Episode #25:

Connection with Stephanie Forck

Connection is in our DNA. It’s the feeling we have when we think about another person, and as human beings, we always want to feel connected. But often, we look outside of ourselves for that feeling, instead of going within. We have the power to purposefully create a connection with ourselves and others, and today’s guest is here to tell us how.

Certified Life Coach Stephanie Forck helps women overcome stress, burnout and overwhelm, and provides them with the tools and strategies they need to flourish in their lives. She joins us on the show this week to discuss why we are all worthy and lovable, and why being kinder to ourselves will enable us to have more unconditional love for others.

Tune in this week to find out why connection is an inside job and why it is so important to love yourself. We’ll talk about the power of realizing your own worth and share three simple but effective tools to harness connection and love. It’s time to let your light shine!

WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER

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How to love yourself and others unconditionally.

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Why you don’t have to change your circumstances to change your perspective.

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How connecting with yourself will enable you to connect with others.

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Why other people’s feelings towards you have nothing to do with your loveability or worth.

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Why you don’t need to change to make other people like you.

FEATURED ON THE SHOW

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Check out more episodes of the podcast here!

TRANSCRIPT

Susan Crockett: Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast, with Dr. Susan Crockett. You are listening to episode number 25: Connection. An interview with fellow Certified Life Coach, Stephanie Forck. Stephanie would like to dedicate this episode to her mom. Listen to what she says about her, “even through struggles and the craziness of life she was always willing to sit down and listen. She inspires me every day to be intentional in how I show up in relationships and life.”

Female Announcer: Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, where women learn to love their lives. Do you find yourself frustrated by society’s expectations? Looking for practical advice on how to discover your talents and level up your life? You’ve found the right place. Here’s your host, US News top doctor, robotic surgeon and Certified Life Coach, Dr. Susan Crockett.

Susan Crockett: Hello, my virtuosas. I am your host, Dr. Susan Crockett on the podcast. You can call me Sue because I’m not actually your doctor. I am a doctor but probably not your doctor, at least not today because it’s Saturday. And I’m enjoying a lovely day outside, everybody’s been asking me about COVID and if I’m still working, and if I’m doing surgery, and if the office is open. And the truth is I am crazy busy, which is such a blessing, it’s such an amazing thing to be able to take care of people and be there for them.

But I think what’s happened is people waited at home with the first stay at home order and they were sick, and they got sicker. And so when we got testing available and opened up our ORs again, we had this backlog of people that came in and they were sicker than stink, like really sick people and busier than normal. And now we’ve gotten a little farther down into this whole pandemic. And now what we’re seeing is still really sick people but also people who are bored and tired of being at home and looking for a new reason to come out, even go to the doctor and have surgery.

So we are doing masking and social distancing, and testing all of our surgery patients and knock on wood, I have stayed healthy and so have my kids and my family. It’s such a blessing. And I hope all of you are weathering this storm too.

One reason I wanted to talk about COVID today, it kind of dates the podcast, but I think it’s important because today we’re talking about connection and relationship.

We’re talking about that with one of our Virtuosa coaches, Stephanie Forck who is a teacher and mother of three. And she had this idea a long time ago for doing this podcast, but the timing of it is perfect because I think in this time of corona pandemic, a lot of people are feeling very disconnected. And I think you’re really going to appreciate the take that she has on it and give you some good ideas about your feeling of connectivity in this world and with others.

So, Stephanie is going to teach about connection today. She, in her coaching practice she centers on helping women overcome stress and burnout and feelings of overwhelm. So she’s amazing. She provides tools and simplified strategies which help women flourish in their motherhood and live their lives with joy and confidence. So I’d like for you to join me in welcoming today, Stephanie Forck.

Hey, Steph, how are you? Hey, can I call you Steph?

Stephanie Forck: Good. Yes, you can call me Steph.

Susan Crockett: Alright, well, I’m so glad that you’re here with us today. I hear you’re going to talk with us about connection and I’m so excited for our listeners to hear this. This is something that I get questions about all the time, relationship and connection. And so welcome.

