What happens when the life you built to look perfect on paper falls apart all at once? In this episode of Create the Space, Cody Maher welcomes back Rebecca Babcock, a coach, former media executive, and founder of Rebecca Babcock Coaching. Rebecca was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis at 16. She spent years hiding her illness while climbing the corporate ladder at companies like Condé Nast and eBay. At 35, emergency surgery removed her colon just as her marriage and her magazine career were ending. Rebecca shares how that collapse became the start of her rebuild. She talks about getting sober, why an invisible illness taught her to perform instead of tell the truth, and how owning her story changed everything. She also walks Cody through the Babcock Method, a coaching approach built on one simple question: why? Together they explore people-pleasing patterns, burnout, confidence, and why telling the truth about your struggles helps everyone around you do the same. To close the episode, Cody shares a feng shui tip on why your home works best as an ongoing practice, not a checklist. In this episode: Living with IBD and an invisible illness, and why Rebecca now feels pride instead of shame How the pressure to check all the boxes kept her pushing past her body’s warning signs Losing her health, marriage, and career at the same time, and choosing to rebuild Telling your truth without taking on a victim identity Dating while sober and without a colon The Babcock Method: awareness, aligned action, confidence, and choice Why asking “why” matters more than any quick fix Spotting the one pattern that shows up at work, at home, and in relationships Terminal uniqueness, the “struggle Olympics,” and connecting through shared experience
Connect with Rebecca:
Website: rebeccababcockcoaching.com
Instagram: @rblife (personal) and @rbc.coaching (coaching)
00:00 Welcome Back Rebecca Babcock, Coach and Former Media Executive
02:02 Founder of the Babcock Method and Life Without a Colon
03:04 Turning Shame into Pride with a Chronic Illness
04:11 Ulcerative Colitis Diagnosis at 16 and Checking All the Boxes
05:00 The Invisible Illness and the Need to Keep Performing
07:12 Emergency Surgery, Divorce, and Career Collapse at 35
08:50 Getting Sober and Trying to Fix Everything
11:19 Starting Her Coaching Business During the Pandemic
13:25 Sharing Your Truth Openly About Chronic Illness
16:28 Telling Your Story Without a Victim Mentality
19:43 Choosing to Thrive Instead of Being the Victim
22:04 Body Shame and Conditioning That Starts Young
23:05 Dating Sober and Without a Colon
25:27 The Babcock Method: Awareness Before Action
28:28 The Power of Asking Why
30:40 Clarity, Confidence, and Control in Life Coaching
31:58 Breaking People-Pleasing Patterns and Healthy Boundaries
34:57 Coaching Type A Perfectionists Out of Hustle Culture
37:28 Every Generation and the Struggle Olympics
39:26 Terminal Uniqueness and Connecting Through Struggle
40:58 Where to Find Rebecca Babcock
42:07 Feng Shui Tip: Treat Your Home as a Practice, Not a Checklist
[00:00:00] Hello, friends. Welcome back to Create the Space. This is fun because I am having a guest on today who I had on several years ago. We share something very unique in common, which we will get into a little bit on the podcast, but it's really cool if you wanna go back and listen to her first interview and then listen to where she is today.
[00:00:18] So my friend Rebecca Babcock is a coach and former media executive who works with high-functioning professionals navigating career, relationship, and life transitions. After checking all the [00:00:30] boxes, Vanderbilt graduate, leadership roles at companies like Conde Nast, eBay, and Taboola, Rebecca found herself burnt out, divorced, and facing a major health crisis that forced her to rethink everything.
[00:00:41] When traditional coaching only offered tactical fixes, she realized the real issue wasn't what she was doing, but why she was doing it. Today, she helps clients understand the patterns driving their decisions so they can make more aligned, intentional choices across their careers, relationships, and lives.
[00:00:57] Known for her direct, no BS style, [00:01:00] I can attest to that, Rebecca's work is deeply personalized and focused on helping people build lives that actually fit. So please help me in welcoming my friend, Rebecca Babcock. Hi, Rebecca.
[00:01:13] Action. Hi, Rebecca. How are you?
[00:01:17] I'm great. As I said, it's a Friday afternoon. What could be better?
[00:01:21] Yes, it's a Friday afternoon.
[00:01:23] The sun is shining in New York
[00:01:24] where we both are. Different parts of New York, but New York nonetheless. And I'm so excited. We [00:01:30] had a conversation on this podcast pre-rebrand, like back in the day. It was a long time ago. I think you might have been one of my first guests on the first iteration of this podcast, so it's really cool to connect and sort see where you're at and see what you're up to and hear everything.
[00:01:45] So let's just dive in. Rebecca and I know each other, and I told her before we started that I wasn't even gonna say hi. I was just gonna hit record. So basically that's what we did. I want you guys to really be in this conversation with us. So catch me up. How are you? Who are you? Tell everyone a little bit [00:02:00] about you.
[00:02:00] All right, well, that's a loaded question always, especially when talking to you. So I'm Rebecca. I am the founder of Rebecca Babcock Coaching and the creator of the Babcock Method. But before any of that happened, I was a IBD warrior who, like my girl Cody here, has been through quite a journey. I also had my entire colon removed.
[00:02:27] I've had a whole bunch of surgeries at this [00:02:30] point. I live my life without a colon,
[00:02:32] and that's a really big cornerstone in an unusual way for how I came to be who I am and do what I do for work. I take a lot of pride in it. It's not something I feel any shame about. It's something I feel a lot of pride about, and it's sort of emblematic ofmy life journey in a sense
[00:02:50] Wow, what a beautiful place to start. I was hoping you'd open up that can of worms. And, it's so interesting 'cause I was having lunch with a friend earlier today, and she's a newer friend in my life, [00:03:00] and I've haven't really talked to her about this 'cause I don't, I actually don't talk about it that much in my life, like with my friends.
[00:03:05] And I said I was remembering, and I said to her, I said,
[00:03:09] "You know, one of the worst things somebody ever said to me was about two years or about a year after I'd had one of my last surgeries." And they said, "Wow, how did you let it get so bad?"
