A conversation with Joelle Lyndon, author and heart coach. Joelle is a strategic relationship coach for successful, growth-driven individuals.
Are you a high-achieving woman in midlife seeking more fulfilling relationships? Join us for an inspiring conversation with author and heart coach Joelle Lydon as she shares expert insights and her story on navigating the complexities of love and connection. Listen in as Joelle discusses her unique approach to relationship coaching, blending psychology, transformational coaching, and a decade of research into her signature Seven Sacred Steps program.
Joelle opens up about her family's complex relationship with money and how those early patterns influenced her own romantic relationships. She candidly shares her journey of self-discovery, including the "Men's Project" that transformed her beliefs about men and led her to find lasting love. This episode is a must-listen for women seeking to break free from frustrating relationship cycles and create pathways of growth, connection, and healing.
Discover how Joelle's holistic approach addresses both inner and outer dynamics, offering practical tools to rewire relationship paradigms and invite lasting love. She also discusses the importance of taking personal responsibility, updating your internal operating system, and embracing vulnerability to create deeper intimacy. This episode is packed with valuable advice and inspiring anecdotes for women ready to create more fulfilling relationships.
Key Takeaways:
💡 The Connection Between Money and Love: Explore the surprising parallels between how we approach finances and relationships.
💡 Rewiring Relationship Paradigms: Learn practical tools to shift from frustrating cycles to pathways of growth and connection.
💡 Updating Your Internal Operating System: Learn how to retrain your nervous system to respond to present needs, not past patterns.
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Get your free copy of Unlock Your Money Blocks Workbook: Your step-by-step guide to unlocking your blocks to financial freedom.
Disclaimer: Please remember that the information shared on this podcast does not constitute accounting, legal, tax, investment or financial advice. It’s for informational purposes only. You should seek appropriate professional advice for your specific information.
Laura Rotter
 Are you tired of the same old relationship patterns repeating themselves? You know the ones where you attract the wrong partners or find yourself stuck in frustrating cycles of disconnection and heartache. You are not alone. Many women in midlife crave deep, fulfilling relationships, but find themselves struggling to create them.
Maybe you've read all the relationship advice books, you've tried therapy, you've even explored online dating, but you still haven't found the lasting love you desire. But what if the missing piece isn't about finding the right. Person, but about changing your own mindset around relationships. My guest today, Joelle Leiden, a heart coach and author, discovered that her own limiting beliefs about men were sabotaging her chances of finding love.
She embarked on a unique and courageous journey. Amends project to challenge her assumptions and rewire her relationship paradigms. Through this process, Joel uncovered a surprising truth about the nature of love and connection, a truth that transformed her own life, and now helps her guide others to create the relationships they've always dreamed of.
Stay tuned and hear joelle's inspiring story. To discover how you can break free from frustrating cycles and invite lasting love into your life.Â
Narrator
Welcome to Making Change With Your Money, a podcast that highlights the stories and strategies of women who experienced a big life transition and overcame challenges as they redefined financial success for themselves.
Now, here's your host, certified financial planner, Laura Rodder.Â
Laura Rotter
Welcome Joelle to the Making Change With Your Money podcast.Â
Joelle Lyndon
Thank you for inviting me. Such a pleasure. Such a pleasure, and an honor to be here.Â
Laura Rotter
I'm excited to see where our conversation takes us.Â
Joelle Lyndon
Yeah.Â
Laura Rotter
We'll start, as I always do with the question, Joelle, what was money like in your family growing up?
Joelle Lyndon
I love this question because through the work that I do, money and love are not so far away from one another. Actually, the way that you approach love is usually the way that you approach money. And so that places where there's disconnection or disconnect is in money. You'll usually find parallels in relationship as well.
So I love that question. For me, money was a dirty, in my family of origin, money was a dirty word. We didn't talk about money. And so my father was English. He grew up in obviously England, but he was there during the blitz and went to boarding school and, and so his experience of money was based on his having, not having, because of war, because his father was also a gambler and a drinker and probably bipolar.
We haven't quite as, we haven't quite determined that piece, but he would, he was often boarding school. He went from age eight to age 18, and then he went to Oxford. And then, but during that time that he was in boarding school, he'd come home on home leave and sometimes he'd come back to a house and sometimes he'd come home to an apartment.
