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World Leading Life Coach06 October 2022

World Leading Life Coach: 3 Steps To Figuring Out ANYTHING You Want: Marie Forleo

10Frameworks
10Insights

Frameworks in this episode

Communication3 steps

Can't vs Won't

Swap 'I can't' for 'I won't' or 'not a priority right now' and tell yourself the truth

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Entrepreneurship3 steps

Clarity Comes From Engagement, Not Thought

You won't figure out your path on the couch — take action in a direction and clarity follows

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Productivity3 steps

Create Before You Consume

Before you touch the phone, create something — mindset, body, art, connection

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Self-Mastery3 steps

Expansive vs Contracted: The Intuition Body-Check

To tell intuition from fear, close your eyes and feel whether a yes makes your body expand or contract

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Productivity3 steps

If Everything's Important, Nothing Is (One Primary Project)

Run one primary project with everything else secondary, and your life gains spaciousness and focus

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Innovation3 steps

Pursue Passions, Not Passion (Multi-Passionate)

The missing 's' is a trap — let multiple interests thrive and their rare combination becomes your edge

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Entrepreneurship3 steps

Start Before You're Ready (Progress Over Perfection)

Perfectionism causes procrastination — do the cringey first version and let it teach you the next step

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Strategy3 steps

The 10-Year Regret Test

Ask: in ten years, if I didn't even try this, would I regret it? A yes means pursue it

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Mindset3 steps

The Three Rules Of Figureoutable

Everything is figureoutable — and if it isn't, either it's a law of nature or you don't care enough

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Self-Mastery3 steps

Want vs Want-To-Want

Separate what you truly want from what you only want to be the kind of person who wants

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Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Myth Buster· 2

Myth Buster27:30

Quitting Is A Skill, And Keeping Your Day Job Makes You 33% Less Likely To Fail

Against the cultural line that quitting is for losers, Forleo argues we glamorise starting while quitting is the equally important thing you must do first — a skill in its own right. But her version is not burning the ships. Because of her upbringing and its perpetual financial scarcity she is financially risk-averse, so leaving publishing meant bartending and waiting tables close to seven days a week to keep a roof overhead while she built the coaching business. She cites a US study tracking roughly 14,000 entrepreneurs which found those who kept their day job as they started their business were 33% less likely to fail. Her prescription is to audit your own risk-averseness honestly first, then engineer the financial runway — another job, part-time work, whatever it takes — that buys you enough time to find out whether the business works.

  • We glamorise starting and stigmatise quitting; quitting precedes every start.
  • Forleo self-assesses as financially risk-averse due to childhood scarcity.
  • She did not burn the ships: bartending and waiting tables ~7 days a week funded the transition.
  • Cited study: ~14,000 US entrepreneurs tracked.
  • Those who kept their day job while starting were 33% less likely to fail.
  • Action: assess risk tolerance, then design the runway before quitting.

“we glamorized starting it's like oh my God they started this thing but quitting is the equally important thing you have to do before you…”

Marie Forleo · 27:30

“they tracked about 14 000 entrepreneurs and they found that those who kept their day job as they started their business were 33 percent less…”

Marie Forleo · 28:30
#quitting#risk#entrepreneurship#research#side-hustle
Myth Buster1:18:00

She Built A 100M-Reach Brand While Barely Using Social Media

Forleo says plainly that being on social was not healthy for her: a thought worm gets in and at 2am you wake up asking why you aren't doing what someone else is doing. Off it, she is more creatively productive, more prolific, a better leader and partner — so she essentially doesn't use it at all. Asked how a coach without a budget is supposed to succeed without it, her answer is that presence does not require personal participation: she has a team who create and post, which is no different from her not being the one uploading to YouTube. With no money, the fix is an intern, or devoting one bartending shift's wages to paying someone to post. Alternatively, engineer the app itself — hide like counts, mute the accounts that trigger comparison (she taught an artist friend drowning in comparison to mute the very people she genuinely wished well). Bartlett's parallel point is that hitting follow populates a personal library that becomes the strongest influence on your worldview, so junk values get in by default; he mutes about 95% of the people he follows.

