Unlocking My Life One Question at A Time: The questions that became my philosophies.

What philosophies do you live your life by? What questions got you there?

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I call myself, “The Unlocking Life Coach” probably because I am trying to unlock my own life.

But, hey! I’m Emily, and it is a pleasure to meet you.

I want to introduce myself through a journey of questioning that created the philosophies I live my life by.

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The more questions I ask, the more fascinated I’ve become learning the etymology of words.

Etymology [v]. the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history.?

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What fascinates is that words, something we think wouldn’t changes, changes and evolves with the times and the culture in which it is used.

I say this, because our lives, too are an etymology. How we once defined ourselves changes and evolves – and this is a good thing as it is how we grow AND too we want to always go back to and reconnect to our roots.

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With that, let’s start with defining philosophy.

Philosophy [n]. a theory or attitude held by a person or organization that acts as a guiding principle for behavior.

The origin of philosophy comes from two Greek words, “philo” (love) and “sophia” (wisdom) to create “philosophia,” meaning “Lover of Wisdom.”

In ancient times a lover of wisdom was related to any area where intelligence was expressed. This encompassed everything from formalized secular or religious system of thought, a personal construct, or a communal understanding of proper attitude and conduct, but in each case, the purpose of the system is to answer questions.

The purpose of philosophy is to answer questions that address our needs as humans.

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My philosophies developed from my question, “what is health?” A question that led me throughout a journey of questions to try and heal myself.

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I’d love you to join me as I take you on this journey of questions that have developed into the philosophies I hold today.?

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My Philosophies & The Journey that Developed Them ?

My Guiding Philosophy in Life

“What I choose to nourish myself is, is what I choose to nourish the world with, for today and tomorrow’s future generations.”

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This statement encompasses all my values into a single philosophy. It is how I, myself, lives and is the place from which I make decisions.

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I can’t remember the exact origin of this philosophy . . . but it’s a statement with many layers.

It’s a statement that recognizes how everyone and everything is truly connected and reliant on each other for their own needs.

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It views our world as an ecosystem, that when working in harmony and is in sync, is self-sustaining and self-regenerating. ?

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From this came the realization that . . .

Health is life and life is health.

Meaning that our health relies on the health of everyone and everything around us, as too does the health of everyone and everything depends on our own health. For one to be healthy, the other must be healthy and for the other to be healthy the one must be healthy.

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This came from me questioning, “what is healthy and not healthy?”

That question transformed into the question, “what makes something healthy and something not healthy?”

A question that realized I had to look beyond the food itself . . . or as I say, “an apple is not an apple.”

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Healthy, or rather, nourishing food goes beyond the name of the food.

For a food to be healthy I had to start looking deeper into the soil and the environment that the food was grow in and asking, how nutrient rich is that soil? How healthy is that ecosystem? Is the air, water, or land polluted? Was the plant grown conventionally, organically, biodynamically? Was the animal fed a biologically appropriate diet? How was the animal treated? What type of life did it live? . . . ?

True health is one that is in alignment with nature, our own and all that is around us.

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Why?

Because for us to be healthy, everything around us must be healthy – our food, our environment, our relationships, our wealth all have to be healthy and for everything around us to be healthy – our food, our environment, our relationships, our wealth.

The health of one affects the health of another.

Not just when living but when dead.

Because Life is a cycle of life and death where the death of one nourishes the life of another.

When the plants, animals, and even ourselves die, our ashes renourishes the soil with the nutrients that the plants need to grow the next set of life.

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And this is why, for me, the most important aspect of this statement is, “what I choose to nourish myself with is what I choose to nourish the world with for today and tomorrow’s future generations.”

This statement reminds me, whether I like it or not, by simply existing, I have an impact.

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That was a hard truth to realize, as I had spent my whole life trying not to be seen or heard – only to realize that I am still felt.

This realization forced me to ask, what type of impact do I want to have? What ripple do I want to create?

And then . . . will I take the actions to become that person??

