SNS97 Saturday Night Special - Interview with health Coach Bas Lebesque
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Welcome to tonight's Saturday night, special episode 97.
[00:00:04] Bas Lebesque: [00:00:04] I'm Bas Lebesque. And I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling, having the ability to overcome your limiting beliefs is key.
[00:00:24] And one way to inspire to do that is to listen to this. The inspired stewardship podcast with Scott Maderer.
[00:00:32]you woke up in the morning and then you would say, oh, my night was horrible. Only 5, 9, 5 hours tomorrow. This coming night will be the same and more. I feel exhausted again. And it, it's what you say. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. If you just start to change it It is possible.
[00:00:54] Scott Maderer: [00:00:54] Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly [00:01:00] desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you.
[00:01:17] Can impact the work.
[00:01:19]And tonight's Saturday night special with boss LeBas gay. I asked boss about his journey from a good career to actually following his calling. I espouse how to he had to over his own limiting beliefs so that he could then work with others to overcome theirs. And I asked boss to share some of his top tips.
[00:01:39] On overcoming your struggles with your own mindset. Now, one area that a lot of folks need some help with is around the area of productivity. Getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be really tough. I've got a [00:02:00] course called productivity for your passion.
[00:02:02] That's designed to help you do this and then to hold you accountable and walk with you so that you can tailor productivity, not just to be getting more done, but actually getting the right things done. What's more, we take the approach of looking at your personality and how you actually look at things in the world and tailor the productivity system to your personality.
[00:02:28] Cause the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type. But if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work, but there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone. And we help you do that and productivity for your passion.
[00:02:48] Check it out over@inspiredstewardship.com slash launch. Boss started his career in hotel management, working a hundred hours a week and smoking two packs a [00:03:00] day. He pivoted at least the first time and switched to working in banking and financial markets. After 12 years, he left this as his full-time job after taking a one-year sabbatical, but then he returned as a consultant.
[00:03:14] But in 2011, he started a health journey and eventually began to realize that it was a mental journey, as well as a physical one. He is now a health and lifestyle coach who helps others transform their life, mind, and body so that they can achieve true health. Welcome to the show boss.
[00:03:34] Bas Lebesque: [00:03:34] Thank you, Scott.
[00:03:35]Great to be here.
[00:03:37] Scott Maderer: [00:03:37] So we just talked a little bit in the intro about your journey and your career and how you've made several big changes in your life. And I think a lot of folks struggle to recognize the way that quote a good career like the hotel management career, the financial advising and financial work career, how those can become golden [00:04:00] handcuffs for people.
[00:04:01] Can you talk a little bit about your journey and what caused you to actually wake up for the need to make a change?
[00:04:07]Bas Lebesque: [00:04:07] I start, I started in my first job in a hotel in Shanghai and I started, I had to work a hundred hours a week, which was insane of course. But when that happened or when that was happening, it never occurred to me that I could.
[00:04:23] Stop or quit or get out, or he was like, I was brought up or raised with, is it you signed a CRA contract? You, if you follow it through. But even in the contract set, that I could leave at any time I want it to, but there was such a strong belief that you finish your contract.
[00:04:39] And my contract was going to be one year. So I did, I worked a hundred hours a week and. Then I came back to the Netherlands and I started to work in a hotel over here, but I was a night manager and I was only doing nights. So now it's working in hotel management for two years and I hadn't seen the light of day and I [00:05:00] was like, something needs to change.
[00:05:02]This is no life, I'm not, I don't want to, I don't want to sacrifice. Yeah. My life for this career, it wasn't that fulfilling. So I really meant I've made a conscious choice back down to leave hospitality. They, of course there's people that, that went into hospitality that didn't go as crazy as I did.
[00:05:23] But yeah, that for me was just a moment where I said, no, this isn't enough. Then I got into finance and I became a financial trader quite successfully actually the, I had the bonuses, I had the validation and I had it all. But still I felt something was who was missing. I wasn't just, I wasn't really as happy as I thought I could be.
