Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service. On the podcast today, we have Elliot Evans. Elliot, welcome,
Thank you Thomas.
Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Sure. I always explain this in a slightly different way. Never quite know what the best way to do it is, but the short story is, I’m a coach. I coach on confidence, coach on careers, I coach on anything and everything, but I found that the majority of my work tends to come back to fear how I see it and this is not an original thought of mine is most people when they come for coaching or they ask for advice or they seek a mentor, they are, they know what they should be doing, they know how to do what they want to do.
But still they’re not doing it and what I found to be there never one case of sorry, the number one reason people are not doing what they know they should be doing in order to get what they want is they’re scared of something. They’re scared of, you know, the typical fear of failure, typical fear of the unknown. You know, there’s obviously lots to be anxious about in our modern day world and with a little bit of digging, I tend to find that focusing on where that fear is and finding some peace within that fear is the quickest, most effective, most rewarding way to help people get what they want in terms of how you learn or how you help people do that, Do you? Are you able to do that because you went through it yourself, or is that training that you’ve had?
Another perhaps trope in the coaching industry. Like if you think about, yeah. where coaching came from the world of sports and performance, Yeah, you know, most, let’s say, Novak Djokovic’s tennis coach was probably quite a good tennis player, but I hope I’m probably sounding really ignorant, I don’t actually know who’s tennis coaches and he might be a really famous ex tennis player, but most of them, most of the best coaches in tennis, golf, acting, etcetera didn’t have glittering careers in coach in tennis or acting. They didn’t have the natural talent that most incredibly successful players did. They had to coach themselves from average talent just to be in the same bracket as these incredibly naturally talented people were. So that’s sort of how I see myself as a confidence coach is, I’ve not been confident my most of my life, you probably, most people who met me before I became a coach would have said I wasn’t an unconfident person, I was I was good at pretending that I was reasonably confident in social situations.
But yeah, I definitely had to teach myself coach myself, encourage myself parent myself essentially through fear to a place of confidence and that that’s what gave me the raw inspiration to want to be a coach. And then of course I trained as a performance coaches are quite, quite sort of general performance coach, so the kind of person you would come to if you were wants to get a promotion or you wanted to solve a certain problem, go after a certain opportunity and did that for a few years, a couple of years and then naturally started to form the niche in confidence and career coaching. So when I say career coaching, it’s specifically helping people transition from unemployment based career too, running a business or a passion project or, you know, a non-employment based career.
So obviously that transition involves usually a lot of fear and a lot of hesitation. So yeah, very long answer to a very short question. Both, Well you mentioned parent yourself and I think a lot of these things do come back two, you know, your upbringing. So did you feel like you had that guidance when you were younger or do you feel like you had to develop it yourself? I ask a question. I I’m certainly not the kind of person that I have no right nor desire to throw my parents under the bus. They were great parents. My dad was sort of, my first without meaning that me or him knowing what a coach was. I don’t think coaching was even a buzzword until recently, he was my first coach and that he would, so if I had a problem or I wanted some advice, I needed help. If I asked my mom, I would get the typical, I don’t know if it’s feminine, it’s not necessarily a feminine trait, but typical, more parental style advice of, I am older, more experienced than you, I know better than you, so you should do this like do this, I’m almost certain it will be better for you.
Whereas if I went to my dad, I would get more of a, he would just question me, he would keep asking me questions until I came to a until I found a place of no place until I found a, a source of confidence to be able to move through the problem, feeling like I’d solved it myself and it was kind of like what coaching is all about, right, as far as I can tell. and it was, it was I had that beautiful juxtaposition and it was it made it really clear to me how I reacted as a person to, especially as I got older and older, you know, when you’re a child or an early teenager, you love the advice, you’re just like somebody tell me what to do and I’ll do it and you know, I’ll get the gold star, that’s great, but as I progressed and life becomes more complex and the problems become more complex that sort of dad style coaching approach, I resonated with a lot more and then I actually originally wanted to become a counsellor after having a bit of a nervous break.