So it was never from like year to there was just like never any sort of certainty around money for him. So for him money was a very elusive. Uh, an elusive thing for my mother. It was very similar storyline, but just different, right? So she's American. My grandfather was also not very reliable provider, sometimes had money, sometimes did not.
Also alcoholism, going on, gambling, playing, having fun, not necessarily providing for the family. So the two of them had this sort of common storyline of there's never enough. You can't depend upon it, and it can go in a, in an instant. And, and so that was the story that I grew up with primarily as a primary storyline in my family of origin.
So a scarcity storyline, a scary city storyline. But the most interesting piece is that when my father. So he was, he worked for United Nations. He ended up working United Nations. We lived in Chile from 68, 19 68 to 1974. So during the time of, and the bombing of the equivalent of the White House in Santiago and the military takeover, we were there in that country during that time.
But when we first moved there, he was being paid in dollars. So that meant he was positioned. Like very differently from other people. So all of a sudden he had all of this income. And so there's a contrast between the not enough mindset that we had with a lots and abundant and look at, and all the ways that we can have money and all the spending that we can do.
So there was this sort of, yeah, it had my father dreaming big. Yeah. But then being scared and being big and being scared. So it was just, it's very like a very interesting place. End story in my family.Â
Laura Rotter
Thanks for sharing that, Joelle. So how do you think that ying yang, if you will, around money impacted you?
Joelle Lyndon
For sure. The dream big and not enough is, has definitely impacted me. Like my father, I'm a very big dreamer. Oh, I love that. Like my father, I'm a very big creative, so she was an artist. So I, there's a both end, right? So there, the apples never fall from the tree, far away from the tree. We always embody aspects of the storyline.
Whatever storyline is part of our matriarchal or patriarchal lineage, we embody until we make a decision to release in whichever way we, we can the story that no longer serves and begin to beat the drum of something very different. So how it really worked out for me is that. This goes back to the relationship work that I do, is that when I left my family of origin, I was really positioned and well set up to marry my first husband who had lots of money, came from a family with lots of money, however.
He was also very abusive. So that, so in, in essence, I gave all agency responsibility, sovereignty around money issues to him, because in my mindset was like, men do the money, women do not. So even though makes sense that I would have my, I have my own job, I'm making my own income. Uh, he was starting to be a lawyer.
So that storyline presented itself in my relationship with my ex-husband, and then later on, after I left my ex-husband and actually took back some of that power with my own money tracking it. Really being able to, in a span of a year, save enough money to put a down payment on a house so I could move into my own office, right?
And then getting into another relationship, and then to hand that over to a man again, it was just like, whoa, Nelly, what's going on here? Joel, you need to really, really find out, like, why is it that you keep handing over? Your power in regards to money to Amen. And how is it that you can begin to take that back for yourself?
So I can happily say we're in a very different position now.Â
Laura Rotter
Yay. Yay. So Joelle, you explain, you described the time that your family spent in Chile. Did you then come back to the States and what was your personal progression?Â
Joelle Lyndon
Professionally. So we didn't come back to the States. We actually ended up in Geneva, Switzerland.
Laura Rotter
Ah.Â
Joelle Lyndon
And that's where they lived until they decided, they graduated, as I like to say. And so my progression from my family of origin is that actually I was. When I became a teenager and a bit of a troublemaker because I was now bringing attention to the family. So as his father was, my father was also an alcoholic.
And then as my grandfather also possibly had bipolar disorder, my father definitely did. So there were lots of things happening in my family of origin that, and he was in a position where he's dealing with. Ambassadors and politico, like all kinds of very important people. And I was being a teenager, drawing all kinds of attention to the family.
So at 16 I was sent away. So I was sent to this country to live with my aunt. So as I, as I shared earlier, my mother was American. And so from here, I got my education here in New York and went on to become a school teacher. So I taught as a school teacher for 32 years. Wow. K Through actually postgraduate school, so I taught, yeah, K through 12 in the public school system.
