Join Gail Kraft and her guest host, Devon Pratt, Holistic Nutritionist, and founder of Devon’s Holistic Wellness as they address this Ask Me Anything segment and discuss stepping out of your comfort zone, getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, and seizing the opportunity for growth.
Listen as Devon and Gail discuss this topic from different points of view and help you understand when it’s time to make conscious choices that support you in your journey for more.
Gail: Hi, everybody, Gail Kraft here. And this is The Empowering Process podcast. This is all about power, purpose, and presence and today with me, we have Devon Pratt, from Devon’s Holistic Wellness, and we are doing an ‘ask me anything’ segment. So, what this means is I have an ‘ask me anything’ question from people who are either past clients or other coaches, or friends who have sent in this question. And Devon is brave enough to go through this with me. And so, Devon, do you want to say a little bit about what you do and who you are?
Devon: My name is Devon Pratt, as Gail mentioned. I am a master certified holistic nutritionist, working with people on many different levels of nutrition and wellness. We work with supplements as well, we get into cooking and grocery shopping, all the different areas of nutrition that maybe are being left to the side. So we kind of dig into all that good stuff, all the stuff that happens behind the scenes, once you figure out what you’re supposed to be eating. We need to know what that looks like on the plate and how to do that.
Gail: And that’s absolutely true. I mean, if you ever go out to her website, you’re just going to [reach out], “Devon, I want this recipe. How did you do that?” But back to the ‘ask me anything’.
Today the question we’re going to talk about… so the question was, how do you balance fear, and the opportunity of growth? Fear and the opportunity of growth. That was a good one. Which is really interesting, because you can’t grow if you’re not a little bit fearful of the next step that you’re taking. And so for me, it’s about being comfortable with fear. One of the trainings that I do is How to Live an Endlessly Delicious Life, living an endlessly delicious life, which has about seven or eight practices that I do on a daily basis, to embrace, to really salivate at life. It’s delicious.
And one of the tricks, if you will, is to do something outside your comfort zone every day because this gets you comfortable with being uncomfortable. So I’m a little agoraphobic. For me to go out and meet people is frightening for me. And you met me, Devon, right? You would never know it. I can get myself out the door. Once I do that, I’m like, “Okay, I’m cool until I get there.” And then when I get there, I have to get the door open. Getting out my door and getting in the next door is frightening as all get out, for me. And when I first moved to the New Hampshire area, I scheduled three to five networking opportunities where I had to get out and meet people every single day because I knew nobody.
So there I would be at the chamber, I went to a whole bunch of different BNI meetings, I went to women networking events, I scheduled the one to ones in between that. To the point where it was insane. But I didn’t know anybody. I now have a nice comfort; I’m not doing that now. I’m Still holding one to ones, still going to online networking events. So this pandemic thing has been not good for me because it has allowed me to get comfortable being home. And so now I go out on purpose, to meet people this week, I’ve got two schedules where I’m meeting people, we’re going to be in our cars in a parking lot but I have to get out the door, into the car, to get to the meeting. And I’m less uncomfortable than I used to be with that process.
There was a time in my life, so I used to dance. And I went to a dancing event, I got dressed, I got in my car, I got to the event, I got to the door, and I literally couldn’t open the door and go in there. I knew everybody. This is my community. And I just turned around and went home. I could not go in for some reason that day. I could not fight through. So how does that translate? There was something else obviously, there must have been something else going on in my life that I was not equipped to handle getting past that fear. So the first thing is, are you equipped to get past the fear?
So get comfortable, first of all, with being uncomfortable and then take the steps you need to take just today. Just today. I’ve accomplished some major things in my lifetime, major things in my lifetime. And I always start with, “What do you want it to look like when I’m done? What’s it supposed to be when I’m done? How do I know I’m done?” If I don’t know what that is, it’s like getting in the car and I’m going to go visit Aunt Beth, but I don’t know where she lives. So there’s an Aunt Beth out there and I’ll go from street to street looking for Aunt Beth. So you kind of need to know where Aunt Beth lives.
Devon: You do. It’s important.