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I was in 6th grade at the time, and in class we watched the movie “Pay It Forward.”?

This movie taught me one of the most impactful lessons that I still carry within me in my life today.

Its that, it’s the small things in life, the details, that have the biggest impact on our lives – not the big things.

I need to go back and watch that movie again but the scene that has stuck with me – was the scene were a man gave another his car and the man said, “what can I do to repay you?” and the man said, “pay it forward.”

That scene taught me that creating an impact doesn’t look “big.” That greatest impact is the impact we have on just that one person.

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Each of us are like a pebble, small, but when dropped into a pond it creates a ripple that expands beyond itself.

We forget that when we impact one person, that one person then goes and impacts others, and those people then impact others. It’s the ripple effect.

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But let me caution us all . . . and I am going to use a should here.

We should never try and change others – we change ourselves.

When we try and change others, we invalidate who they are and where they currently are in their journeys because unconsciously, we are sending the message that who they are isn’t acceptable, good, worthy, or valid – that they “should” be someone else or somewhere else.

Even when we “think” it is the best of them – we don’t know what is and isn’t the best for anyone other than ourselves? Because when we step back and ask ourselves, how does it feel when someone tries to change me? We realize that it doesn't feel good . . . and for me, this was how I lost myself – mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

And here’s the even harder truth. When we judge someone else, it’s a mirror onto ourselves. A mirror that is reflecting the work we need to do, but haven’t, in ourselves.

Trust me – I had to learn this myself.

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The key, as Gandhi reminds us, “is to be the change you wish to see.”

Show do not tell.

I have to laugh, because maybe kids had it right – use your actions not your words.

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And here is the impact, when we change ourselves, we change others through the ripple we become.

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Working at Starbucks reminded me how powerful the ripple effect is.

One time while working the drive thru window, I simply said, “you’ve just got the most beautiful smile” to a customer. ?

There was a moment of a saddened yet surprised shock in her face, as she said, “I never get compliments.”

It was the look and those words that cut at the core as it reminded me of some of the loneliest and most isolating times in my journey.

And then, there was a gentleman who came in to our store every once in a while. At the front register, again, it was simple and I said, “I love your sweater, it so classy.”

After he got his coffee and was heading out the door, he swung back around the front register and said to me, “I specifically come to this Starbucks because of how nice you all are.”

Those comments humble me every time. They are a reminder that we all want the same thing – to be seen, heard, and feel like we matter.

These aren’t big things. They are the small, seemingly insignificant details that have the most profound impact on us. ?

For you and for me, this is a reminder of the power of the seemingly insignificant. We all have an impact.

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Choose the impact you want to be.

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What is “The Unlocking Life Coach”?

The Unlocking Life Coach started as a different way of healing and has transformed into a way of becoming The Conscious C.U.R.A.T.O.R of our lives by leveraging the power of our subconscious minds.

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It started from the belief that healing came from within.

We are our own healers because the answers are already within us.

The problem is we’ve disconnected from parts of ourselves because we’ve come to believe that certain parts of ourselves are either “good” or “bad.”

It’s from this disconnect from ourselves, that “dis-eases” appear.

But diseases aren’t something to get rid of but rather listen to. Each disease is a message from our bodies that’s trying to tell us what’s been disconnected.

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The Unlocking Life Coach is a healing journey of rediscovering and reconnecting to who we authentically are. It’s a process of removing what is not us, so that what is left is us.

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My journey was led by the question, “what is health?”

A question, when I sought the answer outside of myself, I lost myself and my health in the “shoulds” of others.

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The journey started when? I was diagnosed with anorexia at the age of 11.

A diagnosis that when I questioned, I was told, “I need to be diagnosed with something.”

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Diagnosis [n]. “the art or act of identifying a disease from its signs and symptoms (note – not the cause) . . . AND note . . . the decision reached by diagnosis.”

That diagnosis became the label that I lost myself in.

That label told others and myself who I was and what I was worth.?