But I was also an adjunct professor teaching undergrads and grads as well. And so I did that for a number of years and then partway through I in a teacher center course that I was taking after, they usually had these teacher center courses that you took after you had a whole year of teaching you're supposed to recuperate.
Yeah. Invited a woman to speak to the teachers that were there, and she spoke to us about being a life coach. This was probably back in 2007. Oh before, and I remember before it was like a thing and I remember listening to her speak and I like every hair on my body stood on end and she had my wrapped attention.
I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about, lady. I. You like I, this is something that I'm going to end up doing. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it looks like. I don't know how you get certified in it, but I'm going to do it. So probably around 2007, 2008, I'd already gone through an expressive arts therapy training certification.
I decided to go into a coaching training. Stop you thereÂ
Laura Rotter
Joelle. I'm, I'm curious what. You know about yourself, and you knew about yourself at the time that sort of made this coaching idea resonate with you, because I know you and you've already self-express as a creative. So what about the coaching drew you in?
There was no rhyme or reason to it.Â
It was one of these. And I'm sure people have had these situations happen to them in different times of their life where they get a nudge or an impulse or an intuitive hit, or you wanna call it gut feeling that something is meant to be acted on. And then oftentimes people will choose not to.
And then it comes and bangs 'em on the head a couple of times more, and sometimes it's a big old whack over the head until change happens. Yes. For me, it didn't take any wax over the head. I knew it instantly, like my whole body responded instantly in that moment. I. And so I just trusted that was the way for me to go.
There was like, there was no question, there was no doubt, there was no second guessing, there was no analysis paralysis, nothing around that. It was just like, I'm going to do this. I don't know what it is, but I'm gonna do it. I don't know. I don't know how, but it's going to happen. And it was just like, it was that clear.
Laura Rotter
Wow. Thank you. Go on. I'm sorry. I interrupted you how you said you were gonna then take a coaching program. I…
Joelle Lyndon
I did end up going through the a certification program. It was a tier two year program that I, it was an ACCREDITIVE accredited program through the International Coaching Feder Federation of Coaches, and I started to work with women on career transition work.
At that time, I was not feeling particularly happy as a teacher. And was looking to transition out. I didn't have the courage to, the means to, I had gone through divorce. It was like I had my son. I had to like take care of him, take care of me, but I wanted to not teach anymore. So I thought that could be a way out for me.
If I helped other women, maybe they could show me how to do it right. And then, and then as life would have it, I got my heart broken for like the last time. So that second relationship that I spoke of when I handed my hand over my money purse strings over the second time, and I was aware of that, I. That was like a really devastating moment, a deep, dark night of the soul.
We had been together for eight years, just past the marriage, past the divorce, past everything. We'd been to together for eight years. We blended our families, we got the dog, we got the house, like the whole thing and that, and it just fell completely apart. And I realized at the end of that relationship that I, in fact, when I.
Got over the heart and I'm never gonna date again. I'm never gonna be in a relationship again. I realized there, there's this piece in me that actually doesn't believe that I can be held and loved by a man. Because I actually don't trust 'em. I actually don't believe that they can provide for me. So are you staying with the storyline, the matriarchal, the patriarchal storyline that the fathers don't provide?
Not necessarily financially, but also emotionally. So that thread was starting to come through and really clear for me at that point. And I recognized that I was actually a card carrying member of the Men Are Pigs Club. Oh God. Because although I wanted to be in relationship with them, I didn't trust them.
I didn't believe in them. I didn't think that they had my back or my self-interests. And so when I recognized that I was the common denominator in all of the failed relationships that I'd have, that I'd had. I knew that I had to change my own mind about men, and so that actually was the beginning. That awareness was the beginning of a change in course of my coaching business.
Laura Rotter
Joelle, I'm curious, did you seek help that had you recognize the common denominator? It was just through maturity. What came up.Â
Joelle Lyndon
Number of factors. So yes, I did. I was, at that time I was in the school of Womanly Arts Mama Gina work. I, I had enrolled in her school. I was actually in that school for about 10 years and it was through that community and through my work with Regina, that and the support of the community that I was able to then do what I called, end up calling the men's project.
