Episode 324: Overcoming Life’s Challenges with Faith and Resilience

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You. All right, everyone. Hello, and welcome back to Leading with Grace. I am so excited to introduce you to a very dear coach and mentor of mine that I was introduced to when I went into coach certification with the Life Coach School. And I’m actually going to just turn the time over to her right now so that she can introduce herself.

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And then we get to share with you her story, her spiritual and faith journey, and what it has led her to create and become. So, Corinne, would you like to introduce yourself to my people? Yeah. So I’m Corinne Crabtree. I’m the founder and CEO of The No BS Weightloss Program.

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That’s where most people know me from. And I also have a Nobius business women’s membership also. And I got started back in about 2005. I wanted to lose weight. I had been overweight all my life, grew up in very poor background and spirituality wise.

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My mom, she was a single mom, so she was pregnant, 17, decided to have me. This was back in the 70s when, like, gosh, those decisions were I mean, I just think they were just even super tough. She had she was in a small town, and you didn’t get pregnant back then. And my grandparents wanted to adopt me, and she wanted to keep me, and so that was kind of a big deal. And so growing up, though, she had went to a really small county school and just didn’t get a great education, which really hampered her on being able to take care of me.

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She could only get minimum wage jobs, so it was really important for her that my brother and I have a Catholic education. So I was born and raised Catholic Catholic school all the way from kindergarten to 12th grade. And the poor kid in class always, because most of the time when you go to a private school, people usually have some money and stuff, and we didn’t. So that was real interesting growing up that way. And that was one of the reasons why I became so overweight, too.

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We never had money, so we were part of the fast food generation, and we ate at buffets, and most of the time, we only got one meal a day, so we were told to overeat. Just eat as much as you can because we don’t know when the next meal is coming. So in my just battled with my weight all my life, I finally decided I’m going to lose weight, but I’ve got to do it in a way that I change as a person. I can’t do it like I’ve always done. I can’t punish myself.

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I’m going to have to quit talking to myself like a jerk. I just knew that the way to lose weight this time was going to have to be different, and I did. I lost 100 pounds over about 18 months. And then after I lost the weight, I knew I wanted to help other women do the same thing. When I lost the weight, the one thing that I knew that was different this time was that every other time, I didn’t like myself.

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At the end, I was happy to be thin or proud of the weight loss, but I was really hard on myself. Like, I would be paranoid every time I’d weigh in, and if I made one little mistake, I just talked to myself so terribly, and I wasn’t doing that anymore. I had literally changed how I talked to myself all the way down the scale, and that was what made the difference. So when I decided to help women do it, I knew that I don’t want to just help them lose weight. I want to help them truly feel amazing on the inside.

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And that became my mission and purpose. And so here we are. Since I started that business in 2007, been helping women all these years. And then I started a business membership because I grew that to an eight figure business and was like, I should teach other women how to have their own business. This will be a good idea.

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That is so amazing. As you’re thinking back in your growing up time, how have you seen God be with you? How have you seen his tender mercies in your life so that you get to be where you are today, doing what you love to do? I’d say the most pivotal moment for me was literally when I was 17. Let me back up.

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When I was 14, I started suffering with depression. I had a lot of social anxiety, was very depressed. I started having ulcers. Terrible. IBS just it was awful through my high school years.

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I was really, really bullied when I was in my middle school years and when I transitioned to high school, in the Catholic schools, we go k through eight, and then we transition to a high school where all the other Catholic schools come together. Well, it’s like starting over. And I didn’t even have a good experience in my last gig, so I didn’t expect to have good experience in high school. Well, I really suffered with it throughout the entire time, and by the time I was 17, I was suicidal, and I tried to take my life, and so I always kind of wondered, why didn’t I die? And for me, I’ve looked back several times, and I was just supposed to be here.

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Like, that wasn’t supposed to be my time.

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There’s two big things that I know that God wanted me to do. Number one, I think he really wanted me to do this weight loss thing, because in my membership, people are never talked late. If you’re, like, in a weight Watcher forum or you’re in noom or something, people are just talking about their weight loss. In my membership, people are talking about, finally have the courage to leave the husband that I stayed married to because I didn’t think I could do any better. And he wasn’t even nice to me.

