Have you ever felt trapped in a cycle of unhealthy eating or struggled with your self-worth because of your body image? Coach Ali Sempek joins us with her own powerful narrative, turning her battle with disordered eating into a beacon of hope for women around the globe.
Our candid conversation peels back the layers of generational trauma and societal expectations that skew our self-perception, as Ali shares how she learned to value herself beyond the mirror's reflection and encourages others to do the same.
Within the realm of health and wellness, misconceptions run rampant, but we're setting the record straight. Learn how wellness extends far beyond the scale and why it's crucial to foster a harmonious relationship between mental clarity, emotional well-being, and physical health.
This episode serves as a guide for anyone ready to let go of control and embrace their intrinsic worth, acknowledging that the journey to self-acceptance is as unique as each individual who embarks on it.
Get in there and give it a listen for more!
Connect with coach Ali:
Instagram
www.askcoachali.com
Resources:
Manage Your Stress Mentorship
Discovery call
You can find more about Brain-Body Resilience and JPB:
On the BBR Website
On Instagram
On Facebook
Sign up for the BBR newsletter
Have you ever felt trapped in a cycle of unhealthy eating or struggled with your self-worth because of your body image? Coach Ali Sempek joins us with her own powerful narrative, turning her battle with disordered eating into a beacon of hope for women around the globe.
Our candid conversation peels back the layers of generational trauma and societal expectations that skew our self-perception, as Ali shares how she learned to value herself beyond the mirror's reflection and encourages others to do the same.
Within the realm of health and wellness, misconceptions run rampant, but we're setting the record straight. Learn how wellness extends far beyond the scale and why it's crucial to foster a harmonious relationship between mental clarity, emotional well-being, and physical health.
This episode serves as a guide for anyone ready to let go of control and embrace their intrinsic worth, acknowledging that the journey to self-acceptance is as unique as each individual who embarks on it.
Get in there and give it a listen for more!
Connect with coach Ali:
Instagram
www.askcoachali.com
Resources:
Manage Your Stress Mentorship
Discovery call
You can find more about Brain-Body Resilience and JPB:
On the BBR Website
On Instagram
On Facebook
Sign up for the BBR newsletter
Hello, welcome back to the Brain Body Resilience podcast. I'm your host, jpb, and today we have a very special guest. We have Coach Allie Allie Sempek, and Allie's an internationally certified wellness coach and a founder and CEO of her own women's empowerment company. Ask Coach Allie After a decade of disordered eating and failing to hate her body skinny, I think we can identify with that.
Speaker 1:I can't wait to talk about that. Allie craved more from her life than a smaller gene size. Today, she is changing the narrative of what healthy looks like by helping women transform their relationships with food and who they see in the mirror. This is such an important topic, I think, especially as women, this is something that is just front of a lot of our minds all of the time, and I'm really happy to have you on the show. When I work with folks on stress, this is such a common theme of why we're stressed out, and we know that the internal dialogue that we have creates so much of our stress and anxiety, so I would love to know more about what led you to this work.
Speaker 2:How much time do we have?
Speaker 2:As much as it takes I'm so glad to be here Truly a lot of what I do and I always kind of start with explaining. You know, yes, I'm a wellness coach but I look at women as my body's whole right, our relationship to our bodies and our relationship to food. It can drastically impact our lives, for the better or for the negative. Right and kind of how I got into this world was I struggled with disordered eating, with body dysmorphia, with really hating my body for over a decade. I started cracking my food and monitoring my weight when I was 11. And that continued up until my mid-20s. And I think for so many women you know, we can all kind of attest to that same thing of really feeling disconnected to our bodies, trying to constantly find a fix, find something to make us happy, when in reality it has nothing to do with our body or food. It has to do with who we are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that part, who we are and who we think we are. So that leads me to my next question. So, in the way of knowing your worth and being able to sometimes break those generational curses, I wanna start with that. How was that a thing in your home growing up that kind of led you to start tracking your food at 11?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and my mom knows I talk about this on every podcast on my own Instagram and it's actually been a really cool shift in our relationship as I've started coaching, as I started to talk more about my experience. It's allowed her to heal as well. But growing up, my mom has owned a gym the majority of my life. My dad's a chiropractor, so I grew up very much in the fitness health world. But physically my body, just genetically, did not fit that mold, especially the early 2000s mold of what healthy looked like and I always like to preface with like I have a wonderful family, I have wonderful parents that always encouraged me, always loved me, wanted me to feel my best. But my mom's own relationship with her body affected mine and as I've gotten older and as I've done the coaching side of generational trauma, it's apparent that it didn't start with her.
