Podcast #23 Finish The Work

Rebecca Bromberg Polan is a mindset and healing coaching, trained in mindfulness based somatic psychotherapy. She specializes in helping women women entrepreneurs and professionals who are stuck in survival mode, get past that, so that they can thrive in more of a joyful and successful state. And the way that she does that is, in a nutshell, you could call it inner child healing. But it's much more precise than that it's working with the many, many little parts that map to limiting beliefs that hold us back.

The healing part of mindset is vulnerable and so many wounds are social and require community support to be in a space of 'safe vulnerability', so Rebecca loves to coach in groups, through her group program called Finishing School. Sometimes the group is the medicine itself! Rebecca creates a safe container for her group members and protects that space fiercely and compassionately.

This work chose Rebecca. After a catalysmic divorce, she found that talk therapy wasn't helpful for her personally and then she found a somatic therapist through the recommendation of three people - she knew it was the right path and worked for her.

How Rebecca is a Disruptor:

With 20 years of mindulness experience, when Rebecca started the work she didn't take the traditional route of becoming a therapist. If you know human design, she's a Manifestor which means she has a fiery energy of getting things started in a catalytic way. She knew her job wasn't to hold people through a long term process in the manner of regular talk therapy. Her program is called Finishing School because the intention is to take the years of talking about an issue in therapy and complete the change by feeling through it and transforming. It's very complimentary to therapy. Doing it in a safe and social environment creates the container for accelerated growth and change.

Everyone has at least one common block that Rebecca helps resolve. Typical blocks include:

Finishing Block - Perfectionism or procrastination gets in the way of completing anything, lots of starts, not a lot of finishes

Resting Block - You're allergic to resting and doing nothing gives you anxiety

Receiving Block - You have a hard time receiving compliments and taking in the good things in life

Action Block - Recovering perfectionists have blocks to taking action to meet their life, career, relationship, or financial goals. This comes from fear of criticism.

Clarity Block - You have a hard time tuning into your needs, over-complicate things in your mind or struggle to make decisions.

Scarcity Block - You believe that you have to work hard to secure your future and that you'll never reach easy and peace in life.

Relational Block - You have a hard time asking others for help.

Rebecca's favorite daily mantra is:

Done is better than perfect.

Rebecca was recently a featured speaker for Disruptor Day! Sign up for the next Disruptor Day below, join the Disruptor Society and catch the replay of her talk here. She walks you through her amazing journey to being a Disruptor! (Fast forward to 1 h, 30 minutes in).  It's gold!

Featured on the show:

Connect with Rebecca here:

 Website | Instagram | Take Rebecca's Quiz to Uncover Your Biggest Block

Click HERE to sign up for Disruptor Day

Click HERE to join the Disruptor Society

Connect with Mia here:

Website | Instagram | Facebook

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You can view Full Transcript Here:

*Note- The Brand Disruptors Podcast is produced for the ear and made to be heard not read. We strongly encourage you to listen to the audio which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting it in print.

Mia LaMotte 0:03
Rebecca, what's up? How are you?

Mia LaMotte 0:06
I'm goodness me, Anna, how are you?

Mia LaMotte 0:08
I am doing so well. So well, I wanted to first tell the audience a little bit about how we met, we were both in this group coaching program. And we just kind of connected on a on a post, right? That's post and you were passing through North Carolina rather, at the time. And you were like, Hey, let's meet for coffee. And we did. And so we became really fast friends had a great conversation. And we've kept in touch ever since.

Rebecca Polan 0:36
I am actually remembering I came across that post recently, and I had posted my world's best boss socks, that I was like, looking for my people. And I mentioned that I was moving through North Carolina at that point, I thought I was moving there. So yeah, it was so amazing that we got to actually meet up in person and timeout,

Mia LaMotte 0:55
that never happens to me, because I don't really talk to people like that, you know, I have a friend who will talk to anyone, but usually what I'm like, I'm very intentional about who I talk to. And it's, it has to feel right in order for me to even say something.

Rebecca Polan 1:10
Yes. Same. There's like an impulse, like your whole sense of your, you know, like, your body is like, I'm going to go talk to that person. It's very pointed for me to so yeah, yeah, that we did connect.

Mia LaMotte 1:20
Yeah, me too. Me too. So why don't you describe yourself a little bit to the audience, let them know what you do what you're all about. And then we'll get into some couple of rapid fire questions so they can get to know you a little bit better. And then we'll talk about your work.

