Impact the World: Terri Cole

[Music] welcome to impact the world the show for and about creatives change makers and entrepreneurs this is a conversation episode where a special guest shares with me what they are creating and the behind the scenes journey of their experience [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello welcome to today's episode of impact the world where my guest is terry cole terry has had a really fascinating journey in that she was a talent agent for models and celebrities for many years until doing a complete 360 in her early 30s and training to be a licensed psychotherapist this has been her work and her passion for the last couple of decades and alongside working one-on-one with people and creating her very popular boundary boot camp five years ago terry has had a podcast for the last six years and just lately or recently by the time this show airs she is releasing her book boundary boss so terry was new to me um but as soon as i saw a couple of her videos i loved her sassy spirit and her truth telling and i knew that i wanted to get her on the show so we have a really good talk about boundaries about why we struggle to set boundaries and what some of the underlying causes are and also terry's journey with her work and how her childhood set her up to work in this area and this field terry also has a free gift which i will give you the link for now if you go to boundary boss dot me forward slash impact she has a free gift around boundaries for all of our viewers and listeners so i hope you enjoyed today's episode with terry and as ever if you enjoy the show and you want to support us it helps us enormously if you rate review or subscribe to the podcast on apple podcasts terry welcome to the show it's really really lovely to have you on thank you so much for having me liam so psyched well i was just telling you before we got started here i had not heard of you until not many weeks ago and you came across my radar and i checked out some of the stuff that you were doing and hey i loved what you were doing and the vibe and the way that you do your work and you are this brilliant blend of grounded practical and and of course with your background as a therapist you come from that world but also the energetics of of who we are as humans and how our patterns can get in our way or enhance our life if we understand them so i was excited to have you on especially because of your new book which is right there behind you and it's called boundary boss it is and how long has that book taken you to put to to bring to fruition to bring to life how many years are in that book for you well here's the thing truthfully my whole life is in that book like everything that i learned so i mean it didn't it didn't take me 15 years to write it of course but it was coming for that period of time because you know what do they say that you teach what you most need to learn and so i had so much pain in my young life through not knowing what boundaries were or how to establish them or enforce them or even speak them really at all and so it was through a long process of my own therapeutic my personal you know being in therapy and then becoming a therapist as like a second career actually because i was a talent agent for you know negotiating contracts for supermodels and celebrities for almost a decade prior to becoming a psychotherapist and you know firsthand that entertainment is not a hotbed of mental health when it comes to boundaries especially because it's very melded so my own journey of realizing wow this is the thing that's missing in my life i need to learn effective communication i need to learn to you know what i say in the subtitle of the book is um it's boundary boss the essential guide to talk true be seen and finally live free and that i was not talking true almost at all so my process then being an entertainment and then being a psychotherapist i had this whole epiphany like oh my god this is an epidemic where every person who came every client who came into my office even though their presenting problem was different and unique to them whether it was not getting paid as much money as someone else at their office or having difficulties in their relationship or family of origin stuff everything went back to the lack of this all-important skill set i was like oh my god nobody is teaching this we don't learn it at home and if you're a woman really if you are raised as a woman we were not only not taught it right we were literally taught the opposite of it we were raised and praised many of us for being self-abandoning codependence yeah this was this is what meant you were a good girl you're a good woman you know people love to say she's amazing she would give the shirt off her back to anyone you want to be like why it's cold like be discerning maybe but it's almost like the more self-sacrificing the more praise so anyway that this is what i got interested in and then i spent a long time in the trenches with my therapy clients like actually doing it day to day um just taking copious notes and coming up with interventions and accessible ways of getting to the information that my clients needed in their own unconscious mind right i don't have their answers but i know where they are so that was the whole process that led to it then i created a course that i ran for five years so i could in real life see what does work for people what is accessible what are the things that can go away and then that became boundary boss perfect you know i loved something that you wrote in your bio and you just touched on it you um you said when it became evident that the things that i thought would make me happy didn't so you said money power sexy job i could no longer ignore the voice in my heart asking isn't there something more meaningful you could be doing with your life than making supermodels richer and i love that line because i i often think it it takes us walking into the dream we thought was our dream to figure out we're in the wrong dream and i know countless people with those stories i'm curious what led you into therapy at the time that you started working with clients because that must have been a big 360 for you and i'm sure there was trepidation about changing especially from such a successful established career yes and yes my own journey so so part of what was very influential is my own therapeutic journey that i got into therapy very young i was only 19. stopped drinking when i was 21 because of a therapy i was in a relationship with a therapist who was like oh what you're describing is alcoholic behavior i was like