An Interview With Life, Leadership & Business Coach Mindy Amita Aisling

In 2010 Mindy Amita Aisling graduated from iPEC, one of the most highly acclaimed coaching schools in the world, far exceeding the requirements set froth by the International Coaching Federation.  Immediately after graduation, Mindy launched her life coaching business, serving clients all over the world, and was highly successful both locally and internationally. 

In her second year of coaching, she was featured in the New York Times as a successful coach under 40.  Mindy wrote grants for community members to attend workshops free of charge, and she developed curriculum for educational courses on life and How To Be Human. She was a keynote speaker for a variety of groups, offered a series of classes and workshops, hosted community enrichment & advocacy events, and coached individuals and businesses both locally and remotely. 

In addition to her education as a coach, Mindy is also a certified mediator and has served as a mediator privately, and for the Deschutes County Courthouse. 

Currently, Mindy focuses almost exclusively on one-on-one coaching work with individuals and businesses who are seeking to have a more authentic and aligned life and/or business.  Mindy is also in the process of revising her curriculum from in-person courses to online DIY Coaching Courses for fellow autodidacts.

What unique gifts do you bring to your coach/client relationships?

I am highly empathetic.  Yup, I'm one of those people that is brought to tears by life almost every single day.  Some days they are sad tears, but some days they are tears of awe and wonder, or joy and gratitude.  I am seriously moved by life and the experience of being human.  This natural empathy allows me to connect to my client's experience of life in a very real way and allows them to feel tremendously seen and heard. 

I am direct. I say what I mean and I mean what I say.  I don't beat around the bush, or sugarcoat things.  Often times when people say they are direct they are actually using this as an excuse to be mean, or "brutally honest" - nope, that is not what I'm talking about.  When I say that I am direct, I'm referring to this natural inclination - or need even, to be completely transparent and authentic.  I talk about the things that all humans experience but most humans shrink away from giving voice to, like shame, desire, fear, insecurity, resentment, yearning, hope, and love. 
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I am curious.  My wild curiosity is one of the things that I love most about myself, and my clients have reported that the space of curiosity that I bring into our sessions has been valuable in our coach/client relationship.  I find the world, the experience of being human, and each individual's unique story, gifts, challenges, and traumas... all of this is endlessly fascinating.  I have no space for judgment in my life or my work because judgment cancels curiosity.  Judgment and curiosity can not exist at the same time, and given the choice between feeling judgment or curiosity - I'll choose curiosity every single time. 

What is your coaching style?

My philosophy is that every single person already has all of the answers for themselves and their life, they only need to remove the obstacles that are in the way of accessing their inner wisdom and clarity.  Many times when clients come to me, they have a belief system that they are somehow not whole, that they have to be someone or something different in order to succeed - that they are not enough.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  When I am coaching, I am holding the space for my clients to realize their wholeness, and to come home to who they really are.  My clients gain the ability to stand so firmly rooted in who they are, that even life's biggest challenges don't shake their roots. 

What are some of the goals that you've helped your clients reach?

Wow, over the past 12 years of coaching, I've also grown as a coach and a human, and I've tried on different niches of coaching to see where my greatest strengths are.  When I first started coaching, I was also an NFPT fitness trainer, so I focused primarily on health, wellness, balance & self-care.  Then I went back to school for more training, became certified as a mediator, and focused on communication, emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, and relationship.  Given my rich past in entrepreneurship, I've worked with a plethora of clients on opening businesses or changing careers.  For a short time, I branded myself as the 'clarity coach' and helped people who were stuck in making a decision for their life.  Now, I would say that my primary focus is authenticity - and that path includes many of the previous areas of my expertise.  I would say the top 5 goals that I've helped my clients achieve over the years are:

1. Developing Self-Trust/Self Love
2. Improving Health/Wellness/Life Balance
3. Starting a Business/Growing a Business
4. Improving a Marriage/Primary Relationship
5. Finding Your Life Purpose (Authenticity)

What is the process you use to help your clients reach their goals?

Each client is a bit different, so the process isn't always this linear, but in an effort to over-simplify the answer, so that it's easy to communicate, I'd list the steps as something like this:

• Build a safe space so that everything is welcome in session, and an open investigation can occur.
• Identify the client's goal and the why behind the goal (Sometimes we find that a goal can change when we remove all the "shoulds" or shame, align the goal with the client's values, or allow a desire to exist that was previously subdued)
• Build an action plan to achieve the goal
• Take action, evaluate, change and update as needed, take action again, etc. (This process can be complicated and requires serious investigation skills to dig deep and uncover the internal hurdles to achieving a goal.  Usually, the external hurdles are pretty straightforward, it's getting the internal stuff aligned so that the external hurdles can be mastered that is the fun part.  This is also where we might discover that healing that needs to take place to unlock full your potential, new habits and routines might need to be developed, or changes to your environment might need to take place). The action plan for your goal is a living, breathing plan and will change as we move closer to your goal. 
• Celebrate.  

I also have coaching package designed with a specific goal in mind, and the process for these is slightly different.