Listening To Our Inner Coach With Melinda J. Kelly

by | Mar 31, 2020 | Podcasts | 0 comments

GCM 94 | Inner Coach

 

Being valuable to the world means contributing something that you can do for the greater good. Rodney Flowers and guest Melinda J. Kelly share their thoughts on how a person can be his or her greatest coach if he/she dives deeper and understands the true meaning of success. Melinda is a speaker, a coach, and the author of Finding Your Coach: Diving Deep Within, an empowering book which she also tackles in this episode. Your deep-rooted thoughts and awareness help you navigate through life. Melinda expands on this process and talks about the different dimensions of success, letting go of fear, and embracing what could be possible. Listen to Rodney and Melinda as they discuss the link between happiness, confidence, and success.

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Listening To Our Inner Coach With Melinda J. Kelly

I have Melinda J. Kelly with me. She’s an author, speaker, coach, and Los Angeles native. She’s also a life-long lover of words. Introduced to leadership, volunteering at age twelve, she found the interplay of hopes, personalities, and outcomes to be a kaleidoscope of possibilities. She often found the questions more interesting than the answers, leading her to a variety of thoughts. In her book Finding Your Coach: Diving Deep Within is the first collection of those meditations. Welcome to the show, Melinda.

Thank you very much. I’m delighted to be here.

I am delighted to have you here as well. I see and know that you are a strong believer in the messages that are out there in the world. Those things that show us where to look, help us understand and be willing to look, help us understand ourselves and move through the world a lot easier. I want to get into that question. Realizing that I don’t want a deep thought and intuition. What experience brought you to this awareness of these ideas and deep-rooted thoughts that can help us navigate life?

I was thinking my deep thoughts and I couldn’t help but think of the comedy routine where you would sit there and say, “Deep thoughts.” Rather than laugh about it, I feel that we are fortunate that something will touch us. If we take the time to sit on it for a moment, it’s like this amazing little discovery. I came into the questions at a time of my life when it seemed everything was going effortlessly and wonderfully. I should be the happiest camper in town and suddenly as life does, three major components in my life all shifted. I had to seriously think about where that was going. What was my direction and what did I want to do?

After a certain while, we don’t think about that anymore. We get all caught up and while I’m this or I’m that, or I’m doing this or I’m doing that. I had to get brave to ask myself those questions we don’t want to answer after we’re twelve. That led me to a discovery of, what are my hopes and dreams? Which is another thing we tend to tuck away and then asking myself if I was brave enough to reinvent business or would I rather reinvent myself? It struck me that reinventing myself might be scarier, but it might be more fun and it might be more fulfilling for me.

Let’s unpack that a little bit because a lot of the readers have these ideas and dreams. Certainly, one of the reasons why I got into this business is not only to tell my story and inspire your people. I realize that we would see star athletes, we would see stars or people that are successful in life and it seems like they’re living the life of their dreams. We have these dreams, we have these ideas and things that we want to bring forward and experience in life. We would have this thought that, “I can’t do that.” It’s almost like, “I would love to, but it’s not possible for me.”

We tend to think of change as this negative, horrible, cataclysmic thing that happens, but it can be subtle and simple. Click To Tweet

I’m sure many people can relate to that. We settle for what we feel is possible and it could be the 9:00 to 5:00, whatever it is but it’s living that type of life. How do we change the game in terms of having those types of thoughts and reinventing ourselves? There’s something that keeps us in that state of mind feeling like, “I will never be able to do this. I can’t do that, so I might as well go over here. This is something that I can do.” How do we change our mindset to go off and pursue the thing that we want to pursue?

My first thought is you have to be willing to be honest with yourself. I don’t know how often we’re willing to do that because for too long, we’ve been willing to settle for close enough. The job, it’s close enough to what I wanted. The house is close enough to where we wanted to live, or my relationship with people in my life is close enough to what I would like it to be. It’s a scary thing to mix up the status quo because no matter how much our friends and family love us, the moment we make a little change, we make them nervous. It’s not that they don’t want the best in the world for us, but we don’t do well with change. We tend to think of change as this negative, horrible, cataclysmic thing that happens, but change can be subtle and simple. It can be that you suddenly decided you no longer wanted to eat the foods you know that aren’t good for you. You decided at work you wanted to take a walk around the block instead of sitting around the lunchroom.