So I was a financial speculator, a foreign exchange trader in a hedge fund until I was It took about four or 5 years ago and crashed and burned out of that career in quite a spectacular fashion. Had a nervous breakdown. And as I was coming out of that I did so much self-reflective work that I decided I wanted to help other people do that kind of work. So I decided I wanted to become a counsellor because I’ve had experience being counselled and thought it was very helpful and kind of thought it was the only way in to that world short of becoming a full on psychologist and I didn’t have the spare seven years and £100,000 to spend on that avenue. And it was going whilst researching going down that road that I was made aware of what coaching was did a little bit of research, realised that it was the positive side of psychology and asking questions and all that lovely stuff and that was just a much better fit.
Plus the cynical side of me realised that I could do like a six-month training course and be a qualified coach and get started Or if I was a counsellor I think it takes you know three years in the UK to get to the point where you’re accredited et cetera. So that eager young ego in me was like, yeah, come on, let’s just get started. Well, you in your message to me before the podcast, I thought that the turning point for you was about the amount of self-development that you were doing, but it was it a combination of that and the job. Yeah, good question. There was a there was kind of this crossover point where I suppose since, so I basically, in the space of about six months, I went from weed smoking teenager with no drive whatsoever to like suddenly super driven first I wanted to be a musician and then it was working finance.
Like I was super driven and doing all of these self-development, self-help, activities, some absolutely mental ones. And that period of my life lasted from about 18 until 20 or 25. So about 78 years of like what a friend termed relentless self-betterment. So just, it was too, is way too much, it was unsustainable, always trying to be more, always trying to be better, always using the stick rather than the carrot to get myself where I wanted to be. And From about, I think it was 21-24, I was working in a hedge fund, very small hedge fund and was really bending over backwards to make it as a trader. I was working 14-hour days and trying all these different approaches to diet and supplements and exercise and sleep to like optimise my body.
I’ve always had until recently, I’ve had a big problem with insomnia and sleep. So that was kind of one of the things problems I was always trying to fix and all of this kind of stress and over focus on myself and my performance was, it was a way in a way I was trying to treat an intense background level of anxiety by focusing on my performance because when I was in the zone, I didn’t feel particularly anxious. and so after about seven years of this way of living, you can probably imagine. I built up a lot of stress. I was quite fatigued, I was very fatigued. And I was running on gas and I got invited. So I lived in Canada for a couple of years when I was working this hedge fund and then I got invited back to England to for a promotion for better pay, higher level of authority within the business, All these, all this lovely stuff, that was very exciting.
So I came home, dug up my life in Canada came home and within about a month of being at home, the business had gone into voluntary liquidation and then about a month after that, you know, well, we’d all been sent home from the office. About a month after that, a an article appeared in the Daily Mail are saying article front-page headline appeared in The Daily Mail of hedge fund managers steal 50 million in client funds. and the two guys in the picture where my, to the two guys used to run the hedge fund I worked for. And it was this combination of being utterly exhausted, making almost like making so little such little progress in my career as a trader, and putting so much effort into it and then this trust that I had and these two mentors of mine suddenly being cut away all of that happening at once.
Just my body just went enough shut down for two or 3 months. I was for the first month, I was pretty much bedridden and then slowly started to come back to life physically and then it took another six months or so before mentally, I had any sort of inspiration to do anything again. So it was a yeah, it’s kind of a lot of moving parts culminated in this one explosion, but it was kind of beautiful in a set in the sense that it forced me to do nothing for a few months and realise that I was still okay, like I didn’t whatever it was that I feared so much that would happen if I did nothing. And if I didn’t push myself kind of, I had to live through those fears and after three months of doing nothing, I realised that I was just as happy, which admittedly wasn’t that happy, but I was just as happy as I had been when I was pushing myself and the world hadn’t fallen apart and my friends still wanted to hang out with me and you know, it was still meeting new people and still had a roof over my head and yeah, it was kind of a forced, forced realisation that I didn’t have to kill myself trying all the time.
