FWM: Share your background.
As a child and teen, I always loved to write and to help people. When it came time to select a career path in college, I decided on the helping professions, and earned my bachelors in psychology and my masters and doctorate in counseling. In graduate school, I began working with college students and fell in love with it, so I pursued a career in college student affairs administration, where I worked for 13 years. While there, I started a side hustle writing resumes and also taught counseling and women’s leadership classes part-time. My son was born in 2009 and when he was 18 months old, I decided to turn my side hustle into my main hustle to have more time with him, and I’ve been running my business RESCRIPT Your Story full time ever since. It’s allowed me to do work that fulfills my purpose to help others live their best lives, while giving me the time with my son and husband that’s so important to me. RESCRIPT Your Story has evolved in the most amazing ways over the last 12 years. I’m blessed to provide my clients with positive psychology-based career and life coaching, organizational trainings and keynote speaking, and last year I published my first self-help book.
FMW: What is your mantra?
I have a personal mantra I’ve been living by most of my life, but with intentionality for over 20 years. My mantra is, “Treat everyone like they might be having a bad day.” We never really know what people are going through in their lives, so why not offer a smile, our attention, our conversation, and be kind. Our kindness could offer hope to someone dealing with struggles, alleviate some stress, or brighten up a tough day.
FWM: Tell us about your inspiring work as a Positive Psychology Coach.
I believe in seeking the strengths in all people and situations. I naturally see the good in others and in the world. I consider my perspective a healthy mix of realistic and idealistic! As a Positive Psychology Coach, I’m blessed to help my clients see their own strengths, wisdom, unique experiences, amazing accomplishments, and future possibilities. I get to help my clients leverage the resources within and around them to accomplish goals they once thought weren’t possible. Then, I get to celebrate with them each step of the journey. It doesn’t get much more blessed than that in my eyes.
FWM: You are a TEDx Talk Speaker. Tell us about your talk.
I can’t believe that last week marked the four-year anniversary of my TEDx Talk. It was one of the scariest and most awesome moments of my life! It had been a major goal of mine to do a TEDx Talk and I was turned down a few times before I got selected. I was the opening speaker, which was crazy intimidating! My talk, “Re-scripting the Stories We Tell Ourselves” focused on the importance of transforming the way we speak to ourselves so we can empower ourselves versus shut ourselves down. I shared my journey with negative self-talk and panic and how re-scripting my own self-talk and practicing gratitude completing changed my life. Afterwards, so many people came to talk with me individually and told me how my talk felt like I was speaking directly to them. It made me realize even more in that moment how much people really need strategies for becoming their own best advocate instead of their own worst antagonist.
FWM: You are a 5-time award-winning Author with a bestselling book, RESCRIPT the Story You’re Telling Yourself: The Eight Practices to Quiet Your Inner Antagonist, Amplify Your Inner Advocate, & Author a Limitless Life. Tell us about RESCRIPT.
RESCRIPT was inspired in large part from my TEDx Talk. I had been writing a self-help book for a long time that just didn’t have quite the right direction, something was missing. However, after my talk, I knew exactly where my book needed to go. Following the title and theme of my TEDx Talk, I created the RESCRIPT Framework, with each letter of the acronym focused of re-scripting a specific area of negative self-talk: Release Rumination, Engage Growth Goals, Seek Strengths, Challenge Catastrophizing, Restrict Regret, Invite Imperfection, Pursue Passion & Purpose, and Think Thankfully. RESCRIPT offers readers a guide for understanding how our self-talk becomes our story. Our internal voice is our life’s narrator. What we say to ourselves and about ourselves ultimately scripts our story of who we are, why we are or aren’t good enough, what we are or aren’t capable of, and what possibilities the future can hold for us. The RESCRIPT Framework offers readers specific strategies for quieting negative self-talk and becoming your own best advocate in order to achieve your life and career goals. Knowing that different strategies resonate with different people, I created a lot of different strategies people can try out in their lives to find ones that fit them best. It continues to make me so emotional when someone tells me how my book has changed their life. It’s like I still can’t quite believe it. It’s surreal. It’s one of my greatest blessings.
FWM: Can you share one “Practice to Quiet Your Inner Antagonist?”
One of my client’s favorite practices to quiet their inner antagonist is called Rewrite Your Rules. We all have personal rule books that we’ve created for ourselves, even if we don’t realize it. But for most of us, these rules are so long-standing and ingrained in our minds, they become automatic—we don’t even notice we are living by them. Or if we do, we often forget the most important thing—we wrote our rulebook, so if the rules are limiting us, we can rewrite them. Clues to a life-limiting rule—they often have words like should, shouldn’t, must, must not, never, ever, and always. For example, “I should never let anyone down,” “I must always say yes to helping someone out,” “I shouldn’t be so selfish to think about what I want,” and “I must not ever quit something I started.” To Rewrite Your Rules, you contemplate one perfectionistic, unreasonable, life-limiting rule (or two, or three) you’ve created for yourself about your thoughts, emotions, or behaviors. Then, you literally rewrite your rule to be self-compassionate, reasonable and liberating. Finally, you reread and remind yourself of your new and improved rule every time your inner antagonist tries to trick you into living by the old, limiting one. It has the most empowering impact when we realize we are in control of re-scripting our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors!
