0:01 Would you like some tea? 0:05 What kind of tea tea like? You like black tea? 0:10 I have some black tea. cookies on the table. They're really good. 0:22 And anything else. 0:25 Six years ago, Bonnie flat made the gutsy decision to leave her cushy, high paying consulting job downtown for more unpredictable and unconventional career leadership coaching at her two story home in the suburbs. 0:37 First of all, I believe all of us are leaders. It's not a title. It's how you see yourself in the world. You can be 10 years old, and you're a leader in your life. Coaching is about showing you what it is you don't know you don't know. It's about asking questions, being a sounding board, creating that safe, trusted space for you to just show up and for me to listen. Because we don't give ourselves permission. We don't spend time reflecting. We don't ever feel heard. And so if I can hear you, and see you, and support you, you're going to find your answers. Whether you're 10 years old, or you're 50 years old, 1:20 Bonnie was 52 when she finally found her answer. From a young age, Bonnie always made careful calculated decisions when it came to her future. She majored in biochemistry and reproductive biology at the University of Toronto, with the intention of going to medical school to find a cure for her mother's multiple sclerosis. But when that fell through, she was on to the next big thing. Law School. 1:43 I remember we had a library assignment that we had to do. And I figured how hard could this be had the weekend to do it? So I showed up at the library Sunday afternoon to do this library assignment. And I saw these colleagues of mine looking like they hadn't slept, and asked them how is the assignment and they said was great. They were now on problem four of six. And they've been working on it all weekend. And I said, Oh my god, I'm just starting it now. So I remember one of the guys said to me, Well, I'll show you how to do the other four questions if you help me with the last two. And I said to him, okay, sure. What else do you want from me? Like, what do I have to do? Why are you being so nice? And he said, he goes, he said, Where did you go to school, I said, I went to U of T where this is before the internet. So if you had to do research, people would refer the article so other people couldn't access them. It was competitive and cutthroat. And all of a sudden here, you wanted to help me and he said, Well, I came from University of Calgary in Alberta, we help each other. That was for me, a real opening about what it was like to collaborate in it at Queens in law that it wasn't competitive. I mean, if you got into the program, you knew you were gonna make it through 2:53 fresh out of Queens Faculty of Law, Bonnie accepted a promising job at a global human resources firm, while the rest of her colleagues desperately scrambled to find legal jobs on Bay Street. It was there she began tirelessly building valuable relationships within the company, and coming into her own as a consultant. But six years into her career, her life took a sharp, unexpected turn, 3:14 I'd gone to see a client outside of Pittsburgh, and I was with a colleague of mine, and we were running back to catch the plane. And I was numb from my, like, I couldn't feel my legs. And I had a band of numbness around my abdomen. And at this point, like and this guy I was with, he knew my mom had Ms. When we did the MS spiked to her. And I had a team that did the tour of the year. So I said to him, I think I have Ms. 3:48 First time I ever had symptoms, I was in first year university, and I would feel this numbness in both my hands and they would be really painful. I'd go and I'd talk to doctors and say, I think I have Ms. And they told me it was all in my head that I was just obsessing because my mother had it. They also told me while it's not, you have it on both sides, and it's one sided, and it's not painful. And I said, Well, you don't know any of this. Like I'm not feeling anything, and then it goes away. But nobody ever took me seriously. 4:21 When you plug in an appliance, there's insulation around the court. The insulation we have around our nerves is called myelin. When you have multiple sclerosis, or ms, there's damage to the myelin, which builds up scar tissue or plaque. Depending on where the damage is located. It delays or blocks messages from your brain to different parts of your body affecting multiple senses, like your vision, your speech or your mobility. 4:46 When I was finally diagnosed, it was a relief because it was like Oh, thank God, it's not in my head. There is something physically wrong with me. And I have no control over this. It's like it whatever it does with me is going to do with me And all I have control over is how I choose to address it and face it. The hardest thing for me I was five weeks from getting married. He was the only person I'd ever said I love you too. I was living with him. And five weeks before my wedding we postponed then when I got the diagnosis. Nine months later, he said, I can't marry you. I can't marry you because of your mess. So I had to deal with at the time thinking I was losing my 65 best friends and my fiance because of something that was out of my control. I was still the same person. I just now had a disease 5:36 after a fiance left. Bonnie's professional life quickly took precedence over her personal life. 5:42 Each time I met someone the first or second date, I tell them, I have Ms. And they would walk and it was defining me I was no longer Bonnie, I was Bonnie with Ms. And I got really angry. It was like I don't need anybody. I can take care of myself, I make a good living, I'm fine. And you guys all suck. 6:01 It took five years worth of blank stares and awkward silences until Bonnie met the one person who could finally see pasture disease. 