Stephanie Forck: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Susan Crockett: You’re welcome. Today let’s start by – I’m interested in your story. So tell us about your story about how you came to be a life coach and why connection and relationship are your thing, how did this get to be your jam?

Stephanie Forck: Alright. Well, I came to life coaching when my family and I, actually we were living in Japan. And my son was having some trouble in school, he was in an international school and of course we were feeling really disconnected from family and from the traditional American school systems that we just had always known. And so he was in first grade and he started having trouble just socially and academically. And like I said, I was just feeling so disconnected with what I knew just in life in general. And my sister-in-law…

Susan Crockett: I bet.

Stephanie Forck: Yeah, it was kind of a tough time. And while we loved living over there, we were having some struggles. So my sister-in-law came to visit and she had learned of the Life Coach School and she was getting trained, she was getting certified to be a life coach. She’s a marriage therapist and decided to get certified at the Life Coach School. And she said, “Let me just coach you a little bit on this.”

So she started coaching me through and just even the little bit that she was teaching me, I was able to recognize this, it’s really about my perspective about what’s going on. My circumstances don’t have to change necessarily for me to really start thinking and feeling a different way. And she introduced me to the podcast, the Life Coach School podcast and I just from – I couldn’t stop listening to it. The whole – we were there about another year after that. And I just grew leaps and bounds. I just wanted to know everything.

So when we came back to the States, I decided, okay, this stuff helped me so much, it just – I realized the circumstances of my life don’t have to necessarily change for me, like I said, to have such a different perspective and view on things. I started feeling so much better, I wanted to get certified and share that with others. And particularly, I guess, the connection with connection and relationships that I have such a heart for is that I was able to create that feeling of connection with my son and with my family members that were so far away.

It wasn’t a goal thing with my family members, I was able to just start generating that feeling of connection through my thoughts, through my thought work.

Susan Crockett: It’s so powerful, so cool. Alright, well, cool, I’m anxious to hear what you have to teach our listeners today. As you know, we’re always working on becoming the best versions of ourselves. And I think this topic of relationship and connectivity and the work that we do within ourselves to be connected with people and the world around us, it’s so important. So what have you got to teach us today? What do you know about connection that I don’t know?

Stephanie Forck: Well, you’re absolutely right, connection is just, you know, it’s human beings, it’s just in our DNA to want to be connected to other human beings, to feel that feeling of connection. It’s just this innate desire that we have as humans. So I feel like it is such an important topic, but a lot of times we look outside for that feeling of connection. And we don’t always get that because we know we can’t control what other people are doing outside of us and things that are happening.

Susan Crockett: But we all want to be loved. We all want to be loved so badly, right?

Stephanie Forck: Right, right. So I think, first of all I want to talk about the definition of connection. And then I want to talk about lovability. I also want to talk about unconditional love. And then I want to talk about something that listeners can do a little exercise, they can do called the relationship circle, kind of thinking about what they are looking for in relationships.

Susan Crockett: That’s awesome. Okay, so what is connectivity, what is connection?

Stephanie Forck: So connection, the definition we would use as life coaches is the feeling, connection is a feeling, the feeling that we have when we think about another human being.

Susan Crockett: I never thought about it as a feeling, I always think of connectivity or connection as a thing, I would put it in the C line as like something that just exists. Thinking about it as a feeling is really interesting. Okay, keep going.

Stephanie Forck: Yeah, okay. So connection, and that’s what’s so great, this connection that we’re feeling with others we know that, as you’ve taught your listeners on the podcast, we know that our feelings come from our thoughts. So what we’re thinking can create this feeling of connection. And that’s good news because we can stir up this feeling or this emotion of connection on purpose. And we can create this kind of on our own, no matter what is happening outside, or what other people are doing. Or how, you know…

Susan Crockett: That’s awesome. That feels so powerful to hear that, that we have the ability to control that. But it also feels a little like we’re just making it up. Tell me a little bit about why that’s not us just making up in our head that there’s a relationship there when – what’s the difference between that and real connectivity?

