Cover Girl: Michelle Brock

Give us your “elevator speech” about who you are, what you do for a living, and how we should know you.
I am a spiritual development life coach who specializes in hypnosis for past life regression, which is the process of uncovering memories from a previous life from the subconscious mind. I work with my clients individually and mentor them through this process, as well as the subsequent life changes that often result from the new perspective that they gain from having this unique experience.

A past life regression is an incredibly personal and individual journey within, and having done extensive work myself uncovering my own past lives, I feel that I am an experienced guide on this path of self-discovery. I have come to believe that we are all multifaceted, eternal beings who reincarnate over many lifetimes in order to learn, grow, and evolve spiritually, and I offer a way to experience that first hand.

I am also a writer and host a radio talk show on topics related to past lives, soul mates, dreams, and spirituality.

Life Coach seems to be a “catch all” phrase these days. Give us your definition of Life Coach.

Yes, lately it seems that there are life coaches out there for almost anything you can imagine, and I find it amazing that so many people are choosing a career path that is centered on helping others. To me, a life coach is someone who has had direct life experience that they are willing to share. You can’t really become a life coach by reading a book or taking a seminar; a genuine life coach has really lived it. In sports, a coach is someone who offers strategy suggestions based on their own knowledge of the game, but then cheer for you as they let you go out there and play on your own. I think that life coaching works in this exact same way.

Who needs a life coach?

Employing a life coach is all about the desire for change. And, when we want to make a real change in our lives, it can be helpful to seek out someone who has been through it before and ask them how they managed to accomplish it. I think that we all consistently confront the need to make changes, since evolving and becoming better beings is what life is all about. So, maybe we all need a life coach in some capacity at one time or another.

How are you different from other coaches out there? What makes your practice unique?

It is true that there are a lot of coaches out there who deal with different aspects of spirituality, but I specialize in a very specific experience, being past life regression. What I offer is to share with my clients a piece of the puzzle that helped me down my own spiritual path and to eventually discover my own truth. There are many paths, and many puzzle pieces, but I share what my specific experience was with my clients. You can only share what you know, and this is what I can share.

What makes my practice unique is my approach. Spirituality today has become a huge business, and the fact that I don’t buy into any of the “new age” gimmicks or stereotypes set me apart from many of my colleagues. In my practice, I like to teach that experiences that we call “spiritual” are inherently human and can be discussed and dealt with practically, intellectually and entirely non-denominationally.

Every woman has a different path to success. Tell us about your journey to where you are with your business today.

The journey of growing my business has definitely been quite a lesson for me. My career path has been carved out by what life has thrown at me, including some pitfalls, dead ends, foot-in-mouth moments, and even some downright disasters. But, I made sure from the very beginning that I had a very clear vision of where it was that I saw myself going. I think that visualization is an incredibly important factor in any kind of success, and having that vision has been instrumental in helping me stay true to myself and to my ideals. This has meant occasionally saying no to opportunities that didn’t quite fit with what I had visualized, and more often than not, a new door to another opportunity would subsequently open that I would find to be a much better match for this vision.

The most difficult lesson for me in forming my business has been in patience, as I tend to want everything to happen right away. I am so impatient! It has been hard for me to get over the fact that I do not always have control over when and how something will happen, and to learn to trust that the universe has perfect timing. I have found that when you believe in yourself and believe that the work you are doing is your life’s purpose, the details will unfold exactly as they should, even if it is in a way that you might not expect.

And, like any entrepreneur, I work hard and devote a lot of time and effort toward my business. And, there is a Zen proverb that says “Before enlightenment: chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood and carry water.” No matter how “spiritual” you become, you still have to do the work.

Is there a role model, mentor, or other woman who helped you along the road to success? Is there a woman you act as a mentor for?

Yes, there have been many! Reflecting back on my life, I have been fortunate to cross paths with several wonderful women who have served as mentors and role models for me and have each helped me get to where I am today.

In college, I had a professor who managed to see potential buried inside a somewhat lost young girl and decided to give me a much needed job helping her grade papers for younger students. This job was usually reserved for graduate students, and she never flinched at giving me this responsibility as an undergrad. Her unwavering belief in me made me learn to believe in myself. I also worked for an incredibly dynamic woman entrepreneur here in New York in my early twenties who, by her example, taught me what it meant to be truly creative, yet also run a successful business. The list goes on and on, and I am so grateful for each and every one of them and the role that they all played in my life.