wait who what do you mean no idea i mean i'm in college too it was my senior year of college i was like p.s everyone's an alcoholic if i am and she was like oh they might be and i don't care because you're the only one who i'm seeing so if you don't get help i will have to i will terminate our relationship i was like damn is bev breaking up with me like can she even do that is that like a loud like she's ditching me and so i did she said you you have to go to a 12-step program and just learn about this so i did and i had this very um life you know a power pivot moment in that experience in long island in a church basement in a church in syosset keep in mind people it was the 80s so i want you to visualize if you can what i might have looked like with like my huge hair crazy hair long crazy nails anyway lots of makeup so i went into this this meeting and there was a woman who was similarly shellacked to the way that i was i thought she was very beautiful like four pounds of makeup on and she came over to be nice and i was sitting by the door because i thought well i might need a quick getaway i was also you know smoking my parliament 100s considerably because p.s young people everybody smoked um they really did and everywhere and she came over and said oh are you new and i was like yeah i am and she was like what brought you here and i was like well my therapist threatened to break up with me if i didn't come to at least one twelve step i mean i just told the truth and she said oh okay well welcome i'm so glad you came here's the coffee here's the thing and then just to be friendly and i don't know to be polite i said so so what brought you here and she said um i killed the six-year-old boy in a drunk driving accident i was like yeah oh my god so in that moment i knew that that could have been me many times in my young 1980s 90s life and the gratitude that i felt i could barely keep it together for the rest of that meeting i went into the car i was bawling my face off because it was so real and i was so relieved it was like someone gave me a second chance in life to have that not be my story and so i made and i really did make an agreement with the powers that be that like i got it i see this i know what you're giving me and i'm done and i stopped drinking and i was a senior in college actually and that changed my life because now i was wow eyes wide open and it shifted getting into therapy and self-help right because that's what followed is a lot of self-help book and exploration you know the road less traveled that was a member yeah m scott pacquiao oh so into it and i couldn't believe i thought like how is this a secret that nobody has told me like i could just change the course of my life myself by understanding why i am the way i am and i could use these tools to more deeply understand myself but then to change the things so it was as if i used to think like oh here's life it's a game everyone gets a hand you know sometimes you're like wow my hand sucks you know what do i do with that this experience made me realize i could get a new hand i could get rid of that deck i could literally create a new game which is what i did and just from that point forward i realized it didn't matter what i had experienced in my family there was a lot of addiction in my family um and you know just like anyone's family being sort of messed up but that didn't have to be my future right i could choose a different path and i didn't have to waste 10 years of my young life you know lighting fires and wondering why i was getting burned which is what would have happened and i continued drinking i could stir it right now so that really changed my life so bringing it that was the longest way around the barn to get to your question which was leaving entertainment and why but i wanted to tell you that back story because it was therapy that afforded me that early pivot that changed my life so i was such a devotee of the process and of my own learning and when i say evolution i just mean self-knowledge evolution because i don't really know other evolution but that like knowing yourself so when it was time to get out of the business i kept thinking in entertainment if it would be the next famous client that i had or it would be the next job the next place where i was running the place then then i was going to feel the way i hoped i would feel i kept i was chasing this feeling but then i got to that little place on the top of that little hill whatever that was and i was like crap i still don't feel the way i want to feel and so that was a realization and then i really started looking at the business itself and i was like dude this is so not cool this whole thing this objectification i had a niece who had a weight problem a young niece at that time and i was like what are you telling her about her value if you're a part of this machine where everyone should weigh zero pounds there was a lot of internal realizations that i was having and i remember telling my father that i was quitting my job and going to nyu um to become a therapist and he was like sounds weird [Laughter] how old were you at that point early 30s oh yeah so very established i had i had really accomplished a lot in a short period of time and i thought you know the thing with ambition is like it's very tricky so i thought i'm just ambitious i just this is just my thing i'm just doing my thing that's it and then through therapy i realized so the whole time i thought i was running towards something i had this realization no perhaps it was more me doing this looking behind me and really running away from something which was i was the fourth daughter of a father who should have had sums i felt like i was born the wrong gender i was trying to prove i was better than any stupid boy he could have felt like there was a whole thing happening as to why i was sort of killing myself so that also helped me walk away from entertainment because i was like okay you you don't want to live your life for dad and it's so interesting the stories that kids like make up for themselves when i asked my mom about that when i said that she was like terry that's not true at all and my parents got divorced when i was 13. so it isn't like you know she was protecting him she was like never he never said anything like that i was like oh so his disinterest in us it was easier for me to make a reason that i was the wrong gender than to just accept that he just wasn't that interested in his kids which was the truth you know what i mean yeah so so we make up these narratives to be like well that's slightly less painful anyway