You mentioned initially before about how you were really trying to achieve and you didn’t feel, I think the word you used was anxiety when you are achieving trying to make it as a trader. Do you know why you had that anxiety? Yes, I think well, I know as well as anyone knows in these situations, I yeah, I think I fell foul to something that a friend of mine calls the achievement trap, which is a long winded fancy way of saying that I sought validation externally. So all of my, all of my wellbeing at least I tricked myself into believing that all of my wellbeing came as a result of others thinking I was good enough for thinking I was worthy of that of their respect and how I got that respect from them was achieving things and being outstanding and better than my peers and doing things that no one else is willing to do that.
This was what was quite interesting about the self-betterment drive is that although ostensibly it was in service of a greater goal, another of a big achievement, for example, trading or being a music producer or running events or any of the things that I decided we can work out with the new obsession. , what it was also about was proving my badge of honour was okay, I will put myself through things that nobody else I know is willing to put themselves through. Like I did a seven day water only fast, nothing but red meat for a month, really not proud of that one anymore. I did something called the Uber man sleep schedule, which is where you sleep only for only 20 minutes every four hours. You have a 20 minute nap every four hours and that’s it.
You just do that on repeat. I did that for about a month, probably cost myself about a year’s worth of health problems as a result, like, and I would revel in explaining this to people because it was my, it was my badge. It was, that’s what made me different. That’s what made me unique. That’s what made me special. And I thought I believe that people respected me and loved me for that. And that was my identity. And so that the anxiety was that if I didn’t keep on pushing, keep on pushing, keep on pushing, nobody would, nobody was excuse me, nobody would laugh me, nobody would respect me anymore and I wouldn’t have anyone. So that’s all going on an unconscious level presumably. But I’m very interested to know what you would say to someone. Let’s say you’re coaching someone and they’re probably not doing it in at that extreme level because that’s quite hyper achievement you’re going to put their but let’s say you see these traits, these self-development traits and they’re obviously trying to feel some sort of gap that they perceive that they have with it.
What do you say to them? I would ask, what does it give you identify? And repeated questions ah away into people’s deepest self. So I would ask something, like if somebody said if somebody came across displaying this sort of addiction to self-development, like I had, even if it was more chilled out, I would pick up on the specific thing. So let’s say it was a new diet and say what does it give you? What purposes it trying to achieve? And more often than not, you know, the first couple of answers I get reasonably surface level, like I want to lose weight or I want to have more energy. Okay, great. Yeah, and so more energy. What does that give you? What does that achieve for you? Whatever the answer is let’s say I can do more work can get more done at work.
Okay, great, what does that achieve for you promotion and that and we keep going and going and going until it comes to something on the emotional level, it usually comes back to, you can always trace these things going on in the external world back to something on an emotional or belief level, a core belief level and that once we’re into that, you know, once we’re down a few layers from the surface level, then it’s a matter of, so it’s a matter of working back or down I was saying, but it’s also working backwards to when in your life, was that when in your life was the first time or the first period of time that you didn’t feel like enough that you suddenly weren’t enough? Like you said that gap, it creates that gap and if we can get back to that point and sometimes it takes a few conversations because a lot of coaching and therapy etcetera is about building rapport and trust that somebody feels like they can open themselves up in that deep level to me, but that’s how that’s I see my job, especially at first to help people to feel comfortable and safe enough to open up to that deep level.
We, I just keep asking similar questions, like I said, it might be, what does that give you? It might also be if I’m feeling that someone is particularly robust, I would just go straight in with what’s the worst that could happen if you didn’t, or if you stopped dieting, if you stopped self-development and then I keep going along that fear route. So okay and what is to fear about that? This is where the confidence coaching comes in because you can really, if I can facilitates somebody sitting with their fears for 1/2 an hour or an hour going deeper and deeper into them. At the end of that our most of the time I can ask a question like how does that fear you came to, you came to the session, whether the start look from this place of peace or this place of acceptance of the fear and people can reflect on how something that they was thought they were scared of actually now they’ve talked all the way through and thought it all the way through to its I suppose the end of the train of thought they are somewhat free of it or at least they have no choice.
