Therapy and Coaching to Save You and the Planet with Miriam Gunn

Today I'm joined by Miriam Gunn, a seasoned mentor, licensed therapist, and certified business coach, to discuss the intersection of personal well-being and business success. Miriam shares insights on accelerating health, wealth, and weight loss through habit formation and personal agency. She emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, developing oneself through continuous learning, and redefining wealth as the freedom to bring joy and benefit to others. Tune in to learn how to overcome self-sabotage, achieve holistic health, and use your success to make a positive impact on the world.

Explore Miriam's coaching work at https://www.leavebetter.com/experience/

Transcript

Magic Barclay: 0:43

Welcome back to A Magical Life. I'm your host, Magic Barclay, and today Miriam Gunn joins us. Miriam has fostered growth in others since 1985 as a mentor, licensed therapist, and a certified doctor. Coach. Currently, she's passionate about helping businesses and high performers reach their next level so that they can add their influence to this amazing world that we share. Miriam is unique in that she approaches business coaching from the vantage point that the issue with your business growth may be you. She comes at this from a therapy angle, how she can help you recognize the ways you are self sabotaging and how she can help you overcome this so that you can reach your next level. She is passionate about sustainability and wants to see successful people adding their energies and resources toward helping our planet. And it's people. Her company is leavebetter. com, which is dedicated to helping you win in business and in life. Welcome Miriam. Oh, Magic.

Miriam Gunn: 1:55

Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Magic Barclay: 1:59

It's so great to have you here. And I've experienced a little bit of your coaching recently on your podcast, which was amazing. So thank you.

Miriam Gunn: 2:11

You're welcome. It was my pleasure.

Magic Barclay: 2:14

Now, I ask all of my guests the same three questions. Everyone has amazingly different answers. And, you know, we're coming at this from a business point of view with you. but also as a therapist. So, here comes your first one. What can your expertise do to accelerate health? Not just the physical, but also emotional and spiritual health.

Miriam Gunn: 2:41

That is a question that is extraordinarily, broad. So much of health has to do with your habits. And so, part of, Accelerating your health is even just taking a step outside of yourself and observing and saying, what habits do I have that are contributing to my health and well being? And what habits do I have that are eroding that space? And, um, sometimes people are unaware. Sometimes people are aware. And they just don't know how to fix it. So those are two different problems. Becoming aware comes from having conversations with people like you and with people like me, reading things, listening to things that challenge their thinking. But once you are aware, then what do you do? And I'm a big fan of setting yourself up for success with your habits by doing something Like, maybe reducing the friction between you and this desired behavior, and the behavior could be eating something different or moving in a different way or thinking a different thought. Any of those kinds of things would contribute to your health, but I'm a big fan of what is getting in the way of me doing that habit and how can I let that habit take over? piggyback off of some other habit. So like a really easy example is, you know, I brush my teeth every single day, twice a day without fail. If I don't, I can't even stand it. But it's a lot harder for me to floss my teeth. And if I just make a simple, It's a simple rule that I can't brush my teeth until I floss my teeth. Now it doesn't work the other way around, because I could brush my teeth and then I'd be happy and I'd forget to floss, even though it was right there. But if I say I can't brush my teeth until I floss, then the one behavior is going to help the other behavior happen. Um, and there's lots of examples of that sort of thing, but that would be a way that I would say. In order to accelerate, you know, positive health, assess your habits, find one that needs tweaking, and then set yourself up for success by reducing the friction on that particular habit, helping it piggyback off of something else.

Magic Barclay: 5:02

Great. Now, the next question is around wealth. People think of wealth as just financial, but it can also be personal and emotional wealth. So what are your top three tips? I know you hate that word, but what are your top three tips to creating wealth?

Miriam Gunn: 5:20

Well, I think initially you have to define what wealth is. from my perspective, wealth is freedom to do and act in a way that brings joy. and benefit to others. So sometimes that involves money and sometimes that doesn't. But increasing wealth probably starts with real clarity on what is it I'm trying to create. And when you get that clarity, then you have to sort of reverse engineer, how am I going to get to that space? So if I want a space where I would like to have three months off during the year. then I have to sort of look at what are all the things that are constraining that financially and emotionally and how do I address each of those hurdles. If I'm just looking at purely wealth, um, like as in actual money, how do I increase that space? Number one way develop yourself, take some courses, take some classes, read some books, get some coaching, because when you develop yourself, you get better ideas and better opportunities, better connections, and you end up getting paid more for things.

Magic Barclay: 6:38

And our final standard question is around weight loss. Have you ever battled your weight? If so, how did you win that battle? What can you offer the listeners who might be going through this?

