I remember the first time I got coached in Metanoia Catholic by Erin Ingold. I had just joined Purgative Way and signed up for the first coaching session offered to our group, “Cohort 3.”
Truthfully, although I had invested in several secular coaching packages before deciding to become a Catholic Mindset Coach, I had never actually been coached one-on-one. Somehow I always felt exposed in that arena. So, here I was on the Zoom screen, in front of a large group of people, whom I had never met, and I was super nervous. But I remember Erin’s advice of gold during orientation.
And it went something like this….Dive in. Go ahead and start making “mistakes.” The sooner you start making mistakes, the sooner you “fail,” the faster you will learn the skill of coaching and become a great coach.
That lit the fire for me. I was ready to go in and go in deep. That meant cleaning up my own mind and limiting thoughts. So why not do what I was going to be asking my clients to do?
Be scared but do it anyway. Be vulnerable. Be a student. Allowing someone else to guide me is something that for my “A type” personality wasn’t always easy, but for some reason with this I was just ready to let go of the reins. I was ready for change. I was ready to become a new and improved God-infused version of me. I trusted myself. I trusted Erin – and more importantly, I saw and trusted her devotion to the Holy Spirit.
Erin came on the Zoom screen with her big lashy eyes and cute, perfectly coiffed hair. She repeated what I had written in the form that I submitted to get coached just a couple of days before.
I began to tell Erin my story of how I was born 2 pounds 4 ounces, and from the moment I took my first breath I was “behind.” That thought of “I’m behind” carried throughout my life and became an unwanted anthem or theme song. I never felt like I was in the right place. I always felt like a square peg trying to fit in a round hole and always at the wrong time. And I always expected myself to do whatever it was perfectly, no mistakes. I should just know.
As Erin and I talked, I could hear the Holy Spirit speaking through her. My thoughts became her words.
I shared all the times in my life where I felt “behind.” Always being the smallest child in class, not really dating in high school and barely in college, watching my friends get married and have children while I stayed single – and so much more. I was now over 50, not married, feeling like I was always coming in on the tail end of whatever new venture I decided to take on.
Erin began to show me that my thought “I’m behind” was not from God. She allowed me to realize who was really behind that thinking and how it was intended to keep me from my purpose. If I stayed “behind,”I was stunted. If I stayed “behind,” I wasn’t growing. If I stayed “behind,” I would be discouraged to try, to step forward, to be who God is calling me to be.
If I didn’t step forward, I wouldn’t sign up to become a Catholic Mindset Coach. If I didn’t become a Catholic coach, I would help, well, no one. But the enemy’s fiery arrows did not prevail!
And as she spoke, I heard the Holy Spirit whisper “Champion.” I said the word out loud only to be confirmed by Erin who said she was hearing the same. “Champion.” I now saw myself through a different set of eyes. A different lens. A champion, an overcomer, a survivor, a soldier, even, that Christ brought through adversity time after time.
No longer “behind,” I was exactly where God wanted me to be. I had discovered a huge lie that I had unknowingly signed up to believe since birth. I remember hearing the words “profound healing.” Again, a whisper from the Holy Spirit.
This alone was worth the price of my tuition! For me this one moment of awareness was worth the entire cost of my coach training. All of it. And yet there was so much more goodness coming.
I have now learned to rethink the adversity that I endured. The sting of past experiences was somehow lessened. They somehow had purpose and reason. Instead of “sufferings,”, I now see my life as a training ground. Training to become a soldier for God. A really well-trained soldier. One who has been put through the ringer, as they say, in order to learn how to conquer. How to overcome. How to champion. So that I would learn to come back to Him time and time again no matter what I had to endure. No matter what life threw at me. Broken home, multiple family divorces, death of a parent.
I am now convicted that I was born to be in this life of coaching. To help others go from confusion to clarity, from heavy to light, from toxic thinking to a greater good that they have the freedom to choose for their own lives. To not be trapped into thinking something that is not from God and was never intended to be theirs. To help bring someone closer to God’s truth and how he made that person to be.
He, the Creator, defines who that person is and invites them into who they can be. And I get to help in that mission. I get to help in what, sometimes, seems like the smallest shift of our thinking that changes everything. That is my calling . That is my joy. That is my purpose.