Change is these little things that become momentous through time. I always think if you are driving and you decide if it says, “Go two blocks, turn right and then go four blocks.” If you decided to go four blocks and then two blocks, you can be in a whole other world. That was a simple change, but it gave you a completely different outcome. For us to realize that change can be a powerful and wonderful effect, you think about the arrival of a child. You think about finding the love of your life. You think about all these incredibly life-altering, changing moments and we embrace them and yet change for us, we all tend to get, “I can’t do that because it might be too much.” Change is change. How we choose to accept it and perceive it is what makes it both bad and good.

You talk about success as being multi-dimension. Let’s talk about that. What do you mean by that? 

I feel strongly that we have unfortunately made success at one topic conversation. It’s all about the number of zeroes after the comma in your bank account. There is an emotional success. There is a collaborative success. If you have ever been part of a play, a team or some, there’s that one moment when everything perfectly comes together and collectively you’ve made magic. If you’ve ever worked on a report or some major project that gets presented and is well received, you all know that together you made this happen. As long as we see success in this one dimension, we limit ourselves. If you think of success and accomplishment in terms of the intangibles of your life, we’re all much more fulfilled or rich. If you think about your loving relationships, the way you approach life, and if you think about the people that say, “I could call you at 2:00 in the morning.” If you think about that trust and love that your life is filled with, you are rich beyond compare. You can buy a lot of things. True richness, fulfillment, and true accomplishment can’t be purchased.

I listened to Dr. David Greuner, I don’t know if you are aware of him, but he was teaching a class one day and we were talking about wealth creation. It was funny because it was intriguing the way he was teaching his class. The overall outcome of this was that a lot of people use money to create wealth, which is logical. You say, “You need money when you want to create wealth. You take your money and you invest it, you create wealth with that.” He said, “That’s backward. You don’t use your money to create wealth, you use your wealth to create money.” Everyone was like, “What do you mean by that?” He talked about all of the talents. He talked about those intangibles.

GCM 94 | Inner Coach

Inner Coach: How we choose to accept and perceive change is what makes it both bad and good.

 

He talked about love. He talked about your contribution. He said, “When you can use your wealth to create money, you will always have money.” People got it backward because it’s all about the definition of what wealth is. It’s like you explain. We as a society, we classify wealth as the amount of money that you have in the bank or how long your money lasts. You have infinite wealth and you’re born with it. It’s about how you cultivate it and you use that to create money. You’re already wealthy. It was touching to me. I thought it was intriguing the way he described that. If we adopt that philosophy, that’s the game-changer. It’s the perspective.

I love the sense that we approached the world of being full and having to give rather than waiting to be given to then be full.

When it goes back to wanting to fulfill that dream and that desire, you’ve got to put in. You’ve got to invest in yourself. You’ve got to cultivate your contribution. That’s the energy that you have to put into a thing in order to expect something back from a thing. That’s the thing that scares a lot of people. If you talk to many of the successful people, a lot of them would tell you, it took a lot of work. It took a lot of this and that. We don’t see all of those things. All we see is the success, the accolades and all of those things. I realized that to expect something back or to even receive something back, this is the way life works. You have to give. You have to contribute. If you don’t contribute and you don’t give, then life doesn’t give you anything back. Not anything worth anything.

By playing it safe, you’re not safe. If you sit with your little pile of pennies in the sunlight, you have a pile of pennies. If you spread those pennies, you might make somebody’s day. You might make a new friend. Holding it doesn’t help us. It’s by sharing and giving. It doesn’t have to be money. It can be a smile. I often think we don’t smile enough at one another anymore. There is something lovely about taking a walk and encountering somebody and smiling at them. It is, in some ways, the easiest gift you can give anybody. It’s that appreciation of one to the other that we’ve somehow disconnected from because we’re caught up with the immediate needs of us. Yet our immediate needs are everyone else’s immediate needs and smiling at someone might make my day all that much better.

What do you see as a way we hold ourselves back in this retrospective?