[00:03:18] Oh.
[00:03:19] The amount, like in terms of the disease and like how did I let it get to the point where they would have to take out my colon,
[00:03:25] right?
[00:03:26] Yeah, I know. I was so crazy that was taking headshots [00:03:30] for me, so that I then had to like smile at the camera and pretend everything was okay, which like, how good of an actress am I, right?
[00:03:36] Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
[00:03:38] Yeah, exactly. And then I completely broke down in tears afterwards 'cause it was just like, it was like someone saying the worst thing they could possibly say, right?
[00:03:46] And I just feel like you healed something in me, honestly, because to say that it is not something that's shameful for you, but it's something that is full of pride, I've really never thought about it that way. So I'm curious, let's just start like, 'cause I know that [00:04:00] that is a lot about the method that you have and how you there, like they're not separate.
[00:04:04] So let's start with sort of how did you get there yourself?
[00:04:07] If I had the exact answer to that, I think I'd be a bestselling author by this point. But wait,I'll try and come up with it succinctly. So...
[00:04:15] Maybe that's today.
[00:04:16] Yeah, exactly. Here we go. This is how it all starts, guys. I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis when I was 16. I'm 47 years old. The internet didn't exist yet.
[00:04:24] There weren't that many resources available. No one in my family had it. You know, in a sense, I couldn't be [00:04:30] Dr. Google, butit was very overwhelming and I didn't start out feeling like it was a point of pride at all. My story is that I grew up in a very wealthy suburb of New York City, where the goal was to check all the boxes,
[00:04:45] do everything right,
[00:04:46] get great grades, look good,
[00:04:47] be pretty, be smart, graduate from college, have a great job, but then also honestly,get married, move back to Connecticut,have more children,
[00:04:57] join the country club,
[00:04:58] and move on. So [00:05:00] when I was diagnosed at 16,
[00:05:01] this wasn't something that I was jumping from the rooftops about. And one of the things you and I have talked a lot about is the idea that it's an invisible illness, and how challenging that can be. 'Cause if at 16 I was diagnosed with cancer and all my hair fell out, and everyone...
[00:05:17] It would be one thing. But I felt the need to continue to perform and to not let be something that was going to hold me back or slow me down. So I didn't talk about it, A, because no one was asking me [00:05:30] about it,and because I didn't haveanyone to talk to about it with. And that sort of became a theme of my life, right?
[00:05:39] Not just my illness, but my life, which was like, look good,
[00:05:43] pull it together,
[00:05:44] check the boxes, achieve, get the validation, get the approval, and keep going. And anything that's gonna slow you down in that process,
[00:05:53] push past it, ignore it, you know, massage it, manipulate it to get it out of the way so you can keep [00:06:00] going on your track.
[00:06:01] So I graduated magna cum laude
[00:06:03] from college. I got a job in magazine publishing. I'm working at Vogue, right? I have no time to be doing the kinds of things that Cody and I,
[00:06:11] we used to do as it relates to management of your disease. But as I got older, 16 to 20,
[00:06:17] 20 to 30, my disease had gotten much worse, and my quality of life had been really pretty significantly diminished.
[00:06:25] But it wasn't something I ever asked for special [00:06:30] rules. It wasn't anything I ever really talked about at all. And so in a way, the gift for me, and I loved what you said, "How did you let it get this far?" I would've dove out of my seat and scratched that person's eyeballs out ' cause the truth is, I kind of truthfully did let it get that far because my body was telling me in so many ways, like, "We're not, we're not like everybody else here in your early to mid-30s climbing the ladder while also like marrying a celebrity chef and traveling all [00:07:00] over the world and running marathons without training and doing..."
[00:07:02] Like, no. And my body was trying to tell me, and I was like,
[00:07:05] "Shh, shh, that's fine.
[00:07:06] We're just gonna keep going."
[00:07:08] So I was very ill and kind of refused to admit it and was taking crazy medications of all kinds. And at 35 years old, in an emergency surgery, my colon was removed. At the same time, my marriage was ending and my career in magazine publishing was ending.
[00:07:29] [00:07:30] So I had a choice, right? And the choice was to either own all of this and move forward or to let it completely collapse. I didn't have a career. I didn't have a partner. I didn't have, you know, I didn't have my health. I literally, it all fell apart at the same time. But without talking for 45 minutes,
[00:07:47] that became the gift that was the next chapter of my life,
[00:07:50] which was the rebuild with the admission that our power comes from our vulnerability.
[00:07:56] It comes from our honesty. It comes from telling the truth. It doesn't come from [00:08:00] masking and hiding and pushing and ignoring.
[00:08:02] Wow. We have so much more in common than I feel like we've ever uncovered. It's such a similar story in such a different way, and I'm not gonna get into mine right now 'cause someone could go back and listen to that if they want. And again, this has come up a lot, is like we grew up in this culture.
[00:08:15] You and I are of a similar age. We grew up in a similar environment of this like, for lack of a better word, hustle, push, go. And everything is based on what you produce and whether it's the grades you get or the job you have or the success you have. It's just all [00:08:30] this outside measure, and I was the same and was like, "This isn't my way.
[00:08:34] Shut up. Let's keep going," you know? So I really appreciate you sharing all that. And I had a similar thing, like career part, everything fell apart at the same time. But tell me your rebuild. So what did that look like for you? And I know that you didn't go from, you know, A to B. Who you are now and what you do now is, there was a bit of a
[00:08:53] road to get there.
[00:08:54] Oh yeah. So at 35 my life imploded. I [00:09:00] responded to that through just trying to fix it. Put a little glue here, put a little tape here, shift this, do that. I got sober, which was very important. My story isn't one of rehab and like these dark... I just, my life imploded, and I didn't know how to deal with it.
