Nory Pouncil
After graduating from the MPA Program in 2014, Nory Pouncil built a successful career as a communications director in Washington, D.C. – but something was missing. Nory decided to follow her inner voice, leave that career path, and start a project to help women live healthily and love themselves. Here Nory discusses her journey as the founder of The Get Unstuck Coaching Program.
Let me start with a quote from your website:
“I’ve been able to help women struggling from depression and anxiety overcome hurt, pain, disappointments, self-doubt and take control of their lives. The women I work with have found inner peace, developed a laser focus on their priorities, and become more patient. They are able to see beyond their own self-limiting beliefs and improved their mental & spiritual stability.”
What an amazing thing to be able to say you do every day! Please, tell me the story of I Am Healthy Fit (IAHF) and how it evolved into The Get Unstuck Coaching Program.
I began the project as a way to share my story. I have had personal challenges with weight loss and depression, and I wanted to talk about it.
In 2010, I went to visit my family in Honduras, and they said, “oh my god, you’re so fat, we have never seen you like this” – my family is very honest and they say things like this. After that my cousins taught me how to lose weight and stay healthy. That became my journey, and I lost a lot of weight, and suddenly a lot of family and friends wanted to know how I had done it. So I began IAHF because I wanted to share with them the details of the process, to help them eat better, exercise, and balance all of that.
IAHF became this space where I started talking about what it was like to go through my journey. I built this community with women, and I kind of shared my inside. I focused on women, and they would take the feedback that I shared and share that with the women in their lives. Out of that, IAHF began to evolve, and I began to evolve.
I created my website in 2013 while I was in the MPA program, studying full-time and working full-time at the Harlem Children’s Zone. At the time, I had a feeling that I wanted IAHF to be my full-time thing, but I was not clear about it, because I had always been taught that school was the way to go. You have to follow the rules: get your degree, get the job, work and put away for retirement, then eventually retire and maybe enjoy it before you die. So that’s what I did, which is funny because I don’t follow the rules, but I did. I moved to the heart of DC and got a job as director of communications and was making more money than ever, but this was not making me happy.
Then my favorite uncle was murdered in Honduras. I went into a deep depression. When you’re depressed, everything can look great from the outside. You can look like you have it pretty together, but internally I was struggling a lot. I needed to talk about it, but I felt like I couldn’t, because I did not know it was ok to feel that way. I feared that people were going to treat me differently because of what I was dealing with. And I felt like I should toughen up; I’m a New Yorker who got through grad school while working full-time, you know?
When I was really deep in my depression, my husband reminded me that my uncle would not want this for me. My uncle always told me, “I want you to do what brings you joy, what fills your spirit, and what makes you happy.” I asked myself what I wanted, and I had no idea! I had lost touch with myself because I was busy becoming this woman that I thought I was supposed to be, following the rules society gave me.
I went to therapy, and during my time in therapy, I learned that what I was feeling was real, and it was ok to feel that. I also learned about my patterns and understood what was going on with me. But I also felt that my therapist after a while was trying to help me just manage my depression; I wanted to get to the root of it, so I decided to stop therapy. I felt like I’m a smart person enough to sort this out.
Out of this journey came the Health Conscious Podcast, which has since evolved into the Get Unstuck Podcast. In this podcast I started helping women by talking to them about their experiences and what it was like to be a woman of the diaspora in this place and be healthy and preserve traditions. We recorded these conversations and posted them on the website. The project at that point shifted; it went from a weight loss conversation to a deeper conversation.
To finish this story – I know, it’s super long – my husband and I decided to move from DC to St. Petersburg, Florida. We were both ready to leave our jobs. We lived off our savings at first to give ourselves time to figure out what it was that we truly wanted, and not get caught up in what we thought we should be doing, but what we genuinely want to do.
I expanded IAHF into its current form, The Get Unstuck Coaching Program, because I wanted to share my gifts with people, to help them overcome the stigma of depression and work their way out of it. That quote on the website that you read is a compilation of reviews from my clients; that is what my clients say I do for them.
You mentioned women of the diaspora. Tell me about why you started by focusing on this group. What issues do you address with them?
I am a woman of the diaspora, and I felt like I could really speak to the challenges that we are facing. Living in the US, it’s a culture that speaks predominantly to white women. There are a lot of resources for women not of the diaspora. I wanted to create a space for women that look like me, that deal with issues that I’ve dealt with, where they can feel at home.
Within the US, the term black refers mostly to African Americans, but there are black people all over the world, so a lot of women are not feeling seen. To me, it is important in my conversations with women that they see themselves, whether they were born in America or another country, I want them to feel seen.