They have a choice between that feeling of peace, the sensations of peace and their body thus the sensations of fear. So I hope that answers your question and I was tempted to give a sound bite of sort of advice because that’s probably more useful on a podcast but I didn’t want to betray my values as a coach. Like I’m quite a pure coach in the I will really try hard not to give that parental advice. I’ve talked about at the start because I don’t think it’s anywhere near as valuable as somebody searching deeper but to make it to give it to someone who’s not in a one-time conversation with me, I just say get a pen and paper out, ask yourself one of those two questions again and again and again and again. You know what what’s the worst that can happen and the follow up to that is what’s to fear about that for me and if you are really into a certain area of self-development, what is the purpose of this? What is it giving me and ask that again and again? And the key is to not rely on the inner voice in your head alone to go through that process.
Because there’s most of us know by now the kind of monkey mind jumping all over the place every five seconds can’t really focus on one thing. So get it out on a piece of paper type it, et cetera. That’s I guess that’s the advice I give is to question yourself advice particularly like the at what point did you feel like you weren’t enough tracing it right back to where it begins? Because yes a lot of self-knowledge searching for why you are the way you are kind of like that process coming back to your story for a moment. You because we were at the point where you were taken essentially a few months off what happens next for you. So yeah, two things I feel very grateful for that happened next one. My having been very into self-development. I remember Jordan Peterson saying he had this, I think it’s called self-authoring program and I remembered back in my heyday of self-development, I bought a license for this.
Yeah and I just thought I’d just give it a go filling it in and it was essentially like have very long self-reflective exercise. You know, you talk about a little bit about your past, not very much focused on that, a lot about your present and a lot about your future and it’s if I reflect on it now, it was essentially coaching yourself, it’s as close as you could get to effectively coaching yourself. Just some great questions, very structured way of differentiating between your present and your future and all the different types of goals you may have for your future. So a real solid introduction to the kind of benefits that coaching or anything like that can have and I took that to the extreme as is my personality type. I think I spent like four hours a day writing this for a couple of months.
So a lot of work went into it. Found it very meditative and flowy and enjoyable to write about myself, probably says a lot about my ego and so that was once that was a big part of it was feeling like I had taken some control back of my own fate. Yeah, and that process helped me let go of trading, it took another two years before I completely let go of it. I was so attached to this future image I had of what my life could be like as a professional trader, you know, I wanted to be like the Instagram photos, you know, sitting on beach with laptop, working for an hour a day, all I need is an internet connection and you know, I can make silly money as a forex trader, that was, that was the thing for me and it was in service of my creative goals as a musician, as a music producer, I wanted to, I wanted a job that paid the bills and let me live comfortably, but it took very little time so that I’d have plenty of energy that were left over to put into my passion of music production, but somewhere along the way I got I got more absorbed in the trader lifestyle part of that and unless I forgot about the music basically so detaching from trading and letting go of this like dream millionaire beach lifestyle was a couple of year-long process and was kicked off by the self-authoring program.
And then the other key thing was when I discovered that coaching was a real thing I felt I had I got a career coach, so another part of me discovering coaching was that as a yeah, still had that hangover of the achievement focus and the achievement trap and being very Taipei about going after things in an aggressive way. Coaching when it came to careers, The word coaching sat better with me than counselling because it seemed a bit more like, you know, yeah, let’s get after it kind of thing. So I got career coaching and I was very lucky because my career coach was at the time he was quite new to coaching and should have been charging a lot more and he took it from, we went in with the surface level problem of I need help with my career and within about one session he intuited that I needed help with a lot more than my career and that was the it was so powerful for me that I completely took that on when I started coaching.
