Episode 241: From Rock Bottom to Radical Reinvention | Christina Spinazola | Mindset & Business Coach
After a debilitating injury took her out of the game - literally - Christina Spinazola was forced to reevaluate everything. Once a scientist and athlete, she found herself in deep burnout until a single coaching session changed the trajectory of her life. In this episode of the Powerful Ladies Podcast, host Kara Duffy sits down with Christina to unpack how coaching helped her reclaim her power, find new purpose, and build a life of integrity, self-trust, and radical choice. They talk about what real transformation looks like, the myths around the coaching industry, and why adventure, whether on the Pacific Crest Trail or inside your own mind, is often the key to expansion. Christina also shares her practical take on building self-trust, the role of language in reshaping identity, and why the best coaches walk alongside their clients, not ahead of them.
“Choice isn’t actually available until you can see it. Coaches help you see new possibilities so new choices can be real to you. ”
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Follow along using the Transcript
Chapters:
(00:00:00) Christina’s Injury, Identity Crisis, and How Coaching Changed Her Life
(00:03:30) From Skeptic to Coach: What Coaching Really Unlocks
(00:06:00) Redefining Coaching: Integrity, Trust, and Client-Led Growth
(00:08:30) Letting Go of Survival Mode and Choosing Something New
(00:11:00) The Pacific Crest Trail: Adventure, Identity, and Transformation
(00:14:30) Solo Travel, Safety, and Building True Self-Trust
(00:17:00) How Big Goals Start with Small Steps
(00:20:00) Using Science and Testing to Build a Life That Works
(00:22:30) Grace and Grit: The Dual Energy of Coaching
(00:25:00) What It Means to Lead Yourself Before Leading Others
(00:28:00) Navigating Pressure and Rewriting the Rules of Success
(00:30:00) Christina’s Wishlist: Who She Wants to Coach and Why Now
And I think that's what we do is we help people to see it. And once you see it, you can step into it. But if theoretically that it exists, like anybody who's listening to this right now could go do whatever they want, but until they see a real possibility there that they can step into like that.
That possibility doesn't exist for them yet.
That's Christina Spinola. I'm Kara Duffy and this is The Powerful Ladies Podcast.
Thank you for being on The Powerful Ladies Podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk with another powerful lady. Let's jump right in and tell everyone who you are, where you are, and what you are up to in the world.
Sure. So my name is Christina Spinola. I'm sitting here in Massachusetts.
That's where I live, and I am a mindset and business coach. So I've been in the world of coaching since 2018. I actually fell into that world by accident. I hurt my back and had a pretty serious transformation of my own that led me down in that path. And that's who I am and what I'm up to.
Let's dive into your journey of becoming a coach.
So you mentioned that you hurt your back. And many people have hurt their back and haven't become coaches. So what was it about your experience that caused such a shift in your life to get you to where you are today?
Yeah, it's a great question, and I've actually reflected on this a bit myself. Like you said, everybody has their own journey and that doesn't lead to the same output.
And for me, hurting my back was. Huge because it changed the way I thought about myself. Up until that point, I had always considered myself an athlete. I was very active. And that was actually like the primary identity that I held, and I didn't even know that at the time. Okay. So when I hurt my back, and again, that is, that sounds I tweaked it or something went a little off. But, I was down from the count for about a year trying everything I could before I ended up having to have surgical intervention. In, in that process, because I had been an athlete, because I was so used to s. Staying active in.
In essence, I didn't even realize how much I was running from problems until I couldn't physically run anymore. And that led me to a pretty dicey place mentally where I was really low and just grasping at straws, to be honest. And someone had suggested like, Hey, why don't you work with a coach?
And I wasn't really sure what that meant. I just said yes because I was out of other ideas for myself. And in that process, working with a coach very quickly and radically shifted my perspective in such a way that I was just like, oh my God. Like you get paid to do that all day. Like, why have I not heard of this until now?
So it wasn't until I experienced it and I understood the power of it, not just in theory or in concept, but really personally and experientially that I was like, yes I am in for that. If I can change people's lives in the way that my life has just been changed, sign me up. How do I get started?