Miriam Gunn: 6:51

Well, my goodness, with very, very few exceptions, I think anybody who has lived on the planet has battled their weight. I guess I'm going to bounce around a little bit here. It really depends on your gender, your overall health, and your age, as to how you approach some of these things, and your expectations around these things. I have watched people in their 20s, both men and women, go on some sort of a, uh, weight loss program, whether that was one that was unhealthy and just, they just stopped eating certain things or whether that was one that was very healthy and they had very different results. Men lose weight quite easily and women find it much more difficult and it has to do with hormonal balance and stuff like that. Now, if you fast forward 20 or 30 or 40 years, that gets exponentially more difficult. And so I guess I ask people, instead of thinking about weight loss, I think about the attainment of health. And if you can put your thoughts into becoming progressively healthier mentally, healthier physically, healthier emotionally, spiritually, socially. For one, you start caring less about weight loss and you start caring more about pursuit of health. But the pursuit of health Health helps with weight loss anyway. You just naturally lose weight when you are eating better, when you, when your heart feels full relationally, and when you feel less stressed financially. So it's kind of this whole life thing. The more you're pursuing health and the less you're focusing on the weight, the more the weight comes off.

Magic Barclay: 8:46

Right. Now let's open the floor to you, Miriam. What's something that you feel the listeners will benefit from hearing today?

Miriam Gunn: 8:56

You know, my personal hobby horse right now is personal agency. And what I mean by that is that so many of us have a tendency to feel like we're a victim of our circumstances, that things happen to us. And what I feel like I'm on a personal crusade To overcome with people is this notion that that's the case. We're just so much more, an agent in our life than we know. We're so much more powerful than when we know. And when you move out of that space of this is happening to me and instead you say this is happening. What would I like to do about that? Everything changes. And when you start owning that space in your life, and you can say this unpleasant thing is happening, what would I like to do about it? Now all of a sudden you have choices. And it really just transforms a life once someone starts doing that on a regular basis.

Magic Barclay: 10:01

So what got you into the space that you're in? Maybe let the listeners In on how you developed into doing your podcast, you know, why you do the therapy that you do, what makes Miriam tick?

Miriam Gunn: 10:20

Well, it really goes back to the question you just asked about what I'm passionate about. I, I just see that, humanity. is incredible. When you look at a human who is performing in a way that is their truest self, they bring incredible gifts to the world. They serve one another, they serve the planet. and when you see people who are not operating out of their best selves, they destroy people and they destroy the planet. And, I would say that my entire life I've been very curious about people. I've been very curious about interpersonal growth. And so, I would say, years ago I was a mentor of college students for about 25 years. Then I became a therapist, then I became a coach. And in each You're looking at how do I help this person remove the roadblocks and reach their next level? Well, there is a level that is like minus 100 and you can help someone get to minus 80 and then minus 50 and then minus 20. And. You know, those are really, really good and rewarding places, but all of them are still coming from a place of lack. And then you cross over into zero and then plus 20 and plus 80 and plus 100 and plus 1000. And all of those places are places where people are in their optimized form, their next level of. What am I on this planet for? And how do I bring that give that to humanity at large? And that's really what motivates me. I work with a lot of very wealthy business owners. and my, goal is always to help people be successful. Not so you can buy your second yacht, but so that you can do something good in the world. I want people helping whatever, if you, whatever your passion is, if you want to help, you know, build schools in Africa, I want you to make tons of money so that you can build schools in Africa. If you're making money, making a widget or whatever. If you have a service based company, I want you making lots of money so that then you can help someone else less fortunate than yourself. And, uh, Some of my pet projects right now are the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. I love them. They adopt these orphan elephants after their moms have been poached and they've saved generations of elephants. Like your listeners, grandchildren will be able to see elephants in Africa because these people, Stepped into their gifting and are rescuing and saving them. And I could tell you of hosts of other, you know, just organizations doing good. So I'm super motivated to help you succeed, so then you can go on and do the thing that you were put on this planet to do.

Magic Barclay: 13:18

Fantastic. I love it. Now, we love freebies here. So what can you offer the listeners and

Miriam Gunn: 13:26

where

Magic Barclay: 13:26

can

Miriam Gunn: 13:26

they find it? Excellent. I have quite a few resources on my website, leafbetter. com, but also I love to talk with people. And if you're interested in just seeing what is coaching like, you can sign up with me and we can do a 20 minute chat where I'll ask you some questions. guaranteed to expand your vision, and there's no cost to that. And just reach out to me, Miriam, M I R I A M, at leavebetter. com.

Magic Barclay: 13:59

Wonderful. I feel so blessed to have had you on this podcast, Miriam. I'm really grateful for all the information that you've just given myself and to the listeners.

Miriam Gunn: 14:10

Oh, thank you so much, Magic. I'm sure you get a ton of puns about your name, but it has been magical spending time with you.

Magic Barclay: 14:18

Thank you. And listeners, thank you for your time. Please don't forget to like, review, subscribe, and share this podcast and this episode with those that you care about. And please go forth and create your magical life.