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Today I have with me, Quincy Whorf.
Welcome to the podcast, Quincy.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you.
Before we really get started, can I just have you tell us a little bit about who is
Quincy Whorf and how did you come to the world of coaching?
Oh my, I came to the world of coaching by totally by accident, but I've been doing
it for the last Oh, 20 plus years.
And I, you know, I specialize in a couple of areas.
I do a lot of love and relationship and dating coaching.
I do a lot of life and executive type coaching, but I also do addiction
intervention and recovery coaching as well.
And, you know, I I've always been one of those kinds of people who, you know, feel
like everything kind of mixes into everything.
And so just because that's the starting point of where we may get together, it
doesn't mean that that's where it stays all the time.
Oh yeah, for sure.
So you ended up in the world of coaching a little bit by accident.
Tell me, tell me a little bit about that story.
It was something that I was doing in the beginning as, you know, just kind of like
as on a volunteer thing, like it was, it was something I would help people out with
here and there once in a while.
And then it became something that people started referring other people to, or they
would hear me speak and they would say, you know, Oh my God, could you please help
me with this?
And so it just kind of, it kind of just evolved naturally into what it was
supposed to become to the point where it became a full fledged like business, you
know.
So were you a speaker, a public speaker already before you became a coach?
Yeah, actually I was working as a, I did a lot of public speaking for, you know,
all different kinds of topics.
And, you know, I guess that that's kind of where people would hear me and they
would hear my ideas and what was going on with me.
And they'd be like, Oh my God, that makes perfect sense, you know?
And, and so the coaching thing just kind of came naturally.
Like I was really, you know, doing the speaking thing and thinking the speaking
thing was really what I wanted to do, but I've actually really enjoyed both of
those things, you know?
So, so back up a little bit.
How did you end up as a speaker?
How did I end up as a speaker?
Well, I started speaking in, I started speaking in college on different topics
of mostly about addiction, mostly about, you know, mental health stuff.
And it was all kind of like volunteer stuff that people would say, Oh, please
go tell your story.
And I was like, okay, I'll tell my story if that's what you want to hear.
And, and I would just go and I would tell my story and about, you know, growing up
in Hollywood and, you know, being a teenage alcoholic and, you know, growing
up in the music business and having this, you know, what sounded like it should
have been a wild and crazy life to it turning into a complete nightmare and
being, you know, super dangerous and putting me in a lot of situations that,
you know, you wouldn't want your 15, 16, 17 year old child to go through, you
know, and then spending, you know, getting, getting sober and spending, you
know, my, the rest of my life being sober and what that's looked like in all the
trials and tribulations of learning how to find new coping mechanisms, be
besides things that you can become addicted to, cause you can get addicted
to anything, right?
If you have that type of personality and anything that makes you feel good, you
know, that you want to do on a regular basis to avoid dealing with what you
don't want to deal with is, you know, is, is destructive behavior in a lot of ways.
Okay.
So can you tell us a little bit more about growing up in Hollywood?
Sure.
I mean, my father, my family is, they come from, I come from old Hollywood
royalty, as they used to call it.
My grandfather was an actor and a writer and a director.
And he was, you know, on the stage and on a whole bunch of movies and
directed a whole bunch of TV shows.
And so, you know, my, my dad's family all came from that.
And so my father, he wasn't an actor, but he was an artist and he ended up working
in the music business my whole life and designing album covers, which most, most
people don't know what those are.
Right.
Yeah.
Pretty funny.
Like, you know, you gotta go Google that and figure out what it is.
But so he designed album covers.
So it was just, we had a very interesting lifestyle.
There was a lot of really interesting people in my house growing up.
Like I, there were a lot of, you know, drunk, naked musicians at my house, which
again, I didn't know that wasn't normal.
I thought everybody had that at their house, but apparently not so much.
So I was just around a lot of people and then, you know, being in the, in the
club scene and being, you know, just living in Los Angeles and living in
Hollywood, you know, during, during the eighties, you know, was, it was a
fun place to be at the time.
But then it became a bit messy.
Oh yeah.
Very, very messy, very quickly, you know, and that's like, it was, it was a different
time.
My parents were, you know, that generation was a lot more hands off than this
generation is with their kids.
And it wasn't that they ignored us, but we were, we had a lot more autonomy and a
lot more freedom and I had a little, probably too much freedom.