  • Forleo describes social as a 'thought worm' that surfaces as 2am comparison.
  • Off social she reports being more prolific, a better leader and a better partner.
  • Your presence can be run by a team; you don't have to be the one posting.
  • No budget? Use an intern, or fund a poster with one shift's earnings.
  • Craft the tools: hide like counts, mute accounts that trigger comparison.
  • Comparison is built into our neurology and biology, so design around it rather than resisting it.
  • Bartlett mutes roughly 95% of accounts he follows; the people who matter have his WhatsApp.

“it's built into our neurology it's built into our biology to compare ourselves and if you spend enough time on that you're gonna wind up…”

Marie Forleo · 1:20:30

“you're populating your library with junk values and then you're going to pay the price”

Steven Bartlett · 1:21:30
#social-media#comparison#mental-health#audience-building#boundaries

Hot Take· 1

Hot Take58:30

The MarieTV Episode On Not Having Kids — And The Comments Underneath It

Forleo has known from a very young age that she never wanted to marry or have children, an inner knowing she has never wavered on and cannot fully explain. When a MarieTV viewer asked how she decided not to have kids, she covered it for the first time and it became one of the most popular episodes they have ever made — not because of the answer but because it opened a conversation about choice. What shocked her were the anonymous comments: women who had given birth and absolutely loved their children writing that they would have made a different choice if they had known they had one. Her position is not that nobody should have children but that every woman should know the destiny is hers to choose, including her own definition of what family means. Her own framing: her path is to help people give birth to their ideas and possibilities rather than to a physical child.

  • Forleo knew from a young age she wanted neither marriage nor children, and never wavered.
  • Before Josh, partners assumed marriage-then-kids and she had to keep correcting them.
  • A single viewer question produced one of MarieTV's most popular episodes ever.
  • It resonated because it was about choice, not about her particular answer.
  • Anonymous commenters who loved their kids said they'd have chosen differently had they known it was a choice.
  • Her stated path: helping people give birth to ideas and possibilities.

“I would have made a different choice if I knew I had one”

Marie Forleo · 59:30

“it was shocking how many women feel that they must follow this prescription”

Marie Forleo · 1:00:00
#choice#motherhood#social-conditioning#women#marietv

Explainer· 3

Explainer12:30

Soft, Gentle And Persistent: Forleo's Signature For The Inner Voice

Asked what the voice actually is, Forleo says she believes it's her intuition — the timeless part of her that predates and will outlast this incarnation, and for those who believe in a higher power, a supportive level of intelligence. She believes everyone has it, though most have never been trained to articulate, understand or discern it. Its signature is specific: soft spoken, felt as an inner nudge toward something that may make no sense to the outside world and may run counter to social and familial conditioning, but gentle, encouraging and above all persistent. Bartlett's version of the evidence is that people introduce themselves by their finance job and then immediately pull out their phone to show an art Instagram account started at 2am — the whisper still working away at them under the louder external voice of society, parents and platforms.

  • Forleo frames the voice as intuition or higher self, not a metaphor.
  • She believes everyone has it but most lack the training to discern it.
  • Its qualities: soft spoken, gentle, encouraging, persistent.
  • It often contradicts social and familial conditioning.
  • The competing external voice — society, parents, Instagram — is far stronger and everywhere.
  • Bartlett's tell: the finance worker with a secret 2am art Instagram account.

“it is gentle it is encouraging and it is persistent”

Marie Forleo · 13:30

“that other voice that external Voice is so much stronger”

Steven Bartlett · 14:30
#intuition#self-knowledge#conditioning#inner-voice
Explainer15:00

Intuitive Shopping: Training Discernment On Trivial Decisions First

Forleo trains intuition on deliberately low-stakes ground, and admits it sounds superficial. She calls it intuitive shopping: trying on an outfit, thinking it looks pretty good, then quieting down and hearing 'nope, you're never going to wear it'. She extends the practice to what to order from a menu and whether to make a move with a partner — small moments where guidance is available and the cost of being wrong is nothing. The second half of the method is retrospective: look back through your own history for the times something in you piped up and your ego or an external voice overrode it — a hire, a deal, a relationship, a yes you shouldn't have given — and it cost you big time. Those memories teach you what the signal sounds and feels like. She also names two physical prerequisites: as someone with ADHD and a very overactive brain, she needs meditation and exercise to dial down the static enough to detect the voice at all.