Rebecca Polan 1:35
Okay. So I am My full name is Rebecca Bromberg Polen. And I am a mindset and healing coach. I am trained in mindfulness based somatic psychotherapy. And I specialize in helping women entrepreneurs and professionals who are stuck in survival mode, get past that, so that they can thrive in more of a joyful and successful state. And the way that I do that is, in a nutshell, you could call it inner child healing. But it's much more precise than that it's working with the many, many little parts that map to limiting beliefs that hold us back. If you can't tell, by the way, I'm talking about it, I love it. I work with I love working with people one on one, but also groups, I'm finding the group piece is so important, because the healing part of mindset work is vulnerable. And so many of our wounds are social, and we need a community to actually kind of be with that vulnerability in a safe way like Brene, brown talks about that safe vulnerability. That's so healing in itself. Sometimes the group is the medicine itself. So that's the work I do. And that's how I do it. Hopefully, that's small enough. No, no,

Mia LaMotte 2:51
absolutely. And what I want to ask, so now we're just going to get into this, because let's get into it. Yeah. So when you're working in this group setting, and people are talking about past trauma and talking about their experiences, do you find it harder for some women to open up? Or do you kind of set things up for them to open up right away,

Rebecca Polan 3:11
I set a lot of norms around creating a safe container. I talk intentionally in the group program that I run, it's called finishing school. I talk intentionally the beginning about like, look at your relationship to being in a group, right and look at your own judgment and recognize that any judgments that are coming up, are about you. And so when you say that to a whole group of people, they recognize that they're safe from being judged, because it doesn't matter. Because everybody recognizes that any of that judgment is just about your inner projections. So that's a big piece of it. And just normalizing the fact that being in a group is weird. In a healing group. It's weird, it's uncomfortable. And I had my own experience with that when I was in my training to do what I do now. I was really uncomfortable in a group because I didn't want to be vulnerable. So I was able to speak about that. And just like, you know, it's like the elephant in the room. So I was able to speak to the elephant the room nip it in the bud. And I got a lot of feedback from my clients that it was really it was relevant and appreciated.

Mia LaMotte 4:18
Yeah, because I can imagine like, if I'm going to be sharing some things that might not be might not have been such a good light, right? Or I perceived that it wouldn't have me in a good light. I might not want to share it. I might not actually get the healing from it. Exactly. What do you say to people who who heard you the first time, but you can still tell that they're holding back or that they need? They need something else to kind of crack them open?

Rebecca Polan 4:45
I would just say there's no wrong response. Response. There's no bad part. If there's a part of you that's not wanting you to to be vulnerable. honor that and get curious. You can't be curious and judgmental at the same time. It's not physically impossible to different brain and body state. So there's a lot that we can do to kind of diffuse that and ease the protections that you're talking about that keep people from being comfortable sharing vulnerably I'm trained to create a safe container for people. And it's something that like, I feel like a like one of those terracotta warriors like, I feel like I want to protect it, that safety of the space. fiercely. That's the word I'm looking for. Fierce and fiercely and compassionately, like both of those words. So really setting an expectation that it's okay, it's okay to not want to share, like, there's no wrong response, basically.

Mia LaMotte 5:42
Yeah. So So what was it? Like? What made you decide that this was the path for you? And like, this is the work that you wanted to be doing? And like, I'm sure you have your own story. So yeah, tell us what, tell us what happened. Yeah,

Rebecca Polan 5:57
I mean, I don't really feel like I chose the path, I feel like it chose me. And my story to this point was really, you know, initiated by a pretty cataclysmic divorce, that shook my life up, my ex husband had an affair, this is seven years ago. So I can talk about it very neutrally, because of I've been able to integrate it. But it really shook my identity, but shook my life up, who am I, if I'm not married, who am I, if this has happened, happened to me, you know, all of that stuff. And I found I had already been in talk therapy, I had been, you know, recognizing very slowly that this marriage wasn't working for me. But once it all kind of happened, I happened to have moved to a community where there are a lot of holistic healing resources, a lot of body mind focused healing resources. And I found a somatic therapist. So somatic means working with the body. And it was amazing how much more effective that was, for me than just talking about my problems, I would go in, I would talk about my problems, I would leave, I would feel the same, you know, and so when I found a somatic practitioner, I was able to actually move through it. And at the same time, I was also in a yoga teacher training that was scheduled to begin just after my life kind of shook apart the way that it did. And I was able to, you know, be in a yoga class and like, have a big wave of feeling like the grief that's natural, even in a unpleasant divorce. It's there's so grief, you're so bonded with that person, you've got it, to spell it. And the beginning to the end of class, like the contrast between the beginning and the end of class was profound, like the body mind connection was so powerful to heal this stuff. So my own personal experience of it in such a powerful and potent way. It really like lit my path forward. And then, you know, I was in therapy. With a somatic practitioner, my practitioner, and two other people all pointed me to a practitioner training, like three different people said, you should try this. And I was like, I'm gonna listen to that three different people suggested. So I really feel like I was pushed onto my path for so many different reasons.