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And I finally have healed the relationship with my mom. Things like that are happening. And then I had an autistic son, and I really think I was supposed to be here because that’s not an easy gig. And God knows how strong I am. He knows that I definitely am the kind of person who like the ride or die for people.

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And if I think I can help someone, I go all in and I go real deep. I’ve thought a lot about that over the years, but that’s probably the biggest way that God’s played his role in my life. It’s just keeping me here on that day. I tried real hard. When I do something, I don’t do it lightly, and it didn’t work.

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Thank you, God. But I just know that there had to have been a reason why I was here. And those are the two big things, I think, that I was supposed to be on this Earth. I love that I could feel it. I’m trying to not cry, too.

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Your listeners need to know I am always a crier. I am like, I swear every day love about a cry. There it is. No, and I love that about you.

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You’re so unapologetic in how you feel in all areas of the spectrum. It’s so beautiful. So thank you for just sharing that part of you with us. And so a question that came up into my mind I’m sorry, this is not probably one of the questions I wrote down to possibly ask you is what do you think you learned about God now as you’re thinking back, that you didn’t know back then?

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Probably that like, well, I think I kind of knew this, but I think what really matters to me now is and this is that he comes in so many different ways when you grow up Catholic. And I mean, I love being Catholic. I have nothing against being Catholic, but when you grow up Catholic, it’s kind of like, this is the religion, this is the way. And of course, we got so much history and all this other stuff. And I think in this day and age, I am so shocked at how many other faiths play such a key role for me now.

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It’s really amazing to me just how God speaks to us through all different religions. Before we even did this podcast, I was joking around, but I’m serious. Your LDS and one of the people that I work with privately is an LDS male coach. And when I tell people, oh, he’s my spiritual coach, people are like, what? You’re Catholic?

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And I’m like, oh, yeah, he doesn’t care. We just be talking about God and how am I going to get more habits around this stuff like that. But I think that’s probably the most shocking thing to me, because when you grow up in one specific faith, and I think this is probably for everyone, you almost feel a little guilty if you entertain the idea of exploring God through different ways than you were taught. And that’s kind of where I’m at right now in my own spiritual journey. It’s like I just want to try on different things.

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I love being Catholic, but I also love the idea that everybody has different ways that they practice their faith and different levels of meaning. And another good friend of mine is Nondenominational, and she and I talk about things sometimes. I don’t know. It’s so funny to me how many different people come into my life and they’re like, Corinne, I want to talk spiritually with you, especially me, because everybody always wants to talk about weight loss or business. That’s like the two only things people everyone talks to me about.

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But I love just the idea that even when I’m not faith centered, god hasn’t forgotten, hasn’t took his eye off of me. And I do like that, and I feel like that’s probably what’s happening in my adult life now that I don’t know that I would have in my earlier days. I would have just thought, like, well, if you’re not going to church every weekend, and you’re not going to a Catholic church every weekend, you’re just doing it wrong. And these days, I’m just kind of opening my mind up to I actually talk about God a lot now, and I probably pray more than I ever have prayed, even though I’m not going to a formal building every Sunday morning to do my thing. I don’t know.

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I love that it’s a muddy answer, but it’s the answer.

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No. I love all that, and only because I believe that it’s so easy, that it’s easy to put God in a box and to put constraints on his ability to reach out and to love all his children, no matter what their faith or no faith at all. And this is what I found for myself. It’s like when I start just taking Him out of the box, then the possibility is endless. And I just realized that when I open up the possibilities for God, I begin to open up the possibilities for myself, like what I can achieve.

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And then when I’m up leveling my own possibility, then the woman that I’m working with, it’s so much easier for me to hold space for them and the belief that they can do it.

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Are you finding that as you’re on this journey of finding God in all areas of your life and in the lives of others, are you finding that it is easier to hold belief for these women that you’re working with where they come with you, with no belief at all about their possibility? Yeah, for sure. Because one example I’ve used often in weight loss, because in weight loss, literally, I was just working on some content for my members around this. We want so much certainty. Like, our brains just crave certainty.

