Ep.54 From Personal Evolution to Life Coach

Welcome to ReConnect with Plant Wisdom. I am your host, Tigrilla Gardenia, Nature-Inspired Mentor and Leadership Coach. In this podcast, I share ancient and modern knowledge, from biology to spirituality, about the wondrous ways plants can help you lead a Naturally Conscious Life.

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Hello, Hello! Everyone! Welcome back to another episode of reconnect with plant wisdom. It’s me, Tigrilla Gardenia.

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And today I

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okay, I have to admit

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I didn’t want to do this episode.

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I received a bunch of questions, and then I talked it over with my team. Well, I received the same question multiple times, and then I had a long, long, long, long, long, long conversation with my team, which is normally what happens with these things. And my team was the one who was like, you should really do this. And it’s so silly. But I’m gonna explain to you why. So this is episode 54,

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from personal evolution to life

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coach. I know it sounds so silly. Okay, so let me explain to you what’s going on? Since I started my work. Now you have to understand. I started working specifically with the plants. In what was it now? 2,013. So the plant focus has always been really important for me.

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as you might remember from I think it was like Episode 4. I gave you my entire history. I have an extremely varied background that goes from high technology like Microsoft and real networks with audio and video, and then over through to the performing arts I used to man. I’ve managed groups.

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I’ve produced large dance parties. I’ve co-owned a circus. I’ve worked with Cirque du Soleil. I’ve been in theater and dance, and so many different aspects of it.

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And All of that really culminates in this

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communication aspect. Right, like my main element or archetype, is really about communication and bridging gaps for people, and I’ve done it in esoteric studies like Kabala and sacred geometry through to technical communications, and then biomimicry. So science communication, and so coming up with a title for what I do is

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never easy for me. I’ve had this even from the old days. I was thinking about this the other day as I was preparing for this episode, I was remembering that

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when I first started working in software development right in the world of Tech. So I had. I had graduated from college. I had worked in a CD pressing plant for a while I was waiting to work with the FBI in reality, as an audio, video forensics person. And in the meantime I got this other job offer, thanks to a very good friend of mine to move across the country to Seattle to work for what was it then called progressive networks? A small little Internet company that was doing audio online.

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And when I first went to decided I wanted to go and work in this, which I’m so glad that I did.

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You know, I was a what’s called the quality assurance engineer. So I was a Qa. My job was to make sure the audio of the quality of the products that we were putting out, which in this case for me was on the encoding side because my specialization wasn’t audio. So I was really testing audio codecs so very quickly. My title cut kind of back. Then this was the days when everybody was like tech nerd and like

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head geek and all kinds of different fun. Titles were finally starting to come out. So my business cards literally said, you know, quality assurance engineer. And then

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audio video, specialist or audio video quality specialist I can’t even remember. And through the years, as I progress through real networks, I continued with that title, because no matter what job I was doing, I was always the one that was being called back to listen to the quality of the audio and the video to really help test and work with the what’s called a codec engineer to figure out this. So I have always had kind of like a quirky title connected to my real title.

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and this continued on. Even at Microsoft I had different titles connected to the different jobs. I was mainly a release manager in many different groups.

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And yet and I was a lead release manager. And I had all these different aspects. I had these groups then figure. Imagine I left that world to go kind of join the circus. I mean, I left that world to produce events. And so my titles. Yeah, I’ve always had, like CEO, and maybe founder and producer in there. But then I’ve always had all these strange titles.

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so all this to tell you that when it came to working directly with people. I really at the beginning struggled with trying to figure out, what what do I do like? How do I? When I walked out of the communications world I was. I was doing a lot of communications for a biomimicry consulting group as well as for Dominur itself.

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When I walked out of all of this, and decided, no, no, no! I was actually going to get my master’s degree in even there. A strange title. My master’s is in vegetal future futuro vegetale plans, social innovation and design. So it’s not like it actually gives you a super easy title. Actually, as a matter of fact, only recently have I started to use this like

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MA. Or MS. Actually MS. Because it’s a master’s in science. It’s a master in architecture, it’s it’s it’s even there in a strange thing.