moving into it wasn't easy to change and it wasn't you know i had to really look and say hey will i be okay being broke for a while because as much as i'd worked for a long time and i'd made a ton of money i also spent a ton of money traveling and doing whatever the hell i wanted so that was one thing to consider but then i got to a point where i had to leave where because i the only thing i cared about was the mental health of my clients getting them into eating disorder clinics drug treatment clinics therapy like i no longer cared about the movie contract or the pantene deal and i was like you're going to start really doing a crappy job like you need to get out of here and that was when i just i just pulled the trigger and i actually um only applied to one grad school which is pretty nervy since i went to a crappy undergraduate school and it's not like i'm a genius you know i'm smart but i'm not a genius and i just thought listen if i'm not gonna go to like in omaha to go to grad school like i've been living in the city for years i can't and i thought if i could just get an interview i could explain how entertainment this not hotbed of mental health was the thing that i could you know and i was able to actually get an interview and then i got myself in somehow fantastic how many years were you training at that point the the the program at nyu was a two-year program that i did in an in accelerated way so i did it actually in 16 months wow okay and then what was it like you know when you first started with your first clients like what was your what do you remember feeling uh like i should be paying them right i was like hi i was like a talent agent a minute ago is what it felt like you know the first um when i first was in in my first internship it was a lockdown psych unit in the bronx so it was really far away from my upper west side apartment and i had been running things for so long that even i i just wanted to learn i was like cool and you know you're in a situation where a lot of people are already burned out no idea i had literally no idea how dangerous where it was the place that i was this was all people suffering from schizophrenia violent offenders they had all these ex-nfl uh football players who were the basically the bodyguards the security there but like the person who was supposed to be like watching me and teaching me like was so done with her job no one told me anything like on day one i just was like all right i'm gonna go to the unit and meet people and have like the scariest experience and i was like you know you need to slow down like you literally don't know anything about this world you can't just apply your winning formula that worked in entertainment to this place so the learning curve was so massive but it was once i learned once i had a few scary experiences and got it together psychologically myself i learned so much and i loved it so much and i definitely learned that i did not want to work in a lockdown psych unit but i learned a lot about schizophrenia and all the other things so being in that learning curve of just being in grad school was uh so energizing and inspiring i was like oh yeah for the rest of my life this is definitely what i want to be doing that's beautiful and i love that for you you know you were i mean you were you were not old but the early 30s when you leave a successful career it's just a reminder that at any age we can change if we have a passion and we feel to do something we can go and do the learning and we can switch i'm curious terry you you know you've touched on your journey with boundaries and and i totally agree with you i think we end up teaching for me it's a little of both sometimes it's what we need to learn or often is but equally for me i recognize that i've ended up working in a field that i desperately needed as a kid like i've ended up doing the very thing that if i had had in my life when i was younger i would i would have been better adjusted sooner and not needed to go through all the you know the therapy and the self-help and all the stuff i did but that was actually my initiation journey but i'm curious for you how do you feel today as the terry that we have sat here with us with this book behind her called boundary boss how does the young you feel about this you know because the young you you said didn't have boundaries and didn't know what they were i mean how does it feel today to be sat here talking to me as one of countless people i'm sure that you're talking to about this book i'm just curious what it's like for you well the child the young me is excited but she's a little trepidation about being so um visible with this like i she's she knows we're an expert and like we're fine like our stuff is solid but she's a little bit like worried about the um visibility factor which is so interesting so i'm always you know soothing her and protecting myself but it's interesting because you know i was always an outgoing kid but it's different when you're when you have the disease to please right when you're a people pleaser when you are sort of the i was the hero child sort of in my family system because it's not really the real you it's the role that you get so good at playing of being the helper being the fixer right being the one that everyone is like but you're the rock you're the one i come to and i had a brilliant therapist in my 20s helped me sort of reconcile the erection of the false self and she had this great visual where it was like you know here's the shiny successful doing you know talent agent sparkly life life but then behind this and almost imagine it like a billboard right and behind the billboard is like little me like sitting with like a scraped knee my nose is running i'm like dirty faced like what and there was this melding of realizing and that was also the beginning of doing some shadow work of like true self acceptance and self love and and self compassion like why so hard why so pointing out all the things you did wrong like why not be kind to yourself and that in my 20s that was sort of shifting that relationship a little bit so i feel like i have a pretty good relationship with my inner child now but she's psyched she's a little nervous of course that's and i think it's so important for people to hear that because one of the things i think can be a misconception when you see for example in your case wow boundary boss she's really clear she's really strong i think it's important to remember that for any of us when we're when we're doing something in the world that's bigger than we normally do whether it's putting a book out or