Stephanie Forck: Okay. So here’s an example of – and I heard somebody else say this the other day on a podcast and I thought this was so good. Another kind of definition outside of the definition that I just gave about connection being a feeling is plugged in, when you connect something, you’re plugging something in. So when you combine that idea of being plugged in to this idea that connection is a feeling, the feeling that we feel when we’re – about a relationship. We don’t even have to be relationally close like physically close.

We can be plugged in, but it comes from our thoughts about that relationship. And I will say I want to make sure that the whole thing about feeling connected of other people, one of my main points here was you have to be plugged in to yourself first. Feeling this…

Susan Crockett: That’s key.

Stephanie Forck: Yes, yes. Now, we can’t just go around and make up thoughts that we’re going to believe. I see what you’re saying about, oh, explain more. So when you’re plugged in to yourself and you are feeling connected to yourself and you know, this is the whole idea of lovability that I wanted to talk about, this knowing that you’re 100% lovable and you’re 100% worthy and you’re plugged in to that, to yourself.

The more connected you are with that idea and that belief then we are able to then start creating thoughts that will create the feeling of connection with ourselves first. And then we’re able to overflow that with other people.

Susan Crockett: I love that. So in one of my early podcast series I talked about the transformation tool, which is just a process of being able to help people move from being stuck to being unstuck in their lives. And one of the principles that I talked about there was aligning yourself with your moral compass or with God or whatever you call that. So people call that aligning with the universe or different spiritual faiths have different ways of describing it. But my background is Christian so I tend to say God, it doesn’t have to be called that.

But that what you’re talking about kind of reminds me about that is like we all know that still small voice inside of us and yet we don’t always plug in to that. We don’t always come into alignment with that voice, whether we talk about it as being God or that voice inside of us or conscious or what we know. And so when I hear you talk about being plugged in, that’s what that reminds me of. It’s just having that inner awareness and then from that you’re able to generate the thoughts about being connected with others. Am I close to what you’re teaching?

Stephanie Forck: Absolutely, yes. I liked the plug in idea because it was kind of a visual for me. So certainly when we’re able to plug in to ourselves and recognize our worth and our value, we are able then to start recognizing that outside in other people, and that’s where that feelings and those feelings of connection can grow. And I’m the same way, we’re designed, we are 100% lovable, no matter what other people say, no matter what we do or don’t do, we are designed.

And I too come from a Christian background, and I believe God made us, our maker, whoever we believe that to be, I believe that to be God. God made us 100% worthy, 100% lovable.

Susan Crockett: Okay, I think this is worth sitting on for a minute, because whether our listeners are coming from a Christian background or not, I just see so many of us, so many people that don’t really get that. That they’re so hard on themselves and they see themselves as bad or unlovable or not worthy. And I’ve seen that cause so much distress and destruction in people that for us just to be able to get that message across, that our lovability, it’s 100%. You’re a 100% lovable, you are a 100% worthy just where you are and how you are because you are, yes.

Stephanie Forck: Yes. Right, like you said, so many people don’t believe that. Maybe the way that they were raised or things that happened in their past, and there’s things so engrained in them that have been contrary, caused thoughts that are contrary to that. They’re just coming back to, like you said, sitting on this for a minute and coming back to really just practicing and believing that you are 100% lovable. I heard the example the other day, if your parents did not love you when you were growing up, it was nothing to do with you, that was their capacity to love.

Susan Crockett: They just weren’t able to.

Stephanie Forck: They weren’t able to love you. It had nothing to do with your worth or your lovability or your value.

Susan Crockett: That’s so powerful.

Stephanie Forck: So coming back to that in a huge step, I mean that’s really important in doing the feeling connection.

Susan Crockett: I think so too. So when we’re kids and in a family and growing up and becoming teenagers and adults, we don’t really have an awareness that there’s something different, a different type of relationship in the family until we get exposed to that outside of our own family. And so I think that so many people that come from families where maybe their parents weren’t able to love them, they internalize that lack of lovability as being in themselves.

So what you’re saying about that being, like it’s not your fault. You are not unlovable because your parents didn’t know how to love you. That coming to that adult place where you can look at it a little bit separated and understand that is so incredibly powerful, because we all do our best as parents or we all think we try to do our best as parents. But there are so many different scenarios where parents come up short.

