Hello, health coaches, and welcome back to Health Coach Radio.
I'm Erin Power, and today we're diving into a coaching tool that I was reminded of recently
that is deceptively simple, yet potentially incredibly powerful.
It's The Work by Byron Katie.
If you've ever had a client who seems to know what to do, but just can't seem to do it,
or they're stuck in a spiral of self-criticism or frustration, then you know how much their
thoughts and beliefs can get in the way of their progress. In fact, it's the main thing getting in
the way of the progress is the way they think and feel about the progress and what they're able to
do. And that's where the work really comes in. It's not a diet plan. It's not an exercise strategy.
It's simply a method of inquiry to try on with your clients. And it's so simple because there's
four questions to ask. That's it. Four questions that you can ask in the context of a coaching
conversation. And these four questions have the power to dismantle some of your clients' most
stubborn, sabotaging beliefs. Okay, so in this episode, I'm going to walk you through what the
work actually is, why I think it's really valuable in coaching, and then literally, specifically,
how you can use it with clients, and even how you can use it on yourself as a coach.
Because let's be honest, our own beliefs get in the way too.
Am I right?
Hi, I'm Erin Power.
I'm a health coach, a health coaching educator and mentor, and your host of Health Coach Radio.
This podcast delves into the art, science, and business of health coaching.
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So let's start with the basics. The work is a process developed by Byron Katie,
who describes it as a way of identifying and questioning stressful thoughts. And she came
up with it during a time when she was deeply depressed and miserable. And she realized the
only source of her own suffering was her unquestioned thoughts. Unquestioned thoughts.
So the work encourages these four simple questions so we can begin to question our thoughts. I find
it very solutions-oriented, very logical and pragmatic. It's kind of inarguable. And these
are the kinds of tools that I think work so well in a coaching relationship, no matter what kind
of coach you are, because you might be more of an embodiment coach or somatic coach or more of a
mindset coach. There's a lot of coaches who work in maybe more intangible spaces. And then there's
some coaches that work in very measurable, tangible, you know, logical spaces. But I actually
think the work, the work helps to bridge no matter what kind of coach you are. So as mentioned,
the process is four simple questions. Write these down. They're gold. Number one,
Is it true?
Number two, can you absolutely know it's true?
Number three, what happens when you believe that thought?
And number four is, who would you be without that thought?
Okay, and then there's a second part to this, because once you've gone through the four questions,
you play with what Katie refers to as a turnaround, where you take the original thought and you try to come up with like three opposites.
so let me give you an example a client says i always fail at diets
okay number one is that true so you can ask your client sally is that true that you always fail at
diets and she'll say actually no i succeeded at weight watchers i succeeded at keto for a while
So she might have a lot of evidence in the moment that it feels true that she's always failing at diets, but when she's pressed, she might realize that she has not failed at every attempt.
The second question is my fave. Can you absolutely know it's true? And I think about this in the terms of like, is this written in encyclopedias and in newspapers? Is it known to all that you are a diet failure? That's how I like to interpret this.
But this opens the door. Can she absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, know that she always fails? Is that provable? No, absolutely not. Never.
The third question is, how do you react when you believe that thought? So, okay, Sally, what happens when you believe that? Well, I feel hopeless, and then I quit. I self-sabotage. I binge on ice cream.
I prove it to be true, sort of the self-fulfilling prophecy. I think this is a powerful conversation
to have with our clients because there is a lot of self-fulfillment of limiting beliefs. Okay,
that's a mouthful that I just shared, but I always fail, I always fail. Oh, look at me,
I'm elbows deep in the Oreo. See, I'm failing again, told you. But if we can break this cycle,
or I guess short circuit this loop, we can prove to the client that actually you don't always fail.
So how do you react when you believe that you always fail? Well, then I behave like a person
who fails on a diet. And then who would you be without that thought? And this is kind of where
the magic happens. So without the belief that you always fail on diets, Sally, Sally might
might see herself as somebody who's actually capable of making a choice today that keeps
her on the path, makes the best choice today without being chained necessarily to her past.
So really a nice hopeful sort of moment there for our client to see, well, what would happen if
you believe something else? Because I mean, every belief is available to us.
Okay, then we do the turnarounds, though. So now you maybe would ask your client to come up with one to three opposites of the original statement. So if the original statement was, I always fail at diets, well, the opposite to that might be, I always succeed at diets.