I, yeah, discovering that coach was a possibility and that, I think also I was good at it.
My life has been so different since then.
And that's it, right? There's this piece of. The two coming together I didn't know this existed. I see it now. And there's a bit of a natural like ability and desire to do it that when the pieces fit you just take it and run.
Yeah, and it's funny 'cause I go back and forth personally about trying to do everything I can, not to use the words coach or consultant in my space.
So I'm a. I'm a business coach and consultant. I have life coach training, financial coach training. So like I have different assets I bring to it, but ultimately I'm a business coach and I still say that no one knows what it means anyway and everyone has an opinion on what the words coach or consultant means or should mean.
So I think it's really interesting to be working in a space that is so much more powerful than the vocabulary that we have to describe it. That it actually gives us a lot of fun room, I think, to say something different. Like I'll often say when somebody asks what I do, I help people do what they love and make more money than they ever have.
And they're like, okay, like that I can hold onto. So how has the journey been for you of navigating what coach means to you and to other people when you're pitching yourself and the different opinions people have about the coaching space? I think that's
a really interesting question for a couple different reasons.
The first is, we look at language as this thing that we all have the same meanings for the same words, right? Like you say, coach, I get it, and we say the same thing for, pick a word. We overlay these meanings on top of them, and what's really interesting is I just had a conversation. I'm part of a program this year out of London, so I'm flying there a couple of times and we had a conversation in this room with 36 other powerful coaches from all over the globe around reclaiming the word coach.
I'm not sure if you see it with some of like your colleagues and the people that you're connected with, but there is this. Timidness this, shyness, this I don't want to share with you that I'm a coach. There's a bit of hesitation there for people, and I think there's so much power that I'm seeing more and more of really reclaiming and standing boldly and like I'm a coach.
And when people then ask what does that mean? I'm like, I could sit here and tell you about it, but why don't I give you an experience of it? Why don't you. Understand instead of try to read through some brochure and, get a sense of it when you can just experience it. So for me, very recently, I've had a pretty powerful shift into let's, as an industry reclaim that word, let's take coach and stand behind it powerfully because so many people, they get asked.
What do you do? And they're like, oh, like I'm a coach, and they say it so fast that they hope that, the conversation goes somewhere else, which is interesting to me.
What is it about coaching that you fell in love with?
I fell in love with seeing what was available for myself that I had never seen before.
Something that I thought was exclusively available to other people, and then realizing that, oh wait, I can do that too. It's this weird almost egoic power trip where you're like, oh, I'm useful. I'm valuable, I'm purposeful, and it's not necessarily because of the thing that I do, but just as a person. That opened up a lot for me in helping other people to have that moment and to deepen their own understanding around that.
There is just nothing better than watching somebody step into, Hey, there's more on offer for me. There's more available than I'd let myself dream of. So far, watching people have that sparkle come back into their eye is just, it literally
lights me up. Yeah. When I was preparing for this, this interview and I was looking at your website, I really appreciated how I think aligned we are in our approach to coaching. You're using words like adventure talking about how you're doing it differently and encouraging people to be excited to push their boundaries and like really explore things versus follow a systematic structure.
I'm a co in the business space. There are some basic structures we can give people to step forward. I also have to preface it that I'm always, it's a bespoke approach for every business. 'cause every business is owned by a unique, specific person. So as a coach that leans in on exploring an adventure and pulling in that kind of testing to see where your coachee wants to go with you how does that give you freedom and actually give them more results in the end.
I have noticed that every single one of my clients has become my greatest teacher. Where I'm like, who's coaching who here? There's just. This beautiful give and take in that container and in that relationship. And to your point, I mean I have a very exploratory style. It's, we don't have to get anywhere in particular.
Of course we have goals that we're working towards, but the way that you arrive there is really trusting, like what's supposed to be coming forward. And that's taken me a long time to really lean into and trust, and there's more levels available into that, even for myself. But I think what you're pointing to is like, there's this bit of fruitful conversation where the thing that's removed from the conversation is twofold.
