Benay: [00:00:00] Welcome to Coach Pep Talk, the podcast for people who run their own coaching businesses. Each week I talk to an expert who shares wisdom that helps us be better coaches, and better coaching business owners. This week I got Kurek Ashley on the line and he is talking to us all about self-love. It’s a fabulous interview and I hope you enjoy it. See you on the other side.

Benay: [00:00:23] Coach Pep Talk is brought to you by Life Coach Office, the one stop shop for managing your coaching business online. It’s a fully featured software to manage all of your client information and a whole lot more. The best way to check out Life Coach Office to see if it’s right for your single coach coaching business is to sign up for the free seven-day trial at lifecoachoffice.com.

Benay: [00:00:49] Today I’m talking to Kurek Ashley, who Tony Robbins once described as the embodiment of the word outstanding and I think you’ll understand what I mean once you listen to the call. Kurek is an internationally renowned speaker, author, and coach in the fields of self-development and spiritual growth and is recognized as a premier expert in personal and professional development, Self-discovery, and peak performance. He’s written a bestselling book called, “How Would Love Respond.” He’s worked with Fortune 500 companies, gold medalists, and everything in between. And is also the creator and founder of The Life Success Club. Today Kurek’s going to be talking to us about self-love and how to incorporate that into your life and into your coaching business. I hope you enjoy what Kurek has to say.

Benay: [00:01:35] Hello Kurek and welcome to the show.

Kurek Ashley: [00:01:38] I am honored to be here and it’s one of those magical things that you know, even being asked and sometimes I pinch myself, asking how I get to be me.

Benay: [00:01:47] Speaking of being you I have immersed myself in your world, sort of, in the last few days I’ve watched your TedX Talk from environed day, I’ve been reading your book, which is just phenomenal and I don’t know how we’re going to fit everything that you have to say into this like 20 to 40-minute show, but we’re gonna give it a really good shot today and the topic that we sort of kicked out is the topic of self-love. Can you tell us a little bit about what is self-love and why is it so important? And Especially if you can use examples for people who are coaches and coaching business owners That would be the really cool.

Kurek Ashley: [00:02:27] Great. Well as You know, Benay, I am a coach, I have clients all over the world and I’ve been doing it for a very long time and been very successful at it, and the thing is that every challenge you know that a human being goes through is actually a self-love issue. You know people, if somebody really loved themselves obviously they wouldn’t smoke cigarettes or be sticking needles in their arms and doing drugs, or they wouldn’t allow themselves to stay fat, or depressed or broke. You know if you ask people about that, “Would you want that for your children?” They say, “Of course not, I love my kids. I want them to be successful, healthy, and fit. No No way would I let them smoke cigarettes and things.” But they’ll do it to themselves. You see it’s always a self-love issue and as a coach it’s one of the things I’m always looking at because in order for people to have the results obviously they have to do the action. We all know that. A matter of fact, the people you’re coaching actually know that, they even know what to do, I mean everybody knows if you want to lose weight you exercise regularly and eat better quality of food. But, Okay Australia broke a record a couple of years ago, fattest country in the world. They beat the Americans at something and that’s not a good record to have. If you go, there you’ll see that whatever record we may think we may have gotten it’s bad there and most countries are overweight and out of shape. But everybody knows what to do. It’s why aren’t they doing it. Well, the answer is first you have to be the person that would do those things. And so self-love is a way of being.

Benay: [00:04:12] Why Is this this way of being so important. I think you kind of said it that maybe you could make a little catchphrase or something for us.

Kurek Ashley: [00:04:20] Sure. Well I’m not religious. I don’t actually have a religion, I’m a very spiritual person. My mom was Jewish, my dad was Christian and I was just really confused first at what were they were even doing together. But the thing is that the Bible says if you do not know love you do not know God because God is love. And love by priority is the most powerful force in the universe. I watched my son being born and you know his head which was the size of a rock melon or cantaloupe came out of a part of her body that was normally the size of an eye socket and then he put his fist next to his head and you know that really had to hurt. And after you know all those 16 hours of labor in pain you know the moment mom and baby made eye contact, all she remembers is the unconditional love they don’t even remember the pain. I watched it happen. So our moms taught us the most powerful lesson right from the beginning which is transformation. that You can take the worst experience in life and turn into the very best with that power of love. And the word transformation, with A T I O N, that part of the word means the experience of. TRANS means to go beyond, and FORM represents what you have right now. And so you can go, you know, it’s the experience of going beyond what you have right now and the way you would be with the self-love. And the easiest, I guess, way to help people with that, is being of it would be the most powerful two words in this language, which are I am. Because whatever follows the words I am is your identity and that’s what my book is called, “How would love respond.” and love is capitalized as an identity so that when you identify yourself as love, you will start to act in a loving way which will produce loving responses in your life. And we’re not talking about love like Valentine’s Day hearts and cupids and stuff, were talking about that real essence. Like I said unbelievable pain to unconditional love in a millisecond. doesn’t even remember the pain all they remember is the love.

