UFYB 188: OUR HUMANNESS, BELIEF VS DOUBT & ETHICAL MARKETING: A CONVERSATION WITH JODY MOORE

Welcome to Unf*ck Your Brain, the only podcast that teaches you how to use psychology, feminism, and coaching, to rewire your brain and get what you want in life. And now here’s your host, Harvard law school grad, feminist rockstar, and master coach, Kara Loewentheil.

Kara: Alright my chickens, today is a day that I don’t know that any of us would have foreseen coming when I was a social justice lawyer. I don’t think that I ever would have been like, one day, I’m going to interview the most influential Mormon life coach in the world.

Jody: Slash mom.

Kara: Slash mom. The most influential mom/life coach of the Church of Latter Day Saints who is wearing a feminist t-shirt for me today if you guys can’t…

Jody: Yes, proudly.

Kara: It’s a great situation. And I’m going to let Jody introduce herself in a minute, but actually this is something I talk about kind of frequently is the ways in which in my previous life I was around a bunch of people who would have all identified very loudly – I don’t mean loudly in a bad way, very genuinely as feminists and we’re working on feminist advocacy.

I was like, in this very feminist social justice world. And there were certain kinds of diversity and differences of backgrounds in that world, but everybody had the same politics and often the same – lived in New York and was sort of living a similar lifestyle. And then in this life coaching world, and I’m actually exposed to way more of different kinds of diversity in the kind of people I’ve gotten to know and the colleagues that I have, and the different ways that feminist shows up.

Like when I worked at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is an organization I love, but in any social justice organization, it’s actually a real problem. They don’t really pay people often enough to really live on well, especially in big cities.

And so there were people in that organization who yeah, were devoting their lives to social justice work, but also were only able to do it because they had family money, or their partner was making the money, often straight women and their husbands were making the money. And now I’m in this world where I think half our mastermind didn’t know what a feminist was before I showed up.

Jody: Some of us still don’t exactly maybe.

Kara: Some of us are still confused about what does that mean, right? But it’s all these women from such diverse different backgrounds. I think Corinne didn’t go to college. She talked about that on my podcast. Or sort of different educational backgrounds, different geographic backgrounds, different religious backgrounds.

And they’re all the ones who are doing the big work in the world, so it’s just like, I kind of love that transition. Anyway, I’ll let you introduce yourself now that I’ve talked for a bunch, but welcome Jody Moore to probably the first podcast you’ve ever been on where there’s a swear word in the title.

Jody: For sure. Yes. I hope to go on a lot more after this.

Kara: I’m the gateway drug.

Jody: Yes.

Kara: Tell us who you are.

Jody: Jody Moore, and have been fortunate enough to get to be in a mastermind with Kara for, how many years? Three years maybe?

Kara: Probably. I think I joined – you guys started a year before me.

Jody: Oh, did we?

Kara: Yeah. I spent some years out on my own in the wild.

Jody: And then we’re like, come on in, you’re one of us.

Kara: I think I was working with Susan at the time. It was like, no overlap of coaches. So I think I joined you guys in 2019.

Jody: Okay. But even before that we knew each other, again, through The Life Coach School and have worked together in various ways. So anyway, I feel the same as you Kara, that I think it’s natural for us even to gravitate towards people that share our same interests and beliefs and just situations. And so one of the great things about Life Coach School is the diversity that it attracts and we all have gained so much I think from each other.

So I work with, like you said, primarily women who are members of my faith, which is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, although I attract people of various – mostly Christian-based values. But anyone interested in spirituality. Sometimes I get a lot of different things.

But anyway, I just help individuals with emotional and mental health. I like to think of what I do as sort of the gym for you mental and emotional health. We all understand that physically, we don’t want to just wait until we’re sick and need to go to the doctor to think about our physical health. We want to think about maintaining or strengthening our physical health, and I think that is also available for our mental and emotional health, and that’s what I get to do.

Kara: And also, I mean, the same. I talk about the gym on the other side where it’s like you don’t go once and be like okay, I lifted the weight once so I get all the health protectant now for the rest of my life. No, you have to keep doing it.

Jody: Yeah. You’re not like, when am I going to be done with this? Well, I mean, never.

Kara: Right. Just like you have to keep eating and you have to keep sleeping.

Jody: Right, exactly. It’s an ongoing thing. So I love it though.

Kara: When I was thinking about this interview and thinking about when we had started, I was remembering back – so when I got certified, Jody was already a certified coach and she was working at The Life Coach School. And she both did kind of the program sales to get people into certification, so you were the first person I spoke to probably. You screened me and allowed me to continue.

Jody: And I sold you. Let’s be honest.

Kara: You sold me. I was ready. I did ask if it was a pyramid scheme I think when I talked to her.