It's pressure and judgment. Like I'm not sure if you've experienced it yourself in the coach seat or with clients, but you can feel sometimes we have this place where I need to get there. I have to be there, and I have to be there quickly, and I have to be there now or things aren't working.
And when you can remove that. All of a sudden, these new ideas come in and there's like a gentleness to the exploration that brings you exactly where you need to go, but a place that you typically didn't know you were going to arrive. And to me, that's really beautiful to see.
I know that every client that comes to me, they'll, I joke that they'll be like, I need a Twitter strategy. I'm like, you don't have a product. Why do you need a Twitter strategy? And who needs one of those anymore at all? Anyway, I need to pick a new social media platform for this example. I know that whatever people are coming to me stressed out about or feeling is lacking is the symptom.
It's not the cause and we have to get to that cause space. And often I feel like most days I'm just giving my clients permission to do what they know they're supposed to do, but feel trapped that they can't because of. Society or some rules or what their competitors are doing or something they decided to box themselves in with.
And being able to give people that freedom of choice back and that we can fully create what we want in any way we want possible. That's, I think that's one of the best parts of reminding people that truly anything is possible, just depends on how creative you wanna get.
Yeah, and I love that. One of the things I've explored recently too is honestly a misunderstanding on my part that I recently dove into with my coach, along the lines of choice.
And I'm with you. I believe anything is possible. It's how committed are you, how creative can you get? And honestly businesses don't build themselves. You have to do things like you have to be in this action space, which I think sometimes the world of coaching, especially with like law of attraction and manifestation, can get a little fuzzy around.
We have to be doing things, but that is all to say, I was seeing, some frustration in my own world with different people who weren't taking choices that were available to them and starting to open up this understanding, like it just deepens the empathy and compassion you have for people when you realize.
Choice isn't actually available until the moment that you see it. And I think that's what we do is we help people to see it. And once you see it, you can step into it. But if, theoretically that it exists, like anybody who's listening to this right now could go do whatever they want, but until they see a real possibility there that they can step into like that possibility doesn't exist for them yet.
And I think that's really interesting because it. You know when you think that possibility is there and open for the taking for everybody all the time, it's easy to get into a place of judgment, like, why aren't they doing that if it's possible? And pulling myself back outta that has been just something I've been playing with a lot recently that feels like it's coming up in this conversation.
I think it's the hardest part of being a coach is to care so deeply about people and to know, like I can see all everything that's possible for them, but they're choosing. Not to even look. They're choosing not to do the work. They're choosing to stay in what I call the worry well or the victim.
And you're like, you are so magical. Get your shit together. And it's not even people who are clients, right? It's just people who I care about in my life that I wanna be empathetic and hold space for them to vent and talk about things and. It's so hard to be like, yep. And you can totally fix that.
Do you wanna fix it? And they're like, Nope, I just wanna be miserable. And you're like, okay. And those are the people that I've had to like really look at and say, can I hold space for them? How many people in that space can I have in my life on a regular basis? And obviously those people aren't usually clients of mine, but.
It's the hardest part of allowing humanity and allowing people to choose not to change their life.
Yeah, I love that word, that humanity or allowing that to coexist with this huge, magical, like world of possibility to say. I'm, my hand goes up first here, like I'm also human and I have my own limitation that like I place on myself and find myself in.
And I think that's why the more I see that happening for me, I'm like, I get it for other people. And to your point, I don't have to have those people surrounding me all the time. I prefer being surrounded by powerful people like yourself, other powerful ladies, but to balance that as a constant kind of evaluation process.
For sure.
If we go back to 8-year-old, you, what would she have imagined that your life would've been like
a
lot of outside time? I've always loved being outside. My family could barely keep me in the house when I was younger and I was never that kid that had Hey, I'm gonna be a veterinarian or I wanna be a doctor. I really didn't know what I wanted to do. And that carried through probably my college education where I studied immunology and then moved into the field of biotech and biotech sales.
And it wasn't until I found coaching where something clicked, but if I go back to 8-year-old me. She was really just spending a lot of time outside and I did a lot of that last year. So she is pretty stoked to have seen all the time we have now spent outside and continue to even as an adult. That's not just, playing in the street, playing out in the, the neighborhood pond, but really still exploring the world on just now a much larger scale.
