If you’re in the online coaching space, you’ll probably have seen what’s been going on in the past few weeks.
And I’ve been watching, intrigued, because of two main reasons:
1. I’ve been observing some of what’s been going on in the online coaching world since 2014, when I first started creating online courses;
2. This year, I’ve been deep-diving into this particular topic for myself, which I’m seeing from my own Marion Method lens of yeses and noes.
I’ve had three experiences with buying from online coaches or mentors which have helped me get so much clearer about my own noes. I’ve been talking about this with my own mentor all year, and I have been doing lots of research, and documenting what I’ve experienced and observed.
In this article, I’m sharing some of my experiences, and how I interpret them through the MM lens.
I sense that the recent happenings are part of a bigger cultural movement, where, in almost every area of life, old ways of doing things, which I perceive as being related to the Disconnected Domination Culture (DDC), are being more clearly seen and questioned.
I see more and more people saying no to DDC ways of doing things.
My hypothesis about what has happened in the coaching world recently is that so many women, growing up and living in the Disconnected Domination Culture, have focussed on regaining connection with what I call our Yeses – such as our desire to speak and share what matters to us, and in us following our callings, making a living doing what we love.
However, this focus has been on Yeses, and not Noes.
Part of DDC conditioning means that for most of us, when we said no as children, our needs for safety, love, or belonging weren’t met.
So, another important part of our journey is also reconnecting with and reclaiming our Noes.
As an adult, reconnecting with, and trusting when we have a No to something or somebody – and actually saying no – does the opposite than what we experienced as children – it actually creates safety, and a true sense of connection and belonging.
What I perceive in the coaching world is that it’s focussed on the Yeses, but sometimes in DDC ways that include enticing rather than inviting willingness (a full-body yes), as well as often overlooking our Noes.
In fact, often in that world, women are invited to take action fast without truly listening to our Noes, and to frame noes as a lack of faith in ourselves and our future, and what we really want.
This often overlooks and overrides the ways in which our Noes are a vital way that our body communicates with us about what is important to our Soul, and as a result, creates true safety and deep connection.
The Marion Method
This Marion Method work invites people to come home to their Soul by increasingly getting free from DDC conditioning and hurts in relation to both our true Yeses – what we really want and are Called to -and our true Noes – i.e., what isn’t in alignment with our callings or values.
What I’m passionate about is being most truly who I am (as much as I’m able at this time), doing what I’m here to do, amongst a wider community, and inviting and supporting others to be more truly who they really are, doing what they’re here to do (and for those who are parents, also supporting that in their children).
In this long-form musing, I share my own experiences, and how I see this all through a Marion Method lens.
Back to 2014
I’ve bought a lot of online courses since 2014, when I first started creating my own online courses; including about: how to create courses; design (especially before Canva had templates to make designing much easier; social media; and money.
I’m here to make clear that I really enjoyed so many of them – such as Jana Kingsford’s Launch a Little Course, and all the courses I did about design (I loved art and design in my childhood and teenage years).
Yet also, coming in to that online world with a background as a psychotherapist and developmental psychologist, I saw things that I didn’t resonate with, right from the beginning. Other things that I have a No for have taken me a lot longer to see clearly.
My two big Noes
In particular, two elements I had a No to from early on have been:
1 ~ coercion, and;
2 ~ war language (such as: “collateral”, “strategy”, “deadline”, “frontlines”, “campaign”, “target”, “execute”, “deploy”, “arsenal”, “capture”, “recruit”, “defeating objections”.)
I’m passionate about understanding how cultural conditioning is passed down and along through language, and understanding the power of our language choice is a key part of The MM work.
So, with my Noes to coercion and to war words, over the years I created my own offerings such as my Respond Lovingly to Your Callings and Psychospiritual Entrepreneurship Courses.
These included responding to our callings whilst also being loving towards our younger parts, and not coercing people to buy our things, and not coercing ourselves to make our offerings.
They included willingness and the power of connecting with our Inner Loving Presences, so that our younger parts can get their needs met for safety, acknowledgment, appreciation, and being seen and heard, rather than trying to get those needs met from a number of likes on a post.
I developed my own Marion Method psychospiritual maps about exactly what happens for our younger parts when we follow our Soul’s Callings, and how what happens in our childhood is often directly related to our Callings.
I’ve created another offering this year called Following Our Callings (I’m no longer resonating with, or choosing, the word “entrepreneur”), and I am so loving what we’re doing together in that offer.
