My name is Dara Tomasson and this is the quilters coach podcast episode 156.

You got that, right? The name has changed. I’m excited today for this podcast episode, because I’m going to be talking to you about this journey that I have been on and that I continue to help women go on. In fact at the time of this coming out, it will be a six year anniversary of me learning about life coaching tools.

Middle of July of 2018 I was scrolling. I was trying to escape the things that were going on and of my design crushes Deena Ruder had put a post saying that she was going to life coach school and that she needed some Guinea pigs to do some one-on-one coaching.

I thought, oh my goodness. I am a mess. I’m a disaster. What do I have to lose? I said yes to her. By saying yes to her, it changed everything. The one thing that really resonated with me and the thing that took me over the edge of putting myself out there and saying, yes, I will commit to spending time with you. Was she said, I have a tool that will solve any problem

First of all, I felt extremely guilty that I even had problems. I had everything I wanted. I had a loving husband. I had five awesome kids. I loved being their mom. I lived on a beautiful island. I owned a home. I had electricity.

I had cars. I had so much, I had lots and lots of fabric.

I felt really guilty, feeling I appreciated my life. I had friends, we had just moved here. I had so much, but yet I felt so discouraged. I felt so down. When she said that she had a tool that could solve any problem That really did spark my curiosity. Normally at the beginning of every podcast, I share the ripple effects of what happens in the lives of the women in my program. I want to let you know that at the end of this podcast, you will know what this one tool is. You will also have learned really important aspects about yourself that will help encourage you as you think about how do you go ahead and solve the issues that you have in your own life?

The person I’m going to share right now is actually, I just came back from quilt, Canada, and it was Edmonton.

It was really fun. I was able to meet several of the members in my program. One of the members was her husband. I got to meet him and it was so fun to meet him because he heard my voice. He has seen the change that has happened to his wife by being in the program. He just had such a big smile on his face.

He was so grateful for the community and the influence of good that this program has had, so it was really lovely to meet him and to have that interchange. I’ve been thinking a lot about what actually this program that I’ve created has provided for women.

I didn’t intend to be a life coach. I wanted to be a business coach for quilters. As I went to different gurus and, and different, marketing. Experts they just emphasise to me, you have to niche down. You have to say that you are a weight loss coach specifically for the quilting people. I kept fighting back and saying, well, weight loss is the side effect. Yes, we can talk about weight loss.

We can talk about science and things, but if you don’t do the mental part, I’m going to be talking about that mental part. One of my favourite tools in today’s episode. Then they’re not going to have this lasting change. It’s not going to stick. I kind of fought back with these, these people,

I didn’t know much. I mean, What I was quilting for hire, even though I had a room full of a closet. Full of quilts. Sometimes I head up to 50 quilts. You don’t make a ton of money. quilting. And so I just didn’t feel very confident of being a coach. And so I. Just thought. Okay. I need to niche down and I need to just talk about weight loss, even though if you came to any one of my coaching calls, you would see at the majority the coaching I do, has to do with the way that they’re thinking about their spouse or about their children or about their work or about their productivity. all those things. influence your relationship with your body, how you move your body, the kind of food you eat, how often you overeat all of that is influenced.

In the last few months, I have been really pondering on this idea of loving yourself thin. One of the difficulties with that name is that it. It implies that if you are overweight, it’s that you don’t love yourself. Also it implies that if you. Wasn’t my intention. It could imply that the only way that you can be of worth or value is if you are thin.

The end goal is not to be thin.

The end goal is to be healthy and to be calm and peaceful. wasn’t sitting with me and I felt like it was a bit of a trigger. It’s good to have triggers and business. It wasn’t sitting well. And so as I’ve been pondering and reflecting, I’m just going to say what I am.

I am the life coach for quilters. I am a life coach and I coach on your life and the decisions you make and those decisions we make in our life have ramifications. if you don’t. Allow yourself to really look at your thoughts and really look at your life. Then you’re living a life that you don’t even recognize.

It’s not even doesn’t even make any sense.

Yesterday was my third son’s high school graduation. My oldest son didn’t have a grade because of COVID. It’s always interesting in those kinds of ceremonies where it’s similar kinds of talks; they’re all very, quite the same. And it’s this new beginning or it’s. A way of changing and moving forward. so I feel like there was an end of an era. I will still be coaching on weight loss.

Don’t you worry because it all comes together now. The program is what’s going to happen moving forward. It will still have the same membership where it’s $2,000 and you’re in for life but you have lots of different tracks. Let’s say you want to improve your marriage.

Let’s say you want to decide, do I stay married?

Am I going to stay married or am I going to, you know, what am I going to do? If let’s say you wanted to maybe start a quilting business. I can coach you on business. Let’s say you want to work on your relationship with your siblings. Maybe your friendships. Maybe you’re feeling like you don’t really have as many friends as you would like. What about your productivity? I’m going to have all these different topics and you go and you say, Hey, you know what, Dara, I really want to be more productive.