Jody: Oh yeah. Some people think that.

Kara: But also, you did training for kind of selling and marketing for the coaching afterwards. So I’m just remember like, especially for me starting out because I had no selling or sales background, this will lead into the first thing I learned from you, but I just remember feeling like you were the font of all wisdom. I was desperate to get any nugget from your brain. And I remember we did some kind of program…

Jody: Yeah, we did. Like a marketing mastermind kind of thing.

Kara: Yeah. There was something where we were supposed to get on a one-on-one call with you or something and there was some difficulty setting it up, whatever it was. But I just remembered what our relationship was then, where I was like, but I have to speak to Jody or else I’ll never know how to market, she has the answers to everything. And now we’re colleagues. To me, those are almost two different people.

Jody: I know. I was thinking about that same thing about how – I mean, I feel like you’re better at marketing than I am these days.

Kara: That’s definitely not true. I’m definitely still – we’ll get to all that stuff. Especially because back then we didn’t have Zoom, everything was on the phone, so you were just this figure in the ether that I could speak to telephonically who I was just like, I need every ounce I can get out of Jody. I mean, I still want every ounce I can get out of you, but I no longer feel quite so desperate about it. But that does lead me to – so I feel like the first thing I learned from you, this is like the trademark Jody phrase is, “You’re welcome.”

Jody: You’re welcome. I say that to my kids a lot too.

Kara: Yeah, it’s funny but also Jody says you’re welcome when every one of us is freaking out about what if we change something and what if people are upset and we can’t ever whatever, and Jody just says, “You just tell them you changed it and say you’re welcome.”

And it’s funny but the deeper meaning of it for me was it could easily be misunderstood to be sort of like, well, you just do whatever you want, you tell people to be grateful, which is not what you mean at all. But the thing that you’re welcome signifies for me with you and the huge thing that I learned from you is that coming from both being Jewish but also being a lawyer, the way that your brain gets trained to think when you’re a lawyer is to think of objections and counter them, in this sort of adversarial way.

So bring that into marketing, it can be useful to think about people’s objections, but you’re still thinking about it rather than what you’re welcome means to me is a reminder to me whenever I’m going to do something or I have an idea for a change I want to make in a program or I want to do something else, I’m like, why is this amazing for my client? That’s the place I want to be creating my decisions from.

And that’s what you’re welcome is, versus the lawyer way, which is I want to do this thing but here’s the 10 objections people might have, and then I have to counter them. And it’s this very defensive energy. So I always think about if I had three slogans for the things I think about all the time in my business, I think about you’re welcome all the time.

And also because it’s so – maybe this comes from, you have four children, right? You’re just sort of like, we don’t have time for this, for everybody’s opinions here. Just you’re welcome. This is why I did it, it was amazing, you’re welcome, move on.

And women are so socialized to constantly apologize for themselves and try to make sure everybody’s happy, which is impossible, and put everybody else’s whatever ahead of themselves. And you’re just like, no, you got to make a decision that’s right for your business and obviously explain why it’s good for the people it’s good for, who want it, and that’s it. Move on.

Jody: Well, and when you make a change like that and if we approach it like you said, with that attorney brain of okay, I have to think about their objections and address that, for some people, all it does is remind them, you might object to this.

Kara: Right. You’re putting words in their mouth. They’re like, I loved this change until you told me that I apparently don’t like it because of this.

Jody: That’s right. I wrote originally the intro to my book that I wrote that’s coming out later this year, I didn’t mean to just plug my book but anyway.

Kara: You’re totally allowed to plug your book. This is not a no promotion zone.

Jody: The book I wrote that happens to be coming out later this year. Anyway, originally, I wrote the intro in that same frame of mind that you’re describing that lawyer mind, where I was like, some people think life coaching is fringy, or some people think it goes against the doctrine, and let me speak to that, and let me speak to this.

And the editors and some of the publishers, some of the folks that were giving me feedback were like, “Why are you beginning with defensiveness about what you do?” And I realized, oh yeah, I need to approach it like I normally do, which is listen, this will change your life, this has changed my life, this has changed my clients’ lives, this is amazing, you’re welcome.

Kara: Right, it’s totally compatible with doctrine and here’s why.

Jody: Yes. It aligns with the church, it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever discovered, it could be that for you too, you’re welcome. And that’s what we want to hear too from people. So you focus on that in the beginning and if they have objections that’s okay. You can address that later.

Kara: Totally. I do think it’s this sort of – I see even for those of us who are entrepreneurs and on one level get very comfortable with people not liking what we do because they’re sort of the out group people who don’t like what we do, which is the people who are – whatever. In your world it might be like people are like, no, it’s absolutely incompatible with doctrine, you shouldn’t be doing that.

