We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Erica Taylor a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Erica, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
From the age of five, I have heard a whisper. A whisper that said, “I want to help people.”
Every morning for the past thirty-five years, I have heard this whisper. Deep within my childhood soul, I have longed to be a therapist – to help save lives, to empower and inspire others to take action and shift them at the level of thought by giving them new ideas and perspectives. However, for the longest time I held so many self-limiting beliefs. Beliefs such as, I’m not smart enough. I also had a fear of failure while also having a fear of greatness. I believed I wasn’t worthy of success. Ultimately, I did not believe in myself. I also did not have anyone who believed in me or encouraged me. So, I buried the dream away and would go onto play out these self-limiting beliefs.
It wasn’t until I graduated college that I discovered my true potential. I started my first business which I managed for over a decade and thrived in other disciplines such as graduating top of my class in culinary school, dog training and Animal Reiki school. I started my second business working with animals eight years ago. Despite all of my outward success, inside I felt deeply unfulfilled. There was always this deep inner knowing that I was meant for something greater.
In 2020, the pandemic happened. I had to make drastic changes to my dog training business and during this time, I started to really think about what was truly meaningful to me. I came back to the whisper and immediately sprang into action. I enrolled in two year-long coaching certification programs. One for Health and Life Coaching and the other was a Trauma-Safe Coaching Certification program. I immersed myself in the coaching world. I made myself a coffee mug with my company name. I worked 1:1 and in group programs with other coaches and started to embody this new identity. Just four months into my Health and Life Coaching Certification program, I enrolled my very first soul client. The following month I enrolled my second and the month after that, my third. I finally felt like I was living not only in alignment but also on purpose. This path has led to expanding my heart, soul, and mind.
I got clear on what I wanted to manifest, including live speaking gigs where I could reach the masses. Two months later, I spoke on two virtual stages with audiences of over 155 people each. I went onto create two Mastermind groups, one of which just launched into a paid membership. I completed both certification programs and accomplished all of this in the past eighteen months while having cancer and also suffering a concussion.
I don’t consider myself a huge risk taker but pursuing this inner whisper has been the biggest, most rewarding adventure and journey. Taking this risk and trusting my intuition has boosted my confidence – both in myself and in the process, the unfolding, the timing and the unknown and uncertainties.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Erica Taylor is a trauma-informed coach and healer who helps women be in the here and now, improve the quality of their relationships with themselves and others and experience greater enjoyment by slowing down and connecting with their intuition.
She holds a certification in Health and Life coaching, and prior to stepping into coaching, had built a successful dog training and animal Reiki business inspired by her pug, Sampson.
After breaking up with the hustle culture of her earliest years, she began to use her intuition and tools to navigate some of the most challenging chapters of her life – including an invasive surgery and a battle with cancer. Since then, she’s been dedicated to her own healing and the study of how we grow after trauma and learn to trust our bodies’ innate wisdom.
Erica offers general support for overall wellbeing to help women to slow down, get out of their heads, connect with their body and intuition so they can cultivate a new, deeper relationship with themselves – fostered in self acceptance, self compassion and kindness.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I had to unlearn my perfectionism tendencies.
It was ingrained in me at an early age that hard work, grit and discipline lead to success. I bought into hustle culture and was laser focused on being work obsessed, competitive and achievement-oriented my entire life. Along the way, in trying to be perfect, I was extremely hard on myself. There was constant negative self talk and sometimes I would find myself not taking action until things were perfect. I exhausted a lot of mental and physical energy aiming for perfection which then inevitably led to burn out, stress and feeling deeply unfulfilled. Perfectionism also led to people pleasing, not feeling good enough and feeling disconnected from my authentic self.
I started to get curious and it was then that I learned that the root of perfectionism comes from a place of desperation to earn approval and avoid judgment, blame, or being shamed for being less than. I began to recognize and acknowledge that my perfectionism tendencies were just conditioning. If I learned it, then I could unlearn it. I asked myself questions such as, “what are the benefits and limitations of this story?” I experimented with trying out empowering reframes, engaging in mindfulness practices, practicing self forgiveness and somatic therapy exercises.
Unlearning this lesson opened me up to explore my own personal truths and to liberate from past conditionings. Every lesson I have had to unlearn has been a journey of shifting from the comfortable and known into the ultimately freeing uncomfortable and unknown.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I suffered complications from a surgery several years ago which left me unable to walk for months. I was also unable to work for an entire year. At the time, I wanted to heal fast. I wanted to get my body, strength and life back. I constantly worried about how this would affect my business and I fell into a deep depression. I was only focused on the future and all the things I could not control. I was disconnected from my body and lived in a constant state of fear. I noticed that none of this felt good or supportive.
This experience forced me to slow down and to be more mindful. I learned techniques on how to support my nervous system and shift from the sympathetic to parasympathetic. Instead of being impatient and feeling like I needed to figure everything out, I started to get curious and notice the energy of trauma response in my body.
I started to be more intentional in recognizing that healing takes time, and slowly started to be less judgmental about the thoughts, emotions and sensations in my body. I began to attune to myself with love and compassion. I found peace in the unknown and uncertainty and acceptance in my moment-by-moment states. As a result, I felt more empowered. I would tell myself things like, “I see you. I see how scared you are and how you feel that you’re being threatened right now.” This shifted my mindset and my body’s response to the experience. I began to be kinder towards myself. This practice was instrumental in transforming a challenging, traumatic situation into resilience.
Contact Info:
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