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Dr. Anil Shah:
On this Masters of Beauty, we’re gonna go someplace a little bit deeper than we’ve ever gone before. We’re not gonna be talking about the outside of how we look. It’s gonna be more about out how we can transform the inside. I’m super excited to introduce our next podcast guest. Her name is Mariya Krol, and I’m gonna give you a little background on Mariya. So Mariya is, uh, by nature as self-starter Mariya is an immigrant from Belarus. She came over in 1992. Her whole family only had $5,000 and she did not speak a single word of English. So talk about overcoming adversity. So you’re going into a very difficult situation without anything since then. Um, she has kind of written, literally written the book on motivation, how to create transformations for patients, just because she’s done this herself. Um, she went to university of Illinois, uh, my Alma mater and she graduated Magna cam Lada. Uh, so she started her career in wall street and then that mindset for success in wall street, she’s translated that to help people overcome their own hurdles. And what we’re gonna talk today about is our inner transformations, how we can overcome our hurdles, how did be the best version of ourselves. So super excited to introduce our next guest Mariya Krol.
Mariya Krol:
Hi Anil. Great to be here. Thank you so much for having me today.
Dr. Anil Shah:
Cool, cool. So let’s just first start off with this. Um, how did you get started with your work as a life coach?
Mariya Krol:
So I think that as you mentioned earlier, was very keen on overcoming, uh, the very, very tough obstacle of being an immigrant in the us, my family, and I came with $5,000. We didn’t speak a word of English and for a long time, my parents didn’t speak a word of English. So I ended up writing a lot of resumes, the age of 15, really ensuring that the three of us survive in the us. And then once we finally got on our feet and that was when I was around 1819, my father was able to get a job. My mother, my mother, um, started getting sick, um, with a neurological disorder that ultimately developed itself into Parkinson’s. And over time I started reading everything about self-help. In addition to the fact work that I was already doing, because I already had supported my myself through undergrad through grad school, got myself to wall street, saw the value of working hard and then saw the tips of money that somebody that works hard that could make in the wall street.
Mariya Krol:
And so then I saw a mother become ill and I realized immediately, I thought we need to make this better. How do we create a stronger mindset? We need to help her become resilient so she can overcome the disease and really battle the disease, which has been a path of 20 years. And so then I read every self-help book. I can get my hands on that I had anything to do with resilience and tenacity and ability to stay focused and time management and essentially Parkinson’s and ability to help my mother essentially stay ahead of the disease. And it’s, it’s been a battle that we’re, we’re still battling today, but, um, I will, I I’m sure that my mother, if she was here today would say that she wouldn’t be here if, um, if it wasn’t for the work that we’ve done,
Dr. Anil Shah:
Life coach, um, what does that mean? It’s a, one’s asking, like I wanna come into, um, you know, for a life coach session, like, what does it mean? What does it, um, translate to?
Mariya Krol:
Sure. And I think this means different things to everyone because different people struggle with, um, different types of problems. Specifically. Some people have a hard time with their internal self talk. Others have a hard time getting results in their goals. They seem to be doing everything, get, they can’t move forward yet. Other just need help in career transitions. And ultimately what I’ve really found out is that specifically during the time of COVID people have a really hard time just believing in themselves, just really the self-belief for you to be able to do whatever you’d want and succeed in. It seems to be a real problem for people. People continue to see obstacles in their path instead of seeing opportunities.
Dr. Anil Shah:
Okay. So, so for, for a life coach, that means, is it someone who says, Hey, I, I own a business and I want to be like, I wanna take my business to the next level. Is it someone who is kind of lost in your life or is it kind of like a little bit of everything is what you
Mariya Krol:
Said? It’s a little bit of everything I have. I have clients coming, coming to me with they’re a little lost in life. I, and they just need to create a better sense of self. So a better self concept, essentially their story. Cuz I find that a lot of people on the former side of, um, your example that let’s say they were formed in their childhood by some traumatic experience and now they define themselves trauma. So instead of thinking how successful they could be and being their internal self coach, their all self talk is consistently negative. It’s kind of putting them down, no, you can’t do this. How, how could you even imagine being rich? How could you imagine getting that job? You’re a loser, you can’t do anything right. And so what we work on is we work on changing essentially their self concept, which is usually combined by how they see themselves and how they feel about themselves and then create some very specific affirmations and discipline with positive habit, forming processes in order to help them transform their lives.
