The Curvy Girl Dating Podcast
The Curvy Girl Dating Podcast
Episode 16: Navigating Life with No Limits with Natalie Fayman
This episode of The Curvy Girl Dating Podcast features an enlightening conversation with Natalie Fayman, owner of No Limits Coaching. Host Cristina Gonzalez delves into Natalie's transformative journey from a stressed-out veterinarian to a life coach specializing in mindset shifts. They discuss powerful techniques for overcoming emotional eating, stress, and the pitfalls of unhealthy relationships. Natalie shares personal anecdotes illustrating her evolution from low self-esteem and dependency to empowerment and independence. Highlighting the impact of coaching on various life aspects such as weight loss, dating, and family dynamics, the episode also covers her harrowing personal experiences, including a traumatic backpacking trip with an ex-fiancé. Additionally, the discussion extends to the importance of improving workplace culture, addressing employee disengagement, and presenting actionable feedback to management. This episode is a testament to the resilience and growth achievable through self-examination, coaching, and recognizing the value of personal and professional development.
00:00 Introduction to The Curvy Girl Dating Podcast
00:47 Meet Natalie Fayman: From Veterinarian to Life Coach
01:26 Discovering the Power of Mindset in Weight Loss
02:59 The Journey to Stress and Burnout Coaching
04:01 Positive Intelligence: Transforming Stress Responses
08:54 Personal Stories of Transformation and Self-Discovery
12:08 The Importance of Self-Worth in Relationships
17:57 Embracing Independence and Self-Contentment
21:46 The Importance of Complementary Traits in Relationships
22:41 Worst Date Ever: A Traumatic Experience
23:48 The Backpacking Disaster
25:05 Surviving Against All Odds
32:08 The Aftermath and Personal Growth
35:14 Lessons Learned and Moving Forward
37:53 Coaching and Workshops for Personal Development
38:38 Workplace Mental Health and Productivity
41:05 Final Thoughts and Farewell
Natalie's Links and Info:
Website: www.nolimitscoachingnow.com
Email: natalie@nolimitscoachingnow.com
Schedule a meeting with me
Connect on Linkedin
Consultation Call: https://calendly.com/cristinacoaches/discovery-session
FREE Curvy Girl Dating Checklist: https://thecurvygirldatingcoach.myflodesk.com/datingchecklist
Website: https://www.thecurvygirldatingcoach.com
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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thecurvygirldatingcoach
Email List: https://thecurvygirldatingcoach.myflodesk.com/emaillist
You are listening to The Curvy Girl Dating Podcast, Episode 16: Navigating Life with No Limits with Natalie Fayman. Hi, I'm Cristina. After 10 years of dating, I was tired of attracting the wrong type of guys and thinking I had to lose weight to find love. I finally figured out how to date and I found the love I thought I would never find each week. I'll teach you dating advice, share dating stories and help you ditch the dating drama. My goal is to help you have fun and create the life you love. If you're ready to take your dating to another level, then listen up and let's go. Hi everyone. Welcome to the Curvy Girl Dating Podcast. I'm Cristina Gonzalez and today I have a guest, Natalie Fayman, and she is the owner of No Limits Coaching. Natalie, hi, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me. Tell me a little bit about yourself and your coaching.
Natalie:Oh, wow. Yeah, that's a long story. Let me try to condense it. I'm a veterinarian. I've been in practice for 33 years. 24 of those years were in ER critical care. So I basically had an express pass to burnout land. And then I went about 20 miles past that to the point where I was really seriously worried that I was going to fall over dead if I didn't try something different. So I had cultivated a lifelong habit of soothing my painful emotions with food, as a lot of us do. And because of that, I accidentally one day ran across a life coach that was running a weight loss group. I joined her group because she had a very unique approach. There was no good foods or bad foods. There was no, here's how many calories you can have. It was all about mindset. Like, why are you eating when you're sad? Why do you eat when you're not hungry? What emotions are you trying to soothe and squash by feeding yourself? By really embracing this work, it was the first time I had really dug into that. I noticed not only did I learn how to not manage my emotions with food. I was actually successful in losing weight, but I also noticed, wow, I'm not feeling as stressed out as I used to. My relationship with my mother is better than it's been before. And the people at work don't seem to cringe when they see me coming anymore. All these amazing things started happening. My whole life got better and that was when the light bulb went off in my head, like the power of coaching to transform your life in such a profoundly positive way. Just mind blowing and as I was contemplating, what am I going to do with the rest of my life? Because I know my back's not going to last forever. My knees are not going to last forever. My eyesight is probably not going to last forever. What do I want to be when I grow up? And it just hit me I can't imagine a better way to spend the rest of my career. Then to bring the kind of positive life transformation that I had to other people. So when COVID hit and all the things that I like to do with my spare time dried up I found the best coach training program that I could find. I did that. from there I went to positive intelligence, which blew my mind and continues to blow my mind to this very day. And so now I am bringing that full circle and I'm doing stress and burnout coaching primarily for veterinarians, but veterinarians don't own the patents on being stressed out or burnt out. So I would offer anyone dealing with an unsustainable load of stress, if you're at a point in your life where you're like, I don't know how much longer I could take this, what can I do differently? I feel stuck. Like when you wake up every
Cristina:morning and you're like, Ugh.
