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Get In Touch With Nat Couropmitree
Interview Transcription
Morris: Welcome to CreateGrowProfit: Coaching Stories. I am Morris from creategrowprofit.com and today I’m speaking to Nat Couropmitree who is currently exploring self-sabotage but with a twist. Nat, thank you so much for being here. Where are you calling in from today?
Nat: Yeah thank you so much, Morris. I’m grateful to be here. I love podcasts and these types of conversations. I’m based just outside Boston Massachusetts in the US.
Morris: Nat, you have, to me, such an interesting background growing up as a Thai Buddhist monk but tell me first, who are you working with today? What kind of clients do you serve today?
Nat: Yeah so many, okay, I’ll address your questions. Well, I didn’t grow up as a Buddhist monk but you know I spent some you know some time as a Buddhist monk. I just want to address that.
Morris: Oh I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
Nat: That’s okay. Yeah, I don’t want to mislead people so I always wanted to say that. The people I currently serve are mostly entrepreneurs, mostly small business owners but also just you know regular working professionals as well who want to prioritize themselves, who want to prioritize their well being and perhaps have been conditioned to or have habitually put other people first.
In this exploration or in my coaching or guidance, I also look at self-sabotage because I’ve come to see that self-sabotage is a form of self-protection and that there’s some part of us trying to keep us safe. And so self-sabotage comes in where people get in their own way or hold themselves back because they’re concerned that if they do what they want then they’re going to experience loss or rejection or disappointment and it feels easier to hold back than to face the possibility of rejection or disappointment.
Morris: Yeah you’re definitely describing an experience that I have made, too. When you put it that way, when people come to you, do they, are they aware of their self-sabotage? Is that something they express verbally to you?
Nat: They don’t necessarily verbalize it as self-sabotage but they may relate it more to like often in my marketing workshops. I do, I talk about procrastination. I talk about overthinking. I talk about perfectionism. I talk about people not wanting to rock the boat or trying to create waves you know.
These are the ways that they more relate to like they’re aware that, oh there’s this thing that I want to do and I avoid it. There’s this thing that I want to do and then I have thoughts that keep me from moving forward, that is self-sabotage.
Morris: Okay and what do you recommend? Do you recommend people to do it anyway or work through those emotions? What is the approach?
Nat: Well, for some people, they can just do it anyway but that’s not the type of person that I usually attract to work with. Usually, the people that I attract to work with and this includes myself, this is why I do this work because I’ve seen that I’ve engaged in these habits and behaviors for most of my life not realizing it, right?
But for a lot of the people I work with, there’s such a visceral discomfort in their body like contraction and their abdomen may be tightness in their chest or their brain gets so foggy that it’s hard for them to just go forward and take action. And they will get distracted or they will get busy doing things that are seemingly important and likely are important but it’s just another form of procrastination.
For those people just taking action going forward doesn’t work. It’s just the discomfort is too much and they’re trained to avoid it so they’ll look for an escape. For these people what I found is that learning to acknowledge the discomfort, acknowledge the beliefs that are coming up or the thoughts that are coming up and then being present with them, being present with all of it in our bodies, is the way to create change, is the way to create a shift.
The challenge is that most people have not been taught to just be with it, right? Most people even well-meaning experts have said that, oh you just have to change your beliefs, you have to change your mindset and the people that I work with, they may have already tried to change their mindset, they may have already tried to use productivity hacks like blocking time or getting a good planner or that sort of thing and it’s not sustainable.
What they’re actually afraid of, might not know that they’re afraid of but they don’t like to feel uncomfortable and we’ve been taught and conditioned to believe that all discomfort is bad but if we can be with that discomfort and still know and still recognize that we’re okay right We can be with both at the same time. It changes something in us that allows us to take action and and quiet or even maybe let go of that inner resistance.
Morris: I’m really fascinated by what you’re saying here because I see that when I tried to help people with marketing and that was my journey too in marketing where putting myself on social media created a physical discomfort a physical reaction so if I understood you correctly, what you’re helping people do is kind of feeling comfortable being uncomfortable?
Nat: Yeah I mean, to be honest, it’s not a comfortable thing. It’s inviting people to realize that they can sit with the discomfort and know that they’re still okay. They don’t have to run from the discomfort. The discomfort doesn’t always mean what they think it means because a lot of times like I experienced this in marketing as well and creating my business putting myself out there is that you know earlier on in.