I feel we’ve lost our true sense in some ways. We are overtold what to do or who to be or how to behave and there are parts of that that are necessary. That would be more legalistic or moralistic. We don’t allow people to fail anymore. We look upon it as a moral failing, and yet you can look at Edison who took years to create a light bulb. You can look at Tesla. We don’t know what’s going to happen. The car works, the roof works. He’s building a big dig in Los Angeles to create an underground system. At work, we don’t know, but he’s trying. You could say he tries big and he fails big, but he’s trying. The best example is when you have a child, there isn’t a book.

Until you know what it is that's going to fulfill you and make you happy, take everyone else's suggestions. Click To Tweet

Nothing says you must do this. You’re constantly negotiating this darling little terrorist in your hands who has completely disrupted your life. You will not sleep, you will not eat, and you will not do anything on your schedule for a while. If we thought about having children that hard, there would be no human race. The potential for a mistake is huge. We focus on that instead of the potential for greatness. Instead of that first smile, instead of understanding, “That cry is hungry and that cry is diaper time.” We have lost our kindness with one another that we must be a success out of the gate rather than understanding this is all part of this adventure we’re on.

I love that because I’m a firm believer in the process. You cannot escape the process. I’ve grown to learn that when you love the process, everything gets a lot easier. You can’t escape the ebbs and flows of life. The harmony of life doesn’t flow in a straight line. There are ups and downs, there are hills and valleys. There are highs and lows and that’s what it is. It doesn’t matter where you are. You can be broke and you’re still going to go through the highs and lows. You can be a billionaire and you’ve still got to go through the highs and lows. That never changes. There’s still a process to life at whatever level you want. We can accept it.

Wherever you are, the acceptance of the process of the ebbs and flows and the ups and downs, the fact that they’re going to happen. That’s symbolic of a breath. That means you’re alive. When you can accept that, you can look at life a lot differently. Life becomes more interesting. The fact that if there’s something that you feel that you want to contribute in life and bring it forward, you have to go through that process. That’s what it’s going to be. It’s not going to kill you. You can’t escape life anyway. Eventually, we all have to answer to the end. Why not give everything that you have to life during this time for all that you have?

I often think about the famous ball of twine when you’re on a road trip. Sometimes those little side detours create the most interesting new experiences of your life. Sometimes when you’re going through something that, “This was not on my plan.” If we exhale and take a moment, we might be being shown something we’re not aware of either within ourselves or with other people. It allows us to experience, learn, and it deepens. That famous word enriches who we are. Many years ago, I took a dance class. I was completely out of my depths. It was a different style. Everything was different but I loved it in every cell of my body. I fully recognized I probably would not glide like the swans at the front of the room.

What I had was such a joy that in every moment of it, the swans at the front of the room would want to dance with me because I had such a great time. I got to appreciate the kindness of helping someone as they were starting on their journey. From these people that didn’t have to do a thing, but responded to the beauty of our energy and the joy as we were doing this. That has helped me numerous times as I’ve been doing something that may seem effortless to me to remember. “This wasn’t always effortless.” It allows me to be aware of how to be clearer, cleaner, more understanding and gentle when someone else is at that same roadblock.

I feel that one of the things that stop us from taking that step forward outside of the comfort zone is fear. It’s a fear of failing you. It’s fear of extended discomfort, not being able to get back to a place of comfort, which is happiness. We are in a state and we’re feeling like, “This is pretty good. I can accept this. I can live with this.” Anytime I want to go out, there is this threat that I might not get what I have. My happiness may be taken away. Do you believe that everyone can find their own happiness, expand their territory, go after their goals and still be happy? This risk of losing it all, this idea that things may change for the worse if I take a step or a loop, what would you say is the recommendation to address that thought?

GCM 94 Melinda J Kelley | Inner Coach

Finding Your Coach: Diving Deep Within

It’s unfortunate that we tend to think that you only have one chance to have it all. If you think about it, how many stories are there of the people that have had it and lost it? That might be money. For example, as a sports figure, you’re at a pinnacle of success and then life changes. “Which direction am I going to go? I can go into corporate or I can do it.” It’s going to both be risky. Go and become a speaker and change the world. Both are completely new incarnations of who you are. You have every potential to be successful and to be happy. Why do we always start at the default that it won’t work? In Los Angeles, we have Hollywood and everybody talks about overnight success.