I often succeed at taking basic care of myself or diets fail me is an interesting opposite to
contemplate there. I find this to be like a really interesting thought experiment. Like,
what if the opposite were true? What would that opposite be? Because again, I go back to what I
just said a second ago, pretty much every belief is available to us. There's a menu, an infinite
menu of beliefs that we can have. And if your client's really good at practicing the limiting
ones, maybe we can help them practice the unlimiting ones. But can you see how this cracks open the
door? It creates some wiggle room and sort of ignites a tiny spark of belief. I think that this
is all our clients need to step out of their rigid, self-sabotaging belief and into possibility.
So why does this matter for us as coaches? Well, as we know, most of our clients don't have an
information problem they have, they know vegetables are good for them. They know they need to drink
more water. They know they need to sleep better. They know that going for a walk is better than
lying on the couch scrolling. But the real problem is the stories they tell themselves
that prevent them from executing on these actions. I don't have time. I've tried everything.
It's too time consuming. It's too expensive. I'll always be overweight because my mom was overweight,
etc. So every single one of these is a thought and not a fact. There's no facts there. This is
not written in newspapers that Sally is destined to be fat. Sally does not have any time to cook
food. That's not written in encyclopedias. It's not established fact. But when a client believes
it's a fact about themselves, then they stop trying. They stop seeing solutions, and they
stop showing up for themselves. If we think it's a fact, it feels unsolvable. And so the solution
you might offer as a health coach feels pointless, like it's not going to work. And they don't even
want to start doing it. Or if they do start doing it, they don't want to keep doing it.
Okay, let me share a coaching example. I once had a client, let's call her Sarah.
And she said, I just don't have the discipline to stick to anything.
That was her story. And every time she slipped up, she reinforced the story. See,
told you I don't have the discipline. So I tried this with her. I gently used the work with her in
a coaching conversation and she started to see cracks in the logic, shall we say. So I said,
okay, is it true that you have no discipline? She was like, well, okay, I do have a master's degree.
I hold a high level position at my company. I go to the yoga studio three times a week.
I raised children. I've raised them to young adulthood. This all took discipline.
That's pretty cool. It's pretty cool to like almost boil the statement down to its sort of
basics. Like if the person says, I'm not disciplined at exercise, let's take the I'm
not disciplined sort of foundational piece of that statement and say, is it true that you're
not disciplined? No, you're disciplined in other areas of your life. Then we go, is it absolutely
true. Okay, no, it's absolutely not true that I, Sarah, am an undisciplined person. I'm a very
disciplined person. Look at all this stuff I did. It's absolutely not true that I'm not disciplined.
But how do you react when you believe that thought? Well, I feel defeated. I feel ashamed.
Shame is such a common and debilitating feeling. I feel shame. I'm not pulling it together for
myself. You know, disappointment is in there too, right? It's not a good, those aren't good feelings.
Those are very uncomfortable feelings. Now, who would you be without that thought? Kind of the
opposite feeling. Well, I'd feel free. I'd feel capable. I'd feel lighter. I'd feel like somebody
who keeps trying, right? I keep trying. And then we could try the turnaround. The turnaround I think
she and I came up with was, if the original statement was, I don't have discipline,
the turnaround is, I do have discipline when it matters. And that's a huge shift. Then we can talk
about, well, does this matter to you? Why? That's the kind of thing that you should have on your
intake form. Why are we doing this? Why is this important to you? I've talked about values-based
goal setting. I will continue to talk about it. I do think it's really critical for health coaches
to get values conversations going early with their clients, because this is the kind of thing that's
going to come in real clutch when your client feels like throwing in the towel because they
have decided they're undisciplined. So we did the turnaround and Sarah realizes she's
disciplined when it matters. So we have to have the conversation like, does this matter?
Why does this matter to you? That can reignite somebody. This is where coaching meets belief
work. And I talked about that earlier. We can think of coaching as being kind of this very
rigid, pragmatic, logical, data-driven health and wellness realm. But there's kind of a belief
piece to it as well. Even if you're not a woo-oriented coach, I'm not a woo-oriented coach,
we just end up talking about our client's self-beliefs a ton in the coaching container.
We can hand clients all the action plans in the world, but if their story is that they can't do
this. The plans don't matter. So I think the work is amazing because it helps them unhook from the
story. Hey, Erin Power here from Health Coach Radio. And I know that so many of you struggle
with getting your first clients or scaling consistently. And that's why we created the
Health Coach Client Blueprint. This is a proven step-by-step system designed to help health coaches
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hcr100 for 100 off your enrollment make sure to act fast though because this discount is only
available for a limited time so how do we actually integrate this into a coaching relationship so
First, timing matters. We're not going to do this every time we coach somebody.