[00:09:16] So the first thing I needed to do was to get my head back on right. And I celebrated one year of sobriety in the hospital, having my first of the five GI surgeries that I had. So at first I just thought, "Well, [00:09:30] I know what to do. Just fix it. You know? If that doesn't work, take a heavier hammer." So I started hiring a career coach to help me figure out a new career after magazine publishing and like,a health and wellness coach, and then like a therapist, and then maybe a relationship coach,
[00:09:44] 'cause that's how we were gonna fix things. And what I started to learn very quickly was, and this is no fault to these coaches,
[00:09:51] I remember at one point the career coach was saying,
[00:09:53] "If you gun harder, we can get you into an SVP position by the end of the year." And that my therapist was like, [00:10:00] "You almost died. You need to relax and slow down."
[00:10:05] And I said to them,
[00:10:06] "I'm paying each of you however godly amount of money an hour to do this stuff.
[00:10:11] I would like to pay each of your hourly rates to have you two talk to each other. Because if I listen to one of you, I have to ignore the other one, and vice versa." And their response was, "Nope." No, thank you. And that was the beginning. So for me, it [00:10:30] took about five or six years to really rebuild every aspect of me and to really understand who am I?
[00:10:36] What do I want? You know, if it's not just achievement and checking the boxesand doing it to get somebody else's validation or their approval or their acceptance or their gold star, do I even know? I often say to my clients, it's one thing to know what you're running from, but if you don't know what you're running towards, you're just constantly talking about what you don't wanna have happen, the kind of work you don't wanna do, the relationship you don't wanna be in.[00:11:00]
[00:11:00] So at the end of about seven- or eight-year process of continuing to work big corporate jobs, I worked at eBay, I worked at other big companies. During the pandemic, I was let go from a job after five months that I had no...
[00:11:14] I was the head of sales for a company.
[00:11:16] I just said, "It's time."
[00:11:18] And so I got rid of my very expensive lease on my apartment in New York. I moved in with my mother in Connecticut, and I started this company. And my mission and my goal was to create a place [00:11:30] for people to admit,
[00:11:32] "Hey, maybe it looks like I have it all on paper, but honestly, I feel stuck. I feel lost. I feel meh. I feel like I've done everything right."
[00:11:40] And not because their life imploded like mine did. In fact, before they get to that point, and then being able to offer them an opportunity to look at career and finances and relationships and wellbeing andself-esteem and all of it together, because you can't parse it out.
[00:11:56] And so I created this thing that ended up becoming
[00:11:59] The Babcock [00:12:00] Method, but it really came out of
[00:12:04] The GI stuff and then getting sober and realizing that my strengths and my weaknesses were the exact same thing, and the things I was trying to hide and try to be like, "You're not gonna like me 'cause I'm adivorcee," or, "I have diarrhea 15 times a day," became the things that as I opened up about what's been hard for me,
[00:12:21] it invited everybody else around me to share their stuff as well.
[00:12:25] ' Cause one thing I'll say, and then I will stop, is that, you know, everybody has something. [00:12:30] Everybody has a thing. And if the majority of life is spent trying to hide from the thing you don't want people to find out about you, you're wasting so much time to collaborate and connect and to love and be loved and to make a real difference.
[00:12:45] So if we own our stuff... And you know, sometimes people will say, "Well, oh my God, my thing's not as bad as your thing." It doesn't matter. This isn't like the Struggle Olympics, you know? But when say it out loud and we tell our truth, it unburdens us. It doesn't make things worse. It makes things [00:13:00] better, and I really learned that kinda like the long and hard way.
[00:13:03] So I am grateful for my disease, right? Because it forced me to be like, "Yo, this..." If I didn't have a chronic illness, maybe I could've kept pushing through and kept churning and hustling and then what? Then I would be 50 when the breakdown happened? Who knows, right? So long-winded version of finding my life's purpose through breakdown, I guess.
[00:13:25] Not long-winded at all, actually. Quite succinct, I would say. I have many questions, but my first [00:13:30] question is, sohow do you share that truth these days? Is it something that you lead with? Is it something with your clients?
[00:13:37] Like, is it something that you're very vocal about? Is it something that all your friends know about? Is it, like, if you're dating, what about that? How have you kind of recovered from that hiding?
[00:13:46] I think when it fell apart, right? And I couldn't be like,
[00:13:49] "But I work at Vogue, and you know, my husband owns the hottest restaurants in New York," and like, "Look at me, I look great."
[00:13:55] I realized at that moment how much I'd been carrying and how [00:14:00] exhausted I really was. And so there's a quote that says something like, "Rock bottom is a perfectly good place to start."
[00:14:09] Yeah.
[00:14:09] And that exactly what it was. I'll be honest, the first few years after the surgeries and getting sober and trying to figure things out, I was like,
[00:14:15] "I'm just gonna tighten everything up, and I'll get back on track.
[00:14:18] I'll find a new husband,
[00:14:19] I'll get another new job,
[00:14:21] and I'll make more money."
[00:14:22] And then I didn't have it in me anymore.
[00:14:25] I didn't really have the hustle in me, and it didn't feel good anymore. It didn't work. These old [00:14:30] things didn't work anymore. And so I'm very honest. I have a video, it's about three minutes, and it kind of tells this story that I'm telling you, and like, then how I created The Babcock Method and how there's other coaches involved, and how it's a holistic experience.
[00:14:43] And I ask people to watch it before they meet with me because they may watch that and go, "I don't want a life transformation.
[00:14:52] I don't want to be, feel fulfilled. I just want to make more money and get a new job. Awesome. You're not my people, right? I have [00:15:00] been exceedingly open with my illness for a long time.
[00:15:03] I'm very involved in the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation, and through telling my story,
[00:15:10] I've helped to raise a lot of money, with the primary focus of that money being finding a cure. It's not gonna be for me. It's not gonna be within my lifetime. And I will give a lot of credit to 12-step programs, like the one that I'm in, because
[00:15:25] the whole idea is share your experience, strength and hope with others [00:15:30] so that they can solve their own problems and help recover, right? The biggest gift I can give is just telling my truth, and my life has changedin a180 change by owning who I am. The response has been all the things I always wanted.