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And with God, we’re never going to get proof like he’s already said. It’s not like he’s going to show his face and be like, all right, I know you’re struggling. Let me just come down. I’m going to give you like, here I am. Now you can believe.

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And so many of my clients have an unshakable belief that God exists with zero real proof. And yet when I talk to them about losing weight, they can’t grasp it. It’s just like, there’s no way I can believe because I’ve failed so many times. And so when I think about it, I like to use the example to them. It’s like, if you can believe in something that you’re literally not going to know the answer until you die.

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Why can’t we just believe in weight loss and just act like we’re going to have it no matter what? Sometimes when I talk to my clients that way, it is such a game changer for them. They’re like, I already have an area in my life where I’ve just decided, this is the way it is. This makes my life better. This is the path I want to be on.

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Why can’t we just do that in weight loss, too? That’s one thing. And I also think that for me personally, just I think especially as coaches, when we are working with people, it’s really hard for us not to feel a level of responsibility for people. I mean, I always feel responsible for my clients. I don’t think that I can make them lose weight, but I do feel responsible.

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It’s my duty to make sure that the path for them is wide open and clear. And a lot of times when I’m thinking about God uses me, it allows me to be a little bit more courageous about clearing that path. It makes me not be so hesitant about things I’m willing to try and willing to say and willing to do. Because at a fundamental level, I don’t think I’m being steered wrong. I don’t know if that helps, but that’s kind of where I’m at with all of that.

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Yeah, I love that.

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Was it really natural for you to take your spiritual and your faith journey and turn it into a faith calling, a spiritual calling to help other women? Was that a really big leap of faith or was it so natural for you to do that transition? It’s been more natural for me in the beginning especially, I don’t think I thought I knew I had a purpose, but I don’t think I tied it to faith. But I have been very clear from day one that there was something in me like that gut, the intuition, like that heart centered, like something in your chest. It didn’t come from my mind.

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And this is the way I always like to explain it. When I knew that I was going to figure out how to help women lose weight, it came literally from my heart and my chest. It was not my brain intellectualizing this. There was something moving me on the inside. And as the years have gone on and I’ve really studied what is the difference between your brain leading you versus your gut and intuition leading you?

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I always like to think like God. And I actually learned this from my spiritual coach, Tyson. He said this. Tyson bradley. Tyson Bradley?

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Yes. He was at my house this last weekend. He had come all the way here. Oh, yeah. I was so lucky.

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We had met each other in Vegas of all place. Everybody would know I would be in Vegas. Corinne is like, going to Vegas and doing all the things. But when I found out Tyson was in Vegas, I was like, what are you doing here? He doesn’t drink, doesn’t party.

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And I was like, Last place on earth I would think we’d run into each other. And he was actually there for a business thing, so that made sense. We had coffee and then we started kind of working together a little bit. And we had decided he’d come to Nashville and I’d help him a little bit with his business, but he would really help me with my identity and who I’m becoming and kind of unlocking some of this stuff. Anyway, he was talking about how God speaks to us, basically from that neck down, he’s speaking to us through our heart and our gut and this intuition and wisdom.

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And then our brain is like that logical side and it’s usually what blocks God’s wisdom for us. That’s the part that gets in the way of what we’re going to do next and stuff. And this may be old news to your listeners, but it was just like, what I was like, new news to me. And when he said that, I really started thinking about how much of my life I’ve gone by my heart when it comes to my businesses and how I help people, what I say yes to and stuff. And a lot of times I think that that is like, I’ve probably been more in touch because I’ve always been very passionate and very purpose driven, and I didn’t realize that that was how I was getting communicated to.

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And now it makes a lot of sense. I will say, as I’m getting older. And I think sometimes we do this in our life, we have periods of time where we’re real into our faith. We have periods of time where we’re kind of questioning things and we meander, and it’s like a winding path. And I’m kind of coming back to that phase of my life where I know how much I need my spirituality just for me, not for anything else other than my own peace of mind and my own piece of just soul and stuff.

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Yeah, I love that. And thank you for sharing that experience with us. Now, you do know that I work with women going through separation and divorce, and even though they’re on a different path compared to you or anyone else, I think that there is that one common discovery, which is the discovery of our identity as you just brought up so beautifully. And so what are you learning about your identity as you are really stepping into really being heart centered and recognizing the spiritual nudgings and pullings that you’re receiving? Well, I would say one thing that I’m really learning is that I’m good at leading.