Natalie:Yeah. When, I used to pull up to work, I would have to sit in my car for a good 30 minutes hyperventilating, just to work up the courage to go inside. Yeah. And is this really how I wanna live the rest of my life?
Cristina:No, not at all. And actually Positive Intelligence, I took the short term program to do it. I would say I'm Positive Intelligence. aware, But yeah, it's really interesting and I really like how they do everything with the PQ reps.
Natalie:It has transformed my awareness of why I behave the way I do. as I learned more about the way my own brain works, I'm more understanding of why other people act the way they do, so it doesn't trigger me as much anymore. I know when someone is getting snappy or being controlling it's not about me. I have more empathy. So I can understand them better and they don't stress me out as much and the really cool thing is talking about the PQ reps, the little rub your fingertips together so that you can feel the ridges. This exercise trains you to shift your brain activation from the left to the right. The left side of our brain is where our stress responses are. That's where all of our negative emotions live. The right brain is that calm, clear headed, focus where you can actually access your empathy, your curiosity your creativity without the noise and the distraction stressful thoughts and reactions we've carried with us for our whole lives. So over time, I'm doing this exercise and telling myself,"this is crap. This isn't going to work what the heck is this? This is BS." At first I was in this program determined to prove that it wasn't going to work. This isn't real. It's all a bunch of hype," and what actually happened over six weeks, I'm doing this exercise multiple times a day for one minute, two minutes, telling myself it's not working, but I'm doing it anyway, just so I can check the box. And then one day something really irritating happened at work I can't even remember what it was because it was a while ago, but I was so PO'd. I flew out the door to go for a walk to cool off, and I started doing this little finger rubbing thing. Within 10 seconds, I felt this incredible wave of calm, just started at my head and just washed through my whole body. And I realized,"Oh my God, I actually created a physical association between this stupid little movement and shifting my whole emotional state to something that is more calm and peaceful." And that blew me away. I was like, wow, I'm in, give me the Kool Aid. I'm in for life.
Cristina:Yeah. I did the same thing not the same thing, but for example, yesterday I had this ridiculous migraine for two days. anytime I have a migraine longer than two days, the first thing I think of is,"oh my God, I have meningitis." It's just because I work in a lab, it's a lab thing, but I start freaking out and my headache never goes away no matter how much Excedrin or BC powder I take, yesterday in my office, I was wearing sunglasses so I could do work because my head hurt so bad. and So when it came to going to bed or whatever, I was starting to do the finger rubbing and, I turned on the binaural beats on YouTube like those wave frequencies I specifically found one that was for migraine relief. And so I put that on and turn off all the lights and I just I put my sheets between my fingers and rubbed it and then like I breathe and like I would notice my breathing and just like just to calm down my mind at first and be like"We're not going to talk about our headache right now. it's going to go away," and just breathing and touching the fabric and being like,"it's cold on my body when I get inside of it, they're soft, they smell like fabric softener." Just thinking about all that, just like a doze off to sleep. And then my headache was completely gone. That's
Natalie:fantastic.
Cristina:Positive intelligence is fabulous. Amazing.
Natalie:I tell this to veterinarians because this is one of the biggest selling points of this program. When I was back in the ER and even after I switched over to GP, if I had a really horrific soul wrenching, stressful as hell shift at work, it would take me 48 hours, sometimes even longer to recover, like emotionally to where I felt okay to go back to work without having a nervous breakdown. 48 hours. I was pretty much in a state of emotional, just complete despair. almost all the time, but through this work I've actually been able to reduce my recovery time from a day like that. From 48 hours down to 30 minutes. Which is literally 1 percent of the time it used to take me. I had a day like that a while ago. I was recovered by the time I got in the car and drove home, which means it's not about never getting stressed out again. It's about recovering faster. So now every time I have a terrible day at work, I get 47 and a half hours of my life back where I can actually. Be happy and do things I enjoy and be someone who other people enjoy being with instead of this ball of stress and resentment snapping at everybody and making people miserable. Has just given me so much of my life back. I can't even tell you.