And what I see in my patients is in later life, unless they can look at that, and disconnect them being the cause of that, unless like you are teaching, unless they can come to understand that they are fully lovable. And it wasn’t their fault that their parents didn’t have the skills to be able to do that or the ability or the capacity to do that. They carry that and it affects all of their relationships, their work relationships, their marriages, their kids.

And it’s such a powerful thing to be able to step back and see that because then you transform from suffering into awareness. And when you have that awareness you can start making a difference in your kids’ lives and your family’s lives and all your relationships.

Stephanie Forck: Yes, yes. That first step is just the awareness of where you are first. And then knowing, then you can see, okay, this is where I want to work toward going.

Susan Crockett: And what you’re actually working towards is that unconditional love, right?

Stephanie Forck: Yes. Yes, which brings me to the next point, and you do the work and you come to the realization that you are 100% worthy, no matter what is happening outside of you, in the past and the present. Then you are able to unconditionally love people, because just like you’re 100% worthy, others have the same quality. And no matter what they do, when we’re plugged into our worthiness, our own selves and have that relationship with ourselves, that healthy relationship, we’re able to love others no matter what their actions are as well, unconditionally.

Susan Crockett: Wow. Wow, I never thought of unconditional love in that way. But it kind of makes sense, going back to the family thing, if you had a family where you didn’t feel fully loved and then there’s that sense of conditional love, love is based on what you do or who you are. And then out of that comes the lack of lovability. But once you understand that you’re fully lovable and others are too, then you’re able to actually do that process of unconditional love. You’re actually able to exude that with others. And the whole key to that, oh my gosh, this is blowing my mind.

Stephanie Forck: It’s awesome stuff.

Susan Crockett: I’ve never thought of unconditional love like how to do it or what it is in quite these terms. It’s really, it’s awesome. Okay, keep going, what else?

Stephanie Forck: Yeah. And being able to show that unconditional love is for you, you want to sell it to others of course. But ultimately you are choosing to love others no matter what they do because it’s something that you want to do and it makes you feel a certain way. And again, this could be one of those things like well, you don’t know what so and so did. I can’t love them for that.

But I heard somebody say the other day, sometimes even just being able to find a connection when you maybe are disagreeing with something someone’s saying or doing. Even just finding the simplest connection there, like saying, “Okay, they have an opinion just like me and I’m going to love them anyway.” Or, “They think they’re right about this, just like me.” You’re able to find that, even that basic connection and create that unconditional love. And I love them anyway and I’m going to choose to love them right now instead of feel anger, because you’re just suffering from that then.

Whereas when you’re able to really, really know that you’re loving someone unconditionally then it’s really it’s for you ultimately and then it just, you know, then you’re passing it on to the other person. And they get to do with that what they want. They’re not going to feel our feelings, they’re going to feel their feelings, have their thoughts and feelings about it. But we know that we, you know, if that’s something that you’re choosing to try to live in, a space to try to be in and feel that unconditional love.

Sometimes it helps me to be like, okay, I can find some sort of a connection here with this person and I can love them no matter what. And we can agree to disagree. And again, that’s all coming from your thoughts and that’s feeling that unconditional love, the feeling of unconditional love.

Susan Crockett: So cool. So, so often I think of relationships in terms of a give and take or a back and forth or as a two way thing. How does this fit into that idea?

Stephanie Forck: Okay. So first and foremost like I said, your relationships exist because of the thoughts we have about our relationships ultimately. And I know that is – when I was learning that, that was kind of a hard thing to wrap my mind around. But knowing that we don’t need to try to control people or change people, or even change ourselves so that other people like us, in our relationships, knowing that our relationships exist.

So, I was just listening to a podcast the other day about that same thing and really our relationships, we know they’re about our thoughts, it’s really a relationship is about the thoughts we have about that relationship. And it kind of happens in three different areas. It’s what the other person thinks of us, and really that’s what we think they think about us. So what you think of them in relationship to the relationship and then what you think of you in relationship to the relationship.

