Saltanat

Esther is the host of the Canadian Business Women Podcast and she interviews a world traveler who has had various careers. The guest, who is originally from Kazakhstan, shares her journey from being an architect to becoming a life coach. She explains that she realized architecture wasn't her passion and decided to explore personal styling before discovering her true calling in coaching. She helps ambitious individuals who feel stuck and overwhelmed by providing guidance on finding their true passions and creating a balanced life. Common roadblocks she sees in her clients include not knowing where to start, feeling pressured by societal expectations, and struggling to rest and find balance. She emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and taking action to achieve personal growth. My name is Esther. I'm the host of the Canadian Business Women Podcast. And today, I have a world traveler with me. She's had many careers, and I'm excited to have her on. Welcome to the show. Soften up. Welcome to the show. How are you today? Thank you for having me in your show. I am great. Thank you, Esther. I'm feeling good. What about you? Good. I'm glad I didn't. I will try my best not to mess up your name. So I usually have my guests start with telling us about your past history, growing up, and what led you to the work you're doing today. So my past history is I immigrated here eight years ago to Canada. I am an immigrant. I came here as a student. I was studying architecture. So I had a bachelor's degree from my country, and I thought, OK, if I came to Canada, what should I do? I have to keep doing what I'm doing. So I studied here architecture again, and I was working as an architect. I was doing a successful career there. I was project lead, creating the buildings, managing the buildings, all the things. After the point, I came to the realization that it's not what I really, truly want to do. I'm not going to say I suffered so much from my job. No, I loved it. I loved the people. I loved the creation of the building. I loved everything there, but it wasn't my passion. It wasn't aligned with what I wanted to do. The reason where I understood that it's not the thing I want to do when my former boss, very good person, she said, OK, today she promoted me to project lead. And then she said, if you will, you will do great. You will do the same as you're doing with your ambitions. You will be one day principal. I was fascinated. I was like, wow, I am so cool. I will be principal. And then after that, it was like small tears in my inside of myself. And after that, I went to my desk. I closed my eyes and looked around. And I just started to imagine myself as a principal there. And every fiber, like every cell of my body says no. It's like not something you want to do. And by the time, I didn't really understand what exactly I want to do. And I was like searching things and decided to do personal styling. Why I chose personal styling? Because I had the background as a creative person. And I loved working with people. I wanted to change and talk to people. And I did the personal style. It was great, too. But it wasn't my passion again. Because I understood when I started to work with people. And they said, let's hide my belly. Or let's hide this one or this one. I don't want to show. Or how to highlight what I like or how to not highlight what I dislike in my body. And this didn't speak to me so much. Because I really appreciate people are sharing their vulnerabilities. But I didn't want to patch everything. It was not me. I saw the people there. Actually, all of them who I worked with, they're so great. They have the looks, the body. Every people, if you go around, they're all unique. And I was like, how can I show the people that they don't have to hide anything. They are great the way they are. And I decided to do coaching. Go and learn coaching, how to help people to dress. And then when I started to learn coaching, I understood, OK, this is what I want to do. Actually, I want to find what's holding you back, what's holding people back to love themselves. Or what's holding them to live truly life they want to live, to find their passions. What's holding? We cannot just put Band-Aid on the thing, on the triggers, and just live like this. It's not going to work. Let's find the root and work on it. Once we find the root, it will be great, I believe. So that's how I came to Life Coach and answering your question. It was a lot of journey. And during this journey, I'm not going to say, oh my god, it was so good. No, I was on my low part, too. I have my own coach. I have my psychologist. Because I believe if a person cannot help himself or herself, themselves, this person will not be able to help other people. That's why I have almost 400 hours in the personal psychologist. So I was working with psychologist and also with the coach. Because I want to deliver and help people as much as I can, not to put my idea to their head. So this is how I came to coaching. And I always see that this is like amazing when you actually help people to flourish within themselves. This is what I love. And now I came to this point, now I'm here talking to you about it. That's a great story. That answered a lot of the questions I had. I was reading