And, you know, my mom and my dad ended up going through a horrible, nasty divorce.
And during that whole time, you know, neither one of them were really paying
attention to what I was doing.
And I was out clubbing every night and drinking and doing drugs and hanging out
with boys and having a good old time.
But it ended up getting pretty dangerous for me.
And I was lucky that, you know, I didn't get into more scrapes than I did.
So how did the change start to happen for you?
You know, it's funny because people always say, you know, people always say, you
know, you got to wait for an addict to hit bottom and, you know, everybody's
bottom looks different when it comes to dealing with drugs and alcohol,
especially, or any addiction, like, you know, whatever, whenever you decide to
stop digging, that's your bottom.
And, you know, for me, it would take a lot of demoralization pain behind
demoralization.
And, you know, there were lots of times when I would drink and get drunk and,
you know, things would happen to me that I had no control over them happening.
You know, I would be with people who I thought were safe, who really weren't
safe and because I was loaded, could not defend myself, whether it was a sexual
assault or being in a place that I shouldn't have been in or whatever it was
or things that were happening around me that I had no control over.
And, you know, one of the last times I drank, I was in a situation where this
guy who I thought I was friends with, I thought he was like being my protector
of this one particular night.
I was so drunk and so out of my mind.
And it turned out he was just, you know, moving me away from the regular room so
that he could have his way with me.
And I was so paralyzed because I was so drunk that I couldn't even stop him
from doing it.
And, you know, I was mostly in a blackout, so there's a lot of it I don't remember.
But those were the kinds of things that were happening to me.
And it was a price in the beginning that I was willing to pay for drugs and
alcohol because, you know, being drunk, being that drunk, you don't feel
anything.
You don't remember anything.
You don't care about anything.
And that was kind of what I was going for.
But it was getting harder and harder for me to not remember and harder and harder
for me to make the shame go away.
And I finally just hit a wall where I was like, you know what?
I can't do this anymore.
I can't stay drunk long enough to not feel like, you know, the world's biggest
piece of shit.
And I can't stay sober long enough to feel okay on this planet.
And I just, I didn't know what to do, you know, and as luck would have it, I
ended up getting sober and running into a whole bunch of other people that were
sober and my life changed forever.
So it was good.
So were you able to just quit cold turkey on your own or how did you go about that?
I mean, I did.
Like I remember detoxing in my room by myself for a couple of days.
I mean, a long time ago before there were rehabs, it was, you know, like I've
been sober since 1988.
So rehabs were not all the rage that they are now.
I mean, now there's one on every street corner, but, you know, back in those days,
you just shook it out.
And I did.
Like I just sweated and had a headache and I was like, I'm going to go to
rehab.
I had a headache and slept and was miserable for a couple of days.
And I was lucky.
I wasn't nearly as saturated as I could have been.
Like, you know, there's detoxing off alcohol is really dangerous.
It can actually kill you between that and benzos.
Those are the only two detoxes that can really, really hurt you.
The others will make you wish you were dead, but it won't necessarily kill you.
But detoxing off alcohol is really dangerous.
And I was lucky that I wasn't so saturated that I ended up having like seizures or,
you know, going into, you know, any kind of other type of physical reaction.
I just, I was just miserable for four days.
And then finally, you know, came out of it.
So do you remember when you were that miserable for four days, how you stopped yourself from
drinking again?
You know, most of it had to do with, you know, being, you know, I ran into a bunch of people
in 12-step programs and I ended up going to a 12-step program, which was great and worked
for me perfectly.
And that was a lot of it.
But a lot of it also was really getting clarity, clarity on the fact that that wasn't an option
for me anymore.
Like me drinking and using was, it was causing more pain than it was killing.
And I really was too chicken-shed to kill myself.
So it was like, you better come up with something else.
And you know, and truthfully, like, because I didn't really understand what addiction
was all about, I just found other things to get addicted to, whether it was, you know,
boys or, you know, shopping or food or, you know, whatever it was that I, you know, was
using to avoid dealing with the things that were unpleasant in my life.
You know, I just kept changing one addiction to another, to another, to another, until
I finally hit a wall and had to learn how to get tools.
Right.
Which is what 12-step programs are really about is tools.
But most people, most people don't even understand how 12-step programs work.