Benay: [00:06:37] How Do you go about giving this complete unconditional love to yourself?

Kurek Ashley: [00:06:43] Well There’s a couple ways. It’s a great question. Number one is identify yourself as love. Read that statement every day with passion and enthusiasm. Wallace D. Wattle wrote a book called “The Science of Getting Rich” in 1907, by the way he actually met enriched. Nobody really wanted to buy a book on personal development, put money in the title and it was a best seller. He said getting rich or getting enriched is not the result of doing certain things, it’s doing things in a certain way. And the certain way that He’s talking about is with passion and enthusiasm. If there is anything you’re great at, It’s the stuff you’re passionate about. So if you want to get great, get passionate. It’s Easy. And so you reading that statement every day “I am love”, “I love myself.” A lot of people want to tell you Benay, that loving yourself is egotistical, you know to love yourself. Well I’m gonna tell you that its egotistical not to love yourself. E G O = edging God Out, is you know if you don’t love yourself how are you supposed to love anybody else. Say writing a million dollar check on an empty bank account. So the first thing is identify yourself as that. Mary Magdalene who wrote the Scriptures show the Bible that were edited out and they were found in a dead sea scrolls which she refers to Jesus, she doesn’t refer to him as the Messiah, she refers to him as the love. Jesus in John said even in the least among you can do all I have done and even greater things. So that would mean is if we identified ourselves as love we can produce amazing miracles in our lives. So the first thing we do is identify yourself as that. The Other strategy that I would recommended, I’ve done it myself because you know being who I am in the world, where I help tens of thousands of people round the world in front of over a million. I’ve coached people all around the world. One day I was kind of like, “Well who do you think you are Kurek? you’re not perfect and you make mistakes and you’ve done inappropriate things and you’ve even done wrong things.” Right, “What makes you the person that gets to stand up and teach people?” And so I looked in a mirror and I looked myself in the eye and I said you know what I love you man I love you. You’re a good person you’re working on yourself and no you’re not perfect, but you’re not supposed to be. Your just supposed to be getting better. When you do that, you can really care about people who want to make transformation. And I kept doing that day after day for about a minute every day, looking at myself down in the mirror and there’s times I felt stupid, there’s times that I cried and really what happens is the Egyptians said the eyes are the windows soul and so what you’re doing is you’re sending out love through your eyes and you’re receiving it back through your eyes and what it’s doing is, it’s pumping out all the toxins on your system, all that negativity, or the self-doubt and all this stuff that we build up. And then finally after a while it actually felt very natural to say that to myself and to be okay with not being perfect because as human beings our perfectness is being imperfect. We’re supposed to be here to learn, not to be perfect otherwise what are we doing here. And so you know by giving myself self-love in the mirror, it opened up my ability to love others even more. Because if I don’t have it whose gonna deem you with it, you know it’s not like the queens doesn’t tap you on the shoulder with a sword and say, hey you have self-love now. It’s something you have to give to yourself. And we are the center of our universe no matter where you look a 365 degrees circle is eternity, it’s infinity, it’s forever. So you are the center of your universe and you know we send out this energy in all directions. So the first thing you and others love. and In order To do that is through self-love. By saying I love you to yourself and identifying yourself, if God is love, Which the Bible says, then the only way to connect to the creator would be through self-love. Because then you’re one with the source.

Benay: [00:11:01] I Notice it all the time with coaches myself included that that self-doubt, you know when you’re starting your coaching business and you are putting yourself as this teacher, as this mentor, is this guide for other people it is very common for this self-doubt to creep in. And a lot of people really can’t handle it. Are there any other strategies that you use in an ongoing way or does it just looking in the mirror for long enough eventually just click over and then it never comes back. What’s been your experience with that Kurek?

