In this transcript, Hollis shares her process of embracing the part of herself that is a graphic designer, a title she was reluctant to accept despite growing up immersed in the design world and founding her own graphic design business. She explains how design profoundly influences her approach to coaching, merging the principles of design thinking with personal development.

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So much a part of living as a human being in this life is learning to accept all the different variations of ourselves, not just the parts we like or naturally identify with, but also the parts we perhaps choose to ignore or disown. In fact, I have a whole workshop titled "Worthy," which is all about accepting these different parts of ourselves and integrating them into our being as a step towards incorporating a sense of wholeness as we navigate the world.

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That said, there has been a very strong part of me that has disowned the fact that I am a graphic designer. I have been a graphic designer virtually my whole life, and I've finally come to a place where I am owning this part of myself. This has been a really long time coming. I went to the School of Visual Arts in 2007, graduated in 2011, and went specifically for graphic design. My mom has been a graphic designer for virtually her whole career. She started her business when I was seven, and I grew up in her office, watching her work extremely hard while also having fun. She hired incredible employees who became like my older siblings, and it was a space where I really learned to explore my creativity through the vehicle of graphic design, the Adobe Creative Suite, and everything a computer could do to help bring a vision into reality. My time growing up in my mom’s office and learning to express my creativity through design really shaped my perspective and worldview.  

Even over the years, when I haven’t mentioned or owned up to the fact that I’m a graphic designer, it’s always been something that informs how I do everything else. It has informed how I teach yoga, how I show up as a life coach, how I teach my workshops, and how I interact with clients, friends, and even my closest relationships. Design thinking, in particular, is very specific. It’s a skill that not everybody has. Design thinking requires strategy. It requires being able to internally visualize something and then knowing how to take that internal visualization and make it real in whatever capacity is required.

I have been in an interesting process with Life Design, a business that I created solely for coaching. I’ve been trying to determine how to integrate my graphic design with the coaching. From the beginning, Life Design has always been founded on my graphic design background. I’ve always known that being a designer informs how I show up as a coach. As I embrace this graphic designer part of myself, I’m integrating it more into my coaching work. In this episode, I want to describe a bit of the methodology of how design thinking and being a graphic designer informs how I choose to show up as a life coach. I hope to inspire you to integrate different parts of yourself and embrace the fact that you can be many different people, have many different interests, passions, business ideas, and desires, and that’s okay. You don’t have to fit yourself into a box. In fact, I encourage you not to but to explore how all the different parts of you are connected and how they might not be connected, and that’s okay too.

To begin this conversation, let me define design thinking. If I were to define design thinking to someone who has no idea what I’m talking about, I would describe it as the ability to hold an idea of something that doesn’t exist in your mind, visualize it in multiple versions, and then take action steps towards making it real. In graphic design, this is straightforward. Someone comes to you with a visual project they need to create, and you organize the imagery, fonts, text information, and other elements to create something pleasing to the eye with a clear hierarchical structure for easy digestion of the information, and that’s it. You move on.

However, applying this to someone’s life becomes endlessly fascinating. When a client comes to me for coaching, they have a purpose, something they want to create or change. Together, we synthesize what isn’t working in their life or what they want to create, visualize what that ideally looks like, and then I help them take the appropriate steps to move forward. This is a special skill because many talented people don’t naturally have the ability to visualize internally. Knowing what steps to take to get where we want to go requires visualization. People often come to me because they don’t know what the path ahead looks like or where to go. From an outside vantage point, I can hear everything they’re describing and visualize it for them, similar to graphic design. Instead of doing it for them, I provide the steps and formula to follow to achieve their goals. Obviously, it’s more complicated when dealing with human beings, as emotions, chemicals, and biology are involved. However, the foundational element remains the same. It’s about accessing the purpose of what you’re trying to create, the essence and motivation behind it, visualizing it, and then taking steps to make it real.

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Now, the other part of this graphic design background that I'm integrating more into my coaching is the creativity aspect. Creativity is an enormous subject. There have been so many books written on creativity, and I'm only going to describe a small component of it. Graphic design is a natural expression of artistry or being an artist, albeit a more commercialized version. It naturally lives within the creative arts. This is another area that many people don't necessarily feel they have access to, but it is my belief that we are all innately creative. We all have a creative aspect because we're human beings, and by nature, we create. We make children, businesses, homes, meals, and schedules. There are so many ways in which we orchestrate our creativity on a regular basis, but not everyone sees it as being creative. Part of this next evolution of Life Design that I'm developing is acknowledging that we are all deeply creative beings. By tapping into that innate creativity, which I have been fortunate enough to explore for most of my life, and have been encouraged to explore, I help my clients tap into their creativity. Life becomes much more expansive because they can recognize more possibilities and see the various ways something can come into form without feeling fixed into one solution.