Speaker 2:You can step it back lineage to my grandma and her grandma and all the women in my family have had this pressure to be smaller and to control. I think control is a big word for women. If I can just control this, then I won't have to worry about it anymore. So growing up for me, when I started to notice my body in middle school when I started to kind of compare myself to the other girls around me. My friends were all size zeros and could eat whatever they wanted, and I already looked like a woman. I was progressing a lot earlier than the other girls in my class, and not to my mom's fault, but she was trying to help with the only information she had, and what worked for her was counting calories, was oh, don't eat that, maybe just have some more water. We're gonna eat again in another hour. Oh, that's more flattering on you than this is. It's all the little, almost like microaggressions, that we don't realize that we're doing or saying because it comes from a good intention. So I started it being extremely hard on myself when it came to what foods I could have.
Speaker 2:I remember in middle school my mom's goal for me was well, if you don't eat french fries, then we can go on a shopping spree. And in her mentality it was well, I want you to be healthier, right, I don't want you to be eating french fries every day at school, duh, and let's see if there's like a reward that'll make her want to do it right. And as an adult I see, okay, that was coming from a good intention, but at the time all I heard was, if you eat this, you'll get fat and you won't be lovable, you won't be worthy. So if you don't eat this, you'll lose weight, and then we can fit into the clothes that I'm gonna buy you, right? And so I think generational trauma looks different for everyone, but unfortunately we all have it, and something I like to tell my clients is well, there are experiences that a lot of women have been through that are very much trauma, are very much things that should not have happened.
Speaker 2:There's also a lot of experiences that we've been through that was our parents trying their best because they had also had to heal from a lot of trauma that they went through Right. And now, as an adult, I see that even with my own mom and with my grandma. For example, my mom grew up in a household where my grandma would monitor if she was eating the snacks or not, and so my mom would cut like a cut down the side of like a chip bag so she could sneak chips out of the side. So the bag didn't look like it had been opened Right, so she was hiding food and then fell into fitness as a way to control it. Then her daughter. Myself was hiding food because I didn't want her to see that I was eating Right. And none of us realized that this is a very disordered relationship with food in our bodies because we see it almost as normalized or we don't talk about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and I think just what you said, those generational patterns. A lot of older generations didn't have the mindset that we do as millennials, I think, and younger, that you can address those things, that it's okay to talk about those things, that it's okay to want to change those things, and so I think it was harder for our parents' generation, not that it's okay, but those just weren't things that they really talked about and so they did maybe think that it was normal or normalized anyways, because that's just the way that it was and there wasn't anything challenging that. A couple of questions. You said what healthy looked like in the early 2000s, which, for those of us who were old enough to remember what that really looked like, it was very thin. I think about Christina Aguilera, I don't know why. She was just like I don't know 30 pounds and just stick skinny, no shame. That's just what somebody, some people's bodies, look like, but that was the aesthetic that I think was promoted a lot. So what does healthy look like?
Speaker 2:Before I answer that I actually love that you brought up Christina Aguilera. She was one of my favorite singers growing up and I've actually looked into it of.
Speaker 2:she struggled a lot with her weight because they compared her to Britney Spears, who was more of a genetically smaller body human, and so they were trying to make them not so similar but similar enough that people accepted them. So now you see Christina Aguilera decades later as an adult, and she's a very curvy, beautiful female. But if you look at interviews of her now, she would say I struggled so much with my body image, with what I look like, because it wasn't acceptable to be in the limelight and not be that smaller size. And even being smaller, she was still picked apart.