It was kinda like the Men Pigs project, but I enlisted the support of my, of the women that I was in community with and support, and I essentially went out to prove myself wrong around men. One of the things that Regina has due as part of our training is that we would be in an audience as part of the audience, right?
And she would bring men, or she would invite women to bring their men in and they would sit on the stage and then. We could ans ask any questions we wanted of the men that were on stage. The first time I went through that experience, I thought they got paid. Men aren't really this nice, men aren't really this way.
And then when I recognized, wow, I. Maybe they are. Maybe what's in here is wrong and what's on that stage is the truth. I went out to prove it to myself. So I did created a project where I would date as many men as possible to change my mind about them. But the only way that I would go out with them is if they would know that one.
I'm not interested in a relationship right now 'cause I don't think highly of you lot. What I'm looking and changing my mind about you and. Are you in? Can you help me change my mind about you? So there were lots of guys who were just, they ran for the hills. They thought I was very bizarre. They also were looking for commitment, which I was not offering.
But the men who said yes to play really were wonderful. So over the course of a, it ended up about a year of dating lots and lots of different men. I tracked my data. I like what worked, what didn't work, and then I, so I really created like a scientific project around this dating of men so I could change my mind about them.
And what I discovered was like something that really, it was like a teeny little thing that really surprised me because I thought I was looking for the one. And it turned out that every man that I dated, whether he was a construction worker or a professor at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, whatever, a lawyer, whatever, they, each and every one of them had aspects of the one that I was looking for.
So that mean that meant it was like all of a sudden, like what each one of them has potential. So that completely changed my mind about men. And in the process, I met my now husband. Oh. And that's how I began. That was like I was my first client and that's how I really changed the focus of my work from career coaching into the relationship coaching.
Of course got trainings and all kinds of things like that. Started teaching workshops and now I'm doing one-on-one work and yeah, and I've written a book, so I'm just really thrilled to be at this place supporting both men and women and couples, which is my most recent adventure, playing with couples to really transform their relationships.
Laura Rotter
What a great story. Joelle, thank you so much for sharing it. I'm curious if the journey, when you went on, changed your relationship with your father in any way.Â
Joelle Lyndon
I'm so glad you brought that up. It did. It did it. Was it really? Did I get teary thinking about it? For the majority of my life, we had a very tense relationship.
He and I, and, and there were many moments in my relationship with him and with my mother where I would go periods of time, I don't know, 10 years without actually talking to them. And it was easy and convenient because there's anion between us, right? So there was that, there were these like long stretches of time where I would not communicate with them.
But then probably in 2000. 18 ish. I got call from my brother who said, mommy and daddy are like, they're starting to really show their age. I just wanted to let you know, and I had a moment where I thought, Joel, you can carry on with a dance that you've done of, stay away. I'll try to get close. Stay away.
I'll try to get close that peace. You can keep doing that and then they'll die and then you'll regret not having done anything about it, or you can actually do something about it. Probably, I wanna say maybe it was 2018. I decided I'm gonna just call every Sunday. Wow. To say hello. That's a big change. And so I started to call every Sunday.
I didn't tell them why. I didn't tell them what I was up to. I just started to call and, and then fast forward into 2022 when my fa, my parents' health was really declining. I went over, I. Back and forth, taking them outta their home, placing them into a a care facility. And then my father deciding, he was like done with this whole gig.
So very quickly. So in that time period I stayed with him probably about five months. I was like schlepping back and forth to, and in that time period we made peace in a way that I never could have thought possible. I. For starters, I showed up in that relationship as me. I didn't, I'm not the daughter, I'm not the, I am the daughter, but I just didn't show up in that.
You're the parent. I'm the child. That Infantalize like position. It was like, I'm here and I'm here to be a service of you and support you in your this next phase of your transition plan. Whatever your wishes are to the best of my ability, I'll support and follow those plans to the best of my ability, so long as it has your best interest in mind.
And so that's what I did. I was able to show up and then the day that my father died, my husband and my son and I had actually gone to France, had arrived on a Sunday. 'cause we were gonna go and empty out the house and clean things up. We were in Paris and I got a call from my brother saying, 'cause we arrived at five in the morning.