And I didn't for a long time.
Like I didn't understand that drugs and alcohol weren't the problem.
Whatever it was that I was addicted to wasn't the problem.
I was the problem.
Like I, the way I, you know, solved problems was the problem.
And the way I solved problems at the time was to not solve problems, was to pretend
that they weren't happening or to, you know, go in a different direction.
I mean, addiction is all about avoidance.
That's all it's really about.
And you know, it's, it's hard for, it was hard for me for a long time to face the stuff
that scared the crap out of me or face the stuff that was painful or any of that kind
of stuff.
And until I really learned that that stuff couldn't hurt me again, I couldn't face it.
So, you know, it just, it takes time.
It takes time.
People have to want to be different and they have to want to know what makes them tick.
And you know, I just kept making the same mistakes over and over and over again.
And I got sick and tired of doing that.
So at some point I became willing to learn how to do it differently.
And you know, for me, pain is the great motivator, you know, and I will do anything to get out
of pain, but I don't want the pain to come back.
So learning how to, you know, learning how to, how to deal with pain, how to process
pain, how to process trauma, how to, you know, learn how to communicate in different ways,
learn how to, you know, relate to different things, learn how to have different boundaries,
have boundaries at all.
Like I had no boundaries most of my life.
And then having to get boundaries was really painful and difficult.
But dealing with all that stuff is, you know, what, what gives me today the, the insight
that I have into people because I've been through so many different kinds of things
and I've done such a tremendous amount of work on my own pain and my own trauma and
my own, you know, deficiencies, you know, it's easy for me now to spot that stuff in
people and help them get through that process as well.
And you know, it's funny when I first started coaching people, like I didn't really understand
how much I was going to learn about the process when I started coaching people.
Like you can sit there and tell somebody, you know, everything that they need to know
about themselves to be different.
But really until they start trying to help somebody else be different, they may not even
understand it or really understand how to apply it.
Yeah.
I saw a sign somewhere once that said, I teach what I must need to learn.
Exactly.
And that's, I mean, that's so true.
It's funny.
It's the best way to learn because you, it becomes ingrained in you.
If we could figure out how to, you know, turn the school systems into a students teaching
students situation, they'd probably be a lot smarter.
Well, I won't go off on too much of a tangent, but I, there's a school in Sudbury, Massachusetts
that works that way, but it's just called the Sudbury School.
So Quincy, what is your, now that you've dumped the negative addictions, what is your go to
when you, when that pain surfaces now?
Well, there's, there's a bunch of different things that I, you know what I mean?
Like the number one thing I've learned probably in the last, I don't know, a couple of years
is that no matter, no matter how many tools you have, if you don't allow yourself to process
the feelings that come up as a result of whatever it is that's going on with you, we call it
spiritual bypassing, you won't get to where you need to get to any faster, right?
Like you kind of, there's a process, there's a whole process that happens in really moving
from one place to another emotionally.
And you can't just will it away just because you want to.
But what I've also learned is that until I've processed the feelings and until I can, you
know, get to a place where I'm not as emotional about what it is that's going on, I can't
really start to work on how can I look at this differently, right?
So but learning how to identify that number one, feelings are there as red flags to tell
me number one, something's going on.
Number two, you know, the only thing I can do about it is the way I'm looking at it,
the way I understand it, the way I perceive it, what I've decided it means about me, all
of those kinds of things.
I can't do anything about what the other person has done or doing or not doing, but I can
change the way that I'm looking at it or figure out what it is that I'm supposed to learn
from it.
And so I have a process that I've used, you know, for probably at least the last 20 something
years of, you know, recognizing, number one, what I'm having feelings because I can be
really busy.
Like, I'm also addicted to being busy.
And I'm really good at being busy so that I don't have feelings.
Right.
And I have to learn how to, you know, I had to learn how to recognize when I wasn't in
the greatest of places, what that meant and what I needed to do with it or else it was
going to come and get me, you know.
And so there's just a process.
It means taking time to meditate so that I can get clear on what it is that's going on
with me.
It means, you know, taking time to journal on a regular basis.
It means taking time to really check in with what's going on with me and having somebody
say to me, you know, what is going on with you?
Because I can get away from myself, no problem.
I can not answer my own questions really easily.
But I have, you know, I have always had a coach or I've had somebody that I do accountability
work with because I'm not really good at seeing myself.