And in my world, it’s the people who are like, whatever, feminists hate men, or you’re a bad feminist. It’s those out group people. And we do develop a thicker skin for them. But I think that socialization is still there for our in group people when it’s like, our clients, our people, and then we still get too worried about well, what are they going to think? Or what if somebody’s upset with me, or what if whatever.

And we get so hyper-focused on – I think that’s another thing that you often redirect on, which is great, is the sort of okay, well 97% of people said nothing or were like, that sounds great. And then 3% of people were upset, and you’re like, fixated on those 3%.

Jody: Yeah, which is what the brain does.

Kara: Yeah, totally.

Jody: I like to think of it as the way you described it, you have the people that are just the no’s. They’re never going to come with you, they’re never going to buy in, they’re not your people, it’s fine. We don’t need to be talking to them, even though it feels important to. We don’t really need to.

Kara: That’s what the objection mindset would take you to, right? It’s like, all my sales emails are going to be countering objections about coaching and Stacey Boehman says this too, is sort of like, why are you putting all your selling energy to the people who are the hardest to sell? Why don’t we talk to the people who want to work with you and just need a little encouragement?

Jody: Yes. So I think of it in the three buckets. There’s the no bucket. I don’t want to talk to them. There’s the yes bucket that’s like, these people just love Kara, no matter what you do, they’re going to sign up, they love everything about you, they’re your big fans, that’s great, but we don’t need to talk to them either. It’s those people in the middle that could be that are just considering but they’re confused, they have questions, they’re not sure. Those are the people you want to be talking to.

Kara: That’s so interesting because I think about that on the inside of my business in terms of my client structure of like, there’s the people who come through the work and it’s like, not for them, they’re not in the right place, they’re not going to apply. Whatever, it just doesn’t really do anything.

They disappear, they don’t engage, and it’s very hard to get those people even to like, engage a little. They’re kind of there for their own reasons or they’re not open to it or whatever it is, and there’s some small percentage of those people. And you’re never going to be able to bring them along.

And then there’s a percentage of people who are obsessed with thought work and the minute they discover it, they completely get it, and they’re totally in it and some of them become coaches and some of them don’t but use it all the time, and they also don’t need actually that much attention. They’re kind of off to the races on their own.

And then there’s that middle group of people, which is who I’m always trying to focus on when I’m – whatever, I’m creating content, or making my programs better. The people who do want to do it and they are going to engage but how can this be even better for them, how can it help them more, how can it support them more. So I feel like there’s that trifecta approach in different aspects of the business.

Jody: Totally, yes. I would agree. So let me tell you the first thing I learned from you, which is a total change of topic. And it’s ironic that we’re recording this the morning after the Chauvin verdict that came out last night. Because really, and I still have a lot to learn, but what you have taught me, first of all through your example, I just want to say, there’s a lot of things that you’ve taught me more formally, but even just watching how you are so good at staying informed about issues, current events, things like that, political issues, social, economic issues.

And I love how you’re convicted but open-minded I feel like. So last summer, when the whole George Floyd incident went down and there was all this upheaval and we realized, wait a second, as a bunch of privileged white women, like those of us in our mastermind, we need to understand what’s going on, we need to understand our role in this.

And we all sort of turned to Kara. And you recommended books, and as I was reading these books and had resistance or confusion or questions, I just knew I’m going to call Kara. And you talked us through it and just did such a beautiful job of helping us become aware of things that we aren’t even aware of, that we’re complicit in, in our own biases and privilege.

But again, in a way that to me, I could hear it. This is on me, but I have a hard time hearing it sometimes when it just feels like a brick wall coming at me. But I appreciate your ability to be straightforward and honest and at the same time, I feel like we can have a discussion, I feel like it’s a safe place for me to come and talk to you, knowing I’ll probably say it wrong, I might say the wrong thing. And you’ll know that’s from my own ignorance and help me learn. So anyway…

Kara: I mean, I think that was a really powerful experience for me too because I mean, I did obviously so much education and advocacy work in my former life, but that was in a very – it was like the only thing more polarized, which was abortion work. And there was – I mean, it’s not true. There are a lot of people, the vast majority of the American people are actually kind of in the middle, which is like, this needs to be a right and also, we have problems or whatever.

So actually, in reality, that is. But in the political debate, it’s super polarized. And I was just – both because I was in law but also because the sides are so polarized, I was never talking to people who had complicated feelings about it, or I wasn’t – I certainly wasn’t going to convert the people who were like, outside the clinic with the signs.

I was not having those conversations. And so I think coaching is what has allowed me to soften my ability to hear conflicting thoughts and receive that, and I think I was really actually impressed by also how well you all – I do feel like you and Corinne and Stacey, people were just sort of like, what’s happening? And I have so much to learn, I was not aware of this stuff.