So ultimately that’s – it still all goes back to our thoughts about the relationship. And there is some, like you were saying, there definitely is some give and take but the ground, you know, really the baseline of the relationship still is all about the thoughts. And our thoughts are going to create feelings about that relationship, which will then have us showing up in a relationship in a certain way, our actions are showing up.

Susan Crockett: Right, okay, now that makes sense, okay. So is that what the relationship circle is?

Stephanie Forck: So the relationship circle has to do with that a little bit. But the relationship circle is really about recognizing what you want out of your relationships. So we call it – I’ve heard it called want matches or your wants and needs. And just knowing the things that you want to get out of a relationship. And so often we…

Susan Crockett: Can you explain what a want match is real quick, because I think that’s a term that my listeners may not have heard before.

Stephanie Forck: Sure, sure. So a want match is finding a match, first of all, recognizing the wants that you – wants and needs that you have in your relationships, that you’re looking for in your relationships. So a want match would be finding a match, finding someone who has the same wants or wants to meet those desires in your life like they have.

Susan Crockett: So the desires and the wants from both parties match, that’s what that means literally?

Stephanie Forck: Yes, yes. Right.

Susan Crockett: Okay, keep going, it’s good, so good.

Stephanie Forck: Yeah. So the relationships, it’s kind of finding those want matches, you’re finding a match to – finding someone who has the same wants and desires you do.

Susan Crockett: Got it.

Stephanie Forck: And so often I think there’s two things that I kind of had to do some of my own work on. So often we rely on maybe just one or two people. We might rely on our spouse to meet all of these desires and they’re not…

Susan Crockett: Oh my gosh, [inaudible].

Stephanie Forck: Right, right. And we don’t intentionally do it, but you’re like, “Well, you’re here and I want you to do this.” Well, they’re not going to have all of the same, you know, they’re obviously not, they’re not the same person. They’re not going to have all the same wants and desires that you want. And then the next thing is even just taking a minute to – I mean how often do we really sit down and think about the wants and where we’re getting the wants and desires that we have in our life? And where are we getting these from? And who we’re expecting to meet these?

So I did have a little activity or exercise if the…

Susan Crockett: Awesome.

Stephanie Forck: If listeners want to try it, it’s just basically, it’s just kind of three questions to sit down and ask yourselves to help you find your relationship circle and to find your want matches. And so the first thing, like I said is to just sit down and write your wants and needs, just write a list of those. Include everything that you want to have in your life in terms of connection, companionship, love. Some of the ones – I did this the other day and I want a friend who’s a mother. Well, of course my spouse can’t be that for me.

And physical connection and cuddling, a traveling companion, someone to laugh hard with. I know there are some things that were really important in my life that I had written down. So just taking a minute to write some of those down, be as specific as you can with that.

And then the second question is, or the second step is to go through that list and see where you already have that want match with your current relationships. See who, you know, fill in, who do I already have a want match with some of these? It might be through friends, mentors, spouses, wherever you’re looking for those. And then if there are things that aren’t being met then that’s, you know, that may be some work that you want to do. You want to go out and find those or work on looking for other people to meet those.

But the third step of this is, write a little bit in detail about the relationship that you want to have with yourself. Once you, you know, seeing some of those needs that aren’t being met, I think one of the most important things then is working on, okay, asking why do I want these? And they’re just something that’s really important to me. And then working on the relationship that you want to have with yourself, and kind of getting that down on paper. What thoughts do you want to think about yourself?

Susan Crockett: Right. Oh my gosh.

Stephanie Forck: What feelings do you want to feel?

Susan Crockett: Because no matter where we go we’re still with us, we can’t get away from ourselves even if we don’t love ourselves, then oh my gosh, we’re in such big trouble. And yet so many people don’t really take the time to sit down and think about what that means and to love themselves, and yeah, so good. Cool.

Okay, so the three steps are write down your wants and needs. Let me see if I got this right. See where you already have a match in people in your life. And then the third step is, write about your relationship with yourself.

Stephanie Forck: Yes, yeah.

Susan Crockett: Cool. Awesome.