Mm-hmm. Four o'clock in the afternoon. I got a call from my brother saying, daddy's not going to make it. You have to get to Geneva right now. So I booked a flight from Paris to Geneva, was there, but I don't know, 10, uh, 12 or whenever it was, and then slept at the hospital with him, held his hand and was able to be there when he transitioned.
So my relationship with him, I feel like I, I feel like I made peace with him. I made peace with myself as well, and so it really did shift and change.Â
Laura Rotter
Yeah. Like I can see how important that is to you.Â
Joelle Lyndon
Yeah. You have, I think it's important for many people we. The men and women that I work with, I don't think there's any way not to have, I don't know, maybe there are people who have really unconflicted relationships with their parental units, but my experience and the people that I tend to work with have conflicted relationships with their parental units.
It may not be overt. It may be more covert, but there is some disconnection in that relationship, which then gets mirrored in their own relationships, in their own romantic relationships, but also in their relationships with their, with their coworkers and in their teams and in their, so it gets to get rippled out and mirrored out in different ways.
And when one kind of closes the loop with that. Then what I, my experience has been is like. There's less effort used. One doesn't have to shift, and yeah, shapeshift in one situation or in another relationship to meet the needs of the relationship. You just be you and all of them with your heart wide open.
And that is so much less effort to be hard open in all the relationships that matter rather than, oh, I'm gonna open it just a bit here and close it over there and wide over here and do you know what I'm saying? So, but then there's always that, do I not, and then all the overprotective mechanisms. And so I've found that it's just makes it so much easier to just have my heart open.
Laura Rotter
It's beautiful. As you said that Joelle, it brought up several things in my mind. First of all, I remember reading somewhere this idea that our parents and our children, our people we think we know so well, and frankly, we know them the least because we have these pictures of who they are. On the case of my children, for example, and you with your son from like when they were little, now they're much older, but.
And it's hard for our relationship to shift without bringing a lot of awareness that they're not who they were, that when they were five. And the same thing with our parents. And it also brings up the idea to be of the psychological term transference that when you go in with your therapist, but I see it with my clients.
If someone had a bad relationship with their father around money, suddenly I'm in a meeting and I'm realizing like they're treating me like I'm their father. They're coming with the expectation that I'll be judging them, that they're a little girl that's doing something wrong, and it's very powerful that we bring the way we relate to other people into many of our relationships.
It's a learned behavior and response, if you will. I see you shaking your head.Â
Joelle Lyndon
Yeah. I think the, for me, the biggest learning aspect of all of this. Was that moment in I, I said, I think it was 2018. I don't, I didn't keep track of the time when I said, you know what? Because actually my sister came over to visit recently and she said, what had you start to call mommy and daddy?
And I said, you know what? I didn't want to die with regret. And it's that it's the work that I do. And that was a really poignant moment for me. But it's just, it's a moment built on many other moments. Of taking personal and energetic responsibility for the part that I had played in the disconnection, reconnection, disconnection, that kind of like dynamic that we had CRE co-created together to create a final, I'm gonna stay with you until you die.
I will be here when you die, to create that kind of an experience. But the important. Piece of this, and this speaks to the sort of like the foundational work that I do with my clients is the acknowledgement and the need to take responsibility for what part you had in co-creating the relationship in the first place.
Yes, they were your parent, but yes, they're also human. And yes, you are like 50 now, or 60 or 70, and you are no longer their child. So at what point do you put on your big girl, big boy undies on and take personal and energetic responsibility for what you chose to co-create? Not to blame, shame, or beat up on yourself, but to just say, you know what fact I made this choice.
Fact, it had this result. Not good fact, I did this fact, it had this outcome. Probably not the best outcome possible. So just going through and doing this, oh, what do they call it in the 12 step program? I can't think of the name, but where you, you take a, an inventory, it's like an inventory of what you've done.
So there's this piece in the coaching and the work that I do about taking personal and energetic responsibility, which is part of the inventory. But then also beginning the process of, so if the way that you were operating does not work for you and you're still under stress, respon your stress in a stress situation, still responding in that way, and it's not getting you the results that you want, then what we need to do is that to update the internal operating system so it's actually meeting the present need, not responding to a need that was present when you were seven years old.