I'm really great at seeing you, but I'm not great at seeing myself.
So I always have needed somebody to say, you know, you seem a little off.
What's going on with you?
I won't even notice it, but somebody outside of me will notice it before me.
And that's, you know, that's so important in my life.
You know?
Yeah.
And my coach says when you're looking for a coach, make sure that they have a coach
because everyone.
Yeah.
Because what was it?
Oh, she said she said that people ask her, what's it like to have all your shit together?
And she's like, I don't know.
Let me know if you get to that point.
That's so true.
Yeah, it's not that people are nobody's perfect, right?
Nobody does this perfectly, but I really believe that if you're not still continuing to grow
or still continuing to do your work, you're limited as a coach.
And not only that, like there's a level of humility that comes with being able to have
somebody in your life who kind of keeps your feet on the ground and says, Hey, you know,
this is, this isn't working for you.
We need to look at this, you know, before you turn around and say to somebody else,
Hey, this isn't working for you.
You know?
Yeah.
And that's the only spot, you know, what you've worked on.
Like that was my biggest problem with therapy for a long time was I would go to therapists
as a, as a kid or as a, you know, in my twenties or whatever.
And these people would have just gotten out of school or whatever, and they had like no
life experience.
Or even if they were older, their life experience was so different than what I was going through
in my life.
And it was hard to have conversations with people who really could not understand what
I was going through because they had never even been through it.
They'd never been around it.
They'd never had any experience with it.
And you know, it's, it's hard to help heal somebody who, who doesn't have that kind of
base in their life, you know?
So when you would be talking to a counselor and they didn't, they didn't understand what
you were going through, how did that make you feel?
Just kidding.
But if you could bring more of any one thing into the world, Quincy, what would it be?
What would it be?
Tolerance, you know, tolerance.
Tell me more.
I just think that most of, I mean, even, you know, I, even I, I have a, I have a hard time
being tolerant of my teenager, right?
Cause he's not doing it the way I want him to do things instead of being in a place of
tolerance where I remember that he has a path and I've got to let him do things the way
he's supposed to do things.
You know, if we can't let the people in our house be different, how are we going to let
people in the world be different?
And you know, it's just, it's one of those things that like, until you have a level of
tolerance for others, I don't know how much compassion you can actually have either, you
know?
So you're telling me that your teenager does things in a way that it's as almost as if
he doesn't have 50 years of life experience.
Oh yeah.
It's quite irritating.
That's so frustrating.
I know.
Yeah, child.
But yeah.
I have teenagers as well.
Yeah.
They are, you know, and it's funny cause he's so much like I was at his age, even though
like situations are different or what he's willing to tolerate is, you know, what he's
doing in his life is different.
But at the same time, he's going through the same kind of life experiences that I went
through at that age.
And I forget what it's like to be a 17 year old, you know, all I can see is do you need
to do this and you need to get it done now, you know?
And you know, he's got his own stuff going on and it's, you know, I, I just have to always
check myself for, you know, how tolerant am I being?
Am I being tolerant of people on the freeway?
Am I, you know, I just got back from, I had to go do a talk in Michigan and you know,
traveling and watching people, you know, at the airport or being on airplanes with people
is frustrating because there are some people who travel well and there are some people
who travel like they have never been on an airplane before, you know?
And it's hard.
It's hard sometimes to like have patience for other people and remember that everybody
here on this planet has a different level of experience, different level of, you know,
education, different level of everything, you know?
And so everybody has a different, you know, comes to the table in every moment differently
than the person next to them.
And you know, letting people be who they are without taking them personal is probably one
of the things that I help people the most with in coaching.
I would have to, especially relationship coaching, oh my God, you know, we take people, we take
our partners, we take people we're interested in, you know, or people we date, all those
kinds of things.
We take all of that stuff so personally, like it means something bad about us when the truth
is that most of the time it means nothing about us.
It's just who they are, you know?
And you know, how much freer the world would be if people, you know, could stop taking
everybody so personally.
Yeah, something that I read sometime in the last few years, it's really stuck with me,
is just assume everyone is doing the best that they can.
And that does two things.
Number one, you know, you are tolerant and forgive because they're doing the best they
can.
And number two, if they're not, if they're not, if their best isn't good enough for you,
then maybe they shouldn't be in your life.