Save it for a time when a client feels like they're kind of looping, like we're on this again,
we're on this again. I can think of who clients I have right now that keep coming back to the same
concern. When they're repeating the same thought that's keeping them stuck, I think it's a cool
pattern interrupt. So maybe save it in your back pocket for when you have a client who's repeating
the same limiting behaviors and beliefs. So let's say a client continues to say,
I just don't have time to cook. Or I'm just convinced that nothing works for me. Or
I'll never be healthy and thin. It's done for me. Something like that. Like this sort of little
spiral moments that clients can get into, understandably, because I've said this a
million times as well, health change is hard. It is. So let's pick one of those. Let's pick
one of these sticky ones. Like let's go with the, I don't have time to cook. Let's say your clients,
they don't have time to prepare food, which is a big one because I think many of us are getting
our clients to eat differently, which is going to require them to actually do that in their lives and,
you know, execute on that. So when you hear that kind of sticky thought,
interrupt it by saying, would you mind if we just explored that thought together?
Then you can introduce the four questions. So let's try this.
I don't have time to cook. Well, is that true? The client might say it's absolutely true. In fact,
I had a client, a prospective client a little while ago on the phone applying to work with me,
who, for whom it was absolutely true. She thought it was true that she has no time to cook
at all. Zero. Okay. So you might ask your client, is it true that you don't have time to cook? She's
like, yes, my evenings are busy. My mornings are insane. I'm at work during the day. I can't cook
at lunch. I'm at work. Yeah. I have no time to cook. It's true. Okay. Is it absolutely true?
Can you absolutely know it's true? Let's get into the absolute facts here. Okay. Well,
and for what it's worth, this prospective client I had on the phone a couple of weeks ago was like,
well, okay, no, I have like 20 minutes at five in the morning. Okay. There's a glimmer of hope.
Maybe there's 10 or 15 minutes that could be reclaimed somewhere. And also, I think it's
really important, not that you would do this, but just to not get into the accidental habit of maybe
shaming. Oh, do you scroll on your phone? Maybe you could quit doing that. Barb, you know,
let's not do that. But is it absolutely true that you don't have any spare time?
They might do the calculus in their own head and say, well, I do scroll when the kids go to bed.
they're going to say, you know, it's not absolutely true. It just feels hard. Okay,
cool. It's not absolutely true. Great. Now we're getting somewhere. How do you react when you
believe the thought that you don't have time to cook? Well, I feel helpless. Like there's just
no health and wellness program that's going to work for me because every health and wellness program
is going to tell me to cook. I'll just order to, I'm just ordering takeout. I'm just getting
whatever from the drive through. I'm just gonna throw my hands up and defeat. Well, who would you
be without that thought? Who would you be if you didn't have the thought that you didn't have time
to cook. They might imagine themselves being that kind of Pinterest wife that can throw together a
quick stir fry in 10 minutes or, you know, whip a whole chicken into the Instapot or whatever,
right? Like, they can start imagining this parallel universe version of them that could
whip up meals. And now we have a little leg to stand on, like, okay, well, let's borrow a little
bit of that character and see if we can weave that into your life. So it's kind of an imagination
experiment. I think the imagination is a powerful coaching tool. Okay, then we do the turnarounds.
I don't have time to cook. Well, I don't have time to cook elaborate recipes,
but I do have time to cook simple meals. Great. Let's get some simple meal ideas.
I don't have time to cook, but I could figure out a better way to door dash. That's cool.
Cooking actually takes less time than I think. This is one that I love reminding my clients of.
And by the way, they don't often come to that themselves because when the client believes
cooking takes a long time, it's hard for them to see that it doesn't.
But an exercise you could do just parenthetically is, okay, let's do this.
Do me a favor.
This weekend, I want you to scramble some eggs and time it.
And they're like, oh my gosh, I took four minutes.
Okay, great.
Other turnarounds you might come up with.
Well, actually not cooking is taking more time because look at me, here I am jumping
from diet to diet and I'm wasting time by not cooking.
So there's lots of ways to do the turnarounds.
But again, you might have to spend quite a bit of time with your client because when they're in kind of this mood, they're just not as playfully interested in exploring the imagination elements of this.
So, you know, that's where, you know, working on your coaching skills is going to be really useful so that you can create a space where this imagination work feels productive.
But it is.
I mean, it is, right?
And because suddenly the impossible seems slightly possible.
Just like, oh, it's slightly possible to cook.
That's amazing.
That's a major turnaround.
That's productive turn.
Now we have something to work with.
Great.