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So. But when I walked out of like my masters, as I was finishing up my masters, and I was trying to decide exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I knew that it was very much in the realm of more consulting type at the time, like. I knew that I wanted to be very close to an ecosystem, thinking I wanted to bring in all of this biomimetic and all of this like plant inspired work that I was doing, the understanding that the plants I still had

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this esoteric slant, because, remember, you know, I come was a Cabala teacher, and I used to teach sacred geometry. And I have all this esoteric side from Dom and her. And I was like, Okay, how do I wanna bring this all together and give it a sort of a shape of something that doesn’t put me in just the scientific world, or just the engineering world, or just something like that, which is exactly what I had done

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from the very beginning of my career.

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And so at that point, I kind of I zeroed in on the idea of I was gonna be doing consulting because I was consulting on various projects biomimetic projects. And you know, being a facilitator. And I did.

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Didn’t really love the term facilitator. So I went with nature-inspired mentor. At first I think I called it nature-inspired consulting, and then very quickly it became nature inspired Mentor, because

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the consulting side is about projects.

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And while I can work on projects, and I have worked on many biomimetic projects as well as nature-inspired projects, and many other projects, of course, leading up my entire career to get there.

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The mentorship part is the part I’ve always loved like, even when I was doing esoteric teaching and Kabbalah and I was teaching Kabbalah. And I would do groups.

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I very quickly developed a program that allowed me to work one on one with people allowing people to. Really, just how do I explain this?

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Kinda at the time I did? It didn’t have a title in my head. I didn’t know that there was other people, how they were doing it, or what they were calling themselves, so I just gravitated to our kind of session, where people could talk where we could talk through what their particular pro their particular situation was. And the reason for this is because, as you know, I work with a lot of multi-potential lights. I love multi-potential lights, and what I love most about multi-potential lights

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is their unique way of putting together solutions. So the whole out-of-the-box thinking doesn’t work for me.

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Even when I I was privileged enough in the software world to work on very cutting edge technology. Right? I worked on, you know, back when audio and video was first making it out into the world.

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And then even in Microsoft, I was working on the tablet PC. For a long time. Tablet, PC. Which became eventually the tablets that you know today. But back then they were very different, was cutting edge completely. I mean, nobody was doing. This is Pre, you know, even apple coming out with an ipad. This was where we were conceptualizing what that tablet. PC, should look like, what does it work with a stylus? We weren’t even getting to touch yet. We were before touch.

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and so I’ve always worked on very cutting edge projects. And one of the

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you could say, one of my talents and skills is taking a very avant garde concept and making it understandable even to the mainstream, or even to somebody else, like bridging that gap and helping people who are way out there, connect in to their audience or to their clients, or to their customers, or to their bosses and such. And so I’ve always worked one on one with people. And

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so when I first kind of branched out, and I got my Master’s degree, and decided I wanted to work very closely with the plants. The plants were

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pushing me to do this exact same thing right to continue to work one on one with people. And so I went from consulting, which was like around the time of my masters since I was working with a communications company, and I was a communications manager, and they helped me kind of shift that that my private work would be more mentorship. So the idea of being able to work with people who were thinking about bio-inspired or plant and

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inspired projects, nature inspired projects, and how to give them that unique spin, how to help the person particularly navigate that field. So I started always off with the nature inspired part nature inspired Mentor, which still remains my title. Today you’ll always see that I start with nature, inspired Mentor, because that is my way of saying I bring this expertise to our conversation

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the expertise that the plants are teaching me what I have learned in ecosystem services, in design, thinking in all different kinds of inspired technologies, in biomimicry itself.

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All of that I bring to the table as well as my plant communication skills and helping you navigate that world and working very closely with plants directly, and that’s more of a mentorship model in the sense like, I listen to what it is that you want to accomplish, and I help you work through and find your own solutions. But I do give you ideas. I give you thought processes when I went and decided to get my Icf.

