Ep 140: Lessons from 5 Years of Melissa Parsons Coaching - Part 2

Last week, I began sharing my five biggest takeaways from owning and operating Melissa Parsons Coaching and loving my career as a general life coach for women. The first three lessons I talked about were the power of telling the truth, staying in the present moment, and uncovering our limiting subconscious beliefs about ourselves.

In this episode, I’m back with two more lessons: the power of treating yourself with self-compassion and creating your own life on purpose. After five years of coaching incredible women, one of the most profound transformations I've witnessed is when a client shifts from living reactively to creating her life intentionally. This journey from unconscious reaction to conscious creation ties all the other lessons together.

The ultimate gift of coaching is the recognition that we're all constantly evolving in our capacity to live consciously. The journey isn't about reaching perfection, but about embracing the ever-expanding possibilities that emerge when we choose to live as our favorite versions of ourselves.

Click HERE to get the full show notes.

Transcript

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 intentions. 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.

Hello everybody, we're back. I am in the middle of sharing with you the five lessons, my five biggest takeaways from owning and operating Melissa Parsons Coaching and loving my career as a general life coach for women. 

If you missed last week's episode, please go back and give it a listen. You don't have to listen to it before this one, but you sure could if you wanted to. To recap, the first three lessons I shared last week and they were, number one, the power of telling the truth. The second was the power of staying in the present moment and the third was the power of uncovering our limiting subconscious beliefs about ourselves. I had so much to say about these first three lessons that I decided to break this anniversary episode up into two episodes. 

This is just like me in real life too. I like the celebrations in my life to linger as long as possible. So this is apropos just so you know. Okay, who's been waiting since last week to hear lesson number four, the wait is over, which actually made me break out seeing the search is over by survivor. 

My bestie Alicia is laughing about this right now because I turned on the searches over on Apple music and belted it out for her and saying it to her and send it to her in a text. Okay. Enough of that. 

Lesson number four, the power of treating yourself liberally with self-compassion. Once the women that I work with decide that they want to unlearn many of their old patterns, conscious or subconscious, we get to work on treating themselves with so much compassion as they unlearn the old ways and slowly start to learn the new. 

Many women I coach initially resist self-compassion for deeply ingrained reasons. So they mistake self-compassion for self-indulgence. They often believe that being kind to themselves means lowering their standards or giving up on their goals. 

They think, if I'm not hard on myself, I'll never accomplish anything, and that's a common refrain that I hear. This fear that self-compassion means complacency creates tremendous resistance. They also believe that self-criticism is motivating, so many high-achievable women have built their success on a foundation of harsh self-judgment. 

They've internalized the message that their inner critic keeps them sharp and productive. The thought of giving this inner critic less power feels genuinely threatening to their identity and to their accomplishments. 

And then, of course, our cultural conditioning prioritizes others, so as women, we've often been socialized to put everyone else's needs before our own, and when my clients begin to practice self-compassion, it can trigger guilt and feelings of selfishness. 

And many of the women tell me that they don't deserve this kindness when others are struggling more than they are. And then, of course, there is some discomfort with vulnerability. Self-compassion requires acknowledging one's pain and suffering, which many women have been taught to minimize or ignore. 

There's often fear that once they acknowledge their struggles, they'll be overwhelmed by emotion, they might not be able to talk, and they will appear weak. And, of course, this self-kindness feels very unfamiliar. 

For many women, self-critical thoughts feel like home. They're the familiar internal landscape that they've inhabited for decades. And self-compassionate thoughts can feel foreign and uncomfortable, and it's almost like speaking a new language at first. 

So what are some practical approaches we use to cultivate self-compassion? The first is what we call the hand-on-heart practice. When caught in self-criticism, I guide my clients to place one hand over their heart to take three deep breaths and to speak to themselves as they would to a dear friend facing the same situation. 

This physical gesture of putting our hand on our heart actually activates our parasympathetic nervous system and helps us create a moment of pause before responding with kindness. The second practical approach is a self-compassion letter. 

I ask clients to write a letter to themselves from the perspective of an unconditionally loving friend who sees their struggles and their strengths clearly. Writing these letters in the second person saying you are trying so hard often makes accessing compassion easier. 

And then reading this letter during difficult times reinforces self-kindness. The third practical approach is something called the three components check-in. This is based on the work of Kristin Neff. 

