Authenticity and Empowerment with Teal Shoop

Meet Teal Shoop, a compassionate coach and founder of Teal Shoop Coaching, dedicated to guiding women on their journey to self-love, empowerment, and living authentically. Teal’s own transformative experience with overcoming undiagnosed depression and societal conditioning led her to embrace a philosophy centered on love as the ultimate path to inner peace and fulfillment. Inspired by her daughter and her own spiritual awakening, Teal focuses on empowering women to connect with their inner Goddess selves, offering coaching programs that serve as loving guidance to navigate life’s challenges. With a background as an entrepreneur and a deep commitment to authenticity, Teal’s coaching approach integrates personal insights and universal truths to help her clients break free from limiting beliefs and create lives they truly love.

Can you share a bit about your personal journey that led you to become a coach and start Teal Shoop Coaching? You mentioned experiencing undiagnosed depression and struggles with societal conditioning. How did you overcome these challenges, and how do they inform your coaching approach?

I think it was a gradual realization that finally fully crystalized during late 2019 where I was feeling particularly low. I realized that by continuing to put a face on things and to water down how I showed up in the world was actually saying to myself, “You’re broken, you’re not good enough.” And this was only harming myself, contributing to my depression, and fueling my low self-worth. I saw that validating, accepting, and loving myself was the only way to live, to move forward, to exist because it created peace for myself. Any other path just brought me pain, pain caused by my own thoughts and stories. Perhaps it sounds simplistic, but I’ve discovered for myself that love is always the answer, which means loving ourselves, loving others, and applying love to every situation and journey in our life.

By choosing to love myself first, I began very intentionally choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and paths that felt supportive to me, aligned, caring, and loving. I discovered that the more I chose love and viewed my circumstances, others, and the world through a lens of love, rather than through a lens of fear, the less there was in me of anger, hurt, self-doubt, and all of the negative, unsupportive baggage I carried.

This is a THE foundational piece in my own life now and the entire energy and philosophy behind my coaching.

What inspired you to focus specifically on empowering women and helping them connect with their inner Goddess selves?

I’d only just started coaching shortly before learning I was going to become a mom. At the time, I was focused on helping women entrepreneurs in their businesses, but now I felt called to help all women in a very soulful way. My daughter inspired me to create my latest coaching program as a bit of a “what do I wish my daughter knew about navigating life as the powerful Goddess that she is” – a sort of love letter from me to her of all of the things I wish I’d known when I was younger.

My journey in recent years has been a spiritual awakening in a non-dogmatic sense, and through it I’ve come to know that we are all beautiful, infinitely powerful, soulful beings – Goddesses – journeying here on this planet in human form. By claiming this and remembering this identity myself, I’ve changed my life in beautiful, positive, and meaningful ways – such as becoming a mom, stepping into my dharma to coach women, living at a level of peacefulness I never before experienced, and more. Along the way, I realized that most women don’t know these things I’m sharing with my daughter either, so I’ve incorporated this into my coaching with the intention to assist fellow Goddesses to truly live a life they love and thrive.

How has becoming a mother influenced your coaching philosophy and approach?

Is there anything quite like motherhood to push the bounds of our patience? LOL! With a 17 month old bubbly, joyful daughter underfoot, I find that there is always opportunity for me to be more patient with myself and with her, to give myself grace and space, and to intentionally choose during my day what feels fun.

Like most women, I used to be really hard on myself, a perfectionist, a people pleaser, a constant doer, and focused more often than not on how I could just keep up and maybe get ahead a little bit – rather than living in FUN and enjoying the journey with a light, playful, joyful spirit.

However, a path of impatience and self-criticism has no place in compassionate, empowered, and child-empowering motherhood. Or in our lives anywhere. These things just create suffering in our lives, so they’re certainly not what I care to emulate or teach my daughter. As a result, I help my clients create loving awareness of where in their lives they may be suffering due to impatience, their negative self-talk, their doing “lots of hustle” and “not as much fun” lifestyle and mentality in order to help them move into more peace and a better quality life.

Could you elaborate on the concept of your coaching programs being like receiving a love letter from one’s Goddess self? How does this unique approach benefit your clients?

I wonder if you’ve ever considered who loves you the most in the world. I believe that this is your higher self, your Goddess self, who loves you the most. And if you could share with the person you love the most powerful information that would help them suffer less in their lives, experience more joy, love themselves deeply, and showed them how to create the life they want…

Well, wouldn’t that be the most beautiful and loving letter ever, right?

This is what I offer my clients as I share how to remember who their Authentic Self really is, tap into Ancient Universal Laws, and cultivate a Goddess Mindset so that they can set themself free of the limiting beliefs and broken societal rules that are keeping them from having what they want. These are Universal Truths that all of our Goddess selves already know. Unfortunately, we’ve simply “forgotten” them through the conditioning from the world. It’s my path to help my clients remember these Truths, showing them that love is always the answer and deepening their connection with their Goddess self along the way so that they can receive even more loving guidance directly from their higher self.

Transitioning from experiencing personal struggles to becoming a successful coach requires resilience and determination. Can you share any pivotal moments or insights from your journey?

One of the biggest insights I’ve gained is regarding the importance of being our authentic selves. Many people have asked me why it is important for me to show up authentically because that creates business growth.

To me, that is the wrong perspective entirely.

