Get ready to hear a transformative interview! Dr. Elizabeth Hall has a Ph.D in Applied Health Science and Health Promotion focusing on Positive Psychology and Affirmative Behavior Change. Her mission is to shine the light on faith in our ability to change, grow and create fulfillment and fabulous ways of being.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:
- How Elizabeth’s role as a Co-Active Coach helps her clients process their grief, helping them on a Hero’s Journey to a purposeful life.
- The ways Elizabeth helps a person transcend barriers to happiness and joy when the person has experienced loss or trauma.
- The father who experienced the death of his daughter, and how his grief journey led to a different map of his life’s journey.
- The story of the 85- year old widow who realized, after 3 decades of being stuck, that there is a way to get out of the mud!
SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS ELIZABETH
- What is the difference between being nice and being kind?
- Who is the Saboteur and who is the inner Sage?
- What is your introductory offer for our listeners?
SHOW LINKS:
Website: https://www.gettingitdonecoaching.com
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Email: elizahall21@gmail.com
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Listen to the podcast here
Dr. Elizabeth Hall — Transformational Co-Active Grief Coach
Before I begin with what will be a transformative interview, here’s a reminder to please like Irene Weinberg and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. In this episode, our very distinguished guest is Dr. Elizabeth Hall who has achieved a PhD in Applied Health Science and Health Promotion focusing on positive psychology and motivational interventions for affirmative behavior change. Elizabeth has over twenty years of experience coaching individuals, couples, and groups. She also runs workshops and addresses large groups. It’s certainly not surprising that Elizabeth’s dynamic company is called Getting It Done Coaching.
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Elizabeth, welcome to the show whose mission resonates with your life purpose, which is to shine the light on faith in our ability to change, grow, and create fulfillment and fabulous ways of being. Let’s begin to shine the light on our audience with this question. What inspired you to pursue the calling of a transformational coach? How is it influenced by positive psychology? What is a hero’s journey to a purposeful life?
Irene, thank you so much for that layered question because it brings out so many thoughts. First of all, my thought is to thank you and show you my gratitude for what you do for this service because it is so important. It is such a positive, beautiful light in our world and so needed by so many people.
Thank you so much.
What inspired me to be a transformational coach? I feel like a transformational coach equals me. I am a transformational coach. I feel like I came into the world being a transformational coach. I’m not sure if there was any seminal moment that inspired me. I feel like from the time that I came into the world, I have been about transformation and change and bringing out the best in other people. From when I was a little kid, I felt the responsibility of showing up in this world in a positive way and helping others. My mission and life purpose is to be the muse who helps people to live their best life.
You took Positive Psychology. Not only were you born with this feeling or inclination toward it but then, you educated yourself about it. People would be interested to know that there are colleges that you can go to that teach positive psychology.
Positive psychology is such a beautiful thing because it’s forward-moving. Positive psychology is about following our hero’s journey. It’s about one step at a time. Sometimes, on that hero’s journey, we have to sit on a rock ledge, maybe look down the path where we’ve been, and then look up the path at where we want to go. The focus is that we are who we are because of our experiences and our willingness to grow from those experiences.
The hero is the person who’s able to grow from those experiences, I would take it.
In this case, if I were coaching you, you would be the hero on your journey. This is your hero’s journey.
There’s a famous song that is sung about being your own hero.
Our hero’s journey isn’t always about one step at a time in happiness. Our hero’s journey is like the mythic hero’s journey. Our hero’s journey is about the struggles and the difficulties that one faces. It’s about being in the struggle and the journey when it happens and getting past that.
You state that the entity of heart-wrenching, knee-buckling grief is willful, and yet, it is with, in, and through our grief that we know deep, pure, unconditional, and comforting love. Please enlighten us about this.
