Transcript
00:00:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m Joanna Lindenbaum, a coach, ritualist, and all-around transformation nerd who is obsessed with helping clients go deep to create more change and results with their clients.
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I created the Coaching Revolution Podcast to share with you coaching skills, tips, and advice, as well as a deeper understanding of human behavior and of yourself.
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so that you can do even better client work and group work, grow your business organically, and know that you’re making a real difference in the world.
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This is about creating a revolution in the transformational industry so that more practitioners feel amazing about what they do, and so that more of our clients experience life-changing shifts.
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Let’s get started.
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There’s something I want to talk about today that I don’t think gets named enough.
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And yet, my guess is that for many of you listening, it’s going to feel very familiar, what I’m going to be talking about.
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It’s the experience of feeling like an outsider.
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and how that outsider experience shapes who we are, not just as humans, but as practitioners and as entrepreneurs.
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And I’ll tell you, being an outsider has been kind of a theme for my entire life.
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And just recently, it came up in a really glaring way.
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So I just got back from a spring break trip to Mexico with my older daughter, Penina.
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Penina’s 17, she’s a senior in high school, and this trip was basically with her entire senior class.
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And I’ll be honest, when Penina first asked,
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John was a clear, John, my husband, was a clear and decisive no to going.
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He was just like, I’m out, I’m not going to Mexico on spring break.
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And so it was kind of on me to be Penina’s chaperone for the trip.
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And I was pretty reluctant to go, partly because spring break, which let’s just say is not exactly my natural habitat, but also because
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I wouldn’t really, I knew that I wouldn’t really know any other adults on the trip.
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I know Penina’s friends, but I don’t really know the parents.
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Penina started at this school in high school, but it’s a school that goes from kindergarten.
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So most of the other parents have known each other since kindergarten.
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And over the last four years, while Penina’s been in high school, I just hadn’t really gotten to know any of them.
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in part because life is busy, she’s older, that kind of thing.
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And in part because, I don’t know, I just had the sense that the other parents at this particular school maybe weren’t really my people.
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But anyway, I really wanted Penina to have this spring break experience because I knew she’d have fun.
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And so I agreed to go on the trip.
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And she did have fun.
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She really had the best time.
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I didn’t see her all that much on the trip because she was mostly off with her friends, laughing, running around, being 17.
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But I did get to catch her here and there.
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She did come to the hotel room sometimes.
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And when I caught her, she was having fun.
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There was actually one night on the trip where there was a big dinner for the kids and the parents.
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There was food, and there was a DJ.
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And I got to see Penina with her friends, singing at the top of her lungs.
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She was dancing with just this feeling of just such happiness and freedom.
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And it brought me so much joy to see my kid having a blast.
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Also, for me personally, there were some really sweet parts on this trip.
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I had time to read a lot.
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I got to spend hours by the ocean, watching and listening to the waves, feeling the wind on my skin.
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This is one of my favorite things in the world to do, to sit by the ocean.
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It calms my entire system like nothing else.
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I also had tons of time for journaling and reflection.
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I had space to just be with myself.
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It gave me time to also think strategically about my business, which is another one of my favorite things to do.
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So all of that alone time was in so many ways really nourishing.
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I always like to say that I really love my own company.
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It sounds funny, but it’s true.
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I really do love my own company ever since I’ve been a little girl.
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And
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There was one part of the trip that felt familiar in ways that were familiar, I’d say, since I’ve been a little girl.
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And that’s feeling like the outsider.
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So when I got to Mexico and saw the other parents there, I felt like a total outsider.
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They were all socializing.
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They were hanging by the pool.
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They were grabbing meals together.
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They were laughing, connecting, all the things.
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Now, I did have a few nice conversations with people here and there.
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And when I say a few, I mean three total conversations over five whole days.
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So not too many.
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And really, for the most part on this trip, I was alone.
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It wasn’t just that I didn’t know anyone.
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It was that I felt different from everyone, like I didn’t belong.
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And that was a very familiar feeling for me.