And when we're talking about you being outside you, I believe have done the PCT. What was that experience like for you?
Yeah, and if anybody doesn't know what that is, that the PCT stands for the Pacific Crest Trail. It's a trail that runs from Mexico to Canada through the western part of the United States, running through California, Oregon, and Washington.
And I took on that journey, that adventure. Out of sheer pleasure, like it's something I wanted to do so badly. I had this dream and was like, man, if I get to the end of my life and have not done this, like there will be no questions asked, regret present. So that journey for me taught me so much. It's not even funny.
And honestly, I've learned so much. I'm coming up on my year of being off the trail, and so my year of completing that experience, and I've learned probably more in the last year reflecting on it than even when I was in it in the moment, which I mean is life in so many ways, and a big piece is just.
When you think about these overwhelmingly huge goals, right? Like walking 2,600 plus miles across the entirety of the country through mountains, that can be overwhelming. There's a lot there, but really breaking it down, and it sounds cliche, but it's because it's true that it is step by step, moment by moment, and you just let things unfold.
But it was an experience that I would. I cherish it so deeply and I would recommend it to anybody who has like an inkling of being drawn towards it.
It is overwhelming for so many people to think about. Wait, you're just walking and walking and walking and it's yep. And of course there's a lot of logistics that go into it about where you're getting resupplied.
There's the people who in the communities along the trail know that people are doing it. Camping here in California, we've given people rides, right from the trail back to a town to restock to bring them back up. And I think it's really interesting as a woman to do it. Did you do it alone? Did you do it with friends?
So I
always joke with people that this speaks to my selling skills. I was out with a hike on a, with a friend one day sharing like, Hey, I'm going to do this thing. And the more I was talking about it, the more he was interested. So I did end up roping a friend into joining me, and we were together for the first probably half of the trail, pretty much side by side.
He stayed at the same spot every evening. And then from that place our desire for what we wanted, our experience to be individually had started to shift a bit. So we would meet in towns. So I was fortunate enough to head out with a friend and then we met so many people along the way. It's been incredible even reconnecting with them all over the globe after the drill.
Yeah. 'Cause even for me, like going hiking by myself makes me nervous, so I can't imagine like doing it for that long. And again, it's just my weird programming of. Feeling safer in urban environments than in very safe na natural environments. So I think it's just so admirable, like doing any outdoor activities in the woods by yourself as a woman, I find so inspiring because I think about the layers of.
Unnecessary fear that I would have to personally walk through to do it. A friend like went camping in the White Mountains for a solo overnight for the first time ever, and I was like, how was it? She's it was great. I'm like, okay, maybe I just need to start there, like camping by myself for one night.
Yeah, and honestly, I think that's been such a part of my own journey, is spending this time by myself out in the wilderness and my family doesn't love it by any means. And at the same time, I share with them, I feel safer out in the back country by myself than I do in a city by myself. Yeah. Like the chances of things going wrong are so slim.
I'm not naive to the possibility of that, but to your point, like there's a level of independence and self-trust that comes with that process. And the podcast that I have is called Walking Towards Fear. Very much like straight at it, whatever it is that scares me. I'm like, oh, here we go. It's time.
It's time to go walk in that direction.
I always, there's a book I saw at a, in a bookstore once, and it was one of those books where I think the editors probably could have done a real job with the title because you've read the title and didn't need to read the book. I have read this book actually, but it's like Face the Fear and Do It Anyway is the title, and it's okay, so I already got the answer.
Like I don't need to keep reading. But I do think it's so interesting to choose. There's so much is coming at us and for people who are driven towards optimization and performance and expansion, finding that balance of when do we keep pushing our boundaries and where do we take space to be in rest or in grace or whatever.
The not pushing spaces. How do you coach people through those two spaces? And how do you yourself walk through those two spaces?
I love this conversation. It's one that I, that comes up often, right? Within myself and with clients. What I'm seeing, again, more deeply and understanding right now is that we have action.