She is a psychologist that I respect who has literally written books on self-compassion. So I teach clients to ask Dr. Neff's three questions when they're facing difficulty. The first is, can I acknowledge this is a moment of suffering? 

Just doing this is a moment of mindfulness. The second question is, can I remember that struggle is part of being human? Of course, this reminds my beautiful clients of our shared and common humanity. 

And then the third question is, what do I need right now to be kind to myself? The first step in any self-kindness practice. What do I need right now to be kind to myself? The fourth practical approach is compassionate unlearning, something that I have coined. 

So we practice taking harsh self-talk and reframing it in compassionate terms. So for example, instead of saying, I'm so disorganized, I'll never get this right, you can say, I'm finding this challenging right now and that's okay. 

I'm doing the best with the resources that I have. The next practical thing is the would you say it test? So when a self-critical thought arises, I ask clients to consider, would I say this to my daughter, to my best friend, or to someone that I love? 

This simple question often immediately highlights the harshness of their inner dialogue and creates natural motivation to speak more kindly to themselves. And then finally, the last practice is normalizing imperfection. 

So we create something called a failure resume that celebrates mistakes and setbacks as evidence of courage and growth. This practice helps women see that imperfection is not just normal, but it's also necessary for learning and growing and developing. 

What makes these approaches so effective is that they acknowledge the genuine resistance that my clients have while providing concrete, accessible ways to begin practicing self-compassion. The key insight I share with my clients is that self-compassion isn't actually about feeling good, it's about relating to ourselves kindly when we're suffering, which is precisely when we need it most. 

Okay, so that was lesson four. Lesson five is the power of creating your life on purpose. After five years of coaching incredible women, one of the most profound transformation I've witnessed is when a client shifts from living reactively to creating her life intentionally. 

This journey from unconscious reaction to conscious creation represents the culmination of all the other lessons. So when women first come to me, many of them are living in response mode. They're reacting to demands from others to circumstances in their lives. 

They're reacting to their own inner critics. Life is happening to them rather than through them or for them. Their days are shaped by external pressures and internal autopilot patterns they've never examined. 

It is fascinating to watch what happens when a woman realizes she has choices in how she responds to life. This awareness typically unfolds in several stages. First, there's a recognition of the gap between the stimulus and the response. 

In that precious moment, when she realizes that she doesn't have to react automatically. And when I tell you that this awareness alone is revolutionary, I'm not exaggerating. Next comes experimentation. 

So trying different responses, sometimes succeeding, sometimes stumbling, but always learning from the process. And then finally, there's integration where conscious choice becomes the new normal, and she begins to actively design her life rather than merely coping with it. 

The cornerstone of creating life on purpose is awareness. You cannot choose what you cannot see. This is why our earlier work of uncovering subconscious beliefs and staying present is so essential. It builds the foundation for conscious creation. 

I remember working with a client who insisted she had no choice about working 70 hour weeks because quote unquote, that's what success looks like in my industry. Through our coaching, she began to notice how this belief constricted her options. 

The moment she realized that this was just one perspective and not actually an absolute truth, everything shifted. And she suddenly had access to possibilities that she just couldn't see before. This is the magic of awareness. 

It expands our field of options. When we become conscious of the thoughts driving our decisions, we can examine them, challenge them, and ultimately choose whether to continue living by them. 

One of my favorite client transformations involved a woman who just described herself as drifting through life. She had a successful career and a loving family, but felt disconnected from her choices as if she were following a script someone else had written. And our coaching revealed how she'd been making decisions based on anticipated regret, choosing paths that she thought she should want to avoid future disappointment. 

And once she recognized this pattern, she began asking herself different questions. What do I want right now? What would bring me joy? What feels aligned with my values? Within our coaching container, she had restructured her work schedule to pursue a long abandoned creative practice, having realized that her fear of regret was actually creating the very emptiness she'd been trying to avoid. 

Another client transformation that illustrates this lesson came from a woman who spent decades being the quote unquote responsible one in her family. Every decision that she made was filtered through the lens of obligation and caretaking. 

Our work together helped her see how this identity, while noble in many ways, had actually become a prison. The breakthrough came when she realized she could choose differently without abandoning her core values of love and connection. 

She began practicing small acts of conscious choice, declining a family request that didn't feel quite right, pursuing an interest solely because it called her and speaking her truth even when it created temporary discomfort. 