[00:05:48]But dare. I dare. I was really struggling because now I was his, I had all this success and, I thought people looked up to me and and I also thought, if I'm going to give this up and I'm, what am I what [00:06:00] am I going to get? I was have all the success. If I give that up, I'll be living on the street.
[00:06:04] That's basically what I was telling myself, which doesn't make sense at all, but that's how I went. So that decision took a lot longer to let go of and to yeah. So I think I started thinking about quitting trading two years before I actually did. And one day I just said enough is enough and I resigned.
[00:06:26] And that was the beginning of a new life.
[00:06:30] Scott Maderer: [00:06:30] So let's dive into, it's interesting. Cause the first one where it was very obvious to you that it wasn't a great job, it was an easy decision. And the second one where you had at least what was outside of you. Tangible measures of success, good pay bonuses, living the high life.
[00:06:50] It took you a little longer to actually execute on the decision, even when you started feeling like something's not right. How did you talk a little bit about that [00:07:00] mindset shift? What actually began to make you move more in the direction of resigning?
[00:07:08] Bas Lebesque: [00:07:08] It was really about when I started to think about what was good, what my future was going to look like.
[00:07:15] Whether I, the, at a certain moment, the thought that I had to be in that dealing room for another 20, 30 years and trading just, Freaked me out somehow. I was like, ah, I can't do this. I don't want to do this. There's more we were it really goes back to, to, I think to my early life, when my mother passed away when I was 12 because of cancer and that really started.
[00:07:43] For me questioning what is, first of all, why is this happening? Did I do something to deserve this? This should happen to other people, but but also it's what is a good life? What is what is the meaning of life? How are you gonna, how are you gonna. My mother was [00:08:00] 38 when she died, and I didn't want to, she didn't, I don't think she regretted anything, but I don't want to come to the end of my life, whenever that is going to be.
[00:08:09] And look back and say, I've been in this career for 30 years and I should have left after five years, you knew you had to change something or you knew you desired something else. And that's. Yeah, that's really what started to shift my my, my focus, my attention, and that also helped me to work through my through my fears because I knew that on the other side of that fear was some freedom Wow.
[00:08:38] I don't know if, I didn't know at the time, of course, if there was going to be more happiness, but I assumed there would be at least, I could always go back if I wanted to. And then, I can say I tried , this is still what I like best, so I can go back or this works for works best for me.
[00:08:55] And yeah.
[00:08:58] Scott Maderer: [00:08:58] So as you move through these [00:09:00] different careers and now into coaching, what were some of the limiting beliefs that you uncovered and that you had to overcome through that journey?
[00:09:10]Bas Lebesque: [00:09:10] First of all, coming from this career and then moving into self-development, it's two separate worlds, and how do you bridge that gap? And then with there were days and. Weeks, maybe even months where I was thinking I will never get a client, my my story is not that interesting. Why would people want to listen to me? And
[00:09:33] and I also believe that I didn't, I did, I couldn't make a living out of it. Th the trading money or the financial trading money was. Seemed a lot easier than making coaching money. And I'm not making, I'm definitely not making the same amount of money, but that's fine.
[00:09:49]I don't I'm in a much happier place work. Does it feel like work anymore? And that's, yeah, that's great. And I worked through some personal Limiting self [00:10:00] beliefs as well. The relationship with my father, for example, was it very I had some very limiting beliefs around dad.
[00:10:06]And I think, if you want to talk about these kinds of things, which are clients, and if you don't, if you don't work on yourself or you don't clean up your yeah. The mess you created or the things that are, you're struggling with, it's. It becomes very difficult to have a convincing story to your clients.
[00:10:23] And I think they, they sense that in a certain way as well. That was that was a tough one for me. Very happy I did that. The relationship with my father is so much better now, and that's all he, I don't know, maybe he did some work as well and his limiting beliefs, but I don't think he did, I did all the work and I'm not saying that, I shouldn't be rewarded for that or RA in any way, I'm happy, very happy I did the work.