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my international coaching, Federation certification.

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a new world opened up. I had always avoided the word coach. I had avoided the word coach, because, as you know, the coaching world is unregulated. It has no specific kind of yes, there are certifications like the Icf. That I went to, but you don’t have to have a certification in order to use that title. There’s no accreditation that’s necessary in order for you to take on the word coach

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and

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look, we’ll be honest. The coaching world is very varied. It’s wonderful that there is no accreditation because it gives a lot of space for different kinds of coaching to begin. But at the same time, there are many people who just hang their hat on calling themselves a coach, and really don’t have any kind of formal training, or don’t don’t know the differences and the nuances of the word, so I avoided it and focused on the mentorship.

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And then I decided to get my accreditation because I wanted to understand what this skill set could offer me, and how it could help my clients even further and honestly, I am in love with coaching love love it.

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I think we can all agree that music is the true universal language. In fact, what we think of as language is actually musicality, and I would argue that plants may be the greatest composers of all.

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By using the music of the plant’s device, plants are now able to share their healing and communicate with us in a language we can understand.

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Music of the plants now has different devices to experiment with, whether you’re a musician looking to play along with your plant friends, a healer who wants to enhance their practice, or simply curious in the show notes you’ll find a link to purchase the right device for you

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such as this bamboo m. There are also all sorts of fun extras, such as downloadable interspecies, music and plant music, merchandise. So click on the link to the music of the plants in the show notes to discover how you can start making music with your plants today.

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As a mentor, I help you see paths by showing you paths. In other words.

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as a mentor, I say, plants would create your ecosystem or your environment in this way, and I help you look and see which of those ways works for you. So I might give you suggestions. I’ll give you ideas. We’ll talk through how, whatever it is that you’re trying to accomplish

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can be seen from the metaphor of a plant or through the eyes of a plant directly right? Sometimes it’s metaphor, sometimes it’s a model, sometimes it’s a measurement of what should I should I do? Based on what a plant would do? So it really is working with the plant, as the plant being kind of the intelligence model behind this, and the plant came home, giving us a set of parameters

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to start to build our lives as nature.

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but as a coach

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I do none of that

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as a coach. My job is to

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ask provocative, open-ended questions that allow you to see whatever it is that you’re experiencing

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through different eyes, not because I show you that, but because I give you this space

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to find that for yourself. I have no idea where you’re going to get to in a coaching session. Right? And I’m I’m very

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clear when I wear different hats like when I go into a mentorship. If I’m sitting in a session with somebody, and I feel like what they need is more mentorship. I’ll tell them I’m gonna put on a mentorship hat. I’m gonna give you some ideas, and then I’ll take that mentorship hat off, and I’ll give you a coach, and I’ll be like, okay.

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where? Where? Where should we follow? Where? Where? What is the rabbit hole that we should go down? And what does that look like? And I make sure that that rabbit hole is productive, not a rabbit hole that’s going to like get you stuck into something. And that’s that’s to me is really fun, because

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I learn just as much as you do. I don’t know what you’re thinking. I don’t know what are your skill sets are. We might run into a past life, we might run into an old talent, we might come into a fear or a limiting belief, and what I am trying to do is just help you see them in front of you and then help you make a decision. So gain confidence in making your decisions and then help you understand what came from those decisions.

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So the coaching model is very different from the mentorship model, and one that I really love being able to marry these 2 things together, because that’s you know again, that’s how a plant would do it. That’s how a body of nature would do it. Sometimes you’re given information, and many times you’re left to. You’re you’re looking for the best way to use what? What information you have.

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The thing is that just calling yourself a coach in the external world. If you’re not working for a company or a coach in a different business, or something like that, is really

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go heart

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difficult to market. Shall I say it that way? So at first I was like, Okay, I’ll just do. Nature inspired mentoring coach, and I do use that title a lot, especially because.

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what I chose to do. Thankfully I I went back to the university to get my certification, and when I did my Icf, my my international Coaching Federation, Icf has 3 levels. Icc, I mean, sorry. A/C. Pcc. And Mcc. An associates coaching, certific certificate or certification.