6:09 I think the third time I may have said something to him like, by the way, I just thought I should tell you I had a mess. His response to me was, oh, okay, I have to think about it. And I'll get back to you. And I remember thinking, Well, here we go again, another loser guy. And he called me the next day. And we went out and he said his brother in law had Ms. So he knew what it was. And then he said, I've spent the last 24 hours thinking about why he had to tell me this, like, who cares you are who you are. And you may one day be in a wheelchair. So what you'll still be doing what you do, you'll just do it differently. And then I broke down and I cried. And I shared with him that I waited for my fiance to say that. 7:03 Over 15 years of marriage and two kids later, Bonnie decided to venture out of her comfort zone and take coach training lessons while working at a giant accounting firm. 7:13 And I knew from the first day first hour of the first class that this is what I was meant to do. For me it was about letting go of the bullshit. And really, really understanding myself there were 17 of us, I think in the class, I didn't know any of them. And we'd spent a half a day together. And then we had to give each other an archetype. When they came to me. Everybody said you have to wear the name tag absolutely clueless. And I remember saying I don't know what that means. They said, that's why you have to wear it. Because I had been an expert my whole career. I knew everything, I had the answers. And all of a sudden I had to let go of that and have all the questions and to embrace the curiosity of a four year old, which is not easy to do when you've been trained to have the answers. 7:56 She was at the firm for two and a half years until the market crashed in 2009. Her position got scrapped as a result. 8:03 I remember driving home and I had this big smile on my face, even though I had no idea what was next. Now maybe it was you know, when I was six years old, my dad went bankrupt. And we lost everything. We lost the house that my dad had designed and built for my mom, we moved into an area where I don't have a lot of happy memories. And we survived. And so maybe it was that as long as you have each other. Everything will be fine. pictures of my family. Well, Maxine, and Derek had their birth mitzvahs. I didn't want to hire a photographer. And, and so we just took pictures. And then Maxine was one who put them all together. So like this is when Derek was 1213. And then she put all of this, these pictures together. 9:03 So it doesn't look like that anymore. You know, I remember talking to my son, and saying to him, you know, I'm at the crossroads in my life, and I can network to find the next great job to keep you and your sister and your father in the lifestyle we've grown accustomed to. Or I can ask you to make sacrifices and really pursue what it is I meant to do in the world. My son at the time was 13. And he said to me, Well, Mom, you can make everyone else happy, or you can be happy and ask us to support you. And that was pretty wise statement from a 13 year old and I said okay, this was just before his Bar Mitzvah. So he said, Well, you give up your party. And he said, Yeah, I don't need a party. And I said, What about summer camp? said I don't need summer camp. I said, What about private school and he said, I don't want to go to private school. Then I went to my daughter and she said to me, You know I want to be an actress. That's my dream. If I can support you and yours, how can I support me in mind? And then I went to my husband and he said, I could live in a shack in Algonquin Park, I don't need the lifestyle that we're living. So I just want you to be happy. So that helped that I had the people closest to me that were willing to make sacrifices to allow me to pursue what it was I want to pursue because I was the primary wage earner at the time. And then the other reason was my brother in law was dying. 10:38 And he was he was only 45 years old. And there's, there's something 10:46 you know, when someone's on their deathbed, and they're, and they say to you, so what are you meant to do? And when are you going to do it? 10:56 I made a promise to him, that no matter what I was going to do what I was meant to do in the world. 