When I first started my business I’m like, oh I don’t know what I’m doing, I need structure, okay so you know I signed up for a coaching program. I have the structure. I have techniques. I still feel not ready and so I think in my mind, oh I need more experience, I can’t charge yet for my services and so I get a lot of experience and I still don’t feel ready right?
And so the thing is the mind keeps looking for a way to avoid the discomfort, the possibility of being rejected or the possibility of someone saying you’re not good enough, you know the possibility of someone saying you’re a fraud and you don’t know what you’re doing. The mind is looking for ways to plug all the holes but the mind is also the thing that creates all the holes right?
A guy used to follow Kyle C, he talked about how the mind creates a picture of a monster and then we forget that we created that picture and we are afraid of that monster right? So the same thing happens for anyone starting something new. We step into the unknown, we step into the unfamiliar and the mind doesn’t know what to do with that. So it’ll try to plug, try to fill all the holes you know, put up the protection to avoid the possibility of ever being called the thing that you don’t want to be called, right?
But we don’t actually know that that’s going to happen, we just think it’s going to happen. We feel the discomfort immediately, we don’t like the discomfort and we run away and try to find a way to resolve it.
Morris: And all of this happens under the umbrella of self-sabotage?
Nat: Yeah.
Morris: Okay that’s very interesting. It attached to self-sabotage or in addition to self-sabotage. What are some of the other things you work through with your clients?
Nat: Yeah so besides self-sabotage, I mean it goes hand in hand and I invite people to try on new ways of being so as to experiment because it’s one thing to resolve the discomfort in her body. It’s another thing to practice showing up in life in a different way right? If you’re someone who is always helping out, always there for other people and that feels familiar to you.
But if you, yourself are not in your own life, if the things that you want to do, you don’t have time for then it’s going to feel uncomfortable to take a break to do nothing, to enjoy yourself right? Because it’s going to feel in your body like, oh you should be doing something or someone somewhere needs your help.
And so you’re going to gravitate toward doing more of what feels familiar and avoid what feels uncomfortable. So in this case, I would invite someone, okay, set one day maybe an hour where you do nothing and then see what comes up for you. See what feelings, what thoughts the urge to do something and just watch it without doing anything you know not take note of it but watch it and see if it can subside right?
Because it’s the same thing. We feel the discomfort. We don’t like it. Let’s numb it. Let’s get rid of it. Let’s avoid it. Let’s do something but then we’re not taking action consciously, we’re taking action to avoid discomfort and pain.
Morris: Yeah. What you’re describing sounds almost like if you’re not used to it then doing the right thing can feel wrong even though you’re doing the right thing you experience wrong emotions.
Nat: Yeah, yeah. I mean you know for me, one of my big things was I avoided confrontation. And in the relationship with my wife, there are some things that needed to be talked about but I was afraid of the consequences due to my childhood conditioning right? For me growing up as a kid, whenever there would be confrontation or it wasn’t even it was just having a conversation, where either I was made to feel wrong or if it didn’t go right, I got the silent treatment.
And so in my body, in my memory, I have that and I don’t like that right and so I had to learn that, okay I could bring up a conversation. I could be with the discomfort in my body and even though it feels intense in my body, I could still have the conversation and then I could see that, oh even though I expect that it’s going to be weird after the conversation like the energy is going to be weird, there’s going to be like we’re not going to be talking or we’re going to be you know being in our kind of defensive postures, no it doesn’t happen that way.
There’s another possibility that like oh we’re just regular humans having a conversation now. We’re not stuck in that charged energy that I experienced so often as a kid.
Morris: Yeah thank you for sharing that story, by the way I know it’s personal but I think many people can relate to that in some way. How for example, if somebody wants to post videos of themselves on social media and they experience that you know what you’ve just described, what would be something that they can do or experiment with to get over it or create a healthier way to deal with it?
Nat: Yeah it is a great example because this was me last year. This is when I started diving deeper into self-sabotage. I wanted to post a video and I had this Insight, I’m like okay I’m going to record the video and I’m going to post it and then I got in my head you know I was like, oh but you know like the technology is not right? How do I figure out subtitles?
I went into researching it and then you know, I was going back and forth I’m like okay you know screw the subtitles. I’m just going to post this. I just needed to post this and then I kept negotiating with myself, right of like oh just posted no no no no just post it no no no no right?
So I sat down with myself and followed my intuition, asked myself questions and I came out with this process that I now call the Resistance Release Technique and so essentially what I would encourage someone to do is to first of all, acknowledge what they’re feeling. Be compassionate with yourself, not judgmental because if self-sabotage is self-protection and there’s a part of us that’s trying to protect us then if we’re judgmental of ourselves or of that part, it’s going to put up the barriers even more right?