whether it's saying that thing to our sister at the dinner table that we've been suppressing for years it is always going to be a little a part of us that that is a little uh uncomfortable or needs to come along with us and and kind of love that part of ourselves because you to me what you just described i i remember as a kid feeling i had an i had an extrovert side and i also had a role that i developed but what i was not in touch with as a child or even aware of was my sensitivity and it's like reclaiming sensitivity in my 20s and 30s allowed me to kind of reclaim the introvert part of me that i was just dragging along through all of these things and not looking after him you know and now it's a balance of those two is how i stay balanced but yeah and i think many people will relate to that because sensitivity when we were younger was just not it just wasn't discussed no people didn't even know it it's like all the being an empath as a child and being a highly sensitive person i was always so living in the dark sensitive to light never wanted the lights on like and my mother was very um my father was pretty absent but my mother was very in touch she was very in tuned and she'd be like okay like she didn't shame me or embarrass me or make me wrong for those things she is that type of parent and and i'm lucky because i was the fourth one and she was pretty tired at that point but i can remember being like a little just little maybe like two and she would come all the way down and be like so you want to do that like are you saying yes you don't oh that's that's itchy you don't want to wear it you could take it off we have something else like she was such a and she still is just so amazing and i feel so blessed that i had someone who didn't make me wrong for being like a baby empath that no one even knows what that is she was just like okay that's your preference sure so i did grow up thinking that what i thought um mattered like like in some way that i knew that it mattered somewhere what i thought or what i wanted which i think was it helped me be successful that's beautiful what would your mom uh say about you that you specifically brought to her life or have brought into her life she's embarrassing what she would say and what she does say to people people are like oh my god i love your daughter she's like i know she's amazing i love her too she's awesome they'll say she changed my life my mother would be like she changed mine too so what wouldn't my mother say lee about how friggin amazing i am that's great that's great because i i know many people where it's the other way and how wounding that can be so that's fantastic i think switching though i think part of it because i was the first person to get sober in my family like probably honestly to answer the question the most significant thing is that coming from an alcoholic system my father was a high functioning alcoholic my three older sisters two of the three were absolute alcoholics and i was the youngest so getting sober when no one else was sober was super not fun at christmas as you can imagine i was drawing boundaries left and right of how long it would stay of you know and and i remember my mother saying early on in my sobriety i said um you know i told her i said my therapist thinks i'm an alcoholic and my mother said because you know she didn't mean to be but she was an enabler she was like oh you know terry maybe you have a drinking problem i was like uh you could call it maybe i have a hippopotamus but what hi why are we splitting hairs but she made her feel better to be like maybe it's a problem and then she said and you know just because you stopped drinking doesn't mean everyone else has to even though she was not a big drinker but she didn't want the conflict that she knew was going to come if i was like hey man everyone's got to get sober i was like dude trust me it's enough for me to continue to stop drinking i cannot worry about anyone else but i did go back and drag most of my siblings into sobriety with me over different ruptures or accidents where they almost died or whatever and she'll always say how you know i taught the family to talk about these things and about addiction and but they were open i mean listen like lucky me right that they were open yeah and she was open to learning and seeing her part in being an enabler and just yeah i feel very blessed beautiful so boundaries let's talk about boundaries for a second um you have some wonderful you know if you go to terry's website and we will put all of the links in the show notes and we'll put uh your website up on screen uh for the viewers who are watching you have some great things like back to boundary basics how to set boundaries with difficult people you have a whole range of um different slants and boundaries and i know that the people who know me and my work we've i've certainly done a lot around boundaries over the years because like you i gloriously had none and sometimes that was wonderful and had i had magical experiences because of it and sometimes i had very slow painful um repetitive learnings until i you know woke up and got it yep and it was interesting because one of the things that i remember around 12 years ago i channeled a message that was all about boundaries and one of the lines that came through my guides that i was channeling for this recording which we transcribed was to fully open your heart to life you must learn boundaries and i remember this was put out this is about 2008 oh my god we put this out on a quote card and i was still learning this at that time even though i'd come a ways in my life you know i was still as as is often the way with the channeling it's it's new to me or it's the next wave of what i'm going to be learning too and um we had a lot of kickback and we don't get much kickback you know there's not a ton of conflict or negativity in my community usually but i remember that quote card went out and it didn't have the contextualizing paragraph and in the community i was working with at the time which is very spiritual in nature there were a lot of comments like that's not right i don't want a boundary i'm here to open my heart fully and i remember reading some of those comments and i totally understood where some of them were coming from like i didn't think they were wrong but i also saw how black and white they'd taken that sentence to be and i was curious that it triggered something in us yes i was like oh this is a really interesting trigger and of course the years have gone on and i i have a much richer understanding of at this point curious for