Gail: So then you can set your GPS and even on your GPS, it’s only going to tell you to take a left at the next turn. It’s going to say, “Go straight for 63 miles,” and then it’s going to shut up until, “Take the next exit.” So if you look at this massive thing that you want, in business, if you’re an entrepreneur, or if you’re a career person, it’s the same thing. You have a goal, you have achievements, you have things that you want to accomplish in your life, even at a personal level. See what that is, absolutely see what that is, feel what it feels like to have succeeded in doing that. And then step back a little bit and figure out, “What’s the one step I can take today that feeds into that?”
Now, again, back to Living an Endlessly Delicious Life, it’s actually another training that I might put a client through to where you find your word, like, my word is delicious. I make choices based on if that’s a delicious choice or not. If it’s not delicious, then it’s probably not supporting my goals. I recently purchased a new car versus building a new bathroom. They both were going to serve a very specific need that I had, both. But you know what? My dream and my mantra was going to be served by that vehicle. And that’s another thing. Many of my clients, especially those who don’t have a purpose, part of developing a purpose is we develop their personal mission statement.
And I recently shared my personal mission statement with you. “If it’s not supporting that,” so I check, “Does it give me this? Does it give me this? Yes.” Then why wouldn’t I do it? Of course, I’m going to do it. It really helps with making decisions. So, part of managing your fear, based on the growth that you’re looking for, part of that is, first of all, is the step that you’re taking bringing you in the direction that you need to go? If it’s an absolute yes, just take a teeny step. Just a teeny step. Now when it comes to the cliff, and then I’ll ask for your perspective, when it comes to the cliff, I’ve had many clients that we get to the edge and they’ve done the work. They’ve gone this far, and we’re at the edge and it’s, “You just need to leap a little bit,” they stop. And they go back, and they don’t leap.
Devon: What’s the most common thing that you hear from people as far as what causes them to stop?
Gail: “Oh, I got distracted.” “Oh, yeah, I have squirrel syndrome.” Well, you didn’t get distracted on every single step up to here. And so there is an underlying fear that we need to get to.
Devon: So they’re not noticing that that’s self-sabotage, in that moment. It has another label.
Gail: Right, and that’s exactly it, it has another label. And I’m the type of person who will take a look and go, “That water is so deep, I can’t even see the end of it. I’m just going to hold my nose and jump in.” And I will hold my nose and jump in, and I’ve had amazing results and amazing failures. That story that I told in a previous segment, all about having no home, no, nothing, because I took that leap and went, “Oh, shit.” But man, the lessons I got from that, and the growth I got from that, and that’s the other thing. And so, some of the fear is the fear of success. And the fear of success comes hidden in a bunch of different ways. For me, it used to be the fear of losing friends. “If I succeed, my family and friends won’t understand me, and I’m going to lose them.” And what ended up happening is, my friends and family didn’t understand me, and I lost them. But I got some amazing new friends. And some of my family just call me a witch.
Devon: That feels like a bonus to me.
Gail: Because to them, it’s a miracle, some of the things that I’m able to accomplish with myself and with my clients. “How did you know to say that?” I didn’t know, I just felt it was the right thing to do and the right direction to point them in. So when it comes to balancing the fear against the opportunity of growth, what are some of the things that you’ve seen with your clients, or maybe yourself?
Devon: So I think, more often than not, with my clients, it’s a matter of them, potentially, either being in a situation where they’ve never felt the way that they would like to feel. So they don’t have anything to put into their minds as far as how it would feel to be at their ideal weight, or at their ideal health, or to be able to do the things that they used to be able to do. Those are things that maybe they’ve never had. And so, asking them to put those thoughts into their minds and use that as a reference point or something to aim for, that’s a difficult one for people that maybe have never felt that before. So then we start to break that down into other areas of your life where you have been successful.
So if you have not been successful with the goal that you’re reaching for, starting to think about the areas of your life where you have been successful. If you’re not successful in business, maybe you’ve been successful in your family, maybe you’ve gotten exactly what you set out to have. Maybe if it’s not health, it has been business. There’s always that area in your life where you feel like you excel a little stronger than maybe some of the other areas. And so reaching for that feeling of being successful, even if it’s not the success that you were actually reaching for specifically with this goal, sometimes that helps people break it down.