Kurek Ashley: [00:11:32] Get over it. You know you got to get over that self-doubt. The fact is that, you know, every day that you’re not out there helping people, People are slipping through the cracks and their life are getting worse. So you got it over it. You know my son’s name is Elijah and his mom named him after an actor, Elijah Wood. But I named them after the prophet Elijah, because Elijah of the prophet was a man that God talked to directly according to the story that is, and he was asked to go do a mission but he was afraid of being persecuted and killed. So he kind of hid out for a while and then finally faced his own self-doubt and became Elijah of the Prophet and kind of became famous. And the reason I love this story is, if you read the book by Paulo Coelho, he also wrote ‘The Alchemist’, called ‘The Fifth Mountain’ and it’s about Elijah prophet and the story of him hiding out and then finding his own courage. The reason I love it so much is that we all have doubt, we all have fear, we all have insecurity, everybody does. I spent five years on the road with Anthony Robbins, I’ve been friends with Sylvester Stallone since the early 80’s and John Travolta. I’ve worked with Richard Branson and President Clinton. Everybody’s got doubt, everybody’s got fear and insecurity. The key distinction between successful people and average people is that we manage it differently than the average people do. So we all go through it. We just learn how to manage it. And so every day you know, I say when you wake up in the morning, you have an empty tank you know inside your body or an empty container. And if you don’t fill up that container before you leave the house, or before you start your day don’t be surprised if society wants to dump their garbage into your empty tank because they see it empty. They just start throwing stuff at it. And you know we live in a world where people are celebrated for being negative. I mean the news that’s all they do is point out what’s wrong with the world, because it’s sensationalized. You know unfortunately people are following Kim Kardashian and her family, you know and watching all their dramas. So it’s easy to get sucked into the negativity but when you fill your tank up with positivity and self-love. Well the law of displacement, it’s a law of nature says that two things can’t occupy the same space at the same time. So in order to manage it we need to be strong. That’s what I call it a sex model. S-E-X and no it’s not what you think. People get very disappointed. But it is something so it’s easy to remember, S stands for strength. We got to be strong. You have to be strong so that you don’t buy into a hallucination that the outside world dictates how you think and feel, or you know it also gives you power when you’re strong to manage how you think and feel even when you have doubt, even when you have insecurity, even when you have fear. We need to do that. And we need to be strong in 4 major muscle areas. One is physical, one’s mental, one’s emotional, and one is spiritual. and In order to be strong which is the S, the E is that we have to exercise to be strong. We have to exercise those 4 main muscle groups.

Benay: [00:15:09] Are you going to walk us through the steps?

Kurek Ashley: [00:15:12] I am but I don’t want to just you know I figured since we’re doing an interview I’d let you interview me instead of me just going on and on. Because, Benay, I will warn you that I don’t run out of content.

Benay: [1840067:35:33] I’ve noticed that about you Kurek.

Kurek Ashley: [00:15:25] I do 15 hour long days sometimes doing speaking you know like a public seminars and I still have to shut down otherwise we’ll be going forever.

Benay: [00:15:39] Well I think that this line we’re on is incredibly relevant because I mean this talk is all about self-love and I know you know from experience and that with the coaches that are in my network and people building businesses in general. You know you said yourself that successful people basically are the ones who are able to manage their doubt, and what you’re giving us here is a formula, a strategy for managing your self-doubt, for filling your tank with self-love and positivity. So I think that the listeners are ready to hear. So please carry on with your Sex principle. Is it a principle or a process?

Kurek Ashley: [00:16:15] Yes. I call it the SEX formula. Yeah. The thing is, Benay, you know I took the Women’s Beach Volleyball Team to win gold medals at the Sydney Olympics and I worked with the Brisbane Broncos and they won the premiership that same year. Obviously I have not worked with them since, but every I of them work with every companies. My point being that, man, when you’re that lead athlete, imagine your fear, your doubt, your insecurity. People think you don’t have it. You’ve got it even worse, because you’re out there. Your focusing on this like the Olympics, it’s this one game you’ve got to win and your opponent obviously is supposed to be very good. So yeah you know and I study aikido, and aikido is based in the teachings of the samurai. Imagine facing off with another guy who has a very sharp sword who is also very trained in it. I would guess you’d have some fear and doubt at that point. So everybody’s got to manage it if you want to succeed in life. and That’s why I used those examples, and so we have to be strong and we have to exercise those four main muscle groups every day. So physical, well, move. You know that’s exercise for it: Swim, dance, run, hit the gym, something, you know. But the powerful thing about that is this motion creates emotion. You know the way we move our body determines what we’re feeling. And so you can create certainty without having anything to be certain about. So as an example I’m also the world record holder for the longest fire walk in history, 81 meters walking on burning coals with my bare feet. And I’ve taken tens of thousands of people fire walking safely. But let’s back up all the way to that very first program I did, before I was a fire walk instructor. Because I wasn’t born a fire walk instructor. So people had to attend, obviously my first program, I was teaching people how to fire walk, I mean that is not what the program is about, but I took you fire walking. well How would you like to be the guy or the person coming to the program and you go, “You know I’ve never really done this before but I think I can get you across safely”. I pretty much would have emptied out the room then. So instead of lying and making up stories. You know I had to create an essence of certainty so that people felt secure and confident in that. And then once I got people across safely, now I am a successful fire walk instructor. so as you can see we can do that even before we have the credentials and that’s coming from: number one, physical and also if were working on your physiology which is your posture. However, you carry your body tells you brain what emotion your in. So if you sat or stood the way you’d be when your depressed, your shoulders are probably rounded, or your uncertain their probably rounded and down, your probably breathing short shallow and look on your face isn’t very confident. But then if you ask yourself physiology questions like, “How would I be standing right now if I was totally confident and powerful? How would I be breathing if I had total certainty in my body right now? What look would I have on my face?” Well you’d notice your physiology would shift, because we all know what that is. and you’ll instantly feel better. you’ll Feel more confident, feel more certain. Even if you have doubt. So one has nothing to do with the other. So that’s Physical, by way of water intake and eating regime would be included in physical fitness, if you put junk fuel in your get junk performance out.