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I want to ask, how many of us define ourselves by our labels?

Labels that go beyond a disease diagnosis and includes even what we deem as “good” or “neutral, such as: as independent, self-sufficient, athletic, a career woman / man, a provider, an entrepreneur, artist, lazy, a procrastinator, a teacher, lucky / unlucky, stupid / smart, a mother / a father, stubborn or flexible, routine or sporadic, adventurous or shy, as old or young, anxious or depressed . . .

But no label is good, neutral, or bad.

All labels, depending on how we define them, determines who we believe we are and what we believe we are worth.

The questions to ask ourselves are, “how do we define ourselves?”

How does that label determine how we perceive and treat ourselves and how others perceive and treat us?

Is that who we truly are?

Who would we be without that label?

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You’re not a label.

There is a person beneath that label – the you, that has no label.

But will you give yourself permission to be that person?

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This leads me to the next philosophy . . .

“You’re not broken, and you don’t need fixed. You are whole and complete as you are.”

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This came from watching others and experiencing myself lose ourselves in those labels that told us we were broken, there was no hope for us, that parts of us were shameful and unacceptable.

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We as people are not broken and we do not need fixed. We are disconnected from ourselves.

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It’s similar to the idea that you are not your behavior. There is something beneath that behavior, and that is what we are looking to understand.

Every action we do or don’t take is because we are simply trying to respond the best we can to our current situation in the best way we know how to at that current moment in time.

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What if I told you our bodies and minds are only trying to serve us?

Would that change how you viewed yourself?

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Our bodies and minds are working together. They are continually responding to our internal and external environments by adjusting our bodily functions through sweating, heart rate, thirst, hunger, alertness . . . all there to trying help us adapt to our environment.

That also includes those coping mechanisms of ours that we so harshly judge – that is the binge eating, the under eating, the over exerciser, the over worker, the alcoholic, the drug user, the gambler, the shopper . . . yet they too are all there, trying to serve us and respond to our environment in the best way it knows how to.

My message in this is to give ourselves grace for where we are and where we’ve been.

The problem is, in this, we are told we’re broken.

Yet there’s beauty in what we call being “broken.” ?

“We break open to see what is really inside . . . the person beneath the layers.”

That is the person beneath the layers of “shoulds” that we’ve been hidden beneath.

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When we break, we are given the opportunity to reconnect those parts of ourselves and our lives that we’ve disconnected from.

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Everything we need to be whole and complete is already within us.

If we listen, our intuition will tell us what is and isn’t right for us.

Would you believe me if I said, “you are your own best healer?” . . . that the knowledge and wisdom you need to heal yourself, is already within you?”?

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Looking back on my journey, I distinctly remember my mom telling me, “Emily, you’re so smart, so why can’t you fix yourself?”

. . . those words stopped me and, at the time, created a hopeless sense of despair and panic that consumed me.

But that question, “why can’t you fix yourself?” played in the back of my mind for years.

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Moving forward to 2019, I was sitting in the hospital, 53lbs with edema above my knees, my hair falling out, eating over 3k a day, still not gaining weight and yet . . . that label “anorexic” was still defining me, my worth, and how I should be treated.

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According to the diagnosis, the solution was for me to go to an eating disorder facility. ?

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It was at that point, sitting in that hospital, that this feeling of utter despair and hopelessness consumed me.

It’s hard to describe, but there was this knowing deep within me that told me, “I wouldn’t make it if I didn’t leave.” ?

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So, I left.

This might sound like a hero’s journey, but it wasn’t. This was one of the hardest things for me to do. I spent my life without a voice and being dehumanized. I was terrified to say or do anything I wasn’t told and so to go against those I “should” be listening to was petrifying.

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I spent the next two to two and half years trying to find someone, something that I needed to heal me.

Yet the more I sought to find someone outside of me for the answers, the worse my health got.

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I got to the point where I was forced to surrender all control and said I was going to reconnect to myself that my body – physically and mentally – begin to heal.