your journey, your bio. Where did you originally come from again? I don't know if you mentioned that. Ah, no, I didn't. I came from Kazakhstan. Yeah, it's middle, let's say middle Asia. So somewhere there. So I came from there. I love my country. And yeah, and actually where I am today is blue. Blue is the color of our flag. And it's meaning the freedom, the blue color. In my country, the freedom because you are, like the sky is blue and you can fly as high as you want. Or you don't have to fly. Maybe you just want to look at it. So I'm from Kazakhstan. It's a beautiful blue shirt. And I'll make sure to, you can see that when you check the social media pics that I will post later on. So again, it answered a lot of my questions because I was wondering how do you go from an architect, which I think has a distinct skill sets that are different from coaching and how you help people with their life. Obviously both are helping people, but it's to me completely different. So I commend you on being so self-aware that you knew I'm good at this, but it's not what I want to do for the rest of my life. So what are the common mistakes or roadblocks that you see people having when they come to you? Is there like a common theme that you see for a lot of your clients? Yeah, the common roadblocks is they know that they're ambitious. They know they have a potential. They know they want to have something to either raise career. I mean the corporate world or the entrepreneurship, but they didn't know where to start. They're like in the mid, how can I say? Like the midlife, I don't like the word crisis, but the midlife point of their journey. So they already don't want to live the way they lived before. They want to start act and live differently, but they don't know where to start because it's a lot of information and it's overwhelming. People say, okay, journal, exercise, or I don't know, like listen to a podcast. It's good to think to listen, but not that one thing can solve your problem. Or people say, look at your strengths only and with misconception and people start to take something which is very, talk a lot in social media or in the world and they grab it and they start to act and it doesn't work for them because how I do in coaching? They come to me and we discover what actually works for them, not what social media says or not what news says or the millionaire says. And also the second thing people struggle is because we hear a lot, I know, be confident in five days. Earn million dollars in three days. Like this things and you have to, by 30 you have to have this one. By 40 you have to figure out this one. And it's high bars everywhere. You have to have children, you have to have this one. It's something like this and people, not only our parents put the idea how we have to live, but also the social media, the people around and they lost themselves within this all lot of advices. Not understanding what they want, but they feel inside they have this fire, but they need to fire, let go. And how to let it go? How to make it, not burn you, but actually create something and light up you. So this is how, when they come and I help them to find what they want to do and what's best for them. Most people say, oh my God, it's not one day. I'm like, no, I don't promote that I will give you results in one day. In 10 days, no. I always say, I'm responsible for my coaching session, but the result, it's not my responsibility. Because you have to act. Also, the third one is people cannot rest. They think they have to work, work, work, work. If they rest, they lose, they stop. Like, yes, you have to work. It's not like you manifest something, you're the coach and everything comes from the bucket. No, you have to do stuff, but in a balance, not overwork and find a way how to learn how to rest. A lot of people who is ambitious especially, they cannot rest. They don't know what does mean resting. Even they go to vacation, they still think about work, about stuff, and how do I help also to, them to understand what's the best way to rest. I have this problem too. I solve this problem. That's why I see why people struggle because we're afraid to lose something. And we think if we rest, that's all, our world will collapse. No, it's a combination of everything. For this kind of people, my clients, they are mostly comes with this, how to rest, how to have a balanced life, what is my passion, do I need to stay in my career? I mean the career corporate world, do I have to go to interpretership? Like who I am, what I like most, different questions. So they mostly come here to understand who they are and what they wanna do. That is, I completely agree and makes sense to me because I feel like after a certain point, you have somebody always telling you what to do. You have your parents, you have your teachers, you have everybody telling you exactly what you need to do step by step. And then once you graduate, now it's your turn and you don't really have that skillset yet. You have to learn how to be able to make decisions. And even if you don't make decisions, that's still, you're still making a decision. You're still making a decision not to do anything and there's consequences either way that you have to learn to deal with. So if I'm coming to you and I don't know