[00:10:48]But it seemed like the problem we used to have in the past has gone .
[00:10:55] Scott Maderer: [00:10:55] And that the problem that you used to have in the past, did that come out of the early loss of your mother and kind of [00:11:00] that strain from back then? Or was it from something that happened in adulthood if you don't mind sharing?
[00:11:05] Bas Lebesque: [00:11:05] No. No, I don't mind sharing. There was a of course when my mother passed away the dynamics in in, in my family, my father my sister and I. Changed. At the same time I was dealing with my sexuality, which was also very complex for me. The two could have not come into work at a worse time together, but I.
[00:11:25]What now the coping mechanism I created was that I, I've, I found it difficult to deal with life, to accept myself, to be proud of myself. And I basically projected that all onto him. It's he's not proud of me. He does accept me. And not only for my sexuality, but in, in a much broader sense.
[00:11:47] And which was like, It was easier to blame him than to, to fix myself or to look at myself as okay, love yourself, be proud of yourself. So I kept that going for, I think, 30 years [00:12:00] or something and yeah, it wasn't working anymore, and that's such high expectations of him.
[00:12:05]It was not honest to him. It was a real And I'm so happy. I let that go. And that, it was, that was hard work. It's not that you just switch your mind and one day you say, okay, I need to let that go. It's gone. It's not like you put the trash out and then it's fixed.
[00:12:20] No, you need to, it was hard work and it felt almost a like a mourning process. And that, yeah, that took me. It took me six months.
[00:12:30] Scott Maderer: [00:12:30] Yeah, it's interesting how even holding onto something that, intellectually is not necessarily a good thing. It's still loss. And so it can still feel like.
[00:12:39] Grief and it's still a loss, so you're mentally, you still go through a feeling of grief and mourning and all of those stages that we go through, even though it may be something that we wanted to let go of it.
[00:12:52] Bas Lebesque: [00:12:52] No, the great thing about it's at the end. At the end you get a present.
[00:12:56]I get my father back. You get a relationship with him, like in a normal [00:13:00] grieving process, that president is not there, or at least to relate. Yeah, you have good memories maybe of the person, but it's not yeah. So no, I really happy about that.
[00:13:11] Scott Maderer: [00:13:11] So if someone's hearing this and hearing you share your struggle around these areas of, mindset, belief all of these things, what are some of the tips that you could share with us that would help someone else begin to work on improving in those areas?
[00:13:28]Bas Lebesque: [00:13:28] First of all, you have to identify that these are your, these are beliefs that are. Really limiting you. It's if I let's say take the example of my father, by telling, by believing that he doesn't love me, I'm not, if it, if you make that true, that's the only thing you will see.
[00:13:48]But if you start to question that and if you wanted to, one of the best tips I ever got is turn these beliefs around, in, in it's work of Byron [00:14:00] Katie. And it's about, you turn it around to the other, you turn it around to yourself where you would say, my limiting belief would me would be, he doesn't love me.
[00:14:08] And if you turn it around and he does love me. And now look for now, look for examples where he does, or you turn it to towards yourself. I don't love myself. And get examples for that. And that doesn't have to be in relationship with my with my father. I don't love myself.
[00:14:25] I'm drinking too much, for example, or that there's other things I'm judging myself too harshly, all these kinds of things and it's, it takes, it, it takes the dynamic of the belief oh way. And Space opens up for new perspectives. When did you concede that you can love yourself more and that, you have examples where he where he loves you, kinda like simple things, he never calls me.
[00:14:49]Wow. Do I ever call him? No, I don't. And then it's becomes a, it becomes a whole different thing, so why don't you want to change this? So why you don't take the first step, call [00:15:00] him and see what happens and be, and try to be unattached about it.