you who has made boundaries a big focus in your life and your work and you've heard so many stories and what are our biggest objections as human beings to creating boundaries in our life what are our big triggers well let's talk about the myths because this these are the things that actually get in the way so the most common like i will just go through them quickly but these are the things that i've seen over the many years of doing it boundaries push people not true real love needs no boundaries right intimate relationship is if it's a real thing then it's unconditional no it's not boundaries are selfish no setting boundaries require you to be mean no boundaries require too much time i want to be like dude do you know how much time it takes to be a boundary disaster trust me that takes more time setting boundaries requires you to say no all the time reject people all the time people will like you less if you set boundaries so those are like the top seven myths i'd say so let's get into if we can how why those things are actually not true and and i think that we should establish when i when i'm talking about boundaries i'm going to give you my definition so that we're sort of on the same page it means that you know your preferences your desires your limits and your deal breakers and you have the capability of communicating them clearly and concisely in your relationships all of them to me that is being a boundary boss we do this with ease with grace with love when appropriate maybe not with love with your boss but other people right when appropriate it can always be done with kindness so a lot of the fear and myths come from the fact that people who don't um talk true as i like to say about how they feel or wait too long to express that a boundary has been crossed then we use like a sledgehammer when we could have just used like a pencil because we waited too long and there's this cumulative effect of frustration of anger and of feeling like someone is taking advantage of us but i make the distinction in the book that he people fall into categories you have your boundary first timers now those are people that maybe they have been getting on your nerves but you have never expressed with language either written or verbal your boundary request so there's still a first timer because we got to give them a chance we gotta say it because you might be shocked that they might be like maybe they're just tone deaf right this this happens maybe they're just um not dialed in you know some people are just not they're not in they can't sense they can't read a room yeah exactly right maybe they're just on mars but it doesn't mean that they're trying to trample your boundary then you have the repeat offenders these are the people that you have expressed a boundary with or said no and they've tried to work down your no continue oh one of you so when you sleep on it you've said no four times and they're still asked saying that you should sleep on it and give them the answer tomorrow no so those are repeat offenders so we we deal with them in a different way because eventually we need to add a consequence to something right and then we have boundary destroyers which is like the category that boundary bullies also fall into boundary destroyers i have an entire chapter in the book because these are people where the regular rules don't apply a lot of times it might be narcissistic personality disorder could be a bunch of the cluster b personality disorders um could be just super difficult people who are just contrary who are just always trying to get their way no matter what you say so i literally have an entire chapter because what we do with boundary first timers and repeat offenders would not work with boundary destroyers so let's talk about boundary first-timers once you make your boundary request known or you set a limit or you make a request about a preference because these are all forms of boundaries so i want everyone listening to get or watching to get in your mind boundaries are really not about just saying no they're really not they're about having your no be authentic so that your yes can be authentic right it's like if it's not a hell yes it's a hell no right you ever hear that marie forleo says that there's truth that when you if you have the disease to please if you have if you are looking for validation outside of yourself quite a bit if you say yes when you really want to say no that means that people can't trust you because they know i know the people pleasers in my life i was one so trust me people i love you no judgment i was you right so i understand how hard it can be but know that people know this about you when my friend who's a people pleaser says she's gonna do something i say to my husband yeah jenny said yes but that that means about 50 chance that she's in it's okay that's the way she is i can accept jenny i love other things about her but i don't count on her and then i have like lara you know my best friend who if she's a yes we could have talked about it eight months ago and had a plan for like saturday and at that moment on saturday she'll be like hey i'm on skype where are you like yeah you will not forget her yes is her bond her no is the truth so i don't worry that she's lying to my face to make herself more comfortable because another thing lee that we really love to do and i was the queen of this is so much of this we do under the guise of being nice like i just don't want them to think i'm mean i just want to be nice you know i just i just want to it's not nice to say yes when you want to say no because what ends up happening is either we do the thing with like a big grudging energy we're kind of keeping score like yeah she better appreciate that thing that i did that i didn't want to do right or we bail at the last minute where you know you say yes to things that you really don't want to you find a way to have a headache on that day and again that's letting people see you as someone who they can't count on or who doesn't keep their word and there's a lack of respect a lot of times that will happen i remember in my young life in therapy with that therapist when i was in college i was just telling a story about you know um i said i had a flat tire because i was late to work so in the end of that session she said okay so today we've established that you're a person who lies and i was like holy crap am i she was like well yeah you overslept and said you had a flat tire that's lying and i was like oh my god and all of a sudden i go you know bev i don't want to be a person who lies she's like okay we'll start working