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In saying this, it’s not that we go about this alone.

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I like to compare ourselves to semis. Like a semi, we can see everyone else’s blind spots, but our own blind spots are quite large and are in front of, to the sides of, and behind us. Even the sign on the back of a semi warns us of their blind spots.

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We need people on our journey. We need people that will help us find the answers already within us while also challenging us and forcing us to look at the parts of ourselves that we’ve spent our lives avoiding.

I love how Alex Hormozi puts it, “advice should come from a shared common goal” . . . meaning the people you allow on your healing journey should be focused on what is best for you, not them.

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I want to pose this question to us all, “how many of us are outsourcing, silencing, and trying to escape our intuition and our knowing . . . that voice and feeling within us that is telling us what is and isn’t good for us?”

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Sitting in this hospital, I was still asking myself, “what is health?”

Because the more I did the unhealthier I got.

There in the hospital, I was disintegrating, disintegrating fast.

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Disintegrate comes from the combination of the prefix “dis” – meaning “do the opposite” and the Latin “integrate” – meaning “to make whole.”

Disintegrating [v]. break into parts or components or lose cohesion or unity.

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Let’s go back to the idea that “we’re not broken . . . the issue is we are disconnected from ourselves.”

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Disconnect comes from the prefix “dis” – meaning – “the opposite of” and the Latin word “conectere,” – meaning – “join together.”

Disconnect [v]. to detach or separate from; to interrupt or sever the connection of or between?

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We find our minds, bodies, and environments disintegrating when we become disconnected from ourselves.

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To become whole again requires accepting and reintegrating all our parts – even those we label as “good, bad, and ugly” – so that we, as a whole, again work in harmony together.

Because no part is “good,” “bad,” or “ugly.” All are necessary, vital, and serve a purpose. And all are beautiful in their own ways. All have strengths and all have weaknesses.

The question I love to ask is, “What are the strengths in my weaknesses? What are the weaknesses in my strengths?”

It’s a fun and fascinating question that teaches us how to see both sides of everything in ourselves.

What you’ll find nothing is good or bad – rather, they are both.

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Where does this judgement of parts come from?

It comes from getting lost in (what I call are the) “shitty should’s” of society. The “shoulds” that believes there’s a single or right way of doing something or being something. And in those shoulds we hide, shame, and disconnect parts of ourselves in pursuit of those “shoulds.”

Yet – here’s what’s so interesting, the “shoulds,” like style, they never stay the same. There’s always some that are and aren’t in trend, what we believe we “should” and “shouldn’t” do changes depending on the time and the culture we are in.

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And this is why we, as a society, are losing our health.

We are breaking a part our health into parts that we label as “good” or “bad” . . . “useful” and “not useful” . . . “helpful” and “harmful” . . . “important” and “not important” . . . and because of that we compromise the function of the system as a whole – causing what we label as a “dis-ease.”

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What is health?

Simply put . . .??

Health is connection and dis-ease is disconnection.

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Health [n] is the state of being connected to ourselves, each other, and our world

Health [adj] describes the type of connection we have to ourselves, each other, and our world

Health [v] is the action of being connected to ourselves, each other, and our world

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Disease [n] is the state of DIS-connect from ourselves, each other, and our world

Disease [adj] describes the type of DIS-connection to ourselves, each other, and our world

Disease [v] is the action of being DIS-connecting from ourselves, each other, and our world

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We said the key to healing is to reconnect to ourselves.

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The bigger question is “who am I?”

Do you know?

Sit with that question, and ask yourself, ?“who am I?”

Because I didn’t know. I had spent my life living in a label.

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When I first decided to become a coach, I called my practice “Lyfe Redefined.” ?

My mission was to help you “redefine your life by removing your labels.”

Yet, once we removed those labels, the question became, what are we left with?

We – I, spent my entire life, knowing myself and my life through the label, anorexic, that I didn’t know myself or my life without that label. ?

So, who are you without your label?

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Our labels are one of the reasons it’s so hard to change.