FWM: As a Life and Career Coach, what is unique about your program? Why do people come to you?
People come to me most frequently because they are feeling stuck personally and/or professionally and are looking for a guide and partner to offer strategies and accountability for them to achieve their goals. My clients are working on a vast array of goals, no two exactly the same. However, a common denominator for many is that they want to learn to quiet self-criticism, rumination and worry. They want to learn how to speak to themselves and about themselves in ways that are empowering, compassionate, calming, and hopeful. It’s this element that makes my process the most unique—my RESCRIPT Framework walks my clients through positively transforming their self-talk, which in conjunction with customized, goal-driven action steps, helps my clients achieve their greatest potential.
FWM: What has been the greatest form of inspiration in your life?
I’m always most inspired when I see a need, a place where I can help. This is when I’m most creative and most motivated. This is what inspired me to launch my business, to write my book, and to do many things in my life and work. Most recently, when we all found ourselves amidst a global pandemic and I realized how many people would lose their jobs, this need immediately inspired me into action. I thought, “There’s so much I don’t control, but what can I control? I can create free resources for job seekers.” I created a dedicated website listing all the companies hiring during the pandemic, as well as alternative ways to earn income online, job search resources, and financial relief resources. I also surveyed my network about their job search needs and created a free online career workshop series taking place on Fridays over four weeks. I think the ability to help has always been one of my greatest forms of inspiration.
FWM: Can you share a story of how your work has changed someone’s life?
One story that comes to mind is of a client I worked with who had been working unhappily in the same industry for her entire 15+ year career. She stayed in the industry because she felt like she had no other experience and hence no alternative possibilities. She struggled with self-esteem and believing in herself, her wisdom, her skills, and her future possibilities. We worked together to goal set, assess her true passions, identify her strengths, and research her options. Simultaneously, we worked on catching and re-scripting her negative, limiting self-talk. She worked really hard and it paid off. She ultimately uncovered her ideal industry, applied for positions, and landed her dream job along with a nice pay raise. She was dedicated and committed to personal and professional transformation and she created it!
FWM: What are you doing to support and inspire in your local community?
I believe deeply in service to the community. I feel it brings us out of ourselves and our own needs and takes us into a state of compassion, universality, and greater purpose to make a positive impact. I’ve been volunteering in the community formally and informally for over 20 years. Since my now 10-year-old son was five, we’ve been volunteering together because I want him to see service as a must, not an option. Our most prominent volunteering together is at our local food pantry and for our town’s annual community cleanup. I also volunteer annually to facilitate career workshops for a local non-profit for those who are unemployed and looking for work. And, I’ve been running a monthly wellness group that is free to the community at my hometown library for six and a half years. Our group has most of its original members, and it continues to grow into a bigger family each year. We are an ongoing source of support, encouragement, ideas, motivation, and inspiration for one another.
FWM: Why are you a Formidable Woman?
I feel that women who seek to empower and support other women are formidable women. I make this a core mission in my life and work. I’ve been teaching a women’s leadership course at Douglass Residential College, the women’s college at Rutgers University in New Jersey, for 10 years. Each semester I get the gift of helping young women find their voices and their power. I get to be a resource is helping them see their talents, strengths, and unique ability to have a positive impact in the world. And over the years, I’ve gotten to see my students grow into such positively formidable forces. Furthermore, I make this my mission in my coaching work with women. I want my clients to know that their voices, gifts, goals, and dreams matter—they matter. I also love to promote the work and services of my fellow women entrepreneurs. We need to support and champion one another! I’m also a formidable woman because I use my voice to speak up for what I believe in. I follow my heart, passions, and purpose to do good in the world, while constantly striving to set the bar high for myself in life and business. I work to set and achieve new goals for my business regularly. And, I work hard to be a role model for my son, to teach him the meaning of perseverance, compassion, and kindness. I teach him the importance of character, social justice, and being of service to your community and especially to those in need. I’m fortunate to have learned well from the formidable women in my life, my mom and my grandmothers.
FWM: What is next for you?
I plan to continue writing, coaching, teaching, volunteering, helping, and creating. These activities drive and inspire me. And, they allow me to connect with so many amazing human beings along my journey, including you, Jules.
Website: https://www.colleengeorges.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/drcolleeng
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drcolleengeorges
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