Cristina:For sure. I think the power of coaching in general has really been able to change all aspects of my life. I have the same coach. That's how I met you from the same weight loss coach. The weight loss was like an afterthought, but changing my life and changing how I think about dating was a game changer because I was able to be like,"Hey, this isn't my problem." Like the people please are in me. I always wanted to make, everyone happy. I wanted people to like me and I'd go on dates and have all their interests. What do you like?""Whatever you like," I was trying to be desperate or anything, but it's just I didn't know myself to have enough of an opinion. So just say Oh, I'm just up for anything. I just like all kinds of things." it was me just trying to be cool and laid back, not necessarily to try to like somebody else It was just like,"Oh, whatever. If you're into something, I'll learn about it and I'll be into it. Sure. Sounds good." I realized it doesn't have to be that way, but there was this transition of okay I want to know myself. How do I need to know myself? Let's go do shit, and but there was like all these steps into figuring out how to go do shit and not worry about what people thought about me and be okay with trying different things. And so just the power coaching, just in general. really helped not only like my dating life or weight loss or, just my relationships, my family, again, being a people pleaser. And I would tell my sister, like my sister would call me and ask me to babysit, which is totally fine. But, I would cancel dates. Because I had, to go babysit. I could just tell her no, but I wouldn't make my problem and be like,"Oh my God she needs to do something. And I need to be a good aunt. So if I want to be a good aunt that I need to be available for her." That might be true to a certain extent, but that doesn't mean all of that. Be
Natalie:there for her if it was an emergency, but I'm sure she would want for you that you had a fulfilling personal life.
Cristina:Yes. and she would never know that I was doing right. And so finally I had to So it's okay to tell her no, like she can figure something out. We've got more family, we've got more friends, maybe it's something that she wanted to do, but can reschedule, but I'm not going to worry about it.
Natalie:I'm actually glad that you brought that up. Cause the last big relationship that I was in like three and a half years. I think it happened so slowly that I wasn't even consciously aware of it, but I made him the center of my entire universe. Everything I did was for him. Every waking thought was about him. What can I do for him? Make his life easier? What would he like? What would he not like? And after three and a half years, when we finally broke up in very dramatic fashion, I did not even know who I was anymore. I didn't know what I liked. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life because it had all been so much about him. And I felt completely lost. I can't even imagine if you've been married to somebody for 20 or 30 years and they pass away, what a huge void that leaves if you've lost touch with yourself and who you are and what you want for your life. So it's, yeah, that was my pleaser for a hundred percent. Sure. Because. I had such low self esteem that I just deeply believed there was no way anybody was going to love me for me. I had to earn it. And I had to prove it every minute of every day of my life. And That got me straight to the identity crisis.
Cristina:Anybody listening, you're already 100 percent lovable. You don't have to earn it.
Natalie:They have to
Cristina:bring something
Natalie:to the table that's
Cristina:worthy of
Natalie:you.
Cristina:Exactly. Like you're already lovable. You're already there and you got it going on, but you don't have to earn it. it just needs to be a match, I
Natalie:was watching an episode of Dr. Phil and he was talking to somebody who was very much like that. he said this to her, when you go on a date with someone, instead of asking yourself or saying to yourself,'I hope he likes me switch it around, I hope I like him.'" I say that
Cristina:all the time. Yeah. It turns around everything and it gives you back the control and like knowing that you have options because anybody at any time can go and have a partner. You can go"ini-mini-miny-mo" and find somebody and just be like,"Hey, we're going to be together." And I'm not saying I'm going to call George Clooney and be like,"Hey, George Clooney, you're my man!" I'm sure that if I went to a bar, the hundred dudes in the bar, somebody is going to be like, okay, whatever. Want to be with that person? No. Are they good for me? No. Do I care? No, but they said, yes. So you can get somebody, but you have
Natalie:the control and the power to make the decisions. Yeah, but are they going to make your life better, or are you going to have to sacrifice everything you are and everything you want so that they can have what they want?
Cristina:Exactly. just knowing that you're actually in control, And you're not like,"Oh my God, I'm single. Cause nobody likes me." No, you're single because you're trying to find what's right for you. Does that make sense?