Speaker 2:Now, as within my coaching, when I say changing the narrative of what healthy looks like, I think as a society we think health has an appearance and you cannot tell how healthy someone is by the size of their body or what they look like.
Speaker 2:When we're talking about true wellness, talking about true health, that's internal Not only your body's functionality, your hormones, the way that your body moves and breathes and keeps you alive, but it's also mental and emotional. Health has to factor in who you are as a full body person. So when I talk to my clients, I look at mentally and emotionally where are we stuck? Where are we falling into the liming beliefs? Or you talk about the stressors that we place on ourselves? That's actually doing more damage to our health and to our bodies. But no one would ever know, because they look at someone and they say well, you're in a smaller body, so you must be healthy, because that's what the narrative is that we've always been taught. Well, smaller body must be healthy. But I actually have a lot of clients that are in smaller bodies that are very unhealthy because of the relationship they have with food and with their body. Yeah, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And you mentioned before that restriction which a lot of the time you cannot fuel properly. If you are cutting out full food groups or you are restricting to 1200 calories or whatever it is, you are not giving your brain and your body enough to build or to just function properly. Yeah, no, I love that answer.
Speaker 2:I just wanted to see where you went with that Well and really to your point too. It's just a lot of misinformation and I think it does all kind of correlate back to again the generational trauma and what we've been taught over the decades is healthy and what we should be doing to be in a healthy body. I mean, I could go down a rabbit hole on it, but if you look even at, like the oh, the my food plate that they show kids in elementary school, that's not even accurate, because every person's needs are different and women versus men have a different experience. So I can only talk from my experience and my experience with my clients. But the restriction is almost reframed now as oh, I'm being healthy, I'm watching what I eat, I'm eating healthier, I'm cutting out sugar, carbs, dairy, whatever it might be in terms of health, because that's what it has been promoted and what I try to teach my clients is a little bit of intuitive eating, but it's really teaching them.
Speaker 2:Okay, if we take away the restriction? Okay, does the binge eating disappear too? If we take away the restriction, are you mentally more clear to make decisions that make your body feel better? Right, if we take away that restriction, do you feel like, oh, I actually have a little bit more control, a little bit more balance over what I'm eating, what I'm doing. There's not as much pressure around it, right? Which then directly correlates to lower stress levels, lower cortisol levels. There's just so many factors that play into each other that I just don't think there's a lot of the right information out there for.
Speaker 1:No, absolutely. The diet and fitness industry is just rife with poor information, just not scientifically factual. It's ridiculous. But we don't have a general understanding in our society of just how we function as humans, and so then we have these influencers and whoever else saying like oh, I did it, you can do it too, or this is my meal plan, this should be what you're doing and like you said it's. Everybody has different needs for their body, for their activity level, and it's just a lot of poor information.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I mean, you'll never see me post a what I eat in a day video, because one, a lot of my meals are very weird and I feel like people would be questioning what the hell I eat every day. But it's because they vary so much and every single person's needs is so different. Because I remember when I was in college and starting to really deep dive into fitness and deep dive into macros and understanding my body and thinking that I could find a fix, I would follow these, the original influencers. Instagram first came out and they would post OK, this is what I ate all day, and I would try to mimic exactly what they were eating and then wondering why it didn't work for me. Well, because we're completely different people and there's not this magical number that's going to scientifically make you happy and smaller and healthier, not how your body works. Your body doesn't actually register any of that. We're making it way too complicated.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I want to go back just a little bit. In our conversation you mentioned control a lot, which I think is such an interesting idea that we struggle with a lot across the board in life and especially in, I think, the diet and fitness realm of our lives, wherever we're at with that, because so much of it is the idea of control and having control over yourself, rather than having a relationship with yourself and trying to do good things for yourself. So I'm wondering a couple of things how did you learn to let that control go and how did you learn your worth outside of that?
