Choosing a single word to shape an entire year might sound simplistic, yet it's a ritual that has profoundly altered my life. I have chosen the word “joy” to become my beacon this coming year, which will guide me through life's ups and downs with a sense of purpose and delight.
As we stride into 2024, I will speak to you of the importance of a consult, how you can take advantage of it, and how one consult can uncover the things and thoughts that stop you from becoming the favorite version of yourself.
Click HERE to get the full show notes.
Choosing a single word to shape an entire year might sound simplistic, yet it's a ritual that has profoundly altered my life. I have chosen the word “joy” to become my beacon this coming year, which will guide me through life's ups and downs with a sense of purpose and delight.
As we stride into 2024, I will speak to you of the importance of a consult, how you can take advantage of it, and how one consult can uncover the things and thoughts that stop you from becoming the favorite version of yourself.
Click HERE to get the full show notes.
Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the, Your Favorite You podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains, create the life you've been dreaming of with intention.
My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend. If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.
Well, hi there, welcome back to Your Favorite You. Welcome to 2024 people. I am so glad that we're here together.
00:55
If you've been following along for some time, you might know that I don't do New Year's resolutions. Instead, I pick a word that I want to live into for the year. So in the past, my words have been commitment, persistent, thrive, rave, and last year my word was wonder. So I wanted to live in wonder and awe of everything that I had created in my life, and I also wanted to be curious and use wonder to stoke my curiosity, and that happened. It was so fun. 2023 was an awesome year. My word for 2024 is joy, so I'm going to be looking for ways to add joy into my life and, probably more importantly, to find more joy where it already exists in my life. The reason I am bringing this up to you all is, number one, to challenge you to think of a word that you want to live into in 2024, and number two, to remind myself that this podcast actually brings me so much joy, so you can look forward to receiving this podcast every week, or at least the whole year of 2024.
02:10
Today, I'm inspired to talk to you all about the value of a consult. I've done so many consults at this point. I've had consults where people were a hell yes on the initial call. I've had people who have wanted to think about it. Of those who have wanted to think about it, many of them have come to the follow up call and have been a hell yes. Others have been a nod for now and still others have been a simple no.
02:36
Thank you, my goal with the consult is to help you find answers for yourself. So to questions like do I think coaching is part of the solution to my perceived problems, yes or no? If I do think coaching is the next step, that's the right one to take for me, is Melissa the coach that I want to work with, yes or no, my plan is to help you find the answers and then for you to love your reasons for being a yes or a no. Any answers you come up with for yourself are perfectly acceptable, as long as you love your reasons. I never want anyone to come to the consult and then feel worse than they did before speaking to me. I'm actually the opposite of what I want.
03:22
The consult is so powerful because it often is the first time you're being asked deep questions and you are willingly giving the true answers. It might also be the first time you are encouraged to brag about what a badass you are. I'm here for it. I want to hear all of your bragging. There's really no need for humility in this space. The consult might be the first time you're encouraged to share the shit in your life that you're not so proud of to someone who is not interested in judging you, someone who's only interested in helping you figure out why everything in your life you have done to this point makes complete sense. So first let me tell you what a consult with me looks like. You and I will meet on Zoom for an hour. If you don't want to meet on Zoom for whatever reason, you'll have the option to do a phone call consult. That's fine too. I will ask you how I can help you. You will tell me; I will show you all the possibility that is available to you.
04:28
If you decide to invest in a coach, the point of the consult is for me to figure out if you are a great fit to be my client and for you to figure out if I'm a great fit to be your coach. You tell me where you are right now. You tell me where you think you want to be. You talk long enough so that I can help you figure out what's getting in between you and what you want. I share with you the processes that I have to help you solve the puzzles in your life. I tell you what I think might be possible for you that you haven't even considered yet. I ask if you want that I tell you about my offers. You decide if you want to take me up on my offer or not, knowing that I will love you either way.
05:14
Many of my clients know right on the call that they want to hire me and we celebrate the fuck out of that. Some of my clients want time to think about it, which is not a problem. I try not to give you too much time to think about it, because human psychology proves over and over that the longer we give ourselves to think about something, the more likely we are to let fear take over and to talk ourselves out of what we truly want. Like I said earlier, if you are a no, we figure out the reasons why and help you love those reasons. If I don't think I'm the person to help you, I will tell you right then and there and offer you resources of people who could potentially help you. There are times when I have to reach out to my network of people and get back to you with resources, which is also not a problem at all.
06:08
If you've listened to the episodes with the beautiful women who have agreed to be on the podcast after being my client, you will notice how many of them say that they started feeling better on the actual consult call before they even decided to hire me. I have so much evidence that this is absolutely true. They feel better on the call and then they imagine meeting with me weekly for six months. If they can feel better about themselves and their lives in one hour, they imagine how much better they will feel and how much better their life will feel after six months of working together. I have also done consults with amazing women who have not hired me, and then they've gotten back to me several months or even years later and told me how much just doing the consult provided so much value for them. Maybe how one question I asked them changed everything. Or how me pointing out where they were simply stuck in a pattern that used to serve them in the past but that was no longer serving them. It gave them permission to do things differently on every consult, literally every consult. The women say to me that is such a good question. Why? Yes, thank you.
07:26
I am a professional questioner. My entire job is to be so curious about your life that we uncover things that you might not ever be able to uncover on your own. It's very hard to be in your own brain and be curious about yourself. It's really nearly impossible at first. Of course, I teach you how to do this. The reason that it's hard is because we are very, very, very quick to judge ourselves and you cannot be curious and judgmental at the same time. It's very helpful to have an outside observer who knows you're a badass already, help you question your own brain. This is why I will always have a coach. I want someone who sees the best in me always to help me be curious about why I am the way I am and to help me course correct when I'm not heading in the direction of my favorite version of myself.