For those of us who are from the African diaspora, there are a lot of unanswered questions and feelings, particularly around slavery. I also find that a lot of African American women I work with struggle with the weight of segregation, the weight of knowing that they live in a country where there is such a disparity between whites and blacks. There are some things I cannot relate to because I’m from Honduras from the Garifuna culture, and the Garifunas were never enslaved, so my people did not carry that burden.
As a woman of the diaspora, I understand that sometimes you go home for the holidays and people look at you funny because you don’t want to eat certain things because you’re eating better now. When I told my mom I wasn’t going to eat any more white rice, she almost disowned me. She felt I was rejecting her as a person, rejecting her love for me, rejecting her values. I think I bring a lot of that perspective that my clients can relate to and they don’t have to explain it to me because I’ve been there.
Over the past few years, I’ve actually wanted to work more with women who are not of the diaspora. We have to understand what everybody is going through. I’m an avid reader, and the more I read, I realize we are actually all more similar than we think we are and are dealing with a lot of the same issues.
A theme in 2018 was for women to speak their truth, to tell their stories boldly. To what degree is your project related to this broader movement for change?
I think when we say things like “speak your truth,” it can be really confusing, because I find that in my work and also in my personal experience, a lot of women don’t know what that means. We say it, and it sounds very cute and empowering, but what does it mean to “speak my truth”?
In my work I’m learning that a lot of women have no idea what it’s like to speak their truth because they’ve never been who they truly are. They’ve created this person that they are not in order to fit into the mold that society wants them to fit into. They want to speak their truth – to be who they are – but who are they? They have to first reprogram themselves and remove this make-believe person so that they can actually have room for who they truly are.
We’ve been taught to make everyone comfortable, not to disrupt, to make others feel better. Being selfish has a negative connotation, but if I don’t look out for me, who is going to do that? No one is going to do that for me. People often assume that if you are selfish, it means that your intentions are not around helping anybody else or seeing anybody else flourish. In reality, speaking my truth means that I’ve taken time to identify the things I have been raised to believe that do not serve my purpose, that do not make me the best version of myself, and then I’ve taken time to remove those things, so that I can only focus on the things that help me flourish.
I think my work emboldens women to feel confident to trust themselves with themselves and not constantly seek permission or validation from other people. Then it’s like a chain effect because they start feeling like, “if Yenory can be this bold about it, then I can say how I feel,” because one person decided to focus on getting the nourishment that they need to speak their truth. So that’s how I see my work.
To what extent are the issues that your clients face due in part to social injustices? And is collective action imperative, in addition to the individual path to liberation that you have spoken about?
We live in a society that thrives on fear. You feel like you have to be really on all the time. Any time there’s a shooting, you feel like you have to react; any time there’s a new law that is discriminating against people or holding people back, you feel like you need to react, get angry, and fight. These social injustices make people exist in that constant fight or flight mode, reactive mode.
I think my clients struggle because they are always reacting to whatever society wants them to react to. That really impacts your ability to think clearly, because you cannot speak your truth when you are constantly in fight or flight mode. Part of the liberation that my clients feel is that they don’t have to carry the pressure of society on their shoulders; they can just focus on themselves, and because you can just focus on yourself, you begin to unravel these things that are holding you hostage, and you can begin to help your children do that, and you can help other people do that too.
I’m not saying that when injustice happens, we’re supposed to be quiet. But I think you have to ask yourself, “how can I help this situation in the best way?” And I think for me, I constantly see, what is the the greatest gift I can give society? And the greatest gift I can give society is to love myself unconditionally, so that I can love other people unconditionally and show them that this is possible, and out of that love, they’re going to have confidence, they’re going to have self-awareness, they’re going to know that I am not judging them.
What advice would you offer an MPA student who dreams of creating their own project to address a social problem?
Identify what is the problem you want to solve. A lot of us have ideas. I’m the queen of ideas. I have so many ideas about things I want to do, I want to be a DJ at some point and have my own farm. I have so many things I want to do in my life. But instead of focusing on your idea, focus on what is the problem you’re seeking to solve. Then you’re bringing a solution that’s actually needed, and it’s not going to be a hard thing to sell, because people are already asking for it. A lot of people start a project based on their vision for it or what they want to get out of it. I let my clients guide me, because they are the ones whose needs I am filling.
You don’t need a lot of glitz and glamour. Some people think oh, I need this fancy website and this perfect Instagram. It’s not necessary. If you want to help people to solve a problem, do it. Help people to solve the problem. If you focus on the person you want to help, and you help them, then your clients will be your advertising team. My clients rave about me, because I am client-focused.
