Have you ever felt like you’re following someone else’s path?
Maybe you feel you’re expected to conform to someone else's vision for your life—or even just a vision you've outgrown—when in reality, you feel there’s something (or someone!) else you’re meant to be entirely.
After choosing to step out of the box she found herself placed in by others’ expectations, iPEC Certified Professional Coach, Natalia del Olmo, found her belief in herself and her dream life expanded—what she believed she was capable of grew in abundance.
Coach training was the foundation for this new life and vision. Listen as Natalia shares with iPEC Admissions Coach, Nathalie van Haaren, how coaching training can support you in whatever you want to do in life (whether you choose to build a coaching business or not!).
Hear how coach training can set the stage for more freedom in your life.
You’ll also find a transcribed excerpt from their conversation below.
This interview is part of iPEC’s Energy Explorer Live Series, which highlights members of the iPEC Coach Community who are using their talents, drive, and highest selves in order to live their purpose.
Nathalie van Haaren: Let's get started! How would you describe your [iPEC journey] and what made you apply for the [coach training] program first of all?
Natalia del Olmo: I think the best way to put these together would be to say that, for me, my epic journey was my initiation into my spiritual awakening. I know that those are [strong] words, but this is pretty much the work that I do today and, as you mentioned, when I found iPEC I was quite young at age 22. I was a Pilates teacher back then, having just entered university, and I had already been working as a teacher for a few years.
And I just have this voice inside of me where my intuition tells me, ‘you need to go further with this work you're doing.You need to help people—not just with their physical bodies, but in a deeper way.” I just heard this voice inside that said to Google: “what is a health coach?”
So that's literally how my journey started. I just followed that intuitive hit. I went online and I found iPEC.
From there, it was pretty much straight forward. I had one of the calls with the Admissions Coaches. I was very new to everything. I didn't know what coaching was and I didn't know what my life in the future was going to look like, but I just had this intense feeling in my gut that this is what I need to be doing. So I enrolled in iPEC and it was a game-changer for me because, back then, I was already a very efficient young woman. In both my grades and in my work, I felt prepared to be out there in the world.
But when I started iPEC I realized that I'm not just Natalia. I’m not just this body, I’m not just my mind. I'm so much more, and during the coach training it really helped me differentiate between the stories that were playing in my mind: the limitations, my conditioning, and the way I treat myself. It really was a game changer for me to start to navigate that space and it opened the door for me to go in a completely new direction.
Coach training really helped me differentiate between the stories that were playing in my mind: the limitations, my conditioning, and the way I treat myself. It was a game changer for me.
Nathalie van Haaren: Thank you for sharing that. One thing that stuck with me because I know that there's a lot of people watching that may resonate with this: You said that you felt an intuitive hit to pursue [coach training]. Many times when I speak with people on the phone they tell me they have this calling or vision or idea of, “Yes, I want to go and do coach training to start helping people.”
What can be the most challenging is knowing how to follow that intuitive hit. Knowing all your spiritual experience, what are some of the insights, for the people [that you work with] for how to follow those intuitive hits?
Natalia del Olmo: Thank you for that question because obviously this is a huge topic and I specialize in helping people integrate their feminine energy and I specialize in working with women, but this applies to everyone.
You know all of us have masculine and feminine energy within us; the masculine is the structure, the logical brain. It is the part of us that is ready to take action, to create a plan, and follow instructions to make sure that everything is ready to go and to actually execute the plans that we set for ourselves.
But the feminine energy within us is the part that is more fluid, more sensual. It's all about the sensations of the body and intuition. It’s the part of you that is receptive to information and, unfortunately, in the past centuries, our society has been very masculine energy dominated. Not just in the sense of men dominating the world, but the energy of only thinking with our heads and we're all trying to operate from a very logical perspective and linear way.
And we've sort of forgotten that we're human beings who work with the seasons. We have our own cycles and we have this other superpower, which is our intuition and our ability to sense things that are perhaps unknown in the material world.
I think it's so important that people exercise this muscle of intuition and, really, the way I see it is how your soul communicates with you. It’s easy to see the material things, but when you start feeling things and notice you have a calling or a deep desire . . . I think there's a lot to do here for all of us in terms of uncovering these desires and being okay with being worthy and following these pulls that we feel.
So it's a whole thing, and we could speak about these for hours probably, but I think the best way to listen to your intuition AND to follow your intuition, is to [first] create space for yourself to hear your intuition. So do things like walk in nature, spend time on your own for five minutes of meditation. Close your eyes when you're taking a shower and take three deep breaths and just tune into your body and see what comes from that space of stillness.
And then the second step is to create safety for you to then start to walk into the direction your intuition is pointing you towards. And I know that this is a very important point because we don't get trained to follow our intuition, but if you think about it all of the people who are entrepreneurs and create new things—people who take risks in life—they are really good at walking into the direction of their intuition and holding themselves into that unknown, into that space of uncertainty and nervousness so it's an art that we all have the capacity to work on and master.
I think iPEC coach training is amazing in helping you with your intuition.
“I think the best way to listen to your intuition AND to follow your intuition is to create space for yourself to hear your intuition… and to create safety to then start to walk in the direction your intuition is pointing you toward.”
Curious about what’s involved in becoming a professional coach?
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