Feelings as compasses
In my own journey of following my Soul’s Callings and the Callings from Life, I feel a deep sense of satisfaction and fulfilment – which has become even more profound in this past year, as I take each step with these MM maps and practices as a guide and compass.
In The MM work, our feelings are a guide to whether we have a Yes or a No to something, and whether we have overridden those Yeses and Noes in the past.
Feelings that can indicate that we have a Yes in the present:
excitement, enthusiasm, and energy.
Feelings that can indicate that we’ve recently overridden our Yeses:
flatness, boredom, and disappointment.
Feelings that can indicate that we’ve listened to our Yeses:
satisfaction, fulfilment, and joy.
Feelings that can indicate that we have a No in the present:
discomfort, disgust, frustration, and outrage.
Feelings that can indicate that we’ve recently overridden our Noes:
resentment, overwhelm, frustration, and exhaustion.
Feelings that can indicate that we’ve listened to our Noes:
power, clarity, and the feelings that come when our needs for safety are met.
The centrality of Yeses and Noes in The Marion Method
In The Marion Method, reconnecting with our Yeses and Noes are one of the ways that we become more and more deeply connected with our Soul and our Soul’s Callings.
And, as we increasingly know and trust that we are safe to listen to the slug wisdom of our Yeses and Noes, that inner guidance system becomes more and more nuanced.
As a result, we become more and more deeply connected with who we really are, and more and more fulfilled, doing what we’re here to do.
Sometimes we know straight away whether we have a Yes or a No for something, and sometimes we need to actually experience something first hand to really know whether we have a Yes or a No for it.
This is one of the most central parts of the MM – rather than judging ourselves or others when we have experiences that we don’t want (which is the DDC way of doing things), each experience is an opportunity to understand ourselves more deeply, and become more and more nuanced in our Yeses and Noes.
And I have certainly experienced that many times over the past 12 years of being in the online course and mentoring world.
Our younger parts
There’s another element here.
Sometimes, we take a step forwards in our Soul’s Callings, and we experience painful feelings because we’re being invited to revisit the younger parts of us, and to lovingly listen to feelings that we’re never heard at the time.
Other times, we take a step forwards, only to discover that the step is a No for us.
Discerning between the two of these can be tricky, especially when we feel painful feelings – is the feeling a helpful invitation to tend to our younger parts, and then we keep going on that path, or is this a No to going further on that path?
The more we understand how to differentiate between what I call the three types of feelings in The Marion Method, the easier it becomes for us to understand which is which. (The three types of feelings are needs-feelings, healing-feelings, and thoughts-feelings).
A powerful and painful healing process
I’ll share some examples in my own life.
Back in about 2016, I signed up for what was called a “Mastermind”, and I chose to spend what for me was a huge amount of money.
I am SO glad that I already had quite a lot of The MM practices in place at that time.
I had my willingness work – and I’m so grateful that I did, because I went into that Mastermind with a clear willingness practice in place.
That meant that, although the two things I was scared might happen: feeling disappointed; and feeling financially stressed – did indeed happen – that I stayed true to my willingness, which was that as a result of my choice and willingness to say yes (rather than what was offered), I would experience financial stability from then onwards.
And that did indeed happen – but not in the ways I thought it would.
I didn’t learn those things from that person; I learnt it by practicing my own practices in response to what happened.
Secondly, I didn’t only connect with disappointment in relation to the here and now experience in the Mastermind.
I also connected with the most excruciating experience of disappointment from my past – coming into the world as a baby, and being put in an incubator for 5 weeks, and not being held by my mum.
I hadn’t understood until that time how incredibly painful disappointment can be.
At that time, I did so much healing crying – whilst several other things in my life also lined up to help me connect with little baby me and this specific feeling of disappointment (I’d already done decades of listening to the feelings I experienced in the incubator).
I listened lovingly to baby Marion’s experience, and offered her lots of safety and holding whilst I cried.
That healing experience of really feeling the profound disappointment along with deep self-compassion and presence had a big effect on so many areas in my life.
Although it was an expensive way to do that healing, I trusted how it all unfolded.
So. I came out of the experience having done a lot of healing, and also being way way clearer about my Noes.
In The Marion Method, that’s Love-Work (listening lovingly to the past pain) and Will-Work (getting more clearer about my Noes).
One of those Noes was about buying things in that way again.
The Mastermind was on a payment plan, and as soon as I signed up, my income dropped dramatically. it took me a year to get back to the position I’d been in financially.
From that experience, I had a very clear No to joining anything unless I had the money for all of it already, and a No to pay on payment plans.