I really want to work on my perfectionism. Be more productive and I say, okay, no problem. Now, this is, this is now you go to the train station and you put in your destination. More productivity. Then I say, this is that route that you need to go on. You will get what these modules are in this order and answer these worksheets. Isn’t that amazing. It’s like you’re in front of a vending machine with healthy salads, healthy breakfasts. It was awesome. So it’s like, oh, I just want this. So I pushed that in and then you’ll get it. Just like you going to the train you want to go to.

Albany. So you say. Plane ticket or train ticket to Albany. Let’s go. Okay. So that is how the. Quilters coach program is going to work. I don’t officially have the name yet. For the actual program. We’re working on it. But we know this this far. The quilters coach podcast, where you can piece together the life that you want. Let’s think about life coaching. I didn’t know anything about life coaching.

In fact, I thought it was wackadoodle and in some ways there are a lot of wackadoodle coaches out there because lead coaching is actually not a regulated. system. It’s not like therapy or, where you have to get a university degree. Where, and then there’s different tests. Life coaching is kind of the wild west, so you can get all sorts of different life coaches. That’s, I’m, I’m very upfront about that. But the way that I look at life coaching and the training that I did and the work that I’ve been doing since, I started coaching business coaching in. the summer of 2019

Life coaching is, kind of like we sit on a couch and we’re watching the movie of your life. I’m able to, as the coach shows you, this is your life. I remember one time, one of my first clients. She kind of stopped after. about 20 minutes into the session and she’s like, Did you hire a private investigator to follow me around.

I was like, no I did not. How do you know so much about me? How do you know all this? I said, it’s because the way you’re talking, I can see what you’re saying. Because 95% of our thoughts are subconscious, right?

They aren’t, we don’t have a super awareness of them. We don’t realise that they’re happening being able to have a coach

reflect what you’re really thinking, and what’s really happening and you get this whole new perspective. It’s valuable.

When you think about the human brain, our brain wants to put things into, Let’s make them easier and easier. So we make them into habits.

When we were little and we were learning how to use a sippy cup, for example, it took a while to figure out how to hold the cup with both hands, with equal pressure, and then lift that up to our mouth and then learn how to drink from that way. The more that we did it, the more practice the body would then say, okay, this is habitual.

We can figure this out. Then it becomes second nature. It’s kind of like when you first moved to a new place. It’s very overwhelming because we don’t know all the places that we don’t have. Easy go-to so like, you’d have to not only have to navigate new roads and new places. But they have to get new grocery stores and new ones. Get the new rhythm of the grocery store and then the post office and all those things that feel, it felt.

It’s a lot for the brain to have to take in and that, but eventually. Now they have become second nature. Life coaching is very similar to that. It is able to slow things down, look at what you’re doing, and then make decisions on purpose. Do I want to change these habits? And if I do, how can I change them? On the worksheet I have. What are five of the biggest obstacles you’ve had in your life? I have five spots there. Maybe one was, Not getting married to me. In my religion. we tend to get married kind of younger and I wasn’t younger. They would say things to me like, well, you’re so pretty.

Why aren’t you married yet? You’re so accomplished. Why aren’t you married yet? There’s lots of different obstacles that we’ve had. My parents are getting a divorce. That was a huge obstacle for me. when I first started teaching, getting a job in the public system. Working in a private school and also being a nanny at the same time.

And then going back to university. to upgrade. to, ESL certification. That was a big balancing act and how to navigate. Being back after serving a full-time mission. That was a really big obstacle for me of how to prioritise my time and the way I thought about things.

I want you to think, I want you to brainstorm about yourself.

What were those, what are some of those obstacles? When you look back in your life? What we’re really hard. How did you work through those?

So, what were the ways?

Some of you most likely if you’re a human. You haven’t worked through them. Some of us just plough through things and we don’t actually resolve them. We just kind of shoved them aside.

You guessed it. I just keep toting that around everywhere we live. I just keep having a storage space for it because. I don’t want to learn how to knit. read a pattern and knit, or I don’t want to, the wool isn’t really that soft I just don’t deal with it.

That’s what I’ve done. I have a bin that’s labelled and it’s there and I don’t think about it because it makes me feel. Frustrated that I spent all that money and effort and it’s been storing it for so long.

But think about something that you have overcome. Going to counselling, interviewing successful couples. Actively working on my own marriage and putting my own marriage as a priority. Those are things that I’ve done. Now this gets me to the part of the podcast where. What was the clincher for me when I made a decision about getting six coaching calls with Dina and this was, she said that she had a tool that solved any problem. This is a framework, so let’s, so in the worksheet we have five words.

We have circumstances. Thoughts, feelings, actions and results. The circumstance is something that is factual. A circumstance would be. Parents divorce. Another circumstance could be like, so it’s, we could prove it in the court of law.

basketball practice. As I’m recording, I’m looking at the clock.

I’m like, oh, it’s 3 46. The boys have practice at 4: 45. I got the chicken wings. Do I make them beforehand? Do I make them after? That would be the circumstance basketball practice at 4 45. We have to leave the house anyway. So then I have a thought that I don’t have enough time to do what I want to do. Like, whatever thought that is. Let’s just say I have the thought. I don’t have time to do the things that I want to do. Then when I have that thought, then my next. Part of the model is the feeling, what feeling do I have? Maybe it’s anger, maybe it’s frustration. Maybe it’s impatience, maybe it’s unfair.

