Creating a Life That Feels Like You - Ben Depraz-Brenninkmeijer

TUCP Intro/Outro: Thank you for tuning in to The Ultimate Coach podcast, a companion to the transformative book The Ultimate coach written by Amy Hardison and Alan D Thompson, each conversation is designed to be a powerful wake up call, reminding us of what's possible for you and your life. So if you're on a journey to expand your state of being, this podcast is for you.

Welcome to The Ultimate Coach podcast, where we explore the transformative journeys of those who lead with authenticity, courage and deep intention. Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by Ben Depraz-Brenninkmeijer, a coach who has worked with leaders and visionaries around the world, guiding them to unlock their full potential through clarity, courage and long term commitment. Ben's perspective on growth, transformation and what it means to truly live a big life is inspiring. We will talk about how adversity shapes us the hero's journey and his unique experience translating the ultimate coach into French, this conversation is going to be packed with insights. So stick with us. Will you welcome Ben to the podcast? It's an honor to have you with me today.

Ben Depraz-Brenninkmeijer: I think it's nice to be here with you.

So I'm gonna start with your hyphenated last name. And it is pretty difficult to pronounce it, too. Yes. Will you tell us? Why is it hyphenated? What is the meaning?

Ben Depraz-Brenninkmeijer: Sure. So Depraz is actually my birth name. It's the name of my father, so that's French, and the Blaine Meyer side is my wife's name. It's a Dutch name. So when we got married in the UK in 2017 we we both decided that we would go double barrel because we wanted a common name, but we thought as a symbol of union, that having both of our names together really, really worked. But of course, in terms of practicality, it's held because this name is really hard to pronounce. It doesn't fit in most of the, you know, boxes that you have on, like airplane little papers when you have to put your names in. And so we've made our life really difficult. And the funny story is that in 2019 in February, that's the first time I met Steve. I was going to Steve Chandler's ACS in Phoenix, and I managed to go to Steve hardison's house a little bit to meet him and speak with him for a little while, and at some point he asked me, he wouldn't mind me sharing this, but he asked me, you have to tell me how you pronounce that last name of yours, basically like you said early on today. And so I just, I just laughed, and I said, I said it out loud, and then I said, just, but you know, just call me Ben, like, Ben is good. And then he picked up on this. And he was like, Aha, Ben is good. Ben is good. This is great. And then he just went all in with this idea that you know Ben is good, that there are some people that can live their life with just their first name, like Elvis or Madonna. And he was basically suggesting that I could be one of them that people would just know me by Ben, instead of, you know, my full name, which, at the time felt like so grand and so a bit too much. I really kind of, I was like, yeah, yeah, okay, whatever. But then two years ago, two and a half years ago, nearly three years ago, I left my previous company that I was working in, and I had to create a new company that was going to be my own, as a coach I was going to run solo. And I thought, What am I going to call it? And then suddenly, one night, I didn't have the name in mind. I didn't know what to do. Thought everything was a bit meh. And suddenly one night, I realized that the Ben is good sentence that Steve had shared with me as a kind of joke, but also as a seed the acronym formed the word big, which then I thought, wow, in coaching, this is great, actually, because we we want our clients to be the biggest version they can be of themselves. We want them to have big goals. I want to remind myself of who I can be, and so that's where I decided to call my company big coaching. So when people ask me what big stands for, it actually just means Ben is good, which is like a funny reminder for me, and also an explanation of how complicated My name is to say. So we could go without it. Anyway, long winded story, but few things related to the name,

But it's a great story. Thank you for sharing that story with us. Good thing. I asked how to pronounce your name. Okay, then I want to ask something else to you. You know, I know for a fact that you have lived a fascinating life, performing as a break dancer, putting high level leaders, and now living near Bordeaux in France, how have the twists and turns of your path shaped the coach you are today?