As a graphic designer, you have to come up with multiple versions of something. You need to generate many different ideas and explore various ways of creating within specific boundaries or guidelines. Often, my clients engage in all-or-nothing thinking or feel things have to be a certain way. They only see one possible solution and have no idea that there are many other variations of their life they could create or step into. I love bringing my creative mind and energy to my clients to help them see what else is possible. What other potential solutions exist? How could they shift their perspective to see things differently? By doing this, they leverage their creativity and expand their lives.

Creativity is so much fun and connects us to our humanness. Human beings are natural creators. Everything we do is for the purpose of creating. Even on a biological level, we are wired to reproduce. Reproduction is creativity. We are designed to be creators in different capacities. You can be an engineer, a social worker, an actor, a designer, a fine artist, a bartender—anything—and still be creative. It's about recognizing, leveraging, and tapping into that creativity as we move through life.

In this next evolution of Life Design, as I embrace my designer side, this will be a significant aspect of the coaching work I do. It has always been there; I'm just giving it an official title and leveraging it more so that my clients understand they are stepping outside their limitations and exploring different possibilities. This brings us full circle to the purpose of this podcast episode, which is about this next phase of my business. I am identifying and highlighting the design thinking aspect of the coaching and the creativity aspects.  

As the founder and coach, I am embracing a part of myself that I have long disowned. By doing this work to integrate this significant part of myself, I hope and ask my clients and you, the listener, to do the same. Examine the parts of yourself you know are there but have not embraced. Think of them like a tomato with a bruise or an odd shape that you might not consider perfect but is still growing in your garden, one you helped grow. What are the things you’ve been hiding from yourself that are part of you? How can you embrace these parts more fully? Consider the secrets you keep—maybe an obsession, a hobby, or a genre of music you love but never admit to. What are the things you tend to keep in the shadows, and how can you unapologetically embrace them to step into more wholeness?

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You know, there's been more and more conversation around parts work in psychology in general. The idea is that we are not just one singular person; we are many different people at different times, with different people, in different relationships, and in different contexts. It's not about saying we can't be all of those things; it's about naming these different parts of ourselves and saying, "Yes, I have this part of me, this part of me, this part of me," and even the emotional parts. You know, I have an angry part of me, or I have a part of me that feels anger, or I have a part of me that is deeply emotional. I have a part of me that right now feels really, really sad.  

It's helpful to be able to parse ourselves into many different parts so that we can understand that we can be endlessly complex and own that complexity. We've lived in a world where, for so long, things had to be really linear and really defined. We're either one thing or we're not. You can't be two things at once. It only makes sense to have this type of hobby if you have this type of career, or it only makes sense to be this type of person if you live in this environment, or it only makes sense to be in this type of relationship if you come from this background. Thankfully, we are stepping into a world where none of that makes sense anymore, and we're allowed to be all the different variations we want to be.  

However, it can be really hard to undo those generational patterns of behavior when they've been modeled to us and when it feels safer to stay in one lane rather than embrace all the different lanes that we want to be in. As part of this expansive work that I'm doing in this business in general, I really, really invite you to start thinking about yourself in terms of the different parts and different versions of you. You can even start by saying, "A part of me is," or "A part of me feels," or "A part of me is thinking," or "A part of me wants." Instead of saying, "I want this job," you can say, "A part of me really wants that job." By saying that, you can recognize and acknowledge that, yes, there's probably a big part of you that wants this new job, and maybe there's also a part of you that is scared to take the job or is not excited about the job because you're nervous about all the responsibility it requires.  

This approach allows space for the different parts of you that need to be heard, want to be heard, and want to be expressed. This, in turn, invites a greater sense of wholeness and nuance to your lived experience. To wrap up this design thinking episode, I want to give you a few different things to explore and a few different questions to contemplate as a way of digesting all this information. Because again, even though I'm describing the business side of things, I also am doing this for the sole purpose of helping you explore and expand these different parts of yourself.

First, think about your own inner designer. Reflect on the part of you that acts as a designer: how and when you've been able to visualize different things in your life and bring them into reality. Maybe you saw that you really wanted to own a home, and you knew that was something you wanted. You envisioned it in your future to some capacity, took steps to save money, made sacrifices, did all the research, looked through available homes, improved your credit—whatever it took—and eventually, you got the house. Or maybe you wanted to have a garden but lived in a tiny apartment. You felt this was something you really wanted and figured it out. You learned about the parameters of having a windowsill garden in your apartment, took the steps, and made it possible.  

