Self Esteem Coaching: A Special Interview with Lisa Romano

There are times when everyone needs a little help in their life. Whether talking with a pastor, a personal friend, or one of your close relatives, Talk Therapy can help you understand your life in clearer terms.

Lisa Romano works as a personal trainer and has been helping people sort out their lives for over ten years and has been writing since she was seven. Lisa's approach is in learning to first "hear" her clients talk about their lives in detail so she can develop enough understanding to "feel" what they are experiencing.

It can be a very difficult process to turn your feelings into eye-opening and spiritual revelations about events in your life and the possibilty of obstacles being permanently removed can be extraordinarily empowering. This is the kind of work that Lisa Romano thrives on. Lisa enjoys empowering people. Join me in celebrating Lisa's work by finding out more about Lisa Romano.

1. What made you decide to become a self esteem coach and why is it important to you?

After my divorce I needed to make an income. I had always loved weightlifting, so I decided to become certified as a personal trainer. I knew if I did something I loved I could make money at it. What I was not expecting was to discover how tuned-in to people I was. While training clients, I found that I was able to empathize with them at a deep level. Because I had survived so much in my own life, it became natural to want to show people how to climb whatever hurdle they may have been experiencing in their own lives. As a personal trainer, clients let me into what was going on inside them emotionally. When I sensed pain, I felt compelled to help them heal it, whatever the issue was.

I found that my clients needed more help with areas of self esteem and empowerment than they did with toning their glutes. This revelation caused me to expand my own view of my work and to add "Self Esteem Coaching" as part of what I offer.

Because we are only as successful as we are peaceful, I felt compelled to want to bring peace to my clients by helping them unravel what thoughts and feelings might be holding them back from achieving their ultimate goals. In this way, I help heal the world one mind at a time. I believe in human consciousness and in this kind of work, I get to see my own dreams come true by becoming a part of this movement towards raising human awareness.

2. What do you enjoy most about your writing and why is important to you?

I enjoy writing because it soothes me. I have always been a deep thinker. I began writing when I was 7 and have never stopped. I never felt quite accepted by others, perhaps because my mind tended to contemplate things so deep other 7 year olds thought I was weird. Writing is something I get to experience with me, through me, and thus helps me stay connected to who I really am. Writing makes me feel real.

3. How long have you been coaching others?

I have been professionally coaching others for 10 years, but I recently realized I have always been the "go to" person for the people in my life. From way back to when I was a little girl, I was the one others came to for emotional support and for help figuring things out. I think I have been a coach all my life in some way or another.

4. Tell us about one profound moment where you helped someone break through something that was holding them back and how it affected you personally.

Every meeting I have with a client is profound, but one of my most memorable experiences happened with a client much older than I. Helping her heal at her age, moved me so deeply because I knew I had made a difference in how she would spend the rest of her life.

I met this beautiful 70 yr old woman at a womans meeting I was doing a lecture at. After my speech, she approached me and asked if I would "train" her at her home. I began meeting her once a week for exercise sessions, but very quickly our meetings became about much more than bicep curls.

As time past, this glorious woman began revealing to me facts of her life that at times made me want to cry. She had been married to a man who had had an affair years prior who h ad abused her mentally as well as emotionally all the while they were married.

As she shared with me, I could sense the need in her for a healing. This womans self esteem had been shattered by the ego of her husband, and it was now my desire to help her regain her identity.

We spent hours each week piecing together what aspects of her personality and belief systems had contributed to her husbands ability to cripple her in the emotional way he did. She learned to take accountability for falsing believing that her worth was through her husband. She realized she always put him first, above and before her self, and in that way she gave up her own esteem for her self.

Slowly my client began to see how growing up in a family that valued the idea of a woman "depending and needing" a man had set her up for failure in her own marriage. Her conditioning told her she could not make it on her own, which crippled her self esteem. She married a narcissist who fed off of her insecurities and used them to enhance his own ego. It truly was a dysfunctional match made in heaven.

As she learned to "see" her programming, she learned to change it. Because she could understand how her own thoughts had fueled her husbands control over her life, she became more confident in believing she could change. Over the few years we spent together, it was my job to guide her through the re-learning phases. She needed to be re-programmed to hear her own voice rather than the voices of her loved ones. When she realized it was her mothers voice that had crippled her so long ago, she could release it and begin to hear her own.

It was holy to experience this spiritual rebirth, especially at her age. Many days I left her home in tears because what was happening was so beautiful.

I watched this 70 year old woman shed years of pain before my eyes. It was like watching a caterpillar morph into a butterfly right in front of me. The joy t hat swelled within me knowing I had helped heal the mind, body and soul of this woman at her age, brought an abundance of light into my own being. I had been an instrument of peace in her life. This fact is more rewarding than any amount of money or any "thing" valued by this material world.