Mariya Krol:
And that’s the first type of client subject client is certainly more business oriented. So as an entrepreneur, um, like you mentioned a cert career wall street, my background was, uh, a accounting, finance and psychology. Yes. Such an interesting mix. And so I, um, fairly good at, um, understanding how to launch companies create product and ultimately run the sales organization because that’s a lot of psychology and incentives. So I have some business owners come to me and say, I need help motivating my teams. I need help creating incentives and alignment in order for them to be able to envision success. And then for us to envision success as art team, as a firm and then ultimately grow our, uh, revenues.
Dr. Anil Shah:
So I think it’s interesting too. Like, so you, you see these successful people who are coming in who want it to take their level to another thing. Do you see a pattern in like successful people versus unsuccessful, unsuccessful people and say, wow, like, is there a fundamental way that successful people think that’s different and then kind of as a follow up to that, how hard is it to take someone whose thought processes are unsuccessful and transform them into a successful thinker?
Mariya Krol:
Sure. That’s a, was there two great you questions? I think first of all, all successful people are resilient because there’s never a time in your life that everything’s just gonna go your way. It’s just impossible. Especially if you’re trying to do something challenging. If you’re trying to build a business from scratch, if you’re trying to attract new clients, anything that’s worthwhile doing is never easy. That’s certainly at my quote. And so as a result, the key is to create these positive affirmations. So you can essentially wire yourself for being able to overcome those obstacles. And so the people that are successful are constantly referring themselves every morning and every night, what they’re trying to accomplish in addition, doing mirror work, which is something else that I focus on. So essentially again, building their self confidence and ultimately they are creating an UN favoring sense of self.
Mariya Krol:
So regardless of what happens, even if that business collapses or the client doesn’t like you or something happens, you know, within yourself, you’ll just be able to bounce right back up and go forward again. Because ultimately the way that we gain traction is to take more risks. As you, only way we can get results without risk. There’s no result, right? If you’re just standing there and doing nothing, then there’s no physical way. You’re gonna, you’re going to get any type of result in your life. Certainly if you take risk, you can get potentially a negative result. But that way there’s at least an opportunity for a positive result. So that’s the first, the second thing is that I think it’s certainly a challenging, someone’s really in a rut, but that person has to want to change. If that person says no, Maria, I don’t want to change.
Mariya Krol:
I’m happy being here, which often actually happens. A lot of people surprising, like to be broken because they’re so scared of trying and then failing that they just don’t wanna start it all. Like, you know what? I’m just gonna stay here because even if I try, it’s probably gonna fail. So I’m just gonna stay here on and escape the concept of me potentially failing it again. I’m reaffirming that story, that self concept that maybe was built in childhood. So the people that I generally work with that pay me to help them are people that want to change. And as a result, I give them homework. I say, think about you’re 90, 95 years old. What would you have like to have done? How would you have liked for people to have seen you thought of you? What would you have to have accomplished? Let me work backwards.
Mariya Krol:
And we create short term goals, medium cycles and long term goals in terms of monetary components. Then we also create a holistic goal in terms of their mind, body and soul, cuz I believe in balance. So how do we create a balanced lifestyle? It’s not about making hundreds and thousands of dollars. There’s plenty of people they’ve done very well and that certainly don’t leave lead very healthy lifestyles. Um, and that they just don’t know what’s enough. And that’s unfortunate in my work, particularly with entrepreneur as well as, um, individual clients. It’s all about finding a sense of peace within yourself and that’s really about balance within your entire life or your entire life.