Ben Depraz-Brenninkmeijer: It's a really good question. I think I'll mention a few of the big pillars that I can see looking back that really shaped me. Of course, it's easier in hindsight, but as a child, probably like many other children, I was really fascinated with superpowers and magical beings. And, you know, I used to dream that I would wake up in the morning and be able to control electricity or the wind or fire or different things like this and like it was a very common repetitive theme in my dreams. I read a lot of books around heroes and legends and myths and so, you know, Homer, and I was just into it from like 678, years old, a lot. And so I think secretly, I've always wanted to have special abilities, and much later on, so I'm now jumping ahead already, but much later on, I realized that in coaching, one, I have found a special ability that I have, like an ability to be with people and to understand how they see things and see the gaps, listen for the gaps in how they paint a tapestry of their life and their beliefs in who they think themselves to be, and I'm able to then help them see those gaps and change the perceptions they want to change. And so that's really happens to be that coaching for me revealed superpower that I that I had, listening to people and being with them, but also I think it helps me look for that in other people, and that's something I aspire to continuously. I'm not saying I'm doing it perfectly everywhere, far from it, but I think it's a pretty good ingredient to have as a coach to be looking for. Where is your client powerful? Where's your client having some ability that they're not they're taking for granted, or they're not seeing, Oh, it's still dormant. So I guess that's one thing from my sort of childhood that really informs my my coaching today, and another one which really helped me discover that I wanted to be working in psychology, was actually my my sister in our teenage years. We're very close. She's two years older than me. We've always been close. And when we were teenagers, she was brilliant, she's still brilliant, but she really struggled with mental health. She really struggled with depression, and I remember feeling completely first of first hurt for her and for the sort of turmoil that that brought to our lives, but also completely powerless, having no understanding of what was going on and how come with the same life, same circumstances, we ended up in such different places, her and I in terms of how we saw the world and how we considered ourselves and and so I think in my naive, carefree view of the world at the time, that was probably the real first seed of what's going on behind the face inside the mind of everyone. What are the stories we're telling ourselves, and how come some of these can really destroy us, and others can really lift us up. And who determines that, and how do we shape those? So I didn't go straight away in psychology at the time, but again, a few years later, when I was searching for a professional purpose, the only thing that came back to mind was her experience, and my experience with her and wanting to help people with the stories they tell themselves. So yeah, that's just two, two aspects of my personal life that I think very much led the way towards coaching, even though I didn't know it at the time. Of course,

Oh, beautiful. But also I want to ask about break dancing. Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, sure.

Ben Depraz-Brenninkmeijer: Well, when I was 12 years old, I lived in Thailand from nine to 12 years old, and when I was 12, I came back to France, and I think it was, it was a cool thing. That only a few people were doing. It wasn't like very widespread where I was in the southwest, but it looked very cool. And I think at the time, I was really looking for something that could be I was really into physical feats, sports of all kinds. I also kind of really liked the tension. I liked being on stage. And so I think this thing really seemed acrobatically, really, really awesome, demanding as well. You can't just wing it. And the dance school that I registered in at 12, also, we were like two boys in the class with probably 10 or 12 girls, which at the time, was extremely incentivizing element. I would say it's funny, right? Because when you look at break dancers, you think they're mostly guys. But what you have to learn as a in a dance studio, in particular, if you go in the streets, yeah, you'll have plenty of men, but in a dance studio, it's often mostly women, or let's say girls. So yeah, I did that from the age of 12 to about 19. It was my thing outside of school. It was the only place I hung out. And I really loved it. I loved the thrill of the shows. I loved the pushing yourself every time to try to do new tricks. There was always pain involved, but a good pain, like if you know the pain that you go to bed and you feel like achy everywhere, but you know you've worked out really well, and at the same time, it's always in music and and in hip hop and in that whole world, there's a lot of camaraderie, actually, that looks on the surface like it's a bit aggressive, and You've got rappers that are swearing and so on. But in reality, when you're doing battles, they call battles, which is like one team against the other, and we're dancing as a contest. There's a lot of respect, there's a lot of provocation, but it's a game, and everybody knows it's a game, and afterwards, there's no ill will or anything. There's also respect for the other team. So I guess I never really reflected too much on it, but I think it it taught me that it could be fun to strive to be the best, not as a way to put others down, but more in a in a playful, fun way, where we're all trying to do that and it's fair, and actually, we can all learn from each other. So I think that stayed with me afterwards. I'm still striving for that in my own world now of coaching, but it doesn't have to be what's the word zero sum game?