  • Practise on trivial decisions: clothes, menu orders, small relationship moves.
  • Forleo avoids clutter, so 'you're never going to wear it' is a real signal to hear.
  • Retrospective audit: find past overrides that cost you, to learn the signal's texture.
  • The override usually comes from ego or an external voice promising a payoff.
  • Forleo has ADHD and needs meditation plus exercise to reduce mental static.
  • Lowering the noise makes the voice both easier to detect and effectively louder.

“I want people to pay attention to the small moments what you should order on a menu whether or not you should make a move…”

Marie Forleo · 15:30

“I need to meditate and I need to exercise those are two things that help me dial down the noise”

Marie Forleo · 16:30
#intuition#practice#adhd#meditation#decision-making
Explainer45:30

Imago Therapy: Why You Pick The Partner With The Opposite Childhood Wound

Forleo names the work of Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt — the book Getting the Love You Want and the Imago therapy body of work they developed — as the most game-changing thing she has ever done for her relationship. She and Josh found it when they were in a genuinely bad place and she didn't know if they'd make it. The core idea: you absorb patterns from your family unit that become a childhood wound. Hers was smothering, so her need is freedom; Josh's was abandonment, so his need is closeness. People tend to select the partner with the exact opposite wound — meaning you choose, precisely, the partner who forces you to heal what needs healing. She also credits a structured conversation tool they teach called dialogue, which they run in workshops inexpensively and have taken into police departments; practising it let her hear Josh's actual needs without feeling her drive was under threat.

  • Source: Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, 'Getting the Love You Want', big in the 90s and early 2000s.
  • Forleo's childhood wound was smothering; her adult need is freedom.
  • Josh's wound was abandonment; his need is closeness.
  • The theory: you pick the partner with the opposite wound, so you pick your ideal healer.
  • 'Dialogue' is a structured conversation form taught in their inexpensive workshops.
  • The tool let her see Josh's real need as presence and support, not volume of time.

“we will pick the person that has the exact opposite childhood wound”

Marie Forleo · 47:30

“you choose the perfect partner to heal the very things that you need to heal”

Marie Forleo · 47:30
#relationships#therapy#imago#attachment#childhood-wounds

Story· 3

Story02:30

The Kitchen Phone Cord: How A 7-Year-Old Decided Money Equals Love

Just after her parents' divorce, Forleo watched her mother in their New Jersey kitchen on an old corded phone, the cord wrapped so tightly around her hand it was cutting off circulation and turning it white, sobbing to her own mother in Florida that she had nothing. Her mother then knelt down, put her face inches from Marie's, shook her and said: do you see what I'm going through, don't be stupid like I was, never let a man control your money, be your own woman, be independent. In those few seconds Forleo made a set of equations and promises she carried for decades: that a lack of money equalled the loss of love, the destruction of family, and enormous suffering. She resolved to make so much money she could take care of everyone she loved. Now in her 40s, she can see how that single scene drove almost every part of her career.

  • Forleo was about seven or eight; her parents had just divorced.
  • Her mother's repeated line was 'I have nothing, I don't know what I'm going to do'.
  • The instruction was: don't be stupid like me, never let anyone control your money.
  • Forleo equated lack of money with loss of love and destruction of family.
  • She promised herself she'd earn enough to financially rescue everyone she loved.
  • She now attributes almost her entire career drive to that few-second moment.

“the lack of having enough money equaled the loss of love the destruction of family and so much pain and suffering”

Marie Forleo · 04:00

“I can see how much that fear and how much that desire to have love be healed has driven almost every part of my career”

Marie Forleo · 05:00
#childhood#money-beliefs#origin-story#scarcity#family
Story09:30

The Flip-Phone Call To Her Dad That Ended Her Wall Street Career

Forleo took a job on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in the late 90s, drawn by proximity to people earning millions — sums beyond anything she could imagine. But an inner voice kept telling her this wasn't who she was, without ever telling her what was. As the first in her family to go to college, she felt trapped: quitting meant shaming parents who had 'busted their buns' to get her there. Crying, she called her dad on a flip phone; he cut through it with 'if this job is getting you this sick and you hate it you have to quit' — start bartending if you must, but don't stop looking. She moved to Gourmet magazine, heard the same voice again six months in, and then stumbled on an article about a new profession called coaching while on the internet at work when she probably shouldn't have been. Her soul lit up 'like a Christmas tree'; she went back to bartending and waiting tables to fund building the business.