We're doing things, and what's driving that is some sort of logic or some sort of reason, and that is all just thinking it is thought. It is nothing more than that. So in so many ways it is arbitrary. It doesn't, in some ways, it doesn't matter. So I say it to clients quite often and myself like, nevermind, why?
So if you're doing something, it comes down to this interesting like dichotomy and paradox of trust your own experience and know that your experience like you are creating in every moment. So what do you want it to be? And I think that's where it comes down to just. Working to end the incessant self-questioning that a lot of, I don't even wanna say women, but people experience to pick something, trust it, and have some sort of built in evaluative process that helps.
That's what I do. So I have an evaluative process that I'll go through every Friday just to like. Reflectively look at my weak, like how's I feeling? How are my energy levels? And then from that place, I know I don't have to worry about things slipping by my awareness because there's time to look at it.
And outside of that it's really self-trust. And that opens up a whole nother conversation into self-trust and what it is and how it's created, all that sort of good stuff.
And I think that we can step into that a little bit. 'cause I think everyone listening's curious of do, we might think we have self-trust, but how do we know if we do or don't?
Are there any indicators that we don't have self-trust or we do have self-trust? Maybe we just start there.
Yeah and what I say is that self-trust right, comes from us. It's the self bit of self-trust that's important. Not so much the trusting part. And I have seen in my own world. As soon as I understood the power of integrity, meaning I do what I say I'm going to do, I keep all these small promises and it doesn't matter what they are.
That could be joining this podcast precisely when I'm supposed to be here, right? If I have something on my calendar, it's done. There's no questions asked. Of course, I'm human. Once in a while things slip through, but that's something that I check off the list. If I tell myself I'm gonna run three miles today, those miles get run because I said I was going to do them.
Because our language is so important all of a sudden. I have reason to trust myself when I do what I am saying I'm gonna do. But all of those small moments of, I said, I'll do three miles and I'll do two and a half, or I said I was gonna go to gym after work and now I'm too tired. I'm not gonna go every single one of those moments, no matter how small they seem.
And somebody may be listening and frustrated by this concept. But they're really critically important to build that self-trust muscle, because when we're not doing what we say we wanna do, whether it's to somebody else or just to ourselves, it erodes the trust. Why do I think I'm gonna be able to build a business if I can't even, not have a different snack for the afternoon?
It's starting to see that the language is so important and being able to minimize the amount of times we step out of that integrity of. Not doing what we say we are gonna do. And on the flip side, really maximizing that say do ratio when you can get to the place of knowing my word is gold, it creates my world and I say, I'm gonna do it, it will be done.
There's just so much power there that comes into self-trust and that's really the way that I see it. And do a lot of like integrity audits for that reason.
Yeah. I think that there's. I like the idea of integrity being aligned with self-trust. 'cause I've always been aligning it more in the self-confidence space.
That if you do what you say you're gonna do, then there's confidence that you can keep doing things. So I think people get caught in this space where we're so mean to ourselves. Like we, we judge ourselves so harshly that. As you mentioned, because we can't handle those small things, we can't do the big things that we really want.
And I think that there's even space in the integrity kind of checklist process to even look at those small things and be like, should we even be doing them? Like we're holding ourselves prisoners to things that we said we were gonna do, but did we actually want to do them like. If we didn't really want to run three miles, like why did we say we would like, where is that coming from?
And so I think even unpacking the small things that we've made are like judge and jury I think is a really interesting place to hang out with clients too. 'cause again, thinking more on the business coaching side of things, I know that 80% of what people are doing, we can eliminate. And those, that 80% of stuff we can eliminate is often what's preventing us from doing what we want to either 'cause we're judging ourselves for doing it or we're forcing ourselves to do it.
And it's sucking up time and energy that we don't wanna give there. But yeah, anytime my life isn't working, I go back to my integrity checklist too.
Yeah. And it's interesting that you brought in the confidence piece. I believe it's Rich Litvin who says confidence. It's not a prerequisite, it's a result.
Yeah. Like we, we gain confidence by doing things we're not sure we can do. And I think to your point as well, with the integrity checklist, when we're committing to doing things we don't wanna do, like that's also inauthentic. That's not real for us. And then you have a whole nother conversation around authenticity.
