Elaine Godley talks to Carola Moon

Elaine Godley, The-Disruptive DISC Profiler at Discplus.health talks to Carola Moon in Nov 2022.

ELAINE GODLEY: I'm delighted to welcome today Carola Moon, who is a personal coach to women in Business. Welcome, Carola.

CAROLA MOON: Hello, Elaine.

ELAINE: Nice to meet you. The cat, Bobby cat's just started scratching the sofa. I don't know if you can hear in the background, but only a little bit, but that's fine. Hey, ho, sorry about that. And you've got your dog there, so I've got Bobby the cat and you've got your dog, Red. Absolutely beautiful there. Isn't she? Absolutely gorgeous.

CAROLA: Yeah.

ELAINE: Great company.

CAROLA: They want to be part of the party, don't they?

ELAINE: Yes, indeed, indeed. Carola,  you are a personal coach to Women in business. I've interviewed if I had a pound for every woman in business coach that I came across, I'd be a very rich woman by now. So, what's the deal with you? Why are you different? What is it that you bring that other coaches don't bring or explain to us how you work, perhaps?

CAROLA: Yes. So I sometimes call myself the Wonky thinking detective because I realise with myself and with my clients how many lies we keep telling ourselves that aren't actually true. Things like, oh, I can't do Instagram real, oh, I can't speak on a podcast, I can't do whatever it is. My relationship with my husband is horrible. I don't understand him or whatever it is, the lies we tell ourselves. So I see myself as the coach who helps my female clients to get a ten out of ten in all areas of their life. So I'm not a business coach, although sometimes we do touch on business questions, it's about finding all the areas where we're not quite happy with and then not trying to actually elevate it to where we want it to be, to have the friendships we want, to have the fitness levels we want, whatever it is. And to, oh, hi Bobby. For me, it's about giving, that space, giving that time to really look at what isn't working in our lives and then creating, more of what we want and less of what we don't want. And the reason why I love to work with entrepreneurial women is that they create more than it's already there. They have a hunger for bringing their ideas to life, but in the process of bringing their ideas to life, they often have the problem that, they neglect the other areas of their life somewhat because they're so focused to bring getting the business to the level they want to get it too. And my mission is to help them get all areas to a ten out of ten.

ELAINE: Yeah, absolutely. I bang on all the time. I'm banging on about balance and, if our life isn't in balance, then we're up a gum tree, so to speak. So when you say all the areas, what areas do you look at?

CAROLA: It doesn't matter. So it could be literally body, fitness, relationships, friendships, parenting, or death in the family, it doesn't matter, because it's all about giving each of whatever is coming up. Give the room to look at it, to see what the thinking is about these happenings, and then to shift the thinking to something that is more helpful towards what they want to create. And I think that it's a good question that you ask because I think that's the important bit. I have never so far, and I don't think I ever will say that any topic is off the table, because it is what impacts us. And, if we don't deal with it, it will have knock-on effects on the other areas of our lives, and probably most notably on our businesses.

ELAINE: Yes. And in my case, with health, that's, where I come from now because it's almost like business kind of looks after itself. But if we don't look after our health, or we don't have a business, if we don't look after our finances, we can't afford to pay our bills. That puts more stress on us, and every single thing needs to be in balance, because if it's not, then we are in trouble. I found this so often people, that I've mentored through cancer and out the other side. I have time and time again looked at how can I help people with the expertise I have, which is in DISC, behavioural profiling and, the behavioural psychology side of health, how can I help people? And I kept trying to work it in with my disk profiling. I used the disc model, which is the dominance, influence, steadiness and compliance because each of those areas affects our behaviours. But that wasn't enough. There was something I was missing. I couldn't put my finger on it. And then eventually, after two years of, manning a helpline, a cancer helpline, where I was taking calls from people newly diagnosed with cancer and helping them and their families through, it dawned on me, and it's what you've said, everything in life, death and relationships and friendships, home life, obviously, diet, nutrition and all the rest of it. But it's all these other bits that are kind of, sort of superfluous. They're not on our main radar, but actually, they really are. We should turn things on our heads as you said. We spoke before we started recording about your back. Tell us about your back story, about your physical back story.

