We recently connected with Sophia Hyde and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sophia, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

I named my business Favorite Self Coaching.

When I started my coaching business, I originally went with the default, Sophia Hyde Coaching. Two years later, I stumbled on the words “favorite self” and I couldn’t get them out of my head. It immediately penetrated me at the heart and gut level. Those two simple words embodied everything I teach, model and believe.

As a life coach, it’s really common to hear folks in my industry talk about helping people become successful or the best self, but these words always made me the tiniest bit queasy inside. There’s a connotation to them.

When you hear the word successful, the brain immediately defaults to money and possessions, regardless how you may personally define it for yourself. When you hear the word “best self” you have an idea of someone who has it all together. Probably perfectly in shape, organized and crushing it in every category. I could just see someone trying to take a Sunday to chill on the couch, watch Netflix all day and eat pizza and ice cream, then being plagued with the guilt of “but is this really my best self?”

But favorite self? The best part about the word favorite is that the only connotation is you define it. You own it. No one can tell you what they think it means for you. No one can “should” on you.

I have also found that everyone has a favorite self in there. The problem is they are often so buried underneath the layers of expectations you have accumulated over your lifetime, it can be hard to hear them. That’s why I named by book Release Your Favorite Self. You don’t need to create this person. They are already there.

Define your favorite self, and then release them into the world. That is the work.

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?

When people ask me how long I’ve been a life coach, I like to say, “My entire life.” I was born this way, and born to do this job. Coaching, speaking and writing have found their way into every job I have had, and in the two businesses I ran before I became a full time coach. I have always been the direct, assertive friend who was willing to tell you what no one else had the courage to say. For as long as I can remember, my favorite “fun” activity has been grabbing coffee with a friend and hearing all about their goals and dreams and brainstorming how they could accomplish it.

My practice is centered around helping people release their favorite self. Their dreams, goals and passions are already inside of them. I help them pull it out and release it into the world.

As the mother of two children, a wife for the last 15 years, an entrepreneur who previously owned two businesses and a community organizer, I am uniquely qualified to help the folks who feel overwhelmed. So many people are juggling a million balls and don’t know how to move themselves to the top of the priority list. For most of my clients, this is where we begin.

I have always loved traveling, domestically or internationally, and one of my greatest joys in life is public speaking. Therefore, I absolutely love opportunities to travel and speak at conventions, retreats or any opportunity to spread the message of how to release your favorite self. A cup of coffee, my headphones, and an airport terminal are some of my favorite joys.

The only thing that brings me greater joy is living the simple life with my family. My husband is my best friend. We have completely different hobbies and interests, but have always shared the love of a deep, soulful conversation and time with him is always time well spent. My daughter is eight years old and one of the sweetest kids on the planet. She deeply cares about others. She inspires me to be a better human every day. My four-year-old son came out of the womb filled with humor and stubbornness. He makes us laugh a hundred times a day. Spending time with the three of them cuddled on the couch watching Avatar the Last Airbender or playing board games is my best life.

A fun fact that most of my clients love knowing about me is that I was diagnosed at age 34 with ADHD. I spent 20 years struggling with focus, distraction, and organization believing it was because I just was a hot mess. I worked so hard to come up with hacks to help me get things done, be productive and have peace in my home before I found out there were resources to simply make my brain work better. Because of this, my clients love the tools and resources I offer in my course for time management, decluttering the mind, organization and other skills so many of us could use help in. Turns out that adulting doesn’t come naturally to most of us!

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

A month before I turned 25 years old, I left a well paying job to become a full time photographer. That was my first entrepreneurial journey. It was successful at first, but once I started hitting burnout, things did not go well. My husband was also working with me full time as a cinematographer and we were exhausted. We tried different ways of pivoting, but the risks we took didn’t pay off immediately. We hit rock bottom just as we found out we were pregnant with our first child. In our late twenties, we had to move into my childhood bedroom and couldn’t even support ourselves when our child came into the world.

Climbing out of that was messy and took years, mostly because we had buried ourselves in debt. An opportunity fell in my lap to take a full time job just a few minutes down the road from my house working for a non-profit I cared about. I remember the day my husband came home and I said “I talked to Christine today and I think I am going to go work for her. I would start in two weeks.” He looked at my like a had ten eyeballs. I had never in my life had an 8-5, Monday-Friday job. Before I became an entrepreneur, I had jobs where I got to design my own schedule and flex my hours between the office and home. This was a traditional job and so out of the ordinary for me.

I ended up working for that non-profit for four years, and I am so grateful I stepped out of my comfort zone to do it. Despite how much I resist it, the structure and routine was really healthy for me. It forced me to learn healthy boundaries between work and home life. It stabilized our income. It increased my quality of life as a mom because I wasn’t trying to work while my daughter was in my presence. I was able to enjoy her more after she went into full time daycare.

That unexpected pivot was also what gave me the capacity to start my blog, go through coach certification and begin my business. Because I was able to leave work at the office and not think about it at home, I had the mental margin to pursue my dreams and creativity.

Of course it was miserable having to “ask permission” to have time off for a doctor appointment, my sick kid or a vacation. Of course I didn’t like having a boss on the days that their vision and my vision of what was the best next step clashed. Of course this wasn’t going to work long term for me. However, the growth that I went through for those four years served as the perfect incubator for preparing me for exactly where I am right now. I also didn’t realize how valuable it would be for me to have that traditional office experience to be able to resonate with and coach my clients through their similar struggles.

What was so far out of my comfort zone, is someone else’s safe place. Whereas some may find comfort in the W-2 paycheck and the predictability, I find comfort in the risk and unknown. I’m grateful for the four year pivot I took and the foundation it provided me.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I was raised in a traditional Southern Baptist Church. I was taught that we had the answers and “the world” was in need of being saved from all their evils. I remember starting my freshman year of high school on a mission to “save” everyone. I was taught what to look for in who is “us” and who is “them.” Despite Jesus Christ spreading a message of unconditional love, I learned judgement from the church. There were so many sins to judge ourselves and others for falling short of every day.

In my pursuit to “rescue” people, I cultivated many genuine friendships with people who didn’t grow up in this setting. It was fascinating to me how loving they were. Their kindness was deep and wide. If I made a mistake, it wasn’t the “loving” folks at church that I felt comfortable talking it through with. It was always these “other” people who I knew were going to catch me in unconditional love and help me stand up on my two feet again.

Through my teenage years, college and into adulthood, the cognitive dissonance became too much. I spent a decade unlearning the instinct to “should” all over people about how they should be living their lives. I unlearned the impulse to judge other people’s actions, decisions or beliefs. In my pursuit of discovering what unconditional love meant, it kept drawing me closer to the story of Jesus, the words written of his teachings, but further away from the church.

As of today, I have found a church that is a safe place for all. There a transgender women singing in the choir, homeless people in the chairs getting support to get back on their feet, wealthy philanthropists sitting right next to them, and people from every race and age filling the room. After fifteen years of struggling with my faith, the wounds that once felt gapingly wide open have begun to turn to scars.

I wouldn’t say I am fully at peace or healed spiritually. I wouldn’t say I have a label to describe where I am now in my faith. But what I do know is that meditating daily on how to love deeper and wider, and reflecting on where I need to release any judgements I may be clinging onto has enriched my life immensely.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sophiahyde.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesophiahyde/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesophiahyde
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiahyde/

Image Credits
Photo of me in silver dress and photo of me in yoga pants spinning at the beach are both credit to Esther Louise. Headshot photo I sent first is credit to Deanna Hurley.