Mia LaMotte 8:17
Yeah, yeah. So tell me, did you change up any of the things that you learned to kind of make it your own? Like, I'm always talking about being a disrupter right in, in image consulting, like, I felt like, there was so many issues with the way people saw other people in the world. And I wanted to be the kind of person that brought about change. And I feel like you've done some of that too, with what you're up to. Yeah. Tell us I appreciate you

Rebecca Polan 8:41
asking that. Yeah, so I trained alongside therapists, but I knew that I didn't want to go to school to be a therapist. Right. And now I know because of my human design. I'm a manifester. So it's like this, like fiery energy of getting things started in a catalytic way. And helping people like give them the training wheels, be the training wheels for a minute, leave, you know, take the training wheels off, and then they're off and running. Like I teach skills for people to go off and do additional healing on their own. I knew that it my job, wasn't holding somebody long term process the way that therapists do, and God bless that therapists who do that. But also, when I came to this mindfulness based somatic psychotherapy, training, my 20 years of mindfulness experience, at that point, probably 16 years of mindfulness experience made me a natural at this method that and just whatever intuition that had, you know, been uncovered through my life experience, and I was just able to really support people without that other training. And I found that my, like, natural place, I'm creating it as I go. You know, I would say that in our life, you know, if you're, if you're in a healing journey, the first 90% of it, you're talking about it. with a therapist with a talk therapist, but you're really only getting to the 10% of the thinking that you can get to with talk, and then it flips. So you get to the 90% of the unconscious stuff that's held in the body that I help with. But it takes 10% of the time. So that's why my program is called finishing school because it's like, okay, you've been talking about it, you're sick of your stuff. So let's feel it and get through it. And that's the catalytic part. But it doesn't work without the safe container that you've had with your therapist plodding along, you just kind of get to a point where you're sick of it, you're sick your stuff, you're sick of talking about it and feeling like your therapy sessions are Groundhog Day. And that's where I have other skills and tools in the community like to help move you to the next step. Absolutely. So I created like, just sorry, just, I feel like I created a next step that didn't exist before. That's how it feels, it feels like a very much a compliment to talk therapy of like this natural, like 12 week, like, let's do this catalytically and then go back to therapy, like, I'm referred by therapists to help their clients get unstuck, and then they go back to therapy sometimes. So it's very much complementary.

Mia LaMotte 11:11
So they go back to their, or they go back to therapy for the same problem. And they go back to the therapy for something else. Like, they feel like socially, it's like, let's

Rebecca Polan 11:18
integrate the next level of this stuff. Got it, I, um, I've dealt with this. And I've uncovered this and I need more support here. But often, if it's a 12 week journey, what I would say that's different after working with me is you don't need often you don't need a therapist, as often as you used to, you have many more skills and tools to use in between therapy sessions. So you might need a therapist, every once in a while, once every couple months, once a month, instead of every single week, you've got many more skills and tools and, and things that you can be doing on your own in between sessions so that you can kind of stretch your sessions out if you if you need them. But I would say that's just some of the time that people need to go back.

Mia LaMotte 12:03
Yeah, because it seems to me like I was talking to a group of people this morning, and we were talking about this very thing, how you can go to a therapist for years, and you're still talking about the same problem. And I was like, you know, for me, I'm more interested in moving forward. Yes, we've talked about it, yes. I figured out the patterns and all of those things. But how do I move forward? And how do I make sure that I don't make those same mistakes again, right? Notice those red flags, or whatever it is that makes that keep happening? So you help with that, too. Right? Yeah,

Rebecca Polan 12:36
the power of the work that I do is that it's action oriented. It's about doing things for yourself. It's about setting new boundaries, and new expectations and, and connections and requests for support of people in your world. It's very much real life. So it's, it's really the training wheels coming off so that you can live in a fuller way. And also have more awareness as to what blocks are in your way of living fully. There's just much more awareness when you learn the frameworks that I that I teach. Love that.

