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Episode 2:

Hello? Hello. I'm your host, Caroline Schafer, please help me welcome my very special guest Courtney miracle. She has 11 years experience in the coaching and CrossFit industry. And I'm so excited to have her here . Please help me welcome Courtney to the vitality Feed.

Hello, thanks for having me. I'm so happy to be here. I am thrilled too, I know as we've chatted, this has been a crazy world lately. And I thought we'd sent her today's discussion on not being perfect because I don't have my intro and outro ready, and we're just going to do things anyway. We're going to take action. As Tony Robbins says action will cure all.

An, I know that you spoke to me that you were a gym owner for a number of years. You want to share sure. Absolutely. So 11 years ago, my husband and I we were both personal trainers and we met in September. We opened a gym together in March, so I've got to talk about not perfection commit first, figure it out later.

So looking back, we should own a business together, four months into knowing each other. But we knew we had a passion for helping people and we knew we didn't like to be told what to do. We essentially found under space launch the business, and that was 11 years ago. We still have it. And we've learned a lot about ourselves and people and what makes the world go round when it comes to health and wellness.

And I think perfection, in my opinion , if that's all we're going to talk about is the death of all joy. I, I had had eating disorders off and on my whole life and that sort of resurface for me years ago and really dove deep into understanding human behavior and why people do what they do. And it really transformed how we coach people, what we work on and really like the steps you need to take to truly be healthy and happy.

You will have that perfection mindset, you know, the media and everything out there. I have three daughters. It's so hard to get people to focus. I'm more focused on the health for longevity . What do you think, in all of your experience with having so many people at the gym and you and your own experience, what do you think causes people to go down that rabbit hole?

Honestly, worthiness wounds. I think that's, you know, I, I dove into, I did an extensive program where, you know, it was labeled food and body, but it had nothing to do with food and body. That's called hunger for happiness, but. When it really comes down to for most people, is that we have unhealed worthiness wounds that we created as children that we just never healed.

So we are all chasing this perfection. If when the, when then game, right? Well, when I have a six-pack, then I'll be happy when I have that, then I'll be, you know, that, that scenario. And that was kind of my story. And if, if you had seen me, like, I was never overweight, I was never out of shape. I looked happy and all of the things, but I really wasn't genuinely happy.

For me, my parents were amazing, but they had high expectations of us. I was the second child to a very, very, very intelligent brother, which I didn't realize created these stories in me that like I had to be perfect and it had to be all of these things. And so I adopted those as my own and then walked through that. I was like, well, if I don't have the perfect body, then I, then you know, like, that's going to define who I am or what I am. And for all of the clients we've worked with it almost, 99% of the time comes back to some kind of worthiness wound that happened in childhood. And most of us are living out stories and beliefs and structures that aren't even ours.

And we don't realize it. Right. And so getting people for me, it was getting people really at the desk disconnect like their physical body is a vehicle to like live out their soul's purpose and not get too. Woo. Woo. But like it's a vehicle in which the way you treated is going to affect. You are experienced here, but that like, it doesn't have to look a certain way or be a certain way, or you don't have to wait to be happy until an external thing happens.

Right. And so what we've seen is a lot of people are chasing external results to have an internal feeling. And then when they get the external result, the internal feeling isn't there. So we like to flip it of like, let's work on the internal and the external will follow.

I love that term, worthiness wounds. That's really sums that up so well, and it's exactly what one of my objective is, is not to focus on that goal, but to focus on the journey, because if you keep prolonging that happiness, like I always believe happiness is a choice regardless of your situation. I have read, all sorts of things about people in the most hallacious circumstances possible choose happiness. If you just wake up knowing whatever I implement in my health today will show tomorrow. And I need to be happy with that and just grow from there. Instead of saying, Oh, in 10 months when I weigh one 115, I will be perfect and be so happy because that never . And I know that happens with money as well for people who set a money goal or a set of business goal or any of it . It's really the journey. . So that's really cool. I love that term, worthiness wounds .

And I think too, to go off to piggyback off that, I think the other really important thing is it's an ownership and it's a choice too, believe that the world is happening for you, or if you take it a step deeper, the world is happening from you. Have you spent all of your time worrying and in here and in lacking in out, that's what you're going to bring, right? Like that's what you're going to bring upon yourself. And so it's owning that.

Like I am where I am and everyone is where they are because of the decisions we've made. Whereas for a lot of people is hard. But the beauty of that is it's like, well, if I start to shift my decisions, our program is called shift. If I start to shift my decisions and the way that I think, and the biggest thing for me was the intention, right?

If my intention, so my story, I spent my whole life trying not to hate my body, right. Like I just didn't want to hate my body. And so it led to all these unhealthy behaviors. And when I really made the shift and started to heal, I started to go... well, if I want to love my body, which I did, I didn't at that time, but I wanted to, I was like, okay, if I want to love how it feels, how it looks, how it shows up, what actions do I take from an intent of love and not fear.