I remember saying to so many people, yeah, I don’t want to coach in businesses, I don’t want to coach executives because it’s all surface level B. S. You know, I don’t want any of that. I want to get to the core. Like I want I want to be working with people 1 to 1 on their deepest issues and all this kind of thing and I and I still believe that now, but what’s changed is that I now also believe that anyone coming in with any surface level problem within a few sessions, if they’re the right personality types, we can go down to that level. So you have receiving coaching and doing a lot of self-reflective work or the two things I would credit with dragging me out and that’s selling short my family and my supportive network completely who you know, put up with a lot of moping and probably a lot of very boring conversations for them So yeah, thank you for that.
You touched upon like the concept of a trader lifestyle and one thing that you know the whole beach should we say, I mean it just makes me think of some receiving a pitch, it’s like pitch for courses and high price programs and that sort of thing. And were you, am I reading into that or did you receive that message over and over again to the point where that’s everything that you wanted? Yeah, I got shivers then when you said that because Yes, absolutely. forex education, the four online, forex education world is about the scam, easiest world I’ve come across so far made me feel it’s quite dirty being a part of it actually. and I’m sure there’s worse things out there and actually ethical marketing service, you know, you’ve probably got a lot of experience with these not so authentic and reputable marketing styles, you probably come across them quite a lot in your journey, but yeah, my God, yeah, they really pushed the look at the, you know, let’s rent a Lamborghini for a day, take those of photos with it and push that as the essentially the only backbone of our course is that look at this guy or gal, You know, I was part of a school for one three Year or so trading school for a year or so that basically used the, they lent very heavily on the good looks of their female founder to push a lot of their marketing through and there are plenty of other ones.
Whereas blokes with nice watches with Lamborghinis holding a big thing. I mean, it was so, there were so many tropes. I’m, I honestly felt ashamed afterwards after all of this had happened that my B S detector didn’t start going, you know how is this? It was like being in a trance. It was, it was incredible. Like I was so drunk the Kool Aid so strongly and I don’t come from but my dad’s quite sceptical. I don’t come from like a that kind of background where you know, we, we believe in things that are too good to be true, but I just, it was scary. Yeah, it was scary how to reflect on it now. It was quite scary how I got all caught up in it and looking at, I’m not on Instagram and I don’t really use Facebook but when I do see my friends on Instagram and I look at that kind of world, it still scares me that that’s, it’s so intoxicating.
It’s so dangerous. I think it makes me think about the contrast of what the truth is versus what is pitched. So in your case The being a trader is positioned as someone on a beach working one hour a day. But you get the reality of it and the reality of it is like what we’re talking 12, 14-hour days to the point where you know you yeah, risk your health. That’s really, that’s really how much of a liar is just worth highlighting that. What do you say to someone who is like, yeah, I really want to be a trader. What’s your advice to that person? huh. Find somebody in real life, If you meet me on the internet, meet on the internet, fine. Meet them in real life. Obviously be safe but meet them in real life. Find one person who you can verify beyond a shadow of a doubt is making money consistently over multiple years.
As a trader you want, you need to see their account real live account , statements from their brokerage account. You know, and this is a lot to ask if you feel going up to someone and saying, can you teach me how to trade? Now? Show me all of these things. I realise this is a lot to ask, but this is, if you don’t do this, you’re potentially wasting a lot of time and like you say, risking your health, find that person that you trust beyond a shadow of a doubt, get the proof and then ask them to mentor you if that costs you money and you’ve got the money to burn on that adventure. Fine. Even better if they’re willing to mentor you just because they like you and they want to share their wisdom that I think that screams genuine far more than somebody who wants your money. but if you can’t find that my honest advice is well, two things forget about it and then go back to those repetitive questions we talked about earlier in the session.