We think perhaps that grief is something that we can push off, that we can put a blanket over, or that we can decide against. Sometimes, we think of grief as contagious as in, “I can’t be with that person who’s in grief because I might catch some of that.” Grief is willful. Grief will find us and be part of us. It is the beauty of recognizing that grief is who we are when we’re going through it. It is heartfelt. It’s knee-buckling and heart-wrenching. It is part of us. If we process and feel it, it will help us to move with it instead of against it.
Grief is willful and will find us. It will be part of us. It is the beauty of recognizing that grief is who we are and when we are going through it. Share on X
A lot of people are afraid of the feelings that come up. Someone like you is able to help them to cope with those feelings, figure things out, and move on.
As you so beautifully put it, in the swamps of suffering, we are there, and yet, we don’t necessarily stay there 100% of the time. Even when we recognize ourselves in the swamp of suffering, which no one is immune from, we recognize that there is also room for laughter, love, hope, and endurance.
How does your role as a proactive coach help you to process grief with your clients, helping them to set a new life course that includes a new future-forward vision and mission?
In my coaching so often, when we take a look at a situation that someone is in, there is that desire to pop out of it. What I do with my clients, first of all, is to develop a mutual trust in one another. I love to tell them that part of our hero’s journey requires that sometimes, we go into a deep, dark, dank cave and that I am there with them with a lifeline. I will show them the way out. I have the flashlight. We can get out anytime. In the meantime, let’s go there and take one step at a time. Let’s feel what it’s like, process it, and know it.
Often, in this trust and belonging with each other in the cave, we can discover those emotions that we find so fearful. When we speak with other people about our emotions, so often, we try to hide them because we’re protecting others from our negative feelings of emotion. We’re also trying to protect ourselves. Yet, in the dark of night or the light of day, the emotions catch up with us. As much as we try to put a blanket over them and shove them in a corner, there they are saying, “I need your attention.” I provide that opportunity to my clients.
Transformational Coach: Emotions can be fearful when speaking with other people. We often try to hide them to protect others and ourselves from negative feelings.
Seeing you the way I am, I could see why people would be very comforted with you and help you to be their guide. You got that way about you. It’s wonderful.
Thank you.
You’re welcome. Please tell us about the father who experienced the death of his daughter and how his grief journey led to a different map of his life journey.
This was a man who experienced that knee-buckling time when his daughter was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor. She seemed to come out of it. There was great celebration from the time of her suffering from 12 years old to 14 years old. He went through, as he called it, a living hell living. He thought that they were coming out of it. In celebration, he took her to a sporting event or a public event where she picked up a virus. She very quickly died two weeks later because of that virus and the complications thereof.
His faith took a kicking. He decided that he had no more faith. He prayed so hard and he thought that his prayers were answered. He turned his back on his faith. It was then that he experienced the darkest hours because he had nothing to fall back on. There was no reason for him and no purpose in his life. He questioned it.
He and I found each other. We had a coaching relationship. From there, he was able to process what went on and realize that there was no rhyme or reason. He listened to the power of scriptures or the word of scriptures. He also listened to the messages that he was receiving from his daughter which was, “You have so much love to give. It’s time for you to open up in this world and give to others.”
Were these messages through a medium or messages he perceived himself?
It was beautiful, the way that he explained it. He said that the message came into his head without hearing her voice yet feeling her warmth and knowing that these were her thoughts. He said, “We transcended the spoken word and went brain to brain and heart to heart.”
Many people can’t do that or wouldn’t have heard that. They would need to go to a medium or someone to hear from their deceased loved one. What a blessing that was for him. In keeping with that, here’s my next question. A person’s barriers to happiness and joy can be especially strong when the person has experienced loss or trauma. How do you help a person to transcend those barriers?
First, the recognition of the barriers is something that I find important. It is recognizing on the hero’s journey, what is that, that you’re bumping into. It is like, “I’ve heard you for the last 3 calls, 4 calls, or whatever the quantification is mention this, and yet, you pivot from it. Let’s go to it. What is this barrier? What’s the roadblock? Let’s sit on a bench over here and look at the barrier. What’s the barrier telling you? What is the information in that barrier? Where can we move from here? How can we lift the barrier?”