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Not just because I’ve had a business and stuff, but one of the things I’ve been working on is I started looking at my life, and I was always meant to lead my friends. I was always meant to lead my family. Everybody always jokes around about how literally I was born, the mother of this family. I have always taken on a lot of responsibility, but I love being the leader. I was doing some work the other day about how, as I’m getting closer to 50, what do I really want for myself?

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And one of the areas that I notice is, like, I’m craving a lot of comfort these days, and I’m craving a lot of family connection. And the past ten to 15 years, it’s been right the opposite. I have craved being leading a business and financial stuff. It’s been more, I would say, almost like a masculine energy. And I was talking to my other coach about this.

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I have a lot of coach. I’ve got my brain coach, I’ve got my business coach, I’ve got my spiritual coach. I’m all about the coaching, trust me. And I was saying, this is the first time in my life where I feel like there’s a disconnect on the comfort level. And for me, I want more time for me, more self reflection time.

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For me, I’d like to get back into some kind of church again. Those are these things that nurture and comfort me. And so I would think my identity, I can tell, is really shifting. Like, I’m craving time off from work. I used to never crave time off from work.

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I’m now hearing that call that I’m wanting something new. And I think that we all go through in life, whether it’s a circumstance causing an identity shift. Like in my membership, I have a whole maintenance module, like a whole course on it. And it’s based on when you lose your weight, you go through another identity crisis and another because you’re closing the door down on the identity as someone who has struggled with their weight. And now we have to create the version of you who never struggles again, who this is.

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I am a thin person now. I am someone who is in control of food. And if you don’t create the identity on purpose, we create one on accident with just our habit brain. And we don’t want to be creating our identities by our habit brain because our habit brain is a mess. It’s scared, it’s got fear sometimes.

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It has some good stuff in there. But most of the purpose of your habit brain is to guard you against any kind of weirdo fear that it actually has. So I’m always talking to my clients about when you’re going to create your identity. We create it on purpose. We really think it through.

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We ask ourselves the questions of, like, what do we truly desire at this point in life and what do we need in this point in life and where do we want to go at this point in life? So I think it’s for me, I’m in that transition period where I want more time with my family. I want more time in self reflection and on my own. I want more spirituality. I’m wanting to add those things in that have not been it’s not that they’ve never existed to build a business.

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It’s that the business came first and these things came second. And now I want them to come first and the business now comes second. Yeah. And so do you think that as you’re going through this discovery of your identity and adding these back into your life, that it is going to affect how you now run the business or the programs that you create or even how you coach? What do you think will be the effects of you living more fully into your inherent identity?

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For sure, my coaching is changing. It’s really evolving and growing. I’ve always been like, first phase of Korean coaching was a line, a line, a line. And the second phase was I would get into your mindset. But I was very like a drill sergeant.

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Everybody’s always like, if you love a kick in the pants and a lot of sass and cousin thrown in and all the animation, yes. You’re like that’s the coach. Because then I would go there and then go right, tell you what to do. I’ve always been really good at solving problems, seeing a path and telling someone clearly on how to do something. Now, what the third evolution of me?

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Is there’s a softer side to my coaching that’s developed? I really can understand now how to figure out when someone needs all of the sass and energy and when someone needs the comfort and the listener and to feel understood. That has been happening since I’ve been doing a lot of this work. I think that’s evolving in terms of my business. I think my business will actually do better without me being the one who’s always leading.

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One of the things that I’ve been working on is how do I take care of these needs that are coming up and shift my identity while also strengthening my business through it? I think a lot of people think it’s like an either or. I can either prioritize the business or this. And I’m like, just because the business is second, it doesn’t mean that it can’t grow. It means that now we’re going to do this in service of making sure that the business continues to grow, grows better.

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It’s just opened my mind up to how I can I’m spending this year training my team, like, how I think I’m working on their thoughts. We’re going really deep with my entire team on values and culture. And I want them filtering everything they do through our values, our mission statement, rather than just looking for the next task to do. And I think it’s just making us a better company. It’s definitely going to make us serve our clients so much better.