Speaker 2:Great questions. I think it's so valuable to be transparent and say that the relationship with yourself and relationship with control never fully disappears. That's part of being human. We would love to have control over ourselves and our lives and knowing exactly what's going to happen next. I think that's totally human nature. But to allow some of that to dissipate allows you to actually have more control. So to your question I'm not quite sure if there was a moment where I really discovered, oh, I need to let go of this and honor who I am.
Speaker 2:But I was actually talking about this with a client the other day when I first started coaching. I knew I wanted to coach women on wellness, on their relationship with food, with their bodies, because it was something that I was still going through. I was still tracking macros when I started coaching, which seems very convoluted, and I kind of got to this point where I realized, ok, if I don't fully step into this process, if I don't fully trust myself and trust that my body knows what it's doing, I won't ever know. Control is usually a fear of the what if it's the fear of the unknown? And a quote that I had someone say to me really hit home was if the fear of the unknown is just not knowing, well then go find out.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Just go find out. If it doesn't work, if you don't find the answers you're looking for, you can always go back to what you were doing before. But what I was doing before was making me so miserable. I was attaching my worth to not only my body size but what other people thought of me, validation from others, and it got to the point where I was severely depressed, had so much anxiety that something had to give. I was almost at my breaking point where something had to give, and so discovering my self-worth was a lot more about a lot of practice, a lot of investigating.
Speaker 2:What do I like? Who am I, outside of this identity of someone who is in fitness and wants to lose weight? Right, because that was my identity for a good 10 years, whether I wanted it to be or not. Outside of that, who am I? What makes me unique? What makes me special? What do people love about me?
Speaker 2:And I love the question that now I get to ask clients is what is being in a smaller body actually give you? If you're looking for worth, what is being in a different body I'll use a different word choice A different body actually give you? And usually they'll say, well, happiness and affection and love and I'm like, okay, so you're actually looking for connection, you're looking for romance, you're looking for people who truly know you, because no one meets you and says, wow, I'm so glad I met her. She has a great body. They usually say, wow, I am so glad I met her. She's really funny, she's so kind, she made me feel seen. Our worth never has anything to do with what we look like. It's how we make others and ourselves feel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I love that you said that you started building trust in yourself through practice. How do you work with your clients on building self-trust? I think that is a question that so many people have. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think, first off, it has to start with a lot of self-discovery and reflection. We live in a society that's very action-based, so we love the idea of okay, if I do these things, I'll get this result. Yeah, and unfortunately for most of us, right, we look at well, I've done all the things when the hell's my result? Check these boxes? Yeah, yes, exactly. And so I take it a step further where I almost look at wellness coaching as like a form of therapy. Obviously, it's not to that extent as working with a therapist, but it's taking a step back and looking at the mental and emotional. So I have my clients really start to reflect on. Okay, what do you say to yourself every day? What is that running track in your head when you look in the mirror? And not being judgmental, just being curious about it, right, writing down everything that you think, you say, or you notice yourself thinking, or maybe what you notice yourself thinking when you see other women. Write it down. Right, because we can't be curious and judgmental at the same time. They're conflicting emotions, right? So just being curious, like aware, and once they've written those down, we start to dissect okay, why, why do you think this? Where did that come from? Where did you first hear that?
Speaker 2:And I think for a lot of women, they've never paused to ask themselves okay, why do I actually feel this way about myself? Right, we sit in the feeling and we allow the feeling to control our actions, but we don't ever take it a step backwards and say, okay, but why do I feel this way? Where did this come from? Right, because I wasn't born feeling or thinking these things. Something along the line taught me it, right. And if you were taught it, that means you can change it, right? So I always like to say we have to take a step back before we can take a step forward. And then the step forward for most is once we've kind of established which of those thoughts are actually yours and which of those have ownership for someone else, we can start to what I say flip the perspective.