Dr. Anil Shah:
And, and it’s interesting that that although money seems to be the goal that everyone wants. Um, if you talk to people with an endless, a lots of money, more money, they know what to do with, it seems there can be a void for them unless they’ve connected all these other facets of their
Mariya Krol:
Life. And that’s, what’s interesting is that sometimes the poorest people are the happiest and it’s because there’s consistent concept of something being not enough because everything in life is relative. For example, you know, heat because you know, cold, you know, love because you felt hate, you know, lack of money because you may have, or vice versa. Somebody who’s grown up really poor their entire goal in life. Just, just to make money because they believe money will be the answer. The problem is that as soon as you have money or some sort of a basic income, let’s say, I think it’s $70,000 where there’s a decreasing, marginal utility of happiness. At that point, once you get to that basic threshold, then that intense need for more money is such to diminish because you kind of you’re used to it. So there’s less of relativity, there’s less not having to having. And so what’s interesting is that creating a balance is what’s actually most critical in life as opposed to maximizing anything in, in extremes is never a good thing.
Dr. Anil Shah:
So that, um, so we talked about the, the first, um, person who comes in, who’s that person wanting to take their, their company to the next level, their business, to the next level. They want to be the best at everything. And then that second person is the person who’s in a rut. You know, they’re, they’re in a job that maybe they don’t feel like it’s, it’s challenging them. Maybe for some reason they took a path and they said, you know, I’m randomly gonna be a, I don’t know, um, a, an 18th century literature, uh, major. And now I’m like, wow, what am I at? I’m, you know, I’m in my forties or fifties or whatever age I am. And I really wanted something else. I wanted to be someone else. How do you handle that person?
Mariya Krol:
Surprisingly enough, I have handled that person. In fact, there’s a lot of professors that come to me from academia and they really wanted to transfer to the finance in fact, and they want to make more money because a for instance, now lass is struggling. Unfortunately I love the humanities personally. It’s unfortunate. That’s just not where the jobs are as time’s really taking over. And so I certainly manage the tip of, um, and hope the type of client. And essentially we just start from the beginning and we say, what else are you interested in? What else can you, you see yourself doing now? I’m a little different, I don’t say, just follow your passion. Every life coach out there that I’ve seen, or at least a lot of them say, just you wanna be in ski instructor. Good for you. Wonderful. Not think of this little MYOP we can’t all just follow our passions.
Mariya Krol:
Not because I don’t believe in making money with what you’re passionate. I do believe that you’re a lot more, there’s a lot more chance of success. If you’re passionate about what you’re doing. However, not everything that you’re passionate about pays a lot of money. If you’re passionate about collecting stamps and the stamp market <affirmative> is not as aggressive, you’re probably gonna have potential problem versus let’s say you, you really like computers and you’re a software engineer. Then that’s gonna be a little bit of a easier path for you. And so I start with the client in terms of thinking what’s a realistic outcome in terms of what you actually want to accomplish in terms of your lifestyle, in terms of what you want to do day to day and will actually yield real results of happiness for you. If it’s money, then maybe we talk about going back to school.
Mariya Krol:
And we think about what is school in terms of, is it a master’s degree? And then after a master’s degree, how do we get you a job? It’s not just, oh, you just go back to school, you got a degree, you’ll figure it out. There’s so many education systems now not gonna pick of any names, but you pay a lot of money. They don’t have very little street cred. And then people find themselves in a lot of debt after getting out of these universities, especially the online ones and it’s problematic. So it’s even it’s causing that person even more, um, issue than they began with. So we talk about realistic and very specific action. That’s going to lead them to a more positive outcome because even though they may have made different ch different, um, decisions in their lives, which they may have called mistakes.
Mariya Krol:
It’s one thing that I deal with a lot. People really have a hard time getting over their mistakes. Oh, how could I have done that? That’s changed my life forever. I can’t believe I did this. I can’t believe that had I made this one decision differently. It would’ve been completely different. I would’ve been a millionaire. I would’ve done the thing is that they’re all learning experiences. We all have different paths in life and we never know in life what will lead us to the next thing. So it’s all about understanding and my perspective to life. Isn’t a hundred percent linear and to consistently think positively and to create that resilient mindset, to be able to attract that a positive next step in your life.
Dr. Anil Shah:
So a question that comes up a lot is are winners born? Is it a mindset? You know, there’s a classic study that looks at, I’m sure if you’ve heard of this donut study, where they have the little kids and um, they ask the kids, um, you know, you can either eat the donut now, or we can come back in five minutes and we’ll give you two donuts. Um, and it’s, you know, obviously the kids who waited were thought more likely to be planning for their future things. You talked about, you know, willing to kind of take that sacrifice and waved, um, uh, your thoughts on, is it something that’s a mindset that were, is that something habitual? And then the other part is how do you overcome that mindset? Cause it’s probably like years and years have been entrenched thought process. Like it probably can’t be easy. Certainly.