Kurek Ashley: [00:19:58] So the next one physical in being mental, it’s a muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it. They found out through scientific studies that people who are consistently working on their mind have less chance of getting Alzheimer’s and dementia later on in life. Because your building your neurons instead of letting them decay. And so what are the muscles for that, well read. It’s not that hard, I know a great book by the way, it’s called “How would Love Respond.” No I’m kidding. And…

Benay: [00:20:33] It’s A great book.

Kurek Ashley: [00:20:35] Thank You. I’m very proud of it being a best seller and yet it’s the response I get from people, Benay, that is the most profound thing. Every day I hear from somebody, lots of people raving about what my book did for their life and I’m honored by it, because that’s why I wrote it. But I read every day you know and I only read personal development, biographies and autobiographies and things that are going to help me move forward. Business, coaching, whatever it is you know that’s going to help me grow. I noticed on your website you have a couple great books on how to have a successful coaching business. If I wanted to be a coach, I’d be reading those books, that would only makes sense you know. And then audio programs, wow these days you know you have to carry CD’s around, or I’m gonna date myself right about now, cassette tapes or Htrack, which I don’t know who can remember that, but um, you know to have on your phone and your MP 3 player car listening to audios change your life.

Kurek Ashley: [00:21:37] Here’s that tank again though, fill your brain with things you going to you forward and keep your mind strong. Because again that’s the only way you’re gonna manage how you think and feel. when I used an originally I used to buy audio programs, like on cassette tapes as an example, I would listen to that same cassette in like a six or eight cassettes system, the same cassette for a month solid, non-stop, until I started speaking the language. I started sounding just like the person on the tape. Then I would go to tape two. And that’s why I have a program called the Life Success Club in which is designed to create those successful habits. It’s built on the same principles that turned me into who I am. Which is that, you know make it consistent, make it the way you think, keep Those consistent thoughts on your mind. So that’s building your mind. and by the way, it’s going to seminars, going to workshops, I still attend them myself. People look at me and they go, “you’re Kurek Ashley”, and “I go Yeah I knew that, thank you”, and they go “You wrote How would love respond!”. and I said, ” I knew that too.” “And what are you doing here. Are you like a guest speaker? But what are you doing here. You know all this stuff.” I said, “How do you think I got where I am?”.

Benay: [00:22:50] What’s The last show or the last seminar you attended?

Kurek Ashley: [00:22:53] Well I was actually speaking at the Total Success Summit in Sydney a couple of months ago with Arnold Schwarzenegger. But the whole rest, there was 30 speakers, so in a green room backstage I watched the whole thing. I want to be a distraction to people, because after you speak everyone wants to come up and talk to you and stuff, so from the green room I watched the entire program. It was two days of different speakers, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, now that I did go out and sit with the audience for and also Natalie Cook and my Beach Volleyball Players were speaking and I watched them. But I watched the other ones and I actually got the whole program on DVD from the people, who put the program on. And I watched that still. Also I went to New York and spent ten thousand dollars to watch Brian Burchard who taught a program called the the Ten X program, and people in a room were like, man you know what’s in this stuff, what are you doing here? I said, you can always get better.

Benay: [00:23:57] Took us on a little bit of a tangent that we’re talking about the sex formula and we’ve talked about strength and strengthening the four muscle groups: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. And then the e stands for exercising those four muscle groups and we got to mental and we are talking about you know you need to read books, go to seminars, listen to audios, that sort of thing. How about emotional and spiritual?

Kurek Ashley: [00:24:19] Great, see you’re really mean, I love it. I need it sometimes. Emotional. Well you know that we are emotional creatures, we are not naturally rational. And people are, well that’s not rational, well that’s ok because we’re not rational. We are emotional. If we were rational, first, you know, strapping drugs your body in a foreign country and trying to export them. thats not rational, that’s emotional. You know when I was in Kuwait, they behead people there. I go, well obviously nobody does drugs there, and they go oh no, they still do them. And I go, why? and they go, oh well the moneys good. See that’s not rational, it’s emotional. So it’s a muscle. So how do we exercise it.

Kurek Ashley: [00:25:04] Well number one is hang out with positive happy successful people. Quit hanging out pissed off angry negative people because you are a product of your environment. And if you don’t have those people in your life go find them. There’s a thing called the Internet, there’s a thing called YouTube. And if you can’t find videos on YouTube, there’s a video on YouTube of how do you find videos on YouTube.

Benay: [00:25:28] That’s true. Ha-ha.

