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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Your life can only expand to the level you believe you deserve. My guest today knows that owning your self-worth is the secret to unlocking a life you truly love. She's here to help you move past limiting beliefs, build unshakable self-trust, and finally step into the fullest version of yourself.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Hi, and welcome to the UWorld Order Showcase Podcast, where we feature life, health, transformational coaches, and spiritual entrepreneurs stepping up to be the change they seek in the world. I'm your host, Jill Hart, The Coach's Alchemist, on a mission to help coaches and entrepreneurs amplify their voice, monetize their mission, and get visible, leveraging podcasts and Substack. Today, we are speaking with Nicole Bonstill.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Nicole is a certified meditation and mindfulness teacher, healing breathwork practitioner, Reiki master, and professional engineer. As the founder of Stepping Stones Meditation and Healing, she guides clients on a transformative journey using meditation, mindfulness, and mindset techniques to

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: techniques proven to enhance physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Nicole specializes in helping people create inner space, trust themselves, and embrace their authenticity so they can thrive in every area of life, whether you're navigating stress, pain, or anxiety, or simply seeking deeper clarity and personal growth.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Nicole offers compassionate support and practical tools to help you unlock your worth and become the architect of your own happiness. Welcome to the show, Nicole, it's great to have you here.

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Nicole: Thank you so much, Joan. Really looking forward to our conversation today.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Me too, me too. So I'm gonna ask you the big question, and then we'll get going, okay?

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Okay, what's the most significant thing, in your opinion, as individuals, we can do to make an impact on how the world is going?

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Nicole: I think each of us knowing our own worth and knowing that we're worthy, from an internal perspective will allow us to, really be anchored in the world of sense of wanting to give out of community and love, rather out of lack.

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Nicole: And I think that goes a big way. I've seen that shift in my own life, of where the less I have depended on external gratification.

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Nicole: And believed more in myself and my own worth. I've become happier, my relationships have been better, and my professional life has just exploded. So, a lot of great things come out of knowing your worth.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Right, yeah, it's kind of a foundational thing, and I think so many of us were raised with the idea that

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You're… you're only as good as the last thing that you did that was appreciated.

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Nicole: Absolutely.

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Nicole: You definitely…

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Nicole: We definitely know that, from being raised, if you were raised to know that you're only valuable based on what you provide to other people, that can really set you up for having low self-worth, and that's the case in my experience. I was my own first client.

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Nicole: And, through these techniques, I really was able to transform a lot of the way that I live, and then just believe and act in the world as well.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So how do you think someone can start identifying and challenging the beliefs that… beliefs that are holding them back? Because really, I think it's about these limiting beliefs we hold that…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Keep us from valuing ourselves in the way that we really should value ourselves.

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Nicole: I think the biggest thing is knowing thyself.

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Nicole: when I was younger, and even, you know, up to 10 years ago, I didn't know who I was, I didn't know what I wanted in life.

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Nicole: I was just, as you said, just going from one thing to the next, always chasing the next thing around the corner.

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Nicole: everything that I enjoyed and wanted in life was the next big thing, the next vacation, the next, big promotion, the next group of circles, of friends and experiences, and it's a really…

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Nicole: unsatisfying way to live, because if any of that shifts on the external, you lose the job, you get divorced, you have a breakup with a friend.

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Nicole: It's devastating, because we become so dependent on them, and the limiting belief that we create through that

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Nicole: is that I am nothing without my external setting.

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Nicole: And that is not the case. You are so much more than that, and when you learn to know yourself and your worth.

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Nicole: You can start to expand your life in so many ways that you didn't even realize was possible.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So, when did… when did you kind of wake up to all of this? What was your catalyst… catalytic moment?

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Nicole: Mine was definitely my divorce in 2017,

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Nicole: I was a stay-at-home mom, and then I went back to work.

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Nicole: And I really just, lived from the mindset of

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Nicole: I always wanted to have family. I always wanted to get married.

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Nicole: But I didn't really look beyond that, and I'd never developed myself as a person. I just attached myself to these ideas, and when I got divorced.

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Nicole: I was devastated for so many different reasons. I mean, it's a huge life change to begin with, but…

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Nicole: I just felt completely lost. I didn't know what I even liked about myself. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. It was a very dark moment, and I believe that that was the time that I really started to open up to

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Nicole: Knowing there had to be something else.

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Nicole: There had to be something that could bring me happiness that wasn't based on somebody else or something external. I had to find it inside.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's so easy when you're young to…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: To look at getting married and having children as that thing that's going to provide you with love.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I think there are so many of us, I know it was my case, for sure, that we grow up and we don't feel loved, or we aren't actually loved. And…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Not a good thing or a bad thing, it's just a fact. Some people shouldn't be mothers.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But they were.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And, then it's not a slam on my mother. You know, she did the best she could, but she didn't want to have children, and she ended up having 3 of us, and …

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I spent a large portion of my life seeking love.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: in the way that I felt love should look. And it never really occurred to me that I could just love myself.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And that would be more than enough.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And once you get to that point, it's like, Oh.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Well, then you can have another person around, but you're not depending on them to provide you with validation for who you are.