Mariya Krol:
I think the question you’re asking here is nature versus nurture mm-hmm <affirmative>. I certainly think that some part of who we are is based on nature. If you come from parents that are hyper disciplined, that are thoughtful and you have a certain genetic makeup, I would imagine again, I’m not a neurobiologist, but I would imagine that ha that conditioning has impact in terms of your ability to have more tenacity or, um, maybe willingness to work hard. I think more importantly, if you’re in a environment, so nurture where you have family that really focuses on her work and discipline. And for instance, like I come from a pretty strong immigrant family where my mother’s, my mother’s come when I was 12, she goes in the 15th closed knock on the 16th door. And this was my, I was, I had, I paid my way through essentially undergrad and grad school.
Mariya Krol:
And for me to buy clothes in high school, she goes, go have a job. Good luck. You wanna buy clothes? You work. It was very simple. My mother, my mother was very simple in her teachings. And so I was like, I wanted to get a job, but these are 13. And I had a hard time. And, um, cuz you know, and I didn’t have lot of experience. And so, and so I remember that kind and that’s, and I, and that really stayed with me until today. And that’s really, it’s one of the reasons really I I’ve become successful in everything that I’ve done is because even when I’m feeling it’s something or I’m seeing that something’s not coming together, I think of a different way to approach it. Same problem. Now having said that I’ve so certainly had my series of setbacks and I’ve seen some clients that don’t have the fortune of coming from such families.
Mariya Krol:
Additionally, some people, even though they come from fortune of families, for some reason or another, the way that life has presented itself to them, they fall between the cracks and their inner sensitive self gets crushed and they just can’t get out of that quick sand. They’re constantly reaffirming negative beliefs. And so that person has to first make a decision to make a change. I can’t stress this enough. And then it’s between the affirmation work every day, it’s mirror work. So you’re forcing yourself to rewire yourself. You’re rewire your transmitters. You’re rewiring the way you think yourself. And most importantly, self aware in us. And this is where meditation comes in. So you have to be aware of your thoughts. You have to be aware of how you react to situations. How did I handle the situation? Did that make sense? Why did that happen instead of thinking, oh, that was horrible. I can’t believe that happened. It’s more about why did it happen? How did I respond? Because as we all know, life is essentially 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it.
Dr. Anil Shah:
Yeah. It’s interesting with that, that donut question I asked my, he was six years old at the time, you know, do you hunt the wait for one donut? Would you, would you wanna, you know what he, and or you could do the second donut and wait for that five minutes later, he said, he’d eat the one donut. And I was like, why would you pick the one donut? Like, you’re gonna be a failure. He’s like, well I want one donut because if I eat two donuts, it’s too much sugar. And so I was like, oh my God, it’s like a being thoughtful. That’s a classic kid answer. Like they don’t even think within the, the boxes we want them to think of. Do you notice a difference between generations? So you have, um, you know, that classic, you know, roll up your sleeves, the hard work generation, you know, you think of that as sometimes in the gen Xs and um, um, you know, versus my kids growing up right now, none of them are great athletes, sorry about that kids. But, um, and everyone gets a, a trophy. You know, everyone, no one is allowed to fail. No one is allowed to find their own voice and say, Hey, guess what? I tried this, um, everyone wins. Does that make it harder for you harder? And is it different from generation to generation?