Yeah, and while we were talking before, in our earlier conversation, you mentioned adversity, and you shared a moment in your life when adversity transformed you, how you learned to see it as a blessing. Would you care to share that with us?

Ben Depraz-Brenninkmeijer: I've really seen it, first of all, with hundreds of people now, and I'm sure most coaches will have experienced that their clients, adversities, I would say, all the time, are actually the cause or the source of extraordinary capacities or extraordinary blessings in their life. And we often say, I have to credit one of my mentors, Gal Stiglitz, who runs a company and I discover, called I discover in London. He shared this with me. We often say it's despite, you know, he became so and so, despite his father being an alcoholic, or she became so and so, despite her mother abandoning her age too. And actually, he was saying to me every time, it's never despite, it's always because. And if you, if you work with those people, and you look into their story, and you ask them what happened as a reaction, and you just look for the thread of the story and the cause and effect reactions that people engaged in, I've seen it hundreds of times that you just link back their greatest superpowers and achievement now to to their pain and to whatever trials and adversities they had to face. So then in my own, you know, world, I mentioned already something about my my sister's mental health issue, but then add my own versions of what I relate to is adversity. But when I started my professional career, I worked in investment banking for a little bit, and very quickly, I hated it, but I felt extremely I didn't feel stuck, but I think I really felt ashamed that I hated it. And so, you know, it was like this path that was supposed to be prestigious and successful, and here I was struggling to justify why the heck I was there 1516, hours a day doing things that felt most of the time pretty, pretty meaningless. Yeah, and sure, I was at an entry level job, but even looking up 1520, years down the line, I didn't want the life that that my managing director had, or or the people up there. There's nobody, they were brilliant, but nobody that I aspired to to to be like or to emulate, even though, as human beings, they could be really, really smart and really kind. And so I was really confused for a period of time, and not confused in a nice way. You know, I had moved from France to the UK. I had broken up with my previous girlfriend to kind of go live this life, you know, early career, work hard, and here I was thinking, that's not what I want to do. I have no idea what I want to do. And so that that led to a year and a half, a few months of really, really dark sort of self esteem dropping like a stone and feeling like a failure and being ashamed of letting people know that I was kind of lost. And then again, thankfully, right right time, right place. I was like the frog that the water was too hot, so I jumped out straight away instead of slow boiled for 15 years. So within 18 months of that, I had resigned and had already retrained in different things like hypnotherapy and CBT and so while I was in banking I had escaped on the weekends and little hours I could have in the evenings trying to study and consume all the content I could first for me in terms of confidence and how to find your purpose and your passion and typical personal development stuff first For me, and then I quickly realized I loved this content. This relates to the stories we tell ourselves. This relates to, you know, my sister and helping people. And so what was first my path out of a really painful place really quickly turned into an obvious sort of outlet of, this is what I'm going to do. I want to share this stuff I'm learning with other people. Yeah, within, within a year and a half, two years, I was out and starting to to coach, although I say quote coach, because at the time, I was 25 and didn't really know what I was doing, but I loved it, and it was a bit like the break dancing I followed. I think all my life, I really tended to follow quite quickly what I loved, not always. Sometimes in my head would get in the way. And I think investment banking was very much of a head decision, right? Something that would make people proud. Typical overachiever, you want your parents to be proud, etc. So that was my path. But I could never hold that for too long. That kind of head led decisions or journey. Very quickly, my frustration would just rise and I couldn't take it anymore, and then I would wake up to something that I had a lot of enthusiasm for, and I would go for that, and then that always led to good outcomes. In the end,

It's so interesting. I am the same as you. Actually, whenever I see something that really, really interesting and really attractive to me, mentally or spiritually, emotionally, I don't wait. I take action right away. And in the past, I used to feel bad about my time investment, or even funds that I invested on things that I wanted to create but didn't turn out to flourish. I used to feel bad about them now. I never feel that way, because I see them as a step that I had to take to come to where I am right now. So nothing is for nothing, yeah, and everything is to take us one step closer, one step ahead on the journey that we have and that this actually brings us to my question about the hero's journey I said earlier about the idea that our paths are not linear, much like the hero's journey. So when you work with your clients, how do you help them embrace their own unpredictable journeys and lean into fear and uncertainty.