Natalie:I'm single because I don't want to put up with manipulative people. I have a stable income and I'm very independent. I can take care of myself. I can get my shit done. And I think that attracts people who want to be taken care of. I was so love starved and had such little self esteem, I would settle down with the first person who said hello to me, and it would always end up with I ended up supporting them, and they got to live rent free in my house, order me around, get everything handed to them on a silver plate, and then leave when they got bored or when something better came along. And it was just a repeating pattern that I chose not to see for such a long time.
Cristina:Because you're like,"oh at least I have somebody,
Natalie:and
Cristina:having somebody and being miserable is better than not having
Natalie:somebody." It took me a long time to learn that. I am so much better off without somebody who just brings frustration and stress into my life. I've been alone by myself now for such a long time. I'm like,"do I even really want anybody? I have everything exactly the way I want it. The ice cream stays in the freezer until I go get it."
Cristina:Yes. Yes. I was talking to Ryan the other day and I was like,"I have never. been a food hoarder," I said, I found this little plastic box that I could put in the refrigerator with a combination lock on it that I need to have,'cause you take my sh!t all the time, I've never been like greedy with food or anything, but he like is a garbage can eats everything. Like we talk about all the time, but I remember when we first were together. I brought a big Costco size, chicken breast thing. to meal prep for my week. And so I asked him,"hey, you're going to grill. Do you mind grilling all this chicken?" He ate all the fucking chicken like that night. And at that point I wasn't confident enough to be like,"Hey, that was my whole week of food, What the hell dude?" He just got a big old X on the list of, red lights and green lights finally I had to say something, but now I feel like I'm labeling stuff. Hey, see this? Do not eat it. I'm saving it for the right perfect day that I'm going to want it. I'll get to that point where I'm like, yes, I remember getting this ice cream cone and I go and it's not there and I lose my shit, but sure enough, he'll go get me a new one that day.
Natalie:That's a little bit of a redeeming bonus point there.
Cristina:Like it was a thing
Natalie:for me. You're looking forward to something and then it's not there. It's like you've been robbed.
Cristina:So when you're single, it doesn't happen. So that's a good thing. So tell me about that. What was that journey like for you when you had your breakup and then the in between where it sucked really bad to where you feel now where you're like, I'm independent. I can do this. If I'm single, I'm single. If I'm not,
Natalie:then great. That was a really eyeopening moment for me because I took the time to do some work on myself and do some soul searching and I started seeing the patterns. And I started realizing how I'm creating this repeating pattern in my life. It's not that I keep meeting bad men. I keep choosing and attracting the wrong men because of the way that I present myself in the world and because of what I tolerate and what I'm willing to settle for and not really having any idea who I was anymore after that breakup that scared me because I had always been very focused and very driven. I knew where I was going and when that was like the rock that I had to hold on to and when it wasn't there anymore, I felt completely lost and never wanted that to happen again. So I spent a lot of time examining myself and how I had created these situations so I could recognize the red flags and not ignore them in the future. And through doing all that work on myself progressively started to get more comfortable just being by myself, not actually needing to have somebody in my life. I realized that every bad relationship mistake I have ever made in my life has come because I was afraid to be alone. And I jumped into a relationship with the first person who paid attention to me. If somebody doesn't bring something into my life that makes my life better, then I don't have a reason to have them in my life. I've really come to, appreciate my space being set up the way that I want it, knowing where everything is, having peace, having no drama. Not that I would kick a guy to the curb if he fell in love with me and brought amazing things into the relationship. But I don't feel like I have to settle anymore. If I'm single for the rest of my life and die as a crazy cat lady, I'm okay with that because I have no regrets whatsoever. That's so good. I love that. I get to do what I want with my life. I don't have to check with anybody. I don't have to make plans with anybody. And when you take the loneliness factor out of it, I'm not lonely. I was going to say, do you ever feel lonely? Every once in a while, but that's why I have my friend,"the therapy man." Tell me about
Cristina:therapy man."
Natalie:His name is Jose. We've been friends forever. And he is like the stereotypical guy that just doesn't pay attention. When you're talking, doesn't remember anything you say to him. He's always completely sucked into his phone the BO, the smelly socks, the whole thing I look at him and I'm like, I would never date him but he is pretty representative of the typical kind of guy. On those rare occasions when I do start to feel a little bit lonely, oh, maybe I want to have someone in my life. I invite my friend Jose over for a movie. 1 800 JOSE. I'm cured in less than two hours. I'm like, go home and leave me alone. If this is the dating pool, I don't want it. Jose is probably what the hell?