Yeah. But to your point, there's also a balancing point of I don't love. Doing certain things every single day getting up and going for a walk, even if it's raining. But I know that movement is really important for me. So that's an act of self-love, even though I'm like, man, I don't really wanna be out here right now.
So it's, it is, it's just this balancing act of nuance and really trusting your own experience in it to say. Hey, this is working for me right now. And if it's not, I, I'm not using this tool because integrity is such a cool tool to build a life that you really wanna live. I'm not gonna use that tool against myself either and make myself wrong for everything I do.
Yeah. Yeah. I think the root of everything that, that we're talking about is just letting people know how much power and authority they have over their own lives. I don't know when it happened anthropologically, but like when humans started thinking that someone else was deciding everything for us or the path was already decided, or all these, we didn't really have choice in the matter and.
It can be really overwhelming for people sometimes when we start unpacking why do you live in the city you live in and why do you have this job? And why do you eat that for breakfast? Because we can look at everything. And sometimes I think we need to like really break free. Like we kinda have to swing the pendulum a little bit to, to show people how many things they're not actively choosing on a daily basis or even.
Having a thought about and then I like to swing the other way and be like, okay, once you know what you do want, I don't wanna keep thinking about it anymore 'cause we have to be moving in a different direction. But it's amazing how many things we do on autopilot and the midlife crisis people have talked about, it seems surprising when it happens at 25 or any other age, that's not midlife.
It's really just an awakening of wait, how did I get here? This is not the path that I'm supposed to be on. And it can happen more than once too, even for people who are doing all of this work. So for people who are maybe scared or intimidated or overwhelmed by how much of their life may not have been their own choosing right now, where do you think is a good place for them to start to claim the life that they could have?
That's such a big question, and I think what you're pointing to is there's no age or particular time or rule around when things should or should not be working for you and having the ability to, again, just ask yourself like, because I say this all the time is that working for you? I ask clients that all the time and sometimes their answer is yes.
I'm like, great, then don't. Stop thinking about it. Yeah. Put it somewhere else and pick a different topic to, to explore. And I think that comes back to trusting your own experience. And for people that are really looking to make changes. I think honestly that's it is first step.
Where I am right now is not quite where I wanna be, and we don't have to make that bad or wrong either. I think that can turn into a spiral very quickly. But to really just recognize. If I want to make a change, I can, and I'm the one that's responsible for doing that. Yes, I can seek support. And even from a coaching perspective like I've shared now, I don't know if this has been your experience at all.
I talk with a lot of other coaches who have this kind of fear that, we have to have it all figured out. And I will tell you the minute that I release the, I'll say need and desire to be an expert and just share what I'm learning. Like my path is constantly changing and ebbing and flowing.
It really gives people permission to do the same. So all those people, I would really encourage them to explore, like to get out there and try things and tinker. So I'm an explorer on one side with going out and doing all these big adventures, but I'm also a scientist, so like I'm very curious, if I change this variable, like what changes in the output?
Maybe don't change your whole life at once. Start small, change one thing and just see how it starts to snowball because those things do. There's no way that you change something and there's not an impact somewhere that doesn't exist. So I would say to start small, but really explore and play with it.
Let it be fun and let it be playful instead of feeling like. Man, my life sucks and I really need to change it, and I have to be somebody somewhere or somebody else, or I'm going to be miserable. It's no, let's like remove some of the like, deep darkness around it and like just bring it more fun and light.
Yeah. And I think so often too, we think everything is linear. I also see this with creating a business or a product or service. Like, all right we decide and we build it and we put marketing and we launch it, and it's no. Like product creation is a spiral. I think also creating our life is also a spiral in the sense that it is, we're going to talk about the big idea and then we're gonna make some changes.
And then those changes are gonna allow us to come back to the big idea. And it's, we're gonna keep like circling through core conversations, but we're moving forward. And I think there's a really beautiful analogy in the sense that if you look at. The track that a rocket has to take to leave Earth's orbit.