Why? Why are you doing this? What are you afraid of happening if you don’t do it? What’s it supposed to give you? Because I’m not, I’m not convinced. Especially in the modern day world of algorithmic trading and quantitative analysts that there is profit. I don’t think there is a business model on a business scale and on a personal scale for individual point and click traders as they’re called. Nowadays, people looking at screens, looking at charts, looking at data and making speculative decisions. I think maybe in the stock market there’s potential for that. But in currency, forget about it. Like unless you can find that that guru that you truly trust and can verify, just move on with your life. You know, don’t waste the four years I did.
Yeah, that’s the only advice I can give really well, I think I think your questions probably do the job. So when you actually, when you actually dig deep enough, you realise that you’re just essentially trying to do it. Well, generally speaking, I think people try and do it for the significance because they think people will think they’re great or they’ll feel a certain way if they’re if they’re perceived as this high earning trader. And did you ever get to, I mean, did you ever get any closure on your business mentors regarding the Daily Mail article? I got a message from one of them , a couple of years afterwards saying basically, can we chat? And I said, if you’ve got anything to say, just say it here and he said, do you know how much Money The other one stole from the business?
And I was just like, yeah, I don’t need this. That was enough closure for me. These guys are, they’re playing it, they’re playing off against each other. They are, I don’t know whether one of them was more crooked than the other one and one was genuinely had the wool pulled over his eyes. I don’t know. I think I got closure for me. The problem and I don’t think I’ve got closure on this yet is I made recommend I recommended some people in my life to invest in this company and they lost some money and that was something that I neglected to mention earlier when you were saying what led to this breakdown, that was also a big, there’s a lot of guilt I felt for these people losing money and for me having the world pulled over my eyes and encouraging them to invest. So I don’t think I got closure on that. The, these liquidation.
I think the liquidation case has been going on for four or five years now. So perhaps when that comes to a close and there’s like some, there’s some answers to what was really going on and maybe some people get some money back then that’s closure. But yeah, no, I think the answer is no, I on a personal level from my, for my trading career I’ve got closure and for inter personally between me and the two guys who used to run the company, I’ve got closure. I don’t want anything to do with them anymore and that’s fine. But between me and the people who invested. No, no closure. Well, you got some, I’m pressing some very positive stuff going on with your coaching. So have you got any favourite case studies are examples that you’d like to share. Yeah. So this guy, let’s call him, John it’s not his name, let’s call him John, he was quite early in my coaching career.
It was, it was the experience with him that made me think I can really do this. he called me a day after. So this was, this was right at the start of Lockdown one. So March last year. Yeah, I think it was much heat. His business had just had to close up shop in Barcelona because of Covid because of lockdown. So he ended his. He had been sort of travelling around the world for 5, 10 years and he had to end all of that come back to the UKK with his long distance girlfriend and they we’re in an Airbnb in the countryside. Yeah. And so he lost his business, wasn’t sure what to do there. He had his ex-partner who had a child with, who is Norwegian lived in Norway.
I had just had a difficult situation for herself personally and meant that she was no longer able to look after their child. So she was moving. He was having to organise her and their child moving to England and settling them there and buying a house, that there was space for them and all this, all of the stress that comes with that. And then the day before he called me, his girlfriend had walked out and left with no explanation. He’d just gone out on a walk one morning, came back, everything was gone. So it was like crisis point for him. And we kept in our first conversation, we kept coming back to this word stability. He wanted some stability. He needed some stability in order to get his composure and keep moving forward and be the best dad he could be. And after about, I think it was four months, five months we worked together, he had, he was back together with his partner, that was one of the things he wanted to, to work on with.
Getting back together with his partner, his girlfriend, they were back together, he bought a house in, sorry, a nice area and sorry, and his daughter was going to a good school there, he’d settled his ex-partner nearby and he was starting to be able to focus on himself again and looking into the next steps of his career. So he was a director by trade or at least he hadn’t been a direct by trade, sorry, he wanted to be a director, had gone to film school, but had worked in other businesses up to this point and he had the time, energy and passion to start really devoting himself to that, and since then, you know, I actually met up with him for the first time, saw him face to face yesterday actually, we went for a bike, we went mountain biking together and he’s just been invited to me, Orca to do two weeks’ worth of filming, directing and filming on a I don’t think he told me what the project was.
