Shift the Field

How to Deliver the Transformation Your Clients Crave While Unlocking The Magic You Were Born to Share

Darla LeDoux

• Publisher: Original View Corp
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780999399132
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Mentoring & Coaching
• Index: Business

Transformation Doesn't Happen By Accident!

How do some coaches, healers, and retreat leaders consistently facilitate powerful transformation for their clients... while others find their clients chasing breakthroughs without ever achieving lasting change?

Here's the secret no one has told you until now. Your success as a facilitator has nothing to do with the types of clients you serve, but everything to do with your understanding of the predictable (and repeatable) process of transformation!

Shift the Field is the definitive guide for coaches, consultants, healers, retreat leaders, and other service providers who want to facilitate powerful and lasting transformation within their programs and offerings.

Darla LeDoux is a transformational business coach, "recovering engineer, " the best-selling author of Retreat and Grow Rich, and the founder of Sourced™. Since 2009, she has guided thousands of clients to confidently market, sell, and deliver deep transformation, unlock their own magical Sourced Expressions, and build lucrative businesses based on deep energetic alignment.

Drawing on more than a decade of experience as a top-level coach, retreat leader, and facilitator, Darla will show you how to combine her proven framework, The Anatomy of a Transformation, with your unique magic to create life-changing shifts for your clients-reliably, predictably, and in perfect alignment with divine Sourced Energy.

In this groundbreaking book, you'll learn:

• Why "ah-ha" moments don't always equal real breakthroughs for your clients
• Why strategy alone doesn't empower people to create results
• The pivotal role of commitment in creating transformation
• How to help your clients integrate their breakthroughs and embody new, Sourced energy patterns
• How to apply your unique Sourced Magic within the framework of the Anatomy of a Transformation to create incredible outcomes from your clients
• How to sell your programs from transformation, not information

At its core, this work is about using vetted principles to create a powerful container for Sourced Energy. When you make space for transformation using this framework, you will allow your unique magic to support your clients' transformation in the way that is most aligned with their goals, their life path, and their soul's mission.

If you're ready to begin creating powerful, lasting-and most importantly, repeatable and predictable-transformation within your programs and retreats, this book is an indispensable guide and companion.

Chapter 1
Shift the Field

“In theory, I should be feeling great. I did what I set out to do by transitioning my business, but it just feels … off. If I don’t sort this out, I don’t know what I’ll do instead. I’m unemployable at this point, yet I can’t keep going like this.”

Those were the first words Brittany shared with the group on day one of our transformational retreat. I knew exactly how she was feeling.

Like so many healers, coaches, consultants, and service-based entrepreneurs, Brittany was tired. She was juggling so many balls as a business owner, and as a service provider who was committed to the best for her clients, she was often over-giving. In the evenings, when she wanted to simply be present for her partner, she was either on the couch with her laptop writing blog posts or thinking about a client situation she didn’t know how to resolve. She loved her work on the whole, but in the big picture it wasn’t working.

On the outside, Brittany was super successful. She had previously built a thriving therapy practice. She has a master’s degree, several certifications in alternative therapies, and a large network of referral sources. She was curious and resourceful, always looking for the best approach to support her clients.

It was this drive that led her to transition out of her therapy practice and into more transformational work as a coach. She didn’t want to “diagnose” her clients anymore. She wanted to help awesome humans like herself live a more empowered life.

Brittany was just over a year into her coaching work when she registered for our Sourced Experience™. At that point, she had successfully stopped seeing clients as a therapist; she had doubled her pricing, no longer took any insurance, and required all new clients to sign up for a minimum of three months of coaching. She let go of her physical office and was conducting all sessions by phone. Fully half of her clients made the shift to the new model and loved it, and without insurance and rent costs, she was making significantly more money.

Brittany had also recently begun offering transformational workshops to groups of her clients, knowing that she could help them go deeper this way. Her clients were excited to come to the workshops.

As she had said, in theory she should have been feeling great. But she wasn’t.

She thought she would be able to get better results with clients without the shackles of insurance forms and diagnoses. And sometimes it seemed like she was, because she felt free to ask better questions and go off script. But then a client would take a step back, or a workshop participant would show a lot of resistance, and Brittany instantly felt defeated. Because clients were paying her more, she felt more responsible than ever for making them happy. And even though she was making more than last year, Brittany saw other coaches around her earning far more than she was, with a fraction of her qualifications! More, after nine months in a business mastermind and following her coach’s formula, she was doing more to attract new clients, but getting little in the way of results. Deep down, Brittany didn’t really want more clients, because more clients meant more work, more stress, and more time spent on her business. Being in constant hustle mode made her feel less effective in her client work, not more.

Something had to change.

“I know my clients love me,” Brittany stated. “For many, I’m their inspiration and sense of stability, and I love that. But I can’t keep this up. I’m just so worried that I’ll let them down.”

“I hear you,” I said. “I’ve been there, and there is a practical solution. But before you can change your business, you need to find out where this is all coming from. This isn’t just about strategy, Brittany, it’s about Energy.”

Over the course of the retreat, I got to know more about Brittany. Her mother had raised her and her two siblings virtually alone. Her father traveled for work as a truck driver for long stretches, and when he was home he was more interested in drinking than his children. His drinking, and the fact that he wanted things to be exactly how he wanted them, led to terrible fights between her parents.

With her mother working long hours, Brittany, as the oldest child, began taking on responsibility for her siblings. She would notice when the laundry needed to be done and take care of it, and she could tell when her mom was too tired to ask about homework or tuck them into bed. She even reminded her mom when the rent was due.