how to make decisions, what does that look like? What is the consultation look like? And what's the next step after that? Uh, depends. I have a first, my first consultation is 30 minutes. It's for free discovery. We discover together how we're gonna work. You know, like if you cannot make decisions, it's different criteria. You either, like I will, by doing the conversation, I will know it's coming from you're blaming everyone, not taking responsibility. In this case, I don't work with kind of people because it's a victim mentality. It's actually two things. And this thing has to solve with a psychologist first. So you have to go back to the root of the problem. I am not, I cannot work with people. I have a like a list of people I can work with, list of people I cannot work because I have a responsibility as well as a coach. But if person is actually wants to take decisions, but they don't make it, and I see it's not because of he's blaming someone, maybe because he thinks it's waste of time. For example, you want to have a passion and you realize, okay, you like to draw, for example. You come to me and you say, I like to draw, but for me, it's very hard to do the first step. I ask questions, like my coaching is asking questions. You tell me and I ask questions. When I started coaching, I had like certain questions. I had them my things. I tried to make it on every person, but it didn't work. It's just collapsed because every person is different. For example, today I had a coaching session with my client. And this person is thinking, oh, I'm lazy. I'm lazy, I cannot do anything. I cannot decide stuff like this. And we start to uncover what's why he's thinking lazy. And we came to the root that he's not lazy, this person. Actually, he just afraid that it will be waste of his time, right, of my client's time. And then we start to understand why he thinks like this. The thing is, I cannot make decisions. It's just top of the iceberg. And I help people to go to the root. We'll go to underwater. We're going together underwater. We find what's causing this one. And then when we find it, we start to create step-by-step plan what you wanna do. Like do you wanna, depends what decision we make. Once you understand the root of this not making decision, let's not say problem, but challenges. And we go deep and we go back. So this is how I do my sessions. I always, we will always go deep. And then I make person go back to the present, how it's affecting and what he can do in the future in order to make decisions in the future. And sometimes people can understand from first session, sometimes from either three, four session. It depends on personality. Yeah, that makes sense. It's not one size fits all. Every situation is different. And then you customize it based on their needs. So we talked about people who had trouble with making decisions. How about people who are doing too much, who are overworking themselves, who don't feel like they need to rest? Speak to that and how you might counsel that person. Oh, this is me in the past. And I help myself. And also I had a session. People work too much, overwork, because they think they're not enough. Their result is not enough. They have to go there. This is people, I call them overachievers. They are good girls and good boys. I call them good girls and good boys because nothing is enough. What people say, okay, I will rest if I get this one. I say, no, you're not gonna rest, you will get this one. What happens is the mentality of these people, I start to work with these clients to understand that most of the roots, they are thinking they're not enough. Imposter syndrome, they have to work, they have to be better, they have to shape, shape, shape, shape, shape. Then they will start to do it. But the root, you have to start to vice versa. You have to actually start to work on your self-confidence and understand that you're enough. Everything is enough. Your achievement is good. So also what happens, so these people, they start to do a lot. At certain point, they have some achievements. They're like, yeah, I have achievements. And then what happens? They make one mistake and what they do, they take this mistake and start to crush every single achievement they have. And they say, okay. And they think, okay, I am not great. I did this mistake. Now I have to do it again. I didn't do good enough before. If I did a mistake, and what happens? They start to push themselves even more. And this where the depression and anxiety born. When you push yourself to the limits, you're just pushing and pushing yourself. Because you can read a lot of books. You can listen to a lot of podcasts. If you don't understand this here in your heart, your mind will keep saying to you, you're not good enough. You're not doing enough. That's why people overwork a lot. They focus on the mistakes more than achievements. They also try to sharpen the skills. Yes, you have to work on yourself. I'm not saying, okay, you have to stop. And the rest for them to, in order to rest, it means they're wasting time if they're resting. And we, there's a funny part to this. Like, the people who cannot make decisions and they don't work a lot, I don't teach them. I help them to work. But people who work a lot, it's vice versa. I teach