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Nicole: Absolutely. I feel like when you get to the point of where you know a lot about yourself, and you know who you are as a person, what lights you up from inside, and having that knowledge really kind of keeps you energized to

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Nicole: participate in life, right? So, when we don't tag ourselves to external factors, we can do that. And I think that, like you said, not knowing what love should look like, we have an idea in our head, but also wanting to be seen.

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Nicole: I felt like when I was young, and again, nothing against my parents, they did the best they could, but I always felt like I was an extreme burden on people, and so I worked so hard

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Nicole: to make sure that I was always doing something to make somebody else's life better, because I couldn't be a burden. I had to be the most helpful person, and the most flexible person, and it turned me into being a doormat.

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Nicole: And completely submissive.

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Nicole: And that did not make me happy, because what did I attract? I attracted people who

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Nicole: either were so indifferent to anything that I needed, because I didn't know how to ask for it.

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Nicole: Or I attracted people who abused me in a way if they took advantage of me. So, it was something where I was always setting myself up for failure because

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Nicole: I didn't know how to give myself

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Nicole: the love that I so easily gave to everyone else, and that was a huge milestone in my life coming to that point. At the beginning of my journey, you know, I got tapped into the, oh, just love yourself. Oh, just, you just have to love yourself.

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Nicole: like, what does that mean? I mean, if you don't know how to do that, then that is just pop psychology, and it doesn't do anything for you. So that is part of why I kind of created the courses that I did in my whole newsletter on Substack for Own Your Worth.

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Nicole: It's… I went through this process.

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Nicole: And these skills have been life-changing for me. And I've seen how they've helped other people, and…

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Nicole: It's all things that we have inside of ourselves. It's… it's techniques that we're capable of doing and implementing, and they are easy and simple, and the outcome is just amazing. It's… I'm so excited to share it with everyone.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I… yeah.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They are simple, they are easy, but if you don't know what they are.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Or if you don't recognize them.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you just can't get there. You're sitting in this… this… pool of…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I went through an emotional breakdown. It was just, like, about 10 years ago now, where it was just, like, everything has to change, because I… this is not sustainable. And I think we all get to these points in our lives where it's just, like.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I can't go on in this state anymore, and so you make another change, and…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But if you don't know what your options are, it makes it really hard. Like, you know, I flippantly said, you know, I could just love myself.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: That was after, like, years of searching for, you know, what are the tools to help me actually recognize what does love look like? And what does love look like for me?

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: How do I experience love?

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you know, they talk about the five love languages. Yes. For everyone, it's different. And… and when you look at the love languages, I think that you sometimes, …

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: we… we can feel guilt, or we can be confused, because people will say, I love you, but that doesn't…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I know for me, when somebody says, I love you, mean anything to me.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It means, like, the sky is blue.

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Nicole: Yes, we….

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I don't feel anything.

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Nicole: We all have these, great things about us that make us unique, and I think that's the tapetry of life, is that it brings us all different people together.

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Nicole: And one of the things that I feel has helped me significantly in learning how to love myself, but then also knowing how to relate to other people, is just being aware of my own needs, and

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Nicole: before… I went on this journey, I…

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Nicole: I didn't even know anything about myself to the point of, like, being aware that I even wanted anything, so there was a complete disconnection with myself.

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Nicole: Someone asked me one day, what do you like about yourself?

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Nicole: Very… pretty simple question, right?

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Nicole: I couldn't answer it. I couldn't say a single thing that I liked about myself, and…

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Nicole: you know, I like…

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Nicole: I am so much like so many other of us. We're accomplished, we're mothers, we're great providers, we're great in our community, we're wonderful friends, but then we can't say one thing that we like about ourselves.

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Nicole: that is a huge red flag, and that is part of the process that I went through to kind of acclimate into this world of being, you know, accepting myself, and, you know, trying to identify what were my own limiting beliefs that were, you know, I'm the one who's telling me

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Nicole: These things. And they're not true.

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Nicole: So I need to recognize what that is. Is it a limiting belief, or is it… is it something that's really true that I need to change? And then also with, you know, having compassion towards myself, the way that I used to talk to myself.

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Nicole: A friend… I would never talk to a friend that way, but I was constantly, having conversations, and then I would analyze the conversation endlessly. I would ruminate. Oh, why did I say that? That was so stupid. I should have said this. I was so hard on myself.

