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November 5, 2021 Mom &… Podcast: Tipsy Ellipses Episode Guest: Cindy Whitesides, Life Coach Show Summary Tipsy Ellipses is a monthly bonus episode that we record via Facebook Live. This month’s live recording took place on Tuesday, November 2 and featured friend and guest, Cindy Whitesides. Cindy is trained as a Wayfinder Life Coach with Martha Beck, Inc. and is currently in the process of becoming certified through the Courageous Living Coach Certification. Her goal is to become certified as an Associate Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation in 2022. Cindy got her degree in Psychology from Texas A&M University and a Master’s degree in Higher Education from Colorado State University. Topics From This Episode (Complete transcript is available below… scroll to the bottom!) How to become a coachWho should consider becoming a coach and whyHow long it takes to get certified as a coachWho can benefit from coachingIdentifying areas where we can let goThe difference between coaching and therapyCoaches as compassionate witnessesThe Five WhysHow to find the right coach for youHow coaches fill the gaps in our community and family structures Resources and Links From This Episode International Coaching FederationCindy’s website Look, Listen, Learn Cindy: Ted LassoBeginning Balance PodcastBeing a Nielsen household Missy: Only Murders in the Building on HuluSuccession and Billions are back! (Or Billions WILL be, soon.) Susanne: Little Bee by Chris CleaveSelf-Love Workbook for Women by Megan Logan Connect With the Mom &… Podcast Please subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts! If you’re so inclined to give us a 5-star rating, we’ll love you forever. Who couldn’t use a little extra love?Leave us a message – via voicemail or use our form – with your questions for experts, or suggestions for future episodes.Check out our website, where you can find links to all the things!Follow our Facebook PageJoin our private Facebook Group (All you have to do is ask to join, and then be nice once you’re in. So easy!)Follow us on InstagramBecome a patron – check us out on Patreon! Musical Notes Our delightfully happy intro and outro theme music, “We Will Get Through This” is performed by Young Presidents, and used under license from Shutterstock. Transcript* From This Episode *Please note that this transcript is automatically generated through our editing software. Expect odd errors and misunderstood words. In fact, if you find a really funny one, send it to us, and we may feature it – and you – on our socials! Susanne: [00:00:00] All right. We’re live. Missy: Yay. Welcome to Susanne: tipsy ellipsis. Yes. Do you want to explain what tipsy ellipses are this month? Missy? Sure. Missy: And then when I botch it, you can re-explain it. So yeah, if you’ve never been here before for a tipsy it’s once a month, we go live from our Facebook page for a much more relaxed conversation than normal, a little less prep work on our parts. Maybe we’re not prepared. We’re not like we’re not being super careful than we usually have a Susanne: cocktail. Missy: And, um, we have guests who are cool moms doing all kinds of cool things. Sometimes it’s just us, but we are lucky to have a guest tonight and I will wait and we’ll do a big introduction in just a second, but that’s what it is. And then this will be available as a podcast download usually Friday ish. Susanne: so, [00:01:00] well, Missy: yeah, so if you don’t like to top on and watch Facebook live, you can just listen to it. But, and for those who are afraid of Facebook live, we can’t see you. You don’t have to participate. You can just sit and watch, but if you really want to participate, you can ask and then we maybe could add you to the stream. Susanne: Oh. But yes, we don’t do it. We don’t surprise attack anybody with it. We won’t call on you. Yeah. Hey, and who are you? Missy: Oh, who am I as a great question today? Susanne: So I’m Missy Steven’s mom and dot.dot writer. Missy: foster care advocate and today winning football team. Last football game, they finally Susanne: won. So that was exciting. That is so exciting to end on a high note. Missy: Yes. After a lot of low, Susanne: low notes. Oh, you know what? My son played on. He plays on those I nine. So it’s like non competitive sports and he’s been one season where they were undefeated. And then he’s been on another [00:02:00] season where they didn’t win a single game. And it was, it’s just kind of fun to see it’s a different dynamic, but it can still be fun and special in its own way. I look at the, can you tell that I am, uh, do not disturbing? Are Missy: I just breads? I realized that I had forgotten Susanne: to do not disturb. If y’all listen to tipsy. ellipses a couple of months ago we had our texts. Ladies as the guests never fails. As soon as we start recording, it’s like, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing. Um, I don’t know what they’re talking about, but it’s well, I ran into Leigh Ann Missy: at our football game, Susanne. She’s Susanne: telling him you ready? Missy: So, yeah. And we took a picture and I posted it. So that may be is what it is, Susanne: but that was fun now. And I am Susanne Kerns. I’m a mom and.dot dot. LGBTQ advocate, a writer. And tonight I’m a little tipsy. Missy: I’m not even