Episode #47:

Learning to Love the Color Orange with Paige Bowman

How do you learn to change your thoughts about something, and begin to love something you currently don’t even like? To help me answer this question, I have a very special guest with me this week. We’re framing this discussion from the perspective of my journey in learning to love the color orange (a color I have never really enjoyed), and in the process, challenging our belief systems and biases about being different and existing in separate groups.

Today, I’m joined by the super special Paige Bowman. Paige is a coach who helps her clients with weight loss and emotional eating, but I brought her here today for a different reason. I met Paige when I was going through a hard time in my life, and the coaching work we did together helped me profoundly, so today, I’m sharing her magic with all of you.

Tune in this week to discover the work it took for me to start loving the color orange. We discuss how to challenge thoughts and beliefs you may have held your whole life, and we’re showing you the areas you may want to change your thinking around that you might never have considered could be changed.

WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER

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How to approach the idea of changing something you want to change your viewpoint on.

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The value of being willing to take a look at your beliefs.

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How to see the biases you have about different things or groups of people.

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How the rules and norms of dating have been rewritten since we were growing up.

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Why diversity, equity, and inclusion matter deeply to me.

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How the work we do within ourselves can influence the world around us.

FEATURED ON THE SHOW

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Paige Bowman: Website | Instagram | Podcast

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Tennessee Orange – song by Megan Moroney

TRANSCRIPT

Paige Bowman: Just being willing to take a look at your beliefs about things, about people, about the places you find yourself in the world, and then asking yourself what's true here? What are the facts? Then what's the stories I've been told and that I believe? Do I like them? Do I want to keep believing these stories or do I want to make changes?

Dr. Crockett: Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Susan Crockett. You are listening to episode number 47, Learning to Love the Color Orange, a very special podcast about addressing our individual biases. This is an interview with my certified life coach, Paige Bowman.

Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast that encourages you to become your best virtuosa self. Each week Dr. Susan Crockett goes where the scalpel can't reach, exploring conversations about how to be, heal, love, give, grow, pray, and attune. For the first time ever, she's bringing the personal one on one teaching that she shares with individual patients to you on this broader platform. A weekly source of inspiration and encouragement designed to empower you.

By evolving ourselves as individuals. We influence and transform the world around us. Please help me welcome board certified OB-GYN specializing in minimally invasive GYN surgery, internationally in the top 1% of all GYN robotic surgeons, a certified life coach, and US News top doctor, your host Susan A. Crockett, MD.

Dr. Crockett: I am thrilled today to introduce you to my guest. This is my very special guest, Paige Bowman. Paige came all the way from the Atlanta area to meet with us for a couple interviews. She's going to do more than one for us because she is super special.

Paige: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Dr. Crockett.

Dr. Crockett: You're welcome. Let's tell them a little bit about why you're so special to me. So we first met after I'd been through a really hard time. We met as life coaches in training.

Paige: Yep, that's right. We went through certification together.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah. Which was interesting. It was a group of about 10 or 12 of us that were doing Zoom calls and getting certified.

Paige: Every week for six months.

Dr. Crockett: Was it really that? That was almost four years ago.

Paige: That was over four years ago.

Dr. Crockett: Oh gee. That's hard to believe. Yeah.

Paige: The pandemic definitely through time off. So it also does feel like it's been a lot longer and also not as long. I don’t know.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's a good point. So then, after we finished our certification, I actually thought that I needed to continue life coaching and was looking for somebody asked Paige if we could work together. She said yes. So even though we certified together, she's been my life coach. We've met almost every week now for the.

Paige: Almost four years together.

Dr. Crockett: Gosh, four years together. That's really cool. So I first came to life coaching, a lot of you know, because I've talked about it in some of my other episodes after an adverse event in my life. That was the passing of my experiment-husband, which was very unexpected. He had a heart attack.

The grief that I had during that time was so terrible. I didn't want to go through traditional antidepressants and psychotherapy. I was looking for something online. This was in 2017. So it was before the pandemic. I found life coaching online. I started following it and learning how to look at my own thoughts. Really kind of, it got me through that grief.