[00:15:48] "You're amazing. You're a role model. You're awesome. You know, I'm so amazed by you." No one was saying that when I was staying up till 2:00 in the morning finishing corporate decks before ripping out an eight-mile run [00:16:00] before work,and fitting into designer clothing. No one was saying that then, right? So it takes the leap of actually telling the truth to receive the feedback that was what I'd always wanted, you know? To be loved and appreciated and recognized and validatedand seen.
[00:16:17] Yeah. And I think there's a really important distinction because I do not get this energy from you at all, and I'm so curious your thoughts around this. So something that was super important to me at some point in my journey, I can't tell you [00:16:30] the exact date, but at some point I said to myself, "I cannot identify with this anymore.
[00:16:33] I do not want to be the girl with a chronic illness."
[00:16:36] Because that is a frequency and a vibration that I do not wanna keep my life in,like, sort of trauma fest, right? And so I think it's such an interesting line that you've managed to walk, which is telling your truth from an empowered place, from a place of like, "I am proud of who I am.
[00:16:53] I am proud of what I've been through, but this doesn't define my life. I've seen that with people. Like, they fall into [00:17:00] this who I am. I am a girl or a woman or a man or a non-binary person with a chronic illness, and this is my whole. And I thinkthat impacts us physically asI think it caps our healing. So I'm curious you to talk about that too.
[00:17:14] 100%. It's a really good question, and I wanna give you an honest answer
[00:17:19] Yeah.
[00:17:19] I kind of already said it before, and no one's ever asked me this in this way, so I'm just gonna tell you the truth of it. The outpouring of positive energy [00:17:30] and love and caring and support and connection that I've received as a result of telling this, and the amount of people who call me who have somebody who's recently diagnosed in their life, and thinghas been so...
[00:17:44] Selfishly, it's been so beneficial for me. And the other thing I wanna say very specifically about the disease that we have is that it's not chronic migraines, it's not Lyme's disease. The actual symptoms are shameful. [00:18:00] They're embarrassing. They're deeply, deeply misunderstood.
[00:18:06] I'm playing around with writing a memoir andone of the ideas of a title I play around with is, But You Don't Look Sick.
[00:18:13] Right? And this idea that you can't judge a book by its cover. So people could look at me and say, "Oh, you know,
[00:18:20] she's this preppy, go-getter girl. She works at da, da, da, da, da. She's always so well-dressed." And never in a million years would they be like,
[00:18:26] "I think she's walking around without a colon." You know? [00:18:30] And so it begs this. It opens up this dialogue with everybody where it's like careful what your impression is. And what I have received overwhelmingly is that when I talk about what I've been through, it softens other people and invites them to do the same.
[00:18:45] Yeah. Yeah, and I think it's about how you carry it, right? Because there's a real difference. Like, I do not get victim from you, not even for a second.
[00:18:54] There is no victim energy in what you're talking about, and so it really shifts. And I think this is so [00:19:00] important because maybe there are people here living with this, right? With anything. Maybe simpler, but similar. But I do think it's really important, and I think we need to be really careful about the identities that we place on ourselves. Because if you identify like that all the time,
[00:19:15] that is something you are preventing yourself from growing in a certain way, you know?
[00:19:20] So it's complicated, and I just think it's an energy,
[00:19:23] and I just wanna compliment you. I think you've really nailed it.I think that it's a really great balance of not being in that victim [00:19:30] energy, not feeling like this has ruined your life. But at the same time, owning it,
[00:19:35] and at the same time not being ashamed to talk about something that most people find quite shameful and have no interest in talking about. Right.
[00:19:40] Which I hope changes.
[00:19:41] Tell me if this resonates with you. I think we all should and do lean into our strengths. So I'm a natural-born storyteller.
[00:19:52] I love to talk and share and connect. Like, I think talking about the weather is offensive. It's a waste of all of our time. I'm fine. I don't [00:20:00] care.
[00:20:00] You wanna talk about traffic?
[00:20:01] No, I don't wanna talk
[00:20:02] about the Knicks. I mean, I'm happy for them. But, you know. So I've often thought if this was gonna happen to someone,
[00:20:10] it's probably good that it happened to me because I don't have a shy bone in my body, you know? And that whole victim mentality, I blah. It makes me...
[00:20:19] 'cause Iwill get people who wannatalk to me about coaching,and they'll say like, "Well, LinkedIn is conspiring against me," and you know, "There's no jobs anywhere," and, "I'm aged out of everything," or, "I'm too this," or, "I'm not [00:20:30] enough that." And, you know, oftentimes what I say is like, "Well, if you believe that, then I don't know why you're even contacting me.
[00:20:36] There's nothing to help you," So if you choose not to be the victim, the only other option is to assess what you do have and figure it out, and do something.
[00:20:47] Yeah, thrive.
[00:20:48] Yeah.
[00:20:49] My life isn't anythingclose to perfect. There's a lot of challenges still and as you know,chronic illness means indeed chronic.
[00:20:57] It means it doesn't go away. It [00:21:00] has seasons and reasons, but I choose to look for the opportunity instead of looking for... There's a lot of, even in my journey since then, like I had a surgery that was botched. Like I've had a... I don't have great luck, right? But what's the point?
[00:21:15] Don't say that about yourself. You just said not to do that. Don't do that.
[00:21:19] Well, I'm actually okay with it.
[00:21:20] My luck up until this point hasn't been great, but it is changing right now.
[00:21:24] Yeah. And myexpectationof what's expected or what I should expect has also [00:21:30] changed. Like, I don't sit on the couch eating Bon Bons and hope that my life is amazing, right? I do my part, but I also know that, one of the things you learn when you have a chronic illness is that, life is lifey, and you can plan as much you want, but then things are gonna happen.
[00:21:45] So being able to kind of adjust your sails in real time is a skill that I think most chronically ill people have either figured out or they're shut-ins now, and they've, you know, they've stopped trying to participate in the [00:22:00] world.
[00:22:00] Totally.