Mariya Krol:
So this is more a personal thought versus me as a professional life and career coach, I will believe that accountability is really important because if there’s no accountability that there’s no way that person can learn or that child can learn. And so I do think there’s a change in generations now. I think it’s a potentially because of different policies, maybe no, no child left behind policy or just everyone getting a trophy. And then B the social media component, the way that kids spend their time. And what they’re focusing on is drastically different than even, let’s say 50 years ago, before kids would go to class, there were no phones. They would interact with other people. They would form relationship friendships, go to obviously high school college. And so their connections were a lot more in one on one. Now people connect versus social media and they spend a lot of time comparing themselves to others on social media. And so the way that then we form ourselves as people over time, drastically changes because it’s no longer accountability. What I do has direct consequences as a result, I need to do X or differently. It’s more like, wait, but Jenny looks like this and she’s smelling in that picture. Wait, I, what do I need to do? And so people find themselves more lost
Dr. Anil Shah:
Than before. And what they don’t know is that Jenny, there is no Jenny obviously, but, um, has probably using a filter. She’s probably, you know, kind of photoshopped her cell, right. Um, is also all only talking about the highlights. I always find. It’s interesting. Um, it’s my 18th wedding anniversary. That’s why I’m not gonna write a long thing, but, um, couples who write these long paragraph after paragraph of how much they love their significant other again, is it a show for social media? I, I think like a year or two later, you look at them and you’re like, oh my God, what happened to that couple? They were so happy. And are they to what’s going on
Mariya Krol:
Over there, here. Exactly. And that actually, then it’s interesting that you made that comment because then that goes into intimate relationships, romantic relationships between people. So you have these formative years of youth. They’re not as can accountability the way that they form themselves and their connections with other people changes and they form relationships with a partner. Then the way they can act within themselves changes as well and often problematic because they haven’t been taught to develop those, uh, those accountability habits for themselves. And then for their people as well, in terms of boundaries of what they feel comfortable with within that relationship, how they want to show up how they want the other person to show up in terms of their comfort level. So it just changed the dynamic. And so today I find that there’s a little bit more a fakeness in terms of how do I get from a to B because of the social environment we’re in.
Dr. Anil Shah:
Um, so that bit, so, so we know if someone wants to get strong, they’re gonna go to the gym. I’m not trying to say I’m strong. <laugh> I flex for the camera. Uh, if someone wants to get strong, they’re, they’re gonna say, I, I know what I need to do. I need to work out. I need to, you know, eat the right types of food. If I want to be strong mentally, I wanna be super dialed and focused wise. And I, I know if I wanna work out, I need a certain amount of time every day to do this. And you’re probably getting these people who are busy in their own world. How much time do you need to make this transformation? First of all, AF after you’re coaching, is it a daily thing? Is it four hours a day? Is it 10 minutes a day? Is it one hour a day? How do you transform this person transform their mind? The inside of them. This is such a fascinating thing for me.
Mariya Krol:
That’s a great, great, great, great question. I think in the first caveat I must say is that it depends on where that person’s starting from, but the persons let’s say, I’m just thinking broadly, a, a negative situation, just very, very negative. Person’s an alcoholic. They’ve had a really hard time. Quiting drinking. They’re having, they have terrible habits. They never go to the gym. They never meditate. They don’t drink while again, just again, very ation then they’re certainly gonna, it’s certainly gonna take them more time. I would say one to two hours a day minimum, but if the person’s little bit forward in their work, I would say takes 10 to 20 minutes tops. Cuz once you’ve created these affirmations and the self of concept, I literally give people four, no cards like read these four note cards in the morning and the evening you could be at a party.
Mariya Krol:
You could be anywhere. You can take a picture of the note cards. You can go to the bathroom. I just need you to do the work. I don’t care where you are, but read ’em to yourself every morning and every evening because you’re essentially just neuro programming yourself for a more positive outcome. And I believe in the concept of synchronicity. So it’s a little bit more energy work as opposed to more specific. So I combine a very strong accountability, disciplined focused day to day with energy work, which means that you create positive energy and positive mindset in your life, through these affirmations and through essentially. And this is something that I also work on. This is not the affirmation piece. This is where I really, really stress for that person to keep their thoughts, their visions, their words in line. So if they’re aligned and they want to have a successful business, they can never say I failed that this business, they can never articulate that. There’s really any think they create negativity like, oh, this, this didn’t work well. Okay. Here’s how we’re gonna make it better because words are spell. That’s why it’s called spelling. Oh,
Dr. Anil Shah:
I did not know that. Love that.