Cristina:Sorry, Jose. He's my therapy guy. Yeah, no, that's great. Because loneliness feels really crappy. You know what I mean? You don't have to stay in that funk.. Like you have the tool of Jose as therapy man, but there are tools that you can have that you can create your own.
Natalie:You can create those fulfilling social connections without having to be tied to a life partner. Right, like you in the dojo. Yeah. absolutely. That's where I get my stress out. That and Taiko Drumming that really just jazzes me up. I feel like I'm getting my energy out. I feel re-energized. It's such a cool experience and I'm completely satisfied at peace and calm when I leave. It's easy for me, because I've always been an introvert. I find peace and enjoyment when I spend time by myself, especially because of all the crap I have to deal with at work in vet med. It's so draining that I want nothing but to go home turn my phone off and not have to talk to anybody until I go back to work. I find that relaxing. But other people aren't that way. There's people who really need to have that constant social connection and social stimulation. I think for those kinds of people, loneliness might be more of an issue, but it's still not a reason to make a bad decision and fall into a relationship with somebody who is not going to contribute something positive to your life.
Cristina:I always tell people too about the whole"Oh, I'm looking for, the peanut butter to my jelly," or whatever. when people say you need somebody to complete you, you want somebody to compliment you, not complete you. Depends on how you look at the peanut butter and jelly. the peanut butter and jelly can either be the compliment or you can think that there's no way you can have just a peanut butter sandwich without the jelly, like it's not completing you. It's a compliment.
Natalie:Absolutely. Nobody is good at everything. Nobody has all the life skills, there's going to be gaps. it's nice to have a partner that fills in those gaps. For example, I'm super introverted. I would probably never leave my house if somebody wasn't asking me to go out. And if I were to have a partner, I would really appreciate being with somebody who was very extroverted, very social because that would fill in those gaps in my life. But do I have to have that to feel complete? Absolutely not.
Cristina:And you can also do them a favor and reciprocate back and by grounding them back in and, you don't have to be busy all the time. It's okay if you just hang
Natalie:out." I'm super organized. I'm really good at planning and prioritizing. Some people are fly by the seat of their pants and just let the wind take you wherever, free spirit. Which I think cool for a short period of time. But when nothing gets done and things start getting scattered all over the place, that's when it becomes, get out of my house. Yeah.
Cristina:Totally get it. It's good to have that balance. So tell me, pick one. Best date or worst
Natalie:date? Oh, I don't know that I have a best date. I have lots of worst dates, but I can certainly tell you the story of the worst traumatic thing that ever happened to me at the hands of a man and what happened as a result of it. So when I was in college, he was, tall, like army ROTC guy, just really like man's man. He was in the engineering program and, had a great future in front of him. All the women loved him, but for whatever reason, he decided he liked me. So I felt super lucky to have him. We were together for probably four, four and a half years. during that time I felt super lucky to have, like"he picked me. Ooh, I'm the lucky one." The only thing that I there was a lot of things that annoyed me, but the one thing that most consistently really bothered me was anytime we would have an argument. He would just get up and leave and go drive around for a couple hours. And then he would come back and expect that I would have forgotten about whatever we were arguing about and everything would be fine. And I'd be like,"no, we didn't fix the issue. There was a specific thing that we were talking about and that didn't get fixed." That was his habit. He would just leave and expect that the"hysterical woman" just give her time to calm down, right? So when I was a senior in veterinary school, we decided that we wanted to go backpacking, for spring break. And his roommate wanted to come with us. Between the three of us, I did not have a car. I had a motorcycle. That was my only transportation. My fiance had a car that only had two seats and there's three of us, right? So I'm on the motorcycle and they're in the car and they have all the crap in the car. And so we make this big trip from Kansas all the way down to Texas. We went to Big Bend National Park, which is literally right on the border between Texas and Mexico. The Rio Grande River runs. Oh yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah. So we go down there for our little backpacking trip and we had all our routes planned out and my fiancee, let me call him, let me call him,"Aaron." So Aaron decides that we're, walking on the trails is boring. We're going to go off trail, so let's like me, army ranger, follow me. I'm, we're going cross country. The terrain was so hostile. It looked, from a distance okay, clear, walking. Every square inch of the ground was coated in thorns that would go right through your boots.
Audio Only - All Participants:Oh.