Kurek Ashley: [00:25:28] So Yeah it’s easy. Facebook, you know reading about people’s dramas, you know, engage in groups, and again that’s why we have that Life Success Club, I’m not marketing to you, I’m just letting you know that’s what we did. It’s a network of people who are like minded. You do have a network, I’m sure, Benay, you have a network, coaches that you work with you know. There’s all kinds of things. Because in life if you’re not networking you’re not working. Nobody who succeeds does it by themselves. And the network is not just to help you gain clients and all that stuff. Network is they hold you to a higher standard. When you’re dropping off in energy or attitude, they go, hey pick it up. That’s your network.

Benay: [00:26:09] You use that in your book too to describe friendship. That really resonated with me, that your friends hold you to a higher standard.

Kurek Ashley: [00:26:15] That’s your network. My wife, you know, is part of my network. You know she’s there to hold me to a higher standard. my Dear friend John Herso, he’s a famous movie director, who’s Sylvester Stallone’s best friend since University. Still is to this day. you know if you’re gonna marry somebody, marry up. I say what’s happening, and John says, marry somebody who will always hold you to a higher standard. Don’t let you settle on who you used to be and even who you are now. You know, he always inspired me to be greater. And I took that advice and that’s who I’m married to. And we do that for each other. People in my life my friends same thing, surround yourself with people who hold you to a higher standard. Imagine how you feel. By the way, heres that strategy again, manage how you think and feel differently. So emotions, feelings.

Benay: [00:27:10] So that’s emotion, what about spirit?

Kurek Ashley: [00:27:10] Great, now I’ll go back to self-love. Spiritual doesn’t mean religious. spiritual is Self-love and so the easiest way to do that again is be kind to yourself. Do your mirror work every day, like I said, I look in the mirror, you know, for one minute every day and convince that person you’re looking at that you love them, that they’re a great person, that you forgive them for anything that you think you may have done wrong you know. But also itis, instead of criticizing yourself throughout the day, instead acknowledge yourself for everything you’re doing approximately right. Because when you get acknowledged for it, you know, you’ll expand on it and it starts to swell up and then it becomes more and more of your life. There’ll be More and more of it. It’s just a natural function of the brain that anything that we link or perceive pleasure to we will move towards. Anything we’ve got perceived pain to, we are gonna move away or try to avoid. So instead of criticizing yourself, acknowledge yourself for everything you’re doing approximately right. and then that leaves us with the X in the SEX model, which is, well put an E in front of it, it’s excitement. You got to do with passion and enthusiasm. The word enthusiasm, the root word of enthusiasm is a Greek word, it’s enthios, it means the God within. You see a lot more power on your side when you’re passionate and enthusiastic.

Benay: [00:28:34] How do you… Let’s take our coaching business owner again. Let’s say that they are losing their passion, their enthusiasm for their business. Maybe it’s because of self-doubt or whenever, it’s been a bit varied. How can they retap into that? Any suggestions, tips?

Kurek Ashley: [00:28:53] Sure. Well again it comes back to getting in a network of people that you up, that keep you inspired, that keep going. You know, Benay I would recommend for you, I don’t know if you have it or not, is that you have some kind of networking group for coaches and you probably have it already.

Benay: [00:29:12] I have one on Facebook, yeah,

Kurek Ashley: [00:29:15] That’s why you are so good on so many levels. Now it’s up to those people to use it. Calvin Coolidge one of the presidents of the United States, said that the world is full of educated derelicts, which means most people know what to do, most people aren’t doing what they know. it’s in the doing that We developed, not the knowing about it, and certainly not just sitting around talking about it. It’s in the doing and so get in that group, reignite your passion. One of things Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to value, you’ve got to be guided by passion and vision. how do you do that, well think about the end result. Think about all the great people you’re going to help, but also think about yourself and the great life you’re going to have. When your wealthy from having that abundance of coaching clients and programs and books that you’ve written, all the things you’re doing. You know that gets you fired up, you have to remind yourself of it every day. what You’re passionate about. And what your purpose is. I ask people, you know I say, tell me about…Give me 15 names of the teachers that you had in high school, and they look like what, I can’t remember one. Well you can’t remember it because your away from it. You haven’t put it in your mind consistently. But if I ask you when you’re in high school about your teachers, you could’ve rattled it off. well why would you think you remember your purpose in life and what you’re passionate about unless you bring it to the forefront in your mind every day. And one of the things I do for myself with that, Benay, is that I have a journal, and in that journal I write in it every day. And one of the questions, the first question is, what did I do great today? You know and you answer it, because number one if you think about it, you’re using about seven connections in your brain, when you write it down over 10000 connections, and that comes from my good friend Alan Pease who wrote the book ‘Body Language’ that’s a real scientific study. So by writing it down, just like your goals it becomes way more powerful. So what did I do great? First, it makes me feel good to remind myself that am doing great thing. Second, is if you’re doing great now, don’t you want to do it again. Well yes. You want to remember it, so you write it down. Thirdly, is how can I make it better. This is a strategy question, so then the answers you come up obviously are strategies, when put into action, you get a result. And the last question is by what percent did I include that since the last time or since yesterday. Well every day I can see I’m getting better and better. I’m excited because I know I’m going somewhere and that’s measurable even if it’s 1 percent a day. Well if you’ve got that kind of money, interest on your money, in the bank every day you’d be kissing the bank manager because you’re getting about 3 percent a year. So imagine one per cent a day, its massive. And it’s one per cent compounding because it’s not 1 per cent from beginning it’s one percent since the improvement of yesterday. So it’s a compounding effect and you do that and your gonna see it and be passionate. I mean I’ve being coaching now, I keep clients on with me for a full year, with me for a full year. I’ve been doing that for over 18 years now. I always have a full roster. I coach Monday through Friday. Every day, I have clients around the world and I am still passionate about it. How do I do that? Well I do exactly what I just told you. And that’s my system for it, and I’ve looked at your website and that’s exactly what you offer people.