on that next session like she like changed it for me though you know yeah completely is lying so anyway long link i'm coming back don't worry to the boundary first timers but i feel like the yes and no stuff is really important because there is a misunderstanding in there too that of what is what is it to actually be legitimately kind it is the most loving thing that you can do to talk true in your relationships you are giving people the honor of actually knowing you and when we don't give them the right intel the right data about us they're confused they think we like things that we don't they think we're mad about something else because we're indirect about how we're expressing our displeasure right we're slamming a door or rolling our eyes or not getting back to them for five hours rather than just saying hey i'm really upset i have to i want i want to put this on your radar i did not appreciate this is how i felt i felt minimized whatever whatever the thing is and i give you all the scripts the whole chapter is just scripts so don't worry you you'll have the words when you need them but the most crucial part of becoming masterful at boundaries is so that people know you because your preferences your desires your limits your deal breakers those things are what make you lee harris those things about you are what make you you just like those things about me are what make me uniquely and beautifully myself so when we hide that or deny it or repress it we're not allowing ourselves to you know like expand into who we could become who we're meant to become because we're walking on eggshells because we're keeping ourselves small to avoid rocking the boat but when as um i think it was who said it it's a great quote it'll come to me where when we like shut ourselves down to keep the peace when we don't speak up to keep the peace we start a war within ourselves yeah i've heard that quote richardson that's who cheryl richardson very good yeah it's interesting you know because i'm listening to you a couple of things like pinging from over the years with boundaries myself and and the first thing i i totally remember like in my specifically i think in my early 20s making up stories to kind of comfort people exactly the same thing like oh well i'll i'll say this because i wouldn't want to upset them like and that was how thick my people-pleasing uh armor was at that point but i i realized years later both through my own kind of growth and also through working with people one-on-one that for the people that i was often working with and who were attracted to me and who were similar to me in certain ways it was the avoidance of conflict or discomfort that would stop us putting boundaries in place either conflict with someone else or the discomfort of their discomfort if we said no and that was a big one for me that was like a light bulb in my late 20s i don't feel comfortable as the healer and the helper and the the role-based person standing in front being in the room with someone's discomfort that i'm not solving or helping or healing and of course a lot of the people i've worked with over the years have been healer types or healers for work and so there's that piece that comes up but the one thing that i've always expressed to people is if you state your boundaries successfully a few times and be very patient and kind to yourself when you do it in artfully or ineffectively the first few times you know the first few times you're just getting used to the discomfort in your body of the fact that you're doing it but once you've learned to do it in a few areas of your life you'll hold a vibration that is going to be different it doesn't mean you don't still have to assert the boundaries but i think some people their big objection i've heard is i don't want to be a person who's always asserting my boundaries and i'm like if you learn to assert your boundaries in a few key places people will smell your boundary on you and they won't mess with you so it's you know it's like we we we kind of hold that um that energy field of there are people who walk into a room and you're like i'm not gonna mess with them and it doesn't mean that they're intimidating necessarily but you can feel when someone holds their power and as you call it their truth in their body and in their way of communicating that is such a great point of you don't have to re-assert them like every third second of your life what changes though is that the whole the whole process of becoming a boundary boss in the way that i teach it it all starts with your relationship with yourself and really the truth right self-love is the only path to any other love worth having i mean that's that's just the truth because if not we're just looking for someone else to fill a bucket that only we can fill it's the whole thing that leads us to not great places and the correct pot always finds the cracked lid so when we have very disordered boundaries very porous boundaries we call them if they're very malleable we will find the takers the predators the ones who were like oh my god you can't say no i can't stop saying gimme like whoa can't wait we're going to be great together so the this shift in relationship when you fall madly deeply in love with yourself when you treat yourself with the love the kindness the consideration which is so much of what the beginning part of the book is is unearthing or downloaded boundary blueprint which is in the unconscious mind through all of these different activities that we do you know we just learn from our family of origin oh this is how you're supposed to interact this is what you do when you're angry this is how you problem solve or don't all of that family system is it very enmeshed is it very separate those things all set us up to relate to boundaries a particular way so that's there that's like one thing but you how you treat yourself in the in the middle of all of this sets the bar for every other relationship in your life so if you have a low opinion of yourself if you don't think you're worth consideration you will inevitably attract others who agree with your self-assessment so we're always working on raising our self-care our self-consideration and i'm always saying to my clients your preferences matter and why it's in the book all over the place and why i put that as a part of what boundaries are is that people are so quick to say i'm good it's cool no must no fuss you know me i'm easy and you're like but are you though and why do we feel like someone should throw us a parade for being easy when i'm actually interested you know i first met my husband