Ten years later
Fast forward ten years, and I did various courses during that time, all of which were fairly low in price, and the process of increasing clarity about the nuances of my Yeses and Noes was more gentle and slow in that arena.
Not until this year have I been willing to pay a large amount of money again for something like that.
This year, I’ve had three experiences with other people’s online offerings.
What happened in each of them has helped me get even clearer about my Noes in relation to how I create and share my own offers.
The experiences have also helped me understand Yeses and Noes, coercion, choice, and enticement even more.
Experience One
With the first offer, the whole process of getting clear about my Noes was very quick.
I was shown an ad on Facebook of a woman sharing excitedly about her new book.
In the online world, they talk about “hooks”.
I’ve never resonated with that term, because:
1.) I’m here to invite people to be even more deeply connected with choosing from their true yeses, not less, and;
2.) the origin of hook comes from a fishing hook. I feel deep pain thinking of what a fish might experience, having a hook through its mouth, and the idea of replicating that in any way for humans is also a big no for me.
It’s actually why I stopped creating carousels that start off with something enticing on the first page, even though when I did, I often had a lot of responses.
I experimented with those kinds of carousels for a while, and came to a no. Learning through experience about my noes!
Back to the coach and her book.
I’ve really wanted to understand what exactly happened for me that I said Yes, so I’ve gone through each email and each purchase, step by step.
From the FB ad, and from looking at the woman’s Instagram feed, I then signed up with my interest, received an email and I paid for a very low cost offer.
Before actually looking at that low cost offer that I’d just paid for (here’s the clue!), I received several emails each day, which I found enticing.
I signed up for the next offer, without having even looked at the low cost one I’d just bought (some of the things wouldn’t be available for me to see until later).
And after another day of several emails with a lot of extra bonuses included, I signed up for an even higher priced offer.
However, as soon as I got into all three of the offers that I had paid for, I could tell almost immediately that I didn’t resonate.
I’d enjoyed the initial excitement for the book from the ad, but I didn’t resonate with what came next.
(In fact, in retrospect, that was what I wanted to learn – to share about my new books when I’m excited!)
I am so grateful for The MM again here.
Because I was unwilling to hit myself with shame or guilt or any self-punishment sticks in relation to paying for the three tiers of offerings.
After looking at the three offers, I knew that I had a No to any other offers from her, which I am so grateful for, because she also has a Mastermind, and I’m so relieved that I didn’t sign up for that.
I unsubscribed from all her emails, and unfollowed her on social media.
I learnt a lot from that experience about how I am susceptible to being enticed to buy something that isn’t actually what I want at all.
Being enticed
So, I’d learnt a lot about being enticed.
If you know me, you know I love the etymology of words, and since I haven’t really chosen the word “entice” before, I looked it up.
I was interested to see what etymology online said: late 13c., “intice, “to incite or instigate” (to sin or violence) from Old French enticier “to stir up (fire), to excite, incite,” which is of uncertain origin, perhaps from Vulgar Latin *intitiare “set on fire,” from Latin in- “in” (see in- (2)) + titio (genitive titionis) “firebrand,” which is of uncertain origin. Meaning “to allure, attract” is from c. 1300.”
I felt even more interested, reading that!
As the year progressed, I saw that understanding enticement was essential to me understanding more about Yeses from a MM perspective.
In the MM work up until then, I’d focussed on helping people see all the ways in which growing up in the DDC, their needs, wants, desires, interests, preferences, and Callings weren’t supported.
The practices of the MM help people reconnect with that particul Yes part of their slug wisdom.
But I hadn’t really seen or understood the other side of the DDC and yeses – the enticement side – where we are enticed to want things that we actually don’t want.
This year, I’ve deep dived into this, and I wrote a long form musing on it recently – studying Bernays, the father of Public Relations, and all the ways the DDC tricks us into wanting things.
(It’s the previous article in my long-form musings).
Enticement without deeper knowing
In the first experience, because I came straight from an ad and some IG posts, I hadn’t experienced much of this woman’s work before – so I hadn’t had time to already feel into my No from what she shares on her social media.
So, I’ve also come away with another learning about my Noes.
I am not willing to buy anything from anyone unless I’ve fully explored what they offer for free, to be sure that I resonate with their work.
And I now understand specifically what things can entice me.
And again, this is core to The MM – rather than judging or shaming ourselves or others, we’re invited to compassionately learn more and more nuances about our Yeses and Noes – and for those to guide our next choices.
We’re also invited to connect with what we were not willing for, which might include asking for a partial refund, for example, if we think that we were coerced into buying something, and that the offer didn’t give what it clearly said it would.