The people that know they’ve been doing ten years in community theater and still plays. They’re not an overnight success. They have been dutifully, dedicatedly going day by day to honor that which fulfills and drives them. Even some of these celebrities prefer to do theater because that’s their true passion and do the celebrity things to pay the bills. It’s what’s fulfilling them. They know what makes them happy and that’s a large part of why I talk about diving deep within. Until we know what it is that’s going to fulfill us and what’s going to make us happy, we’re taking everyone else’s suggestions. They may be good suggestions but they may not be our suggestions.

Let’s talk about your book, Finding Your Coach. This is a good segue into understanding a little bit about the purpose of this book. What do you mean by Finding Your Coach: Diving Deep Within?

As I started to reassess, “Where was my life going? What did I want to do? Where was I going to be?” I did what everyone does out here. I went in to find a mentor. Many years before, I had attempted to write and had gone through what I thought was a wise way. The person I worked with seems to believe that the best process was to be hyper-critical. It dimmed everything in me. None of us want to be criticized, especially when we don’t feel it’s fair or we’re doing everything they tell us and we’re still being criticized. I put that dream on hold and decided years later, let’s pull it out. I knew enough to know I didn’t know enough. I followed suggestions from people and started to go to courses, webinars or seminars to learn.

I noticed after a while, a pattern none of us want to admit to that everyone else in these rooms were moving forward but I wasn’t. If all of us weren’t moving forward, I could say it was the person helping. If it’s just me, maybe I’m the problem. That’s not fun to say to yourself. That is the moment of real wisdom. I had to sit and get still with myself and ask, “What was I doing that was sabotaging myself? How was I keeping myself stuck in ways I didn’t understand?” I feel it, all through our family, our histories, our upbringing, do accidental things to self-protection. What we don’t realize is we’re worked in one situation and now, hurts us in another. I found one of the things I do, and when I mentioned it, I found a lot of people do it too.

Someone is at the front of the room pontificating great wisdom. I’m sitting there and going, “I know that. I know that too.” I’m busy being smart, I become stupid. Something is going to be said that I needed to hear, but I’m being a fool of myself and knowing I know everything. I missed this beautiful pearl of wisdom dropped in my lap but I already know that. I found when I said that to people, they’d be like, “I do that too.” Somehow I’m keeping myself stuck by not being open, not listening or not being willing to rehear things. Even if I know it, they may have a wholly different two cents afterward that could make or break everything I’m hoping for.

Disappointment is tough because we've put our hopes and dreams towards something and not achieve it. Click To Tweet

I want to commend you first of all for taking responsibility that you’re explaining it. Most people don’t look within. They don’t look at themselves. They look at the environment, anything that’s out there and they say, “That is the reason why.” You’ve taken responsibility for where you were at the time. That is commendable. We have to get to a place where we’re willing to receive knowledge. It’s not that we don’t know certain things. You can know something but what you know isn’t serving you at the time, therefore, it’s worth repeating. What you know can become an action, a habit or thing that you utilize in your life on a regular basis.

Knowing it doesn’t serve you. It’s the application of what you know. If there is someone providing information to you, even on this show, we say a lot of basics. The fact is a success is fundamental and it’s basic. It’s not rocket science. It’s a fundamental practice. It is like sports. If you start playing sports, you want to be a great player in sports. You have to learn the basics. The problem is the reason why you don’t have a lot of people, you have a huge disparity between those that play and those that are stars. The ones that are stars master the basics. Mastering the basic, it requires repeatedly hearing and doing these things over and over. You have to do it over and over again so that you can become a master.

A lot of these basic ideas, tools, ways of beings, behaviors and habits, it becomes subconscious to you. You experience success by default because you unconsciously live by these habitual principles and fundamentals. I was going to ask you a question is what blocks people, but there lies the answer. A lot of the things we know, like to dribble a basketball. Our readers know how to dribble a basketball but if I put you in a court with some of the players that have been dribbling a basketball a lot longer than you, then you may appear that you don’t know what you’re doing out there. It’s not that you don’t know, but they have more time.