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My perception was that these other parents were more carefree, maybe kind of more surface oriented.
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They were talking about things I couldn’t really connect to.
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And I just couldn’t quite find my way in.
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And I’ll be honest, for as much as I really try not to judge others, I do sometimes catch myself passing judgment when people seem to me to be really surface-oriented.
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Now, on a related note, the other thing that was going on here is that I’ve never been good at small talk.
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Small talk has never been my thing.
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I just don’t really know how to find myself in it.
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And on one point on the trip, somehow in casual conversation, I somehow brought up Viktor Frankl.
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And if you don’t know who Viktor Frankl is, he was a psychologist and a Holocaust survivor who wrote a book about the Holocaust and finding meaning in life.
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even in the worst suffering.
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Well, bringing up Viktor Frankl was clearly not spring break material, and it definitely did not land the way that I hoped in that conversation.
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It kind of created awkward silence, and people sort of looked away, not knowing what to say.
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And part of me internally was like, yep, that tracks.
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There’s me again, doing my thing.
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There were a couple of moments on this trip where I tried to step in.
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So you know that moment where you kind of gather your courage, you try to enter a conversation where a bunch of people are standing in a circle and talking.
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You kind of get closer, and then no one even notices that you’re trying to join, and you can’t even really physically get into the circle without tapping on someone’s shoulder to move over, and you just like kind of hover in this weird way.
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And so after a little while, you kind of do that slow, awkward fade out.
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You just kind of like walk away, slowly pretend to check your phone.
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You just walk away like it didn’t happen.
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Yeah, I did that a couple of times.
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And so on the trip, I did what I’ve done so many times in my life where I’ve been in groups and I
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I felt like the outsider.
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I felt like I didn’t belong.
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I observed.
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I watched people.
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I tracked dynamics.
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I felt into who people were by observing them.
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I understood them, but from the outside.
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And on one hand, honestly, I was completely okay being the outsider, not being part of it.
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I was really more than okay.
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I didn’t actually feel a strong desire or pull to be part of that group.
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And like I said earlier, I loved my alone time.
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I genuinely enjoyed being with myself and having that time away from regular life and work and adulting.
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I didn’t have to cook or clean.
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I was just happy to spend most of my time away
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being with me and away from this particular crowd.
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That being said, there was also just a little bit of that old familiar feeling.
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The one that says, I don’t belong here.
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I’m not part of this.
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Why can’t I just be more easy, or more laid back, or more likable?
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Why do I have to be so deep?
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So none of these feelings are new.
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All of this goes way back for me.
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I’ve always had friends, and I’ve always had meaningful relationships, and at the same time,
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I’ve also often felt like an outsider.
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This has been a thread through most of my life.
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And sometimes I’ve actually for real been the outsider.
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And other times it’s just that I’ve felt that way because of all of the old patterning and paranoia.
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And
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through the years, sometimes even within my own group of really good friends, I’ve still felt the outsider.
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What I mean by that is I can sometimes be with a group of people that I genuinely love and who I know
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genuinely love me back, and still I will feel a little different from them, a little other.
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Like parts of me don’t quite land in the group.
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Especially in my younger years, but even every now and again these days as well, like be with friends, and still I would feel that some of my thoughts and my feelings were just too deep to really be shared, or
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I could be with a group of people that I love and still wonder if I’m coming off as a little too intense.
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Or even just feel like maybe the rest of the group has certain inside jokes and I’m being left out.
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And when I was younger, I worried about all of this A lot.
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I judged myself for it.
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I hated on myself for it a lot of times.
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I tried to change it.
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I tried to change myself.
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I would try to conform.
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I would try to modulate myself and who I am just so that I would appear to fit in.
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And I’m thankful to say that as I’ve gotten older, there’s been a lot more self-acceptance.
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and a lot more self-trust, a lot more knowing that I don’t need to conform, that I get to be myself, and that I should be myself, even if I’m different, even if I don’t belong.
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And also, as I’ve gotten older, there’s been a lot more understanding for me of what this outsider thing is all about.