Natalie:Ground was, like, all crumbly, and there's these gullies you would slide down and land in a cactus, you'd scramble up, and the ground was falling out from under you, you'd land on another cactus. So we did this for seven hours. In that seven hour time, he looked at the topo map and figured we had covered half a mile, it's getting dark, and cold, and we, hear the coyotes howling, so we have to camp out in the middle of nowhere. Did the same thing the next day. By day three, we were running out of water, and he finally admitted that we were lost and did not know where we were, didn't know where the trails were. By blind luck, we found a dry river bed to walk in because it didn't have any thorns in it. I heard something dripping when I stepped down over a rock fall. And I turned around and, this probably saved our lives, there was actually water in a spring or something collected underneath these rocks and our canteens were empty by that point. Thank God. We found water. The next thing, like a few hours after that, we stumbled across trail marker. So we found the trail, got back to the parking lot. The rangers had been out looking for us for a day and a half because you have to file a plan. So they know if you don't come back in time. we narrowly escaped death. Hallelujah, we're safe. On the way out of the park, Aaron decides, there's a hot springs, over by the entrance that would be really cool just to soak in the hot springs before we head back. Sounds great because we're all dead, tired, blistered, and stuck with thorns and everything. Okay, yes, go to the hot springs. We drive to the parking lot. It's a big empty parking lot. There's no changing rooms. There's no like public facilities. It is literally a big empty parking lot. And then there's a trail that runs along the side of the cliff. it's straight up on one side and straight down on the other. And there's people like. inching their way along the wall. Yeah. And then it opens up and there's the hot springs. We get in the nice warm water in our clothes. It's great, but now it's starting to get dark and we gotta get out and go home. So we scritch our way along the cliff back to the parking lot. No changing facilities. I'm dripping wet on a motorcycle. So I had to strip to my bra and underwear in front of 200 people in the parking lot. I put my dry clothes on, which are now wet clothes because my underwear and my bra are wet. I get on my motorcycle, which has no windshield, and we start heading north. The temperature in the desert drops down to the 40s. So I'm on my motorcycle soaking wet in 40 degree weather on a motorcycle for... And there's nothing out there. No, there isn't. There isn't. I've never been,
Cristina:but I've seen, and there's not shit out there.
Natalie:Yeah, no. I haven't been there in 30 some years, but I'm sure it hasn't changed very much. So I'm on this motorcycle wet in cold weather and driving. My fiance and his roommate are in the car in front of me. I'm just trying to follow the taillights and the taillights are doing this weaving back and forth. I'm like,"is he avoiding potholes? What's going on?" I'm trying to follow the taillights. Come to realize later, he's not the one that was swerving around. That was me. I was delirious. my body temperature had dropped. I don't know where, how far down it went, but I was hypothermic and I was getting delirious. The first little town we came to is Fort Stockton, Texas. A hundred miles from the Texas Mexico border. Has like literally one stoplight. So he pulls into the parking lot of a Pizza Hut. I pull in behind him. Thank God they had already gotten out of the car, because I couldn't get off the motorcycle. They actually caught me as I was about to fall over. They pick me up, carry me inside, and order me some hot coffee to wrap my fingers around. I'm sitting in the booth at Pizza Hut with my hands wrapped around this little hot mug of coffee and my fiance and his roommate sitting across the table from me going,"you look terrible." And I'm like,"I feel terrible. Can someone put me in the car with the heat? Someone else just drive the bike for a while. I need to warm up." I hadn't brought any heavy cold weather gear with me because the weather report, it wasn't supposed to be this cold, but they're whispering to each other and they're looking at me and they're like, you need to go to the hospital. I didn't have any health insurance. I had$30 to my name. That was just enough to buy me gas and hamburgers for the trip back. I'm like,"I can't go to the hospital. Just put me in the car with the heat, please. Somebody else take the bike." So they're whispering and they're looking all shifty. Next thing I know, my beloved fiancé of four and a half years takes his paper placemat and turns it over and he draws me a map from Texas to Kansas. Fuck that. Shoves it across the table at me and says,"you're not going anywhere with us. If you don't go to the hospital, you could have a heart attack. You could go into shock and I don't want to be responsible for that." So they both get up and they go outside and they throw all my camping gear out the back of their car and they get in the car and they leave. And I watch the taillights disappearing, and it's 11 o'clock at night. Pizza Hut's closing, I got all my stuff all over the ground and me and my motorcycle, and$35 bucks to my name. What the heck do you do in that situation? I filled up my canteens in the Pizza Hut bathroom. And tried to figure out how to strap everything onto my motorcycle. Get back on the bike. I stopped for gas. I was sobbing. This poor guy at the gas station, I don't know what he thought. I was hysterical. But I just, there was not even any light. It was so dark. I get back on the motorcycle, I start driving within 30 minutes, I can barely keep the bike upright anymore. I'm