Oftentimes, it’s processing it. It’s realizing, “It wasn’t my fault.” It’s realizing, “Perhaps I was part of that.” It is the pain of wrestling with it. It is the pain of not so much trying to hurdle the barrier or trying to turn back on the barrier. It is staring at the barrier, looking at the information, and deciding, “How can I move forward because of the barrier, not in spite of the barrier?”
In order to lift the barrier to happiness, you must first realize that what happened is not your fault. Share on X
What a great way to turn that whole process around. It gives a person a life. I can see that. It’s involved with acceptance also because they have to accept what has happened, not personalize it, and decide that they’re going to love themselves enough to move forward.
It is giving themselves permission to move forward and love themselves instead of blaming themselves, shaming others, and being a victim. We look at the voice of the self-limiting beliefs or the saboteur and we listen to the voices that accompany the saboteur or that self-judge. The saboteur is the self-judge who says, “Who do you think you are? You don’t deserve to be happy. This was your fault.” It’s all in self-protection. Yet something goes awry in that voice. It starts in self-protection and ends up being self-debilitating.
In keeping with that, how do you replace that negative self-talk with the voice of his or her sage? You have the saboteur and then the sage. Do you want to tell people the difference?
With the sage, I alluded to that when I spoke of my being a healer and a helper. Our sage is the spirit and essence that we came into the world as and we will leave the world with. Our sage is all-knowing. Our sage is trusting, curious, and loving. Our sage gives permission. It’s open, wise, kind, and forgiving. When we listen to that part of us, the saboteur scuttles off. There’s no place for the saboteur.
Transformational Coach: Our inner sage is the spirit and essence that came into the world, and we will leave the world with. It is all-knowing, loving, and gives permission.
In each one of us living our sage, the saboteur will try to get noisy again and say, “Sage doesn’t know everything. Who do you think you are being happy?” We are equipped with having the answer by recognizing that we are not our saboteurs. Our saboteurs are based on lies. We develop those lies in self-protection. Our sage is the truth.
Would you also equate the sage to a person who’s spiritual as maybe their higher self?
Absolutely. Our sage is our higher self.
Could you share with us the story of the 85-year-old who realized after 3 decades of being stuck that there is a way to get out of the mud?
I love this story because that was her narrative. She was stuck. She decided that she was going to believe this story that she was a widow and that’s all there was to it. She felt that she could not express her sorrow because her family said to her, “It’s time to move on,” and she wasn’t ready. She lost herself in her sorrow. She muzzled herself and closed herself off.
Part of her couldn’t be honest with people because she felt that she was protecting them as well. Through expressing her sorrow with me, there was that sorrow that she bottled up for years saying, “I miss him every day. I talk to him every day. My daughter thinks I’m crazy. I’m not because I’m talking to my husband. I miss him. I can love other people. I love other people because he is love.”
Once you worked with her and she gave herself permission, I would imagine it improved a lot of her other relationships too.
It improved her relationship with her children because she outed herself. She said to them, “I do talk to your father. I do communicate with him. I speak with him every night.” As a matter of fact, she didn’t tell them that his urn was in her bedroom. She outed herself with that one as well. She told them that she put herself into the stuckness and was ready to get herself out because she was open to her emotions and feelings. She was accepting of them and ready to move forward with them.
It’s wonderful role modeling for her children because surely, they are going to have a loss in their lives and all that. Here she is showing them that you can move through that.
They got their mother back. They got the mother wholly instead of a part of their mother. She felt that finally, she was able to breathe again and that a weight lifted. It took a long time for her to move that boulder but she was able to move it.
What a gift she gave them before she died. Is she still alive?
Yes, she is.
She’s given them a wonderful gift of herself for the years that they have this newer version of Mom.
Her grandchildren as well.