Then through that, I thought this is what my patients need. These are like kind of the things that we've been taught to teach our patients about, but then I decided oh, why don't I just go get certified so then I can really bring that to my patients. So I'm certified, but Paige is the guru. I'm still the surgeon.

Paige: I mean, yes.

Dr. Crockett: Tell me a little bit about your practice. Tell them about your practice and what you do.

Paige: So, I have been working with Sue. We've been working together for almost four years now. We work through a lot of things. But mainly with my clients, I focus on weight loss and emotional eating in my field of weight loss or of life coaching.

So I focus on things like how to eat food just for fuel is how I think about it and not eat food for comfort or when you're feeling anxious or upset and just making that transition. For the most part, my clients want to lose weight, but sometimes it's just recognizing that I don't like my relationship with food. I want to change that. This is something that life coaching is really, oh yeah.

Dr. Crockett: Right. So if my viewers wanted to find you, where would they find you?

Paige: I have a website PaigeBowman.com. Then if they're watching this right, they probably like something like this kind of format. So I have a podcast, weight loss for life coaches because I love helping life coaches.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah. We'll put those links below. They'll be in the show notes below. We'll put a little banner here with your stuff on it for you. So after the show, we'll repeat that information. But let's get into our topic of the day.

Paige: Okay, let's do it.

Dr. Crockett: So when we were thinking about topics that we wanted to bring to the audience, one of the ones that came up in our coaching was this how to love the color orange. It's such a fascinating thing for me to watch my brain go through this. I wanted to tell our listeners the story.

So a lot of you are like what the heck is wrong with the color orange? Some of you may be Tennessee fans, or what's that new song? I'm wearing Tennessee orange. Tennessee orange. Oh, the anyway, we'll put that in the notes too because I love music. I'm Wearing Tennessee Orange For Him. It's sung by a girl who's a Georgia fan. She's like crossing the line and liking orange.

Well, that kind of resonated with me because I'm maroon. I'm an Aggie through and through. My late husband was also very much an Aggie. In fact, he was head drum major his year. So he bled maroon. There was no orange in our house. We were married for 22 years. So literally, we were not allowed to have orange in our house. It was such a taboo thing.

I was 10 years past that relationship into like a year or two ago, I don't remember when it was in our conversations. One day, I looked around at the colors around me, and the flowers in particular, and I thought I can't have orange flowers in here. How silly is that? Have any of you ever thought that?

I thought what the heck? I used to love the color orange as a kid. I loved all the colors of the rainbow. I mean teal, obviously. Teal and blue are my jam. But then I thought how did that ever happen? I don't have to think that way anymore. Right? I can make a choice to think of orange in a different way. So I brought that to you in a coaching session.

Paige: Yeah.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah. Do you remember that?

Paige: I do. I think what's really interesting just like hearing the way you're talking about it, and this is something to point out in this conversation is you noticed that you didn’t like the color orange. That was one of the first things we talked about is just being self-aware of this is something that I might want to change. Can you help me with it?

Which is such an important part of the coaching client relationship, or just anyone that's wanting to do this personal work is noticing this is something I'm wanting to change. So you did you brought that to me. You were like I don't like the color orange, but maybe I want to start liking the color orange? Can I do that?

Dr. Crockett: Yeah, challenging those thought patterns. Like what made me think that way? Why am I continuing that? The thing that brought me to that. I have a lot of friends that went to the University of Texas. They seem to be good people. But we have those rivalries. It's really not just about the color orange. It's about challenging our belief systems, about being in separate groups or separate people. So then I started practicing loving the color orange. I have an orange cat now. His name is Milo.

Paige: You do, don’t you?

Dr. Crockett: Yeah, and I bought a really bright orange tie-dye dress, like a long Maxi summer dress. I have some jewelry now that's got like orange beads on it. I started buying orange flowers. There's still not hot pink. Hot pink is my accent color. But I actually look at the color orange now, and I don't have that trigger like oh, that shouldn't be there. There's something different or not right about it anymore.