But again, there's no reason to hold any grudges or anything because they were doing the best
that they could.
Yeah, exactly.
And that's, you know, that's hard for a lot of people, you know?
Yeah, probably most of us because we can, as you say, we can only see things from our
own perspective.
Perspective.
So we have all the experience we have.
Yeah, we don't and we don't know how much we're driving other people nuts by not having
the experience they have.
But we do know that they're driving us nuts by not having the experience we have.
Yes, that is true.
So could you share with us a success story, someone that came to you for coaching and
where they were and where they ended up?
Well, it's interesting, you know, like I do a lot of relationship coaching and, you know,
people come to me right before they're about to get divorced.
Right.
And, and I haven't had a couple get divorced yet, which is the good news, you know, but,
but it's not just about not getting divorced.
Like, you know, it's interesting, you get together with somebody in a relationship and
emotionally, something happens where you don't necessarily mature emotionally as much as
somebody who's single.
Right.
That's always, that's just always been my experience.
Right.
And so you use a level of you use the level of skill with that partner that you had when
you got together with them, but to increase your skills while you're in the relationship
doesn't usually happen until the wheels are falling off.
Right.
And so, you know, a lot of the times when people come to me, like they've been together
for 20 years, 30 years, whatever it is, 10 years, who knows, and the wheels are falling
off and it's like, they're still have the expectations and they still have the skills
that they got when they got together with this person, but nothing changed.
And so, you know, working with people on how do you, how do you have a different level
of skill and a different level of, you know, emotional reasoning much later down the line
is mostly what I work with people on.
And so I have this one couple who, oh my God, they were so ready to get divorced and they
were literally like wanting me to in the beginning to negotiate the terms of their divorce.
And I said, okay, well, we can start there.
Right.
And we did, we started talking about the terms of their divorce and I would ask them over
and over again, you know, if this could be different, what would that look like?
If this could be different, what would that look like?
And you know, three years later, they're still together.
They still come to coaching, you know, every other week or so, and they've learned how
to talk to each other in different, in a totally different manner, but they've also learned
how to accept each other at this different place in life.
Like they both came to the, to the conversation expecting that person to be the way they were
when they met him 30 years ago.
And that's just not what happens in relationships.
You grow and you change and you become a different person and, and sometimes it's really easy
to get focused on what the other person isn't doing to avoid dealing with you not being
who you think you should be, you know?
And that's most of the time for me, what I've realized it is when somebody is so focused
on what the other person is doing or isn't doing or, you know, how they've hurt me or
why they're a victim of them, if I said, you know, if you could take them completely out
of the equation, what would you be dealing with that you, you know, that would have nothing
to do with them?
All of a sudden they have a different view on life and, and they see things in a completely
different way and they become their own individual.
And they get to a place where they're like, oh, it's not about, you know, making that
person be who I want them to be or getting them to behave who I want them to behave as,
but it's about me being who I'm supposed to be and letting them have the journey that
they're supposed to have.
And you know, that's, that's a, that's a hard concept for a lot of people in relationships,
especially if they've been together for a really long time.
That's interesting.
I've noticed with every single coach that I've talked to on this podcast, that it all
comes back to identity and finding who you truly are and then living as that person instead
of what other people want you to be or what society wants you to be.
So I, I coach people who are not long out of a long-term relationship.
And that's what I found with myself when I came out of a 13 year relationship and what
I find with my clients as well, that that's, they had a couple identity and now they have
to find their, their own identity.
But yeah, no matter what kind of coach I've been talking to, we all seem to be identity
coaches.
Totally.
I mean, cause that's truthfully, I mean, look, there's nothing we can do about anybody else.
But if I mean, and that's been my philosophy forever, which is, you know, if I change me,
the world around me changes, you know, and you know, I mean, I spent years trying to
get people around me to be different and you know, it just made me angry and frustrated
and really awful to be around, you know?
And when I realized that, you know, the only person that I can, you know, change anything
about is me, you know, life got a whole lot easier.
That's for sure.
If you had to boil your coaching down to a core philosophy, would that be it?
How would you put that?
My core philosophy has to do with, you know, nobody else has to change for me to be happy.
That's really what it is.
And so yeah, technically that's, I mean, that's really what it is.