And for me, like the actions were the same. I still wanted to move my body. I've I've always loved to exercise. I love training. I love cross. I love being an athlete. But I knew that like when I ate healthier foods and I consumed less alcohol and I slept and I meditated and I did breath work, like I was doing those things to love my body.

Not because I hated it when the intention changed, every single thing changed. And like your body will no longer hold onto physical weight when you release it from the emotional stress and struggle in weight that's holding it down.

I can't remember where I heard this, but I heard this guy was at the dinner with his friend and he knew he wasn't a spiritual person, but before they ate the meal, he kind of closed his eyes and bowed his head. And he's like, did you just pray? And he's like, no. I was asking my food to please nourish my body. And they, they say that there's some science behind that too. It's very interesting about it. The intention, you're eating with intention to help yourself. And even if it's not the best, but when you put that mindset spin on it.

So that's really cool that you brought that up on that made me think of that immediately.

And there's an actual on the science side. This is what's cool there's there's scientific studies that show that when people are in a place of enjoyment and joy and happiness, and really in that good energy, the food that you eat actually affects you differently, hormonally. Then, if you're in a place of stress and struggle or bingeing or whatever, like you could have the same, like caloric. Suppose it intake and your body will process it completely different because of the hormones and, and the emotional connection. And it's like, you know, your mind and your gut are so scientifically connected that it's like, there, there, there is not this like calories in calories out.

Like that's all that doesn't make any sense. And when you start to really go, okay, I'm an emotional, physical, spiritual being, and all of these actions work together. All of a sudden when you start to unlock that, you're like, Why is this so easy now? Right? Like, wow, this is so simple because the intention and the energy and what you, what you're focusing on experience.

Right. We all know that like where energy goes or where energy go. Okay. You know what I mean? And where does energy flows? Right, right. Yeah. Your attention goes energy flows and that's, we are so on the same page with that and I couldn't agree with you more and I watched this one gentleman, he just got a lot of YouTube videos, Dr. Joe Dispenza. I love him. It's very interesting. I try to eat like very organic and I used to get kind of crazy with that. And I think that that conjures up some negative things.

And he was saying specifically back this lady who had an organic farm, who literally like, was just inundated with, I think, cancer tumors. And he's like, I can't tell you how many times. And it really sunk in on me. That I get these people who are so regimented in their diet, and then they end up in some kind of catastrophic cancer situation.

It must point to that mindset of what is going on in your mind. You're you're doing the environmental thing, right? So, you know, one of the pieces of the puzzle is what you're telling yourself. So that, that was really a revolutionizing to me. I was like, wow, that is crazy.

Well, and it's the intention, right? Like I always, we always say like, habits walk a very fine line of being healthy and unhealthy, right? Like there's this thing of, I want to eat well and these are the reasons that I know all of these things, but when it becomes obsessive and that's where I lived a lot of my life. And now you're in fear and you're in lack.

And I always ask, I was asking my clients just the question of, does it feel expansive or does it feel contractive? And if what you're doing feels like it makes you contractive and shut down. And in lack, it's not serving you versus like, if it feels expensive, right. If it feels expensive, have dark chocolate every night and you should do it.

Pay attention. How are you feeling at the moment? Absolutely. I tell people that too, when they're trying to figure out their life's mission and I'm like, just start writing down when you're happy .

What is your pivotal moment where you were like, okay. And not enough of the way I'm treating myself, was there a specific aha? Yeah. Yeah. So I was we were running, so in our cross region, we ours up performance at health, and I really thought over a lot of my body of your stuff when I started CrossFitting Long story short, our building got sold.

We had to learn how to market, or we were going to go bankrupt. So we hired a marketing company and this was three years ago, back when everybody was doing six week challenges. So we started along that road and we were, I was selling all the challenges, but the challenges were, you know, can you do this for 42 days?

You know, it's, it's, it's a bet on yourself. If you, if you hit your weight loss school, then you get your money back. Right. So. Intuitively that's a terrible way to do things, but it was what it was. And it taught us a lot. So I was selling that all of my own stuff came up. Right. Well, if I can't do this for six weeks, I shouldn't be telling other people to more, the perfection showed back up, all those factors, impostor syndrome, all that.

Yes. And so I was on a mission to find a better macro coach which was funny. Cause I know all of the science, I knew all of the things, right. I didn't need a better macro coach, but. The world, the world is happening for you. I landed on the podcast with Samantha Skelly, who was my mentor is my mentor. And she was talking about the emotionality behind food and all of the things.

And my daughters were, so I have two little girls, they were they're four and one at the time. And I remember looking at them and I was like, I have to fix this, so I don't pass it on. So I don't know why I felt this way for, I mean, it started when I was 16, I was 41. I was like, if I don't know why I felt this way, I'm going to pass it on to them and I don't want them to do what I'm doing.