So I think talking about it in this way is a very safe way of addressing biases that we all have about being in separate groups. I think this is kind of the DEI kind of thing. This is kind of the whole point about not being like this is my group and that's their group or the Hatfields or the McCoys or the this religion or that religion. Do you think you could talk a little bit more for our listeners about what DEI means and how we could apply these kinds of lessons to those kinds of conversations?

Paige: Yeah, of course, and just to for everyone that's watching or listening DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. The way I understand it is that diversity is this idea that when we're in this group of people that there are multiple different races or genders or ages that are in this group of people. So it's diverse. Or equity is that when you're in a situation that people maybe that have different, for example, handicaps that have the ability to be as equal as someone without them. So equity. So people are have the chance to be equal.

Then inclusivity is in that same group. If you were, for example, to have someone over that is vegan to your house. If you were being inclusive, you would make sure that you have food available for that person to eat who's vegan, so they feel included in this environment you included them in.

So something that I love that we're bringing the topic of learning how to like a color you haven't liked for years to this conversation is because sometimes when we're not, like I said earlier, self-aware or paying attention to the things that we have just thought are true for our entire lives or for a long time, we're not able to see where we don't make feel people included or don't have a diverse group, or we don't have equity in the places where we have responsibility.

So one of the things that's why I like to bring up this idea of paying attention to yourself, paying attention to your mindset, to the things that you're thinking, to the things that you think are true. Questioning those things. Like maybe orange isn't a bad color.

Dr. Crockett: Maybe it's just a color.

Paige: Just maybe it's a color. Then what do I do from there? So the work we did for orange specifically is we questioned it. Could it be that orange is not a terrible color? What would it mean if I liked the color orange? It's still not like one of your favorite colors, but you're making progress.

So when it comes to something like paying attention to the things you think about the people around you, for example, is paying attention and asking yourself questions like how do I feel about the people around me? What things have I been taught about equity that maybe I want to question, and I want to maybe continue to think the same way I've been thinking, or maybe I want to change some things I've been thinking?

So I always start with its self-awareness knowing what are the kinds of things I think. This is what we do every week is bringing these kinds of things up, and then questioning them.

Dr. Crockett: And becoming self-aware. I think that's a really important point. I want to talk to the audience, our listeners just a little bit. This show is pretty new. I think you're Episode 13 or 14, which is brand new. One of the things that's really important to me about the show and about building the community is the DEI concept.

So we have all kinds of diverse guests that are going to be on the show. We have different genders, different job professions, different financial wealth. We have different races. We have Ollie. We even have different species on our show. So there's Ollie back there.

I would challenge you as you start to interact with us and in our comments and with our community to just become aware of the diversity in your life, and to help us make this platform a welcomed and safe space for people of all kinds of diversity and doggies too. Yeah.

Paige: Maybe we need to add a cat in.

Dr. Crockett: Maybe Milo needs to come.

Paige: Maybe not what I'm here because I'm allergic, but wait for the next guest.

Dr. Crockett: The idea of the cat though is okay to you. You're aware of that.

Paige: I'm aware of that. Yes.

Dr. Crockett: I heard a good story the other day about explaining equity. I'm sure it was on somebody's podcast, and I cannot remember. I'll try to look it up to give them credit below. But the description went something like this. That if you have a man who's six feet tall, and then you have me who's five foot five, and we're both trying to look over a fence that's five foot eight inches tall. Then the six foot man can easily see over it, and I can't. So I need a step up. I need to step up so that I can look over the fence. So equity doesn't mean equal. It means making the playing field even.

Paige: Right, absolutely.

Dr. Crockett: So I see this in the operating rooms. I just had an amazing experience last weekend. I went to San Diego. It was for the Women in da Vinci Surgery meeting. I was there with 200 other robotic surgeons who are all female from all over the place.

Paige: Oh my goodness.

Dr. Crockett: You talk about that was not a diverse group in gender. However, what they were doing is affirming the diversity of gender within surgery, which is typically a male dominated field, especially when you get into the robotic specialties and stuff. But what was there were women of all different races, all different ethnicities from all over the world, all different specialties, colorectals and GYNs, urologists, thoracic, general. Yeah, it was really fun. So that topic of equity and diversity was one of the things that we talked about in that conference. It's kind of right on my heart right now.