And there’s valid – whatever, people with valid thoughts about the fact that maybe we should have all – more people should have been aware. But you guys were so open-minded and hearted about it, and I feel like there’s a lot of performative activism in the world.

And in the social media world in particular, which I have always just been like – as somebody who was an actual on the ground person for 20 years, I’ve always been like, this is just not the same thing. Come be on the board of this non-profit I was on for eight years and come to our board meetings and debate about this and negotiate and compromise. That’s how real change happens.

Jody: It’s not so sexy and just an inspiring quote or something.

Kara: Yeah, or just this sort of black and white thinking. There’s so much we could talk about there. I think it has been interesting to be in this world, more behind the scenes. I’m very public in my work, but more behind the scenes in our conversations with people at LCS and with you guys and sort of helping you there.

And I think for me, that’s been also – when you’re a reproductive rights litigator, people who like reproductive rights are very impressed with you. I mean, not all of them obviously, but there’s just sort of public aspect to it where you get to be like, I’m the do-gooder, give me my crown.

And this experience – I mean, now we’re talking about it on the podcast but until now, this experience of being like, it’s not about whether anybody knows what I’m doing, it’s about if I work behind the scenes to change the hearts and minds of people who then have huge followings and influences, and nobody on Instagram may know and people may even get mad at me that I’m not calling out this person, or calling out that person. But I know that I’m doing more to actually create change behind the scenes and I care about the actual results that I’m creating and not what it looks like on social media.

Jody: And I appreciate that and that you continue to recommend books and things because you know we’re all like, okay, what do we need to learn next? I know it’s like, okay, it’s not just a one and done, and okay, what do we do? Anyway, I just appreciate having access to you in that regard.

Kara: You guys are all getting an unrequested bound copy of the feminist coaching curriculum delivered to your houses. So you’ll have the whole thing.

Jody: I can’t wait.

Kara: We’re getting them bound in actual books because I wrote so much. I was like, this needs to be no spiral bound…

Jody: Do it right. I love it. That’s exciting.

Kara: Okay, so I think this actually kind of goes certainly along with what we were talking about before, which is I think again in that lawyer brain, when you’re in that like, this or that, it goes along with that black and white thinking.

I sort of was I think perfectionist, had a lot of black and white thinking, I don’t know if it’s all Jews but certainly my family loved black and white thinking. Also they’re made of lawyers so the experiment’s not a clean experiment because lawyers definitely have a lot of black and white thinking. So whatever the forces were.

And I’ve cleaned up so much of that, but I still see it come up. I just did a whole podcast episode about it. And I think often, in the way my brain works is to map all those potential problems and what are the solutions. And I tend to just sort of be like, okay, these are the actions, this or this. And I feel like you are very good at questioning the premise behind whatever my fake set of two options that I’ve come up with is.

It’s just sort of like, maybe this, what if this or what if that, and you’re like, well, that’s not the only two options. I’m trying to come up of a good example and I can’t really – maybe one will come up as we’re talking.

Jody: I’ll just say while you think about it, I sort of had to train myself to do that when I started having children because my life became so chaotic and I couldn’t keep up on anything. Because I couldn’t keep the house clean, I couldn’t keep up on the things that I just wanted to do for myself.

And so I used to run marathons for example. 26.2 miles marathon in a whole ‘nother life. But at any rate, I had these two babies. My first two kids were only not even a year and a half apart. So it was just madness. And I was like, I don’t have time to go for a 12-mile jog so what’s the point? I might as well sit on the couch.

And I realized, wait a second, this isn’t working, this black or white, all or nothing thinking. It is okay to just go for a walk around the block and it is okay to just put three toys in the toy box, even though you don’t feel like cleaning up the whole living room. It is okay to just wipe down the counter in the bathroom, even though you don’t have time to clean the whole bathroom top to bottom.

And that’s the only way I started to feel like more in control of my life again, and it was life-changing to me to just constantly tell myself, “Doing a little bit is better than not doing any at all.” And so it’s still challenging but it’s something I had to do to survive.

Kara: It’s like that quote, that common saying is so wrong, which is like, anything worth doing is worth doing well. It actually needs to be like, anything worth doing is worth doing poorly and barely but more than zero. That should actually be the saying.

Jody: Which actually, this brings me to another of my things I wanted to share that I learned from you. Because you described it so well when you teach the infinite 1%.

Kara: That’s one of my favorites.

Jody: I mean, that’s what you’re talking about is that idea that that first step is way more powerful and important than what we realize. There’s a book called Begin with Yes. I can’t remember the name of the author off the top of my head. But it teaches sort of what you’re talking about there with that infinite 1% in a little bit more woo-woo way for people that like that.