Like if you know, you say something to me, Morris, and I say, Morris, you’re wrong. What you’re doing even though you’re trying to help me and I tell you, you’re wrong, you’re going to put up your guard right and that’s what happens in our body. But if we can acknowledge it and be compassed with it that’s already a big step forward.
Yeah the next would be to get to know what are the beliefs or yeah essentially what are the beliefs that this part of you has you know what are you trying to protect from and in my process, I asked questions like what is this part of you trying to avoid? What doesn’t it want to be seen as or what doesn’t it want to be told, right?
And often the answers are like I don’t want to come across as an idiot or no one wants what I have to offer or you know people are going to think that this is not good enough. All of these ways of thinking are often very young right and I find that part of ourselves that’s trying to protect from being hurt is young in nature. Yeah so you know it’s that part of us that, you know I talked about.
Like you know when I was a kid and having conversations, I was made to feel wrong so I protected against that oh I don’t want to come across as I don’t want someone to tell me I’m wrong so I’m going to preemptively stop it by not doing anything right? By avoiding, by procrastinating. I don’t want that feeling and so I’m going to stop it so essentially asking yourself these types of questions.
What outcome is this part of me trying to avoid? What don’t I want to be told? What don’t I want to be seen as? What are the ways this part of me protects, you know keeps me safe and you start to get an idea of how this part of you operates. The next step which is what I call allowing is that thing that I talked in the beginning about being with the statements, feeling them in your body without trying to change anything.
Just like meaning ourselves with loving, acceptance you know before we started this conversation, you know you introduced me as exploring self-sabotage with a twist right? And so I’ve come to believe that self-sabotage is an act of love right? There’s that part of us that’s protecting us out of love because it wants to keep us safe. It doesn’t want us to be disappointed and so.
But we also engage in loving ways like sometimes we self-sabotage because like, for instance, I had one client who wanted to make time for her well-being, plan her food, and plan to exercise but she never had time. She could never make the time and it came out that when she was young, she didn’t have a lot of people who spent time with her. She felt abandoned and so for her kids and her family, she didn’t want to abandon them and so she was always around for them even if they didn’t really voice needing her around.
She just chose to be around just in case but what unbelongs to us is that when we are trying to be there for other people so they don’t feel abandoned, we can abandon ourselves right? Because we in some ways, we act in the same way that we were treated. So this is how I see self-sabotage being an act of love and so as a result we need to meet ourselves with love, with loving awareness right?
So we get to meet that part of ourselves that’s afraid, that’s putting up the protective gear, the shields, the walls. Meet it with love, meet it with acceptance so that it feels safe to be whatever it is. So it feels heard that like okay yeah I’m doing this I didn’t know that you’re a grownup now. I didn’t know that things are different right?
But seeing that you can be with me and be with the discomfort, I can let go of some of this resistance. I can see that, oh you have the capacity now to be with the discomfort and to be with life and I don’t need to play this role anymore.
Morris: Yeah. Yeah. I really like how many examples you’re sharing that like even from your own life it’s very authentic. What do you do in your work, thank you for sharing that.
Nat: Oh thank you.
Morris: I have a follow-up question so two things. The first thing I noticed is how many of these triggers seem to come from earlier days or childhood and I already introduced you half wrong I guess saying you grew up as a Buddhist, Thai Buddhist monk but that wasn’t accurate.
So as we talked before, can you just summarize what you learned, how you grew up and you also mentioned going to a Catholic school and then I would be really curious if you think much of those teachings that you learned if they are influencing your coaching today or if it’s not that connected?
Nat: I don’t know if they directly influence my coaching today. I would say that as a kid, I was very curious and you know potentially growing up in a Buddhist family, you know you had asked about is it a philosophy versus a religion. Before we started the conversation, you know I did grow up with that belief that it was more of a philosophy on how to live life and it wasn’t like our way or the highway which is sometimes some religions feel that way.
I’m not saying all and I also say that at the root of all religions, I think there’s a pureness that speaks to this and then sometimes you know man might take religion and use it as a form of control right? I think there’s a possibility of that but I grew up with a lot of curiosity so not only did I learn about Buddhism and kind of engaged in the rituals of Buddhism because it was just part of my family’s culture.