Ben Depraz-Brenninkmeijer: It's a dance. I think it's a very fine line between the idea that we can, that we're a force in the world. You know that we are happening to life more than life is happening to us. And so we have agency, and we have the. Ability to influence things. And we want a locus of control that's inside, right? We want our own sense of I am a creator, and I am doing these things, and I am achieving things. So you want to develop that and people help them connect with it. But at the same time, I love to bring the dense of the complete opposite, which is also remembering that actually, at the end of the day, we control so little. There's so many opportunities and things that show up that have nothing to do with what we've done, or if they do, it's not in a way that we can conceive of intellectually, right? It's at a level of vibration or intention, if you like that. We have no idea how really it happened. Slash, it's other people's journeys that interact with ours and and so I want also to remind myself, and therefore to help my clients to have the humility of, Hey at the end of the day, like be open. Keep your eyes open. Stay aware of what what comes because the opportunities are are possibly showing up. And if you're just in a tunnel vision, going for your own thing, you're gonna miss, like, you know, 80% of the fun and of the reality of miracles that can show up. So it's more depending on what the person brings. I'll emphasize one more than the other. So if they bring this humility of things are bigger than me, and, you know, I don't control very much in my life, I tend to bring them more the idea of the of the hero that has to go on a journey, that it's in their hands. They have to answer the call, they have to step into the magical world, use allies and mentors and so on to fight the dragon and so on. So then it's more of the whole idea of take ownership, but if they come in very much, I've taken ownership my whole life. And, you know, I get what I want to achieve. I get it done. And now I'm stuck with this and that and the other thing, then I tend to want to bring the other part of come up with something bigger than yourself, realize that a lot is not in your hands, and how can you learn to be at peace with that and embrace that, open yourself to it, be more receptive, because I feel intuitively, that's the piece that they're missing then. So for me, it's it's a balance. It's an intuitive, intuitive balance between the two. I don't know that one tool works all the time, but I find that the hero's journey was a great inspiration for me. I watched a documentary on YouTube. You can find it. It's called Finding Joe by Pat something. I can't remember his last name, but finding Joe is an hour and 20 minutes documentary on the hero's journey with kids being filmed, and you have Deepak Chopra and Brian Johnson and lots of people commenting. And I watched this when I was in banking, trying to get out, and it just completely opened my world. So yeah, after that documentary, I looked into Joseph Campbell a lot more. Yeah. The whole, the whole idea of the hero's journey, felt like, this is what we do all the time. This is what we live all the time. We have one big one, which is our life, you could say, but then you have lots of smaller ones in our relationships or in our professional life, or in our health, or we're just constantly living mini hero's journeys. I find it a really nice, cute frame to understand our experiences, so I don't teach it, but I use it for myself.

Yeah, thank you for sharing that, because I'm gonna put the link for that documentary in the Episode Notes for anyone who would like to check it out. Thank you for mentioning that. Now I want to ask about your experience of translating the ultimate coach book into French. But before getting to that, I also know that you had a coaching arrangements, agreement with Steve Hardison for a little while. Can you start with that, and then get to the book and how you how it came up to translate it to French.

