Finding Fulfillment in Helping Men Thrive with Patrick Smith E77
January 17, 2023
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In this episode of Raise Your Energy Podcast, Linda Lange, an Energy Expert, is interviewing Patrick Smith about helping men thrive and find fulfilment.
Pat is a Men’s Mindset Coach, Holistic Nutrition Consultant, and Certified NCS Consultant. He has a deep desire to guide others in creating sustainable changes to reach peak performance in their personal and professional lives.
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Get to know Patrick Smith
Pat is a Men’s Mindset Coach, Holistic Nutrition Consultant, and Certified NCS Consultant. He brings almost a decade of knowledge and experience during his time in the Recreational Vehicle and Marine industries while working for multiple Fortune 1000 companies. Pat has a deep desire to guide others in creating sustainable changes to reach peak performance in their personal and professional lives.
Connect with Patrick Smith
Website: Pat Smith Wellness
Instagram: @patsmithwellness
LinkedIn: Patrick Smith
Free Gift: Here
So tell us first how you got to where you are today. Tell us more about your journey.
I’m 30 years old. I live here in The United States. And for the past, roughly a decade since I graduated from business school at Indiana University, I’ve been working in sales for the corporate world in the recreational vehicle, which is RVs and then the Marine, which is the boating industry.
Interested in holistic nutrition
And through that time, I was always eager to do something different. I couldn’t say that that was always my passion. And so about halfway through my corporate career, I wanted to get some more formal education around nutrition and so I attended a holistic nutrition university called Bowman University that’s located in Berkeley, California.
And what I realized was I was always into physical fitness, and of course, I was wanting to learn more about nutrition and understand how that played a role in my health and wellness. But the education actually got me to open up my eyes to so much. Because it was focused on more of a holistic approach, meaning it was focused on a more well-rounded, emotional, physical and spiritual approach, which I hadn’t really gone too far into depth from.
Which led to my interest in Journaling and meditation
But after seeing how important that part of our own health was, I started to get into things like journaling and meditation and stress reduction because for someone like myself who before in my past life, before my corporate job, who dealt with addiction through drugs and alcohol, I never really was in a good state of mind or a state of mind that was stable.
It was a lot of anxiety-producing thoughts and negative thoughts and worrying about the future. And when I got into understanding the holistic aspect of things is when I really started to get into meditation and understanding the deeper work of that. And so once I completed my holistic nutrition certification, I was able to then coach individuals specifically around nutrition.
The changes seemed like a Band-Aid for my clients
And what I saw was I was helping individuals and they were making good changes, but the changes only seemed like a Band-Aid and they weren’t actually fixing the root cause, which as I learned further on, much of the stuff that they were trying to overcome were habits that they were programmed to, that were deep in their subconscious world.
NCS opened me to tools that can help my clients on a deeper level
And so when I went to my first Dr. Joe Dispenza retreat early last year, I learned about NCS (NeuroChangeSolutions) and realized that they had a specific formula to help individuals, actually deprogram to reprogram for new habits. And I thought, what a great way or tool that could be for me to utilize for my clients.
And so after seeing how that could work and after going through the entire process, getting my certification and still having my corporate job going on, I actually left my corporate job roughly two and a half months ago to pursue my coaching business and NCS consulting full-time. And that’s what got me to where I am to make 2023, you know, our greatest year yet.
Can you share a bit more about how you felt in the past in comparison to how you live your life now?
Always Putting out Fires
Yeah, sure. So for myself internally when I first took on my most recent job, which was roughly three years ago, we were really establishing our brand in the specific area that I covered. And so I hit the ground running nonstop. Trying to make things work, but I was also always putting out fires, and I was always running around going from one thing to the next with no real breathing room.
Achieved success but at the sacrifice of putting my dreams to the side…
And two to three years later, I did get into that same situation of burnout where I felt like, yeah, I achieved all of this great success based on how much money I was making or how much money I was making the company, or how successful it was. But in reality, I did that all at the sacrifice of me putting my dreams to the side, which was my coaching business.
And so when I was in corporate, I felt like I was always chasing other people’s dreams. And I was neglecting my own personal happiness. And although I was working remotely, I didn’t really have true freedom in what I thought was freedom. You know, I was given two weeks of vacation. Ultimately that’s about 4% of the entire year.
So I worked the other 96%. And to me, that wasn’t really suitable for me to be sustainable in long-term success, which really quickly led me to burnout. And so now that I’m full-time in my coaching business and with the NCS work, something that I’m super passionate about, actually fills me up and brings me excitement to each day, as opposed to just putting out fires and going from one task to the next, to one meeting to the next.