he was just so he was widowed three acting out teenage sons his wife had died when they were little kids i came in 12 years later and it was a [ __ ] disaster but i just loved him so much i was like you could have four to four teenagers and i was like love will find a way babe oh that's love terry 44 teenagers all right well trust me three felt like 44. as they were getting into trouble and doing all these bad things but i used to say to him early on because i'm such a talker and i just want to know what you're thinking and i remember saying to him i said you know babe if there's anything that i'm doing that's like bothering you or i could do differently i really want you to tell me the first time i said that to me was like is there a problem is something wrong are you mad are you upset are we in trouble is something going on i was like no then well you always want there to be a problem there's not a problem i was like no babe i don't want there to be a problem i am specifically interested in what you think and if there's something that i could shift specifically i would like to do that and if you don't tell me i won't know it so it took a while for him to get how like much friggin work this relationship was going to be what's the i'll tell you and then you'll you know that's probably what's going through it definitely thought it was a setup to something and the only thing he could come up with is like you know you have all that hair after you wash your hair sometimes it stays in the drain could you take it out of there i was like of course and 24 years later i've literally never washed my hair and not waited for the water to go down and clean the drain and not thought of him lovingly like it's not that there's a problem it's that that level of communication and preference which was my point is the way that we can also love each other better be considerate of even the small things and for yourself you know how much of the time do we go it's fine how about it should be an awesome why why why fine how about let's make changes so that for one of the first things we do in the book is you do this massive inventory of the okay and not okay list where everything from like the lighting in your office to the sheets on your bed to the way you're having sex with your spouse or whoever like all of it so that you start thinking because i know from my practice my therapy practice that i would ask the women who come in and i would say either something like what brings you joy they'd be like never thought about it i'm like okay well let's all right that that's a start but then i started asking like what what is working for you and not working for you in these areas and they're like oh no listen it's fine i don't want to make a big deal i'm like why is you having your preference met by you literally things you could do for yourself why is that making it a big deal it's not it's treating yourself with consideration and why shouldn't we do that i know i don't know where i was going but there we are beautiful beautiful very yeah there's there's a lot of light bulbs going off right now on the other side of this conversation um so terry i'm curious you know you've done this this body of work now on boundaries because as well as the book you have blog posts you have a quiz you have you have a whole you always have your boundary boot camp right which is your course that you said you started five years ago but you also started a podcast and i i'm not sure what year you started your podcast 2015 2015 and i'm curious what was that like for you so what was the ethos behind your show and and how is the experience of of doing a show been for you you know it's so interesting it's transformed so much um i'm just so fascinated by people i find you incredibly fascinating like i want to ask you like i'm literally we're not even done and i can't wait to be like please come on my show because i'm so interested in what what experiences that people have in their early lives that um impact where they end up and like like you're asking me these questions a lot of them are similar like why and what and what is it like what is that like for you because i find this human condition and humans in general i just friggin love people i'm so mesmerized by our potential and by our moxie and by our cruelty and by our all of the things that are humans so that was really the the desire was to have a platform so i could interview people whose work i love and then it changed a lot for a while i did just myself talking first i only interviewed people and then my people were saying we just really wanted to be you so then for like a bunch for a long time i was like oh okay so i guess i don't need to do the blog the video and the podcast being like all like dude i was putting out so much content is ridiculous clearly i needed a marketing manager like uh it could all be the same thing but i love love love doing it now i'm interviewing so many interesting people and you have to come on my show i would love to i would love to no definitely and and it's interesting you say that because i remember there was a point very early on in this show where i'd agreed i would do some episodes that we were going to call insight episodes and you know my social media manager very quickly pointed out to me they were the most popular episodes and they do really well on youtube you know and i was like okay but i don't want to do those anymore i'm actually you know i i produce a lot of content i'm loving the conversations and for me i'm loving getting to kind of there's a personal side which is you know meeting you delightful i'm loving learning more about you but i also hold an ethos for the listener that we're going to see a range of people doing a range of different things and there'll be some similarities but why are we different how is what we do in the world different so you know so i ended up following my passion with the show more than worrying about numbers or any of that stuff um even though i appreciated his feedback you're like but i'm the one who asked to do it and i don't want to yeah yeah but but um i'm curious what's well this is a really weird question for me to ask you because you're releasing this book into the world and so i know that that will bring with it a whole new way for you and i don't know what that will be and you may not yet fully know what it is but it's gonna it's gonna do different things in the world there's going to be a different ripple effect for you so it's going to bring new experiences and new people to you but i'm curious do you have a vision or a feeling or a