Mariya Krol:
Cool. So if we create this alignment, so it starts with thoughts. If you create positive thoughts and you hear yourself, you hear yourself, thank you’re meditating for let’s say, and I have different meditation ways you can meditate for. Literally I give my clients, I just need you to meditate for three minutes in the morning and three minutes in the evening. If you can’t do it twice, you can just do it three minutes in the morning. That’s all I need you to do. And then they’re like, oh, three minutes. That’s nothing. Yeah, I can do that. And then we work on maybe five minutes and then they find themselves that they’re meditating 10 minutes a day. They’re doing that formation work. That’s 15 minutes. That’s about it. And they have amazing results. I can’t say I, I can’t, my clients have done. They’re surprised of how fast the results come. It it’s
Dr. Anil Shah:
A little like learning a foreign language. I guess if they, about 10 minutes a day, if you just worked on it every day, 10, 15 minutes, you have the power transformation, but very unlikely that someone’s gonna be able to do it on their own. I’ve been by the way, trying to learn Spanish for like, um, I’m in my late forties, 30 some years. And again, I think I need that accountability. I need someone telling me to kind of do that, but I get that. It’s not quite as easy as just saying I, I can do it. It’s um,
Mariya Krol:
Yeah, I think everyone needs, I mean, I’m a little biased obviously. So I think everyone needs a coach. I have a coach, for instance, I think it just, you need someone, that’s an objective person that creates like a coach. It’s not someone that tells you what to do or how to think they just give you a guideline. They keep you accountable for how to you do the, this week. How did you handle this? Would you keep your thoughts, feelings, and actions in line in order for you to continue on the path, to what you’re trying to accomplish on a short term basis, medium term basis and long term basis.
Dr. Anil Shah:
I, I kinda have this random thought here. Um, so I think what I do is I have someone who comes in and I look at them at, at the external side, I’m looking at the external surface and, you know, I view this person as they should be confident and hopefully making this little change helps them become more confident, which I think leads to some success in their life. Um, I think you’re coming at this from a different perspective and your perspective is, Hey, I’m gonna make you more confident actually making you more successful and that’s hopefully gonna lead to positive change in your life. Agree,
Mariya Krol:
Disagree, certainly because I think what you work on and I completely agree. I think you work on is that or appearance where every time they look in the mirror, every time they feel that they’re more presentable, they feel more confident and the confidence is very important, but what’s also key is action. Confidence without action is useless. It’s just bread record <laugh>. And so what I focus on is once that person has a confidence out, how do we create that internal sense of self? So you’re constantly taking action to move yourself toward a positive outcome and reaching the goal that you saw out for yourself today, tomorrow, 10 years from now lifetime
Dr. Anil Shah:
Fascinating discussion. Um, and, uh, um, looks like I have some, some work I might need
Mariya Krol:
To, to, to work on. No, no, no. I would not say that. I would not say that, but if I, if I may, um, make one comment, in fact, in fact, two, the first thing I wanna say is the importance of gratitude. Gratitude is highly critical. Now we didn’t talk about that, but I just wanna end on gratitude. And so I wanna say thank you so much for the opportunity to have this conversation and to get this message out to people so that even if let’s say they don’t work with me, that they consider working with other people or even consider, um, if in a tough spot, wherever they are in their lives, they know that there’s hope that there’s, if they’re alive and they’re with aray, that there’s always an opportunity for change.
Dr. Anil Shah:
The difference between success and failure is such a thin line and anyone who’s super successful and thinks they’re untouchable. I mean, you can see things crumble with just
Mariya Krol:
Hub. Hubris is a downfall of man. We all know that.
Dr. Anil Shah:
And that turnaround for, uh, for failure. It’s probably not as many things that you think to kind of turn that around. Yeah. So that’s both a exciting thing, but also one of those things that, uh, you know, make us all, you know, we all have
Mariya Krol:
A lot of work to do. Yeah, absolutely. And so my company’s called our best piece forward one face or our BFF for short. So everyone’s best friend, kinda like a millennial then. Ha ha ha. And if you’d like to find me and I’m on our BFF, so O R bff.live, L I V E. And the reasons that live is because I run a lot of my webinars live on the website. And so it’s easier to me.
Dr. Anil Shah:
Love it. Thank you so much.
Mariya Krol:
Thank you Again.