[00:15:06]He might say something I haven't heard from you in such a long time on automatic responses. You never call me either. It's but that's not what it's about. It's about having that connection in that moment. And that's yeah, that's just, allow yourself to sit with tea, these limiting beliefs Yeah be creative around them.
[00:15:29]Try can see if you can either empathize or innovate or activate something and see what it's going to happen. The moment you start to demote moment, you start to show up differently. You will get a different effect and that's That's really what surprised me is that when I started to show up differently, it somehow didn't seem to exist anymore.
[00:15:53] And now it's okay, why didn't I do this like 25 years before?
[00:15:58]Scott Maderer: [00:15:58] And again, it's [00:16:00] because it becomes self-reinforcing you have a belief that creates a reality. That creates a belief in someone else that creates a reality. And then that reality becomes self-reinforcing. So if you change your reality, it has, it has to impact the reality of others.
[00:16:18] Yeah, by definition. Right?
[00:16:20]Bas Lebesque: [00:16:20] I w I was a very simple example. I was working with a woman, the other like a couple of weeks ago, and we were talking about sleep and she was like, I slept five hours a night. All of my life. I'm 45 years old. I will never change it. Yeah. I was like What have you let's start if you let's start with seeing, if you could believe that it's possible that you can sleep six hours a night and she's oh, is that possible?
[00:16:46] I was, possible within a week she was sleeping six hours a night. Let's just say, yeah, you were like, You woke up in the morning and then you would say, oh, my night was horrible. Only 5, 9, 5 hours [00:17:00] tomorrow. This coming night will be the same. And tomorrow I feel exhausted again. And it's, it's what you say becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where if you just start to change it It is possible.
[00:17:14] And of course there were a week. We tweaked a little bit of other things as well. But it became possible. And then what I've, what I did find was really funny. So a week later she came back and he's oh yeah, I slept seven. I slept six nights, six hours her last week. It's a great, so can you not sleep seven hours a night?
[00:17:34] This is no. That's predictive. Yeah. Tell me why a person needs to sleep seven hours? I don't, I'm not saying that, if you can change, what you believed all your life in a week, why couldn't you not change what you believed in the last week?
[00:17:49]That's just yeah, it's fun me as this, is the same. I work a lot with a lot of people executives as well. And they, a lot of them are overweight and they don't believe that [00:18:00] they can. Lose weight, the moment they start believing it, it starts happening. They changed their, the why they changed their life.
[00:18:10]They bring more balance into their lives. And then, by bringing more balance into your life, you bring more balance into your body. Weight loss is a gift.
[00:18:18]Scott Maderer: [00:18:18] And what's interesting is there are certain. What I call Keystone habits and health is one of them.
[00:18:24] Finances. One of them, these are these areas where. If we begin to change our beliefs in that area, there's usually spillover effects too. Where if you change your mindset around losing weight, all of a sudden, other parts of your life start improving that aren't direct at first glance. You're like, why is that connected to this?
[00:18:40]Or you start working on getting your money in order and all of a sudden you lose weight and you're like, wait a minute. What, how did that connect? Yeah,
[00:18:48] Bas Lebesque: [00:18:48] absolutely. And I've worked even worked with with with a woman. She was an executive, she had five children, she was working 70 hours a week.
[00:18:58] She wasn't sleeping or [00:19:00] children, weren't sleeping, and in one session she comes to me and she's what's been spent, I think it's a coincidence, but I slapped her. Three nights straight. My children weren't coming to wake me up. And I was like, no, it's not a coincidence. You sleep, you come into your family with a different energy.
[00:19:19]You've been doing that for the last three months. And of course your children pick that up. And I don't say, if you sleep well that your children are gonna automatically sleep well. But if you change your energy, your children will change your energy. And they'll, they're, they're theirs.
[00:19:34] Super sensitive to these kinds of things. Oh yeah.