Benay: [00:32:52] I do.

Kurek Ashley: [00:33:00] Now I created mine own because I knew I needed it and that’s why I really appreciate what you have on there, Benay, because it’s what a lot of people need and instead of wasting their time trying to come up with the system, great you have one. That’s awesome. I’m acknowledging and very sincere about that. But use the system though, so that every day you keep yourself tuned up and fired up. and The other thing I would recommend is that if you’re a coach, have a coach. I had coaches and people go really? But wait I’m suggesting other people get coaching and yet I don’t know, that’s not even congruent. So yes, I have coaches for everything besides personal development because I work in personal development every day. It’s my world. So that I don’t really need the tuning up on but I’ve had internet coaches, business coaches, all kinds of different coaches for different reasons in life, to keep me going, to keep me strong.

Benay: [00:34:02] We’re really close to the end of our time here but I have got some other questions for you, Kurek. Just on a couple of things. I think you explained a really good system for working on your self-love. Transforming that self-doubt into positivity and self-love with your with your SEX Formula. One of the things you said in our conversation earlier on, is you talked about when you were teaching how to be a fire Walker and you know from your story of the gold medalist There was a similar thing here, but having this essence of certainty even though you yourself may be thinking, I haven’t exactly done this before. And this whole Fake-It-Till-You-Make-It concept. I think is coaches starting out, especially and even as you go down your path, you always will cross this new milestone in your own evolution like can I really do this? I haven’t done this before. You know you come to this crossroads. Can you talk… I know that it can be a little bit of a controversial thing, like faking it till I make it. Does that mean I’m not authentic? Can you talk about that for people who are at that crossroads right now and wondering who they need to be in this moment?

Benay: [00:35:11] Sure. Well the term Fake-It-Till-You-Make-It. It’s just a catch phrase you know the word faking it, or the term faking it, makes it sound kind of negative, or dishonest or whatever, that’s not what it is, it’s just a catch phrase so people remember it. Remember it’s the Be Who Have model. You have to be the person, who would do the things, to produce the result. I got it. So once you’re being that person, which is like, let’s say, I am wealthy, you know, and you’re saying I want to be a wealthy person. You have to identify yourself as wealthy now even when your bank accounts empty. Because if you’re saying well when my bank accounts filled up then I’ll be wealthy, you’ll never be wealthy because you’re saying your poor and not wealthy. And poor people don’t do wealthy things, they do poor things and that’s why we say poor. So we’ve got to be wealthy, do wealthy things. Am I going to spend money I don’t have; no only poor people do that. Wealthy people don’t spend money they don’t have, that’s a poor habit. wealthy people produce wealth. So they study it. They you know they go to programs and read books, that’s what wealthy people do. they Choose to learn to be wealthy in shares, property, they start learning how to master it.

Benay: [00:36:31] Exercise their wealthy mental muscles.

Kurek Ashley: [00:36:34] There you go again.

Benay: [00:36:34] Just bringing it back to the formula.