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Nicole: And these are things that…

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Nicole: happened day in, day out. It wasn't just when I had a, you know, a traumatic experience. These are things that I was doing to myself on a daily basis, which was…

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Nicole: you know, it's understandable to see why I was so unhappy and disconnected, because I was really treating myself really poorly. And, you know, the last step that I like to talk about in my course would be healthy boundaries, and

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Nicole: I really love that quote from Marissa Peer, that says, before you… until you know the meaning of yes.

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Nicole: no has no meaning, or I think I messed that up. It's… before you mean the meaning of no, yes has no meaning. So.

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Nicole: if you say yes to everything, but you're saying yes to everything, you don't really say yes to everything, you're just not saying no to anything. And when you live from a place of where you don't

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Nicole: Know exactly what you want to do, and you can't put boundaries up.

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Nicole: you're kind of just at the mercy of whoever and whatever is around you. So those…

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Nicole: things and changes that I went through really enabled me to kind of

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Nicole: just really like myself. I mean, that was a big step for me to even like myself, and to, …

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Nicole: really be okay, and embrace some of the things about me that I always thought, you know, weren't good enough, and now I'm… I just shrug my shoulders at it, and I'm like, well, you know what? I'm not perfect, and … there's a lot of good about me, and that's what I try and focus on. So it's been… it's been a wonderful journey.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I was laughing a little bit to myself when you were talking about conversations with yourself.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: with other people.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And I did the… I was doing that the other day in the shower.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: it just, like, the flashback in my head when you said that. I was having a conversation with my father, and I stopped myself in the middle of the conversation I was having with my father, in my head, and said, you're having conversations with people that you will never have in real life. Why are you bothering?

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But then I went on to think about something else. It's being conscious of what your thoughts are.

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Nicole: Absolutely.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And what you're thinking about those thoughts, because you will always have thoughts. Things will always come up. Like, I was…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Thinking about something that had to do with

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: My daughter or my granddaughter or something, and my dad has, like.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: He… he's from the 50s, and…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: 40s, and he has ideas about how the world is, and… He's very, …

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: energetic in his… in his portrayal of how the world should be, according to Bob. And, it's not the way the world is. And so, I was having this conversation with him where I was… I was kind of getting worked up

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: In my head! I mean, this is a conversation that will never be had anywhere else. Certainly not with him.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And it just… the act of catching it, And saying, I, you know.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you're doing this to yourself. It's just, like, totally you. You can stop at any time. You can get off the train.

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Nicole: I think that, that realization and understanding that that is powerful in itself, of being able to have a conscious understanding of these patterns that we get into that keep us

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Nicole: in the place that we don't want to be in. And if you can become aware that it's a pattern, and it's a negative pattern, you can then flip the script, and you can think new thoughts that are going to be, you know, turn into new positive behaviors. So, for me, it's been a journey,

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Nicole: the self-compassion aspect was probably the hardest for me, because I just…

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Nicole: Really didn't know anything about myself, and…

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Nicole: I put so much weight on how

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Nicole: if someone externally thought that I was great, that meant that I could let myself think that I was great.

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Nicole: as long as they thought that I was great. Once they thought I wasn't great.

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Nicole: then it's my fault, there's something wrong with me, you know, and it was, … it was just a pattern that went on for decades, and…

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Nicole: I realized through talking with, the communities and friends and family that, you know, we're not alone. We all experience these things, and

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Nicole: One of the best things that we really can do is learn to love ourselves in a way that's positive, not through having, you know.

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Nicole: all these material possessions, or, you know, being in power, that's not real love. That's control. And control is not love. So, when we've learned and really want to aspire to learn how to love ourselves.

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Nicole: It's from a place of…

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Nicole: having empathy for ourselves that transmutes out to others, having an opportunity to have perspective that you might not always see things the same way that I see things, and then having an understanding of being able to get to the root of

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Nicole: how people feel about things, because those limiting beliefs, the more that I thought about it.

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Nicole: it's because I was always afraid that I was gonna get hurt. So, in some way, the limiting belief

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Nicole: Was me keeping myself in a cage.

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Nicole: Because I didn't want to get hurt. So, I'm sitting in the cage, and the belief is.

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Nicole: No one would care.

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Nicole: You know, you're not worthy, nobody likes you.

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Nicole: So what does that happen when I keep saying that to myself? What happens is I don't take any action, I don't do anything.

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Nicole: And that is, another big, important part of

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Nicole: these wonderful, techniques that I teach is that

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Nicole: we can learn all day, and we can learn all these new tips and tricks and techniques and strategies, and it's great, right? Because it's wonderful to learn.

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Nicole: But if you're not taking action on it, and you're not implementing that through either,

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Nicole: Trying it out for 5 minutes a day, or practicing it on a regular basis.

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Nicole: you're actually not going to change. So, I always look at… I love to read books.

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Nicole: But when I read a book, I never get the same out of it than I do with either a conversation or something where I'm writing. I know that when I write a lot, I feel like the energy inside of me actually comes out onto the paper. So…

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Nicole: I feel like we have to take action. If we get inspired to do something, if we get inspired to say, you know, someone's watching this podcast and saying.