Stephanie Forck: And that kind of brings it full circle, I guess that’s why it’s labeled the relationship circle; it’s just kind of bringing that full circle. So we’re looking outside for people that are a want match. But when some of those needs aren’t met then we can definitely look inside ourselves and think about the relationship with ourselves, because that’s what great relationships are, what we want to think about ourselves.

Susan Crockett: That’s pretty much – that’s really close to summarizing all of this up. If you wanted to leave our listeners with one last thought or the main nugget that you want them to take home from this and to take forward into the next week, what would you say that is?

Stephanie Forck: Yeah. I would say just really the main take away of this that I want to drive home to listeners is just that connection is really an inside job. It starts inside. When we are feeling connected with ourselves and we’re recognizing our worth and our – that we’re 100% worthy no matter what. Then we’re able to create those feelings of connection and use that in relationships with others as well. When we’re feeling connected to ourselves we’re more likely to find that connection outside.

Susan Crockett: It sounds so backwards but so powerful. Thank you so much for being with us today.

Stephanie Forck: Yeah.

Susan Crockett: And for such a great podcast and really good tools and deep teaching. I think this was powerful, and thanks for joining us, Stephanie, have a great week.

Stephanie Forck: I was so happy to be here, thanks for having me, Sue, you too.

Susan Crockett: You’re welcome.

Alright, so what I’ve shown you today – what we’ve shown you today is hopefully a little deeper idea, a little different idea about connection and unconditional love and relationship. That even though we talk about connectivity as being in between two people and something outside of ourselves, it actually originates from within ourselves, which is a very powerful place to be from.

And I’m reminded as I was talking with Stephanie and we were doing the interview, I’m reminded about one of my favorite quotes and a lot of people have attributed this to Nelson Mandela. It’s supposedly not actually found as a quote by Nelson Mandela in any of his speeches. It’s been attributed to Marianne Williamson because the last line is the last line in her book, A Course in Miracles. But she doesn’t actually know where the rest of the quote came from either, so we don’t really know the truth of the true author of it. But maybe that makes it even more beautiful and more interesting.

So the quote is, “Our deepest fear is not that we are weak. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God, you’re playing small does not serve the world. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Isn’t that beautiful? Just love it.

So obviously what I’m reading this week is, A Return to Love, Reflections on the Principles of A course in Miracles by Marianne Williamson, amazing book. A lot of times she gets credited for writing A Course in Miracles, which she did not. But she has written some amazing books about it. So I would encourage you to check that out.

And then what I’m listening to this week is one of my favorite musicians, Bob Schneider who’s a local Austin musician. And I’ve had the privilege of seeing him in concert several times, he’s just an amazing writer and I love his lyrics, so this song is called The World Exploded into Love. And I’m going to leave that link to my favorite YouTube video of that, which is some just spectacular photography and art on it, it’s just beautiful. So I hope you’ll enjoy that with me today.

And then what I’m watching, I’ve been watching Call the Midwife, which is kind of weird for me because being an OB-GYN, even though I don’t do deliveries anymore, I did for a very, very long time, longer than I want to admit. So it’s an interesting series, kind of watching the whole baby birth thing, midwife thing, set in 1950s London.

So it also has nine seasons, so if you’re running out of things to binge watch on Netflix and you haven’t seen Call the Midwife, not only does nine seasons mean there is lots to watch, it also means that it was good enough to make it through nine seasons. And lots of other people love it too, so probably a good choice.

So next week we have an interruption in our interviews, I’m actually going to do a teaching podcast. I’m going to be teaching on a very important topic that I’ve been giving a lot of prayer and study and thought to over the last three months. It’s called Healing all the Isms. And we’ll be talking about healing all the suffering that’s happening in our world today, starting with racism, but talking about all the other isms as well. And how we heal and move from suffering, to awareness, to healing. So I hope you’ll join me next week for that very special episode.

Okay my virtuosas, let your light shine, plug it in, plug your heart light in, light it up, connect with others through and with your heart light. Love always, Sue. And I will see you next week in episode 26.

Female Announcer: Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. If you want to find out more, come check out virtuosacoaching.com. That’s virtuosa - with an A - coaching.com. See you next week.

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