Let's say, or when you were five years old. So what do we need to do to retrain the nervous system? So it's the brain, heart, the brain, the heart, the belly, the whole system to like actually meet what's emerging, not what you think, not what you expected, not all the past stuff, but actually need it in the present moment and therefore have a result and an outcome that is fruitful and generative for all involved.
Laura Rotter
I hear in your voice how empowering that mind shift is and can be because you are shifting from being a victim of a, of a relationship that started many years ago, and taking responsibility again, as you said, Joel, not by blaming yourself, but by rising to the occasion by. By coming into who you are. I think we, we all develop coping mechanisms when we're younger and they work for us at a time and they don't continue to work for us.
But recognizing that we've chosen in some way those coping mechanisms and shedding them is what I hear your work. With your clients is, yeah. So Joel, what's your, can you say what your favorite part of your work is or the, your favorite people to work with?Â
Joelle Lyndon
Oh my gosh, that's so hard. You're ideal client as they say.
Okay, so my newest, favorite person, no. So I'm gonna give you context, right. So this weekend I, I did a couple's retreat. Oh, love it. Where I brought couples forward together and they each had a single canvas that they were going to work with. And this canvas was meant to be a representation of what I like to call and what I've referred to in the book as the Sacred Third, which is the soul of their relationship.
So we looked at all the aspects of the relationship that need pruning back. I use a lot of sort of plant language, all the things that need to be pruned back and what you're really, what your vision is for the relationship. And then they co-created a painting together that required zero artistic talent.
By the way, I'm all about, it's very low touch, high sensitivity. So very little technique. So that was such a fun thing to do, to see couples who were, who'd been married for 20 years and like the, how they enjoyed spending the entire day together, creating a canvas together, or the ones who had been only together for six years, right?
There's a little level of maturity of a couple that's been together, 20 compared to somebody who's been together six, and they're just, you can even, it is tangibly visible on the canvas, right? I love working with couples. I also have a three day retreat that I do in the summertime up in Lake George in July.
And this is just for women and, but we do similar work, but we take our relational, we take relationship to the canvas. 'cause what usually happens is that however you deal with straight with stress. Will show up on the canvas like so you're like, Ooh, I can't, oh, I can't see the wrong thing. I can't do it imperfect.
I can't do it imperfectly. I gotta really think about it before I take action, or, oh, forget about it. I'm just gonna go in there and, oh, this sucks, and I'm gonna toss the canvas across the room. So all of the stuff shows up in a canvas. So I love working with those women because it creates like this amazing community of women who are looking to see, have more awareness of how their relational issues are coming forward, and a safe space.
One of my mentors, Shiloh Sophia, says, art is the most dangerous thing that you could do without ki without dying. Because it feels like you're dying. Oh my God, if I make a mistake for women, we're such perfectionists. Oh my gosh. Yes. Absolutely. So I love working with that community of women. And then I also like working one-on-one with my clients.
I just had a client you mentioned earlier, you know, that you notice that I shifted out of a victim space into more empowered space, and I had a recent conversation with a client of mine. We've been working. So I work with clients a minimum of 12 months. That's like the smallest amount. Wow. They usually stay with me between three to five years.
And the reason for that is because I work with women who are primarily in their fifties and sixties, some in their forties. But if you've been doing something for about 30, 40, 50, 60 years, it's gonna take some practice to do it differently before. Before it becomes a new normal. Right. I imagine that the same is true with your work, Laura, right?
That that the practice of doing money differently is not something that just happens overnight. It has to be a practice. It has to be, you have to be practicing doing things differently before it clicks in as a, oh, I'm doing this way now. This is just how it is. So I was speaking with this one client, Diane, who had a, who had met somebody while we were coaching together.
And then it didn't work out and her heart got just blown out of the water. She was just devastated. So she and I, in our coaching, I hung with her through that whole very devastating space to get to our last call. And she said, so while I realized that when I met this gentleman, I was hoping he would choose me.
I was hoping, and I said, and I had this image of her, I'm like, it was kinda like an Oliver like, and he's holding out the bowl, right? Please, may I have some bowl? Like she had that attitude of, I've gotta get chosen, I've gotta be like, I've gotta be good enough for him to choose me. And then now she's describing her dating and she's, no, I have a criteria they have to match.