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They’re already getting a better experience from just even me doing my work on myself. Yeah. And I can actually can just envision that. Is that like, you were saying you were doing a lines before, but now there’s like and I could be wrong. With this, but it’s just like at.

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Least for you, there’s like this undercurrent of spirituality and you’re just filtering everything. Like, everything is all just coming together in one great whole. And so if there’s any one or two advice that you can give to someone who is seeking their identity, who is seeking to I don’t want to use the word reinvent maybe to find or to remember who they are. What would you want to tell them? What would you advise for them?

00:26:42

First is just don’t be afraid to write a lot. Like, I am a voracious journaler. If I’m not journaling, I’m usually talking to someone out loud about all of the thinking going on me. I think one of the reasons why I’ve been successful, I’m able to do a lot of this stuff. I think easier is because I don’t judge anything.

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So like, if I have a desire to do something, I don’t think, oh, that’s wrong, I shouldn’t be thinking that, or like, I don’t know. I let my entire mindset have its say all the time. And what I watch most people do is when they’re especially if they’re trying to change their identity, there’s parts of their current identity that they shame themselves about. So then they don’t want to work on it and they don’t want to admit it, and they don’t want to look at it. But it’s there and it just sits there and it craves a voice and it craves attention.

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And if you don’t write about it, it comes out in eating and spending and yelling and isolating. It’s like, I’m going to do stuff to get your attention. And most of the time, the stuff that it’s doing, we can’t read what that is. It’s like now it’s talking in a whole new language. Because the original language was like, hey, I just wanted to whisper in your mind and I wanted you to pay attention.

00:28:11

Well, you shut that down. You went off and did all these other things. So now I’ve got to talk to you in a whole new language that you don’t even know. And then now you got to do all your thought work on trying to figure out, well, all these actions, what. Do they even mean?

00:28:24

Why are they here? So I think just being honest with yourself in a very open, non shameful way, I really think for all of us who are into self development, coaching, whatever you want to call it, when we are willing to look at all of our thoughts and then step back and say, and this is what I tell my clients all the time, I don’t give a crap what you write down. All I want you to do is to tell yourself every single feeling and every single thought is there for a purpose. And it’s always to me, I love the idea of thinking about it, always has a good reason for being here. My job is to figure out what the good reason is.

00:29:09

My feelings and my thoughts, they’re just there to get my attention. I’m the one that’s going to reason it out as to why it’s here. And if I do that, then I don’t sit there and think, I shouldn’t think this or I shouldn’t feel this way or this is a bad feeling or whatever. When you really figure out that everything is purposeful, well intended, just not always well stated, it frees you up to be able to work on yourself as much as you would ever want to. I’d say amen to all of that.

00:29:40

And I just recently started to realize that I was not always honest in my writing because I am also a voracious journaler. And I know I think I remember Brooke once saying that she threw all her journals away. And I’m like, I can’t do that.

00:30:02

I just moved. And the only journals that I kept, I had one from when I was nine. I still have my very first diary that I ever started, and I had one from actually, this wasn’t a total journal. It had a lot of really good, like, I had been journaling. This was back when I was not organized.

00:30:23

But I had this one notebook that had a lot of journaling, and it also had a lot of conference notes from this one conference. I was like, and I’m going to keep that one because I don’t want to lose that was a good conference, but I throw them out, too. When I moved, I was like, getting rid of it. I was like, I don’t want this stuff in my new house. That’s probably what I need to do is I just need to be like, it’s okay.

00:30:47

There’s plenty more coming down the pipeline. Oh, gosh, yeah. But I mean, I’ve come to realize that when I went into the discomfort of being honest, that’s. When I was able to really clear this up, because we’re dumping it, right? We’re dumping it out on paper, and then God has something to work with.

00:31:11

And I saw this pattern of, like, when I’m really honest, and I know when I’m honest because I’m stepping into shame, like, I’m just feeling it, and then I’m putting it all on paper. Then I found that I could hear God more clearly, and the answers came, and it was always from a place of love. And I realized then that God doesn’t shame. He never shames. Like, this brain of ours, shames, right?