They have more effort towards this particular skill. It’s worth repeating. The great mentors out there that will walk you through these fundamental things because a lot of times what we want is the slam dunk. We want the million-dollar contract and I want it. We haven’t learned how to make the first sale yet or perhaps you made the first sale, but then there are six months before you make the next sale. You’re still looking for the million-dollar contract, but you haven’t learned how to build relationships on a regular basis with individuals. It is worth repeating, you made the first sale, but we need to talk about the fundamentals of making that first sale.

Something I wanted to add to what you were saying is I often feel that athletes are more open to getting help. They know there’s more and they appreciate the fine nuance of a little shift. It’s game-changing mentally, physically and professionally. We wouldn’t think twice about going to take golf, tennis or swimming lessons, yet when it comes to life, we think we should know it all. None of us get anywhere alone. There’s always somebody there helping or opening a door or giving us a suggestion. It’s that openness to realizing we know a lot of great stuff. We do a lot of great stuff. We all have things that we have accidentally mastered by the gift of birth. There are some things we don’t have fairly well figured out. Why wouldn’t we be open to someone’s kindness to help us be the best we could be and understand things more than we do? I do appreciate that true professionals are always looking at a way to elevate their game and their relationships. They see things not as an I but as we. It doesn’t matter how good you are. If someone isn’t blocking or protecting you, you can have the ball all day, but it’s not going to go anywhere.

I believe in lifelong learning and continuous improvement. If you win the Super Bowl, but the next season, you have teams that are out there that are trying to knock you off the pedestal. The thing that got you there is not going to be the same thing to get you there next. You have to reinvent yourself. You have to figure out new things, new strategies, new ways of defending the ball, new ways of running your offense. You may even have to re-identify the players. The team has to change. The personnel of the team may have to change. You can never become complacent. You may need to revisit some of the things that you did to improve them, even though you worked on an all year.

GCM 94 | Inner Coach

Inner Coach: True professionals are always looking at a way to elevate their game and their relationships.

 

You realize that in order for us to get back to this place, we’ve got to revisit this. We’ve got to spend more time here. If I’m talking to them, saying, “I know you guys know this.” If we’re going to be at the top of the food chain and we’re going to be the stars that we were, then we have to put more hours in the same strategy. The same plays that we ran. We’ve got to get better at it. We’ve got to get better at defense. We’ve got to get better at offense. We’ve got to get better at attacking the quarterback and bringing the ball up the court. We’ve got to get better at them. We’ve got to get better at the full-court press. We’ve got to get better at shooting from the three-point line.

The other part of that is every year is completely brand new because there are new people. Instead of necessarily seeing this competition, they could be a compliment or they could completely alter your approach. The Washington baseball team came in and noticed that the team wasn’t as a team. He had his walkup song, the little Sharky song. Suddenly, this little light of amusement charged the team, the fans and re-energized everyone. They went from a locker room that emptied to a locker room that talked and a locker room that suddenly was a team on and off the field. That’s one little thing. Who would have guessed it would make that night and day difference? Every person coming in has the potential to up your game, to let the two of you shine together, and to bring new depth or dimension. That gets into, why do we fear change? Why do we see it as negative instead of understanding? It’s offering us many new possibilities.

That’s the staple of my brand. When change comes to me, it’s game time. That’s when the lights come on. I light up and it’s time to perform. Why? Change is all about opportunity. If you’ve been going down this road and when that new road comes up, as bumpy as it may be, as challenging as it may be, as treacherous as they may be, it’s still an opportunity for you to discover something else. You’ve got to get over the treachery. You’ve got to get over the humps. You’ve got to get over the roadblocks. You’ve got to get over all of that. In doing so, you discover what’s down that road and you discover something about yourself that wasn’t on the road that you were previously traveling. It may be tough. It may be hard but it’s new.

We talk about expanding our territory but we don’t want to go down the dark roads. We don’t want to see what’s down there. We are afraid that it may be something because we know that sometimes the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, but that’s fine. Maybe I’m not looking for grass. Maybe I’m looking for something else. Maybe I’m looking for the next best thing for me. Maybe it isn’t green grass. Maybe it’s something else that I hadn’t thought about that’s going to take me to the next level, up my game and improve me. I know if I stay on this road, I’m not going to get anything else. I’ve traveled this and I’ve gotten what I’m supposed to get. When that new opportunity comes, you need to take it. 