I’ve got a room full of quilts that I want to be working on for a friend. Let’s say the feeling is frustration. Now I am going to be fueled by frustration. By what I do when I act, when I act out of frustration, well, I might get snippy with my kids. I might feel resentful.

I might push myself to the last limit and then rush them into the car and then have them quickly. Maybe I might talk a little bit, more harshly with them to be like, come on, you guys. Then when I’m waiting for them at their basketball game, maybe I’m impatient. Maybe I’m going to scroll on my phone. Because I’m frustrated.

Because I don’t have enough time to do all the things that I want to do. So, because I’m going to be fueled from whatever feeling that is. Then when you look at all of those actions that I just said, That creates my results so that my result is I don’t have enough time to do the things that I want to do because I’m not using my own time wisely. With this model, it shows you why you’re getting the results you’re getting.

How often at the end of the day you think. Oh, that was a terrible day. I never have time to do what I want to do. What a waste of time. Who did I think I was to be able to make changes? All of that. Okay. So if that’s. So now when we slow down the model, I can start seeing the results we have. So there is that expression out that it says you are what you think. And what life coaching does. It actually shows you. You’re getting the results that you’re getting. I’m really looking forward to continuing to serve you. I absolutely love reading your comments about the podcast.

I love meeting with you. Those of you who have been following my podcast for a long time. you have so much awareness. It’s just so awesome to me. I’ll never forget the life coach school podcast and Jody Moore podcast just changed my life. I never even knew it was possible for me to think differently. Just as I close. I want to reflect back on that scared. I was scared. In July of 2018. Because I was 46 years old and I was 205 pounds. Thought. I’m just going to gain five pounds a year for the rest of my life. So by the time I was 65. That’s 20 years. That’s a hundred pounds. I would have been 305 pounds. At 65. I would not be able to be a grandma. I would want to be at 60, at 305 pounds. I wouldn’t be able to do the hikes.

I wouldn’t be able to go swimming with them. I wouldn’t be able to babysit them as much. I would need a lot of help because I would be exhausted carrying an extra a hundred pounds around everywhere. I went. It would be devastating. When I learned these tools, I embraced them and I worked on them. It has changed everything. Not only have I lost 50 pounds and I’ve kept it off. But I’ve been able to build an incredible coaching business. I have been able to buy a house for my mom. I have our health. We are almost mortgage-free. Plus I have that second home. And I have been able to go on trips. I take my kids to Hawaii and Mexico. To do things I never thought we could ever do.

Normally we would go camping. we didn’t have those kinds of funds. I have been able to be the witness of so many women transforming their lives.

It’s just incredibly humbling. The other thing that’s happened for me is my marriage, my relationship with my kids and my siblings, my parents. Has changed so much. Personally.

When I look in the mirror.

I have never felt more beautiful in my life. I’m 50. The reason I feel so beautiful and the reason I feel so powerful is because I’m becoming more and more who I really, really am. I’m not always worrying about what other people think all the time. I’m truly able to become more and more who I really am. And I want that for you. I want that. Freedom.

I want that level of joy and liberation for you. And that is why. I produce this podcast. That is why I show up at my membership. That is why. I go to my own life, coach my own. I’m always working on overcoming my own obstacles. I’m unlocking This gate of what my possibilities can be for me. Sometimes I think back of how I thought when I was, this little girl and this. I was one of the eight DS.

My family, my mom and dad are both. their names start with D and then my siblings are six of us and we all have DS. And sometimes that was really fun, but sometimes. People would say, oh, you’re just one, another one of those DS. Just another one of those. Like, a name. I didn’t really have one. Like I wasn’t this unique person. And there’s a lot of different expectations. Put on you and sometimes you didn’t feel like you had the voice. Even going to university. My mom said, well, you can either be a teacher or you can be. a social worker.

Those are your choices.

So learning how to become that person. Is amazing. I want that for you. That’s why I show up.

Even when things don’t always turn out. The life of an entrepreneur is challenging. But it’s worth it. I have the confidence. Of the tools that helped me know that I can solve any problem. Even when things feel like the chips are really down.

If these words that I’m sharing resonate with you. Please come. I am the life coach for quilters. I truly have tools that can change everything for you. You just have to be willing to show up for you. But I got you and I have an amazing community of women. That you will be blown away by. No more delay. We got this. Have a great day. Bye.

If you want more help with learning about your body and how it’s changing through menopause, perimenopause, through whatever it is, my program is focused on helping you truly become your own best expert. So as we go through June, uh, working on our menopause, perimenopause experiences. July, we’re focusing on becoming our own bestie July and August actually with our summertime, um, challenge.

And then in August, we’re really diving into how to lose the physical weight when you focus so much on the mental. I have an incredible program for that coming in August. So there’s so much to look forward to. You truly can make your own transformation and I love helping you. Find that inner knowledge and wisdom.

That’s just waiting for you to unlock so that you can create permanent change for yourself.