Change requires changing our identity and our identity tells us and others who we are.

When we change our identity, we must change our relationship with ourself and those around us because if we want something different we must be someone different.

We cannot be the same person and expect different results – as Einstein said, that would be insanity! Trying to be the same person over and over again and expecting to be a different person.

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This can, and many times does, lead to an identity crisis – or what we may call a mid-life crisis or a rock bottom.

?Simply put it’s “a loss of oneself to find oneself.”

Because true lasting change isn’t a result of the actions, we take but the person we become. All actions that we do or don’t take are a result of the person we are.

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Here’s what’s interesting about change, we want it, yet we fear it.

Going through my own identity crisis, one of my biggest fears was the fear of losing the discipline I had – of becoming “lazy” . . . losing that drive . . . becoming unfit and unhealthy . . .

Yet I found the exact opposite. I am healthier, more disciplined, more purposeful, and more productive.

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Yet, I am now working with, rather than against myself.

I am now someone taking action aligned with my values, from a place of self-worth, radical responsibility, and compassionate self-discipline. ?

I became more of who I wanted to be and less of who I didn’t want to be without beating myself up – mentally, emotionally, or physically.?

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How do we get there?

I like to say, by “trying our lives on” . . . the lives we think we want but aren’t sure if that is what we want. ?

To become the person we want to be, we must be willing to try something and then give ourselves permission to say that didn’t fit like I thought and then put it back on the mannequin.

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Life is a “re”

Or as I put in my Pinterest Bio – “A gal with a mission to [re] - that is [re]create, [re]envision, and [re]defined who I am.”

Life, like the seasons is a continual cycle of evolving through life and death.

Death breeds new life. Without death there would be no life.

The soil that gives nourishment to life, is created from the death of plants and animals. It is a cycle that continues to give back what it took for the next life to take what it once had. The death of plants and animals of today, become the nutrients of the soil for the life tomorrow.

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The same goes for us.

We are dynamic beings that are continually cycling through our own seasons of life and death. The death of who we once were to give life to the evolution of who we are to become. It is this very evolution that creates purpose and meaning to our lives and our journeys.

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I invite you to look at your life and ask yourself, “is there something in my life that I need to allow to die that will allow something else to be given life?”

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Removing

That leads me to the most important aspect of my journey and that’s the idea of removing.

Removing everything that is no longer in alignment with you or serving you in your mind, body, & environment.

How many of us have never ending To-Do List that keep growing with more and more things we “should” do?

The problem isn’t always what we “need” to do, but rather what we need “not” to do.

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This is like a gardener who removes the weeds, so their flowers have access to the nutrients and the space they need to thrive.

When we remove, we create space that allows us to fully nourish, tend to, and grow that which is most important to us.

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The question for us is, what do we want growing in our gardens? And what is preventing that from growing? ?

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The action is to change your “To-Do” List into a “Results” List created from the question, what results do I want to create in my life? – that is asking ourselves, what are the results that are most purposeful and meaningful to me?

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But, we don’t want to constantly be removing the same “weeds” over and over again.

As my mom told me, “Emily, if you keep just picking the top of the weed, it will keep coming back. You must get to the root of the weed.”

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This lesson applies to every area of our lives.

From a health perspective, the purpose of a detox isn’t to keep detoxing the body but rather to remove the toxins that are there AND more importantly stop putting them into the body.

When organizing, the key was to create a system prevented the need to organize and reorganize over and over again. The purpose is to create a system that functioned for the purpose of the space.

Looking at finances, it’s not always about making more, it’s about knowing what is purposeful to us and then cutting out what is not.

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The same is with us. We must remove the root that “grew” the problem, so the problem does not regrow.

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How many of you have told your kids “not” to do something, only to find them doing exactly what you told them not to do?

We are the same way. When we remove something or stop doing something, we create an empty a hole that many times we don’t know what to fill it with.

