Episode 261 Transcript: How Coaching Creates Lasting Change
[00:02:15 – 02:56:22]
Welcome back to the Nancy Levin Show. I am going to begin our conversation today with a question for you to consider. Have you ever invested in support, real support, and still walked away feeling like nothing actually changed?
Maybe you did therapy, or you hired a consultant. Maybe you read every book by every mentor, or you hired a strategist who gave you the seven-step plan to follow, and yet you find yourself stuck in the same loop. You’re still second-guessing yourself. You’re still not moving.
Here’s what I want you to consider. It might not be that you didn’t work hard enough. It might be that you were using the wrong tool for the job. Because here’s the truth, and this is something I feel deeply as someone who has lived on both sides of this, not all support is created equal. And when we’re stuck, we often reach for the most familiar form of support without asking whether it’s actually designed to get us where we want to go.
So today I’m going to talk about the difference between coaching and the other forms of support out there. Therapy, consulting, mentoring, teaching, strategy. They are all valuable. They are all real. But only one of them is designed to move you forward specifically. And by the end of this episode, you’re going to know which one that is. And more importantly, you’re going to understand why.
So let’s begin by naming what is actually out there. Because one of the most disorienting things about being a high achiever in pain is that you’ve usually tried a lot of things and nothing quite fits.
Or maybe it helped for a while and then it didn’t. And you started to wonder if the problem was you. It’s not you. It’s the mismatch between what you need and what you’re receiving. So let’s look at each one really clearly.
First, let’s look at teaching. Teaching is about the transmission of knowledge. A teacher’s job is to move information from their head into yours. The teacher is the authority. You are the learner. And there is incredible value in that. But teaching cannot reach inside you and your life and rearrange it. It can tell you what to do. It cannot tell you why you’re not doing it.
[02:56:22 – 03:11:14]
Mentoring. Mentoring is about modeling. A mentor has walked a path you want to walk. And they offer you the map they made along the way.
[03:12:18 – 03:30:04]
It’s beautiful. It’s generative. But a mentor’s map was made from their life, not yours. And when you try to follow someone else’s map through your own terrain, sometimes you get lost in ways that neither one of you can explain.
[03:30:04 – 04:08:06]
Let’s look at consulting. Consulting is about expertise. A consultant comes in, assesses the situation, and tells you what to do. They’ve seen this before. They have answers. And again, enormous value. But consulting is solution-focused. It’s about the external. It addresses a business problem, a system problem, a structural problem. It doesn’t address you. It doesn’t address the internal architecture that keeps recreating the same problem.
[04:08:06 – 04:23:22]
Strategy. Strategy is about planning. A strategist helps you map the steps from A to B, B to C, C to D. They help you see the path. But here’s the thing about paths.
[04:23:22 – 05:01:13]
Knowing the route doesn’t mean you’re going to walk it. And the strategist isn’t equipped to ask, “What inside you is keeping you from taking the next step?”
And now let’s look at therapy. And I want to handle this one with care because therapy is profound. Therapy is divine healing work. It goes deep. It goes into the past, into the wound, into the root system of who you became and why you learned to survive the way you did.
[05:01:13 -05:37:12]
That work is sacred. And for many people, including me, therapy is life-changing. But therapy is primarily retrospective. It’s oriented toward the past, toward understanding, processing, and healing. And while understanding the past is essential, it’s not the same thing as moving forward into your future. Therapy and coaching are not competitors. They are companions doing completely different work.
So at this point, you might be wondering, what is coaching?
[05:37:12 – 06:41:23]
Coaching is forward moving. It is action-oriented. Coaching is foundationally about you being committed to your own evolution and the coach being committed to holding you accountable to what you have committed to yourself.
Coaching is about moving from where you are right now to where you want to be. And that happens with action, commitment, and accountability. Coaching is centered entirely on you: your vision, your values, your patterns, your roadmap, and your next move. And here’s the deal. You are the expert on you. The coach is not the authority. You are. The coach guides you by holding up a mirror. The coach asks a question that cracks something open within you.
[06:41:23 – 06:45:16]
The coach believes in your capacity to know the answer, even when you’ve forgotten it yourself.
[:06:52:00 -:07:21:15]
So coaching isn’t about fixing you. It’s about revealing you. Because you are not broken. You are not behind. You are not too much. You are not enough. You are someone who has been carrying a lot and who has, along the way, learned some strategies that used to keep you safe, but are now keeping you small. That’s what coaching addresses. Not the symptom, not the surface, but the underlying architecture.
[07:21:15 – 07:46:06]
The framework I return to constantly is what I have named the Transformation Equation. Change equals vision plus choice plus action. Notice it doesn’t say change equals information plus a plan. Notice it doesn’t say change equals understand your childhood.
[07:47:13 -:08:19:12]
It says change equals vision plus choice plus action. Vision is knowing where you want to go. Choice is deciding on purpose to move toward it. And action is actually moving. Coaching is the only modality that works across all three. Coaching helps you get clear on that vision. Coaching surfaces the beliefs and patterns that are hijacking your choice. And coaching holds you accountable to the action.
[08:19:12 – 09:15:16]
No other form of support does all three. Teaching gives you vision sometimes, but not the why behind your resistance. Therapy illuminates the roots of your choice patterns, but may not move you toward action. Strategy gives you the action steps, but not the inner work to actually take them. Coaching is the bridge. Coaching is what moves you forward.