Speaker 2:So if you're saying you know, oh, I look terrible today, okay, you're probably not going to go and look in the mirror and go, wow, I am the hottest woman I've ever seen in my entire life, right, we can work towards that, but it's probably not going to be very natural right off the bat. But if you shift to I like this about myself. This color looks nice on me. This is a fun, fun outfit that I have on right, something that is more neutral. It allows you to start practicing feeding your brain what it wants, right? Because if your end result is that you want to be confident and authentic and feel great in your body and who you are, probably doesn't start with talking shit to yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that part everyone.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think that that internal dialogue takes a level of honesty with ourselves that some people aren't ready for. They're not maybe prepared for that in that moment. So when you're working with people, how do you know, or how do they know, if they're ready to start this work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I kind of always joke with women when we get on an initial alignment call. I always do a first free call with people because I don't believe you should jump into a program just to jump into a program. I do think you need to be in the right headspace and heart space to do the work, otherwise you're just wasting money because you're probably not going to show up because we haven't taken that first step yet. So when I get on a call with someone, I can usually tell it might be partially intrinsic, but I can usually tell if someone's ready, because they say things like I want to feel comfortable in my skin. I just want to stop thinking so damn much. I want to be able to experience my life and be present. Their goals have shifted to I just want life to be easier. I want to be happy again, versus the goals that are typically. Well, I want to lose x amount of pounds. Well, I want to do this. But I also want the scale to say this I can usually tell when a woman is kind of on that like teetering point where they're like I'm really scared to let go of this, but tell me what it's like. If you can tell me what it's like to let go of the tangibles and just lean into the feeling okay, I'll trust you and let's do it. And so I'm totally honest with people that some women aren't ready.
Speaker 2:I've had a lot of clients come back to me after our initial call was maybe a year or two years ago, and then they say, okay, what we've talked about stayed in my head. I've realized that nothing has changed, trying to control those factors, and I've tried, tried to do it on my own and I can't. I think I'm ready now and I can't make that decision for someone. They have to be in that space of saying you know what? I can't do it alone. The world loves to tell us, especially as women, that we're supposed to be able to do everything on our own. We're supposed to know all the answers. We're also supposed to be emotionally mature enough to dissect our emotions and not be hysterical all of those words that they like to use. But I like to tell women we're literally created for community. Once you're ready to have someone else hold space for you, that's when you're usually ready to do the work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I couldn't agree more with all of that. I love that. So how do you if someone comes to you and they're saying you know, I just need to lose this last 10 pounds, I just want to fit into these pants? What do you say to them?
Speaker 2:So usually it's a little twofold. So one. I usually say why, what do you think the last 10 pounds is going to give you? Just curious, not judgmental at all I genuinely want to know what is that last 10 pounds going to give you in your life that you don't have right now? Thank you, because usually what we want is what we think the weight loss is going to give us. Right, we think, well, if I look this way, I might be more attractive to the people that I'm attracted to and I'll find a relationship. Okay, that could be true. However, do we want a relationship with someone who only likes you because you're a certain size, right? And then the other side of this that I usually ask, or I guess I tell them, is I say you know, weight loss inherently is not a bad thing. It's not a bad goal to have. That's fine.
Speaker 2:If you physically, for health reasons, need to lose weight, I don't see that as a negative. However, weight loss is a byproduct of how you take care of yourself. If you need to lose weight Meaning if you are speaking kind words to yourself, you're probably going to move your body out of respect rather than out of punishment. You're going to probably have a healthier relationship with foods. You're going to not be binge eating and then restricting and messing with your metabolism.
Speaker 2:Your body's going to probably say, hey, I'm hungry, you're going to honor that. You're going to move on Right. You're going to be doing things and being someone that respects themselves and in doing so, your body's going to hold on to less stress. It's going to not really need to hold on to the barrier that it's held on to this long and you're going to probably lose weight slowly over time because it's not the main goal. But that's where I have to get. If someone's really hooked into this is the only goal I have. I just help them like reframe it of okay, how do you actually want to be feeling and how can we prioritize habits that look at that feeling, and then your body will probably follow. But if we do it backwards and we're only focused on your body, well, your feelings and your thoughts are not there with you, they haven't caught up yet, and then your body doesn't know what it's doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. If somebody can't get on board with that and they just are in a space where they're like, look, I don't this all sounds great, but that 10 pounds low.