Ben Depraz-Brenninkmeijer: This is a long story. So you know you said before that you were like me, and that when really spoke to you mentally or spiritually, you just went for it, and I would cave at this, saying that I haven't always done that. And my experience with Steve was one of those, because I discovered TBO, l i t NFL, the video in 2016 super inspired by it. At the time, I was the apprentice of John P Morgan, who is part of the community. He created the course creating being, which I think was available at some point somewhere, probably still is, which is really good course. Actually, I was John's apprentice from 2016 to 2018 and halfway through that time, John. Hired Steve. So I was then one degree of separation, and I then, through my coaching with John, got some insight, and already then knew I'm really inspired by this Steve Hardison. I really want to work with him one day. But at the time, I was barely beginning, the money was far from something I had access to, and so it took me a very long time to actually end up in his office, working with him, like nine years in total, pretty much, you know, know about him in 2016 and then I told you I went to ACS in 2019 and that was the first time I met with him in person, and decided after that, well, I'm going to be back in this like I'm going to see him again. This wasn't to be with it was just somehow he accepted that I came and hang out to his house, at his house a little bit, and I decided to myself, I will be back. I'll see him again. I'll be his client, and that will happen by the time I turn 35 and he will be about that time. I calculated he would be about 70, and I thought, symbolically, that's a really nice moment. February 2019 I was 29 years old when I decided this, and I hired Steve in october 2024, last year for a 10 hour agreement, turning 35 in November. It's just like a really beautiful, symbolic moment. And one week after our last session, which was the, I think, 28th of February, of January, sorry, 2025 one week after a few days after he posts on Facebook that he's no longer, you know, doing be with sessions and chocolate cookie agreements and so on. So I thought, wow, that was from a nine year inspiration journey. I cut it short, but just, you know, a few months and and I would have missed the window, so that just all felt quite, you know, prophetic and perfectly aligned. But essentially, after I saw Steve in 2019 I didn't hire him straight away. And I think it wasn't the money at that point, if I'm really honest, I think I was just a bit scared of what it represented. I had the money I could have done a B with at the time, the 10 hour agreement was $25,000 I could have done that instead of paid the $45,000 years later. So it wasn't really a money thing. I just think the money was the excuse not to do it when I thought, whatever is going to happen there. It's just a bit too much for me at this time. It's like he was gonna bring out some growth in me, or I was gonna grow in a way that probably I somehow wasn't really fully ready for. So I kind of pushed it back for some time, and then in March 2020, COVID happened a year after. So you know that for a while, kind of, anyway, took it off the table, because from Europe, going to Phoenix wasn't going to be a walk in the park. And then after that, the book came out in 2021 so I was just delaying, procrastinating a little bit. The book came out, which obviously I, I was actually gifted the book at Christmas by my younger brother obviously read it. And I think it was in 2022, April, that the London experience happened, the ultimate experience. So I went to that, saw Steve again, again. Knew this is going to happen. I'm going to hire him, but, you know, still not quite growing to the low level that I'm really ready to take it on. But I started to see all these people doing amazing things. You know, Gabby Puma translating it in Spanish, and Quechua Eric love home, doing the website. Then John did the course. And there was just like, and I'm not too much on Facebook, but every time I was there, I saw something, and I thought, Jesus, like, what these people are on fire, like everybody's doing stuff. And it's beautiful, the idea that everything's gifted, nobody's really paid much or anything, for that matter, at least for the experiences I don't know, I don't know, the ins and outs of everything. But, and then I decided early 2023 so you know, each time there's like time passing in between. So it's not like I jumped in straight away. I was living my life. Working with Steve Addison was a bit of a long distance dream. He was still inspiring me from a distance like I still consumed videos, and the content that showed up on YouTube was amazing for me. So I was still learning from him, even though he didn't know it. And then, I think in about April, May 2023, I decided, hang on a second, like I could do this for the French audience that doesn't read English. One, I'm a bilingual coach. I mean, I'm French, but. Birth, and even though I learned everything in English, and most of my business is in English, I do have some French clients, so I also coach in French. My mother was a translator in a previous life so she could review my translation. I know the terms most, most of the terms, not the baseball ones or the Church of Latter Day Saints ones, but most of the personal development terms I know. So I can do the first draft, she can review. My sister's an author and a writer in French, so she could read the French version at the end to see that it's neat. And so I thought, I have the perfect like constellation to and I love the work of Steve artisan. And so I said, like, who? Why not me giving that? I have time. I'm running my own business. I have a lot of freedom. So I contacted Amy, and we agreed that I would take it on and and I did. And selfishly, I had two intentions. Well, one intention wasn't selfish, one intention was a gift to the French people that any French person that would want to read it and hopefully could benefit from it, I thought that's a beautiful gift. And two, I thought, even if nobody reads it, I'm going to do a PhD in Steve Hardison by translating this thing. Because it's a it's a big book, and I tell you, I've never read a book so in depth and so slowly than that one when I translated it, because, because you don't have a choice, you have to, I had to understand what every client meant. You know, in the vignettes like when they described the impact, I couldn't just be literal. I had to put myself in the client's shoes of what they felt or what they saw. But then I also had to put myself in Steve's shoes to see what he meant, what he what was it that he tried to say or that he tried to have as an effect to create such a such an impact on people as shared by them? So it was amazing to be able to, and literally had to imagine myself being Steve or being facing Steve. It's so many scenes. So I got all my value from doing it. And it was just, it was basically me doing it for me. And then if it can help other people, then great. So it was fantastic. I spent, you know, a few 100 hours working on this, enrolling my my family into it, and it's just worked out perfectly. It took a bit longer than I thought it would, mostly for the for the rereadings and stuff, but in total, I finished it by october 2024, so like almost 18 months. And by halfway through, I was like, Okay, I have a baby now. I might have another one. I'm gonna turn 35 soon. I want to hire Steve before, before all this, you know, grows and it's too late, but I decided I'm not gonna hire him until the book's finished. So then that became my own self agreement, that I had to finish the translation properly, and then I would reach out to him, which I did in October, and then I wanted to do 10 hours, and we started at the end of October, and finished at the end of January, and now we're end of Feb, and we're speaking. So it was a very long decade trajectory. I didn't act on it right away, but, but it was always there, you know, I always knew it's coming one day. I'm just not ready somehow, and then, and then that became the time where I was ready. And it was beautiful.