Mia LaMotte 13:11
So yeah, yeah. And that's how you help people disrupt the patterns in their lives, right? Yes, yeah.

Rebecca Polan 13:18
Like that. There's very much we're unblocking. So there's six common blocks that people have, it can be not being clear, having a hard time taking action. So like procrastination or perfectionism, you might be allergic to finishing projects, which is why my program is called finishing school, you could be allergic to taking naps and resting, which is such an important piece that we don't recognize. Or you might be allergic to asking for help, because you've been disappointed in the past. And so all of these blocks manifest in different ways in our lives. Everybody's got at least one, most people have many. And so so that's what I help people do is see those blocks and unblock the limiting beliefs that are in the way so that they can, you know, live differently with more awareness and space for choosing differently.

Mia LaMotte 14:10
Yeah, so there was one thing that you can tell the listeners today, like if they were having a problem that they've been working through, they've been seeing a therapist, or they haven't like, what's so one thing that you would say, would help to move the needle for them? I would say

Rebecca Polan 14:26
accountability, like mindfulness and accountability, like have a loving accountability moment with yourself and your journal of like, I take responsibility for X, even if somebody did something to you. How can you own how it's the imprint that it's made on your body, your mind your psyche, and recognize that they're just a symbol for what is in you? So that's the empowering piece of like, nobody's coming to save me. And nobody did anything to me that I can't you know, repair within my own body mind system.

Mia LaMotte 15:03
Yes, that's that's really powerful thing because once we take that ownership and accountability, right, we get to change what's happening now. Like, you're no longer a victim to whatever it was I did happen. Right? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So do you have like, we're gonna get a little bit into branding stuff now but do you have a mantra that that you use daily or that you help your clients with or something like that we have one,

Rebecca Polan 15:30
I would say the best one that is that's literally taped to my computer Done is better than perfect. Oh, God. When I told my, you know, five, you know, my parents and my three siblings that I just remember like watching all five of their heads explode in front of me like, wait, what I didn't know anything was better than perfect. Like, an engineer told me that because of the iterative nature of design process. It's so useful for recovering perfectionist and there's so many of us who struggle with inaction. Yeah, we live it all out in our head, we overthink it. Most of us who are perfectionist are really smart. But our intellect becomes a place of a bit of an escape hatch. And so Done is better than perfect gets you in your body to take action, which is so important. Like you're saying,

Mia LaMotte 16:21
yeah, one of my former coaches used to say that all the time to shoot just like just get it done. Do something, right? Yeah. Yeah. So what would you say? What three words would you use to describe your brain? Hmm I would say

Rebecca Polan 16:38
confident compassionate, compassion is a really important piece and joyful loving that's really where we're going like being with the the discomfort and the joy that is part of the human experience. So making space for both with compassion and joy and having confidence in your skill to go from compassion to joy.

Mia LaMotte 17:02
And joy is the is really the reason why we're here right? Where he's experienced the joy and not not all of this, this heavy stuff that we carry around with us that we can just get rid of by coming to see right

Rebecca Polan 17:13
it's our natural state joy is our natural state. And I don't heal you nobody heals you know, you may unnecessarily but anybody, we don't even heal ourselves, we just make space for healing to happen naturally by itself the same way that you know, a cut heals underneath the bandaid you wear enjoys the same kind of thing. It's there. All we have to do is uncover it. Yeah.

Mia LaMotte 17:37
Now, what is your what is your least favorite mode of communication? Oh,

Rebecca Polan 17:43
I thought about that. Okay. I don't love email. I'm very good about it. But if you send me a voicemail I might not get it for a year like I might be over exaggerating but voicemail I feel like is a very antiquated mode of communication at this point. But email is more of like it's a bit of a drag because it just takes it can really suck your time away.

Mia LaMotte 18:12
Absolutely and and love it right and trying to construct it in the right way to say the right things in the right tone. So people don't miss

Rebecca Polan 18:19
it's really difficult of energy to compose a decent email and yeah, yeah, I love sending like I send out a Monday boost email to my people and it writes itself in 10 minutes and I'm done you know, like, but when afterward a business email or like it's a bit of a drag, but on the flip I love sending voice memos. Like I love boxer that app with with my clients and my friends. You know, I we send audio messages back and forth. It's so fun. It's like a walkie talkie.

Mia LaMotte 18:48
Right? Right. I love boxer too. Yeah. I so what what else it makes you feel like a total badass.