Like if nobody else has to change for me to be happy, what do I have to do to make myself
happy?
Right.
And, you know, without stepping on the toes of somebody else, you know, my husband doesn't
always like the fact that I have to do the things for my life that I do in order to be
happy because it takes time away from him.
But at the same time, he wouldn't want me to be any different than who I am.
Right.
And if he needed, you know, when he gets into a place where he's super needy of me and my
time, it's usually because he's avoiding dealing with something with himself.
And that's been the case every time we've come up against that.
It's like, okay, well, if you didn't have me to focus on and you didn't have me to be
the reason all your problems are happening, you know, what would you be focusing on?
What would you what would you do differently?
You know, and then it's amazing.
Like all of a sudden he starts to look at those things.
You know, we end up being in a much better place because he's he's dealing with him.
I'm dealing with me and we get to be just together.
We don't need to make each other whole by sacrificing ourselves for the other person.
Not that sacrifices in a relationship.
It is.
But it's not it shouldn't be to the point of, you know, it being destructive to one person
or the other.
Yeah, it sounds to me like the sacrifice is letting go of your your needs from the other
person when when they need something else.
It's all about each of you meeting your own needs and then coming together.
Yeah.
When I have a need from him, you know, it has to do with, you know, most of the time
for me anyway, it has to do with I want you to be the best person that you can be so that
we can have a great life together.
Right.
So when he's on his game and I'm on my game, you know, nothing can touch us.
Right.
But when he's not on his game and wants me to make up for where he's not on his game,
that's when it becomes a problem.
Right.
Like that's that's codependency.
Yeah, that's right.
That's so often when people come to me after they've just come out of a long term relationship,
they're looking to jump into a new relationship to make them happy.
Yeah, and and and the first thing I have to teach them is that you you don't need someone
else to make you happy.
You don't need the right partner to make you happy.
You need to be happy to find the right partner.
A hundred percent, a hundred percent.
And that's, you know, a lot of the people that I work with doing dating stuff and love
relationship stuff like that's what we talk about.
It's like, you know, I always have them draw a picture of exactly, you know, what does
your partner look like?
What is what is the perfect partner look like for you?
You know, and then they write down all of the things that are important to them.
And then I say, are you that person?
Are you that person that you think is a perfect idea?
Because if you're not, you're not going to attract it.
Right.
Like you have to know you're going to attract someone else with with the same sorts of problems
that you have is what you're going to attract and then it's going to multiply.
Yes, especially if you have children.
So you know, like and that's so the truth.
Like water seeks its own level.
Right.
Like water can't go higher than water where water is supposed to go, where other water
is.
Right.
So but so water will always seek its own level.
And it's an energy is the same way.
Like, you know, if my energy is is off, you know, then I'm going to attract people who
are off in that way.
And the great thing about it is even though it increases your chances of getting together
with the right partner when you become whole and happy in yourself as an individual, it
doesn't actually matter if you do find them because you're already happy and whole yourself
as an individual.
So it's a it's a bit not fair.
The people who need partners the least are the ones that find the right partners.
Well, and that's what it sounds like.
Right.
So for sure.
But at the same time, it's it's it is that way.
It's you know, when I'm the head when you always hear people say it like when I'm not
looking I wasn't even looking for him and he walked in the door and that's where you've
been together for the rest.
Well, why weren't you looking because you were happy because you were enjoying your
life because you were being who you were supposed to be.
You know, it's kind of the funny part about the dating apps.
It's like, you know, everybody on there is desperate to find somebody, even if it's just
for five minutes.
So it's already working against itself in some way.
Yeah.
So what's one piece of wisdom, Quincy, that you consistently find yourself giving to anyone
who will listen or just comes out and conversation all the time?
Oh, God, I don't know.
I mean, that's you know, there's a lot of different things.
You know, it depends on the week.
Like I realized, realized like there's, you know, like during the depending on what week
it is, like I will talk to different people and it'll seem like they're all having the
same problem in the same week, you know.
And so I end up saying the same thing over and over again.
And I think a lot of, you know, what I'm hearing about right now has to do with, you know,
people, people feeling, you know, everybody I've talked to is people feeling like they
can't they just can't get out of their own way.
Right.
Like they just can't they can't seem to get to that next place.
Right.
And a lot of the things, you know, I say to people a lot is, you know, do you know where
your next place is?