So some kind of cooking is possible.
Let's figure out what that is for this week and put a plan in place.
What do you say?
Then you get to your goal setting.
Help your client create some kind of attainable granular goal around getting some food cooked.
And the key here, and I know you know this, is that you're not lecturing, you're not telling
them that they're wrong, you're just walking them through their own thought process, dropping
them mindfully into their own thoughts.
So they kind of discover it in themselves.
And whenever somebody discovers something inside themselves, it sticks.
That's why I really encourage you coaches to nurture thinking and feeling from within your
client, nurture their own internal wisdom and knowledge, rather than telling them what
to do.
It's just stickier when it comes from inside them.
So I guess to summarize, the benefits and maybe some cautions of using the work as a coach.
First of all, I think it really empowers the client to see that they're not victims of their circumstances, because that can feel extremely disempowering.
It builds self-awareness, which is, to my mind, a character trait, a state of being that all humans who want to self-improve must nourish in themselves.
It helps them find freedom from these thoughts that plague them that feel like facts.
That's got to be exhausting for somebody to always have that narrative running through their brain.
I always self-sabotage.
I always fail.
I'm non-disciplined.
That's not a really healthy, happy way of being.
And they get freedom from that.
What if I'm wrong?
What if there is a different alternative here?
And also, I just think it can lead to some surprising breakthroughs that sort of action
steps alone can't touch.
So if we go back to the client who doesn't have time to cook, if we come up with a goal,
well, can you just suck it up and try your best and cook at least two nights this week?
We've come up with some kind of action plan, but we haven't done the work.
We're delivering an action plan to somebody who really does not believe it's possible to do.
We have to, again, sort of blow on this little ember of belief.
But I think there is also cautions.
You've got to stay in your scope.
We are not therapists.
And I actually forget what Byron Katie's credential is.
But I do believe she's in the mental health space, potentially in a licensed position.
We're not.
unless you are, but health coaches are not. So stay in your scope. This is not therapy. If a
client's thoughts are tied to trauma or abuse, tread very carefully and refer out if necessary.
And just by the way, I feel like that's something that comes up a lot more often in coaching than
you might expect. I'll have to do a whole different episode on that. I've had clients
who are navigating incredibly traumatic things that I'm not qualified to help them navigate.
It's impacting their health journey with me, but I can't help them through it. In order for us to
the most success in the health journey, they need to probably be referred out to a licensed mental
health professional. Maybe I'll do another episode on that down the line here. But another caution of
using the work is don't force it. Like don't take this lesson and put it into all of your next
coaching conversations. Really save it for a special occasion. And if a client is totally
checked out on the process, don't push it. It's not going to end well. This only works well
if the client is open, appears to be open to it.
And, you know, I know you'll do this as well, but keep your compassion front and center because
it's hard to work through these kinds of thoughts and feelings. And it can feel really
real and kind of painful for people to confront their limiting beliefs.
So hold space and try not to, you know, argue, debate, allow the client to sort of freely think
feel and just take in the information the client's giving you. So if this intrigues you, I highly
recommend diving into Byron Katie's work directly. Her book is called Loving What Is, and it's the
foundational text for this approach. And I think she has tons of free worksheets on our website
that you can download and try with your clients. And you can even give your clients one of these
worksheets as a journaling tool between sessions. You know, you could ask them to write down a
stressful thought and then walk through the questions and the turnarounds and notice how
they feel. And don't forget, you can use this on yourself too, coaches, because coaches get stuck
in beliefs as well. Like, I'm not good enough yet. Nobody wants what I offer. Before you spiral,
run those thoughts through the four questions and you'll be amazed at how quickly the air clears.
In fact, maybe trying it on yourself first would be a good little practice run.
so to wrap up the work is a simple yet profound framework for questioning the thoughts that keep
us and our clients stuck you got four questions and one to three turnarounds
so relatively quick and easy once you get the hang of it and it can lead to massive freedom
because as coaches our role is not to hand down answers is to help our clients see themselves
differently and nurture change from within them. And the work is a tool in that process.
So my invitation is for you to try it on yourself first. And then when the moment feels right,
try it with a client. Don't make it fancy. Don't make it a big deal. Just one thought,
four questions, see what happens. Well, thank you for joining me today on Health Coach Radio.
And if this was helpful, please share the episode with any other coaches you might know.
And if you try the work in your coaching, I'd love to hear how it goes.
So tag me on Instagram at Eat Simple Erin or at Health Coach Radio and drop me a message.
Okay.
And until next time, keep coaching, keep questioning, and keep doing the work.
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