them. We teach them how to rest. This is like an interesting thing. Like, the most you fear, the most you hate, you should do it. So this is like how they answer the question. You have to learn how to rest. And we start to focus on that. And by emotions, how people talk in the sessions, I can see if a person is always tired. And I will ask them, from session to session, I see you're always tired. You put the goals, you set the goals, but I see that you're not happy or you're not excited. What's going on? Let's go there. And then they start to unpack themselves. And then I see, okay, yeah, you just say, oh, I'm tired. Or like, they say, I'm tired. And I'm just, I don't have the energy. And I don't have emotions. I don't have like resources. Once we find out, when they recognize it, then we start to work. Because unless a person doesn't recognize it, you cannot help. But that's why I help to recognize it first. Not saying, okay, you're tired. No, a person has to recognize herself, himself, themself. And then the deep work goes this way. So this is how more sessions go. This is how I work with people who love, who cannot rest and they like to work a lot. You're speaking, I'm guilty. So everything you're saying makes sense to me. I did not agree more. I'm a recovering perfectionist. So I understand that mentality where, even the person you were saying that was lazy, like when you are this overworker, overachiever, you're never tired. You're always lazy. If you're not working, you're always lazy, right? So that's the great thing about hiring somebody to help you because we lack self-awareness. And there are things that we can't see in ourselves. We just have this blindness. And so when we go to a professional like you, then you can help them see things that we can't see on our own. Is there anything else that you want to share that I haven't asked you? The question, the only share I ask people to seek for help and advice, not advice. Some advice might not help you, but help either or mentorship or coaching or psychologist because I was guilty of that too before. I wasn't, if I had coached myself long time ago, maybe I wouldn't go on this loop finding myself and burning and crying and regretting that I, like a lot of things went through me. And I understood that it doesn't necessarily have to be me, but it's very great to find a person who help you look at the situation from different angles. So as a coach, I help people to, like I have the flashlight within your room. I just show you around the corners and stuff. Let's look here, let's look here. What happens is this one. And when people start to articulate, when you start to articulate your thoughts, you will understand what's the problem, how to go. It's very important to find the seek help. If you, like some people say, okay, if I ask help, I am weak, no, actually. You're not weak, we need, people needs people and it's truly, I speak to it, I stand for it because I did a mistake, I burned myself, I went to depression, I went to anxiety because of these things. And I spent so many times to get back to normal life. Don't like, don't make, don't go to the edge to help, ask help. You don't have to be on the edge. Maybe your life is great, but still having coach and mentor will help you even better. It's like, you don't have to go to the edge as I did. So I hope people will hear it. Don't make, yeah, don't bring your body, don't bring yourself to the point where you cannot stand up for your best, as I did. That's why I always say, if you feel something off, start to find the people, coaches or mentors, whoever you need to find to help you. That is a great point to end it on. I completely agree. I, again, very guilty, feeling like I have to do everything myself after multiple burnouts. I'm learning that you need community. So even if you can't get, like you said, even if you can't go to a professional, reach out to people, join a community of like-minded people, people who are positive and doing things and achieving things, and just be around the right people. That makes a big difference when you're not feeling confident or you're feeling lost or you don't know what to do. Like be around people who are achievers and that alone will help guide you and help you figure out where you need to go. So if somebody wants to connect with you and have a consultation, what is the best way to reach you? So I have a website. Anyway, my name is Faltanat, F-A-L-T-A-N-A-T. You just go either my website or LinkedIn or Instagram, faltanat, underscore, B-S-O-L-A, or simply, sometimes it's very hard to Google my name. So you can just message me at 778-751-2846. Say hi here, I'm from Esther, and we can talk from there. I'm okay to have a conversation from the phone as well. Perfect, no worries about Googling. I will make sure to include all the information in the show notes to make it easy for people to connect with you. And I encourage everybody to do it because you're so positive. I love your energy, I love your desire to help people and take your struggles and help somebody else maybe hopefully not have to go through the same thing. So I love that about your business. Thank you for being here today and I hope you have a great day. Thank you, thank you very much for having me, Esther. Have a good day too.