[00:22:00] That's a very real root. And I think that shame starts really young for a lot of people. I notice that I'm so intentional with my daughter. Like, every time she poops, I'm like, "Your body's amazing. This is so great. I love your poop." Like, I'm really... I maybe go, like, too far in the other direction, really wanna celebrate that for her and normalize that this is a beautiful, wonderful thing that your body is doing because when someone tells her that it's gross or that it smells, I'm like, "You are out." Like, "Go. Go away." know? I do not want that [00:22:30] because we grew up thinking that our bodies are disgusting, right? And so, there's a lot of conditioning in there to really work with, and that's kind of a tangent. But I just wanted to say, it's just this thing that, for some reason we've all deemed as gross.
[00:22:44] Yeah, and I think also it becomes universal. Take out poop and put in weight. Take out weight and put in skin color. Take out skin color, put in religion.
[00:22:54] There's so many things where we have been conditioned and maybe [00:23:00] there's a part of me that likes the shock value of saying the things that other people won't say, 'cause the ceiling doesn't cave in.
[00:23:06] Right. Right. Totally.
[00:23:08] And you asked me a question a while ago that I'll come back to now. You asked about dating without a colon and
[00:23:12] Oh
[00:23:13] Yeah. Oh, yeah. Tell me about it.
[00:23:14] So there's like a double, triple layer for me, right? I am sober,and I don't have a colon. So here's what I've discovered. If I'm like, "I have something I need to tell you," and like, it's not that big [00:23:30] of a... it's fine. But I don't drink and I don't have a...
[00:23:32] Then they're like, "Whoa, that's a big deal, and I should be concerned about this."
[00:23:37] But maybe it's because I don't have that victim mentality,
[00:23:39] I'm kind of like, "Yo, off the bat,
[00:23:40] here's some stuff you should know. I don't drink. I don't have a colon. I pretty much manage my own stuff. I can eat wherever I want, 'cause sometimes I just bring my own snacks, but like, we're good."
[00:23:49] You know? And if they wanna make a big deal about that, that tells me so much about them, and their lack of open-mindedness, their inability to be resilient, and their inability to pivot in real time. [00:24:00] I don't care if I'm dating someone who drinks or doesn't drink, but if they don't like that I don't drink, that tells me a lot more about their drinking habits than it does about me not drinking.
[00:24:08] You know? And I say this because this is true. A lot of people have things that they're maybe ashamed about. 99% of life is about how you own and present your story, which gives other people permission to either freak out 'cause you're freaking out or to take it...
[00:24:24] 'Causeif there's one thing people would say about me, they would say, "You're so confident." And sometimes I [00:24:30] don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but if I say it in a convincing way, which is what I learned,doing a lot of presentations and pitches and spokesperson stuff in the magazine world.
[00:24:40] If you stand up there and you say, "There's three reasons why."
[00:24:43] By reason one,
[00:24:44] I'm like, "I need two more.
[00:24:45] I need two." But you know, there's ways to say things that make it sound like you know what you're talking about, and I think how we present says a lot about it. And I will add one more thing.
[00:24:56] My family didn't necessar-
[00:24:57] No one was celebrating my poop or [00:25:00] talking about it at all for that matter. But no one also said like, "Oh, she's sick. She can't do that."
[00:25:07] So it was just sort of like, I also found out when I was 45 that I have dyslexia.I didn't even know, right? So same idea. It's sort of like you pivot, you figure it out, you make things work as opposed to there being like a giant plastic bubble put around me.
[00:25:21] That's really great. It's just this not lighthearted, in a like, it doesn't matter way, but just a like, "Okay, and?" Moving on. Yeah.
[00:25:28] So, oh, that's so great. [00:25:30] Thank you for all that. I would love to shift a little bit and talk about your method, and we talked about this on our first chat, which people could probably scroll back and find.
[00:25:39] But I'm sure it's evolved since then it's probably been five years. So let's talk about it.
[00:25:44] So the core principle basically is we all need to stop. Here's what we're all doing wrong. We're jumping into action. We don't like our job, our marriage isn't working, we don't feel and we say, "I'm gonna quit, I'm gonna move, I'm gonna get a [00:26:00] new house, I'm gonna..." Whatever it is, without really understanding why. Who am I? What do I want?
[00:26:09] What am I good at? What do I enjoy? What is the core principles that are my guiding lights in my life?
[00:26:17] So people feel uncomfortable, they do something, and then they feel stuck because they hate their job now, and then on top of that, their marriage isn't really...
[00:26:25] What I found was that was true for me.
[00:26:27] You know, my life imploded and I just said like, [00:26:30] "Okay, hire a career coach. Get a relationship coach. Let's keep it moving. Let's go, let's go, let's go." And I think if one person had said to me, "Rebecca, your life imploded. Who are you? What do you ... want? What's important to you? What are your values? How do you define success?" I would've been like,
[00:26:43] "Oh, I have no idea."
[00:26:45] So the work that I do is really about understanding before we take action so that the action that we take is far more strategic, it's more proactive, [00:27:00] it's more productive. It has a strategy behind it.
[00:27:02] And what I've discovered in my own life and with clients is that what comes next, start with awareness, then you take action, is confidence.
[00:27:10] So we don't wait until we're confident to take the action. We determine what our core belief and what our purpose is. We start taking action. If it works, great, we keep doing it. If it doesn't, we go back to awareness and figure out why it didn't. I love this expression, "Esteemable acts build our self-esteem."
[00:27:29] So this idea is [00:27:30] that it is throughtaking action, not throwing spaghetti at the wall, but aligned action, aware action, that we build our confidence. And that ultimately at the top of this pyramid is the feeling of choice. This is my life. This is what I choose to do, big picture, but also this is how I choose to react if I get cut off in traffic.
[00:27:48] This is how I respond. This is what I eat for lunch. This is what I do when I am stressed, right? And I think ultimately, more than getting a new job or making more money, what people want is they want to [00:28:00] feel like they're in control of their life. They wanna feel like they're in the driver's seat of their life.