I'm like, Ooh, welcome to the men's project. Right, so she's now engaged in her own men's project from a more sort of, oh, I'm the catch, I am the catch. I get to choose not from an entitled place, but from a what's gonna make my heart happy. Who is gonna be the one that I will choose to live with me until we're sitting on our rocking chairs, until we decide to shuffle off this mortal coil.
So I love working with those clients as well. So to ask me who I like to, just like I gave you all over them, I'm all over the map. I love to work with them all.Â
Laura Rotter
You did describe a certain age group that you tend to work with people around 50, give or take. So that is something, and clearly people dealing with relationship issues.
Joelle Lyndon
Yeah. They tend to be really smart and savvy. They also tend to be kinda like CEOs, professionals, like very high end, like they're very responsible for people and things and systems and stuff. And so it, the skillset that it took to get them to where they're at is actually working against them to get the relationships that they want because they had to hustle to get to where they, their, where they are.
They had to push and shove and do whatever they needed to do. But in relationship, you have to learn to surrender. Ah, great word. And you have to learn to receive. And so the women that I tend to work with, and the men as well tend to bring, be movers and shakers, but I haven't, like, they're just, they're still like, I'm the one who's gonna make this thing happen.
What's really needed is a reversal of that, of, oh, I actually have to ask for what I want and then lean back and hope and receive it. So there's that kind of, that I don't have to be doing, I have to be more of this stance. And so the skillset needed to go from, I'm gonna. Put my hands and everything to, I'm gonna let go.
Is is something. So yeah, very kinda like highend, very movers and shakers who just need a different skillset that they've accustom, accustomed themselves to having to get themselves in the positions that they are. It's not that they're gonna give that peace up, but they just need a different skillset to be in the relationships that they want from a open heart.
Laura Rotter
Which strikes me as someone who is a pusher and a mover and a shaker as as something very difficult to do. Like it in me. As you describe it, it brings up this feeling of this emotion of fear, right? Yeah. Like because you have to trust in order to open your heart and surrender. And as you described in your own journey, many of us come.
From a place where it's not so easy to trust.Â
Joelle Lyndon
So, um, well, and that's, that's really key. Everyone is looking for to be seen, to be heard, to be understood, to be held. And we want intimacy with another human connection with another human being. The currency for that is not. I'm gonna handle and manipulate and do all the things to make it happen.
'cause then it just won't, the currency to for that to happen is vulnerability. Yes. And so this is why clients stay with me three, five years because to release. That fear and to begin to trust and that opening up the heart and keeping it open is a safe thing to do. Takes practice and it also takes a container.
Laura Rotter
Yes.Â
Joelle Lyndon
And accountability. Yes. Yeah, that's the biggest, that's the biggest piece. 'cause everyone says, like everyone says, they want transformation, but nobody wants to really change. Yes. You know, get there. But when working with me, you get to step into a dojo. It's almost like martial arts. But we get to practice katas over and over again to soften your resistance, to dropping that protective, all those protective mechanisms.
And then. The men and the women that I work with, like all of a sudden, like they have these, they're like, they become all of a sudden really intuitive and they follow these guidances that are that. These synchronicities start to happen. And I think of my friend, my, one of my clients, Margaret, who, when she worked with me, she was dating a whole bunch of people who were just not a good fit.
And part of my coaching, I said to her, use this, you choose, but I'm gonna make a recommendation that you don't date this person anymore and that you be done with him. And my coaching recommendation is that you stop dating altogether and you start going out with your girlfriend. Have fun. Enjoy your life.
Discover what brings you joy. Kinda like a Marie Kondo man. Very Mama Gina approach to the whole thing. And as it turned out, she decided to start going out, lots of girlfriends, and she start and she went to a charity event, and it was at this charity event that she ended up meeting the lid, what she calls a lid to her pot.
They're engaged to be married. And so that's like how the whole thing transpires. Once you're with it and you get to practice. Opening up your heart and releasing the fear and surrendering to receive the love that you want, the intimacy that you want, and trust that you can be seen, heard, held, understood, and intimate with another human being, and that you won't self implode, the world won't fall apart, and you will be safe.