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Nicole: I really don't want to be mean to myself anymore. I really don't want to keep myself from doing these things. I really want to accept all the parts of me.

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Nicole: I want to be able to say no when I know in my side that, you know, someone asked me to do something I really don't want to.

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Nicole: These are things that you can do, you know.

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Nicole: through these tips and all these strategies that I teach, because it is something that we should all really know. They should be teaching these techniques in schools.

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Nicole: And people would have a better understanding of themselves, and then their surroundings and their communities, and I think it would be a wonderful thing for people to learn how to love themselves. It would go a long way.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It ripples out, because when you love yourself, you give permission for others to love themselves, and you learn

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Part of the boundaries things is that you learn how to approach other people looking for their boundaries, too.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So that you don't interfere with what…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: How they don't wish to receive things, and you look to present things in a way that,

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: that they can receive the information, because we don't all receive information in the same way, and it…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's a fundamental skill that we really do need to teach others. And it's… it's not, like.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's not like anybody escapes childhood without trauma, because it's… that's just how…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: how this experience we call life goes. You experience trauma, you resolve the trauma, you learn something, and you…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: have a moment of joy, and then the trauma starts again, and it's just, like, a continuing rollercoaster.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But we're here for an experience. We're not here for, like, the Garden of Eden, because, you know…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I've heard rumors it's on the other side, and we'll get there eventually!

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Nicole: I definitely feel like one of the biggest things with relationships that's changed for me through these practices is

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Nicole: I don't…

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Nicole: take offense to someone not seeing the same perspective of me. I don't take offense to someone who doesn't want to spend time with me. I don't take offense to someone who isn't interested in me.

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Nicole: I… I used to be so devastated by that, and now I'm just like…

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Nicole: Thanks for letting me know, because what does that say? That means that I can keep my energy

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Nicole: And then use it for something that's gonna be a better match for me. And…

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Nicole: That's a good thing. Like, rejecting is a good thing, if you really look at it what it is. It's not negative. It… it doesn't always feel great.

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Nicole: But what is that really telling you? It's saying that you need to realign your path.

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Nicole: to be around people who are gonna be, you know, lifting you up instead of dragging you down. And healthy boundaries help a lot with that. And then also respecting other people's boundaries. If, like you said, knowing that someone is not okay with something.

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Nicole: you don't get offended by that, and you're just like, okay, well, that gives me… you take that information, and you use it in a positive way. You don't have to grasp onto things a lot, and

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Nicole: That was really hard, learning how to let go of things, …

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Nicole: And why did I need to let them go was because…

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Nicole: I was only holding onto them because

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Nicole: it was externally what was making me happy, because I didn't know how to make myself happy. And that was a big, big change once I started doing boundaries. Like, my mom…

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Nicole: She jokes with me how much I just…

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Nicole: you know, she'll call me, and she'll say, oh, do you want to do something? I'll be like, I have plans.

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Nicole: And she knows that that means, you know, not exactly what she might think, oh, I'm going out and I'm not going to be away. That might mean I have plants in my house by myself.

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Nicole: So, she knows that, you know, 10 years ago, I never would have made time for myself. I would have just been like, what do you need? Okay, I could do that. Yes, okay, that's fine.

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Nicole: And then I would just put myself way on the back burner. I'm not that way anymore. I know what I like, I know how I like to spend my time,

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Nicole: And it's been… it's been wonderful, because now I get to create a life that really is truly my own.

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Nicole: I have children, and our relationship has just…

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Nicole: blossomed in the sense that they're becoming so independent, I think because I'm becoming so independent, and… but we still… that time that we spend together.

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Nicole: The quality is so fantastic, because we're present with each other, and we… we can, you know, if someone comes downstairs and they're in a really bad mood.

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Nicole: I don't think it's something that I did.

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Nicole: I can say, this is because that person

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Nicole: didn't get a lot of sleep, and they're cranking. And we'll just joke about it.

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Nicole: Like, that never would have happened when I was younger. Like, when I was younger, it would turn into an argument, like, why are you mad? And, you know, well, why are you… what did I do? I didn't do anything. You know, so it's a different lifestyle, and it's… it's one that is a lot more peaceful.

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Nicole: And it's a lot more energized in the sense that I get really excited about the things that I'm doing now, because I know that it's something that is coming from me.

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Nicole: out into the world, not me trying to grasp onto something out of lack. So it's been amazing using meditation and mindfulness and mindset. I call them the 3Ms. For me, it's been a life changer, and it's a…

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Nicole: It's really wonderful techniques to implement into your life.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's so freeing in a lot of ways, because we're… we might have taken responsibility for how other people are feeling, or, you know, you're talking about your child coming down the stairs and being really crabby and thinking that

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you have to, A, take responsibility for their feelings, which is never a good idea, but we do it.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: as moms, it happens all the time, that you just feel like you have to be responsible for all the feels that your kids are going through, and we really need to just be helping them to acknowledge that, yeah, you're having that feeling. It's normal.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: This is what we call it.