Speaker 2:Do you?
Speaker 1:just say like hey, we're not a good fit right now or revisit this later. How does that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I usually look at it. It's different for every person. Especially the conversation I have are very similar to like this conversation with you. It's very open and honest and straightforward, and I'll usually tell someone like, hey, if that is your goal, I wish you the best of luck. I definitely would still love to support you along the way and whenever you're ready to do the work that's actually going to change the rest of your life, I'm here to help. But by all means, go work with another coach or a nutritionist or a dietitian or a fitness plan, whatever it might be, and see how that works out for you. It might be a better fit, right? Because every person is different. Their needs are different. I'm well aware that some people do really well following macros and following a workout plan and being very, very diligent in that way.
Speaker 1:I just know that that never worked for me, yeah, so those just aren't your people, and I love that because there is a space for everyone. I have one of my mentors. She always says you know, there's a reason that there are 11 billion types of cereal on the shelves, because everybody wants something different. Everyone is a good fit with something or someone, and it's not always you, and I think that's such a great thing to remember that when we're in businesses like this, when we have these services that want to help people, we want to help everyone and sometimes it's just not, they're not ready or it's just not a good fit for what we do, and we have to say okay, if you are ever ready, I'm here. Otherwise, there's somebody better to fit your needs and your desires out there.
Speaker 2:And I look at it too, really to what you just said is, if you're going to work with a coach, not only do you need to like the person you're going to work with in a very intimate way, but I hope your coach likes you too, right, because it's a mutual transaction. I don't want to spend my time working with someone who doesn't want to be there, who doesn't want to do what I'm asking of them, right? Because that's not going to give them the end result that they're looking for.
Speaker 1:No, it's not serving anyone yeah.
Speaker 2:And if they don't like me, I hope they don't want to work with me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Right, and I love that you mentioned that, because this work is. It is so intimate and it is going back to the beginning of our conversation. It's dealing with a lot of like really deep held beliefs about yourself that you learned and have been part of your identity forever, and starting to address that and peel back those layers can be incredibly vulnerable and sometimes you have never had that experience with somebody and so you have to feel like it is a good fit. You have to feel like this is a person you can trust and relate to and person that will hold space safely for all of these emotions that are going to come up for you. I think that's a really important thing to think about, just for everyone listening, when you are looking for a coach or some help, some support or guidance. Those are really important things to think about.
Speaker 1:Shifting a little bit, I'm looking at your speaker sheet that I have here and it says from doubt to bold action, saying hell yes to more out of life. I love this. I want everyone to say hell yes to more out of life. What does that mean to you? Tell me more about what that means.
Speaker 2:I actually had a coach. Now that we're speaking of our own personal coaches, I had a coach say to me one time if it's not a hell yes, it's a hell no. And that kind of hit me because I realized a lot of the things in my life at that point were things that felt really good, but they weren't things that, like, raised my vibration. They weren't things that made me feel like hell. Yes, I am so in alignment, this is who I am, this is what I want to be doing. They were things that felt good, they were fine, they were okay, right, and I even noticed when someone would ask me, oh, like, how was that event that you went to, or how was the date that you went on, my response was always fine, it was okay. That's not the way I want to live. No, absolutely not, and I think it honestly.
Speaker 2:It all started when I was looking at going into coaching and being an entrepreneur. I had been working in corporate America. Don't miss it whatsoever. I don't think any of us do that, are more creative people. But I was working in nine to five. I was in marketing, and I just remember thinking like there has to be more than this. There has to be. I've been told by so many adults that like this is just what adult life is you wake up, you go to your job, you maybe go work out and you go to bed, and I'm like there has to be more than that. Right, it's terrible, it's awful. I'm like there has to be more. And I even remember back to when I was first applying for colleges, back when I was 18, I had someone ask me what do you wanna do with your life? Which, first off, if you're 18 or 19 and you're supposed to know what the hell you're doing with your life, it's okay if you don't.