so cold. I'm gonna die if I don't stop. So I stop in the middle of nowhere in the desert and I threw my sleeping bag down on the ground and climbed in it I didn't even sleep, I was too cold, but I just laid there by the side of the road. I hear coyotes sniffling and howling I finally drifted off maybe two, three o'clock in the morning I woke up at some point because a semi blasted by me doing like a hundred miles an hour and the wind from the semi knocked the motorcycle over it landed on top of me. And I'm in my sleeping bag like a mummy with this, I don't even know how many hundred pound motorcycle on top of me, the rear view mirror snapped off on my chest. And so I had to spend the rest of the night tunneling my way out from under the motorcycle. Getting it back up right by that time the sun's coming up and I'm so pissed off I get on the bike and start going. So it took me like another two days to get home There's snow on the ground in oklahoma. I'm freezing. I'm starving all over the highway I don't know how I made it home alive. When I finally made it back I just laid in bed for three days my roommates brought me chicken soup. When I finally felt strong enough to get up and walk outside there was a note taped onto the gas tank of my motorcycle from Aaron."Oh, glad to see you made it back. Give me a call when you want to talk." And I called him like,"What the hell?" And he was so taken aback that I was mad at him. Because in his mind, what I had done was walk out on just another argument. So what's the big deal? He acted like I was overreacting because I screamed at him. I told him, burn in hell. And especially for somebody who's going to be in the military, You're expecting men to put their trust in you and follow you. And you're just going to abandon them when they get inconvenienced. how does your brain have to work for that to be okay with you? That traumatized me for years. I felt betrayed. I felt like my heart had just been ripped out of my chest How can I ever trust anyone again? I'll never love anyone again. I'm not gonna let anyone near me I did a lot of self development work after that and I finally healed enough to at least accept the possibility that I could let someone back in my life again at some point in the future, but also to look at, what were the positive things that came out of that terrible situation? I was forced to become the kind of person who is resourceful, who can take care of herself, has my own resources, who, always make sure that I can take care of myself. I don't have to depend on anyone else to take care of me. I became much more assertive, much more of a leader. And, as horrible and traumatic as it was, as much as I would never have guessed in a million years while that was happening, that I would ever appreciate anything about that situation, it has done so much for me in how I'm not even the same person that I would have been if that hadn't happened to me. And I like the person that I am today so much better than the person I probably would have been. That dude's a total asshole. I actually joked around that I wanted to send him a thank you card for doing that. If it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't be where I am today. And I'm pretty darn happy with where I am today.
Cristina:Oh yeah, that is amazing. I probably would have kicked his ass when we were in Big Bend, and he went off.
Natalie:Oh, yes, I wanted to. I would have probably kicked his ass then. Ironically, we were both in the same judo club in college. Okay. After I was back home and, functional enough to go back to class, I told my judo instructor what had happened. The next time Aaron came to class, he got the beating of his life and I was holding up pom poms by the side.
Cristina:I just can't even believe it. I think that takes the cake You win the medal of worst dates.
Natalie:Yep. That was very nearly fatal. I have no idea how I made it home alive.
Cristina:I find it interesting how he's I don't want to have any part of you being sick and not going to the hospital, but you might die."
Natalie:It's actually, as awful as that experience was, at least he showed me who he really was after four and a half years. He did you a favor. What if I had married him and had kids and then 45 years later I get a cancer diagnosis and now I'm inconvenient and is he going to leave me, when I need him to be there for me the most?
Cristina:Or what if he went on a family vacation to Big Bend, y'all get lost and then he leaves y'all's family and y'all are all out.
Natalie:Like what an asshole. Yeah he has to live with himself, but he was a catalyst for some significant growth for me and I'm actually grateful in hindsight.
Cristina:And I love that you have found that experience and coaching, because you could still be in that angry, lost, traumatized version of yourself that isn't independent and resilient and resourceful and can take care of yourself. Like those are all great qualities to have. But if you hadn't overcome that and done the work to get through that, like you said, you wouldn't be the person you are today. And this is like on another level, but that's what I tell people about dating that every single bad date is still an experience. It's still an opportunity for growth.
Natalie:It's an extreme example, but every bad thing that happens to you in your life on the other side of it, looking back, there's something about it that did something positive for you. Whether you learned something valuable, you met someone you wouldn't have met before you were able to gain a new skill or it just inspired you to do something new with your life that you had thought about doing before. But you have to be willing to let yourself see it. If you're so stuck in the misery and the victimhood and the resentment and the betrayal. There's no
Cristina:growth.