Well, the story is beautiful, and I'm sure experiencing it was even better. And while you were telling your dilemma around when to hire him, how to do it, am I ready or not, I see that. And I'm sure you are seeing the same thing with your clients too. Some clients, in my experience, they come and they say I wanted to work with you for a long time, but I think now I am ready. So in coaching, it is an important factor for the client to be ready and committed 100% present, because otherwise we don't get as much from the work. They don't get as much. I have clients who get 1,000% and I have clients who get 40, 50% so that makes the difference. That's why, actually, I don't believe in pursuing potential clients, because they are not ready. If they were ready, they would show up themselves in the first place.

Ben Depraz-Brenninkmeijer: So you are ready, it really took me some time to get what you're sharing here. I used to be more, much more attached. Maybe it's a. Long energy thing when you start a business. It was my case, at least. But I definitely had more of this idea of like, okay, I need to, I need to make it work. So I need to create clients. And even though I was following, you know, the prosperous coach approach from rich lady and Steve Chandler ever since 2016 still, I was always like, quote, unquote, pushing. And took me a long time to see that, actually, yeah, if people are not able to step into it, from from themselves, almost that, that almost I try to contribute to persuade them, they're going to leave a lot of value on the table. And if I had worked with Steve earlier, I mean, I would have gotten some great stuff, probably, but I would have missed a lot that I was able not to miss here because I came not with an issue to fix, not with I've got this problem in my life. I came completely open saying, Wow, this is, this is the equivalent of my somebody said that to me. He was like, Oh, so this is your kind of Ferrari. So he meant by that, it's your present to yourself. And I said, Yeah, exactly. It's not. I don't, I don't need, by that point, I really felt like I don't need to work with Steve. I just really want to, almost as a as a child like joy, you know, if buying a toy, that's really great. Obviously, I didn't buy him, but I bought some of his time. And so it's a different facet to how a lot of people might engage in coaching. Often they probably have more of a challenge or something they really want to work through, and it wasn't really my case, but even so, what you say is absolutely right that their level of readiness makes so much difference, and that helped me understand a lot of the prosperous coach approach of not being needy, of actually slowing it down, of actually checking if the person, are you really ready to do this? Are you sure, like this is not going to be what you what you imagine you're going to have other commitments that get in the way not to, not to kind of play this tactic of trying to be hard to get literally, I'm vulnerably trying to check that, that they're not pushed in any way into this. But that's only like a recent years evolution of how I'm showing up, compared to, you know, the previous or the early years, where I was very different.