5. If you had to pick one thing you could communicate what is the most important thing you can tell someone struggling with self esteem?

The one thing I would communicate regarding self esteem that I feel is ultimately important, is for people to know that at our core we are all perfect. The self is not the part of us that feels. It is not the part of us that wonders what we want for dinner. It is not the part of us that enjoys bowling or sushi. It is not the part of us that believes it needs others to validate us. It is not the part of us that looks in the mirror and hates the way we look.

The "self" is the part of us we may not even know we have, which is why so few people possess "true connection to their higher self".

The "self" is the part of us that gets to observe our thoughts, our feelings and our behaviors. It is a pretty deep concept. It is necessary to spend time alone considering it because to know ones "self" it is necessary to quiet the mind so that we can tap into that awareness that is truly us.

When we learn to be quiet enough to connect to this awareness that is our "self" we reach peace. The more we spend time actively seeking this place, the easier it is to quiet the "other" unimportant voices in our heads. We learn to hear our own voice for the first time, and it is perfect, divine and good.

Self esteem is found only when we find our "self".

6. In this interesting journey called the human experience why is it so important to know your "self".

I always say that we humans are not German Shephards. What I mean is, that being human is much more than simply living and behaving on instinct like dogs or animals in the jungle do. We humans have a consciousness that other mammals do not, yet rarely do we tap into that consciousness in a true way.

Being human, truly human is to climb the emotional and intellectual e volutionary ladder that leads to "AWARENESS". If you are continually angry you are NOT aware. If you live in fear, you are NOT aware. If you worry constantly, you are NOT aware. Instead you are stuck in the ego where all the illusions of the material world live. You have yet to break free of the needs of others or of your own to fit in and to try and control all that exists around you.

To know the "self" is to know that the only voice you need to hear is your own. To know the self is to know that we are all connected by the intelligence that created us all. To know the self is to know that it is not enough to "simply react" all the time. To know the self is to know that whatever it is it is, and it is all good no matter what, even if what is is uncomfortable.

To be human is to know that awareness is possible. If you are human and yet simply react to anger like beasts in the jungle, then you are more like a bear in the woods than you are a true human bein g. If you do not tap into awareness, then you have more in common with dogs than you do with humans who do know their "true self". Being born a warm blooded mammal does not guarantee the human experience.

7. How can talking to someone else about your problems or difficulties help you overcome them?

Talk therapy is essential to healing because feelings need to pass through us in order to leave us. When feelings go unattended they can often times cause our bodies to release negative hormones. These negative hormones cause inflammation and things like headaches and diarrhea, just to name two.

Negative emotions also cause damage to our spirits. They weigh us down like wet leaves. It is crucial to unzip our minds to allow our feelings to flow out of us. Otherwise they wind up controlling us.

8. How does pain help us learn?

Pain is a necessary part of life. When you have an infection in your appendix, your body signals there is a problem by firing up your nerve endings. This gets your brains attention and then your conscious mind gets you to the hospital. In essence pai n has saved your life.

It is the same with emotions. It is sad really. When we feel physical pain we look for solutions to heal it. When we feel emotional pain we look for ways to ignore it instead.

Emotional pain is a signal that we are in trouble and that we need to pay attention to a certain area of our life. Sadly because most of us are not "aware" or lack the esteem of a "self", we pretend things aren't as bad as they are and wind up alcoholics, depressed,adulterers or worse.

When you truly love your "self" you refuse to ignore the red flags because you respect your "self". You respect your "self" so much that you will not allow anyone or anything to steal your peace. When you love your "self" you don't run away from emotional pain. Instead you take it on and embrace it knowing it is there to signal danger. When you love your "self" you learn to fight for your peace. There is no room for denial anymore.

9. If someone would like to contact you for self-esteem coaching how would they go about speaking with you and what can they expect from you in the process?

Someone wanting to speak to me about "Self Esteem Coaching" would have to contact me through my email, website or blog. My email address is; lisaaromano@aol.com. My website is; http://www.healingtheselfwell.com and my blog is; www.healingselfesteem.blogspot.com.

What I do is first get in tune with what my clients are feeling. I "hear" them and learn to "feel" what they feel. Once I do that, I then seek to understand how this unique individual got to where they are and why. As I piece together their personal emotional puzzle, I help them ease into their reality. Once a client understands why they are the way they are, they begin to feel more confident because they have gained an understanding through a perspective they did not have before.

As perspective is gained, perception is changed. Through talk therapy I am able to gently guide people to a place of understanding that resides far beyond and above the whirlwind of emotion. Slowly old programming fades and the joy that is true sel f begins to emerge. I help people see what they can not because they are trapped in the eye of the emotional tornado that often times becomes their life. It becomes my goal to stand above the chaos and to help lift clients above what they are experiencing so that they can find the "self" they truly are.

I can think of no better way to spend my time on this earth while in this physical thing we call the "body".