00:31:39

Our thoughts and feelings. Like, it shames. I read something interesting about shame just the other day, and it talks about how when shame enters, that first few moments of shame is very intentional from your heart and your soul to say, I think we’re off track. I think we’re doing something that I just need to get your attention. And shame is such a big one.

00:32:06

It’s just like raising the hand right now. I don’t want you to continue. When shame lingers, that’s when we know we have a brain thing to work through, when we allow it to still be there. We’ve ignored the lesson. We are now just focused on being bad.

00:32:24

We’re focused on being like, now we’re caught up in the personalization of things. And when I read that, I was like, that makes so much sense. It makes it so much easier to think that that initial wave of shame and stuff is like my inner compass or God or something. And I don’t think God’s trying to shame us, but he uses the feeling to say, please pay attention. I love you so much.

00:32:48

I need to get your attention right now. And then when it sticks around, that’s us. That’s us ignoring the signal and ignoring the lesson. It was very interesting to read. I was like, I’ve never really thought about shame that way.

00:33:02

Yeah. And to kind of see shame as kind of like a process of this is just a red flag saying, hey, let’s pay attention. This is something you need to consider and think about and process out, but that it doesn’t have to stay. Exactly. And I just love that, because when we think about shame, it’s like, it’s there to stay.

00:33:21

We can’t get away from it. We don’t know how to get rid of it. And yet the whole time, we’re just slathering on more and more shame. Exactly. I love that.

00:33:32

So thank you for sharing that with me. Yeah. All right, so before we end, could you just share with us your program? Who is it for and how they can find you? Yeah.

00:33:44

So it’s the nobs weight loss program. If you want to take my free course, you can go to Nobsfreecourse.com and you’ll get a couple of videos that will talk to you about what my process is. My process is very much simple we’re going to do simple steps and then we’re going to work on everything that’s going on between the mirrors, what’s going on between your ears. That’s the complicated part. How you eat should not be complicated.

00:34:11

And it really isn’t complicated to lose weight when you clean everything up going on inside the head. So just nobsfreecourse.com and people can check it out there. And you’ll get into my world, you’ll find all the things. And if you’re a business person, you’re interested in the business side, you can go to Nobsbusinesswomen.com and you’ll find information about what we’re doing over there for online entrepreneurs, course creators, anybody who’s in that online space. And you’re looking to build your business and you’re primarily using online as your vehicle for all of that.

00:34:45

Yeah. And then just one last question. Why have you chosen to set these programs up? Because you could have just stayed where you were, just continuing on being a mom and working with your little people. Why create these big programs to help so many others?

00:35:06

Literally, my personal mission, so each of my businesses have their own mission statements, but my personal mission is I want to help women break the generational curses of health and wealth. I just think it’s important. It’s important for our children. I’ve been able to do both in my lifetime. To be able to go from obesity was just a thing in our family.

00:35:31

I mean, I can’t even tell you how many times I was told, we’re just a fat family, we’ll always be overweight. You might as well just give up. And then on the same side with the money, just generations of broke, I think, for women especially, and I have a passion for women because we are just not taught especially my generation and the generation beneath me, we’re not taught all of our potential. We’re constantly messaged what we can’t have, what we need to settle for, what we’re even given as what we should shoot for. I remember I love my mother to death, but she must have told me 5000 times growing up, marry a good man so that you can just at least pay your bills every month and have a little money left over.

00:36:24

And that was living the good life. Wow. And I kind of created that for a while until I met another powerful woman who was like, did you know that you can take what you’re passionate about and you can affect millions of people if you wanted to? You can think so much bigger than this. And I was like, what?

00:36:46

So many women are never exposed the idea of their potential. And it’s hard to go after something that you’ve never even, number one, been exposed the idea that it’s possible, and number two, when you spent your entire life being told it’s not possible. So I just want to help women do that stuff. And for me, it’s the work of my life. I love that.

00:37:12

Thank you so much for sharing that. Thank you for being on this podcast. I’ll make sure that we have all your information in the show notes so that my people can check you out, take advantage of your freebie, and be part of your program. So thank you so much, Corinne. I appreciate this.

00:37:28

Thank you.