I think that for some people, they don’t know and a lot of people, we touched on it with yours, they don’t know that it’s self-sabotage. And so feeling like, “Well, I don’t understand why it never works out for me, I don’t understand why I get so close to my goals, and then I just don’t achieve them,” it’s because we don’t feel like we deserve it. It’s always, always, always the cause. And so anytime that I’m reaching for a goal, and I’m unable to achieve it, I have to take a look at, do I think I’m capable of achieving this? Do I think I deserve this?”
Gail: Are you good enough? Are you smart enough? Are you strong enough?
Devon: Yeah, all of those things, all of those ‘enoughs’. And so being able to look at that subjectively, and I find that process to be easier when I’m having those conversations by myself. But sometimes we need a little help unpacking that. And so being able to have someone kind of walk you through that, someone that you trust. Someone that you know can… again, we tapped into this discussion in a previous segment about people calling you out. Having people in your life that you trust that you can have call you out in ways that will improve your life. If you’re going to be in a place where you self-sabotage, then having people in your life around you, who are going to say, “No, I’m not going to let that happen. You’re better than this. You’ve got to fight harder. We have to figure out what’s going on here and we have to get you into a better space.”
Whether we’re hiring that person to help us do that, or whether we’re lucky enough to have those kind of healthy people in our lives, that’s an individual thing. But I think that regardless of what we have to do to get those people in our lives, if we don’t already have them, we need to get them because that’s the kind of support system that it really requires, I think. To have that kind of fear and to move forward anyway, I think sometimes we need to call in the cavalry to help us out.
Gail: Well, it’s never a lonely… we are not an isolating creature. We are a tribal creature. We lived in clans, we started off in clans. I read a book one time, and it said at any given point in time, you can look at somebody’s phonebook or contacts and find 50 to 75 people who they consider pretty close. That’s their clan. And that group may change but that’s their clan.
Devon: 50 to 70?
Gail: Yeah.
Devon: Wow.
Gail: Yeah. Now, there’s a difference in how close because if you think of a tribe, you may be not all that close to the medicine man, but you really do know… you’re really, really friendly with whoever takes care of the kids. Maybe you’re the person who works in the gardening while the guys are out hunting and killing, doing their thing. So there’s a difference in closeness, but still, those are the people that you would contact and connect with. If you had a big party, they would be there. So I thought that was interesting. That was something that I kind of played off of a little bit in my mind. But it really does require that you understand, don’t do it alone.
That was one of my struggles when I started in business. As a career person, I didn’t realize I was not alone. I mean, I had my staff.
And so they did the work, my job was the facilitator. I made it possible for them to do the work. I mean, the tools or I was the buffer, so no one went near them while they did their work. But that was my job. And so it didn’t really dawn on me that I wasn’t working alone, because my boss’s job was obviously to give me the tools and do the same thing. When I became an entrepreneur, I had no clue what I was doing. And the first business I was in was with someone who had been an entrepreneur and I thought, “Okay, so I will learn from her.” And I was not learning from her at all.
And so, I ended up going into business on my own and I joined groups. I joined a co-working place in San Diego that was all about supporting women entrepreneurs, and showing them the tools and techniques needed to succeed, and how to communicate. What one to ones were. I joined a BNI group and all of those things in order to learn. And fortunately, because I went into coaching, I already had a network of people in the dance community who were looking for coaches. And so I did not have a hard time finding clients at first. So I was able to build those skills organically. Even though I was out learning those skills, it wasn’t, “Oh, my God, where am I going to get the next client?” I had the clients, I wasn’t in a panicked state and wasn’t trying to figure out how to make those connections.
But I was always striving for more. And that’s another thing for dealing with this fear of growth is, it’s got to take your breath away. It’s got to be a roller coaster ride because that’s what it is. I don’t enjoy roller coaster rides, but I love the bumper cars. So mine is in a bumper car. So I’m going to bang and I’m going to smash, but I’m going to go after the next one. I’m going to go after the next one. That’s what it feels like.