tipsy yet. And I just could barely do my intro. I don’t Susanne: know. I’m just [00:03:00] tired. I know it’s candy. I got the sugar buzz. But like we said, we have a guest tonight. We have Cindy Whitesides, who I’m so excited. Y’all probably heard me talk about Cindy before. Cause she is a mom and.dot.life coach and a runner. And she is the friend who I talk about, who got me to try stand up. So, I mean, talk about a good life coach getting me to do that. She can, she can work you through anything. If she can give you that. I was kind of scared for you Missy: since you were not Susanne: really a swimmer. No, I wear my life jacket. Didn’t I say? I sweat, oh my God. Talk about what it was like 95 degrees that I had a life jacket on. Like everybody else. Yeah, just me and the eight year olds out there. But so Cindy is like we said, a life coach and helps women, including me imagine and create the truest versions of their lives. [00:04:00] And she likes to go deep and identify the patterns, themes and stories in our lives that are keeping us stuck, which is such a huge topic for us talking about getting on stuck. And some of this, it was kind of fun reading Cindy’s bio cause some of this I didn’t know about her. So I’m learning a bit. I read too. So you’re a graduate of Texas, a and M university, and also has a master’s degree from Colorado state university. She’s a smarty pants and has had a really interesting variety of teaching and counseling roles. And what I have known her primarily as a small business owner who co-founded and runs a medical practice with her husband. So that has been, it’s been talking about some pivots. So, whereas yeah, so the expertise was primarily in teaching and counseling roles, but was basically running a business, a medical practice, which. That’s it interesting [00:05:00] stepping out of your rules, but before we dive too much into that though, twin boys who are 10 a bonus daughter, who’s 23, who we just adore she’s she worked in the medical practice. Cindy: She does. She’s got it. She’s our best medical assistant. Susanne: She is. And she was the medical assistant for my daughter a couple of weeks ago. In fact, um, and Cindy, I CA I knew you were an avid runner, but six marathons and 12 half marathons. Wow. Cindy: Yeah, I did count. I wasn’t sure. Susanne: Um, I Missy: got one full and two half, and I feel like that’s more than enough. I’m just not cut out for Susanne: running. I am just starting the training for another half with my daughter. And every single time, it feels like it’s impossible and that I’ll never even be able to make it mile, but I. I’ve been here enough times before that I know that somehow it happens, which is kind of a nice little [00:06:00] metaphor for life coaching as well. I mean, Cindy: it is for sure, for sure. Cause marathoning it half marathon, whatever it is, you don’t start out running 13 miles, 20 miles, 26. You don’t do that. And I’ve heard you talk about your training. You start out with 10 minutes, work up to 20, you do the run walking, you do, you know, it’s, it’s little pivots that add up over time and that’s what gets you there. It’s a beautiful kind of floor for all kinds of changes in our life. Susanne: Yeah, it is. And it also is kind of a metaphor for I’ve always, and I’ve been warning my daughter about this and like, if you take too much time off, like if you see if you think that, oh cool, I’m up to 10 miles. I got this. I mean, I’m a runner. You take a week off. And it’s almost like starting from scratch again. And so I’ve, I kind of feel like that is a similar thing to where we get kind of cocky and we think, oh, we got this figured out. It’s fine. Kind of like my son who was always like, I don’t need to [00:07:00] keep taking my allergy medicine. Cause I feel good. I’m like, no, no good. But it is an Missy: incredible metaphor Susanne: for life. It is. You just have to keep plugging along and it just makes you so dang tired. Cindy: I think, I think there’s a, there’s a mantra and running that is consistency is more important than volume and that’s always stuck with me. It’s like, it’s still it’s the all or nothing thinking that we talk about all the time where, you know, if I can’t, if I can’t do the 10, I shouldn’t do anything if I can’t do whatever’s on that plan. And, and just tonight I had, I was supposed to have had a five mile run. My day got all Susanne: off the, off the whack, like just, you know, and I’m watching Cindy: the clock and I got it kind of be with, and Missy later and I didn’t want to miss it. And, and I just, I had that mantra in my head. So I went out for two miles and two miles and the scope of what I’m doing this week. Isn’t that much, it’s not a big deal, but it’s that consistency day in day out two miles is better than [00:08:00] zero miles. And so, yeah, there’s the Susanne: metaphor. Oh, oh good. Cause we do that with writing all the time. Don’t we miss this where we think it’s all or nothing. Like if I can’t sit down in a cabin by a Creek for 10 hours straight, then it just doesn’t even count as writing. Whereas now it’s writing a page here and there while you’re in the car and the pickup line, or while you’re waiting at a doc doctor’s office or, you know, or whatever the case may be. So I love that you did that. Yay. That’s an inspiration. Okay. Missy: The muscles