And they're like, well, no.
And I said, well, if you don't, if you don't have any idea of where your place is, how
are you going to know that that's, you know, how are you going to how do you know that
that's what it is you're supposed to do?
Right.
And so getting people just to be willing to look at themselves and look at, you know,
what do they wish they could do differently right now has been something that I talk about
a lot.
And I ask people all the time, what do you wish you could do differently, whether it's
a conversation you had with somebody or something you did at work or a decision you made about,
you know, the path that you're on, what do you wish you could do differently?
Right.
And a lot of the times that answer will will really, you know, propel them into the next
level of whatever it is they're supposed to look at.
You know, I have a friend this week, this came up last week, I have a friend of mine
who, you know, he's dating, he's, you know, out there dating again, and he goes, I keep
dating the same person over and over again, they're always emotionally unavailable, they
always, you know, don't really want to be in a relationship, they just want somebody
to hang out with and be a buddy with, but they don't really want to give anything.
And I said, Okay, and I said, and he said, and if I don't find them, then I find the
other ones, the ones that are super needy, and super emotionally available, and you know,
like want to choke me with how much emotion they have.
And I said, Well, do you know what it is that you're looking for?
And he said, No, I said, Do you know how to recognize these people when they're coming
at you?
He said, I guess not.
And I said, Do this, I said, Go write down the top five things all of the last, you know,
couple of girls that you dated had in common, and tell me what what they are.
Right.
And it was funny, because I saw him the next day.
And he said, I can't even believe how much just being aware of what those five things
were in all those people, like how much awareness that that gave me.
And I said, That's great.
And I said, But the opposite, you know, the opposite is true as well.
Like if you don't know what you're looking for, you're not going to find it.
Right.
And I said, So you've got to get clear on what it is that's important to you and what
it is that you're looking for so that you can find it right.
And you know, whether it's jobs, whether it's friendships, whether it's dating, whether
it's a house, whatever it is, like if you don't know what it is that's important to
you and what you're looking for, you will not find it.
If you don't know what it is that you're looking for, you will not find it.
Well, there's a bit of a wisdom right there.
Exactly.
I mean, that's, you know, and that's, you know, it sounds really simple or sounds corny.
Yeah, it's really it's I mean, it is really that simple.
I'm sure he would have thought it sounded simple before he wrote those five things down.
And then but seeing it in action is a whole different thing from, you know, hearing it
and going, oh, yeah, that's obvious.
Yep.
Well, that's the thing.
I mean, when people put stuff on paper, it makes stuff really clear.
You know, yeah, to do it in your brain, it just picks up steam and, you know, it doesn't
ever get resolved on some level.
Yeah.
So putting it on paper or or having it in a conversation with a coach, for example.
Yeah, really, because the right questions get asked, it doesn't just bounce around
and it becomes yeah, it becomes clear.
Yes.
Yeah.
And and you know, it's funny, because I don't know, I don't know about you, but I wake up
in the middle of the night often, right.
And I can solve all of the world's problems between 2am and like 5am.
I do some of my greatest thinking in the middle of the night.
And it's funny, because if I get up and I write down what I'm thinking about, it's not
nearly as much stuff as I think I'm thinking.
Right.
Like, it's really just a couple of key thoughts.
But in my brain, it feels so much bigger and so much more important and so much more developed
because it just picks up steam as it's in there.
Right.
But then you go to put it on paper and, you know, it gets boiled down to maybe a couple
of things.
Right.
And that's this that's always been the case for me is that the second I put it on paper,
not only does it take, you know, the emotion or the grandiosity out of whatever it is,
hey, that I'm thinking about, right.
Hey, I have a four pound dog who thinks she's the boss of me.
But there's a dog barking here as well.
Oh, wow.
Well, they're all they're all barking together.
It takes away it takes away the emotion and the grandiosity of the situation.
Right.
And all of a sudden, it feels manageable.
Right.
It feels like something you can deal with.
And you know, that's, you know, one of the biggest problems, I think, with the mental
health crisis right now is that everybody is so, so falling for whatever it is that
their brain is telling them.
And you know, learning how to separate who you are from what your brain does for a living,
I like to say, you know, is probably one of the most important skills anybody can teach
anybody.
And I just heard another little I guess, I guess, I don't know, technique or or a bit
of wisdom or whatever else it is.