Paige: Well, and it's so important. I mean, it's a topic to think about as someone who has a presence and is leading people but also as a member. When you were going to the conference feeling like you were welcome there and you were seen, and people wanted you to be there. That's a big part of the DEI conversation is so that everyone feels welcome and included. They feel seen and not like the odd person out. So welcome. They did. They asked me if I felt included. I said of course. Yes.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah, before we started, we were talking. Yeah, that's awesome. So let's expand this concept a little bit bigger here because we've talked about, like my individual story with the color thing, which is a pretty small scale, easy conversation. We've talked about the DEI thing, but let's expand this to see how the work that's done within us is able to influence the world around us.

Because that's one of the core values of the show is that we believe that by transforming ourselves, that that's how we transform the world around us. In fact, that's going to be our next conversation. So stay tuned for part two. So when we talk about what that looks like, transforming the world around us, this concept of becoming aware and seeing separate groups as not being the color orange, pre-thinking about it. Let's talk a little bit about how that may be translated into religious barriers or nationality barriers, or what other types of more global barriers can you think of?

Paige: Well, I think that, let's just take being a vegan, for example. I'm someone who grew up eating. I'm from the Midwest. I live in Atlanta now, but I'm from the Midwest where I grew up eating lots of meat. That has always been just true for me that you just eat me at every meal.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah.

Paige: It hasn't been until recently, I would say within the last five years, that I really even question if that's true.

Dr. Crockett: If it's good for you. If it’s healthy.

Paige: If it’s good for you, right? If that's like what you're supposed to do is eat meat. Then if I want to and questioning, like you said, is it healthy? Is that something I want to do? So it's like taking this idea, I use it as an example, of looking at areas of your life. As we're talking about people and the people you're around and the beliefs even that you put yourself around. Like is eating meat healthy or not?

You could even do this with religion. I identify as a Christian. The way I use this conversation we're talking about, this idea of questioning things, and being self-aware is just saying is this true? Whether it's true or not so there's we have the facts of the world, like what's actually true. This is something I teach my clients in life coaching. Then we have our thoughts about them. So to Dr. Crockett in the past, it was a fact that orange was not a great color. But really, the fact is orange is just a color.

Dr. Crockett: It’s just another color.

Paige: Just another color. It’s not good. It's not bad. But your thought was, like the sentence, the story you were telling yourself is orange wasn't great. So what we do is we say okay well, let's get clear about the fact is this. Here's my story about here are my thoughts about it. Do I like my story?

So learning that eating vegan or less meat is actually healthier, that's now the story I want to be telling. Then that's the choice I want to make from that is eating less meat, eating way more vegetables. So it's this idea of just being willing to take a look at your beliefs about things, about people, about the places you find yourself in the world.

Then asking yourself what's true here? What are the facts? Then what's the stories I've been told and that I believe? Do I like them? Do I want to keep believing these stories or do I want to make changes?

Dr. Crockett: Because this isn't about changing another group or another people. It's about the thought changes that happen in us to center us into attunement with where we want to be.

Paige: It's so hard to come into attunement if you're believing things that maybe don't go along with something you really truly believe, but you’ve just been told. You're going to block yourself from aligning with the truth of your consciousness, your soul, whatever you want to say it if you're not being self-aware and questioning things that you've been told all your life.

Dr. Crockett: The truth is orange is a bright and happy color. I loved it all along. All right. Well, thank you so much, Paige. This was an awesome interview. It was so great. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Tell our listeners one more time where they can find you. We'll put those links down below also, but go ahead.

Paige: Yeah, they can go to PaigeBowman.com. I have articles there. Then you can also check out my podcast, Weight Loss for Life Coaches wherever you listen to podcasts.

Dr. Crockett: Cool. Thank you so much.

Paige: Thank you for having me.

Dr. Crockett: You're welcome.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. To learn more, come visit us at DrCrockett.com, or find us on YouTube for the Dr. Crockett Show. If you found this episode helpful or think it might help someone else, please like, subscribe, and share. This is how we grow together. Thanks, and I'll see you next week. Love always, Sue.

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