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Because for many of us, this outsider feeling, it didn’t just come out of nowhere.
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It’s just like, **** one day, right?
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If you identify as an outsider, there’s a real chance that starting from when you were younger, your differences, the ways that you felt, the ways that you moved through the world, just none of that was fully understood
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by others, or honored by others, or celebrated by others, probably not even in your family of origin.
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Maybe parts of you were dismissed.
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Maybe parts of you were seen as too much.
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Or maybe you just didn’t quite fit.
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Or maybe you cared about things passionately, things that the rest of your family just simply didn’t care about.
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Or maybe you understood things very deeply from a young age, maybe things about your family’s dynamics, for example.
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You understood things that even the adults around you didn’t quite understand.
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And that deep knowing, that’s what made you feel different.
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or separate in a certain kind of way.
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And for some of us who identify as outsiders, there’s also sometimes another layer.
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The culture that you come from,
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the religion, the race, the identity, the community you come from, or maybe your sexual orientation, or maybe being neurodivergent, et cetera, something about the culture you come from or the way that you identify, it may have been othered in one way or another, which means that
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The feeling of being on the outside.
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That feeling of not being totally known or understood or honored for who you are.
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It’s not just personal.
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It’s historical.
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It may be inherited.
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Generation handed down generation to generation to generation.
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Whether it’s personal or whether it’s historical and inherited, in one way or another, that feeling of being an outsider, it runs deep.
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And I know for me, one of the many experiences that shaped who I am as an outsider was having parents who are immigrants.
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The foods that we ate were different.
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The clothing that we wore, that my parents wanted me to wear, was kind of different.
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The language that we spoke at home was different.
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But it was even so much more than that.
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Between being an immigrant family, and actually especially an immigrant Jewish family with direct family ties,
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to the Holocaust and also being persecuted through the generations for being different, I have always felt other and always felt like an outsider in one way or another.
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And this outsider feeling, this I am other and othered,
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feeling.
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In my family lineage, this has been a survival issue.
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This is something that’s huge inside of my psyche, and it’s something that I’ve done a lot of inner work on around the years.
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So the outsider thing, it runs deep, it’s big.
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It can have big impact, but all that
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being said, here’s the thing that I really want you to know.
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Being the outsider, it can also cultivate something profound.
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Yes, it comes, it may come with some pain, but it can also cultivate something profound.
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Being the outsider can shape us in incredibly beautiful
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and powerful ways.
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It can cultivate perception, the ability to read a room, the ability to track safety and unsafety, the ability to understand people and really see people and have compassion from the inside out.
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And
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If you’re here, if you’re drawn to the work that I do and to this podcast and this community, I have a feeling you might recognize yourself or parts of yourself in this.
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If you’re here, you’re likely a certain kind of human and a certain kind of practitioner who has always known on some level
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that you see things that other people don’t see, and you understand things or sense things that other people just don’t name.
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You probably pick up on subtle shifts and emotions under the surface on what’s not being said.
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And by the way, what I’m talking about here, I don’t necessarily mean that you’re empathic.
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I actually don’t consider myself to be empathic.
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I personally don’t viscerally feel what other people feel, at least not most of the time.
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But
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what I do do is that I am a keen observer, and I’m very perceptive, and I’m able to see layers and beneath the surface.
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And so much of that comes from my outsider status, as well as like what made me an outsider in the 1st place.
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And if you’re here and you’re listening to this podcast,
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The other thing I’m going to guess is that you’ve probably also always have been a really good listener.
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People open up to you, maybe even strangers on the street or the supermarket line.
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People feel safe with you.
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They feel seen by you.
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And of course, the ironic thing is that you probably haven’t always felt fully seen yourself, even though you see others so well.
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And so, again, for some of you, if you’re anything like me, from a really young age, there’s been this sense of being a little different.
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a little outside, maybe even on your own wavelength.
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Separate.
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And for a long time, that might have felt confusing or lonely or like something you needed to fix.