Yeah, and the word push is a good word to use, because I don't like the push. I like the pull. They need to feel the pull to urge you as their coach and and it is the same for anything and everything in my life. For example, if there's something that I am pushing, I know that the possibility of that turning out to be something really majestic or amazing is quite low. But if there's a real pull and real need from the other side, that they pull you, or that project pulls you really, then the outcome is exponentially much more beautiful.

Ben Depraz-Brenninkmeijer: That's beautiful. I'll keep that in mind. Never heard it that way. It's really great.

Thank you. So I'm coming to my signature question now, and I want to ask you, from the questions on the back of the book, or questions in the before you begin section, which one resonates with you the most at this point in your life and why? So

Ben Depraz-Brenninkmeijer: I looked at them again, and I'm going to take a little bit of a segue. It's the early questions, who am I being as a partner, a parent or friend? Who am I being as a leader? Except I would just remove the as and that came from something that showed up in one of my sessions with Steve, I was speaking about a challenge I had with a client recently, someone who I lost my state of presence with when we're in conversation, and I think we kind of both triggered each other a little bit, and it's quite a rare thing, but it sort of threw me off a little Bit. There was some self judgment into it. And then after that, I haven't had contacts with this person, you know, even yet. I tried to reach out, but, but there's nothing coming back. So it's been something quite unpleasant to work with as a coach, to be like, Okay. One, I made a mistake, slash, I didn't manage this greatly. Two, this is not even something I'm managing to repair right now, because I need the other person to speak to, and so I had to deal with those feelings and the judgments that came. And so I shared this with Steve, and one of the things he asked me to do was just to sit with the question, Who am I being in this situation, even after I started to do some forgiveness and. On myself some forgiveness for the other person. I thought, Okay, I'll sit with that. And and I did, and I really saw more levels, like subtler levels of Oh, even as I forgave, and, you know, want to bless this person and wish them well, I noticed that there's a bit of like moralistic superior energy to me that somehow I'm the good one, because I at least I forgive, and they didn't even just sitting, thank you Beck, even just sitting with that question got me to really see more subtler levels of how I still had a little bit of guilt and I still had a little bit of resentment, and I still had just with that one question. And so for me, it's not one particular area of life that's interesting to me at the moment, around confidence or around whatever creating miracles or I love I want to be only with this practice of when I get frustrated or I get snappy or I get a bit tense, like really practicing sitting with Who am I being like right now? Not as a oh, let me see what declaration I can use. We don't need that. In a way. It's literally just watching and observing the different ramifications and levels. From a witness perspective, I found it extremely powerful. And I think if, if that would be my only practice, forever like every day, that would probably be it for me. So this is how I would answer that question.

This is beautiful, and it reminds me of Eric love Holmes, three steps of being. He says we are always being, no matter what we can observe our being and see where we are right now, and if it doesn't aligned with who we want to be, then we can shift our being, and we can do that any moment. And

Ben Depraz-Brenninkmeijer: I do think I love that simplicity of these three steps. And I I I do believe that the second step, maybe naturally, or most of the time, would lead to the third, because just the awareness of it already gives you access to to change it if you choose to, if it's proper awareness, not a not an associated, oh, yeah, I realized that I am like this. So how do I change it? Well, no, with the context of the understanding, once you realize that you're being like this, that's enough to realize that you have a choice to be something else in that very same token,

Absolutely! Like step three is the automatic next step of step two. Yeah, beautiful and rapid fire questions. Now, okay, who would you invite to the ultimate dinner party? Who would be your dream guest to have?