Kurek Ashley: [00:36:36] It is. and So, you know, with coaching as an example, if you know m an if you want to be a coach you need to immerse yourself in not only being coached but also coaching business. The more education you get out of it, the more certainty you develop. And you know as they say in life you don’t really know something until you start to teach it. And so you know my best lessons in coaching have come from coaching. You know your client are going to challenge you, they’re going to ask you questions. Now by the answer, if I don’t know the answer, I have no problem telling them that because lying is always when we get in trouble. as Judge Judy always says, you don’t need a good memory to tell the truth. So what I do is I’ll tell the client, I don’t know that at the moment, I will get back to you next week or next session and I’ll have the answer for you. And then I go and search for the answer. Wow that’s crazy. And as a coach I don’t need to know everything. I just need to know the right questions to ask to find out what do I need to know when I need to know. It’s ask and be given, that’s Biblical, you asked and you start getting the answers. Just ask appropriate questions, not stupid questions, like How come I don’t know this and I’m not smart enough and why am I so stupid, because definitely the answers will not make you feel good. Ask the appropriate questions. Wow, you know, If Kurek was coaching me right now what would he tell me to do? I have clients say that all the time. And I go, So the answer you got. how Close is to it what I said, and they go, word for word, its verbatim. Because your bringing answers in that way, you know, what would Richard Branson do here? Or where could I get the information? Who can help me with this? I Always think of Google, that’s pretty easy or Siri, you’ve got all these things now that it’s easier than ever. But yeah we’ve got to work on those muscles so we got to fake it until you make it like with the gold medalists. I them get display cases two years before the Olympics, to display their gold medals in. Because I said, if you really thought you’re a gold medalist, wouldn’t you have a display case that would show your medals. and they said, yeah well get it right after we win, and I said now your saying, if, not I am. There’s that little difference. And then I make them practice the national anthem to get ready to sing it on the podium. And I made them practice bending over on the podium and getting their gold medals and waving to the audience. and they had To sign autographs, gold medalist 2000 Olympics. Because it was 1998, how do you know who the gold medalists are already. and I said that’s just who we are. well here we are, we are five points behind at match point, against the best team in the world known as the Brazilians and we are one point away from losing, when the average person says oh shoot it’s over, but not my girls, my girls said we’re gold medalist man. This is part of the game, let’s turn it on. So they started waving their arms in the Stadium and they see 10000 people cheering, OI OI OI! And right then you could see look at the Brazilians face and saying why does it feel like we are not winning just yet, and point by point, we took away two matches and walked home with the gold medals. When most people quit, gold medalists kick in and do just a little bit more than the rest of the field is willing to do. Not dramatic, just a little bit more, it’s like one-one- hundredth of a second difference in time. It’s that managing how you think and feel. That’s what got us gold medals. And that’s why every team I work with, every athlete I work with will win, because all you’ve got to do is get them to master that little incremental difference. That’s just working at it. Building a muscle.

Benay: [00:40:27] Yeah, so they really, they have just built that muscle so that they have certainty. And self-love and that just dissolves self-doubt.

Kurek Ashley: [00:40:38] You know I wasn’t actually born this guy, you know people go man, were you born on like a lotus flower float? I got the same haircut, but the thing is that I am an evolution of a guy who wanted to make my life better because I grew up in… You know my mom was a serious alcoholic and very abusive. My step-dad was the same way. My mom was married four times. You know my dad was married three times. I wanted a better life. And I don’t blame those people those people at all. They forced me on the road to become who I am. But I went searching for answers. I put them into action. I practice them and I practice them. Be my habit. And then pretty soon, I just became who I am now. You see it’s just like going to the gym and exercising consistently and you stay in shape that way. You don’t go to the gym once and think your buff for the rest of your life. that doesn’t make any sense. you have Got to be consistent. So it’s not what you do once and a while that counts. It being consistent.

Benay: [00:41:42] Yeah, consistency is key. Okay just three more short questions for you. Kurek, and then we’ll wrap this up. Just for anybody who was listening when you talked about you know you’re reading. I was just wondering do you ever read fiction or watch movies or something you know that’s not personal development?

Kurek Ashley: [00:42:05] I do watch movies. I don’t know if you remember but I used to be an actor in Hollywood. I worked, I was in 38 movies and I used to, I worked on over 500 movies as a key and body grip. So you know, I still have clients who are directors and writers. I love entertainment, I mean life is for living, it’s a balance. But I won’t watch movies that depress me. I’m wont watch movies that make me angry or violent. You know like for instance, in The Notebook, you know it’s a great movie. Very touching. I’ve can’t watch those movies because they depress me for weeks. They get me to and I don’t feel that. So I watch movies that make me feel good, make me laugh, you know, a good love story, a good inspirational story or whatever, but that’s just you know I’m controlling how I think and feel. you know controlling my environment. That’s just me. Some people don’t have to go so far, that’s just for me. Books… I love reading Dan Brown’s like DaVinci Code and those kinds, because, you know, to me you see the book when you’re reading it. But they weren’t, you know their adventure books, I guess you know story fictional adventure books. I love Paulo Coehlo, you know he’s one of my favorite authors. He wrote The Alchemist, and my favorite book of all time is Illusions by Richard Bach, he wrote Jonathan Livingston Seagull, so those are books that, yes their stories but there’s always a message in there for me. I guess, you know. You read How Would Love Respond and it has a lot of stories, but the stories all lead to helping you make transformation in your life. And that’s, there’s people who want to be entertained, or don’t want to be educated. So I wrote it in a way that I call edutainment. Where you mix entertainment up with a story where people get engrossed with the teachings. And that’s why it’s so beneficial for people because they get caught up in the story and yet The transformation happens. Yeah.