CAROLA: Yes. So I had a bad back, and it started actually when we lived in Vienna. And I sneezed and I literally felt that searing pain. And from then, for the next two weeks, I couldn't move and ended up in a hospital in Vienna and was diagnosed with a slipped disc. and I was on morphine and all kinds of other medication. and within two weeks, I was lucky without an operation, being released home. And I then had a steady but like, slow, recovery period. So I got better and all seemed fine until we moved back to the UK. And I had to lift my then five-year-old son and it slipped again and I was in agony. Back on all the medication, went to all the practitioners to help to get my back in shape and me moving again and out of bed. And the doctors ended up saying actually, now the next thing, the only thing we now can do is to put you under the knife and operate on you. Which I really did not want to do because I knew that I'd heard too many stories of where sciatica had been operated on and people just were fine for a year or two and then it slipped again. And so I heard of a book and it was by sheer chance, that's called The Great Pain Deception [by Steven Ozanich]. And the name of the author is very long, so I won't be able to repeat it. I heard of it, downloaded it onto my phone as a kindle version, and read only the sample version. And that completely changed my outlook on what I was going through. I stopped immediately taking all my medication and some of them were very strong. And from then on, it wasn't that it told me that it was all in my head. I think I would have very much resisted that if the book had told me that. But essentially,  it did say that the first three weeks of a slipped disk of an illness is when the body goes through the first healing process. But then, after that, it could sometimes it can be used as a crutch by the mind to not have to deal with life and its challenges. And for me, something clicked in my mind and I have been well ever since. I do have twinges, and I now take them as a little invitation to check in with my money mindset. And what's troubling, Carola,  then? I usually don't have anything after excellent.

ELAINE: And that's a good example because the back is known for precious life and particularly finances. and also the shoulders will talk about having the weight of the world on their shoulders. And very often it's financially linked, it’s family linked, so there's always a reason why we hold tension in different parts of our body. I actually have a, damaged spine and, I've had trouble all my life, with my back, but it doesn't stop me from doing anything. I was also hospitalised and on traction in the days when they thought that that was a good idea and, morphine and Valium and goodness know what. But at the end of the day, wherever I've moved to, I've always found a chiropractor to fix me. And I've been through hundreds, well, probably incorporation in there, but I've been through so many different chiropractors because they're all different, they're all different techniques. So  I've got some very special chiropractors that I refer to when I need to, but since I've lived in Portugal for the last two and a half years, I've not needed a chiropractor at all. And yet when I was in the UK, I would go every two weeks to keep me on the road.

CAROLA: What do you think is the difference?

ELAINE: My lifestyle. I'm a lot calmer, a lot slower. weather, of course, over here in Niallgov, that helps as well. But I think it's a lot of, you know, the lifestyle, the tension that we carry day to day. And because we've had an old trauma, we think, oh, can't do this, can't do that. And I find that with healthy people as well. So many people hide behind a diagnosis and they can't do this, they can't do that. Well, actually, you could if you wanted to.  And some people like to be victims. I've now developed a rather strong bullshit barometer, and people, who want to live that way, I don't spend an awful lot of time now trying to persuade them otherwise, because they've obviously made their mind up and I have to respect that. That's the choices they've made. So there we go.

CAROLA: And there may well be a time when they're ready for that.

ELAINE: Yes.

CAROLA: It may just not be at that time.

ELAINE: That's right. Yeah, absolutely. So, you're a coach, a rather splendid coach. What did you do before you were coaching, Carola?

CAROLA: I've got a, what is it called? A dash career. Like portfolio? Exactly. About that. I've worked, for years in the telecoms industry in the UK and then I also worked as a professional photographer, for the last ten years. Yes.

ELAINE: So,  you've got an all-around experience of life?

CAROLA: Yes, definitely.

ELAINE: Brilliant. What advice would you give to people? Is it solely women that you work with, or do you work with any men at all?

CAROLA: I don't market to men. I think if a man was really drawn to working with me and we have a good fit, then I'm not opposed to it, but it is pretty much women that I tend to draw into my business.

ELAINE: Do you have any kind of top tips that you would recommend for women who are maybe entrepreneurs, they've built their business, maybe they're thinking, is that all there is to it? Or, I need to get to the next level. How do I do that while I'm juggling children and partners, husbands, whatever they're called these days, pronouns and goodness know what comes into things? We have to be careful what we say, so we don't want to upset anybody. But there are so many things to juggle and so much pressure on us. Where does somebody start?