That ripple effect from helping my clients
And never really have any breathing room. Because for myself, I noticed that I wasn’t giving myself ample enough time to fill up my own cup in the personal world. So I was always running on very low energy. And so now I also get to have the freedom to be able to work from wherever I want.
And I get true fulfilment in seeing others progress because I know when they win. It’s not just them improving, but it’s also the people around them, their families, their coworkers, and their kids. And that ripple effect really is what has drawn me into creating so much happiness around being able to be my own business owner.
And I know in the corporate world, everything was dependent a lot on other individuals, making sure their job got done and then sometimes that would fall back and make me look bad. But I know now here in my personal business, it’s all dependent on me, which I’m willing to make the investment and take the risk on myself.
So those are the real differentiating things between my old life ultimately in my corporate world versus my new life.
Can you maybe share a little bit more of how can they change from this stressed and burnout place to just live a happier and more fulfilled life?
You can have happiness and/or fulfilment in your nine-to-five job
I think ultimately, most of my clients are still in their nine-to-five corporate jobs or whatever they work. And I think that’s great and I think that they have that stability but they might be missing some happiness or some fulfilment. And so the things that I like to focus back on is how do you focus back on filling up your own cup, right?
Focus on filling up your own cup
How can we be mentally strong? How can we work on our physical health? How can we create more happiness? And some of those things that I always try to incorporate are things like reminding them to have community, having a little bit of support in the background, of course, taking care of their mental health, whether that’s journaling or meditating or just literally taking a couple of minutes outside of work or between work to have some mental health break even for five minutes just to breathe and recalibrate because when we’re going from zoom to zoom to zoom to zoom to zoom, we don’t really give our brain time to de-stress.
Do any movement that you enjoy
And so I like to incorporate some of those and then of course physical activity as well. And that can be movement in any fashion. And I always recommend just doing something that you enjoy.
It doesn’t have to be running a marathon, it doesn’t have to be a super hard CrossFit workout. If you have a walk with the dog, great. If it’s playing ball or tennis. Any of those things I think are super helpful in revitalizing the energy needed so that individuals can feel like their cups are full, so that way when they walk into work each day, they can use the overflow from their cup and let that run into everybody else’s versus trying to run off an empty battery.
Tell us more about who you work with and why this is your mission.
Of course, there are times, especially with the NCS, when I’m able to work with men and women. But primarily for my one-on-one coaching business, I’m working with men and the reason is I feel like I have a deeper connection with men and I also can relate to where they’ve been at.
“You’re always in a position to help and serve your five-year ago self”
And I once heard on a podcast is you’re always in a position to help serve your five years ago self. And that was me as a man in the corporate world. As a guy, sometimes speaking for myself, and I would say most men, we feel the need to be that provider and protector and the breadwinner of the family.
And a lot of times, just like I did in the corporate world, we work super hard to achieve, to achieve that success, to achieve the money, to make sure we’re taking care of the people around us, but all while we carry this huge weight on our shoulder and don’t ever share that with anyone.
When they care for themselves, they’ll care for others
In my work, we’ve placed the focus back on them in understanding how we alleviate that weight and pressure because they’re able to then create a mindset that reminds them that if they’re taking care of themselves, first and foremost, the people that they’re trying to take care of, colleagues, coworkers, family, kids, parents, friends, they’re actually gonna get the best version of that person out of them actually taking a little bit of time for themselves.
And so I really try to instil how to create true change and try to create these healthy lifestyle habits that are actually sustainable and they’re not just that quick fix. And in turn, what I’ve noticed is the clients that I work with, actually, even though they might be working a little less because they’re taking more time out of their day to focus on themselves, this still leaves them more productive, more focused, a bit more efficient each day, and ultimately more present.
Being Present is the best ROI you’ll get
And as we, you and I both know, when we’re truly present, we are actually in the perfect place to then create whatever it is we want for our life. I put it into terms because we’re in the corporate world a lot and we think about return on investment, right? Well, if you’re more present and you can be more productive and more efficient, that ultimately means you have a better chance and higher likelihood of making more money.
Being relatable to my clients
Which to many people equates what they think is a better personal or professional life. And so I make sure I share all that information with the men I work with. Sometimes when I talk about just mindset, it might not trigger what they’re looking for. But when we talk about productivity and efficiency, that’s what I noticed for the men who I used to work within the corporate world, colleagues and managers, that’s all they really focus on.
