
Our main objective here at the National Coach Academy is to enable aspiring coaches to reach their full professional potential. One of the most effective ways to educate students about the world of coaching is by offering them a window into the world of real, practicing coaches and showing them all the different ways coaches make a difference in the lives of their clients.
We hope today’s interview adds another insightful glimpse into the dynamic world of coaching.
Today we are interviewing Judy Kane. Judy is a PSYCH-K® facilitator and owner of Aligned Consciousness based in Tarpon Springs, Florida.
NCA: Can you describe your business and the kinds of clients you typically work with?
Judy: My business is called Aligned Consciousness. I help people rewrite subconscious, self-limiting beliefs. People come to me for three main reasons: 1) they have tough emotions that are keeping them from functioning fully during the day—anxiety, phobias, trauma, etc, 2) they’ve got conscious goals that they’re not hitting and they don’t really know why, or 3) they’ve got physical symptoms of stress because the stress is caused by beliefs. If you can get rid of the beliefs or change the beliefs, you can get rid of the symptoms of stress.
NCA: What initially got you interested in going down this career path and what were some of the motivating factors behind you choosing this career?
Judy: I don’t have a lifelong background in this type of work. I was an IT manager for decades.
What I do is a process called PSYCH-K®. It’s not a matter of understanding energy that’s moving around or anything like that. It’s a process that can be facilitated. I could tell it was something I could learn to do and I was very excited because of the possibilities and the impact with it.
NCA: Can you talk a little bit more about the work you do specifically with clients that are sent to you by other coaches and some of the most common challenges that they come to you facing?
Judy: A lot of times, coaches will have clients that have blocks that are making it hard for them to be successful in those coaches’ packages. I have coaches that will refer their clients to me to help work with the blocks. We’ll spend an hour, sometimes more, but usually it’s just one session for an hour. I’ll help the client work through the subconscious block so that they can go back into the coaches’ programs and be more successful there.
Because I’m not doing strategy or accountability or actual coaching advice, I have a wide variety of coaches that send clients to me because I don’t need to be an expert in the subject matter. But typically, I see people who are either trying to improve their success with their business or that are working through self-esteem issues that may be impacting life in general.
NCA: In working with your clients, what would you say is the most rewarding part of that process and on the flip side of that, is there any part of the work you do that you didn’t anticipate when you first started or parts of your work that you find to be the most challenging?
Judy: The work I do is with the subconscious which means that’s not something that you can easily change with facts or logic. Typically, I am working with people that have had a challenge around some particular aspect of their lives for a while. Not always, but usually it’s something that’s been there most of their life. When I get feedback that they’ve been able to be successful with whatever it was that was a challenge for them before, that’s when I feel very rewarded. Either they’ll let me know themselves some differences they’ve experienced or I’ll get feedback from the coaches because they can see a dramatic difference in the client’s ability to move forward in their programs.
The challenging part is sometimes these things are easier to find than others — the reasons for the blocks. The challenges are when it’s more complex, when it’s not as straightforward in getting to the root cause of whatever is contributing to the block.
NCA: Can you think of a mentor or a coach in your own career who was the most vital to your success and in what ways did this mentor help you thrive in your career?
Judy: It wasn’t exactly a mentor. It’s somebody I’ve never actually met. But somebody who had a big influence on my understanding of the impact I could make was Bruce Lipton, author of The Biology of Belief and The Honeymoon Effect. He’s a pioneer in epigenetics. He writes extensively of the impact of beliefs on experience and how one can understand by looking at your life what subconscious beliefs you might have or where there might be opportunities to change those to have a different experience.
NCA: One of the most common challenges new coaches face is self-doubt. Some coaches call it Imposter Syndrome, where early on they feel somehow inadequate to take on the role of coach. What is one piece of advice that you would give to somebody who is in the beginning stage of their coaching career and dealing with these doubts in their mind?
Judy: First, have a little compassion for themselves because nobody starts out as an expert. But if they’ve gotten to the point of being a coach, they’ve got knowledge. They’ve got an interest. There are some skills there. They need to trust those and they need to trust those are going to grow as they go along. Because the more people you see, the better you’re going to be at putting together insights to help future clients.
I would also say that if data and logic and all of those conversations with yourself end up not making a difference, consider finding someone who can help you identify and change the subconscious beliefs causing those doubts.
I work a lot with coaches and entrepreneurs and the imposter syndrome is one of the big, big things that comes up in a lot of those conversations.