How Can Leaders Overcome the Fear of Asking for Help? A Live Coaching Session with Bubba Nicholson
Summary:
Why can asking for help feel so difficult, even when you know you need it?
This week on The UpLevel Podcast, join us in a live coaching conversation as our guest Bubba Nicholson opens up about his struggle to ask for help and his belief that reaching out might make him an inconvenience.
As a strategic consultant, hybrid athlete, coach, and creator of the Black Pocket Breathwork Protocol, Bubba is stepping into a major new chapter. He is preparing to launch his book, Blue Collar Breathwork: Breathwork for People That Don't Do Breathwork, while continuing to grow his work and bring his mission to more people.
We’ll explore the internal voice that tells him people are too busy, that he has not stayed in touch enough, that he might be taking advantage of a friendship, or that someone might think his idea is foolish. Together, Bubba and Christie give that voice a name: Charles.
Creating this character gives Bubba a way to recognize the difference between his own values and the protective voice that has been trying to keep him safe.
This episode offers a powerful look at how coaching can help us recognize old patterns, separate them from our values, and create more choice in how we respond.
In this episode, we'll explore:
Why asking for help can feel deeply uncomfortable for leaders
How the fear of being an inconvenience can affect relationships and leadership
The connection between self-doubt and asking for support
What the "saboteur" represents in coaching
How naming an inner critic can create more awareness and choice
Why our protective patterns are not always trying to hurt us
How old beliefs can influence present-day decisions
The relationship between isolation, connection, and community
Why vulnerability can become a leadership strength
How to distinguish your own values from the voice of self-doubt
The importance of recognizing personal growth
Why it is possible to change patterns that have been present for decades
How asking for help can expand your community and your ability to contribute
What it means to step into a bigger platform while continuing your own healing
If you want to build the same coaching skills you just heard in action, bottom lining, holding someone's agenda, uncovering self-limiting beliefs, championing what's possible for them, The School of UpLevel teaches these skills so you can use them with your own team, your family, or yourself. You can explore what's available here: https://course.uplevelproductions.com/homepage-page
Order of Topics:
Designing the Alliance
Why Asking for Help Feels So Difficult
The Fear of Being an Inconvenience
Meet the Inner Critic: “Charles”
Where Self-Doubt and Protection Meet
The Connection Between Isolation and Community
Learning to Ask for Help Directly
How to Stop Letting Self-Doubt Make Decisions
Turning an Inner Critic Into a Conversation
Bubba’s Next Steps for Working With Charles
Recognizing Your Own Growth
Why It Is Never Too Late to Change
Blue Collar Breathwork and the Mission Ahead
Action Items:
Name your saboteur.
Give the voice that talks you out of asking for help a name, a tone, and even a physical presence. This creates separation between "who I am" and "what that part of me says."
Identify what your saboteur is protecting you from.
Ask directly: is it rejection, judgment, feeling like a burden, or something else? Naming the fear underneath the pattern makes it easier to work with instead of around.
Catch it in the language.
The next time you notice hesitation before an ask, reframe the thought out loud or in your head: "That's not me, that's [name] talking." This one shift creates room to choose a different response.
Get ahead of the story before you make the ask.
Build a small, consistent habit that maintains your connections before you need something from them.
Name the fear inside the ask itself.
Instead of assuming the other person is thinking, "this is an inconvenience," say it directly: "I don't want this to feel like an imposition, but would you be open to..." Naming the concern often dissolves it.
Build accountability into the practice.
Whatever your version of Charles is, tell someone. A pattern you're tracking alone is easier to slip back into.
Practice receiving your own acknowledgment.
Notice if your instinct is to redirect credit for your growth onto someone else. Growth you can't own out loud is growth that's harder to build on.
Free Resources for Your Next Step
Growth doesn't happen from listening alone. It happens when we take what we've learned and put it into practice.
That's why we've created these free leadership, coaching, workplace well-being, mental health, grief, publishing, and personal development resources.
Use them to go deeper into the conversations you've heard on the UpLevel Podcast, explore topics that matter to you, and find practical tools you can bring into your life, your team, and your organization.
Start with the resource that speaks to you. Your next UpLevel might be one click away.
About Bubba:
Bubba Nicholson is a high-level strategic consultant, hybrid athlete, and the creator of the Back Pocket Breathwork protocol. After building an elite career in the regulated cannabis industry, a high-stakes path that required traveling 310 nights a year for over four years, Bubba engineered his protocol out of necessity to manage his own health, recovery, and long-term sobriety while building a cannabis business.
Today, he leverages that corporate precision to consult on both Global Cannabis businesses & experiential design for contrast therapy companies and has coached well over 2,000 individuals through his protocol. He is the author of the upcoming book Blue Collar Breathwork: Breathwork for People That Don’t Do Breathwork. Bubba strips the mysticism out of somatic practices, opening breathwork up to anyone who may not resonate with mainstream wellness culture they see in their feeds.
He reframes breathing as a rugged, mechanical, and tactical tool for everyday performance and resilience.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bubbanicholson/
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About UpLevel Productions: Founded by Christie Mann, MA, CPCC, PCC, and Rachel Baldi, CPCC, PCC, UpLevel creates, produces, and delivers Transformative Experiences, Workshops, Training, Events + Media that develop leaders who make our world a healthier, more alive, and connected place to be. As Associate CTI Faculty Partners, UpLevel is licensed to sell, produce, and deliver Co-Active coach training and leadership development programs around the world to support the transformational growth of individuals and culture inside the workplace and organization. www.uplevelproductions.com Instagram @uplevelproductions Facebook & LinkedIn @uplevelproductionscompany
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