[00:19:38] Scott Maderer: [00:19:38] Yeah. In many ways more sensitive than adults because that's. They're so dependent on you that they have to pick up on those sorts of things. It's a survival skill. So let's switch gears a little bit, and I've got a couple of questions for you that I like to ask everybody.
[00:19:55]The joke going around is these are the easy questions. Cause they're not the easy questions, right? [00:20:00] If I could invent a time machine and I could pick you up and I could pull you into the far future, maybe a hundred to 150 years, and you could look back on your life, what's the impact that you hope you've had on the world?
[00:20:13]Bas Lebesque: [00:20:13] I, what would really looking back then? What would really make me happy is if. People will talk about me in a way that, that in the moment they met me or the moment they've worked together with me, something changed that can be made. It doesn't have to be like enormous or gigantic, but it's something that they'll always remember was like, when I worked with him, then.
[00:20:45] Things started to become clear. Things started to become better, became easier or more fun, or yeah I just got it. I just got a testimonial from a woman and she's she was a diabetic, a [00:21:00] type two patient. And she said I think boss potentially saved my life. And that's. No bonus.
[00:21:10] Can I can outperform that. That's what I mean. I hope I'll have a long list of these these testimonials. That's a yeah, that's what we do.
[00:21:21]I also would like to look back and
[00:21:25]well, not half. Re like serious regrets, like staying in a profession too long, or being in the wrong relationship for too long, or like really where I would have really have heard of people. I don't I don't have an a, I have made amends with the people that I did, but that was never, that was something Too serious, I would say.
[00:21:53]Yeah, and the bigger, the the bigger the crowd, the better, but it doesn't have to be, I'm not. Some people say, I want to [00:22:00] impact a billion people. That's that doesn't detail up.
[00:22:03]Scott Maderer: [00:22:03] So what's coming next for you. As you continue on this journey to living out your call and making that change on the people that you touch.
[00:22:12] Bas Lebesque: [00:22:12] So next is hi. Would
[00:22:15]I want to. Work a live location independently. So I really want to start this is basically an idea that just. Right before. Not right before, but let's say six months before COVID started to appear in my life. And then COVID happened, of course. And I've already lived on so many in so many places, but I would really love to spend more time in different places.
[00:22:40] The only continent I haven't left on yet is Africa. And I wanna, I want to spend some time there as well. And I want to work with people. Around the world. And I also really want to give back to, there I'm like still triggering and figuring it out. I want to make this accessible to two [00:23:00] Peter youngsters or people that are.
[00:23:05] Not fortunate. Let's say not fortunate enough to pay my feet. So I want to, on one side I work with executives, but I also want to be able to work with people that, really needed and wanted to afford it.
[00:23:20] Scott Maderer: [00:23:20] Okay. Awesome. So you can find out more about boss Lubbock on his website and that's his name.com.
[00:23:31] He's also active on LinkedIn. Under boss Lubeck. I'll have links to all of this over in the show notes as well. Us, is there anything else that you'd like to share with the listener?
[00:23:42] Bas Lebesque: [00:23:42] I do host every other three weeks workshop around. Oh, weight loss and getting balanced into your life and that which will then create balance into your body.
[00:23:52]It's a lot of fun. It's it's an hour and a half. It's totally complimentary. And yeah, everybody's welcome to join. Hi, [00:24:00] it's usually on while it's fun. Mounds on being 10. So follow me there and then you you'll see it or send me a message and I'll put you on the list for the next one.
[00:24:10] Scott Maderer: [00:24:10] Awesome.
[00:24:10] That's a great resource. If anyone's struggling in those areas or unbalanced or weight, loss and health and getting healthy, I'd encourage you to attend that and get started on that journey as well. Thanks so much for being here today.
[00:24:25] Bas Lebesque: [00:24:25] Thank you very much.
[00:24:26]Scott Maderer: [00:24:26] thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoy this episode. Please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate.
[00:24:53] All one word iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a [00:25:00] rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed until next time, invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world. .