The ripple effects were remarkable. Not only did she experience more joy and love in her life, but her relationships deepened. By creating her life purposefully rather than reactively, she showed up way more authentically with others, which of course invited them to do the same. 

What continues to amaze me is how one woman living consciously affects everyone around her. When a mother begins creating her life on purpose, her children witness a powerful model of agency and authenticity. 

When a leader begins operating from conscious choice rather than reactive patterns, her entire team experiences a shift in culture. This ripple effect extends far beyond immediate relationships. I've really seen clients transform their communities, their workplaces, and their social circles simply by embodying the truth that we can create our lives rather than just react to the circumstances. One of my clients put it so beautifully when she said, I used to think changing my life meant rearranging external circumstances. Now I understand that the most profound change comes from shifting how I relate to whatever is happening, choosing my responses carefully rather than being hijacked by my reactions. 

Creating life on purpose isn't a destination, but it is a continuous practice. It requires regular reflection, a willingness to notice when we've slipped into autopilot, and all that compassion that we talked about earlier as we learn this new way of being. 

And the women who experience the most sustainable transformation develop rituals that support their conscious creation. So whether it's a morning reflection practice or regular check-ins with their values or pausing throughout the day to ask is this a conscious choice or a reactive pattern? Or maybe it's all of those things, and I'm sure many more that I haven't said here. What I find most beautiful about this lesson is that it never ends. 

Five years into coaching amazing women, I'm still discovering new dimensions of conscious creation in my own life. Each client I work with reveals new insights about what it means to create a life on purpose. 

And this perhaps is the ultimate gift of coaching, the recognition that we're all constantly evolving in our capacity to live consciously. The journey isn't about reaching perfection, remember fuck perfection, but about embracing the ever-expanding possibilities that emerge when we choose to create our lives rather than merely endure them. 

I so hope that you found these lessons valuable and inspiring. I know that I do. I'm so proud of the work that my clients have done over these past five years. I love hearing from women I worked with in the early days and how they are still applying the coaching and still getting to know themselves on a deeper and deeper level and always evolving into a new favorite version of themselves. 

So what's next at Melissa Parsons Coaching? I have been personally working with my therapist getting to know myself on a deeper level through a type of work called internal family systems and I am loving this method. 

So as one does, I am going to attend internal family systems level one training. I will have already started by the time this episode comes out and that training will go through into the fall. So as I'm coaching my beautiful women in group and in my one-on-one coaching, I will be learning and implementing this new way to help women get to know themselves even better, which of course I find endlessly exciting. 

I plan to continue to coach in small groups and one-to-one for now. and am planning another retreat for the future. I will continue to get coached by my fabulous coach so that I continue to evolve into the newest favorite version of me. 

Thank you so much to those of you who have been with me since day one of this entrepreneurial journey and welcome to those of you who are new to me. I can't wait to see what I have learned by the 10 year anniversary. 

I'm sure there will be many more new lessons and reinforcement and evolution of the current lessons. I invite you to continue to follow along. I would love to hear from you if anything from these anniversary episodes landed spectacularly and of course, if anything crashed and burned. 

You know, I am open to feedback and healthy discussion always. Okay, folks, see y'all next week.

Hey - It’s still me. Since you are listening to this podcast, you very likely have followed all the rules and ticked off all the boxes but you still feel like something's missing! If you're ready to learn the skills and gain the tools you need to tiptoe into putting yourself first and treating yourself as you would your own best friend, I'm here to support you. As a general life coach for women, I provide a safe space, compassionate guidance, and practical tools to help you navigate life's challenges as you start to get to know and embrace your authentic self.

When we work together, you begin to develop a deeper understanding of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. You learn effective communication strategies, boundary-setting techniques, and self-care practices that will help you cultivate a more loving and supportive relationship with yourself and others.

While, of course, I can't guarantee specific outcomes, as everyone's journey is brilliantly unique, what I can promise is my unwavering commitment to providing you with the skills, tools, support, and guidance you need to create lasting changes in your life. With humor and a ton of compassion, I'll be available to mentor you as you do the work to become a favorite version of yourself.

You're ready to invest in yourself and embark on this journey, so head over to melissaparsonscoaching.com, go to the work with me page, and book a consultation call. We can chat about all the support I can provide you with as we work together.

I am welcoming one-on-one coaching clients at this time, and, of course, I am also going to be offering the next round of group coaching soon. 

Thanks for tuning in. Go be amazing!