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Nicole: Yes, absolutely, and I… and I pivoted, and I come up… try and come up with these,

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Nicole: sentences that I'll say in certain circumstances that kind of, like, defuse the situation, or just…

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Nicole: Bring some humor into it.

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Nicole: in a way that will kind of help de-escalate if someone's really not, you know, is getting… starting to get angry. And one of them is just, like, what can I do to help?

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Nicole: And… Just coming from that place.

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Nicole: You have to already be grounded yourself.

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Nicole: To know that this has nothing to do with me.

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Nicole: It sounds like they might need some help that either they want to talk it through or not, but it gives them the opportunity to be in control of their own emotions.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And just by you saying, what can I do to help?

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Nicole: Like, that helps our relationship improve so much, because

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Nicole: You're connecting on a way that is out of love.

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Nicole: not out of fear, okay? So if you came downstairs, and you got into an argument with your spouse or your child, and it had nothing to do with them.

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Nicole: That's because something's going on with you that is…

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Nicole: The real route, if you keep digging, keep digging, it's out of something that's fear.

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Nicole: And so, like, again, the awareness of, like, being able to do that, it really helps with, just relationships in general, and I've seen that tremendously. It's so powerful.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It is really powerful. But even with little, little kids who might not even know how you can help.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: for example, I have a grandson who's… it was…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It was about 6 months ago when we were going through this tantrum.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: event, we would… we take him out on Thursdays to go to the park, and… and there's… there's the trauma at the end, where he's just like.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I don't want to go.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And… and he's crying and screaming and all the things.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But, you know, if you're just, like.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I understand. What you're feeling right now is… is sadness.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Then maybe a little anger.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And you are welcome to express that all you want, but it's not going to change the result, we do have to go.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And if you talk in that tone of voice, and you give them something to do, like, and now can you please carry this thermos for me? You give them a job, because it distracts their brain.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It usually just, like, ends, because They've felt heard

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They've… you've acknowledged what they're feeling, And…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You're not yelling at them, so they're… they don't really have any place to go with that.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But if you engage them, and you're like, you can't talk to me like that, then it escalates, and then you escalate, and then it escalates, and then, you know…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Then it's a bad experience for everybody.

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Nicole: Yes, so I like to think of it as, like, two scenarios. You're either the sponge, or you're the fuel. So, if you're the sponge, you're absorbing everyone's, like.

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Nicole: negativity, and then you, yourself, become, you know, you get angry, you get upset, you feel damned. You could have been 5 minutes earlier in the best mood of the day.

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Nicole: So if you're a sponge and you don't know how to do those healthy boundaries, that could be a negative outcome. And then with the fuel, that's when you try and control through just, like you said, engaging and escalating, and neither of those turns out well. And it takes a lot of self-awareness.

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Nicole: A lot of compassion, a lot of acceptance, and great boundaries to be able to do that. So…

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Nicole: All of these techniques, it's not just for yourself, but it's so that you can stand in your own core.

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Nicole: and that you're living from your own internal joy that's coming out of you, that it does, like you said, a ripple effect to the people closest to you, and then also out to the community. So it's…

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Nicole: I just can't overstate how much these techniques have changed my life in so many amazing ways. It's given me the confidence to do things that

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Nicole: I never thought that I could do. I… I always thought that I was gonna be a wife, and that was gonna be it. You know, people would ask me, who… who are you?

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Nicole: I'd say I'm a mom. I'm a wife.

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Nicole: That was it.

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Nicole: I couldn't say anything else about myself. I just really identified myself by society labels, and that was as deep as I could go. So it's… it's definitely something where

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Nicole: I've been living my best life.

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Nicole: And it's not always easy. I go through the same things that people do, but I know that my reaction times

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Nicole: They just keep getting smaller and smaller and smaller, things that, you know, 10 years ago, if I had an uncomfortable conversation with someone, I would ruminate it.

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Nicole: days. I would be thinking about that conversation, and what would be the result?

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Nicole: I would be, be really feeling sick to my… I used to get… make myself sick to my stomach. I would just feel nauseous the whole time.

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Nicole: To now, yes, I have, you know, circumstances that happen that it's not the best, and I just say to myself.

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Nicole: well, that happened, what can I learn from it? You know, so your rearview mirror should be something to look to the past, not to, like, you know, look forward. You want to make sure that things that you come

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Nicole: an experience in life, you can carry forward as a lesson, and that's going to help you navigate through those a little bit quicker next time. So, having that awareness,

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Nicole: It's pretty amazing. It's… it's a beautiful thing.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And with the rearview mirror analogy, we glance in the rearview mirror as we're going forward. We don't stare in it, or we're going to run into stuff.