  • Forleo was first in her family to attend college, which made quitting feel shameful.
  • Her father's advice: you'll work 40-50 years, don't stop looking until you find something you love.
  • She next tried magazine publishing as the only business-plus-creative combination available.
  • The same inner voice returned about six months into the Gourmet job.
  • She found coaching by accident, reading an article at work.
  • She funded coach training with bartending and waiting tables, not savings.

“if this job is getting you this sick and you hate it you have to quit”

Marie Forleo · 10:30

“when I read this article it was as though something in my soul lit up like a Christmas tree”

Marie Forleo · 12:00
#career-change#quitting#intuition#origin-story#coaching
Story1:28:00

'I Don't Think I Love You Anymore': The Couch Conversation That Nearly Ended It

Asked for the lesson from her lowest point, Forleo describes sitting on the couch with Josh while he told her he didn't think he loved her anymore and thought it was done. She could feel his heart was unavailable; this wasn't a normal fight. Her gut dropped, all the oxygen went out of the room, and she felt she had destroyed the best relationship she'd ever had with her work addiction — they had been together six or seven years and had never once taken a proper vacation because she always said she couldn't, she was too busy working. The defensive reflex was available: screw you, get out, fine, it's over. But an inner voice said he's hurt, you're hurt, fight for this. She told him it wasn't over, that she still loved him more than anything, that she'd do whatever it took including therapy, and asked only whether he was willing to take one step to see if it was possible. She saw something crack in him — he hadn't known she cared that much. Her lesson: never outsource wisdom, and never doubt the quiet voice over the whiny egoic one.

  • Josh told her on the couch that he didn't think he loved her anymore.
  • They had been together six or seven years with not one proper vacation, always blocked by her work.
  • Her physical response: gut dropped, oxygen gone from the room.
  • The egoic reflex was defensive withdrawal; the deeper voice said be humble and fight.
  • She asked for one step, not a guarantee: are you willing to see if it's possible?
  • He cracked because he hadn't realised she cared that much.
  • Her stated lesson: trust your instincts, don't outsource wisdom to external people or expectations.

“there was this inner voice that I was like he's hurt you're hurt fight for this fight for this relationship do not let this go”

Marie Forleo · 1:29:00

“the lesson that I learned from a low point was to always trust my instincts and to not Outsource wisdom”

Marie Forleo · 1:26:30
#relationships#workaholism#lowest-point#intuition#repair

Takeaway· 1

Takeaway50:30

It Takes More Courage To Redefine Success Than It Did To Start The Business

Responding to Bartlett's story about a friend worth hundreds of millions in her twenties whose partner has left her and who cannot get off the metaphorical lorry dragging her, Forleo's answer is that everyone must first admit where they are killing it and be honest about where it isn't working. Then apply figureoutable to connection, friendship, adventure and downtime the same way you applied it to revenue. Her own turning point came in a therapy chair: looking at what she'd built, then at Josh, and concluding it was not an either/or but that she had a problem — the business could not remain her number one priority if she knew in her heart that love was the most important thing in life. She is blunt that it doesn't count until you demonstrate it in behaviour and calendar. Her claim is counterintuitive: refusing to be dragged by her drive made her more successful, not less — a better coach, teacher, friend and partner. And the courage required to redefine success at a higher level exceeds the courage it took to start the business.

  • First move: be honest about the domains where it is not working, not just the ones that are.
  • Everything-is-figureoutable applies to love and friendship, not only business problems.
  • Her turning point was a specific realisation in a therapy chair.
  • Knowing love matters most is worthless until you demonstrate it with time and action.
  • She reports becoming more successful, not less, after stopping being dragged by fear.
  • Redefining your own success takes more courage than starting a business did.

“they have to be even more courageous to redefine their own success at a higher different level”

Marie Forleo · 51:30

“this thing meaning the business cannot be your number one priority if you know in your heart that love is the most important thing in…”

Marie Forleo · 52:30
#success#burnout#workaholism#priorities#relationships