When Dad was home, Brittany was sure to keep things extra orderly and smooth in an attempt to prevent him from taking issue with her mother. And while it didn’t always work, Brittany knew that he was pleased with her at least—her work ethic and commitment to the family shone through. Her dad criticized her younger siblings for being lazy or causing trouble, but she knew she would never be faulted or hurt as long as she played this vital role. She was the reason the household ran—even if her mom didn’t know it. She was the quietly responsible one, and it kept her safe.

What Brittany came to learn on our retreat was that she was running her business the same way she’d run her household—from a position of fear. She was “quietly responsible,” caretaking and managing her clients’ issues the same way she’d been caretaking her mom, her siblings, and her dad. But she had never been able to change him—and she wasn’t helping her clients change either.

This pattern was revealed early on in our retreat during an experiential exercise. Each randomly selected team was to reach a specific outcome within a set period of time, and the winning team would be rewarded. Achieving the goal required the team to agree upon and execute a strategy efficiently, and without missing any details.

As luck would have it (though it’s never luck!), Brittany ended up with the perfect team for her. It was as if her team was made up of the same people that she’d had in her family! They were also the same people that were her roommates in college, and the colleagues in the therapy practice where she worked before going out on her own. In other words, she found herself having the same familiar experience that had been repeating throughout her whole life.

In particular, one of her teammates had quite a dominant personality, and deemed himself the one in charge, just like Brittany’s father. There was the woman with her head in the clouds, reminiscent of her mother. Her other two team members seemed … just okay. In response, Brittany found herself rallying the less dominant members of the team to get it together and do the exercise right. She didn’t need to win, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to lose.

Throughout the exercise she was subconsciously seeking the approval of the “man in charge.” That same feeling she’d experienced throughout most of her childhood was welling up in her stomach, but she barely noticed it; it was just “the water she swam in.” But she sure was frustrated. Trying to get it all done and keep everyone on the team happy was extremely stressful!

Brittany’s result was perfect, just as designed, but not because her team won (they didn’t). Because as we debriefed the exercise, she discovered that this way of being was actually the way she was showing up in all the areas of her life: taking responsibility, making sure everyone on the team was okay, diminishing her contribution publicly so the self-appointed leader still felt like he was in charge, while secretly knowing that she did it all! The purpose of the experience was to reveal to participants the way of being they default to in a challenging situation, which would mirror the way they are being that had been creating their current business challenge.

As Brittany began to explore this idea, she could see exactly how the pattern that revealed itself in the exercise was also showing up in her business.

She could see that she was working hard to figure out how to do it all, how to make her clients happy, how to please the coach who was giving her advice on how to run her business (aka, the “man in charge”), and make time for her home life. But what was really hard to see and admit to herself was how, ever so subtly, she saw her clients as incapable of managing their own lives.

Brittany was horrified to see this truth. But it wasn’t her fault. In her situation growing up, it really did seem that if she didn’t take care of things, no one else would or could. She’d done this so often, it had become a natural approach to life, and necessary for her own survival. If she didn’t take responsibility for things, it meant Mom and Dad were sure to fight, and the terror of that had been more than she could stand.

While she was led to coaching because she wanted to empower her clients, she suddenly realized that she had a filter for them—for everyone really—that had her seeing all the places they “needed help,” rather than seeing their power.

She could now see, with the support of my guidance, that it hadn’t actually been true that it was her job to take care of things for her family. She was just a kid. But it made perfect sense that it had felt that way, and that she’d created this pattern.

As soon as Brittany could see that she’d been showing up this way (her team went out on a limb to express how they’d felt diminished as she quietly took control of the exercise), she knew she was ready to let this pattern go.

As she began to explore what that might look and feel like, she realized something else.

While in some ways Brittany felt totally self-important—my clients need me, I have to get this done—she also felt very hidden.

When she handled things for her parents, she did so quietly. She never took credit; it was simply expected. As she watched the coaches in her new industry “put themselves out there” and promote their work, giving clear opinions and getting noticed, Brittany felt terrified.

Staying focused on her clients and what they needed from her, giving them extra sessions, offering workshops for free, emailing them resources after hours … suddenly Brittany could realize how nicely this old pattern kept her safe in another way. Not only would her clients love and approve of her, but as long as she was busy with that, she didn’t have to formulate her point of view, or do the things she knew she needed to do to get visible, bring in more clients, and move beyond her financial set point.

The decision Brittany had made as a middle schooler was still subtly controlling her life. This pattern had allowed her to survive in a household that wasn’t set up to nurture her success—but she’d trapped herself in a dynamic of needing to be responsible and in control of everything to stay safe, while at the same time flying under the radar and making everyone else feel like they were doing it on their own. Even becoming a therapist had been part of the pattern: a built-in group of people who “needed” her, and a strict set of rules to which she was legally bound.

As she got present to it, Brittany could even feel the pattern in her body; it showed up as tension in her shoulders from carrying those burdens, and a concavity in her chest from her efforts to stay hidden.

When she began to see and work with this old energy pattern (as I will teach you to do with your own clients in this book), she felt it release from her physical and emotional bodies. She seemed to stand a full foot taller. Her fellow retreat-goers described her as “glowing,” or “lit up.” On the last day of the retreat, she put on a bright purple dress.

“I had no idea at the time why I packed this,” she said. “But now I do. It’s time for me to be seen.”

This new Brittany was not ...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Part I: A Commitment to Transformation
• Part II: The Anatomy of a Transformation
• Part III: Integrating Transformation in Your Business
• Afterword A World, Sourced
• Resources
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• About the Publisher