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Then it’s professional. And then it’s masters, and I’m a professional. So I’m on the second tier. So oftentimes in certain environments

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I just have to call myself a coach and say I have a Pcc. Certification, and the person knows what that means, more or less. But in the world the Wild West, that is the unregulated world of coaching again

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not so clear.

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So when I was doing my certification, I started using leadership coach. My intention with it was self leadership, right? The idea of how do I become the leader of my life? How do I lead my life with confidence? How do I get to a place where I have I completely accept who I am and how I do things, and I lead my life

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consciously, I make conscious decisions. And all these things.

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Can I tell you that in the outside world, from corporate life that leadership word is very misunderstood, very misunderstood.

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You are a leader, right? You want to be a leader in a lot of ways, but a lot of people shy away from the word leader, and especially when they see leadership coach, they assume that that means I wanna go work in corporate. So very quickly, I you’ll see that some of my materials still say nature inspired mentor and leadership coach.

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And so I was like, Okay, I was using it. But it wasn’t really working for me, because it was not connecting with the people that I really wanted to touch. I know that you’re a leader. I know that what you wanna do is lead your life with confidence. But how do I explain that to you

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so? And around this time a very good friend of mine said to me, Well, why are you worried about this? Really? What you are is a world ambassador for plant intelligence

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which I fell in love with. I mean, really I what a compliment I was like! I love that I’m an ambassador for plant intelligence, and I was like, yes, let’s go with that. That, too, has changed. By the way, today I call myself a world ambassador for plant advocacy, because it’s not just the intelligence of plants. It’s advocating for plants at 360 degrees. But that’s another episode that I’ll go to in some other moment. So

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around after I had been using leadership coach for a while, I I decided to change because I moved it to personal evolution, which is convoluted, I mean seriously, nature inspired mentor and personal evolution coach. It was again the concept that I wanted as a leader like

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self leadership. The idea that you manage your evolution. You don’t just get tied on like you don’t just get pulled out, and, you know, dragged into a direction. But that evolution can actually be guided like you’re guiding your synchronicity. Right? I’m making conscious choices that allow my evolution to be personalized and to move into certain directions without halting.

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What are the emergences like? What can emerge in a path? So I’m not holding on and like trying to control everything. It’s not a controlling path, but it’s a guiding path.

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Yeah, you try to explain that to people as you can tell from just the difficulty of explaining it here. That wasn’t working anyway.

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So.

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after so much soul-searching and so many terms and so many discussions with my team, with my clients.

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with my friends inside of the naturally conscious community.

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I ended up settling with life coach

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certified life coach, because, you know, I do have my Icf certification. I have to admit I hate hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it. This term at the very beginning.

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because life coach is so overused.

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so many people call themselves the life coach. I’ve seen 21 year olds no offense to 21 year olds seriously like. I am so proud of you for being ambitious and entrepreneurial, and getting out there. But life

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for me has a capital L, because it’s not life, as in human life or my life, but life, as in

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the web of life.

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And so

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every time I would circle around to try to understand how to explain to somebody what it is that I do on a one on one basis in my sessions. It is life coaching.

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I want you to live a naturally conscious life, a life where you’re confident, where you’re on. You’re you’re working towards you. Feel like you’re you’re a part of something planetary as well as individual, where your personal life is beautiful and your planetary life is beautiful, where we are thinking about, where your place in the web of life.

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how do we create conditions conducive to life as biomimicry often states?

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Where is it that you feel your plantness, your humanness, your animalness, your rockness, all aspects of you, life with the capital. L.

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This work is about impacting all areas of your life, so ultimately

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it is life coaching.

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It all comes down to your life.

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And so, chai as I may.

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I couldn’t get away from the title.

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It didn’t make sense to get away from the title.

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as I want to reclaim the title. There are some amazing life coaches out there that are doing really great work.

