Sophie Chiche is a French-American speaker, entrepreneur, and the author of The Power of Personal Accountability: Achieve What Matters To You. She co-wrote this book with Mark Samuel to bring attention to what really matters to you. She is a two-time TedTalk presenter with degrees in Business, Journalism and a Masters in Applied Psychology from the University of Santa Monica. She is working on a new book to be released later this year.
In this interview Sophie talks about how she used to weigh more than 350 lbs and made the significant change to lose and keep off more than half that weight. We talk about the mindset and behavior that allowed her to achieve such a massive transformation which also led Sophie to founding Shape House, an urban sweat lodge with eight locations now between California and New York. She tells us what it’s like for her celebrity clientele to be inside an infrared sauna
Sophie speaks to loving ourselves and the power of integrity to transform our lives, taking charge of our lives right now, and knowing that life is not a rehearsal. We explore the idea that pretty much every one of us has at least one area of our lives in which we want to make a similarly significant change.
“You can eat everything you want, but before we do that, can we feel our feelings?” and I was startled basically and said, ‘Okay, all right, I’ll try.’ And then I backed off from the refrigerator.”
– Sophie Chiche
This week on The School for Good Living Podcast:
- The two different lives between weighing 350lb and weighing less than half that amount
- What a therapist said to change the course of Sophie’s life and shifted the relationship she had with herself
- To look at the process of change as physical, emotional, mental and to some degree spiritual and how they all have to mature to the same level
- Being raised in an environment that treated feelings as the plague, to be avoided at all costs
- How Disney’s Mulan character Mushu is a lot like feelings – we imagine them to be bigger or scarier than they actually are
- The education system is one way to learn and some kids it fits really well, while for others it really doesn’t
- Sophie became a coach because she was more interested in where people are now
- Whatever is in your past, whatever’s not resolved, it’s all here in the present
- The brain (and the heart) is a muscle that requires to feel as an exercise, and avoid atrophy
- The toxicity of not letting your feelings be expressed
- Putting on a suit of armor will in the end limit your ability to grow
- Question your beliefs. Are they really yours or could they easily be someone else’s? Do they serve you?
- Sophie’s Netflix recommendations – ‘Fleabag” & ‘Killing Eve’
- Some people develop their mental capabilities but neglect their emotional capability
- The parallels between addiction and being healthy
- Self-medicating to not feel the feelings we are meant to feel
- The industry of sugar and how it’s an addictive substance
- Going from not loving yourself to thinking you’re the most precious thing in the universe
- The first step to self-love starts with integrity
- How not making commitments under the gun can avoid living a life that’s not the life you want
- We are in charge of our lives right now – we are the directors, the actors, and the production management as it’s happening
- Judgement is the poison that you take hoping that it kills the other guy
- If you treat your friends the way you treat yourself, would you have friends?
- The question Sophie often asks herself is, “What’s the highest choice right now?”
- The best mirror is often a good friend
- The meeting and impact of Lewis Mehl Madrona
- Sophie’s first sweat lodge experience
- Confronting cultural appropriation
- The Shape House experience: Infrared bedding, Netfix, a relax room with tea and Vitamin C and burning a thousand calories
- How we abuse our bodies and what can be done to reset it and allow it to heal
- Your at-home Shape House sweat experience – hot bath, lemons, ginger
- The benefits of alkaline water
- The feminine spirit of money and Sophie’s practice with a chess pawn
- Writing Tips – Write like you speak
- Write shorter sentences. One idea per sentence and only one sentence per idea.
- Sophie’s biggest advice in life: find out what you’re really good at and then be okay to ask for help for that things that you’re not.
- Working on your inner critic
- When Sophie was ready for an agent
- The best money Sophie has spent was on a retreat and having a coach
- Have a date with your spiritual self
Resources Mentioned:
- The Power of Personal Accountability: Achieve What Matters To You by Sophie Chiche & Mark Samuel
- The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- Method Writing with Jack Grapes
Connect with Sophie Chiche:
- Sophie Chiche Website
- Shapehouse.com
- Email: sophie@shapehouse.com
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Visit the Sophie Chiche guest page right here on goodliving.com!