Kids are the same way, when we tell them not to do something they don’t know what to do instead so the only thing they know to do is what you told them not to. Leading them to do the very thing you told them not to do.

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Our brains are the same way. They don’t know what to do other than what we tell it. When we tell it “not to think about the pink elephant” it doesn’t know what else to think other than “not to think about the pink elephant.”

Leading us to, like a child, focus on what we don’t want rather than what we do.

This is another reason we fall back into our old habits and behaviors. We tell ourselves what we don’t want but forget to tell ourselves what we do want. We simply forget to fill that hole with what we do want. ??

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Here’s the key.

We must fill that hole with the person we want to be . . . because, what we “want” is not a “thing” but a way of being, living, and experiencing life.it is a feeling and the things we think we want; we want because of how we think they will make us feel.

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This is Important . . .

What we think we want, and what we really want, are not always the same thing.

Because what we are after is a feeling and the “thing” we “think” we want, we want because of how we “think” that thing will make us feel.

When we chase the thing – we may end up with a life that we don’t want.

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Chase after becoming the person you want to become and the “thing” will become a natural byproduct of being the person that is taking the actions that is creating the “thing” . . . or rather, the life you want. ?

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It’s the “Be, Do, Have” model – but approached backwards.

Instead of first asking, “what do you want” and then working backwards and by asking, what must I do and who must I be . . . I start with the person, and ask first, who is the person you want to be, then what is that person doing and the byproduct of those actions will naturally create what you want.

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Not long ago that I was talking with a friend and telling her how right now I only focusing on figuring out myself so that I get myself back on a clear track before I even consider a relationship . . . and before I finished she stopped me and said, “what are you closing yourself off to?”

“What could you be preventing yourself from by not being open? . . . What if you opened yourself up to the possibility?” ?

It was an interesting question as I was so focused on staying the course so I wouldn’t get distracted with shiny object syndrome.

In that, I was so attached to a specific order of operations, “when I achieve this, then I can,” that I was potentially closing myself off to what may come my way.

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Caution.

This does not mean, not having a clear focused vision, but rather allowing the process to unfold in the order and way in which it will. ?

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A lesson I am still learning is surrendering. Surrendering to the process and allowing the process to unfold in its time and its order while staying true to my vision and continually showing up, doing the inner work, and taking aligned action.

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I have to laugh, as this reminds me of what one of my neighbors used to say – and she was a preacher’s wife – “God give me patience, but hurry up.”

Our time is never our time because we don’t know what our right time is.

Looking back, how many of us would say, that things worked out when and how they were supposed to? Or thank goodness I didn’t get that when I wanted it because I wasn’t ready?

Why?

Because we had to learn lessons before we were ready for the thing.

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A mentor once told me, “don’t worry about people showing up, be the person that shows up and then people will show up.”

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The question for you, and for me, is “how are we showing up, when no one is looking?”

This is the question that centers me as it reminds me to ask myself, what type of life do I want to live and what type of ripple do I want to be?

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“Successful people ask better questions. As a result, they get better answers.”

-??????? Tony Robbins

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“The questions are the answer.”

-??????? Jim Kwik

Our journeys are paved by the questions we ask.

The questions we ask ourselves determines what we or don’t do with the circumstances that we are given. Because it’s not the circumstance that matters, it’s what we do with it that does.

What possibilities we decide to go out and seek, create, and take because opportunity comes to us but is not given to us.

Who we choose to be or not to be as that is a choice.

Whether we take direct our lives or we allow life to direct us.

The questions we ask determine the answers we open ourselves up to.

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Change your questions, change your life.

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So, I ask you and me, where are our questions taking us? What life are our questions creating?

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As right now I, myself, am writing this, I too am questioning, “am I holding on too tight a vision? Is that vision preventing me from creating the life that I want? Could that vision be holding me back from creating a life greater than that vision?”

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I now, want to end by inviting you to continue the conversation and share with us:

1 What questions you are asking

2 What philosophies are you living by

Unlocking our lives, one question at a time.

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Best –

Emily