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And it probably caused a lot of extra heartache in the middle school years where belonging and being part of the tribe, in particular in the middle school years, being part of the tribe that’s outside of your family is a major, major part of brain development and psyche development.
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So this outsider thing,
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It’s not always easy, but here’s the reframe.
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that I want to offer you, and I really hope that you take this in.
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What if the very thing that has made you feel like an outsider is the exact thing that also makes you powerful in your client work?
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What if your ability to see patterns, to perceive deeply, to notice what others miss, to sit in complexity, to not be satisfied with surface level conversation?
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What if these are some of your greatest superpowers?
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Because here’s what I know to be true.
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Those exact qualities
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are what allow one to be a very particular type of coach and transformational practitioner, the type of practitioner who will never, ever be satisfied with only surface fixes or not getting to the root of things with clients.
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That outsider lens, I believe that it is also a depth
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lens.
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It’s a depth lens.
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And not all coaches and therapists and transformational practitioners possess this lens.
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And being able to go deep, not everyone has the capacity for it.
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But if this episode is resonating with you so far, you likely do have the capacity for depth.
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and you probably already know this in your heart.
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And this love of depth and this longing for depth and this knowing that you were meant for depth, it’s probably what led you to want to be a coach or transformational practitioner in the 1st place.
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It’s probably what has led you to want to be not the typical kind of coach or practitioner,
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but the kind with gravitas, who gets to the root, who holds such exquisite and layered space for your clients and their growth.
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Am I getting that right?
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Is that you?
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Because again, my guess is that if you’ve listened this far to this episode, you look at things with the depth lens.
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And
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This next part is also really important.
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Being this kind of human, the kind that is predisposed to have the capacity for depth, it does not automatically make you masterful at your client work or your group work.
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And it doesn’t automatically allow you to go deep with clients in ways that are effective
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and safe.
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So let me kind of unpack this a little bit.
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Your perception, it’s a gift.
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Your depth, it’s a gift.
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Your ability to help others feel seen and heard, it is such a gift.
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But without skill, those gifts
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can turn into something else.
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It can turn into over-accommodating your clients or being too sensitive or reactive to client emotions or moods.
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Without skill, those depth gifts can turn into staying in empathy with clients but not creating movement or being able to see so clearly the resistance
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but not knowing how to work with resistance.
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All of those outsider gifts without skill, they can lead to being able to hold space, but not really be able to facilitate transformation inside of that space.
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Or going deep for depth’s sake versus going deep in order to really create forward movement and change.
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And
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All of this reminds me of my first few years of working with clients.
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I’m not too humble to say that I was really good those first few years.
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I was good at working with clients, and that’s because of my innate talents.
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That’s because of all of the life experience I’d learned along the way, the inner work I’d done, and also because of the coach training that I had taken, which was more traditional coaching, but it included some really good skills.
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But that being said, those first few years of working with clients, I was good, but for as good as the work was,
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I also knew that I held the capacity for that work to be 10 times better, 10 times more effective, so much deeper.
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And it wasn’t until I added all of the very nuanced and detailed skills and techniques that my work went from good to extraordinary.
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that my clients went from really, really liking me and appreciating our work together to being blown away over and over again by what we were doing together.
00:29:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
Now, there’s another place that this outsider experience shows up that I think is also really important to name.
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This outsider thing, it doesn’t only impact your client work.
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It impacts your visibility.
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Because when you’ve spent years feeling like, I don’t quite belong, I’m not part of the group, people don’t really get me, or I need to conform in order to be acceptable, well, when you’ve spent years feeling like that,
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It makes complete sense that putting your true self and your work out there can feel too vulnerable, too exposing, too scary, too unsafe.
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And so what I see happen a lot out there is that incredibly gifted practitioners
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practitioners who are meant to be making way bigger impact and building their businesses, they end up staying hidden, or they dilute themselves, or they try to fit into what’s already out there instead of fully owning who they are and the way that they work.
