We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Andrea DeWitt. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Andrea below.

Andrea, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you recount a time when the advice you provided to a client was really spot on? (Please note this response is for education/entertainment purposes only and shouldn’t be construed as advice for the reader)

Stand firm in your innate gifts and the professional services that you are gifting to the world. When we allow other people’s reactions and/or opinions to impact our passions and core beliefs, we run the risk of losing not only our integrity, but the monetary value of our worth.

When I started my coaching practice, I struggled to stand confidently in a competitive hourly rate. I felt unworthy because I was still earning my client coaching hours, honing my skills, and had not yet been officially certified through the International Coaching Federation. This worthiness made me a victim when a potential client who complained that my fee was too high. So,
in order to win the sale, I hedged, giving her a cheaper rate. I immediately regretted the decision as the client repeatedly no-showed for our sessions and ignored my invoices. Because I accepted a lower standard of pay, she mirrored it by showing up with a lower standard of respect, which undercut my confidence and professionalism. I dreaded our sessions because the surrounding energy clashed with my core values and the incredible coaching I wanted to give my clients.

Moral: You do have the power to fire a client or end an alliance that does not serve you! When things come easy to us it’s easy to discount the insight and experience we are bringing to the table. Own your light and don’t undervalue your unique talents and skills or clients will too.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am an author and certified leadership coach who inspires leaders to step into their power, their potential, and their truth. My circuitous career path is proof that it is never too late to transition, modify, revise, and rewrite your life story! After an over thirty-year career in education, I released my cloak of academia and took a courageous and transitional leap into the world of life and leadership coaching. I bet on myself, all the wisdom I had gathered through the years, and I trusted my gut instinct that the net would appear. It did and in gloriously letting go of an identity that no longer fit, allowed myself to become the person and thought leader I was meant to be. YOU DO IT CAN TOO! The best guides are just wounded healers who have risen from adversity, understand the obstacles, and share humbly from their scars of enlightenment.

The experience of being lost myself, in my early fifties, gifted me the road map to develop Name, Claim and Reframe®, a practical approach to navigating life’s challenges; Balance your emotional triggers, choose actions that align with your core values, and take your power back strategically, resourcefully and gracefully. Featured on NBC’s TODAY Show as the best motivational read for 2023, my book, “Name, Claim & Reframe-Your Path to a Well-Lived life” is a call to disarm from the suit of metaphorical armor that hides our truths, false identities, and the pain we’ve stuffed away and never acknowledged.

Using what I call the NCR Toolbox (Name, Claim and Reframe®), I created a three-step system that helps leaders establish healthy boundaries, realign their perspectives, and fuel their goals and dreams so that they can curate their own version of a well-lived life.

• NAME the source of your pain point; your triggers and limiting beliefs.
• CLAIM resonant actions that align with your core values.
• REFRAME your thinking so you can proceed with strategic and visionary optimism.

Especially during our most challenging times, the best decisions are made with a calm and centered mind. Name, Claim and Reframe® is about intentionally choosing to respond to life instead of reacting to it. It’s about holding yourself with grace and not giving your power away to things that are out of your control. To notice how you are feeling on the inside out so you can shift your perspective and make a choice that matches who you want to be going forward.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Panache Desai’ s book, “You Are Enough Revealing the Soul to Discover your Power, Potential and Possibility”, 2020 (Page 41)

“Often the precursor to spiritual awakening is some crisis, something that cuts through the thick layers of illusion of the ego. (The event) awakens to facilitate the emergence of the transcendent beauty and joy that you could not see in the chaos and perceived limitation…You begin to see life with new eyes and an open heart.”

I LOVED Panache’s book and used the quote above as an invitation to harvest learning from the chaos of reorganizing my life so I could resourcefully curate a new life of my choosing!

What if the adversity you are experiencing is calling you to become something better than you were before? Anyone who has been knocked to their knees needs to believe that they have the power to rise again and the framework to do so. Whatever disrupts “the who” you thought you were and “the what” you thought was sacred (financial stability, marriage, health) the power to recover lies within you. Desai reminds us that the storm has come to wash us clean and that there are valuable lessons in everything, especially the hard things. Wholeness comes not from dancing in sunshine and rainbows, it comes from weathering life’s worst storms. How we conduct ourselves through the humility and the vulnerability of adverse situations is in fact what creates more grounded and authentic human beings.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

If we strive to improve our interpersonal relationships, we must step boldly out of our comfort zone so we can try more authentic ways to navigate conflict. In my book I share a story (see passage below) about a pivotal exchange with my 92-year-old father that transformed our relationship because I bravely asked for what I needed from him and in doing so claimed the integrity of myself.

Excerpt from Name, Claim & Reframe-Your Path to a Well-Lived Life (Page 51-53)

“Everything in your life reflects a conscientious choice. If you want a different result, you must choose to take a different path. It is the only way to redirect your life and change the outcomes. When I chose to Name my pain with acceptance and forgiveness instead of stoicism and anger, I welcomed in compassion for myself and everyone in my orbit. I showed up differently, and in doing so, I welcomed in new energy and raised myself to a higher vibrational frequency. With new awareness of my feelings and freedom from the identity of an inadequate daughter, I no longer looked at life from a distorted point of view. By receiving myself at a higher frequency, I shifted my mindset, creating space for more of my light and love to shine through. I broke the dirty wash and rinse cycle of my past and became more strategic in the exchanges that I had with my dad, intentionally neutralizing a chiding remark by boldly daring myself to be kind but also truthful. When I consciously opened my heart to him, he surprisingly followed my lead.
One afternoon when my father jokingly criticized me for a reason I do not recall, I looked him straight in the eye and said honestly, “Dad when you say things like that to me, it hurts my feelings. It is not funny, in fact, it is a mean thing to say to anyone, especially the daughter you are supposed to love. It’s time for me to leave.”
There was a sudden shift in the room and as I got up to exit, I spied deep regret in my father’s 91-year-old face. “Annie, I’m sorry. You know I love to tease you,” he jokingly countered.
“Saying unkind things does not feel like love to me, Dad, it only tears a hole in my heart. I think there are people out there that would be honored to have a daughter like me. I wish you were nicer to me.”
I had spoken my truth, but I also regretted the hot tears that welled up in my eyes. I was finally showing him my divine feminine side. My father looked at me with anguish and in that small moment, I knew that he had seen and heard the voice of a very different woman.
“I am sorry, Annie,” he said earnestly. “Please come over here and give me a hug. I am sorry I hurt you.”
Although I wanted to resist meeting him where he was, I caught myself, seeing that old age had softened him. I needed to allow him to offer up the best of himself.

“I used to be afraid of the dark until I learned
that I am light and the dark is afraid of me.”
~D.R. Silva

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.andreadewittadvisors.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreadewittcoaching/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-mein-dewitt-98694068/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TODAYshow/status/1611376906288390147
• Other: https://www.amazon.com/Name-Claim-Reframe-Pathway-Well-Lived/dp/157826958X

Image Credits
Hillary Jeannie Photography https://hillaryjeanne.com/