Devon: So you think any challenge should feel like that?
Gail: Yes. You’re not growing if you’re not challenging yourself and if you’re challenging yourself, there should be a little bit of fear there, but not enough to hold you back. A little bit of trepidation. And yes, my leg is up again, and that’s too bad because I’m very, very comfortable talking with Devon. So, yeah, because you’re not stretching yourself.
Devon: But thinking about some of the challenges, some of the growth and obviously, this is specifically pertaining to business and business growth but I do definitely think there’s a lot of areas of personal growth as well, where some of those changes that we have to make, I’m not ever going to feel like that’s a roller coaster. I’m not ever going to feel like that. There’s just specific things that we have to work on in ourselves that maybe aren’t as… they’re not as delicious.
Gail: The result is delicious, though.
Devon: The result is delicious, yes. And being able to kind of focus on the end result is a thing. This is how you and I complement each other. You’re a goal oriented person, you’re very, very capable of thinking about the end result, having a very, very specific thing in mind that you would like to accomplish, and then getting yourself there. That’s your superpower. You’re great at that. I struggle a little bit with that end goal having a tangible outline. I’m more of a, “I don’t know what that’s going to look like. Let’s just start and see how it goes,” because I’m about the journey. I’m about the journey. I love that part of it. I love the love the click, click, click of the roller coaster. I have no idea what it’s going to look like when we start going down on the other side of that.
Gail: But you know you’re going to have the click, click, click again.
Devon: Yeah, I mean, that’s the delicious part for me. So what do you suggest for people that maybe think a little bit more like me, who, we’re just not as great at the whole having that end goal have all of its definition and lines, and numbers?
Gail: That’s having a mission statement because the mission statement is a way of being. It’s eternal, it doesn’t have an end. My mission statement doesn’t really have an end. It’s about how I show up, how I want to show up every day, and why I want to show up like this every day. And so yeah, my end result is your growth. That’s why I show up every day. And I’m not responsible for your growth but I will show up for your growth. If you call upon me, I’ll be there and if we’re done, okay, call me when you’re ready. So the mission statement. I love the journey too, you enjoy the journey, and your focus is on the journey, but that’s not true. Your focus is on that client, and where they’re going to be when you’re done with them.
Devon: Well, like I said, in the personal sense, it’s a completely different conversation, but in a business sense, of course, everything that I do is pertaining to who I want to be for them and the goals that I can help clients achieve for themselves. But as far as them, like, say clients that you have that have that struggle as well, about having that ability to just write out their mission…
Gail: Oh, they hate me.
Devon: Do you think a lot of people struggle with that?
Gail: They absolutely do. But what I do, I have exercises that we go through. So I’ll talk about my last client, and I don’t know what exercise I’m going to pull out for you because I don’t know what you need until we meet. And I have a couple at first so that we can find what your dharma is, “What is your God given gift? What is that? What’s your purpose here on this earth?” Whether you agree or not, that’s what it is, and that’s what we’re going to work towards. And he disagreed, like, his came out communication. “I hate writing. Are you kidding me?” We dug into that and he didn’t hate writing. He’s an amazing writer. He’s an amazing storyteller.
But he’s a little embarrassed because he’s dyslexic and so am I. That’s where the frustration comes in. So, he didn’t hate writing, he hated the process. And guess what, he’s now writing a book. During that process, there’s another group of questions that I sent to him. And in and of themselves, each question is digging deep. And when we were done, we went through the questions, and every once in a while, I would highlight one. And as I was going, “Oh, you must have hated me this week,” he goes, “Oh yeah, I was cursing you. Like, you did a good job, though.”
When we were done, I took those sentences out and I said, “Here’s your personal mission statement.” And he read it, he goes, “Oh, my God.” I said, “Now, you need to clean it up.” And he now reads that to himself every day. And the next thing he does an hour later is reads off a list of his that he created. So how…? So what was the point of all this? I digress. So for him, he came because he could no longer bear the pain of not challenging himself to grow. Those are my clients, “I can no longer bear the pain of being invisible.” He was successful, he’s got plenty of money, good job, nice family, blah, blah, blah, and never, ever had a dream. And now he has a dream, he has a goal, he has a purpose. He’s got juices running in his body that has never run in his body before. It’s beautiful.