[00:28:03] They wanna feel like they know who they are, they know how they work through the world, they know what their patterns are, they know what holds them back. So I do all of those other things, and I help with career and relationships and self-worth and finances and all those things, but at the core of it, I wanna ask every single person why.
[00:28:21] So if someone comes to me and says, "I wanna make a million dollars," a more traditional coach would probably say, "Okay, cool. How money do you make now? What's your earning potential? [00:28:30] Ba-da-da-da, let's put together a budget and a strategy." And I'm gonna say to them, "Why?" And it just stops people in their tracks.
[00:28:41] What do you mean why? If I had a million dollars, I'd feel confident, I'd feel secure, and I'd be respected. Okay. So let's work on you feeling confident, secure, and respected, and actually, while we're at it, is that an inside or outside job?
[00:28:54] Do you need to feel confident, secure, and respected so that you can make a million dollars? [00:29:00] Because let's be careful. If you've decided that the only way to feel that way is if you have a million dollars, what happens when you get to a million and you don't feel confident, secure, and respected? Do we need 2 million? Do we need 10 million? This is where people come and say, "I feel exhausted. I've done everything right. I've checked all the boxes, and I feel like the more I climb, the higher there is to climb."
[00:29:20] And so really what the method is about is before we jump into action, let's check the motivation, let's understand the patterns, let's see, [00:29:30] are you running away from things? Is it a childhood trauma that you're trying to get away from, and that's why you're so ambitious, hungry?
[00:29:36] Or is this something you're running towards? "I wanna make a million dollars because I have estimated within my budget that at that exact amount, I will have enough to do this many vacations, this much time with my chil-"
[00:29:46] And these are the things, "And I love playing golf, and I..." Okay, cool. Let's do that.
[00:29:50] And by the way, that person doesn't need me because they just need to put it in their calendar and get going. So the method itself is about [00:30:00] making me no longer be useful,
[00:30:03] understanding what your patterns are,
[00:30:05] understanding what's holding you back,
[00:30:07] helping you take new aligned action that builds your confidence so that you feel in choice.
[00:30:11] And then you're like, "Bye, Rebecca," 'cause I'm not putting a Band-Aid over something and just saying, "Oh, they need a minimum of a million dollars, and they'll feel good." No, let's ask the questions. Let's validate that. Let me, kick that. around a little bit before I just say, "And off we go," because that person's gonna hire another coach, and another coach, and then a therapist, and then a financial planner, and then at [00:30:30] some point they're gonna come back and say, "I feel stuck and lost and meh, and I have a million dollars in the bank."
[00:30:35] Right. Totally.
[00:30:36] Yeah, like the stick keeps moving.
[00:30:38] Yeah, it sort of throws the concept of action-based coaching away. It's not that I don't do that. So the first phase of the work that I do with my clients is clarity. Values, goals, true goals. Not just a performance goal of, "I wanna get this done by the end of the week," but why? What are you laddering towards?Right? And then the second phase of the work that I do with them is [00:31:00] about confidence. What's holding you back? What are the voices you're telling yourself? What's the childhood stuff that's going on? Unlike therapy, I don't care as much how or why it started, I care why it's holding you back now.
[00:31:11] Right.
[00:31:12] Right.
[00:31:12] And then the last part is what I call control, which is the tactics. Do we need to redo your resume? Do you need to work on your health and, you know, diet? Do we need to look at meditation activities? What does your breathwork look like? But none of those tactics are gonna stick if we don't first understand what we're [00:31:30] solving for.
[00:31:30] Yeah, it makes a lot of sense, really getting clear on the motivation and I think it's so true that so many of us don't actually stop and ask ourselves this really amazing simple question, which is, “Why?” Like, why? Right?
[00:31:44] And it can apply to anything, I'm just thinking about...
[00:31:46] Yeah, of course. Of course. Why do you wanna have a child? Why do you want a new house?
[00:31:49] Right. That’s what I was thinking about.
[00:31:50] Absolutely.
[00:31:51] Yeah. And it can go so deep, right?
[00:31:53] It always goes so deep. I'll give you a personal example, 'cause obviously I'm not shy. So [00:32:00] before I created this method, this is actually a big reason why I created it.
[00:32:03] I had a boss who threw a stapler at my head, and that's objectively unacceptable.So I hire a career coach, and the career coach, helps me get a new job, right? 'Cause the problem is my boss. So in the new job, I was pretty significantly sexually harassed. This was before the days of the Me Too movement, so there was no money to be made here.
[00:32:25] But I hired another career coach. I got another job. At this point, I left magazine [00:32:30] publishing completely. I went over to eBay, and then I had an encounter there with a person of color who was female and based on the West Coast, who recorded me without me knowing it and played it. And my therapist was like, "All right, we're gonna s-," ''cause I was about to hire another $5,000, $10,000 career coach, and she was like, "All right.
[00:32:51] Here's the deal, girl. You've been coming to me for 15 years talking about how you didn't feel validated and loved enough as a child. Do you not see [00:33:00] that you are taking authority figures--
[00:33:01] Manifesting it.
[00:33:02] and making them...
[00:33:03] You don't set healthy boundaries. The first thing a boss does is not throw a stapler at your head.
[00:33:08] You know, the first thing they do is something else that you let that slide, and you let that slide 'cause you wanted so badly to be, get the promotion, get the raise, be accepted, be validated." And it was like And I was like, "Oh, and that's why I under eat and over exercise. And oh, and that's why I married someone that...Oh." [00:33:30] And then I was like, "Okay, cool. What do we do about it?" And she's like, "Oh, I have no idea." You know? But, and that's, all of these were sort of the drops in the bucket of creating a method that, uh, that looksat patterns and helps people figure out that it's not 65 different problems. It's one thing that manifests one way at work, and one way at home, and one way in relationships, and one way in health and wellness, and on and on and on.The calling card, the thing that I want is for everyone to know what their pattern is [00:34:00] and own it, tell the truth about it, and move past it.