I did go to a Catholic school for fifth grade and then they took me out of that and put me to a Baptist School the next year and then they took me out of that because they were the Baptist School kept showing up at our house and wanting to convert us. So that was like you know kind of felt like crossing boundaries for us.
We had enough of that but even in college I explored I was very curious in religion and trying to find like what tied it together and I explored a little bit of the by high faith. Not deeply but just had a surface. I feel embarrassing about that but just a surface interest of like oh what is it that ties all this together?
I would say what does influence my coaching is probably that I have curiosity and I have acceptance that everyone has their path and that there is not one way that is right for everyone and that’s probably something I bring very much into my coaching. I will never tell you, this is the way to do it. I will invite you to explore something, to come to your own understanding, to your own truth of what’s right for you and I find that’s more empowering.
I used to be someone that followed all the experts because I had a deep sense of fear in who I was and I followed everyone that had the formulas and the techniques because I wanted a guarantee. But I never got that. It took me some time to you know recognize like okay I got to find what works for me.
Morris: And that’s why now you can help others. Find what works for them, I believe.
Nat: Yeah.
Morris: You mentioned following all the experts, and implementing the expert advice. I tend to do that too. By the way like I’m very how do you say like systematic and almost academic about these processes but that’s not reality. In reality, we have to test a bunch of things and find what works for us. And how did you get started with your coaching practice? What did you do to get your first few clients and get the business off the ground?
Nat: So I started coaching ages ago probably before you were born, likely. I started in 2006 Am I right were you born yet Morris?
Morris: Oh yeah yeah I am, 36.
Nat: Oh okay. So back then things were different. My coach at that time recommended that I do a workshop and I was so afraid so nervous so anxious that I procrastinated a lot and then she’s like, Okay just set the date, do the workshop and so what I did is I found local venues, bookstore spiritual bookstores, wellness centers and you know those that had a community already. Already had an audience maybe they had a mailing list or even a paper newsletter and I would find those and put together a workshop.
And that became something that I enjoyed doing. I didn’t know it but I really love teaching and engaging and interacting and that’s how I built my business is. I just put on a lot of workshops connected with people invited them to have a conversation and then you know if it was a good fit, they would sign up for my coaching.
Morris: Would you say the same strategy still works today?
Nat: It does. I mean it’s different because so very few people have paper newsletters now. They have online but online still works but still people may be more distracted. People’s attention spans are different now and also some of the like people are more, they’re smarter about marketing they’re not you know, they’re looking for things that are more authentic at least my audience is.
Like they’re my audience is not going to like my first workshop was like seven roadblocks to living a good life and these days my audience will probably not respond to a seven roadblocks workshop. You know a number like three ways to do this or that like that sort of thing even though it’s rampant in the still in the business world and marketing my audience is not likely to respond to something like that.
So I think that’s important for your audience to just recognize like okay it could be a good start. Good place to start don’t overthink it and try to get it right. Like that was my thing like oh I need to get it right now just like put it out there and test and experiment but you know I took a break from coaching and I came back and now I’m rebuilding it again and different focus. The self-sabotage thing is a new thing and I’m doing the same thing I did whatever 20 years ago.
I’m putting on workshops, going out there and meeting people. I find for me that works better than online. I think it’s just who I am and I get lost online with social media and people have shared over the years that there’s something about my voice or presence that they get something from that they may not get from just text-based promotions and so I’m leaning into that.
Morris: And as more and more people go online that only creates more opportunities offline I believe.
Nat: Yeah.
Morris: Nat, thank you so much for sharing all of this. People listening to this, how can they get in touch with you?
Nat: So I created this thing, it’s kind of an audio meditation or mindfulness practice is called Notice and Be With. It’s the very thing that we’ve talked about a lot today and so they can go to inquisitivejourneys.com/bewith. I’m guessing that you’ll probably put that in show notes as well, Morris. But that’s probably the quickest way to contact me is to just access that or you can go to my website: inquisitivejourneys.com.
Morris: Okay great. So if somebody is procrastinating something, you know running away keeping themselves busy, running away from uncomfortable feelings then that mindfulness practice will help them take the first step am I right?
Nat: Yeah yeah we’re in a society that’s taught to avoid pain and avoid discomfort you know to overmedicate things like that so meeting yourselves differently is really going to make a difference.
Morris: Great and that’s free right?
Nat: Yeah that’s free.
Morris: Okay great yeah. I’ll link to both of those. Thank you so much, Nat.
Nat: You’re so welcome, Morris. This has been a joy and a pleasure. Thank you.
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