The idea is you just get moving and then momentum comes. And again, back to my example, I had to tell myself no, it’s genuinely okay to just put three toys away. I couldn’t do it with an agenda of like, then momentum will build and then I’ll keep going and then I’ll clean the whole living room, although sometimes that did happen. Other times, I did just put three toys away and then walk away. And I had to learn to be okay with that. But I just love that idea.

Kara: That brings me to a question. Do you see this with your clients? Because what I see with mind often is that they’ll take a concept like that and then they totally do try to use it instrumentally and that like, well, I’m going to tell myself that three minutes is okay because then I’ll do 20. And I’m like, that’s not telling yourself three minutes is okay.

Jody: That’s right. It’s like the way we teach processing emotion. If you just allow emotion, then it will subside. And they’re like, “When’s it going to subside? I’m allowing it.”

Kara: Right. Or it’s like intuitive eating for weight loss being like, okay, I’m going to intuitively eat so that I get this outcome. Then it’s not intuitive. Whatever the process is. Where do you think that that comes from? I guess it’s just like when people encounter self-development work, they just slurp it into whatever their thoughts already are.

Jody: To me, the way I think about it is just the whole idea that we get so fixated on the outcome, or sometimes it’s changing a circumstance or whatever, or creating a certain result even because we’re sure that that’s when we’re going to feel better. And what we’re trying to describe is just feel better right now.

And it actually does help you create the outcome you want when you feel better, but that’s the irony of it. You don’t have to create that outcome to feel better. You need to feel better now and then you probably will create the outcome, but even if you don’t, it’s okay because you feel better. But I think if you don’t understand that, like no, we don’t want you to even wait for that thing to change to feel better, then that’s when we know, no, you’re not even doing it right. And when I say you, I mean us too. We all do this.

Kara: Totally, of course. I don’t know how often we have to say the only reason we know any of this is that we do it too.

Jody: Totally, yes.

Kara: This is the original research site is our own brain. We’re not above or beyond any of this. I mean, I used to see this still in me in the places I’m still doing work. It’s like, we haven’t let go of the belief that what we really need to be happy is the result. It’s like, we’re halfway there.

You ever seen someone straddling – two things are floating in water kind of. We’re all in this very uneven bouncy, something’s going to get out from under us at any moment, we’re just sort of like, I guess I’ll try to like myself if that’s going to help me actually stop eating cookies, because that’s what I really need to do to like myself.

So it’s like we’re trying to skip over the liking yourself part. And we can’t understand that if we do like ourselves, then that thing doesn’t matter anymore. So it is like being in the river of misery, or that’s what we were taught to call it, but that’s when cognitive dissonance is at its strongest when you’re like, I believe you that the thing I want is to feel good and not the actual thing, so I’m with you there, but I don’t really believe that I can do it without the thing, so I’ll try to like myself so I can get the thing that’ll make me feel good.

Jody: Did you experience this when you started making really good money in your business at all? Because I remember the first time I set a goal to make a million dollars in a year in my business, just setting the goal, Brooke kind of suggested it. She’s like, “Why don’t you make a million dollars?” I’m like, what?

And my head kind of exploded, I can’t do that. But as I went about the process, I started believing that of course I could do that, and having fun doing it, then once I got to the goal, I remember my husband was out of town and he texted me, he’s like, “We just hit a million dollars.” And I was like, yeah, cool.

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not taking for granted how awesome it is to achieve a goal, but it’s almost like because I had to do that work along the way that when you get there, it just feels like not as exciting. It’s almost disappointing that you don’t feel like a new person.

Kara: That’s always how it is. I think the part that’s exciting – this is why I try to tell – people hate the journey and they want to get to the destination. And I’m just always like, you’re missing the fun part. Because you’re going to get there and it’s not going to be that fun, either because there’s only two options.

One is you didn’t change your thoughts, you white-knuckled your way there and now it doesn’t feel good because you have the same thoughts. Or if you did change your thoughts but you didn’t take time to enjoy that, then you skip the fun part.

The fun part for me when I made seven figures for the first time was not when I made seven figures. It was when it became clear to me it was going to happen. It’s like when – whether it’s the math or the belief or both, but when it was like, oh shit, I think this is going to happen.

There’s the buildup where you’re trying hard to believe, trying hard to believe, and then you’re producing some evidence. It’s one step, two step. So I think yeah, the most fun part is the part where you reach full belief, see it’s going to happen, believe it’s going to happen, which is before it happens I think.

I mean, I think we were sort of taught that true belief and the full result occurs automatically at the same time and I actually think that’s more on the manifestation side in a way. I don’t really believe. I actually think some results take more time, even if you’re in full belief that they will happen.

So you could say the belief is still the result because it will happen, as opposed to it’s happened. But either way, the fun point for me was at $800,000 or something where I was like, okay, there’s this much time left, I think it’s going to happen. Now we’re on the downward slope. Climb the big hill, that’s the fun part.