Benay: [00:44:07] And it’s really good for me. You know I learned a lot of the concepts that are in your book at some level, you know, six-seven years ago when I did my life coach training. But it’s really good to kind of free experience them in this in this new way in your, what did you call it? Your edutainment. It’s really good. It’s like I really needed to be reminded of all these concepts in a new way. So coaches who are listening, I really encourage you to go out and grab a copy. It’s a great reminder of all these quick concepts that probably blew your mind The first time you ever came across them. And for those who aren’t coaches who are listening. Definitely will blow your mind. Okay, Last question Kurek. If you can leave our listeners with just taking one action as a result of this episode today, what would you want them to go and do today?

Kurek Ashley: [00:44:59] Make a decision. The beginning of all change, all transformation, comes from making a decision. You know, we have to practice that as a muscle as well, because you know people are weak decision makers. You know 5 of your friends you know playing cards or something and go you’re hungry? I don’t know you hungry? Yeah everybody’s hungry, where do you want to eat? I don’t know. Where do you want eat? People can’t even decide where they want to eat. Finally, somebody says pizza and everyone gets excited because somebody made the decision for them. So we have to practice making decisions. and The way that we make appropriate decisions is that we think to create and we feel the desire. It’s getting yourself in a good emotional place. You know because you don’t want to make a decision from a bad emotional place, you always regret that one. But get in a good emotional place and ask yourself how do I feel about this? Because we have all been in a place where we knew we felt a certain way but we went against that feeling. And then we said to ourselves, man why can’t I just listen to myself. That feeling that we are talking about is your spirit, and it will never steer you wrong. so you start making decisions from that feeling place and you’ll never steer wrong ever again. It’s something I developed in myself so that I’m very fast at it. I just learned how to listen to myself, because I paid the price like everybody for not listening to myself and I just said well that’s not a very good strategy. So I’ve learned how to developed that. So decide what you want you want in your life, decide on what you’re going for. Every morning and wake up and decide what your days going to be about. Decide it’s gonna be awesome. You make that decision and funny thing; You’ll live up to that. If you don’t, you know, you’re at the whimsical, you know wind blowing and pushing your life all around throughout the day and you’re wondering why you’re so beaten up again. So decide. One of the things I say is you know, all your dreams come true when you make the decision to make them come true.

Benay: [00:46:59] And that key distinguishing point and making that decision from a good emotional place, like creating those circumstances, that environment for you. It Is really important component of it. Okay. If people want to learn more about you Kurek, they want to grab a copy of your book. Where can they go?

Kurek Ashley: [00:47:19] Well thank you for that, Benay. The easiest way to get a hold of me is through kurekashley.com. It’s one of those names that people go, what? What was your mom thinking? I don’t think she was at the moment I mean she giving birth. Ill spell it for you, So K-U-R-E-K-A-S-H-L-E-Y.com. I know there’s all kinds of videos, we put up a lot of videos, you’ll also notice that there’s a place where you can get a free program from me. It’s a 10-day course, it’s a real online course. It’s awesome. By far the best comments from people I’ve ever read. This is way better than I ever expected. It’s called Get Out Of Your Bad Mood. And a bad mood is any mood, but it doesn’t mean being grumpy. It means a mood that’s not supporting your happiness, your goals, your dreams, even some stuff we worked on today will be in there. It’s absolutely free, it’s a real course. It doesn’t have any value if you don’t use it. So you know you hear it. You could also get a copy of How Love Responds there because we bought the rights back from the publisher. So we started our own publishing company, so we do it and its the fastest and easiest way get it, plus I can sign a copy if you want, or you can get an eBook of it. You email and I write back, my e-mails kuraek@kurekashley.com. It’s quite easy to get me. You write there, I write back. I don’t have ESP, So I don’t know people need help unless they ask for it.

Benay: [00:48:56] Excellent and I’ll Include all of the links to all of those sources in the shown notes for this show. All right Kurek, we need to wrap it up there. Thank you so much for being on the show today. I’ve been very excited and looking forward to our interview.

Kurek Ashley: [00:49:11] My pleasure. You know any time you want me back, I’d be honored and if there’s anything I can do for you or your coaches, I’d be honored. Because Are doing great work on the planet. The world really needs more coaches, it’s in a very challenging place. It needs more people to help people fulfill their dreams. Because when People are happy they spread happiness and the world becomes a better place. So one person really can change the world and it all starts with us working on our self, that if the world must change, I must change. And when we have that attitude we can change the people around us. SO I really am honored and I sincerely mean that. Thanks for having me.

Benay: [00:49:52] Thank you Kurek. And that’s why Universal Coaching Systems is here. It’s that ripple effect. We know if we can help coaches actually make it in business out there then they’re going to be able to impact more lives. And I do think that there is a conscious shift happening on the planet and I am proud and honored to be playing my part in that process. Thank you listeners for listening to another episode of Coach Pep Talk. You could do us a favor by going into iTunes and liking the show. Happy Coaching.