That's the biggest lesson of all.Â
Laura Rotter
Beautiful. So we're coming to the end of our conversation. Jole, Joelle, I'm wondering, I I do to ask the question, how has your definition of success shifted over time and particularly perhaps financial success?Â
Joelle Lyndon
My definition of success used to be a very socialized definition.
It looks like six figures. It looks like blah, blah, blah. All the definitions that you'll see on social media, right? That's really shifted for me.
Success for me is how many of my clients graduate, meaning no longer need me, are off on their own in a relationship that they never expected, but is the perfect match for them. Where they're like living their life in their happiest and the most happiest way possible. So for me, it's not necessarily a financial piece, it's more of an energetic quality.
I'm not saying money's not important and I'm not dismissing that component, but they actually go hand in hand. For me that when I am aligned and I'm doing the best service and I'm really providing the best service and the highest support to my clients, it comes back to me financially, it comes back to me energetically, but that is not my motivational value.
So that for me is what success looks like. When my clients are out in the world moving and shaking and they talk about the work that I do, and they send me clients, that to me is success.Â
Laura Rotter
Thank you and Joelle, I can't step away from the question. What role? Your art as I, whenever I see you, there's a beautiful painting behind you and I know that art is a big part of your life.
You, you spoke about it a little bit, but what role does your art play both in your work and perhaps in your definition of feeling that you are living a successful life?Â
Joelle Lyndon
Like art as life, right? It's, I think back to that first time that I heard about the Life coach and I had that whoa feeling, oh, I've gotta pursue this.
I don't know why and I don't know how, and I don't know what makes no sense, but I'm just gonna follow. That's how art is for me, and that's how my business has grown. Like I'm just gonna follow the next thing and the next thing and the next thread, and it gets to be woven together and it becomes this beautiful tapestry.
And then before I know it, I've got something beautiful. That I've created and other people benefit from. Yes. And appreciate and love.Â
Laura Rotter
Yes. Reminding me of, again, something someone said that I, but you're just that life is art. We imagine that life is following you do this piece. It's like pieces of a puzzle, but it really is more of a painting.
Joelle Lyndon
Yeah. Yeah. And it's also that surrender that we talked about earlier. Right. Because if I was like, Ooh, it needs to look this way and that way, and I'm the one controlling it, it's never gonna get to where I, where my heart really is leading me to go. But if I really let my heart guide me, then it ends up being the exact painting I need it to be.
Love it.Â
Laura Rotter
Joelle, is there anything you wanna make sure you say to our listeners? Any resources you wanna share or any thought before we say goodbye? I.Â
Joelle Lyndon
I have this three day retreat coming up in July 18th through 20th, so if you sense at all, you'd like to play with me up in Lake George, New York, which is in the, like the beginning of the Adirondack Mountains, which is really a beautiful place.
I'm doing a three day retreat called The Art of Relating Pathways to Expression. And it's an opportunity to play with a canvas in your relationships in a community of other like-minded women at a place called ow, Waka Center for Women. It's actually the oldest running women's center in the United States.
Georgia O'Keefe used to spend her summers there, so to be painting in the same location where she was. Is exciting and fun to do. Yeah, you can go to my website, joel leiden.com uh slash art of relating. I will put that in the show notes. Beautiful. So if you're interested in playing with a bunch of girlfriends hanging out on Lake George with some paint and other women.
Right. That's it.Â
Laura Rotter
Thank you so much for your time, Joelle. It was such a nice conversation.Â
Joelle Lyndon
My absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for the opportunity to connect today, Laura. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.Â
Narrator
Thanks for listening to Making Change with your Money certified financial planner. Laura Rodder specializes in helping people just like you organized, clarify, and invest their money in order to support a life of purpose and meaning.
Go to www.trueabundanceadvisors.com/workbook for a free resource to help you on your journey. Disclaimer, please remember that the information shared by this podcast does not constitute accounting, legal, tax, investment, or financial advice. It's for information purposes only. You should seek appropriate professional advice for your specific information.