But you have a problem, write it down.
For sure.
Write it down.
And if you still have that problem, then figure out what it is about that problem that's going
on because a lot of time, it just doesn't mean much.
You know, our brain is designed to think that's what it's supposed to think.
It's supposed to do.
But just because it's having thoughts doesn't mean that those thoughts are true or need
to be paid attention to.
But if you are as big as they feel in your head.
Exactly.
But then figure out a way to deal with it.
That is how you deal with it.
Not how somebody not not how if somebody else would change something, then then it would
be dealt with.
But what can you do?
Yeah.
And that's excellent.
Yeah.
That's this dog, four pound dog, four pound dog who thinks she's 100 pounds.
It's so funny.
Dogs are so funny how they they if it's a small dog, it will attack big dogs and think
it's a big dog.
And if it's a big dog, it'll try to sit in your lap like it's a little dog.
They just don't know their size.
They don't know their size.
They don't know time.
They don't know a lot of things.
They just keep going.
Little girl.
So what's the real end result?
What do your clients get from working with you?
You know, feeling empowered, feeling like, you know, no matter what comes at them, they
can deal with that.
You know, that problems aren't necessarily the end of the game.
They're the beginning.
Right.
And they're really you know, things are just about teaching us how to develop our skills.
Like whenever a problem is there's if it's a problem, what did my friend used to say?
If it's a problem, then there's an answer.
Right.
There's a solution to it.
But if it's if there's not a solution to the problem, then it's just a fact.
And learning how to differentiate between the two is, you know, not always easy for
and, you know, but every time there's a problem that's that shows up in your life, it's not
game over.
It's, you know, how what do I have to do to solve this problem?
You know, and helping people see that, you know, problems are problems are gifts in disguise
most of the time.
Well, our brains want humans are problem solving machines.
I've noticed that sometimes when I'm like, you know, I'm feeling unsettled, like there's
a but I don't know what the problem is or whatever.
Sometimes I'll sit down and play a game or something like a board game.
And it turns out my brain just needed a problem to solve.
It didn't have a problem.
Yeah.
So we invent.
Yeah.
We can make something up, but just play a game, solve game problem.
You know, you don't actually need a real problem to solve.
Your brain wants something to solve.
Just want something to do.
Yeah.
So is there these last two questions are just designed to catch anything that we could have
caught in this conversation that we haven't yet.
So it's OK if the answer is no.
And we've already covered everything, but it's also great if there is an answer to these.
So first one is, is there anything that we were discussing that you didn't get to say
as much as you wanted to because we did go off on a tangent or headed off in a different
direction?
No, I think we, you know, I think I was pretty succinct on most of it.
And is there anything that I didn't even know to bring up Quincy that would be a glaring
omission in a survey of the life and work of Quincy?
No, my phone just all of a sudden started ringing.
No, I mean, I think you got a pretty good overview of what it is that I do and what
it's like being with me as a coach.
Excellent.
Yep.
Great.
Well, the point of this podcast is it's for anyone who wants to listen and glean anything
they can on self-development from hearing chats with all different kinds of coaches.
It is also for people who are ready for a coach and hear the person that they need in
their life to contact them to get started.
So for those listeners today who are saying, I need Quincy Wharf in my life to help me
move forward, how do they find you?
They can go to quincywharf.com and they can get a hold of me there.
And yeah, and I have all kinds of contact information on there and all kinds of other
stuff that they can reach out to.
So if they're old people like us, they can email you, if they're even older than us,
they can fax you.
No, probably not.
And if they're young people, they can reach out by messenger or TikTok.
There's only one Quincy Wharf that I know of.
So I am on TikTok and Facebook.
Oh yeah.
Can you spell that out for us, please?
Sure.
Q-U-I-N-C-Y-W-H-O-R-F as in Frank.
Is that the same way Wharf on Star Trek spells his name or is it?
No, he's W-O-R-F.
Okay.
So Quincy is W-H-O-R-F.
Yes.
Fantastic.
And if you need to find me, you can find me anytime at jeremywest.net.
And that also lists, there's also a link there to every episode of this podcast.
Thank you so much, Quincy, for coming and we'll see you again soon.
Thanks so much, Jeremy.
I appreciate it.
Take care.
Thanks so much, everyone.