CAROLA: So, I think the first thing is when someone has all these thoughts and feels all the pressures, the most important thing is to almost, breathe.  It's okay, yes, you feel all the pressures right now, but it is a now thing. It's a seasonal thing. It's not necessarily it's not going to be how your life is going to be from now on. And I think, the next thing after someone has breathed and is back to feeling a little bit more grounded again, is to look at, how can they get the support they need to help them create more of what they want. So it sounds like the picture you've painted, someone who would want to feel more, organised with the family, maybe feel more, calm and grounded so that they can, react and respond to the family's needs while also dealing with their business and the challenges that come with it. So they may well, want to look into, getting a business coach and or a life coach to just help, with all the challenges that come up and, help them to learn, how they can show up in such a way that they create more of what they want.

ELAINE: Absolutely. So stopping,  breathing, calming down, and assessing or reassessing life, really just look at where is it that's causing the most stress and how you can unravel everything. Because if you unravel one area, then something else gets muddled, doesn't it? And so it goes on. And the balance is always a challenge to keep. And the point you made, I think this is very relevant just now about maybe two coaches, a business coach and a life coach because both will bring different aspects.

CAROLA: Yes, definitely. I think the difference there is, I think, a lot of business owners think that, oh, it's okay if I have a business coach because that will solve everything else that will get me to where I need to get to, and therefore everything else is tickety-boo. But what often happens is that the other areas may sometimes get a bit neglected because we put so much effort and time and energy into our businesses. But it's so important to just keep looking at the other areas as well and make sure that we create as much balance as humans as we can.

ELAINE: Yeah, absolutely. I've just created a new process actually, and I haven't officially announced it yet. I'm working on developing my disclosure life Currency Indicator, which is a form of balancing, where people can assess where the balance is in their life and so on, and then match that against the financial currency. Look at your life currency and, it's exactly what you've just said. And as I said, people that I've mentored in the cancer world, if the life stuff isn't in balance,  their health will never get balanced. If their emotional state is out of kilter. They're never going to heal properly. So everything but everything is just balanced balance. But everybody's balance is different as well, isn't it?

CAROLA: Yes. And that's why personally, I've worked with my clients one on one because every client is going through different things. The other day I had a client who had just had grief, a case of bereavement, in her family. So we then couldn't even talk about anything else in her life as that grief had taken everything over. So it was just about holding that space for her to go into her grief. But it could also be that you just have had a bad fallout with your husband.  You know, ideally, that needs mending before you even try to achieve anything else. Because part of you will be, processing that fallout in the back of your mind, and you won't show up, as well to your kids, to your friends, to your businesses, or whatever else you're dealing with.

ELAINE: Yeah. So spot on there. I find that for people who've had a bereavement, I caution them to be extra, extra vigilant with their health and well-being because the research is just beyond question within two years of a bereavement. Breast cancer is a very common occurrence in women within two years of bereavement. So there's anybody listening to this who has had, obviously a sad bereavement, please look at your health and well-being very well. Just do the best you can because it's emotional. All illnesses have an emotional root cause. And, that's a biggie and there's a lot of this time of year coming up. Wintertime is, difficult as well. So, how do people get a hold of you, Carola?

CAROLA: Yes, I've got a website at www.TheCarolaMoon.com. I'm also on Instagram again with the same handle @TheCarolaMoon and also on Facebook. And I would like to connect with people also on LinkedIn because that's becoming my favourite platform right now.

ELAINE: Yeah, that's my favourite as well. Yes, absolutely. Any last tips before we finish?

CAROLA: I think to give yourself the opportunity to just sometimes breathe and stop. And don't take whatever your mind serves up so seriously. Because I think I'm so sorry. There are so many, times when we just literally just believe whatever our mind serves up. And the best thing I found to almost, stop that immediate acceptance of what our mind tells us is sometimes to do thought downloads and then to look at it. A thought download is literally just writing everything down that we're thinking about. And then to look back over it with a little bit calm or mind to see, actually, is that really true? Is that really something that is helping me to have the business success, have the marriage that I want, have the relationship with my kids, whatever it is, and have the house that I want? To actually question your own thoughts a little and loosen that grip that the mind has on us,  on our easy acceptance of what it serves up.

ELAINE: Yeah, very, good recommendation. So writing things down is extremely cathartic, isn't it? And you say when you reflect back when you're calmer, you've done a few breathing, deep breathing exercises or sleeping on it, however long it takes you. Very often you get clarity, don't you? Quite quickly, definitely. So just repeat your website again.

CAROLA: www.TheCarolaMoon.com. 

ELAINE: Marvellous. Thank you. Been lovely speaking with you. Thank you.

CAROLA: Bye. Thank you.

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