One of my biggest lessons in 2016 was almost one of the most painful.

It started out last Summer when I began the search for new members of my coaching team.

I had a very extensive screening process that lasted a number of months:

First round: fill out a lengthy and detailed application
Second round: create a 3-minute video about yourself and your strengths
Third round: interview with me

Fourth round: record one of your coaching calls for me to review
Fifth round: second interview with me

Intense, right?

It’s because I was determined to find the exact right women to join my world-class team, spread my sacred message, and serve my clients in the highest ways possible.

One woman who was considering applying emailed me to see if it made sense since she was about to have a baby.

When I received her email, I got an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach:

She was a former client who, a few years back, had suddenly asked to be released from her contract. Even though she had been receiving incredible results from my program, she simply decided she was in the wrong place in her life. It’s very rare I have a client ask to be released from a contract (maybe a handful in my 12 years in business), and if I do allow it, it needs to be for a really good reason because I take our contract and my commitment to my clients very seriously.

But this client insisted that I would be “ruining” our relationship if I didn’t release her from her commitment…so I said OK, even though it felt shitty and totally misaligned.

And now, two years later, she was applying to be on my coaching team!

If any of my clients would come to me with this situation, I would advise them IMMEDIATELY and firmly to not even consider this person as a candidate, because someone who is blindly out of integrity with a commitment once is going to show up that way again.

But that’s not how I advised myself, even though I knew better.

I told her she should apply.

And even though she applied late, didn’t keep to deadlines, and didn’t have as much experience as some of the other applicants (though she is an EXCELLENT coach and one I did trust fully to serve my clients), I continued to make excuses for her and let her get to the next round and the next round of the hiring process.

In our interview, we did have a somewhat honest talk about the fact that she abandoned her previous contract with me. But it still wasn’t kosher.

And yet, I ignored my gut again…and eventually hired her.

The training process to become a coach on my team is really intense. It involves a lot of work (on the part of the coach and on the part of my existing team) for me to feel fully confident in allowing the coach to work with my clients.

I invested 6 weeks into this new coach. And my team invested a lot of time into her as well.

Just as she was about to start working with my clients (I had already signed on a few to begin with her immediately), she abruptly told me she didn’t want to be on the team.

I tried to shift some things to make it easier for her to stay.

Still, a NO on her part. She was done.
And leaving me totally in the lurch.

The entire situation was pretty stressful for a day or two (thank goodness I’m a good problem solver and also had other incredible coaches on my team ready to step in).

But I knew that for as much as I wanted to blame and crucify this woman for carelessly leaving me high and dry in the middle of a launch that I created in order to fill her roster, that truly I needed to look to myself for why this had happened.

I knew something had gotten off track inside of me.

And I saw immediately why I had made such an obvious mistake in hiring her – it all stemmed from a deep need to be liked.

I allowed this woman out of her original client contract with me because I didn’t want her to dislike me.

And I completely ignored my common sense about hiring her because I didn’t want her to dislike me.

The truth is that the need to be liked is one of my Achilles heels.

For as confident as I am, I’ve got moments where I’m not as confident. And in those moments that very, very old fear that I’m not good enough and not likeable enough takes over. And I’m willing to do whatever it takes for others to like me just so that I can feel like I am “OK”.

I’ve done a lot of self-development work over the years, and have been able to overcome this fear by leaps and bounds when it comes to speaking my mind, spreading my message and setting boundaries in my business. In fact, there are so many ways in which I’ve truly transcended this fear and have become a bold warrior in my business and life.

But like everything (because I’m a slow learner with core wounds), there is still more work to be done.

So how does this story end?

Well, it ends by me deeply learning the lesson of not allowing my need to be liked to make the decisions in my life and in my business.

And by deeply understanding that making a decision out of the need to be liked is actually not in integrity: it doesn’t serve me and it doesn’t truly serve anyone else.

And by getting to the next layer of acceptance of my sacredness…and awareness that I am already more than OK, and don’t need to be liked by anyone in order to prove that I’m OK or be validated.

Difficult lessons for sure. Tears shed for sure. Uncomfortable moments for sure.

But I wouldn’t trade this lesson on any account.

Because the gift is that my self-love is more present now than it ever has been before.