Rebecca Polan 18:54
You know, you know me when you asked me about like my car. I'm like, I don't know, like It's dented and all that stuff. But I can say like, I don't think that much about my typical outfit is his yoga pants. And you know, getting dressed to take my dog for a walk because we are in 2020 2021 Right. But my favorite thing to wear it are like big you know, gold. Yeah, I love I love gold accents. I just think of you know, friends who call them like power pieces. Like I really, I love that makes me feel like a badass and my hair. Like I just love that my hair is it has a personality of its own and does whatever it needs to do that outfit is kind of secondary. Right.

Mia LaMotte 19:35
Wow. I mean, and plus who cares about the outfit? We're just looking over here now.

Rebecca Polan 19:40
Right? Right. Yeah, checkup from the neck up.

Rebecca Polan 19:43
Yes, yes. Yes. Now tell me like we've talked about your brain stuff before but what you know what are your brand colors and why did you choose them? Well,

Rebecca Polan 19:52
I thought of that today. So I wore this yellow. This is my main color is this miracle yellow and I've been called the bee so much even before I put it in my coaching name Rebecca BiII coaching. I have been told you remind me so much of a bee like they just bees show up and like they hang out, they land on my hands. Like they're really a big part of just, I think my personality. I love that bees, like synthesize information from everywhere and create something new and sweet like that. And they communicate. Like there's so many reasons that I love the bee. And so that seems like a natural thing. And the other colors are charcoal, gray and white. I just didn't want to do like a bright, be yellow and black that felt a little less sophisticated. So I just toned down the black to like a charcoal gray. Just to bring it a little bit more of my personality, which is which is a little bit more understated than some. So that was the thinking. I also really love that. Yellow is the color of transformation and wisdom in the yogic tradition. It's the first color you see in spring, it's the last color you see in the fall like it's a really transformational color. So I love it.

Mia LaMotte 21:09
Me too. And I love that you were able to describe it so well. And you also did the other thing that I tell clients to do is that you made sure that these colors look good on you, too. Right? These colors work for you and your skin tone. So when you do decide to do a brand shoot, you can take color, and you can take photos with those colors and celebrate. Mm

Rebecca Polan 21:30
hmm. And I've started I think have you a lot with that I've started to bring in like a like a fuchsia is the wrong word. But like a deeper pink, like a deep pink sometimes finds its way into my stuff, too.

Mia LaMotte 21:44
Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that pop of color. No. So what are you? What do you have happening right now that people can, you know, come work with you, if they want to do this group session? Is that happening soon, or that's

Rebecca Polan 21:58
that's happening. It's rolling enrollment, right now, I have a big new cohort beginning in January. And that's a great time to do it. I don't know when this will air probably after this. But on the 20th of November, I will be doing an intro to emotional regulation workshop, I do a free workshop on a basically monthly basis that, you know, gets to some of the content that I teach. But if folks are just kind of curious to work with me, I do have a free healing audit, where we look at three different measures of how you're doing to see where you need to build some skill. And so that's that's a free offering that I love to do. It's just a short like 15 minute intake, and then we do a follow up. So that's that's the best way to begin. But the finishing school, it's rolling admission. It's a 12 week program, I've priced it extremely affordably because I just care about getting this information out there. But yeah, the healing on is a great place to begin with me if you're really new. And if you don't feel like talking to me yet, you can just take my quiz, the blocks quiz, which is called how you get stuck. And it's got a really silly gift. But it's grounded in psychology and psychological frameworks, so that you're getting really good information in a few minutes.

Mia LaMotte 23:18
This is great. So how do people get in touch with you?

Rebecca Polan 23:22
Instagram is the best way. Okay, just find me Rebecca be coaching is the best way to just you can DM me, you can, you know, find my website through Instagram, the link in my bio has, that's the best way through.

Mia LaMotte 23:36
Yeah, and then we'll put all of the information in the show notes too. So you can just click that as well. So Rebecca, this has been so much fun, like, we get to talk all the time, but I want to really understand that, you know, one modality that you've been working in, which could be talk therapy or something else that you've been doing, may not be all that you could do to get to where you're trying to go. And so I'm so grateful that you know, we met but also that you introduce this kind of work to me and I'm sure that the listeners are gonna be grateful for it as well.

Rebecca Polan 24:09
And thank you me for just, you know, encouraging us all to be disruptive. I think that's so important. So I appreciate your leadership, and I'm really grateful to have been here. Absolutely.

Mia LaMotte 24:21
Thanks so much. All right, guys. We will see you guys next time. Thanks so much for being here, Rebecca. Thank you

Transcribed by https://otter.ai