11:05 And so he was the impetus for me. And he still is, whenever I have doubts or questions, I know he's there looking down saying, just keep doing what you're doing. You know, I remember thinking, yeah, like, my legacy is not about how much money I make, what size house I live in, how many countries I've seen, and all that my legacy is about contributing to something bigger than myself, and I can't do it alone. And I'm definitely not going to be able to do it by staying in consulting, where the only thing I'm doing is making people wealthy, but I'm not changing the world. My belief is that when you're really clear on your purpose, because we all have a reason why we're here and you're clear on your strengths and your values, then you'll be successful. 11:52 Bonnie had her own coach who she confided in for the first three years of her coaching career, 11:56 I shared with him stuff I had never shared with anybody, like not even my husband, not my parents, I had to unpack a lot of narratives, I call them that were holding me back from being my greatest self. 12:09 She then adopted a leadership model called tribal leadership, where coaches work in teams of three to help change the workplace culture in organizations. Her first experience of working in the triad didn't go as smoothly as she hoped 12:22 we would meet to twice a week on the phone. And this other woman would say things to me like you know, I'm you're really pissing me off. I really don't like you right now. Or I can't stand you and I had to let it go. It wasn't about me. There was something that she couldn't be with that was inside of herself. And so I'd be on these these phone calls migraine in my right eye tears streaming down my face, my husband would say, Why are you doing this, I said, because there's something I have to go through, I have to go through the eye of the needle to get to the other side. Like there's something here for me to learn. And I would just hold up that mirror for her until she was ready to look at it. And when we finish she shared with me that I was like this really strong oak tree that was just there giving her support and love and understanding until she was ready to do whatever she needs to do to move to her own level of leadership. 13:20 She once made a living out of solving client's problems for them. But Bonnie now sits patiently and encourages them to figure it out for themselves. Her positive coaching philosophy permeates every facet of her life, including the relationship she has with her loved ones. 13:37 My mother always saw the world as much as I loved her, she saw the world from a half empty glass. And I didn't want to live my life that way. You know, I spent a lot of time with her, trying to change her mindset. And she's to say to me, she was too old to change, like, and I kept saying to her, you're never too old to change. And then I remember in at the end, for her last six months, I was the only one who could calm her down. She had gotten bone cancer and brain cancer when she was like really freaking out. My dad would call me and say you need to come over and calm your mother down. And I would just sit with her and rubber hand and listen to her wherever she also had a little bit of dementia coming on. So wherever she was, I just was with her. Like if she was golfing, I was golfing with her. It was like a coaching conversation. And the last few days before she lost her lucidity. She said to me, you know, Bonnie, you always said that you believed I could change my mindset. And I didn't believe it. And she said that you're right. And I have and you've helped me do that. So it's cool. The end when she finally said, okay, because she kept would keep asking, like, Am I dying? And my dad, everybody would get so upset that she would keep asking them I said Well, part of it is she probably doesn't remember and even if she does, maybe she doesn't want to. So I would say to her, you know one thing that's for sure is we all die one day and you just happen to know your death. coming sooner, you're more aware of it then other people you don't know when it's gonna happen. All you know is it's gonna happen. So now you have the opportunity in this moment in this time right now, to define how you want to live the rest of your life. What's the legacy you want to leave? How do you want to be with me with your sons, with your husband with your grandchildren? What do you want to say that you haven't said, you know, this is this is a gift for you? And she said, Well, I don't know. And I said, Well, let me coach you on it. I can actually not be your daughter, and compartmentalised myself and help you define the legacy for the rest of your life. If you're ready, and if you're not, that's okay, too. So we never really got there because she No, I don't think she ever really wanted to do that. But her telling me at the end that she was starting to see how it was possible to change your mindset was, was pretty nice to hear. Like, I don't know if she ever fully got there. That, 15:56 you know, 15:58 she's been a good role model for me because I never wanted to be that person. There were certain things I really respected and admired about her and her ability to cope with all kinds of adversity was really resilient and was something I want to aspire to. And I also wanted to live my life seeing the half full glass and what else was possible rather than what was me. 16:27 That's think in your stomach when everything goes wrong, but he didn't play my song. I heard a million most happy is Williams modem drive the message 16:55 in Toronto, I'm Eunice Kim. Transcribed by https://otter.ai