hunch about what might be next for you in the coming few years so it's a premature question but i feel compelled to ask him i think that my my heart's you know my it feels like my dharma my my mission you know is to impact as many people around the world as i possibly can in this positive way to give these tools because i knew as a therapist i knew it wasn't me i knew i believe i'm perfectly special and regular all at the same time but i knew that the truth was i did not possess the magic i was just holding up the mirror to my clients so they could see their own and i knew even though therapeutically listen what i'm doing is not popular amongst now people want to do it but when i started doing it they were like i don't know if that's ethical you're a psychotherapist what are you doing blah blah i was like listen trust me i'm figuring it out i'll do it the way that i do it because a lot of therapists want or or need the way that their business is built clients to like need them you know and i never even when i only had that and no no public anything i was always like no i'm gonna teach you skills i'm gonna teach you strategies you do not need me i would always be like i think you should take the summer off i feel like you should spread your wings like they're like why are you ditching me but i wasn't i wanted them to i don't want to be a crutch for you because that'll not really helping you then then i'm centering myself in your experience anyway so when i started teaching this this complex therapeutic stuff in courses people were like you're nuts and i was like no no you know why because my audience is smart as hell and i know that if i am a good and clear and concise coach and if i can take these theoretical things and make them accessible like i did for the course like i do in the book they don't need to be in therapy for 20 years and if they want to like i want to i love being in therapy i will be in it forever but it's not necessary to do that in my estimation i was like i know that this is this will translate so i want to continue making anything that will lessen the suffering and increase the joy and the it's really the sovereignty right it's the i want to help people become truly self-determined mindful what you are doing is your choice instead of feeling trapped in their lives so i could see that going a bunch of ways i'm sure there'll be other books i really love to talk i'm sorry did i just talk the whole time while i was on the show why i have you on the show so thank you for doing exactly what i was hoping you would do you people pleased me very well excellent excellent maybe a talk show i don't know i would do that you know but just more of the same and now that the world is opening up again i mean not not prematurely like i feel like in another six months maybe but i want to go back to speaking publicly and going to cali and all the places i was supposed to go all over the world with this book i had three i had three cities in australia four cities in europe and we were doing eight in the us wow and i did none and you know what i'm kind of psyched like it's okay but i would like to do that at some point so maybe the next book of course and you know the irony of course is that the the for those of us who had to cancel live in the room events we suddenly became more accessible to other people online so that's the kind of golden kind of silver lining if you like but that sounds fantastic i can see you doing a very good talk show by the way um all the other stuff is great but i can definitely i'm holding a flag for that one because i think um i think good conversations between people are for me anyway really illuminating like you know i love hearing what's going on for people and how are they thinking and feeling their way through life so yeah that would be great well we're about to close our conversation but i know that you have a special gift for all of our viewers and listeners so perhaps you could walk us through what that gift is okay to get it you're gonna go to boundary boss dot me forward slash impact and i created a lesson basically so it's a video and then a downloadable guide about how to protect your energetic boundaries your own bandwidth and so i walk you through you're going to do you're going to basically see what relationships in your life are really draining your energy and your bandwidth and again not because we need to break up with anybody because we need to see where is that happening and what are the things that you could do i'm going to give you ideas of things that you could shift i'm going to give you some some simple um language that you can use so it's sort of like some sentence starters ability to say no make that a teeny bit better than it is i think you're going to love it and then i give you two other things to do one it's called top of mind which is like raising your awareness about something for 24 hours and then in the go deeper um you're going to be that's where you'll be taking the relationship and energy inventory so you can see where you are in your relationships beautiful so that's boundary boss dot me forward slash impact and we'll also put that on the screen for those of you who are watching and we will put it in the written show notes for you so terry it has been delightful you are delightful i love what you're doing in the world and um it's been really great to get to know a bit more about your why thank you thank you thank you i loved this conversation and i super appreciate what you're doing in the world and can't wait to have you on my show definitely i will i will we'll we'll set it up after this so best of luck and love with the book and for those of you who tuned in today whether you are watching or listening terry cole's book is called boundary boss and we will put links to terry's website her boundary boot camp and her book what can be found there and also the free gift that she's giving all of you so thank you to everyone for tuning in thank you terry and we will see you next time on impact the world thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of impact the world and if you want to go deeper and more in depth with my work you should check out my members group the portal you can find it at my website lee harrisenergy.com or visit the portal dot world you

Channel: LeeHarrisEnergy

Views: 8,533

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Keywords: terri cole podcast, terri cole wikipedia, 2021 podcast, impact the world with Lee Harris Energy

Id: nC1Opah_Hdk

Length: 58min 23sec (3503 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 07 2021