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Why should I limit my ability to do that great work, to make it easy for you to find me or to understand what I do? Because I’m afraid of some

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being grouped in with people that in that that maybe are creating, you know, are doing damage, or are not necessarily taking life coaching in the way that I feel like is most important. I mean for me, what’s most important is radical honesty with yourself

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really, truly getting to the place where, no matter what you think, no matter what you feel, no matter what you’re experiencing.

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no matter how ugly it might seem from the perspective of what you’ve been taught. You can admit it to yourself, and understand where that’s coming from, and work through it

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where you can be your truest self, like, where I have such an authentic life.

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where I am so comfortable in my skin that I can navigate what it is that life offers me, because if I’m a plant. I’m sure I’m morphing. I’m adapting, but ultimately I know I am a plant.

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I know who I am.

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and I am creating an ecosystem that allows me to thrive. I’m in an ecosystem that allows me to thrive, and that’s really what I want. I want to flourish and blossom, and it’s all about your

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personal life, radical honesty, complete self acceptance, including all of those things that life has told you are negative about you or bad. You know me. I do not believe in anything that is negative, like. I believe that we were handed a whole series of talents, and it’s about learning how to master them and use them.

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How do you really navigate through this life as a multi potential aate who has so many different passions, who has so many possibilities, and yet can feel where their life purpose is pulling them, and knows how to weave them together. All of that is about life. Is it about personal evolution. Yes. Is it about leadership?

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Sure?

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Is it about

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so many other topics that exist, and titles and and things? Yes, but why would I waste so many words when ultimately it’s about life. So now you’re gonna see me start to use my

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full title in some places, or sometimes pieces of it, which is nature inspired mentor and certified life coach. Icf. Pcc. World Ambassador for plants, advocacy. What do you think? Does it? Does it fit me? Does it? Does it? Does it work? I mean, this is where I wanna get to. I wanna get to the place where you feel comfortable enough spending that

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at that time really looking at yourself. I read somewhere today there was something really beautiful that said, you know, creatives need more time, time doing nothing.

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and I think that that’s true. I think we all do. I think everybody is creative. Everybody has the opportunity to do it, and I do think we need more time to reflect and to just be. That’s the plantness part. Right? That’s the plantless part I want to embrace. And I want you to embrace, which is that I want you to just be able to be

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and to be means. I have to accept who I am and what my life offers me. What what does this incarnation offer me to give phone? So that’s my story.

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I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. What do you think about the word life coach like when you hear it, do you instantly have, like a positive reaction, a neutral reaction, a negative reaction. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

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So you can leave me a comment. You can write to me in the naturally conscious community. You can contact me through my website. I wanna hear what you have to say, because this really will help me better. What do I say? Reclaim this title for all of the great life coaches that are out there, but to also make it easy for all the people that really want life coaching to find it.

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And so

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yeah, I guess I guess that’s it. I mean, I could go on and on, but you know how I am, so thank you so much for listening. Please please send me your feedback. I’d love to hear it. You can find me all over the place, and remember, wherever it is that you’re watching here. You can, or listening. You wanna subscribe like, if you could comment, leave a comment even only to say.

00:27:30.720 –> 00:27:43.809
I’m here. And I heard you, because all of that helps, and it makes it easier for others to reach to reach this content, and I hope that you’ll enjoy some of my other episodes. I’d love to hear your feedback on those, too.

00:27:44.170 –> 00:28:05.499
There are so many topics, so many ideas, so many thoughts, so many people, that I want to bring to you, and it’s not always easy to put them together in a way that makes sense. I mean my mind. It makes sense. But that doesn’t mean it makes sense to you. So in an effort to really reach out and make sure that what I am producing helps you on your journey.

00:28:05.610 –> 00:28:17.089
please. Your feedback is super valuable. It’s what allows me to continue to grow and improve, and for me to evolve.

Thanks for listening to this episode of reconnect with plant wisdom, Intro and Outro Music by Steve Shuli and poinsettia from the singing Life of Plants. So join me to give you like our Dania and my plant collaborators next time on reconnect with plant wisdom.