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And
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I cannot tell you how many years this was me, how many years I spent either completely hiding and making myself and my business invisible, not promoting myself, not doing outreach, or worrying, obsessing that people would read my stuff and they just wouldn’t get me.
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or they would hate me.
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And I also definitely went through a phase in my business of trying to write my marketing in a way where I was conforming, where I wasn’t allowing myself to be me.
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And I’ll tell you all of these things, the complete hiding, the obsessing that people wouldn’t get me, or the conforming,
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none of this was good for my business.
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And one of the great joys of my business, and honestly, of my life, because it’s helped me personally too, is that I get to be authentic.
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I get to be my authentic self and fully expressed through my marketing.
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I won’t do it
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these days, any other way.
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I am okay being the outsider when I mark it.
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So if you recognize yourself in any of the things that I’m sharing, first of all, I’m so glad you’re here.
00:32:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
You’re in the right place.
00:32:19 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m so glad you found yourself and your way to this episode and to this community.
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And
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I really want to lovingly challenge you here.
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If you recognize yourself in anything I’m sharing, here’s what I want you to remember.
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Please, please remember with every fiber of your being that your work is not casual and it’s not meant to be.
00:33:00 Joanna Lindenbaum
There’s a reason that you’re drawn to the deep work.
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And the world right now, in this moment, is asking for the exact gifts that you carry.
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Because none of us have to look too far in this world to see that people are more dysregulated, they’re more overwhelmed.
00:33:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
They’re more defended.
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They’re more disconnected from themselves.
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There’s so much noise, so much distraction, so much fear, so much disconnection.
00:33:46 Joanna Lindenbaum
And what that means is that surface level work isn’t enough anymore.
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And insight alone isn’t enough anymore.
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People need a practitioner who can actually sit with them in the complexity, in the discomfort, in the messy truth, and guide them through it.
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And that ability
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That ability lives in the very traits that either now or in the past have made you feel like an outsider.
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This is not random.
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I am telling you, my friend, in so many ways, you were shaped for this moment.
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You were made for this moment.
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Your work was made for now.
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Which means that your personal work now is to become more masterful at using what you’ve been given through your outsider status.
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To become more masterful at using it inside of your client work and also in your marketing and your business.
00:35:34 Joanna Lindenbaum
To learn how to actually work with resistance instead of just understanding it.
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To learn to know when to go slow and also when to challenge.
00:35:47 Joanna Lindenbaum
To learn exactly how to master working somatically.
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and how to activate clients to real change, to learn the skills of helping clients actually integrate the breakthroughs that come forward in your sessions, instead of those breakthroughs just being cool insights that gather dust.
00:36:09 Joanna Lindenbaum
Your work is to learn how to use your depth to inspire people through your marketing,
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versus overwhelming them with all of that depth in your marketing.
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To learn also how to stop hating on your outsider feelings and to finally work with them in a way so that they stop holding you back from the visibility that you really want.
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And
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Inside of the Sacred Depths Transformational Practitioner Training, all of this is exactly the work that we do.
00:36:54 Joanna Lindenbaum
Not by asking you to become somebody that you’re not, not by asking you to become louder or more performative, but first by learning how to love yourself
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as someone who has felt like an outsider by not conforming or abandoning yourself in order to belong.
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Now, this is a different kind of self-worth.
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One that isn’t built on trying so hard to fit in or lamenting that you don’t fit in.
00:37:39 Joanna Lindenbaum
But instead, it’s built on knowing who you are and loving all of it.
00:37:49 Joanna Lindenbaum
It’s a self-worth that’s built on trusting that you don’t need to be part of the established club in order to be seen, respected, and chosen.
00:38:07 Joanna Lindenbaum
That you don’t need to be part of the established club to grow your business.
00:38:14 Joanna Lindenbaum
That you don’t need to be part of a club that actually has never really interested you or aligned with your values in the 1st place.
00:38:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
That you don’t need to be part of a club that has never cared about you.
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And in fact,
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Your work is to create something entirely different.
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Your work is to create a space where people who are like you and where people who are looking for support from you actually belong.