Jody: I like the idea too that I heard this recently from – I listen to a lot of Abraham. But the idea that you’re always going to have some doubt. Sometimes we’re like, you just have to really believe it. And I’m like, do I really believe – have I ever really believed 100%? No. There’s always some doubt.

Kara: Of course, because you have a human brain.

Jody: Yeah. So I think for people listening, you’re going to be human, you’re still going to achieve your goals. I like the idea that you just need your belief to outweigh the doubt. Maybe more often you believe than you think about doubt thoughts, or maybe it’s just a little bit stronger.

Kara: I’ve described it once as like it’s like a 100 here and zero here, and then you’re transferring it over. So you’re trying to – you may never get to 100 on the other side, but it doesn’t matter. If we’re down to 5% over here and 95% over here, that’s good enough to get the job done.

Jody: 80/20 probably gets the job done.

Kara: Totally. I mean, I hope that one of the things that my listeners remember me saying the most is it’s amazing what you can accomplish with a half-managed mind. This is not…

Jody: Amazing. I love that.

Kara: I mean, that’s really – I think you are very transparent also. There are coaches out there who I feel like sort of present themselves – and that’s fine. I mean, it’s just a different audience, as kind of like, I have it all figured out. I have ascended to the top of the mountain and now I’m going to explain it to you.

And I’m like, six steps ahead of you so I can totally help. Still crazy here. But that’s how you know it works. That’s how I know it works. I’m never pretending that I don’t have a crazy human brain because…

Jody: Oh, totally. And sometimes I’m even like, I’m going up, who wants to come with me? Let’s go together. We’ll figure it out.

Kara: But I do think your point about the journey is so important. When you are resisting and hating the journey, you actually are missing the fun part. Because 100%, once you get the thing, you’re going to learn that it’s not as what I call an exit ramp off the human experience. It’s not going to just take you to the land of meadows and sunshine where everything is unicorns forever. And the fun part was the part where you got to blow your own mind and you skipped it because you were busy being upset that you weren’t at the destination yet.

Jody: And I’m curious your opinion on this but sometimes we see celebrities or what have you in the media who seem to be so successful, and obviously there’s a lot going on there. I don’t mean to simplify it down to one thing.

But then these people who crash and burn, and sometimes I wonder if it isn’t like, I finally achieved all the things I thought I wanted, and I don’t feel, like you said, I’m still human, I still don’t like myself, and it can be crushing I think to realize that.

Kara: Totally. If you think that getting the adoring – I don’t think it’s any different, yeah, than whether your goal is I want to make 100K, or I want to have a baby…

Jody: Get married.

Kara: Get married, or I want to lose 10 pounds, or I want to have 100 million followers on Instagram. I don’t think anybody has 100 million, but whatever it is.

Jody: But then you get there…

Kara: I want to win an Oscar and you’re still going to wake up in the morning and you’re still you.

Jody: With your own brain.

Kara: Yeah. And I think this actually leads me to the third – I think I maybe had four. But you had that podcast episode called The Human Void. Is that what it was called? The Human Void, which also just sounds very space age to me. It’s like we’re on the Star Trek enterprise.

Jody: Titles aren’t my strength.

Kara: Me neither. I’m just like, I’m always like, here’s an adjective, I’ve capitalized it, that’s the title. Like anger, I guess that’s a noun. That’s what we’re talking about, that’s it. But I think a lot of what our work has to be to be both true and responsible is never trying to sell the idea that you are not going to still be a discontented human some of the time.

In my advanced certification, I’ve been teaching – I don’t teach business and marketing in the certification, but I teach a feminist approach to thinking about how you market, what are the messages you’re using, and how do you ethically market life coaching kind of.

And for me, one of the pillars of that is not selling something that isn’t true, and not selling the idea that – even if you’re selling weight loss coaching, not selling the idea that after this, you will always feel good and amazing about yourself and always feel confident and never have a negative thought about your body.

And I think you learn sometimes in sometimes conventional marketing, it assumes people are kind of stupid. It’s like, well, you have to tell them that things will be perfect or they won’t do the thing, and they won’t buy the program. But I don’t think that’s true.

I mean, my business is proof that isn’t true. I think you can tell people the truth, which is like, being a human is fucking hard and I can’t solve that for you. There literally is no solution. But I can help you be more skillful at navigating it and it’s definitely going to help you more than drugs, booze, Netflix, shopping, gambling, whatever else you’re currently doing to try to deal with being…

Jody: So I was recently listening to Daniel Pink’s masterclass on sales. So you know the Masterclass app? Daniel Pink has a course on there on sales. And he was saying that it used to be, back before the age of the internet and everything, that the salesperson had all the information and the customer didn’t, and they needed the salesperson to give them all the information.