What are the short-term and long-term ways you have figured out the problem, visualized the solution, and then created your way forward to making that solution real? Also, think about the alternative. Think about times when you’ve been really lost, confused, and unable to see your way forward. What did you need then? Because I'm assuming you found your way out of it. Or if you're in a moment right now, think about past instances: what helped you clarify your vision, get clear about your direction, and understand your next steps? What skills did you apply? What did you outsource? Who supported you? What did others contribute to help you find your direction? What did you do to move from point A to point B with more clarity, stepping out of the fog and into the sunlight, so to speak?

Next, think about your inner creativity. Reflect on your inner creator. What do you get lost in? What do you love to get sucked into the flow around? Do you get lost in the kitchen, or while going on a long drive and planning a road trip? What projects, hobbies, or activities bring you joy and involve constant creation? Is it your business, how you design your home, the meals you cook, your friendships, or experiences? When does your inner creator emerge? How can you remind yourself that you are deeply creative, even if, say, a teacher in second grade told you that you couldn't draw or something similar? Recognize that such an incident represents just one tiny aspect of what it means to be creative and that you're exceptionally creative in other areas of your life.

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And then the last thing I want you to think about, which I've already kind of proposed to you—and this is a big one, this is a really, really big one. This is bridging on the side of shadow work. But what are the things in yourself that you have disowned, that you don't want to acknowledge about yourself? And how can you bring them to more light in your consciousness? How can you embrace more of that part of yourself by releasing shame, embarrassment, guilt, fear of not being accepted, and anxiety? How can you unapologetically own this part of yourself?  

It can be so, so, so small. I mean, it took me a long time to embrace the part of myself that was obsessed with astrology and start telling people about it. It's taken me forever to embrace the part of me that is a graphic designer. I'm only doing it now, and I've been designing since I was 8 years old. This stuff is not a one-size-fits-all process, and it can take a lot of time. As I say this, I want you to do it in a bite-sized way. I want you to take maybe the smallest part of yourself that you've been afraid to share with others and just start telling people about it. Start saying things about it. Start putting little breadcrumbs out there for people to start finding so that you can test the waters on how you can step into the ownership of this part that you have so long not loved or appreciated.

It took me a really, really long time to own up to the fact that I'm a graphic designer because I didn't want to be the part of my mom that was so obsessed with work, spent so many late nights at the office, and so much time in front of a screen. I really did not want to be that. I didn't want my life to revolve around a screen. I didn't want to have extremely late nights where I was just working on projects. In many ways, I have not become that graphic designer, but I had to separate how my mom did it from how I'm doing it in order to embrace that this is part of me and really own that this is part of me.

So again, what are the things that maybe you've stuck into a box, thinking, "This isn't possible, this isn't acceptable because how it was demonstrated to me is not something that I want to identify with"? How can you separate that definition of the thing and start to own it more as your own? Slowly do the work of becoming more and more whole. We can go through life living in pieces and not accepting these parts of ourselves, but inevitably there's going to be a sense of dissatisfaction or feeling unfulfilled because we will only feel fulfilled when we nourish all parts of ourselves. It's like eating a meal full of all your complex nutrients and macros. If you just have something that's all carbs, you're not going to be satisfied. You need to have protein and fat in order to feel satiated. I don't know why it always goes back to food for me, but it's the clearest visual.

So anyways, I really invite you to explore those different ideas for yourself, and I invite you to continue following along on this evolution of life design as it becomes more and more about clarifying your life path through the lens of the creatorship that you own. Really becoming the person behind the wheel, being the helmsman of your ship, creating the path ahead for yourself, and visualizing where it is that you want to go while leveraging your inner creativity to help you get there.

I really hope this episode makes sense. Thank you so much for tuning in for this kind of abstract episode. I hope that you got a little bit out of this. I guess you can say that I'm still in the process of stepping into this new version of Life Design and the evolution of coaching. So there's a part of me that's still kind of figuring it out, but I hope that you are finding some interesting insights based on me sharing my process with you. I recently saw something that someone posted saying the final product is really boring and everybody just wants to know how you got there. So this is a little bit of me sharing how I'm getting there, or how I'm almost there, and hopefully there are some lessons and insights that you're also gaining from this share.  

All right, thank you all so much for listening and for tuning in. I'll be back again in a couple of weeks with the lunation episode for July, and until then, explore that inner creator. All right, take care guys.