How does a person live with intention, attention, and self-kindness? I notice in life that many people are not conscious. They don’t live with intention.
It’s drawing attention to living intentionally, having intention, and having the attention of being kind. What we practice grows stronger. If we practice numbing ourselves in whatever way we choose, being inattentive to how we’re feeling, and not paying attention to our inner voice or feelings to going somatically, “What’s my body telling me? Why am I feeling these butterflies,” instead of taking something to soothe the feeling, if we intentionally pay attention or we decide to pay attention to what our body is telling us, it’s about our brain-mind, heart-mind, and gut-mind. What information is our brain-mind, heart-mind, and gut-mind transmitting to us?
It’s a real kind of self-love because instead of doing and doing through life, you’re tuning in and caring about yourself. You are being aware of how you’re processing your feelings and what you’re doing.
We’re being kind to ourselves too and being patient. That doesn’t mean being nice. There’s a difference between being nice and kind. Being nice is born from fear. Being kind is born from bravery. We’re kind to ourselves when we say to ourselves, “It’s time to hit the pause button and figure this one out.” We love ourselves through it. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being excellent in our intention to live our best lives.
We’re forgiving ourselves if we’re not perfect too.
Exactly, because we’re not meant to be.
Why do you call joy a discipline?
Joy is a practice because we get cluttered and muddled in all kinds of emotions. It’s a discipline for us to keep our joy and be in joy. It is so easy to step out of joy. What we practice grows stronger. We step into feeling guilt, shame, blame, sadness, and the quagmire of, “I want this and that. I need this and that.” Being in joy means being in acceptance and in love. It is first me. I’m like, “What do I need to fill my cup?” What runs over, runs over for others.
Transformational Coach: What we practice grows stronger.
In a way, it’s a form of gratitude.
Joy equals gratitude, kindness, and love. It is a discipline.
Do you have a message about the importance of healing to share with our audience?
The message of the importance of their healing is to be intentional. Our healing comes from our work, our hero’s journey, and our willingness to make the climb, get to the rock face, stare at it, and figure out, “How do I get up there?” It is so important that someone without an agenda accompanies us like a Sherpa. Someone with no agenda of their own who will accompany us in our agenda to heal.
Transformational Coach: The importance of healing is to be intentional. It comes from our work and our hero’s journey. It comes from our willingness to make the climb.
In my life, I have found that to be so true. To get out of your head, get someone else who sees things so much more objectively, like a caring guide. It’s so important. How can our audience connect with you for your life-changing coaching services? Do you also coach virtually?
As a matter of fact, most of my coaching is done virtually, which is a wonderful blessing to us. We don’t have to get in cars and go through traffic jams. It’s an immediacy. We hit a few clicks on the keyboard and connect with each other in our naturalistic setting. It could be in our homes, our cars, or wherever we want to be. I find that works well with my clients. They get in touch with me through my website, GettingItDoneCoaching.com.
Do you have an introductory offer for our audience?
I would love to meet with anyone who wishes to meet with me, have a sample session, and have them feel what it’s like to be coached by me. To know what it’s like to be coached by me, they need to be coached by me so I offer them that.
That’s such a nice gift to offer that complimentary session. That’s lovely. What is your tip for finding joy in life?
My tip is to focus on it and practice it. What we practice grows stronger. Stay focused on joy. Remember that joy isn’t always about being exuberant. Joy is about our life purpose and finding that.
Joy in life isn’t always about being exuberant. It is about our purpose. Share on X
Everyone, here’s a reminder to please be sure to like Irene Weinberg and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Thank you. Elizabeth, you’re wonderful. I agree with you that we do not leave grief behind because grief has no end. I deeply admire and respect your ability to help people move forward on their hero’s journey to a purposeful life. Thank you for all you do to help people transform and find happiness in their lives. Surely to be continued. Many blessings. Bye for now.
Bye, Irene. Thank you so much.
It is my true pleasure.
Mine as well.
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