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Nicole: Absolutely.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Keep them alive!

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Nicole: I was always in the rear mirror. I was constantly… I was the most negative person, and alls I did was look back on the past, and if you ask me about memories from my younger adulthood.

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Nicole: 9 out of 10 of them were something that bad happened. I just was only keeping the bad memories.

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Nicole: And I, I really…

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Nicole: I mean, I know now that that was what always fed into my limiting beliefs. I'd go back and I'd point to that, well, this happened 10 years ago, and it could happen again! You know, so I had a very strong

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Nicole: hold on myself about, you know, what I couldn't and could do, and it was very, self…

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Nicole: destructive. It was pretty bad.

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Nicole: So it's… that itself has been a huge change.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Hey, I heard Marissa Pierce, another Marissa Pierce quotes, she has a few of them, but this is one that really was powerful in my life, and she says, tell yourself a better lie because they're all lies.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Which, to me, gave me permission to rewrite all of those bad stories that, you know, we all have bad memories.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But you can… you can make them up to be something different, because nobody… no two people experience the same thing in exactly the same way. Like, I can have conversations with my dad now, because my mom's passed, but… about a situation, and he will remember it totally differently. I can have conversations with my kids.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And I remember it one way, and something was said, and… And they interpreted it Totally differently.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And it… it had a… Negative impact on them.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: it wasn't maybe even something that was directed at them, it was something that I was dealing with

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Tangentially to something that they may have happened into.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's just like, you don't know where…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Any of these memories come from.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But we've made these stories, and we tell ourselves these stories over and over again, and they change.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Over the years.

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Nicole: It's almost like our own, pre-AI, right? So, we're always modifying the story based on if we're starting to step away from how terrible that was, and we might be making progress. Well, here comes our mind telling us again, oh, no, actually it was this, and it was, you know, 10 times worse than that.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Worse!

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Nicole: Yes, so it's definitely, …

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Nicole: I've loved learning about the mindset in general, and neuroplasticity, and I am just amazed Ed…

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Nicole: Knowing how your thoughts

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Nicole: turn into emotions and then turn into a behavior. And when I look back and I do a lot of reflection as a big part of my courses, …

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Nicole: there's just huge eye-openers for me, because I'm like.

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Nicole: I have such a strong pattern of this, and the outcome is always this emotion, and then, you know, what is my behavior? Is that I totally shut down? Like, that was a huge pattern for me. Like, I'm… I like to say when I do my healing breathwork,

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Nicole: I'm the crier. Like, so for me, like, my emotional releases, I cry a lot, and…

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Nicole: Like, my family, they're just like, no, no you don't.

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Nicole: because I'm very… I'm, like, always, like, have to be the person that always has it together, right? So, I don't show a lot of emotion, so they don't believe me when I say that I cry in a room with other people.

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Nicole: So, I'm like, no. And I said, and you know what? It's really cathartic. It's really, has helped heal me a lot, and when we know what emotional release is the most beneficial for us.

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Nicole: We should kind of practice with that, and see how we can work a little bit more with it. It will have wonderful outcomes for you, and it will help you stop going from that emotion

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Nicole: to a knee-jerk reaction impulse of doing a certain behavior that you've always done. So for me, like I said, I suggest shut down.

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Nicole: I just would withdraw myself, I would be quiet, I wouldn't, you know, engage with anybody. And everyone thought that that meant that I was fine, but inside, I was…

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Nicole: Feeling so….

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: saw a response.

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Nicole: Yes, yes, I was… it was a very protective response, and … But to people.

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Nicole: they thought that I was really… I was just fine, but on… I was just really upset. So, there's also that, you know, limiting beliefs

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Nicole: It's… they're like a mask. You know, they keep us…

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Nicole: contained into our own kind of, like, thought process, as well as keeping us from really connecting with other people, because most limiting beliefs, they want to keep you from being vulnerable, because we don't want to get hurt, right? So, we'll have a limiting belief about certain things.

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Nicole: So it's just… it's pretty amazing what you can learn about yourself through the reflection and… and these patterns that you develop over time. And once you become aware of that.

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Nicole: It's really powerful to sit with it and…

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Nicole: that's where the awareness comes in. Once you have an understanding that's a pattern, the next time you do it and it comes up.

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Nicole: That's where the, wait a minute.

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Nicole: Oh, I'm doing this again, aren't I?

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Nicole: And that's when you can take action, and it's like that quick little breath of pause to stop you.

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Nicole: I don't need to react in that way like I used to. I can… I could do it a different way. I can… I can say, hey, you know, that statement you just said to me, that was really hurtful, and I don't like that. And…

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Nicole: that will then change the way that you do that behavior in the future, too. So it's… it's something that compounds over time, and it gets easier every time you do it.