08:25
I often have to remind potential clients on the consult that they are not signing up for coaching. They're actually signing up because there's a result in their life that they want but that they don't yet have. And now you might be thinking but Melissa, I don't know what I want. What I want hasn't mattered for over 20 or 30 years. Let me reassure you right now that you don't even have to know what you want ultimately. You just have to know that you want something different than what is happening right now. I will help you figure out what it is you do want and help you stay motivated to keep reminding yourself of what you actually do want, so that you can keep taking action toward your favorite version of yourself.
09:12
The most common fears that women have on the consult are several. First, they fear that other people may benefit from coaching but that they are actually extra super special, broken, and they worry that they will be the first person I was not able to help. Conversely, I've had a lot of people lately say that they think, maybe, that their problems aren't big enough and that it's too indulgent or extravagant to spend an hour a week on what is bothering them. Another thing they fear is that they're going to invest the time and money and not get enough quote unquote out of the coaching. Conversely, they fear that they're going to invest the time and the money and change so much that they become unrecognizable to themselves. To the first fear I say well, you will be the first one, the first woman whom I coach, whose life wasn't made better in some regard after coaching with me. To those worried that their problems aren't big enough, I offer that you don't have to let the situation in your life become dire before asking for help. Why not solve the small things before they become big things? To those who are fearful that they won't get quote-unquote enough out of the coaching.
10:35
We define what a successful coaching relationship looks like, how you will know you were successful right at the beginning, and then we keep working on that until you achieve it. Anything else you unwind or achieve, or usually unlearn, is just gravy. And to those who are worried that they might become unrecognizable to themselves, if that does happen, it will be in all the best ways possible. You will not end up anywhere after coaching with me that you did not intentionally set out to go. You are actually manning the ship. I just have the compass to keep pointing you back for the destination you set. Keep pointing you back to what your favorite version of you does in every situation.
11:24
So how can you get the most out of a consult? There are several things that you can do before the consult and on the consult to help you get the most out of it. The first is to show up with an open mind and an open heart. The second is to choose to be vulnerable and share everything that comes to heart and mind. The third goes with the second. It is to be honest with me and with yourself. Again, so many women on the consult utter their words. I'm going to be completely honest. Yes, please, if you cannot be honest with me, you are probably not being honest in many other areas of your life, and I am here for the brutal and beautiful honesty. Always, at this point, there's probably nothing that you could tell me that I haven't already heard before.
12:20
Next, to get the most out of your consult, you want to be somewhere where you can have privacy so that you can say all the things you need to say without the fear of being overheard by someone else that you know and love. Next is logistical; be somewhere where you have a great internet connection so that you're not lagging and you know, the call's not cutting off and we're not having to come back to the call over and over and over again. The next thing is important too. I want you to show up wanting to invest in yourself. If you think about it, you're already investing an hour of your time for the consult, and I truly believe that time is your most precious and really the only non-renewable resource available to you. So give that hour of your time. Show up ready to invest. Next, show up wanting to be a YES and notice when your brain is telling you NO, tell me about it so that we can question it with love. Finally, give yourself time after the consult to process things. Don't schedule it and have to rush off to a meeting or to pick up your kids. Give yourself abundant space so that you don't feel rushed, so that you can celebrate the hell, YES so that you can think about what you want to think about before we meet again. If you need some time to think about it or you want some time to think about it, all right. I think that is all I have to share in terms of the value of a consult.
13:55
Now that I have recorded this podcast, I'm sure I will come up with 20 more things that I want to say, and if that happens, I'll just record another episode.
So fun, all right. I encourage you all to go right now and to book a consult with me. It's still not too late to join our group that starts on January 10. And I just heard from another coach who is amazing in our industry that she has had several people reach out to her because she doesn't know of any coaches who are high level which I consider myself a high-level coach who are still accepting one on one client. So I want to make sure that it is heard from the mountain tops that I remain available for one-on-one general life coaching as well. So if that speaks to you more than group, or you want to do both I mean, what a friggin gift to give yourself at the beginning of 2024. If you want to do both, I'm here for that as well. All right, folks, see y'all next week. Hey, everybody, don't go quite yet.
15:03
I want to let you know all the ways that you can work with me. If you've been listening to this podcast maybe, especially the episodes where I interviewed my clients, and you are thinking like the older woman in the diner in the classic Meg Ryan Billy Crystal film when Harry met Sally, where Sally, proving a point to Harry, is faking an orgasm while at the diner, Sally finishes and takes a bite of her food and the older woman in the next booth says I'll have what she's having. This is your sign from the universe to schedule a consult with me. I'm currently enrolling clients who want to work with me in a group setting. The group will start on January 10th and we will meet every Wednesday at 1pm until July 3rd, 2024.
15:53
I'm very excited about the women who have already made the commitment to themselves and the investment in themselves to join the group and would love to have you be part of it. I also have a few spots available for one-on-one coaching with me, if that is a way that you want to work with me. The way to contact me is to go to my website, melissaparsonscoachingcom, and either go to the group page and click Book Now or go to the work with me page and click Book Now. That way, you can schedule a consult. I look forward to hearing from you. Let's make 2024 your favorite year ever, as you become your favorite you.
The way to contact me is to go to my website, melissaparsonscoachingcom, and either go to the group page and click Book Now or go to the work with me page and click Book Now.
That way, you can schedule a consult. I look forward to hearing from you. Let's make 2024 your favorite year ever. As you become Your Favorite You.