So let me make this real. Let me tell you what it actually looks like when someone experiences coaching versus every other kind of support. I have worked with many people who have quote unquote done the work. They’ve been in therapy. They’ve read the books. They’ve hired consultants. They can tell you what their patterns are. They can even name things with clinical precision.
[09:15:16 – 09:51:06]
And then what happens is the patterns repeat over and over and over again. Because knowing is not the same as changing. Insight without action is just suffering with better vocabulary. When someone comes into a coaching relationship, the first thing that shifts is this. They stop being the problem and begin being the solution. In so many helping relationships, the practitioner is the expert.
[09:51:06 – 10:15:14]
You’re the patient, the client, the student, the receiver of wisdom or the diagnosis or the prescription. In coaching, this flips. The coach is not here to tell you what to do. The coach is not giving advice. The coach is here to help you hear yourself, maybe for the first time or the first time in a long time.
[10:15:14 – 11:27:10]
So what does that look like in practice? It looks like a question that stops you in your tracks. Not a question that makes you feel interrogated, but a question that makes you feel seen. A question like, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid of getting it wrong?” Or “What’s the story you’re telling yourself about why this isn’t possible?” Or ‘What do you actually want underneath what you think you should want?”
These questions cannot be answered by anyone but you, and that’s the point. Because the answer that comes from inside you is the only answer that will actually hold. Someone else’s answer, no matter how smart, no matter how accurate, is borrowed wisdom. And borrowed wisdom doesn’t stick the way earned wisdom does. Coaching is about helping you earn your own wisdom and helping you become the author of your own next chapter. Not a character in someone else’s story of how transformation is supposed to go.
[11:27:10 – 11:41:24]
Because here’s what I know about change. Real lasting change, the kind that holds, the kind that doesn’t snap back – it moves through three stages.
11:41:24 – 12:55:18]
We move from release to reclaim to reinvention. Release is about letting go. Letting go of the identity that no longer fits. Letting go of the story that kept you safe, but is now keeping you stuck. Letting go of the version of yourself that you became for everyone else. Reclaim is about remembering. Remembering who you were before you learned to shrink. Remembering what you want. Not what you’ve been told to want. Reclaiming the desires you put on the shelf because they didn’t seem realistic or responsible or safe. And reinvention is about returning to the truth of who you are as you are on the path to becoming. Stepping into the version of you that is waiting. Making new choices. Taking new actions. Living as the person you’re becoming, not the person you’ve been. Now notice what each of these phases require.
[12:56:18 – 13:44:06]
Release requires awareness and permission. Reclaiming requires excavation and truth telling. And reinvention requires courage and accountability. And coaching is equipped for all of it.
Teaching can point you toward the concepts. Therapy can help you understand where the resistance comes from. Strategy can map the external steps. But coaching, coaching is the relationship that walks you through all three phases. The coach is there when you’re in the middle of release and it feels like falling apart. The coach is there in reclaim when you don’t quite believe what you’re starting to remember about yourself. And the coach is there for reinvention, the rebirth,
[13:45:09 – 13:59:10]
You are no longer stuck with the fear of what you want being louder than your desire for it. This is the work. This is what coaching holds.
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Coaching is for you if you know what you want, but something keeps getting in the way of having it.
[:14:11:12 – 14:52:23]
Coaching is for you if you have no idea what you want because you’ve prided yourself on having no needs. Coaching is for you if you’ve already done inner work but still can’t seem to take the next step.
[01:14:26:17 – 01:14:28:22]
Coaching is for you if you’re at a crossroads: a relationship change, a chapter ending or a beginning, and you don’t know how to trust yourself to navigate it. Coaching is for you if you’ve been performing your life instead of actually living it with presence. Coaching is for you if you’ve been so busy being what everyone else needs that you’ve lost track of what you need.
[14:52:23 – 15:35:16]
Coaching is for you if the version of you that existed 10 years ago doesn’t fit the life you’re living today. And coaching is for you if some part of you knows quietly, stubbornly, undeniably, that there is more. More aliveness, more meaning, more you. And you’re ready to stop waiting for permission to go after it. If anything I’ve said today has landed, if you found yourself nodding or exhaling or thinking yes that’s it, I invite you to join me for a free experience called Reignite Your Spark.
[15:35:16 – 16:20:05]
Simply go to nancylevin.com/spark and I will show up in your inbox for five days with five short videos, five journal prompts that you can do in a beautiful workbook to hold the experience together. This is a free coaching experience designed to help you reconnect with what you actually want so you can start moving toward it because that’s where it begins. Not with the perfect plan, not with having everything figured out. it begins with a spark, a flicker of what’s possible for you.
[16:20:05 – 16:58:12]
This is for you, my high achievers, my people-pleasers, my perfectionists. If you are tired of knowing, but not changing. If you are ready to stop outsourcing your authority and start living from the inside. It’s free. You can join us at nancylevin.com/spark. Let yourself feel what happens when you take one step toward the vision of your life that’s waiting for you. That pull you feel right now? That’s the spark. Don’t let it go out.
[16:58:12 – 17:37:13]
Okay, I’m going to circle back to where we began. You are not someone who didn’t try hard enough. You are not someone who’s broken. You are someone who’s been using the wrong tool, and now you know. You know what coaching is and what it isn’t. You know why it’s different from everything else that you’ve tried. And you know, I think you’ve always known, that you are ready for something different. The question was never, “Can you change?” The question is, “Will you let yourself be supported in doing it?” That’s the work. That’s what coaches are here for.