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and they know that they belong.
00:39:09 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’ll tell you, I have never felt like I was part of the club or part of any club for that matter.
00:39:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
So you know what I did?
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I created my own club out of my business and out of sacred depths.
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It’s a place where I don’t have to be anyone but myself.
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And it’s a place where people who have often been on the outside, people who are depth nerds and transformation nerds, can come and be seen and loved and cherished for who they are.
00:39:54 Joanna Lindenbaum
A place where they can belong.
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So I just went ahead and I created my own club.
00:40:01 Joanna Lindenbaum
If you’ve
00:40:03 Joanna Lindenbaum
ever felt like an outsider, I want you to know this.
00:40:10 Joanna Lindenbaum
You’re not on the outside when you’re in sacred depths.
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The way you see, the way you feel, the way you think, the way you work, it belongs here.
00:40:30 Joanna Lindenbaum
And not only does it belong, but it can be refined and strengthened and deepened so that you don’t just have all of the gifts of perception and depth that come with being an outsider, but you know how to use them extraordinarily and masterfully in your client work,
00:40:59 Joanna Lindenbaum
in your group work, in your marketing, and in your business.
00:41:04 Joanna Lindenbaum
And so if you leave with anything from this episode today, I hope that it is this.
00:41:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
If you’ve spent any part of your life feeling like an outsider,
00:41:26 Joanna Lindenbaum
I don’t want your work to be to figure out how to fit in.
00:41:34 Joanna Lindenbaum
Instead, I hope that you know your work is to trust yourself more deeply, to trust the way that you see, to trust what you notice,
00:41:52 Joanna Lindenbaum
to trust the depth you naturally go to, even when it’s not mirrored back to you, even when it’s not immediately understood, even when you’re the only one in the room who sees it.
00:42:11 Joanna Lindenbaum
Because the truth is, you don’t need everyone to understand you or get you.
00:42:18 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m going to say it again.
00:42:21 Joanna Lindenbaum
You don’t need everyone to get you.
00:42:24 Joanna Lindenbaum
You just need to not abandon yourself.
00:42:32 Joanna Lindenbaum
And when you continue to proudly stay rooted in yourself, that’s when I think, over time, what starts to happen is that the question shifts.
00:42:49 Joanna Lindenbaum
The question moves from, Will I ever belong?
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To, Where do I want to belong?
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And, Who belongs with me?
00:43:07 Joanna Lindenbaum
And that, my friend, is a very different way of moving through the world and one that I wish for all of us.
00:43:23 Joanna Lindenbaum
Okay, I really just spoke for a while from my heart.
00:43:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
I hope it really touched your heart as well.
00:43:34 Joanna Lindenbaum
As always, I love to hear and know if this podcast impacts you, if
00:43:45 Joanna Lindenbaum
It’s something that is valuable for you.
00:43:49 Joanna Lindenbaum
If this episode has touched you, I’d love to hear from you.
00:43:55 Joanna Lindenbaum
Send me a note.
00:43:57 Joanna Lindenbaum
Let me know.
00:43:58 Joanna Lindenbaum
Let me know what it meant to you.
00:44:02 Joanna Lindenbaum
Let me know if you’re a depth nerd and a transformation nerd like I am.
00:44:08 Joanna Lindenbaum
Let me know about your outsider experience.
00:44:11 Joanna Lindenbaum
I really want to hear.
00:44:14 Joanna Lindenbaum
And of course, if anyone who would love this episode, please, pass it along.
00:44:21 Joanna Lindenbaum
It’s my best way of gathering the outsiders together to know that we belong.
00:44:30 Joanna Lindenbaum
And if Sacred Depths is something that you have been interested in, the next cohort is starting soon.
00:44:41 Joanna Lindenbaum
There are some special rates right now.
00:44:44 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’ll drop the links in the show notes and I would be honored for you to check it out.
00:44:51 Joanna Lindenbaum
As always, thank you, thank you, thank you for your time and for being here with me and for being who you are in the world.