It's a spiral. It's like a cone like going. And I think that's how to think about ourselves. Like we're gonna release ourselves from where we are to where we could go or want to go. We can't get mad when we come back to oh, my house is still a disaster. It's not organized. I thought I cleaned my closet.
And I was like, yeah, but you know so much more now. So when you go through that experience again of. Unpacking something simple like, why can't I stay organized to something bigger? Like why? Oh, like I thought I got over trusting people. And it's you did at that level, but now you're a level four or six or 10.
And it's a different relationship with that concept. And that I think is really interesting because it can be so frustrating thinking like, I already did that. Why? Why is that a breakdown for me again? And it's because now you're bigger and more badass and it's, there's still space to explore it that you could never have explored before because you weren't at a capacity to even notice it or see it in the way that you can now.
So I think, giving up the fact that we don't know where our journey is gonna take us, and if we do feel like we're circling back through something. I dunno. It's okay, cool, like we missed something the first time, so let, we did it once. We can figure it out again. Yeah. And that curiosity like,
oh, I thought that I understood this, but what if I didn't?
Oh, like now I have an opportunity to learn something new. And I've seen that and had so much fun playing with that this year in particular, like really just deepening my understanding around different pieces. The program, again, I'm in London, we just had a phenomenal conversation around listening.
I deepened my understanding around what it means to really powerfully listen and I thought before I got it right. Yeah. In this version of me, there's a future version of looking at and laughing, thinking that I understand listening right now. Yeah. Like it's this kind of ongoing evolution and when you can see that as just what it is, there really isn't a place to get to.
It's an exploration and it's, it changes all the time. That feels really light and really fun instead of. Again, like this, so many people, and especially I'm sure on your podcast talking with powerful women. It's so easy to put yourself in this like pressure cooker. Yeah. Of like high performance and needing to be somewhere else and always intentionally digging at this next growth edge.
And I love that too. But doing it from a place of love instead of a place of a judgment or thinking things have to be different or fixed. Like it's nuanced, but it's such a powerful distinguisher.
I think it's a great segue into asking you. What does it mean to you to be powerful and do the definitions of powerful and ladies change when they're alone versus next to each other?
There were a couple questions in that one, so I'm trying to figure out where to start. I would say my definition of powerful is how I would define a like self-leadership, which is. Being able to regulate yourself and therefore regulate other people. That to me, is something that I work on. On an ongoing basis and work really heavily with clients on as well.
And when you take a powerful and ladies and you put them together, I think there's a bit of magic that happens, especially when they're all in one room. In the same way that right now I actually have a friend who's over in the UK working with a group of powerful men. And that space is so uniquely special because of the sameness and the thread that connects it.
So I think you can expand this question and be like, powerful people and what does that look like? And I think that's kinda the business that we're in, is creating more powerful people. And that can look like more ownership, more responsibility for our own experience. And that can look like, having someone that has more power, more money, more impact in the world to keep that ripple moving, which I think is really fun. But for me it comes down to ultimately like leading yourself first being a self leader and that, I've heard a quote a while back that when you follow your dreams, people follow you.
And I've seen that like we powerful people become walking permission slips for other people to do the same.
It becomes a reminder that of all the things we've been talking about that it is possible that you can do it. That it is accessible, that and it goes to the bigger conversation we're having culturally right now of if you see someone like you doing it, it does give you permission.
'cause just because Michael Jordan can do it doesn't mean that I could necessarily. And I think that's an interesting expansion of things too. Yeah, to
Go
ahead.
No, you go to see there are so many people that watch powerful people, and there is, there's like the spectrum of watching this, we'll call it, right?
Yeah. There're the watchers that are like, oh my gosh, that's possible. What the hell am I doing? Like I'm gonna go do that. Thank you for showing me, it's possible. Thank you for paving that path and showing me the way. And then there's the total other extreme where it's just straight judgment and that judgment comes from a place of I don't think it's possible for me.
So I'd rather judge than step into something and everything in between there. And that's interesting to, to see unfold in real time.
Yeah. Yeah, agreed. We ask everyone on the podcast where they put themselves on the Powerful Lady Scale. If zero is average everyday human and 10 is the most powerful lady you can imagine, where would you put yourself today?