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Nicole: And it's just… I think it's something that everyone could do, and the benefits are just amazing.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It doesn't take a whole lot of time. It's not like you have to suck up… it has to suck up your whole life, and you have to spend hours in meditation, and

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Breathwork, and all of these things that can kind of be scary sounding. It's really… a few minutes.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: repeated daily.

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Nicole: Absolutely.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: changes.

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Nicole: when I started out with meditation, I was… I didn't really fully understand it, and I really was put off by, you have to sit in a room, don't disturb me for an hour, I need to have incense, I need to have candles, and …

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Nicole: you know, that's how I'm gonna get through this. Like, you have to force yourself to meditate.

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Nicole: I'm… I'm a lazy meditator, so my shortest meditation is 1 minute.

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Nicole: And that's my favorite meditation I teach everybody. It's very simple, and it's all just about connecting to yourself and your body, and your breathing, and any body tension that you have. 20 seconds each, and then you're done.

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Nicole: And I think that…

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Nicole: helping educate people that these techniques don't have to take up your whole day, they don't take up your whole day. It's all about

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Nicole: micro-learning, doing something for 5 minutes a day, and then keeping what resonates with you, because there's a thousand different ways to do something, and, you know, maybe 900 of them, you're like, I never want to have to do that again. And that's fine. You don't.

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Nicole: Just stick with what you like, because what you like is what you should be doing.

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Nicole: And, it's really easy to kind of implement these activities into your life.

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Nicole: And the breath work is, again, it's just different breaths that you do, that you can do for anxiety, that help you regulate your thought process, disconnect from your ruminating thoughts, and again, they could be as simple as, like, you know, breathing consciously for a few minutes.

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Nicole: So, it's not something where you have to go on a retreat or, you know, do a silence yoga thing for, you know, a week.

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Nicole: It's not. It's about learning to recognize your body, how you respond to certain things, and bringing yourself some compassion through conscious breathing, or mindfulness.

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Nicole: Or meditation, so it's… It's really easy to implement.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And they can have…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: life-changing effects. I do want to ask you how you do your coaching, but I wanted to just share this one thing. I learned how to do box breathing.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: A few years ago, a friend of mine taught me about box breathing. I'd never heard of it before, and it never really occurred to me that if you did this at night, it would relax your body, and you could fall asleep. It has fundamentally changed my sleep patterns at night. I sleep for 8 hours a night. I'm 65 years old, I've been through menopause.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I mean, that just doesn't happen to women.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: women I know.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And I was like, you know, most older women out there. I would get up several times a night and have to go to the bathroom, couldn't go back to sleep, I was cranky a lot because I was tired, and it has just…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Changed my whole life.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's… Who knew?

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Nicole: I love the box breasts because it's so great for insomnia.

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Nicole: You're focusing so much on, like, having to count, having to do the movements, holding the breath in, holding the breath out, that it's fundamentally disconnecting your thought process, because you're taking your focus on your breath.

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Nicole: And it does help relax you so much. Body scan's also great right before bed, where you can, you know, consciously release any of the tension out of your body. So, these are… these are practices that we should be doing

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Nicole: Not only for mental, but for physical health and wellness as well. The benefits are just amazing. I think that people should be doing, a whole routine

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Nicole: that could take no more than 10 minutes before they go to bed. And like you said, the, you know, outcome for you has been amazing. And that's… that's great to hear, because I… I know that

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Nicole: As I'm getting a little bit older, my sleep's been a little bit more unpredictable, so that will go a lot with regulating that and getting a good night's sleep.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And even if you wake up, because sometimes we get those cortisol jolts, and we're just like, I'm awake, and you don't want to be awake.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Because, you know, I have standards. I will not get up before 3 in the morning, because it's still the night before, before 3. But…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: If you just practice it whenever you wake up and you feel like.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you know, I'm… I'm awake. You can just, like.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Relax back into sleep and get your 8 hours.

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Nicole: Absolutely. That's a great technique.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So, how do you do your coaching? Is it one-on-one? Is it group? Is it just courses?

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I don't mean just courses, but is it as a course? How does all that look?

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Nicole: So, I have a couple different things that I do. I teach workshops in person, and I do those for students, staff, and then also just for community, groups, and…

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Nicole: One of the things that I do on a regular basis is teach, teachers. So I'll go into a school district, and I'll teach them different techniques that they can use.

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Nicole: for themselves, so that they can be in a more mindful place when they teach their students. And then for students, I teach them with kind of age-appropriate techniques for, you know, breathing, meditation, mindfulness. We play games and stuff like that, so they can have these techniques for when they're feeling a little bit unregulated with their emotions. I love doing those in person.

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Nicole: …

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Nicole: I don't do one-on-one, because I feel like, for me, I love the group setting a little bit more, and… but I do have online classes, which are self-paced online classes, and it takes you through with, you know, all the videos that you need. I do a lot of downloads.