Well, it’s sort of flipped today. The customer has way more information sometimes than you do. If somebody’s going to buy coaching from me, they might have researched 10 other coaches that I don’t even know about their programs, I don’t know how they work.

But he kind of used the example even of a doctor with a patient. The patient would come in and say, I have this problem, what’s wrong, doc? And the doctor would diagnose it. Well, now the patient can go research and comes to the doctor with a pile of research which used to drive doctors insane, but what they’ve realized is that the best thing we can do as people who are business owners, entrepreneurs, service people is to help people organize information and help sift through all the information that’s there. So for a doctor, for example, to say, okay, great, so let’s just take a look at what you’ve got here. This study actually was from 25 years ago…

Kara: That one was on lizards. It isn’t replicable in humans.

Jody: New thing since then. But this one is good, pay attention to this part, and you might also want to look this up. Kind of help them condense and organize. And I think about, like you said, for us, what we do as coaches is we can’t be out there selling happily ever after. That’s just not even real.

But what we can do is like, listen, I’m going to simplify it for you, I’m going to guide you through a version, it’s not the only version, it’s not even the best version for everybody, but to your point, if you have some Christian-based values and things and family is important and all that, I’m going to guide you through a process of mental and emotional health that takes all that into consideration and simplify the noise for you. I just love that idea that that’s what we’re doing is simplifying and guiding our clients.

Kara: Yeah. And it’s like we’ve done all the work ahead of time. I am not a DIY-er. I want to hire people who have already done all the work and have all the expertise and have them give me a customized solution. I just hired somebody, I wanted to get plants for my outdoor balcony.

Is that something a normal human could just do themselves? Sure, they could. Am I doing it myself? No. Because I was like, I know nothing. I will buy some plants, it will be inconvenient, a pain in the ass, they’ll be heavy, I’ll have to pot them, I’ll probably pick stuff that will die or that has weird bugs, I will have no idea what I’m doing, I’m not spacial, I will get too much or too little.

I’m going to skip all of that and pay somebody who knows everything about plants and everything about shade and whatever, and they’re going to get me some plants and I’m going to get to enjoy them. Now, with coaching, you do have to do a little of the work yourself. It’s more like having a trainer.

But I have one of those too. So she can tell me how my form is and like, I’m like, well, I think I have this problem, and she’s like, well, not really, but you have this other problem and let’s work on that instead. So yeah, I totally think that’s right. It’s like you can go through it all yourself but why would you want to do that?

Jody: Yeah, that’s right. So here’s the third thing I have. I don’t know if you remember this but it was a Life Coach School event. I think it was back when they did coach training in person and you and I were both instructors there. And you made this comment, and the way you said it, I was like, oh yeah. You know those things that you’re like, I think I have been told that 25 times but for some reason…

Kara: I have one of those for you too so you tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine as a perfect ending.

Jody: For some reason it really landed that time. And it was this idea, I think if I recall, this student was asking a question about underneath whatever we’re coaching on, isn’t what’s underneath always just I don’t like myself enough? If I loved myself and I understood my value.

And the way you said it was, yeah, that is true, at least under probably 90% of the things we’re coaching on is a self-worth issue. And so if we just dig down to that, then what we discover is – so stop thinking I’m not good enough. Start thinking I am good enough. See you later, client.

And the problem is most of us can’t get much traction. And so we do coach on the way it shows up in our life, how it manifests on the surface, or how it impacts your relationship or whatever else. And I don’t know why the way you said it, I was like, oh yeah, that’s true. Because otherwise we’re just like, yeah, so stop hating yourself. There’s a Simpsons episode where there’s a motivational speaker and he says, “Get confident, stupid.”

Kara: This comes up all the time. I think it’s one of the downfall of some forms of therapy, not all, but often people have this high-level insight about how it’s all due to their low self-worth. I’m like okay, so now we’re just hanging out with that or we’re going to have lunch with it, now what?

And people come in and they want – I think especially clients who have been to other coaches or have been to therapy or whatever, they come in and they’re like, I already know my problem. I care too much about what everybody else thinks and I don’t like myself, and so that’s what I want to stop.

And I’m like, okay, we’re going to have to back it up. I talk about it directionally, it’s funny because that is a core belief but I think of it as top level because it’s abstract. So the way I teach is you can’t coach from the top down. You have to coach from individual instances and it adds up to growth.

And actually, there’s two forms of logic, I just did a whole episode about philosophy and one is like, we take a first principle and then we reason from it, like things should be fair, and then we try to apply it to specific situations. Or we look at a bunch of specific situations that we’ve had and then we try to deduce a principle from it.