Right. And so don't give better than that, right? Yeah. I was like, I just can't, you know, so it was really for them and for me of just like, I started crying and I'm like, okay, I clearly don't need a better macro Coach. I need to actually. To, to figure out what it was. And again, it was a worthiness thing and it was honestly, for me, it was releasing rules and understanding the difference between rules and boundaries, and really like stepping into that and, and trusting cause most of us when we started health journey or most of our clients, at least like we don't trust ourselves, we have to have more rules.

If I have more things that I have to do right then it's going to work, which rules are always made to be broken. And that's why, like our challenges didn't work for people. There was those 30, 35 pounds in six weeks. And then go right to where they were. Right. So my opinion is that like it's either all in or all out and that doesn't work.

So it's like, what can you shift? And what can you understand? And how can you look inward to really figure out why you're doing what you're doing? Right. Like we always say awareness, without awareness you'll never get it. You're never going to change. You don't know why you're doing what you're doing, or if you don't even know what you're doing.

So awareness. And then courage, right? Courage to the look deeper at like, why do I do what I do? Right. Consistency. We have sixties in our program, but it's courage, consistency, congruency. Right. I was just looking at like your whole life. And how does, how does your sleep affect your workout and how does your sleep affect how you meet and how does, how you eat affect your workout and what is your mindset do and how, like, what are your emotions when someone tells you, you, you know, it's like, it's all interconnected.

And if you just try to compartmentalize your life, you'll never make longterm change. Right. Speaking of sleep what would, what would you say that keeps you up at night? My four year old. No, just getting it.

Right. So, so I am really good at going to sleep. I get up crazy early. I get up at like three 20 everyday.

Before I get up at five now, since I'm not doing nine to five, but yeah. Right.

So for me, honestly, like what I realized was my eating disorder had created a sense of certainty in my life. Okay. And for me too. So like I knew if I could count my macros and everything else was falling apart, I was certain right.

And I know that at the time, but it was just an out of alignment way to create certainty or control in my life. So once I released that and I knew that I could meditate and I could do breath work and I could create a feeling that I could then take through my day. Everything in my life changed. So going to sleep is not hard for me.

I don't really worry anymore. I don't think there's much that keeps me up. Usually I think about business after the middle of the night, but it's not like from a worried place. It's usually from a, what do I want to get done? Right. But for me, the perfection /control were really closely tied and once I real, I remember my mentor said controls in illusion and I was like, Nope, that's not true.

I control all the things. And like, once I lean into, I can control nothing, but I can create everything my whole life changed. And so now I come from a place of creation and expansion. So I don't have to worry about the things cause worrying about them. Doesn't do me much. Good. So other than my five-year while she's by now, she sleeps with me still.

So she keeps me up cause she like kicks me. But other than that, I don't have a lot of that going on anymore in my life. It used to be money, but not anymore. I love that.

Control's an illusion that I'm, I think I'm there. Cause I, like I said, I'm trying to grow and do things that I'm not comfortable with, but I am doing it anyway.

Surrender. You have to surrender.

Yes. I'm surrendering. Where's my white flag. Let's see, I'm going to get some of those. I think I'm going to keep that as a prop. Okay. So last question is, if you could remove one thing from this entire planet forever more a food or a beverage or something, what would it be and why?

I think if there's one thing that I'd want to remove right now, it's fear. I mean, truthfully, like I believe every, you know, There's a lot of foods that are not serving us. I believe that to be true, but I believe the reason they're being consumed and the ways that they're being consumed. Are the bigger culprit. And I think here is the reason for so many people. And if you look at the state of the world in the last nine months, it's been perpetuated with fear and fear of the unknown.

And again, lack of ownership and people giving away their power to take care of themselves and their power to choose. And just, I think fear kills dreams. It kills lives, it kills families. So really for people just to. And to understand that life is happening for them and that they don't need the fear of the unknown. I think the world would be a better place if we took that away.

I think where everyone is now is that fear is created from the uncertainty level. Everyone just at their edge, what is Tony Robbins called? It's one of the six. I forgot what the six human needs are.

When I did that test, honestly, that was a big one for me was, certainty.

I'd spent years as an event planner. I like everything that's down in its own little place, you know? So it is very hard. There's a lot of uncertainty and I, I just think everybody doesn't know, and it's a hard place to live where you just don't know. With all aspects of your life with your kids, with your parents, with your jobs , I mean, like everything is up in the air and uncertain.

I'm excited that I got to share your wisdom today because that was, we are so very much on the same page. We will totally have to get back together to chat some more because I love your message and I'm happy that you're spreading that good to your clients because everybody needs to hear the things that you're saying.

I want to thank you . I do believe that change is both doable and sustainable and I know that because I'm looking at you. I hope that that other people can be inspired by this interview ,so until next time my friend, remember life has no remote, get up and change it yourself.