When I started my life-coaching business, I put up an announcement on Instagram that I wanted to talk to women about personal fulfillment. A lot of women wanted to talk about that, and I had about 30-50 calls. I didn’t want anything from these women. I wasn’t pitching them anything. I just wanted to understand what was the problem that they were struggling with.
You don’t need to be a super confident expert at first. The only way to gain expertise and self-confidence is if you do the work more. You can read and listen to podcasts about it, but if you don’t get in there and face the people you want to help and listen to them, then you’re not going to gain confidence or expertise.
There is nothing wrong with failure. I wish we would stop using the word failure with this negative connotation. If you’ve never been ice skating, you can’t expect to get out there and be a pro. If you’ve never played tennis, you can’t expect to go out and beat Serena Williams.
Failure is just feedback. I learned this from a mentor: you have a belief, you take action based on your belief, you receive feedback based on your action, you reiterate based on that feedback. That’s the part where people don’t do well. Instead of changing their beliefs or actions based on the feedback, they just go back to their idea all over again.
What are some of the challenges people can expect when starting a social enterprise?
The biggest challenge that the students can expect to face is themselves. They are their biggest challenge. It is their ability to be clear on what they want to do and not let their fear paralyze them. I think people feel bad for being afraid or having doubts, but that’s not it. The thing is not letting that stuff get to you and prevent you from doing it. Yes, be afraid, be doubtful, but do it anyway, and then deal with the consequences. That’s how you learn to trust yourself.
How do you think the MPA program can better support students who want to pursue a social enterprise, as you have?
Help students get more clarity on what they really want to do. Give them a chance to spend some time really exploring what they want to do and why. Challenge students to think about whether what they’re doing is something that is really needed or is something that people just don’t need, that’s not going to be helpful.
If they can get to know themselves personally, they can see how to optimize their talents and work on the things that they’re not really good at and pair themselves up with people who are really good at those things so they can complement each other.
And students need to learn how to build genuine relationships. These are things that I think programs don’t really teach enough.
Another thing would be creating access for people to do this sort of nontraditional type of work. You know, doing networking events with people in these different industries who can talk about how it is, and how to get the word out by leveraging social media.
As a tactical thing, there are elements that you can teach that the students can use no matter what they do, no matter what sector they are in. Learning to adapt your message to your audience, for example. Focus on the message that the person really needs. And learning how to focus on the most important parts of their work and not get lost in multi-tasking.
You put a lot of energy into helping others. How do you maintain your personal balance?
I realize that I am accountable to myself and responsible for myself. I can create boundaries around the things that aren’t serving me. If I am on the internet and I’m scrolling and seeing that things are triggering me, I can choose not to be in those spaces. But I also take note of what triggers me because I spend time going through it until I get to the answer as to why it triggers me.
I also prioritize my self-care. In my schedule, nothing gets booked before 10:30. Between when I get up and 10:30, I am practicing my self-care, whether it’s having breakfast, meditating, exercising, reading, or journaling.
I have a manifesto that I read to myself every morning. It reminds me about my accomplishments and reaffirms why I’m doing this, how I’m doing it, and that I am amazing. That helps me deal with self-doubt.
The other thing I do for my self-care is eat healthy. I used to eat healthy and exercise because I wanted to look good. Now I do it because I love myself, because I know that it’s in my body’s best interest for me to eat food that nourishes it. My intentions for doing things are not superficial. They are because I genuinely care about myself, and I treat myself like someone I love.
I also have a very supportive husband. We take time off just to not do anything, which can be hard when you’re a full time entrepreneur and you love what you do, because you feel like you’ve always got to be ‘on’. When you walk away for a moment, ideas can flourish and you can find solutions to problems that you hadn’t seen before.
What helps you maintain hope and optimism amidst what can seem like overwhelming negativity out there in the world?
What gives me optimism is knowing that if I can feel this way about myself, and I can help my clients feel love about themselves, then it’s going to be alright, you know? There are ways to get out of it, to solve the problem. I can plant those seeds of love, and that’s enough.
Thank you for sharing your inspiring story with our students and the MPA community.
Nory is a Get Unstuck Coach, founder of The Get Unstuck Coaching Program and the Host of the Get Unstuck Podcast.
The Get Unstuck Coaching Program is for millennial women feeling stuck, that want to get out of their heads, and overcome their paralysis by getting to know themselves. You’ll learn to love yourself no matter what, you’ll know exactly who you are, you’ll have full clarity on what you want and will fearlessly step into your purpose. Learn more at iamhealthyfit.com.
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