And on an average day? I put myself up
at a nine or 10 regularly. And that's not to say that it's really not a comparison to anybody other than me. And I just had this conversation as well that when we put somebody else above us, it therefore means we also put other people below us and really starting to see into level the playing field that like we're all just powerful.
And even if you were removed a scale. A means of measuring. It doesn't change the level of power that's there. And just being able to tap into an access, like I think anybody who listens to this is just as powerful as I am. I don't think there's anything unique or different or special about me that's allowed me to get there.
And when you were talking about the similarity in business, right? Like earlier in the podcast, I would say any coach. They have their own unique power to what they do because they're them. Yep. There is this really unique piece to each person, their essence, what makes them, stand out in the world, individualistic.
And so for that, I would say, yeah I feel really powerful a lot of the time. And that is just an invitation for other people to see themselves more powerfully more than anything else. When you are a nut coach, what are you doing? What is your life like? It's a lot of, right now I'm actually in a season of slowing down, so I've been pretty actively traveling for the last 18 months and I'm just finding that's a limit for me of a year and a half of constant plane rides and jet setting and movement.
So right now I'm in a slower season where I'm working with clients, I have my business, and outside of that I'm doing a lot of slowing down, resting, going for walks, going for hikes, doing the things that I love, reading, listening to audio books. Really just doing a lot of local and gentle exploring right now as well as, I do my podcast, which I love.
These conversations light me up and being able to record them and share them with more people is just super fun for me. Yeah. So I've been enjoying being on the receiving side of it for our conversation, like I said, very much in a season of slowing down and resting right now.
We've been asking everyone on the podcast as well what do you need?
What's on your either wishlist or to manifest list? This is a powerful community with that can answer big to small questions or have that key you might be looking for to open the next door. So how can we help you?
I love that question and I actually asked a very similar question on my podcast. So it's funny that I didn't have anything that I had thought of coming in.
I would say. What I, we'll call it a loose need, but I have a desire for what I enjoy is getting more people into the space of possibility. So more so than asking to receive something I'll share with your audience something that I think is really powerful for anybody to, to know and understand.
And there's a book that came into my world last year called The Ultimate Coach. Written by Amy Hardison, who's the wife of Steve Hardison, who's an incredible coach out of Arizona. And it's a book that when you read it and you read it the way it's supposed to be read, starting with the back cover and really reading it about you and what's possible in your own world, it helps people crack open this world of possibility.
And I was reading that before hopping on this podcast. So I would say I, I need more people to be aware of that book and what it can do for you if you read it from a place of. This is not just a book to read and to absorb, but like a book to really show me that I can do more in my own world. And that feels really fun to share.
I love that. For everyone who is excited about you and wants to work with you, support you go on a hike with you, where are all the places that they can follow and connect?
I am all over the place. I do a lot of my coaching work on Facebook. A lot of content goes out through there at Christina Spinola.
My Instagram is Christina Spin. My LinkedIn is Christina Spinola, and then I also have my podcast called Walking Towards Fear, where I put out a lot of information. We can connect that way as well.
I love that. Thank you so much for taking time today and sharing your wisdom and who you are for the world with this community.
It's powerful. Ladies are busy ladies, and for you to take a moment to be so generous with your time means a lot to me. So thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It was an
awesome conversation, and half the time when I'm talking with clients in the same way I talked in this conversation, there are all these reminders for me as well to move into the rest of my day, feeling that inspiration and that deeper knowing.
So thank you for facilitating the conversation. It was incredible and really looking forward to staying connected.
All the links that connect with Christina and her podcast. To earn our show notes@thepowerfulladies.com, please subscribe to this podcast where you're listening and leave us a rating and review. Come join us on Instagram at Powerful Ladies, and if you're looking to connect directly with me, visit kara duffy.com or Kara Duffy on Instagram.
I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Until then, I hope we're taking on being powerful in your life. Go be awesome and up to something you love.
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Episode 208: Powerful Coaches Empowering Women
Episode 167: The Power of Coaching to Live Extraordinary with Angie Wisdom
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Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
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Music by Joakim Karud