I view authenticity as not a means to an end. Authenticity is not about creating success in a traditional business or life sense. It’s really about me being authentic to myself, honoring myself, loving and accepting myself and my path here during this earth journey in order to be at peace and to live in joy and love. That’s the end of the story. Being authentic in order to succeed in the world to me is actually inauthentic and manipulation.

From that peace and joy, I’m then able to share my gifts and light more powerfully with the world in order to help others in their journey toward whatever success they’ve defined. But being authentic in order to succeed in the world to me is actually inauthentic and manipulation. It’s all about our intentions.

Besides coaching, you also own another business, Sterling Essentials, providing natural equestrian care products. How do your experiences as an entrepreneur complement your coaching practice?

I’m actually thrilled to share that I just recently sold Sterling Essentials to another amazing family owned business! This was actually an almost 9 year adventure for me with so many lessons along the way, which foremost again was a lesson that love is always the answer. Whenever I acted in my business from compassion, caring, and love, I saw my efforts thrive. New clients, marketing performance exceeding expectations, incoming orders far larger than anticipated – all wonderful and good things happened for me. However, whenever I bought into the fear of the world, such as the economy is bad so I expect my business to have a “bad” year, I saw my outside world reflect that fear back to me in the way of things like damaged shipments and clients going on radio silence. This is of course one example of how I experimented with my philosophy on the power of love, but Sterling Essentials proved to be for me an invaluable testing ground to put what I coach on into practice in order to confirm with my own real life experiences what I teach to my clients.

What advice would you give to women who are struggling to break free from societal norms and limiting beliefs to live a life they love?

I’d already left my high powered corporate job in 2017 and was an entrepreneur full time in Sterling Essentials, but come late 2019 I was still struggling to find my way to a life I loved. I’ve always been so good at figuring things out and overcoming pretty much any challenges in my life. I generally always got what I wanted, and quickly, too, so my mind was boggled, frustrated, and honestly, angry, that I couldn’t figure out why I was stuck in my life.

I bet if you’re reading this right now that you can really relate to that, right?

But then it dawned on me, “How long was I going to keep pushing a snowball up a desert sand dune?” Useless, right?

Shortly after this I learned about my current mentor through a podcast. I’d never heard of him before, but clearly the Universe brought him into my life in perfect timing. I firmly believe that “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” This was absolutely true in my life. Through my mentor’s guidance, I’ve completely reshaped my life in the most wonderful and positive ways.

The bottom line I’m sharing is that if you or someone you know is struggling, open your heart, mind, and hands to receive help. Open your awareness to see what help may cross your path, such as a coach, a friend, a course or program, free guides or newsletters, maybe even a podcast like I found. Yes, it is possible (anything is possible) to get through your struggles and to a thriving life yourself, but in my experience, that takes a very, very long time and has a low success rate. I invite you to get help because where will you be a year from now if you don’t break free?

What are some common challenges or patterns you observe among your clients, and how do you help them navigate through these obstacles?

Most women, and I used to be the same way, too, try to change external things in their life in order to live a life they love and thrive. This totally makes sense when you consider our society has taught us things like working harder is how we’ll get farther ahead, that losing weight will make us feel better about ourselves, that getting “better” jobs or relationships will bring more satisfaction.

However, as I discovered first hand, working harder, being in the best shape of my life, and changing jobs – even to a job I actually really enjoyed, only brought temporary satisfaction and peace. I soon found myself repeating history, again dissatisfied with my life and feeling frustrated, confused, and doubting myself.

What most women don’t realize is that our external reality reflects our internal reality, meaning our beliefs, identity, and stories and perceptions about the world. We act based on what we believe and the stories we tell ourselves about what our world is and is not, and as you can easily see, our actions then create our life experience. As I experienced myself, even though I changed my environment, I still had all of the same beliefs as before, which led me to act similarly to before (hustling, overdoing, doubting), which created the same unsatisfactory outcomes (stressed, poor health, money issues, burned out).

I see this all the time with my clients. They have often changed jobs in the past, moved to new towns, divorced and remarried, and done all kinds of things to make their life better. Yet, they still don’t actually feel they’re living a life they love. Thus, they keep trying to change those things again, over and over, becoming more and more frustrated when it doesn’t improve their life as they hope.

By working with me, my clients discover how to break this cycle and thrive by shifting their emotions, mindset, and inner state. Together we work to actually rewrite their beliefs, identities, perceptions, and stories from a narrative that keeps them perpetuating the same struggles to one that supports and empowers them and aligns with the life they want. I offer many tools and paths to do this, such as subconscious reprogramming and other mind and emotional management tools and practices.

Looking ahead, what are your goals and aspirations for Teal Shoop Coaching, both personally and professionally?

One of the things women usually do not realize is that they are a blessing to their coaches and mentors. My wonderful clients are so sweet and thank me for helping them, but in truth, they are helping me. By helping them, I am being given the opportunity to live my dharma and to contribute good to this world. What a blessing to me! And furthermore, through coaching I am constantly pushed to grow, evolve, and connect with my Goddess self to an even greater degree. This is because my client’s challenges and needs continue to ask me to rise above and expand my current level of knowledge and life experience in order to serve them at the very highest level.

So yes, it is my intention for Teal Shoop Coaching to continue to allow me to live a life I love and thrive by allowing me to live aligned with my highest values like freedom, family, fun, wellbeing, financial freedom and abundance, travel, and more.

Yet, it is also my intention that Teal Shoop Coaching continues to help me know myself more and more, radiate my authentic self more and more, and embody the Goddess I am more and more.