[00:34:03] It's so beautiful and simple.
[00:34:06] Yeah. The beginning of this conversation was like, "You don't seem like a victim." No, I don't,'cause I'm like, "Here's my story. I didn't feel loved enough, so I broke my body trying to be good enough." And what I discovered was, underneath all that was a person who inherently had skills and talents and strengths, and things that they weren't highlighting 'cause they weren't the things that they thought would help them climb the corporate ladder and marry the right person and [00:34:30] do these things.
[00:34:31] And that I was here all along, If I didn'thave a breakdown, I wouldn't have stopped. And in the stopping I had to ask myself, "Why? What do you want? Why do you want that?"
[00:34:42] Totally. It's such a great question, and I just love the simplicity of it. I'm all about simplicity lately in so many ways. And I think it's so powerful because as the world gets more and more complex, it's like I feel like there's this real power in going back to these simple things. So I'm curious, as [00:35:00] we're coming to like the end of this conversation-ish, what excites you now? What are you growing towards? What's exciting for you?
[00:35:07]
[00:35:07] That's a great question.
[00:35:09] This is a real pivot for me. I worked in corporate for America 21-plus years and no one was having authentic, real vulnerable conversations. No one was talking about how do I level up so I can be of service to others? Those listening don't know this, but before the podcast recording started, Cody had us do this beautiful kind of listening experience, breathing, [00:35:30] and just saying like, "Help us to channel whatever it is can be most helpful to others."
[00:35:34] And that's really my life's calling. So at the same time, I have to pay bills, you know, and I have a chronic illness, and I have medical expenses, and I don't have a corporate job that pays for that kind of stuff. So I'm just so inspired by what happens when I talk to people and tell my truth, and they do the same thing.
[00:35:54] And I've been doing that predominantly one-on-one, and I've started doing retreats in places [00:36:00] where a collective of people can do this together. And I'm watching my one little pocket of the world change. And then these people go back into their lives, and they say in a board meeting, "Hey, it's okay to be a little nervous."
[00:36:14] Or, "I stayed up all night thinking about this, and I, still don't have the answer for it." Or, whatever it is. And that their experience is also, "I'm not getting laughed out of the room, i'm not getting shunned out of the room." As I tell my truth, it gives other people permission to do the same thing.
[00:36:28] And so [00:36:30] what excites me and what keeps me up at night is just continuing to watch this thing that I do evolve and progress and seeing. Instead of saying, "This is my vision. In the next five years, I need to do this," and seeing where it's best received, andrecognizing who wants to hear this and who needs to hear this.
[00:36:48] And what I'm finding predominantly is that it lands with anybody who's Type A hustler, perfectionistic, maybe their colon didn't get removed in an emergency surgery. Maybe they didn't have their whole [00:37:00] life fall apart at the same time, but they're tired of hustling
[00:37:03] #Everyone.
[00:37:05] Yeah. Unless you're like 22 and you're like, "No, I'm s- I, I, I'm just getting warmed
[00:37:09] True.
[00:37:10] True. Yeah.
[00:37:10] No, I mean, there are peoplethat are so afraid to ask that question, to, ask why, that they just keep hustling.
[00:37:17] Yeah. Although I feel like I've heard that the younger generation is kind of averse to that hard work. I've heard that in multiple places,that there's a whole trend around younger people that really are like,
[00:37:27] "We deserve our leisure time."
[00:37:29] So I'm [00:37:30] gonna add something to that, 'cause this is something I hear often. Every generation thinks that they worked harder than the generation before them. Every person I talk to says, "I graduated college at the worst time. I graduated, it was 9/11.
[00:37:43] Oh, 2008, it was the stock market crash. Oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:37:46] Everybody thinks that they had to work harder to get where they are, and I think that what the truth is, is that our generation,older, maybe even a little bit younger, we're pissed that we had to actually crawl and dig and [00:38:00] scrape. And so it's not that we think that they don't have good work ethic, it's that we feel like they should have to have had the struggle we had had.
[00:38:09] F*** the struggle, though.
[00:38:09] I mean, really, f*** it. Like, who wants struggle? I don't.
[00:38:12] I don't know. They have technology that I didn't have. I have a lot ofthings they don't have because I've been alive on the planet Earth for a while.
[00:38:20] Plus we had the '90s, which was just awesome.
[00:38:22] We went out to play and didn't know where we were going and didn't have cell phones and had to figure it out.
[00:38:27] Yeah, I don't know. I have real '90s [00:38:30] nostalgia, so I feel like that's...
[00:38:32] I feel like we had amazing things in the 90s.
[00:38:33] I think that they have
[00:38:34] a different value proposition, which is probably more about like work smarter, not harder. But I don't think we actually don't like it. I think we're jealous.
[00:38:43] I have no opinion 'cause I have no interaction with this, so I've never really experienced it. I'm not, like, hiring people in their 20s yet. But I'm curious about it, and I think you're right. I think I had this same conversation earlier thatevery generation thinks this, right?
[00:38:58] We all think that we had [00:39:00] XYZ orwe're different in this way, and it's probably like, a truth.
[00:39:03] But I think that actually as a way to put a bow on all this, is actually what we're talking about. ' Cause everybody has these things that they feel like make them different or make it harder. And as you start to say it out loud, it's like, "Oh, your generation was this, and my generation was that."
[00:39:18] And then that allows us to connect as opposed to have the struggle Olympics, which is like who had the worst. And what do you win? You know? Nothing.
[00:39:27] You win nothing. You win a big old pile of poop. But [00:39:30] yeah, this like, what is it called? Terminal uniqueness, Have you heard that? Of course. Of course.
[00:39:34] I think there's something so powerful in recognizing that you're not actually special. Even though you and I don't have colons, which is kind of a unique thing, although there's lots and lots of people actually that don't have colons, but it doesn't actually make us special or unique. It's just our story.
[00:39:50] Well, I will say this. I think I'm a total, excuse my language, you can bleep it out later, I think I'm a badass.