I feel that I’m most relatable and can share and create the most connection. And that’s where I’ve found the most success with the clients that I work with primarily with men in the working class. You know, the twenties, thirties, forties primarily, who are really looking to make shifts in their life and kind of understand that they have to create a new mind to get new results.
They can’t always stick to the old thinking that got them to where they are.
Why do you think it’s so hard for us to ask for help or speak up about how we really feel inside of ourselves?
The Fear of being judged
For myself, I think a couple of things, at least personally on what I dealt with, and then also kind of still what I see in many individuals is we’re kind of fearful of being judged around what are these people gonna think of me if I seek out help? Does that mean I’m weak? Does that mean I’m not strong enough, or I’m not smart?
Those who seek help, tend to achieve more.
But what I’m noticing more is that that’s not the case. Actually, the individuals who are reaching out for a mentor or for a coach or just for someone to talk to are actually going to be, like I talked about earlier, more present, more productive, and more efficient because they have reduced a lot of that stress that maybe they’ve been bottling up.
And for men especially we’re always told that we have to be macho and we have to be strong, and we can’t necessarily express our emotions. So in turn, we just resist it and we resist it, and we resist it until it continues to persist. And then sometimes it rears its head so much that we literally can’t stop thinking about it.
And that’s all that we think about. And for men I think that it’s just anybody in general, sometimes we don’t even know where to turn. Just like you mentioned, we’re not sure who we can talk to. And so things that we, you and I both share on social media or on any other platform are really an open invitation for anybody just to talk to.
Taking the road less travelled
And it’s not a thing to feel that we need to feel less. It’s this idea for me how vulnerable can we be, and even though that’s the road less travelled, that’s not what we’re told to do ultimately, especially as we grow up and how we’ve been programmed. It’s not always that easy, but it sure is worth it in my opinion because I’ve seen at the times that I’m more vulnerable, that I surrender to my feelings and really get to fully understand them is allowing me to be a better person, which means I can show up better in the world for all of the people around me.
And, I think it just takes that step. And sometimes individuals don’t want to take that step. So great to have people like you and me who can really keep those doors open and create an open invitation for people to speak up and share their truths.
We’re all in the middle of change
We’re all getting challenged in some way or another. We can go much farther together, having someone in your corner, you know, licensed or professional or just friends or family is really the key, like I talked about with community, to take things to the next level for pretty much anyone, male or female.
I think it’s all becoming a bit more mainstream. We’re seeing it more often, and I think that’s awesome for all of us. And unfortunately, we also see very negative side effects, unfortunately, with things on the news. It ends up coming more up when it feels like it’s maybe around celebrities or something.
Nonetheless, the ability for it to become more mainstream and more people will be aware of it. I think is really gonna help the world as a whole, get us out of any chaotic times that we might find ourselves in.
What are your top tips to protect your energy and/or raise your energy for everybody who’s listening?
I would say what I had to really learn especially in my corporate job. I was in sales, but I had a lot of people who worked around me that had to make sure their jobs were taken care of. I found myself being a bit of a control freak if you will.
Releasing Control
And so really releasing control so that you can actually put your focus where it needs to go is a huge energy builder. It also takes away the ability for that energy to be taken away from you, and also setting boundaries around the things that aren’t quite aligned with you are great tips.
Setting boundaries
It’s so easy just to say yes, to say yes, to say yes. But if it’s not kind of aligned with where you’re trying to be or the people you’re trying to be around, it’s very important to say no because you’re trying to keep your energy level at a certain vibration or frequency. For myself, I’m sure very similarly to you, is really just giving my time, myself time during the day to meditate or sit with myself or journal just so I can become aware of my thought patterns so that when I walk into every situation, I’m prepared for whatever might come.
And those really, I think, set me up for a perfect day. Pretty much every day is to sit with myself, understand my thoughts, meditate on who I need to show up to be that day, understand what parameters I need to put around in terms of boundaries.
So if I already set out to a plan to not try to deviate from that plan too much and say yes to every little thing, just set my boundaries and then also, protect my energy.
Releasing control and only worrying about the things that are actually in my control and letting go of the uncontrollable.
Those two tips gave me more energy
Those all have been major keys. I really started to implement that in the corporate world and the amount of stress that was reduced in my life, which then gave me more energy to show up was pretty, pretty drastic. For so long I was always worrying about the future, trying to control how other people were gonna handle situations.
And so those have all been great. Great tips for me and things that I’ve been able to implement for myself.
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