Devon: Don’t you think it almost doesn’t matter what the goal is?
Gail: It doesn’t.
Devon: It’s the act of improvement, of self-improvement, that I think really taps into the parts of you that are very human and they’re about the most delicious parts of being human. I think one of the things that really has helped me recently on a personal level, but also in business, the cure for anxiety, or in this conversation, fear, is action. So, thinking about anytime something makes me nervous or causes fear. Take a step.
Gail: And it doesn’t have to even be a step in the right direction.
Devon: Because momentum is momentum. Momentum is movement. And so if you think about, and in my case, it’s a very applicable example, if you think about a person that’s sitting on the couch, no movement there, the likelihood of movement there is less likely than a person who’s standing and maybe rocking back and forth. The likelihood that that person that’s already standing and rocking back and forth, the likelihood that they’re going to take a step is much higher than the person who’s laying down on the couch. And like I said, that’s just an example but obviously, it pertains specifically to health. But I think that, regardless of the direction, regardless of the topic, if you’re scared, take a step.
Gail: Take a step. Yeah. I mean, at some point, you do have to take a leap of faith. The gap between this step and the next step will be big. But you will have practiced facing fear every day. Little teeny steps. And that’s what happens with coaching, is to step back and, “Let’s just do this.” I’ll work with clients, I’ll go, “Well, this week, the only homework I want you to do,” and I always say, “The only homework I want you to do, even if it’s a lot, is this. Do you think you can do that? Will you be able to fit that in? Awesome. If you can’t, then I’m going to take something off. I want to be sure that you are…” because then our sessions are about success.
And that’s another way to deal with the fear of growth, whether it’s personal growth or business growth. If you focus on your success, we have way more successes than failures. And our society has taught us to focus on the bad and not on the good. Yeah, “Well, you got four A’s and one D. Why did you get a D?” “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I got four A’s. Maybe look at my strength”
Devon: You’re absolutely right. It’s one of the things I think, as a coach that if you’re not doing, really, in my humble opinion, I think that we’re doing a disservice if we’re not setting our clients up for success. You’re creating a belief system in that person, and by them achieving small goals, and to use your example of taking that next step, if they have a history of being successful in those steps, then they’re going to assume that they can be successful in your goals. That’s obviously on a personal level and on a business level. I think that it just travels into all areas of life.
Gail: Absolutely. Success breeds success. And what happens when we allow ourselves, we give ourselves permission to focus on successes, that when we have those moments of failure, we can dust ourselves off and take the next step towards success. We can look at it for what it is and not look at it as, “Well, I can’t do that anyway.” I mean, I do lots of things that are not my strengths. It doesn’t mean I can’t do it. I don’t do it as well as the next person. But the things that are my strengths, the next person doesn’t come anywhere near what I can do. And so I may do something that I struggle with, but I focus on what I’m great at. Anything else that you can think of? I mean, this is a subject, we could go on forever, and we don’t have that much time.
Devon: No, I think that we’ve tapped into all the main points that I think are… no, I think we’re good.
Gail: Okay, so Devon, from Devon’s Holistic Wellness, thank you for spending your time with me today. Share with us how people can get in touch with you if they want more information about the wonderful things that you do with food and mindset.
Devon: So the website is www.dhwellness.com. And I do have Devon’s Holistic Wellness Facebook page as well. All the free tips and tricks, and recipes and all that good stuff. And the telephone number is 603-998-9951.
Gail: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Devon, for your time. I am definitely going to go and take a look at some more of your recipes. I love them all. And again, this is Gail Kraft from The Empowering Process Podcast. If you really like this, please do give me a thumbs up, share it with someone who you think might get something, leave a comment, and if something came up for you, definitely leave a comment or send me a PM. Let me know and that will be one of our other ‘ask me anything’ segments. Thank you so much for spending your time with us.
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