Speaker 1:I'm a child, I have no idea.
Speaker 2:I still on a daily basis, have no idea and I'm in my 30s. But I think back to that moment and I literally told them I want more and like that's not a degree you can get and I'm like I know, but I want more than a normal nine to five and 3.5 kids and living in my hometown the rest of my life. I want more experiences than that and so I think a lot of it. It is the self worth conversation. It's also allowing yourself to dream right. It's allowing yourself to say, okay, these huge dreams that I have, the reason I have them and the reason they're on my heart is because they're possible. There just might be a few roadblocks in the way to get there.
Speaker 2:But I tell my clients all the time there's a difference between a wish and a want. When you wish for something, it's like oh yeah, it'd be nice if it happened, but it's probably not possible. We're immediately stepping back into that scarcity mentality of my living. Beliefs are gonna win, probably not gonna work out for me. Let me just go the easy route that I'm comfortable with but I'm not fully happy. I like to say we're kind of complacent.
Speaker 2:Or there's a want when you're like I want this. My hands are literally in fists when I say it, I want this, and it's like an innate part of you that says I'm gonna do whatever I can to experience that. I don't know when it's gonna happen or how it's gonna happen, but I want it. And I think you know, and I'm sure the people listening to this I immediately know when I say you want more, it clicks in and they go yeah, I do, I really do. And I think the first step is accepting that that's not a bad thing. Yeah, that part. Yeah, you can love your life right now. You can be very content in your life right now and still want more, and I think we've always kind of been taught that that's negative or that's almost selfish. Yeah, why do you want more?
Speaker 2:You already have enough. You already have a great life, or you have a great partner, or you have a decent job. Why do you want more? Because I do, because it's my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, because I do. That's all I need and I think that idea of wanting more doesn't. I think in our society we are driven by consumption and so the idea of more is like more things, more quantity of whatever it is, and that is not necessarily, doesn't have to be more things. More add, excuse me, more additions to your schedule. More it's just quality, more quality experiences.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, I love that, yeah, quality over quantity. I'm gonna use my own relationship history here as an example, but I literally had a conversation with someone that I was in a relationship with and they said if you want more, I can't give you more. This is all I have to give. And I said I don't want more. I want more of you, I want more of the experiences with our life together. And you will find people in your life or in your community that won't understand that it does not compute for them, because they truly are fine with the way that their lives are. And that's wonderful. That's so wonderful If you feel fully content and assured in the life that you have awesome. But there's also going to be people that say I don't get it, that's not enough, right, and I've learned. You have to find the other people that say, yeah, you're right, it's not enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, because those are your people, Exactly just like I think what we were talking about with coaching too. Like you have to find your people. Everyone's idea of happiness or success or what a great life looks like is different, and there are people out there that have the same ideas that you do, and surrounding yourself with those people lets you know that it's possible and gives you support and community. In that. I think that that is yes, absolutely. That's very much needed To recognize. I think, with the comparison that we have, it's different and it's fine, and whatever I want is what I want, and that's okay.
Speaker 1:I'm looking at the time I want to wrap this up, but I think that a wonderful place to wrap this up and end is just that idea of quality over quantity. I think that that applies to what you're eating, your nutrition habits, your fitness habits, your inner dialogue, what it is you're saying, your practices, your daily practices. More is not better. Better is going to be better, the quality that you are giving yourself, and I think that's such a great summary of what we have been talking about, what you have been saying that you work with your clients on. So I would just like to know tell the people where they can find you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, come hang out. You can find me on all social media, at Ask Coach Alley, it's just A-L-I. My website is the same it's askcoachalleycom. I am someone that loves connection. I love to hear people's stories, so please feel free to slide in my DMs, send me an email, especially if this conversation resonated with you. I want to hear about it.
Speaker 1:I love that and I will link all of that in the show notes so that's easy to find. Thank you so much for being here. I love this conversation. This was great and to everyone listening. Thank you so much. You know that I don't take your time or attention for granted. We will do this again until next time. Peace out.