Anyway, he’s off there at the end of the month and He’s got two other part-time gigs working in environmentalism and sustainability, so yeah, that was a real, like, that was one of those moments when we finished working together and I, I really felt like I can make a big impact on, you know, I’m never going to make a big impact on lots of people’s lives, but I could definitely make a really big impact on a few people’s lives highly meaningful, highly meaningful Yeah, and that’s very cliche, but you know, I don’t, I don’t make a huge amount of money, I make enough to support a very nice lifestyle, but I do the actual coaching sessions for me now from a selfish standpoint, I find them like a meditation, like I know I know the process well enough where I’m not thinking about what I say next, I’m not thinking about what the other person’s saying, I’m just usually I shut listening, listening with my body and listening with my ears and waiting for and like an inspired response, something coming from my gut, my inner wisdom to a question, maybe a point in a certain direction and it doesn’t feel like work, it feels like it feels like I’m just present for that other person and I feel extremely grateful for that really, so wow, well done, thank you.
Yeah, and it’s a complete juxtaposition from trader life, but yeah, I suppose this is interesting coming back to what you’re saying about the advice somebody’s going into trading, maybe I would just say go fill in because you only know what you really don’t want to do and what’s truly important to you when you epically fail at something. Well that’s not the only way, you know, that’s one of the ways you get to it. And I remember watching a video on the necessity of having a breakdown and how important that can be for some people as a turning point in their lives. And so if, if, if going, you know full on into trading is how you hurry up and have your breakdown and realise what life is really about for you, then, you know, Get on with it, you know, work 16 hours a day, burn yourself out. Yes you get more of a kick out of the examples where people are particularly struggling and you turn them around or is it just rewarding across the board.
It’s just rewarding across the board. I certainly get, I certainly get as I get more into coaching, I get more of a kick out of the coaching on the like working with thought itself, I almost had spiritual, but I know that puts a lot of people off because I’m not religious at all. But working on a level, working on the level that helps people detach almost completely from their own thought from and therefore from anxiety from depression from their own moods. So helping people light up to the fact that they, their awareness who they really are is separate from their thoughts and they can have some relief from their constant ongoing thoughts in their head. I think the quotable line is the mind is an excellent servant but a terrible master and I like I remember hearing that quote for about that when I was in self-development and anxious.
I had that quite so many times and I was like, yeah, yeah, cool. I understand that great next. and since having my breakdown and becoming a coach, I now feel like I really, I feel that with my whole body is one of the most beautiful insights I’ve ever had. Is I this isn’t running the show, There’s something behind it that is and the more I can identify with what’s behind it, the more common, the more peace, love, joy, all those, all the tick boxes you want to feel, the more of that I can be. And I’m starting to formalise the process with which I help people have that insight and that’s yeah, that’s where I get my kicks these days. Really sounds very, very mindful. Yeah, very chill dude. Yeah, my mindful is a lovely way of explaining what it took me about 10 minutes to explain that. Well I asked you or I spoke to you beforehand about the fact that was going to ask you about your goals.
And I’m fascinated to hear what your response is in relationship to what you think about the concept of goals based on everything we’ve talked about today. Yeah, yeah. I don’t have any. You might have probably might have expected that answer. , I don’t have any girls and I’m smiling so much because it’s, I can remember if you’d have asked me this even a year ago when I was, I was already a coach, but even a year ago you would have got a very different answer, very well thought out answer. And if you’d have asked me three years ago, we would have had to have a two hour podcast because I wouldn’t have stopped talking for an hour. I don’t have any goals and I don’t, I don’t think girls are bad, but I also don’t think girls are good. I think goals are a I think I believe goals can be a, can be very helpful for a lot of people and I help people work on their goals. You know, one of the ways in which I build rapport and trust with clients is help them work on their goals so that we, so that they know that you know, I want to go wherever the client wants to go.