It’s important to realize that. You’re saying with the bumpy road, I was thinking off-roaders and they loved the bumps. Most of us don’t. We’re like, “The transformation is going.” They know that after they’ve gone through up and down, hill and valley, water and what have you. All of a sudden, there is this beautiful vista and the only way to get there is I think about the mountain climbers. To me, there’s something fascinating. You think about the Greeks or the Romans got into a leaky boat with a loaf of bread and sailed off to a new country, not knowing what might be there. That sense of adventure is within us. Why don’t we embrace it and see where it might take us?

There are many views that we haven’t experienced because we have not been willing to climb. 

GCM 94 | Inner Coach

Inner Coach: A question is reminding you there might be something more or it might be a way for you to check-in and discover where you want to be.

 

Anyone who’s ever gone hiking knows there’s that moment you start with great enthusiasm and then about a little bit longer go, “What was I thinking?” You think, “Is there a polite way I can say I turned my ankle?” You go a little further thinking, “I can do this.” You grumble a little more and then you suddenly get up to where there’s this magical waterfall, picnic place or meadow and you go, “Why was I grumbling? There’s no way I would have found this without help. This is the best secret no one knows about. Am I lucky to see it? Aren’t I lucky to be part of it?” The best part of it, as you’re going down back, and walking down the hill and talking about how beautiful it all was. As you take that memory and that sense of accomplishment in you, with you and about you because you did it, you master that hill you grumbled about. You mastered this seemingly silly, simple task that has changed you in ways you didn’t know it would.

Melinda, while you’re sitting at the bottom of that hill with the base end of that mountain, do you believe that there’s a little coach or mentor deep within you that’s telling you to climb, telling you to go, and cheering for you deep within? Everyone has that little voice inside of them that’s aging them on.

Deep within each and every one of us has, “Let’s do it, let’s go. This is going to be great.” We have all those other little things that start coming at us. They’re all well-intentioned little voices, but they’re voices of other people. The first time you wanted to go do something and someone said, “You wouldn’t be very good at that.” I don’t want to say it breaks us, it bruises us. When we try something later along the same line that bruise starts to hurt, but bruises heal. We know we can do stuff to make a bruise heal. It’s learning what a bruise is and what’s true.

If I’m not good at running, it doesn’t make good sense for me to enter a marathon. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t do a 5K because maybe I’m good at walking. It’s understanding that the bruise would be to run. The smart thing for me might be the walk. It’s understanding there are all options out there and it’s getting out of this everything or nothing. It’s understanding that embracing, that excitement will help us get to our truth. It will help us understand, “I could do this.” Sometimes we can do stuff we didn’t even believe we could do because we held onto that. “I could do it. This could be fun. Why not?”

Opening that door to ourselves is, in some ways, the biggest gift we can give to ourselves. We don’t need to limit. We need to embrace what could be possible. If we don’t embrace it, it can’t ever be possible. That sounds trite, but we’re busy being told what we can’t do. We need to remind ourselves of everything we can do. More than that, everything we can dream because dreams are coming true all the time. We’ve gotten nitpicky that it has to be on Tuesday at 3:00 underneath an Elm tree, but it happened Monday at 4:00 even earlier and better, and yet we’ve not realized it because it was supposed to happen.

Melinda, how can people connect with you if they wanted to learn more about you? Maybe speak with you and work with you?

I welcome them to come and take a look at my website because after all, that’s all our business cards. They can visit me at MelindaJKelly.com. I’d love to speak with you. You’re welcome to book some time and we can chat and see how I can help you find your best dreams or how we could fit together. I have something for your audience. It’s a little guide about understanding the importance of valuing yourself. We’re busy taking care of everyone else that sometimes we forget we need to value ourselves and take care of ourselves first and make sure we’re nourished so we can nourish others.

You’re welcome to join me because there’s all the fun of social media, which I do enjoy. The usual Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. I love to hear from you. I do appreciate other people’s perspectives. If I’ve said something that resonates, I would love to hear that because these are my thoughts and my meditations. I’m happy to share them with you. If they mean something to you, that means the world to me. If you have a different perspective, I appreciate hearing that too because you might spark me to something more.