And coaching works that way. You have to work on a specific thing where you can change a specific thought and get some traction there. And then the magic part is somehow you do anywhere from 300 to 700 of those and it adds up and kind of percolates up and then you get that big picture change. But otherwise, we’re all just sitting around being like, well, I guess I’m worthy today again.

Jody: Yeah. And sometimes even just making peace with – we’ve been saying over and over again, that human part of you. I always use the example like, yeah, and guess what, every morning I wake up with bad breath. So we can spend a lot of time trying to solve that, or we can just be like, yeah, that’s what happens to most people and then why don’t we just brush our teeth and move on with it?

Kara: I think that’s so important for people to hear though because this desire to solve the big – for the first time I had during this Unfuck Your Body Image course, and I allowed people who weren’t in The Clutch to join, so this is brand new people.

And one of the things I see is that is how people come to the work. They want to get on a coaching call and they’re like, okay, so I need help to stop obsessing over everything I ever eat. I’m like, yes, you do need help with that, we’re going to have to break that down a little bit. There’s no magic 20-minute fix to that where we change one thought in your brain on this Zoom call and now it’s all forever solved.

Jody: That’s right.

Kara: And anybody listening to this obviously coaches themselves, so just like, yes, it’s true, it all goes down to your self-worth but don’t try to coach yourself always on that. I mean, sometimes that’s the right place to go, especially if you’ve been working on something a long time. But in general, it’s totally useful to be like, why did I just want to drive my car into that guy who cut me off in traffic? Let me think about that.

Jody: That’s right. I think you can have small practices that improve it.

Kara: And it adds up. I was in traffic yesterday actually. I love watching other people’s models now because I tried to move over and this guy sped up, and then I still moved over, and he was really mad. So he honked a lot and I was like, okay, you saw me moving but whatever.

But then he drove around me, drove in front of me, and then stopped short to teach me a lesson I guess. But I’m just imagining his thought process like, his T in his model was I’m going to show that woman what she did. That’s not what that showed me, sir. It didn’t show me the error of my ways.

Jody: Oh my word, I know, people are hilarious. I was at the airport and they canceled a flight. We were all waiting to board and they’re like, we just canceled this flight. Like, what?

Kara: Don’t you wish you could do that sometimes? You’re like, on your way to the family event and you’re like, this is just canceled, we’re just not doing it.

Jody: But I love watching people, like you said, in that situation.

Kara: And that customer service especially. So the thing you said, this is a perfect example and people have heard me tell this story about you saying this before, of exactly that. Somebody says something and you’re like, what? Even though it’s something you already knew. All of us were scribbling it down. We were at one of our million dollar mentoring retreats and you were like, it’s like the T line always shows up in the R line. And we were all like, hold the phone, what do you mean?

Jody: So profound.

Kara: Yeah, but for whatever reason, it’s one thing to say your thoughts create your results, which we both teach, but somehow the T line always shows up in the R line was just like, mind-blowing. And I think it’s because – it’s almost like the difference between creates and shows up is important somehow. Because creates seems vaguer and shows up is really like, this is a real direct correlation. What you are thinking here is going to be right here when you get to that R line in your life or in your models.

Jody: Yeah. When I had that realization myself, I felt that way, and I realized it’s kind of a shortcut for me. Do I want this showing up in my result in some way? I don’t even take the time to stop and figure out how.

Kara: The A line, I don’t want any part of this.

Jody: I’m like, wait, I don’t want that anywhere near my R line.

Kara: Right. You’re like, no permutation of this T showing up in my results in six months is going to make me happy.

Jody: That’s right. So let me just consider if I want to keep thinking about that. And I think like you said it, all the work we do here is to remind people it’s a practice of redirecting your brain. And training yourself to think a little bit more intentionally for a portion of your day. I think still, most of our day, we’re going to operate unconsciously.

Kara: Right. It’s not a perfectionist fantasy where we’re like, I’m mindful every moment.

Jody: Right. But we’re trying to retrain some of those automatic beliefs and then just choose one area that you practice redirecting and it does work.

Kara: It does work. What we do does work. I agree. Anything else you think people need to know, Jody Moore? Or where they can find you?

Jody: People can find me at my podcast, which is Better Than Happy, or on social media, Jody Moore Coaching. But no, just I mean, I just love talking with you and I think it’s fun that, like you said, probably two unlikely to get along – not that we would ever not get along.

Kara: Yeah, unlike we’d ever meet each other otherwise.

Jody: For our worlds to converge, exactly. Anyway, I just love you and appreciate you for letting me come on your show.

Kara: I love you too. Thanks for coming. I’m going to see you in June, I’m so excited.

Jody: Oh yes.

Kara: I haven’t hugged anybody in person in so long.

Jody: I know. Thank goodness for vaccines.

Kara: Thank goodness. Alright, thank you for coming.

Jody: Thanks for having me.

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