[00:39:56] No, I just cursed before. Yeah, you are.
[00:39:58] Perfect.
[00:39:58] I think I'm a total [00:40:00] badass, and part of why I know I'm a badass is because my whole life fell apart and I pulled it back together and I made something out of it. So I do think that I'm unique, but I'm not unique in having struggles.
[00:40:10] I'm not unique in having family issues or health issues or a marriage that didn't work out or career problems, right? But I think that in seeking connection, we don't look for the differences, we look for the similarities.
[00:40:25] Totally. Totally. Yeah. That's so beautiful. [00:40:30] Well, I'm on my third drink here. I wonder who's clocked that I've literally drank three different things.
[00:40:35] I didn't say it, I was shocked that I drank this entire thing. This is what happens, people, when you don't colon. Hydration is key.
[00:40:40] I feel like people are like, "How many drinks does she have in that tiny box?" I've seen at least... There's three, guys. There's three in here.
[00:40:48] Well, Rebecca,thank you so much for spending this afternoon with me on this Friday, summer Friday. Is there anything else you feel called to share?
[00:40:56] I wanna know where people can find you, how people can work with you, where [00:41:00] they follow you on the medias and all the things. Yeah.
[00:41:02] Well,
[00:41:02] probably the easiest way to find me is on my website, which is, this is a tongue twister, get ready everybody, rebeccababcock, B-A-B-C-O-C-K, coaching.com. I am on Instagram @rlblife is my personal one, which has a lot of disease journey stuff, and then @rbc.coaching. Everything else, I don't know, they're all interconnected.
[00:41:28] It'll all be in the show notes,
[00:41:29] [00:41:30] Okay. Okay.
[00:41:30] Yeah, and anyone who's listening who wants to just have a chat and isn't sure and could this be interesting or not, it's free. Let's chat 15, 20 minutes. That's my gift to everyone. And the one last thing I wanna say quickly is a thank you to you,Cody, for this work that you do, and the way that you have transformed your life, and the legacy that you're building with your daughter and your husband and your home and your lifestyle and your authenticity and your truth.
[00:41:57] Taking the time to create a podcast it's not a light [00:42:00] endeavor. So you're doing your part to really help enlighten and shift and change consciousness.
[00:42:07] Thank you, my love. Don't go away. We'll say goodbye privately, but bye everybody. Talk to you soon.
[00:42:13] Okay, so today I wanna talk about something that keeps coming up in the private spaces that I am holding consultations in, and that is this desire to just get it done. Like, give me the checklist, Cody, tell me where to put everything, tell me [00:42:30] exactly what to do, let me follow through with that, and then my home will be, quote unquote, feng shui'd, and I will have all of that on my side.
[00:42:38] And while there is nothing more that I would love than to be able to hand a client or a friend or a person, just a person, a checklist of everything they can do right now in their home to make it completely, quote unquote, perfectly aligned to their vision. In fact, that would be better for my business, right?
[00:42:56] How much simpler would it be if I could promise that? [00:43:00] Just like, "Hey, I'm gonna hand you a checklist. If you do everything on this list, you're gonna get everything you want." Well, that would be lying, and I'm not about that. I'm sure you can find someone out there who will work in that way, and I'm not knocking this person at all, because you know what?
[00:43:14] I'm not about that. I'm not about needing to put other people down in order to lift yourself up. So that's not coming from this place. It's just not how I see things. We are in this relationship with our homes. Our energy is constantly changing. Our home is constantly changing.
[00:43:28] So while there is an [00:43:30] order that we can work through and things that we can do that will most likely affect bigger change, it's never something that's going to be, quote-unquote, complete, because we're always changing, and we need to continue to tend to our homes and work with the environment and read the cues that are coming back to us, and that's not always going to be a big thing.
[00:43:50] It's not gonna be like, "Okay, now I have to spend hours and hours overhauling my whole house." It might be something as simple like, "Oh, this crystal doesn't wanna live here anymore. [00:44:00] Oh, this plant needs more light. Let me move it over here." I just had that happen. I was very committed to having this plant in the bathroom, and I was like, "You're not happy in the bathroom. Let me move you."
[00:44:08] So it's really just understanding and working through those cues, but going back to what I just said, I come up against this a lot, especially with a certain type of person. I do believe that feng shui tends to attract the Type A, let's get it done personality.
[00:44:23] It attracts all sorts of personalities, but that is one of them, and that person wants to work through things like a checklist. [00:44:30] Like, all right, I moved this, and I moved this, and I moved this, and let me do this, and da-da-da, let me just get it all done, right? And my reports that I hand people, there's lots of information in there.
[00:44:37] I'll just say that. And I caution against moving too quickly because really what we want to do and what will be most fulfilling, most effective, most high value in the end is if we can slow the F down and make one simple intentional change, rest, let it have the effect, and then continue on. [00:45:00] So instead of, "Okay, I moved this out of my bedroom, and I swished my bed, and I da-da-da-da, and I ba-da-da-da, now what?
[00:45:04] And da-da-da." If we can just take a breath and say like, "Okay, let me do this one thing and see what the effect is," or if you must, do three things and see what the effect is, or one whole task, right? One whole section or category, I suppose.If you were really needing a new perspective and you were like, "Okay, I'm gonna take all the art off my walls, let my walls be bare for three or nine days, as long as I can stand it, [00:45:30] and then I'm gonna see where things wanna go," because when we change what we see, what we see changes.
[00:45:34] So anyway, that's my message to you today. My message to you is, if you're here for the long haul, if you're here to really have your home help you in your life, yes, there are things that we can do right away, but we really want to treat feng shui as a practice, as an experiment, as a new relationship that we are welcoming in.
[00:45:55] And just like with new friendships, you can't just jump in and know everything about a [00:46:00] person instantly. Things unfold, things are revealed, things shift, things change. So I hope that you can allow that patience to trickle in to your relationship with your space. If you want to continue this conversation, find me over on Instagram, and I look forward to seeing you next week.
[00:46:17] Have a great one. Bye.