like our brain is just like that. You just keep those muscles working and don’t let them forget how. Susanne: Okay now, thank you. Speaking of inspiration. So you have kind of been my informal life coach even before you, even before you decided to formally become a coach. and I’m just, I’m so thrilled just because I just feel from the day I met you, like, this is what you should be [00:09:00] doing. Um, so I’m just really curious. So like, that takes a lot of courage too. I mean, I watched it from the background, the decisions that went into it, but can you kind of talk about like what went into that decision to go and become a certified coach and what are even the choices available for people who are maybe thinking about it themselves and don’t even know where to start Cindy: Yeah. It’s been a journey and a journey. Honestly, you know, you said since we’ve known each other, it’s been a journey on, on my website. I actually point all the way back to third grade. Um, I had had this experience, that story, oh my gosh. It it’s surprising to me that this has stuck with me. Like I don’t have a lot of, clear memories of third grade, but there was a kid in my class who was, parents were going through a divorce and I was sitting next to him one day and he started kind of spilling his guts about it and just how much it sucked and when he was going through. And, um, I had been through [00:10:00] some similar stuff and I just, I just, you know, no training as an eight year old Susanne: stratified at this point, I was not certified. I was, uh, Cindy: and, and, you know, later on that day, he comes up to me on the playground and he’s like, you know, Cindy, I mean, it’s just, it’s a funny thing for a kid conversation to say, but he just said, Brian, Cindy, you’re really easy to talk to you. Thanks. And I just remember being like. Oh, it just, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to me. So, so Susanne, as you mentioned, um, when I look at my career trajectory, there’s all these kinds of parts that seem a little disparate. Like I was teaching outdoor education and I worked as a counselor for a treatment center for teenagers with drug problems. And I worked with college students who had been in violation of university policies. And when I started to piece together during, you know, some of my dot, dot dot searching, um, it was like, what, where are the threads in this? And it has to do with, , listening and, being with a person, you know, if there’s some difficult stuff and I’ve [00:11:00] always been really comfortable with that, I’ve had a really high tolerance for that. Like somebody can tell me big stories and big stuff and I can be there with them. And then also. I’ve had people say, like, how do you hear all this stuff? And then walk away, go on with your life. And, um, I can, I can do both. And so, , yeah, so I’ve been running this medical practice for about eight years. , and that has been a huge, that was a huge pivot, , out of, , a couple year break when my boys were born, I stayed home with them for almost three years. So definitely relate to a lot of which I’ll talk about on this podcast of like you step out on one career and then. Now, all you’re doing is wiping butts and wiping counters and Weinberg that’s right. Professional wiper. Susanne: I’ve heard you say that Cindy: you might need something wiped. So, um, so I’ve been doing that and, , certainly have gained incredible skills from that. But even in that role, when I was working in the office, , I don’t, I don’t do that directly anymore, but when I did, you know, I remember working with staff and it’s like, I cared a lot less about the performance, then a staff member who was going [00:12:00] through a big life transition or somebody who was sorting out a relationship problem. And so what my office kind of looked like was a little coaching room. That’s Susanne: when Cindy: I worked. Um, so there’s been a thread of it forever. , and that’s, that’s kind of when I started looking for my next move, this. Susanne: It’s so exciting. So now, okay. So where, where does one start? When one is trying to decide if they want to be a coach, but then if they just say yes, for sure. I do want to be a coach. I’m assuming that there’s all kinds of different certification programs based on what area you want to focus on. I’m assuming that I have zero idea. I mean, I know what you were focusing on, but I don’t know the wide variety. Yeah, you’ve done it. Cindy: Um, it honestly, and I say this with all respect. , but some people refer to the coaching industry as the kind of unregulated wild west. And it, it is in some ways it is a largely unregulated industry. , I’m a coach who could be a coach. [00:13:00] We’re all coaches like there’s, there’s no legal, container to, to be able to call yourself a coach. It, it doesn’t exist. , and there’s pros and cons to that, right? Like, so, you know, anyone can be a coach. And so the barrier to entry can be a little bit low. , so somebody who really has a passion for this and wants to do it, they can get in. Okay. And it also means that the quality can vary widely with the amount of training someone has and their experience and what kind of certifications they’ve gone through. But there is an international organization called the internat…
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