Lin Eleoff is our very special guest on today’s ModernMarried Interview. She is a life coach and author and a very dear friend. I am so delighted to share her insights about life, work and marriage with you today!
My favorite part of the interview is her grandmother’s wisdom about hubbies and puppies! Read on for a sassy and wise piece of marriage advice you will not soon forget.
Tell us about yourself in 5 sentences…
I am a lawyer who happens to be a life coach who happens to be a business woman. I’m also an author, podcaster, and lip gloss aficionado.
Most importantly, however, I am a wife and mother (of four) and am madly in love with my family.
I have a boyfriend who happens to be my husband who happens to be my best friend.
I always remember that I was a girl first, and as a woman I am committed to loving and cherishing the little girl who will always be inside me and who keeps me in integrity.
Tell us about your latest project…
My latest project is a book called, Gutsy Glorious Life Coach: How to Turn Your Life Coaching Practice Into A Soulful Money-Making Business.
This book is BIG for me because, years ago, when I was in master coach training with Martha Beck, she told me that I “just had to figure out a new way to be a lawyer.” What? It took me a while to figure out what that meant (because, of course, Martha wasn’t going to tell me).
What I have came to realize is that becoming a lawyer, or a life coach, didn’t make me a business woman.
That’s the part I had to figure out. Once I did I was able to redefine what it meant, for me, to be a lawyer: someone who could coach other coaches on how to launch, grow, and protect their online businesses, with a heavy dose of what I call “Extreme Self Coaching”–because your business is an AFGO: Another Freakin’ Growing Opportunity and it really messes with your mind.
So my book is a combination of two things: how to use your business as an opportunity to grow yourself up and into the woman you are meant to be; and all the action steps (there are 47!) you must take in order to turn your life coaching practice into a thriving online business.
Why do you do what you do?
I do what I do because I am deeply committed to helping women (myself included) get their shiitakes together.
I truly believe that we have more than a right to pursue happiness; it is our duty to find a way to be happy, however you may define that. It’s our thank-you gift to the Universe for having given us the opportunity of a lifetime–literally.
To do that, you must defend your integrity, because, to me, there is nothing more important than to live in integrity.
One of my favorite management principles is “Stop, Start, KEEP” the idea is that there are things we should stop doing, start doing and keep doing that will make us successful. What should we “stop, start, and keep” to make our relationships stronger?
I think in order to make our relationships stronger we need to stop expecting other people to “make” us happy.
We need to start taking full responsibility for every aspect of our lives and re-arrange all the moving parts so that they are aligned with how we truly want to live and be in this world.
And finally, I think we need to keep saying “I love you,” even when the going gets tough, even when it’s the last thing you feel like saying, even when other people stop loving us; we do this, not for their sake, but for our own.
Staying in love is always a choice.
The secret to a happy marriage is…not expecting the person you married to become someone else so that you can be happy.
What I know is true about love is… that it doesn’t really come from other people–it comes from within. No matter how much someone may say they love you, you’ll never feel it to its max capacity if you don’t feel it in yourself, first.
The single most important thing we can do for the person we love is… to remove all conditions for loving them–love them at all costs, whether you stay or you leave, love them through it all.
The biggest myth about marriage is that those who fight must have a bad marriage. It makes me proud that our marriage can endure it all. Sadly, I’ve seen marriages fall apart without barely a fight.
I can create a life I love by…staying in my own business.
When I get involved in other people’s business (what I think they should think-feel-do with their lives) I fall out of love with my own life. How crazy is that? But when I stay focused on what is most important to me, I feel like I’m in love… with everything.
Favorite quote about marriage: “A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.” By Mignon McLaughlin
Best advice: My grandmother, bless her heart, once told me that when I got married, all I had to do was treat my husband the way I would treat a puppy… give unconditional love, lots of praise, and play with him a lot. Best marriage advice ever.
The most surprising thing I’ve discovered through my work is how much of a non-conformist I am at heart. It serves me well, but I’ve had to learn how to reign in the rebel spirit in me at times; I’ve come to realize there’s a big difference between an idea that pushes the envelope and one that just rips it to shreds for no good reason.
Lin Eleoff is a lawyer, life coach, and business woman. In her “former life” she was an award-winning television news journalist and anchor.
Lin is the author of Gutsy Glorious Life Coach: How to Turn Your Life Coaching Practice Into A Soulful Money-Making Business, an Amazon Best Seller in Marketing for Small Business.
Her mission is to show women how starting a business is just an AFGO: Another Freakin’ Growth Opportunity. Marriage, she says, is also an AFGO– one that has caused her to grow herself up, a lot.
As a life and business coach, Lin helps fellow coaches get unstuck when it comes to turning their coaching practices into thriving online businesses. As an intellectual property attorney, she shows business women how to cover their “assets” online so that they’re not exposed to liability.
She can be found at LinEleoff.com and CoverYourAssetsOnline.com.