Ben Depraz-Brenninkmeijer: My goodness, that's supposed to be rapid fire, yes, the ultimate dinner party. Wow. My dream guest. I mean, that might be a cop out that I think I probably want to invite my wife. Oh, that's so sweet. No, no, but I mean that literally, I and say she's been my first coach we met when I was in banking feeling really low, and she opened my eyes so much to the freedom to do things differently, the freedom to be and the freedom to act. She embodied that for me, she's been super encouraging and supportive all through my exploration of hypnosis and NLP and coaching and things that, for me were really wild and very different to what I've ever looked at before. And so, you know, I She's seen my journey. She's been inspired from the sidelines, but she's never it was kind of like that's that's your journey. She never tried to join and I never pushed anything on her. But if there was a dinner like this, I thought it would be a great way to to show her and help her experience for herself some of what I've lived so that that's the person that comes to mind.

What a beautiful acknowledgement for your wife. So lovely. Second question, what is your favorite way to relax? How do you unwind and recharge when you are not working?

Ben Depraz-Brenninkmeijer: Oh, I think I have to say sports is probably a big one. It's shifted a lot from my break dancing days, but lately it's a lot of swimming or running, but anything that's going to be quite physical, I think is, is something I enjoy. I enjoy obstacle course races. I enjoy triathlons, things like this. I don't, I don't do them very often, but the training in between helps. So that's one thing. And weirdly enough, reading. I read like crazy. I love reading, and most of the time it's relaxing. It's my way of shutting out all the conversations, all the expectations, all the other things I have to do, and I can just i. Be in that world, whether it's fiction or non fiction, doesn't matter.

Wow. How interesting that you mentioned reading, because it's my next question. Which book you have on your nightstand right now, which one you're reading?

Ben Depraz-Brenninkmeijer: Oh, my God, I have plenty. I have plenty, but the one that I'm reading right now is called forgiveness. Is power by William Fergus Martin. I think it's actually very well written for a book on forgiveness. It's very nuanced. Feels very solid. You know, some stuff I shared about forgiveness to other people can be a bit esoteric or a bit too spiritual for them. So it's kind of hard for them to access, like the way of mastery, for example, I love but it's very Christian in its approach, so it doesn't resonate with everybody. This one, I find, is extremely well written for any lay person doesn't have to have a spiritual inclination, right, or a religious one. So that's one I have. But if I can plug in another one while I'm here, sure this one I thought was amazing, The Art of Possibility by Rosa Moon Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. She's like a psychotherapist, Coach person, and he's the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. And together as married couple, they're writing a book on 12 practices to engineer possibility that are mind shifts, that he uses the orchestra as a as a tangible place to lead and, you know, maneuver egos and make people work together and so on. And she's bringing the more psychological piece and framework around it. And it's a, I thought it's a brilliant, brilliant little piece of change work. So for any coach out there, for anyone I recommended big time.

I'm gonna add them in the Episode Notes too, for the ones who wanna check them out, thank you for sharing both books Ben and thank you for such a meaningful and inspiring conversation. I am sure everyone listening will take something valuable from your insights, whether it's learning to embrace live tweets and turns leaning into fear or seeing the hidden gifts in adversity. And for those who want to connect with you or learn more about your work, where's the best place for them to find you? I know we will have some links in the Episode Notes too, but let's hear from you too,

Ben Depraz-Brenninkmeijer: Sure. Well, thank you first of all for having me here and letting me share all this. This was really amazing for me to be able to reflect and express different bits of my journey. So I'm very grateful for the opportunity. People can either find me on LinkedIn with my very long last name, Benjamin depraz Bernier. They can email me at create, at Ben depress.com or or just go on my website. My email is there as well, which is big dash coaching.com

Wonderful. Thank you again, Ben, it's been a pleasure until next time. Everyone listening to us, please keep embracing your magic and following your bliss. Have a lovely day.

TUCP Intro/Outro: Thank you for joining us today. If there's someone you know who could benefit from this conversation, please share this episode with them. Also check out our website, being movement.com, you'll find valuable resources and links to connect to an engaging and wonderfully supportive community. Together, we can inspire and support each other on the path to a greater understanding of being until next time, take care and be kind to yourself you.