Natalie:Exactly. you have to work through it as painful as it is, but there's amazing, incredible things on the other side.
Cristina:Yeah. And I think that's very valuable. This is actually really good because it's super valuable to have that. information because when you're dating, and learning all these things about yourself, you have to go through all the sucky parts. It's not always going to be good and you're learning along the way. It teaches you independence. It teaches you all those red flags that now you can cut it off at the beginning or you can give people chances and be like,"okay this situation sounds familiar. But let me keep an eye on it and see if it can, turn into something better." Like Ryan eating all my food. I just had to tell him,"stop eating my food," and he fixed it.
Natalie:Yeah. But I was one of those people that was always afraid to speak up for myself and I would talk myself out of the red flags and I would talk myself out of my feelings. I would tell myself a story about how I didn't deserve to feel the way that I felt, or I was being unfair. That is diametrically opposite from how I am today. I completely validate my feelings. I pay attention to my intuition. There's a reason why I feel the way I feel. And if someone's trying to talk me out of it and tell me that I'm overreacting or I'm being too sensitive. That's a red flag right there, right? Nobody tells you how to feel. Anybody that does not have respect for your feelings is not somebody that cares about you. Yeah, absolutely
Cristina:not. Yeah, because feelings are what drives like everything. It drives your actions, it drives your results, so if you're not using these feelings as some guidance, or if somebody's shutting them down, then they're not supportive in your in your
Natalie:interests. And who benefits from you not taking your own emotions seriously. Exactly. So
Cristina:red flag y'all. My goodness. Thank you, Natalie. That's awesome. I really appreciate that story because there's so many lessons from there
Audio Only - All Participants:and
Cristina:it's totally valid. Where can
Natalie:people find you? My website is nolimitscoachingnow.com. And one of the tabs across the top is"Workshops." I do monthly workshops that help people to learn new approaches to handling life challenges. Past workshops I've done have been resilience, conflict management, stress management. Productivity and effective energy management leadership, how to be more persuasive. So there's a new life skill that we work on developing with a little bit of a different approach. I use a lot of the positive intelligence framework, but you don't have to have been through the positive intelligence program to be able to learn the way that I'm teaching it.
Cristina:Yeah. Check out the workshops and hope to see you there someday. Awesome. Do you have any, offer to get in touch with you every week?
Natalie:The freebie that I have on my website on the front page is more for people who work in high stress environments, which, That could be anybody really. it's an ebook published by Positive Intelligence called,"Your Employees Are Not Okay, The Impact of Poor Mental Health in the Workplace." And it talks about the real cost of being miserable at your job or having to deal with somebody that's bullying you or just working with people who just aren't engaged and just get like 50 percent effort. It really breaks it down from an employer's perspective. This is something you might like to leave somewhere where your boss can see it, turnover and those hidden costs really impact the functioning of your business and the experience people have at work and why they leave. When your boss does an exit interview, Most people just say,"oh, I got a better paying job somewhere else." That's not the reason. That's just because the real conversation is too uncomfortable to have. That's the surface excuse. But when people are happy, when they feel appreciated, when they feel supported and challenged in the right way, they're not out looking for other jobs. It benefits
Cristina:to
Natalie:improve the culture and the environment in the workplace.
Cristina:It's true though, because even if you do it"anonymously," it's not that anonymous. They have a handful of people they know who are leaving. it's a really uncomfortable conversation to have. It just depends on your approach on having those conversations because you can make it productive and give positive feedback, or you could be like,"fuck this place, I hate it because it's this."
Natalie:If you want things to change, it actually benefits you from being able to present it to the person who is in a position of being able to make decisions, in a way that shows them what's in it for them. In medicine, we call it ivory tower, people that are so far up there, completely detached from reality, on the ground. They don't really appreciate fully what the impact is of having employees that are stressed out, anxious, unhappy, feel like they're in a toxic environment. They just, their attitude is a lot of times they'll just get over it, whatever, just go back to work. But if you can actually show them,"this is what it's costing you in turnover and mistakes that have to be fixed. And people calling out sick because they just don't feel like it today." It really does a great job of laying out exactly what the actual cost to the business is of having employees that are just, Stressed out and miserable. Yeah. It's like
Cristina:factual and not emotional. Thank you so much, Natalie, for everything and coming on the podcast. I really appreciate you sharing your stories with us. Thanks
Natalie:for having me. It's been a pleasure. Thanks.