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Nicole: And then I do audio meditations, which are, you know, pre-recorded, so then you just download it and you can listen to it when you want.

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Nicole: I'm… really love the teaching aspect in the sense of my courses always have meditation, mindfulness, and mindset in them. And the… as we've discussed through our conversation today, I feel like

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Nicole: Together, they're so much more powerful than just doing one, because they overlap and synergize with each other so much, and the benefit that you'll get from doing all three of them, they really hit the mind-body-spirit

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Nicole: so great. So, I love them, they're always in my courses. And my courses are always aimed to,

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Nicole: Informing, inspiring, and involving my participants, because when

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Nicole: I'm the teacher, so I want to inform you of how to do the technique.

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Nicole: But then, I want to inspire you to take that action on your own, because, like we talked about, you have to actually do the techniques in order to get the benefit. If you just learn about it and say, oh, this sounds great, and then you never do it, you're not going to get the benefit. And then….

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: go to work.

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Nicole: And then from there, you act as an inspiration for yourself, and then also others around you, to kind of

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Nicole: magnate that out… outwards, to positively affecting your life, as well as others around you, so it's… I've run all these core principles in my classes, and, I have, like, an online platform that I use for the courses, so…

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Nicole: I'm really excited. The Own Your Worth course is a series, so if you're a person who's only struggling with, like, one topic, you could just get it on that topic, but if you want the whole bundle, you could buy the whole bundle.

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Nicole: And then you own the downloads, you can download them and keep them, in the audio meditation, so it's…

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Nicole: For me, it's been a passion project. I feel like

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Nicole: learning to do these techniques and getting certified in them has been one of the best things I've done in my life, and it's just been a pleasure to be able to teach. I especially love

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Nicole: Working with the kids, because, …

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Nicole: they're just amazing. I mean, they're so open to, kind of, Learning these techniques, and…

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Nicole: Just being able to know that, like you said earlier, when they're seen.

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Nicole: It opens up this huge blooming effect for them.

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Nicole: that…

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Nicole: You know, makes it a little bit easier for them the next time they become more resilient, because then…

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Nicole: They get exposed to something that they're in control of, and they can implement in a way that is not dependent on who they're around.

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Nicole: And it's something I get to keep to work with. And the same for the teachers. I teach a, compassion fatigue course, which…

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Nicole: I love, and I think is really needed, where we have so many teachers, nurses, and people in emergency response that they're just experiencing such high levels of burnout.

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Nicole: especially after COVID and the pandemic, that they just have to start taking better care of themselves.

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Nicole: And these techniques are a really wonderful step in that direction.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: How can, people get in touch with you? And you have a free guide, Unlock Your Worth, A Simple Roadmap to Kickstart Your Self-Worth Journey. You want to talk a little bit about that, too?

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Nicole: Yes, so, as we talked about earlier in the conversation, when we say, you know, the jargon, oh, just love yourself, well, you know, myself included, I didn't know, like, how to even start.

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Nicole: So, the reason I put together this Own Your Worth Roadmap is, really to give an opportunity for you to take actionable steps

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Nicole: to start unlocking your worth, and look at the two… the five different areas of your life where you… that might be holding you back. So, we do over steps for limiting beliefs, healthy boundaries, self-compassion and self-acceptance, and also investing in yourself, which is important.

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Nicole: And I put a free download that's available through my Stepping Stones website, which is www.steppingstonesmh.com.

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Nicole: And you can just find the link to that at the bottom of the page.

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Nicole: And any information on the courses are on there as well, and …

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Nicole: It's been something that I've loved doing. The roadmap is a great way to start, and it gives you an understanding of where you might be struggling, and then from there, you can go on to the other courses that are available.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And you can also find Nicole over on Substack. If you just type in substack.com forward slash the at sign, Stepping Stones MH, you will find her own your worth.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: publication, and…

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: look through them! There's some amazing content just right there, available for everybody. And please consider subscribing to her publication so you get notified when new content comes out. Thank you so much for joining us, Nicole. This has been an awesome conversation.

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Nicole: Thank you so much, Joe, I really enjoyed it.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So, to learn more about Nicole and grab her free guide, Unlock Your Worth, A Simple Roadmap to Kickstart Your Self-Worth Journey, please visit www.steppingstonesmh.com, and don't forget to subscribe to her on Substack.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And we'll be sure to put those links in the show notes below. Thank you for tuning in with us today. If you have a podcast or are interested in starting one, be sure to reach out to us at heartlifecoach.com.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: support at heartlifecoach.com. I missed that part. We love to help spiritual entrepreneurs.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And coaches amplify their voice and monetize their mission, and offer a variety of ways to do that, leveraging Substack. Join us for our next episode as we share what others are doing to raise the global frequency. And remember, change begins with you. You have all the power to change the world. Start today, get visible.