And, since being a life coach is all about mentorship, I get the opportunity to pay it forward on a daily basis. Hopefully my clients discover that I am a sign, or an arrow on their long, winding path through life that serves to point them in the direction that they were looking to go, just as so many have done for me. This is actually a really beautiful pattern, as I believe that we make agreements with one another before we are born that destiny will allow us to meet for the purpose of helping one another on our own spiritual paths. This is what a soul mate is, and we have many, many soul mates of different types who serve various roles for us on our journey through life, and also lifetimes.

Many of our readers are professionals who struggle to balance work, home, and personal pursuits. How do you find balance in your life?

Yes, this is the million-dollar question! Balance between the many different aspects of life is truly difficult to achieve. And for me personally, I feel that it is an additional challenge because my profession does call for me to be somewhat of a balance role model for my clients. I mean, who wants to hire a life coach whose own life is a mess? So, I find it quite important to achieve this balance as best I can.

For me, the key to this balance is through daily meditation practice. I know that it might sound overly simplistic, but by finding a few minutes to just sit, breathe and clear my head each morning, it gives me the chance to start my day feeling grounded, calm and centered.

Meditating regularly makes my whole day seem to flow in a much smoother way, and I am also able to be a lot more present in each situation that I am in. Whether I am with a client, having lunch with a friend, or doing something I enjoy by myself, I’m able to really be there in it, without worrying or thinking about my next priority. By working to stay in the moment, I find that I don’t get so frazzled by the million and one things that come at me and that I am able to calmly and objectively prioritize what I choose to create space for in my life. And, I have discovered that even as little as five minutes a day spent sitting and just breathing can make an enormous difference.

Do you have a personal motto or mission statement? What is it?

I would have to say that my personal motto is “remember who you are”. We are beautiful, eternal beings who have already worked hard to earn wisdom over many lifetimes, but we are born forgetting this. By remembering who we are, who we really are, then we can discover a much bigger picture and a greater design for our existence. We might also learn how much we are truly all connected, and that we are all beings on the same journey through many lifetimes in order to learn and grow. I also believe that if we could all just remember who we really are, then our actions would follow and the world would be a much better, more peaceful and loving place. I have made it my life’s mission to help others remember this.

Work isn’t everything; other than what you do for a living, what are you passionate about?

I am first and foremost passionate about my family. I am also passionate about spending time with my friends. I love to entertain at home, and I am always happy and content when my house is filled with good food, wine, and laughter emanating from people that I love. I am also a bookworm, a total history nerd, and a real nature lover and outdoor enthusiast. I am also passionate about traveling, discovering new places and finding adventure wherever I can!

What FIVE things are a must in your life? (Coffee? IPod? Etc)

Time alone in the shower, where I get my best ideas and inspiration, my iPhone, yoga class, laughter and love. Lots of it.

In many fields, a strong media presence is crucial to success. Where can we find you on the internet (including social media sites), in print, on the radio and television, or in film?

My website is www.michelle-brock.com, and I can be found on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pastlifemichelle and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/michellebrock. My radio talk show page, where you can listen to my podcasts from the archives, as well as my new shows, can be found at www.blogtalkradio.com/michelle-brock. My blogs can be found at www.pastlifespiritualpractice.blogspot.com and www.examiner.com/spiritual-development-in-new-york/michelle-brock.

Where can we find Michelle in 2011? What is on your “big picture” agenda.

From what I can see right now, 2011 promises to be an incredibly exciting year for me. I plan to publish a book this year, which will be amazing! I also plan to launch a large scale research project that I hope will culminate in both a book and a documentary film, and there has also been some talk of a television project. I can’t wait to see how it all pans out, and I am bracing myself for a wonderful, rewarding, and very busy year ahead.

Now is YOUR opportunity to tell us what we missed! What question should we have asked, that we didn’t (and what’s the answer to it)?

I guess that would be “what is the most ridiculous question that people commonly ask you?” For someone who is aware of many of their own past lives, like I am, the silliest question becomes “who are you?” Because, that definitely depends on how long you’ve got.