But once I’ve got that report and that trust, I’ll start questioning in a slightly different way that helps them to see that although their goals may help motivate them, they are also probably one of one of, if not their biggest like ambition is probably one of, if not their biggest source of, I am not enough of not being worthy because coach of mine once said it’s like having an ambition or goal is like writing, you know, be thinner on a tennis ball and then Playing fetch with yourself, like throwing it off 50 m in the other direction going, I’m not going to be satisfied or enough until I get that ball. And it’s like at least when dogs play fetch, they get the ball and they go and they enjoy it for a bit and they run around, whereas as humans, we just go, I got the ball and then you rub off thin and you go, I want to be rich and you throw it again and you’re so you might have like a very temporary feeling of satisfaction, but it’s not if you’re in that habit of sacrificing your present wellbeing for an idealised version of your future, it’s going to be very, those moments of satisfaction are probably going to be very transient.
And so I help people with goals, keep throwing that tennis ball so that when they get to that point where they get it and it’s very transient, I can go. So just tell me about how it felt to achieve that goal. And then sometimes that opens up a crack with which we can delve into to look at right what might be a for you, what might be a more fulfilling way to live your life instead of that constant playing fetch with yourself. So we can walk away from the tennis ball. Yeah, exactly, or just hold it and look at it and play with it like a dog would. , so yeah, so I don’t have any girls. I I don’t have any girls. Sorry, that’s not very inspiring answer. I like the answer just because you’re the first person who has said, I don’t have any girls typically answer it, I’ll ask it on every single episode and some people very clear, you know, I’ve got Exactly, I even had one person who had like a 30 year plan broken down, which is, you know, I never never heard that before, but everyone has a crack at the answer, but you’re the first person who has said no, not doing that good.
Well I like that. There you go. That’s probably likes you to one of my girls to the individual you go, Is there anything that you feel would be a value to the audience that haven’t asked you about? Yeah. I think the quality of questions you ask yourself defines the quality of your experience and that’s probably the biggest value of coaching traditionally is it helps you get into the habit of questioning yourself in a way that leads to confidence, peace, self-realisation, etcetera. So all I would say is if you’re struggling or if you want something you don’t have get into the habit of asking yourself questions rather than trying to think about the solutions first. yeah, it’s a great point. I think lots of people Presuppose the answers rather than asking good questions. Thanks for that. Elliott, where’s the best place for people to find you now?
This is a question I don’t have a good answer for. I am about to, I’ve had so much feedback from clients that I should have a face, but I just don’t like social media, but I should have a place that people can collect and either converse or whatever. Basically, I’m a terrible businessman. So I’m going to start Facebook, but that’s not very helpful. So what I say is I will chat with anyone if anyone wants to chat. , can we put my like, I don’t know, email address in the, in the show notes. Sure. Or I can read it off here and now it’s just elliotthecoach@gmail.com. If anyone wants to just chat. Very happy to do. So my business model is I talk with someone for at least an hour and a half before there’s any mention of money and programs and all that rubbish. So if anyone wants to talk for an hour and a half about what you’ve got going on, that’s the best way to be in contact with me.
So my email address will be in the show notes and yeah, if anyone’s interested to look forward to hearing from you and maybe eventually I’ll have a Facebook. Well, I’m not in the least surprised that you don’t have social media and I’m not an advocate of heavy social media use in any way. So I kind of get what you mean. And I also think that I’m sure that a conversation with you which is focused on, you know, the value to the other person is going to be extremely beneficial. So I guess. Thank you very much for doing that.
Thank you. That’s very kind of you to say.
All right, Elliot, thanks for being on the show.
Thanks Thomas.