We’ve talked a lot about success and getting to success and some of the things that it takes, mental triggers that we can use to help ourselves be successful. We talked about the ebbs and flows and the ups and downs. That’s all part of the process, but how do we deal with failure? How do we deal with disappointment? It dictates how we continue on our journey, whether or not we continue on our journey. What are your thoughts about that? 

Disappointment is tough because it’s something we’ve put our hopes, our dreams and we’ve worked towards and we don’t understand why they don’t realize we’re the best thing since sliced bread. Anyone who has not gotten a promotion at work, they feel they should have had. Anyone who has given their all and not had to come out. Anyone has been brave enough to risk an idea in a meeting and everyone rolled their eyes. I see it a little differently. I gave my idea and you didn’t care for it. It doesn’t mean it might not have been a good idea. It might not have been a good idea for this room of people I’m in. In terms of a game, you’re out there giving it your all. That’s a clear win or lose, but you’re not winning the game may have shown where your weaknesses were or how you weren’t connecting, how you as a team have lost the team.

If it’s a solo sport, are you focused on your next shot, you’re not in the immediate shot? Are you present or are you in another place? With work, sometimes not getting that might be the indicator. You’re not in what you love, you’re in the job you got. If you’re not happy there, or you thought to move into a new position would make it better. Is that your wake up call to see what could be more in your life? If you’re not meshing, this is a polite way to understand it before you find out ten years later you should have changed jobs ten years ago. Disappointment can be a wake-up call and taking it further with a relationship. No one wants to have a relationship go bad.

Sometimes we can have a friendship and we always go immediately to love. We could have a friendship with someone we love and they’d been this great person in our life, but our lives have gone in different directions and we’ve moved apart. That doesn’t mean I won’t always think of you warmly and remember all the good times, but you’ve gone in a direction different than mine and we have changed. It doesn’t diminish what we had. It means the future will be harder to navigate. That’s not necessarily a bad thing either because it could be a friendship that is challenging us to be more and it could be a friendship that we’ve outgrown or our values have changed. That’s a hard thing to say goodbye. It’s also honoring the growth within you and saying what you need, not what you feel you have to do.

I want to say thank you, Melinda. This has been a lovely conversation with you. It’s a wealth of information and I love your energy. Thank you for coming on the show and spending some time with me. I appreciate it.

Thank you very much. I have thoroughly enjoyed this as well. I love the idea of game-changing because everything in our life is a game-changer when we choose to embrace it that way. I love your approach to life in the world.

What is the game-changing message that you would like to leave with us?

I would encourage everyone to embrace the power of questions in your life. We run from questions. Instead of seeing them as doors of opportunity for us, for the people we love. A question is reminding you there might be something more or it might be a way for you to check-in and discover where you want to be. The questions can be wonderful friends.

It’s the quality of these questions that can change the trajectory of your life. Melinda J. Kelly, thank you again for stopping by and sharing thoughts. I appreciate it. Get the book, Finding Your Coach: Diving Deep Within. Imagine if we lived our lives every day listening to that coach that’s pushing us, encouraging us and cheering us on to dive deep within and become the person that you want to be deep within. Discover those things and contribute those things that you know that you are capable of contributing and bringing forward. It’s going to be hard and difficult. It’s going to be challenging, but it’s going to be worth it in the end because that’s who you are. When we can listen to that inner coach and we can dive deep within ourselves to push ourselves forward and express ourselves in an utmost manner. After we give back to life we serve life, we serve God and we changed the game. Thank you for reading. Until next time.

About Melinda Kelly

GCM 95 | Finding SuccessMelinda Kelly, a Los Angeles native, has been a lifelong lover of words.
Introduced to leadership volunteering at age twelve, she found the interplay of hopes, personalities, and outcomes to be a kaleidoscope of possibilities.
She often found the questions more interesting than the answers, leading her to a variety of thoughts. Finding Your Coach: Diving Deep Within is her first collection of those meditations. She is available for seminars, retreats and speaking engagements based upon her work.

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