The second experience
The second experience was different, but the similar aspect was that I hadn’t known about this person’s work for very long.
Yes, I had looked at their Instagram posts, but only for a few weeks.
And then I went one of those free discovery calls.
I’ve only been on one of those before, about nine years ago, and back then, I’d come to a Yes in the call, but afterwards came to a clear No because of the amount of the offer, and the person was willing to honour my No afterwards, which I’m very grateful for.
I haven’t been on a discovery call since, and again, I’ve learnt a clear No.
I see how I am susceptible to being enticed, so I am not willing to ever go on a discovery call with anyone again.
In this call this year, I felt drawn to what was being offered, and said Yes.
And even though (and actually I think this was part of it, since the less money I’ve had, the more susceptible to being enticed I’ve been) I was receiving less money than I did 10 years ago (after changing everything about the way I work this year), I signed up for what they call a “high ticket” offer.
This time, the No came later
In this experience, I didn’t start to feel a No for about four weeks.
I did all the course material that came each week, but over time, I kept hearing more and more DDC words and ways in the material.
I heard lots of war words.
I saw the self-coercion that the woman was doing.
And then they started suggesting doing things that did not meet my values for integrity.
When that became clear, I came to a No.
As I was only very partially through the offering, which was live each week, I asked if they did partial refunds.
The answer was no.
This time, my No had only become clear through actually being in the experience.
They were sharing things inside that space that they weren’t sharing in public.
Might there have been some clues in public that would have helped me come to a No before paying?
Maybe, but I wasn’t able to see them at the time.
Now I would, which is the key here.
My gratitude for The Marion Method
Again, I am so grateful for The MM, and for being unwilling to judge myself for making that choice.
I learnt an expensive lesson.
And as I’ve experienced several times before, sometimes the lesson needs to be expensive financially or emotionally before we really are NOT WILLING to do a certain thing again.
I know from that experience that I am not ever willing to go on a discovery call again.
I see how I am susceptible to being enticed into doing something that actually isn’t aligned with my values.
I understand even more clearly how tricky DDC consciousness can be, and how hidden it often is.
At the moment I have a No for ever buying anything to do with the online coaching world again – no courses, no “masterminds”, none of it.
You can probably hear the tone of my No in that statement!
Experience three
Experience three was even more subtle.
This time, it took me many months – about eight months, until I started to really see that the woman’s work didn’t meet several needs of mine, including for integrity.
This no wasn’t expensive financially, but I had put a lot of time into watching the offers.
I’m grateful that I came to a No before spending a big chunk of money.
This time, the Noes came through Messages from Life.
(Sometimes our Noes come from our feelings, and sometimes they come about from external Messages!)
I saw an Instagram post, and a few weeks later, a Facebook one, and I started doing lots of research.
Then there were more Messages from Life, and as I dived into the research, writing copious notes in my document, I saw a much more subtle process of enticement.
I’m so grateful for the timing, because I saw that I was close to spending an even larger sum of money.
I’m so grateful to Life that I didn’t need to spend much money to learn about this even more subtle form of enticement.
And I did experience some enjoyable things from this woman, and did learn some things that have been helpful for me.
And now I have a No to doing anything that she offers.
The three experiences
So, there were the three experiences.
In the first one, my No came very soon after I started looking at what I’d paid for.
In the second one, it took me longer to come to a No, once I had more experience of what I’d paid for.
In the third, I had a lot of experiences until I came to my No.
And possibly, that also relates to the degree of resonance with each, and what I learnt from them (aside from getting clearer about my noes!)
In the first one, I really didn’t resonate, and didn’t learn anything that I found helpful.
With the second person, I resonated with a few things, and learnt a few things that I found helpful.
With the third person, I resonated with more things, and also learnt a few things that I found helpful.
I do believe that one of the most important things in saying Yes is how much we resonate with someone and their work.
Person A might have a deep resonance with person Z, and as a result, might receive a huge amount from being a part of their offers.
Person B might not have any resonance with person Z, and as a result, would likely receive nothing from being part of our offers.
Person B might judge person Z, whereas person A might share enthusiastically about person Z. Which is why, just because someone else loves someone’s work, doesn’t necessarily mean that we will.
I’ve known that before – in terms of why it’s SO important that we don’t override our Noes, and work with someone just because others really resonate.
If we don’t actually resonate with the person, we’re unlikely to receive much from their work.
However, this new piece was experiencing that sometimes I think I resonate, when actually I don’t, or I resonate a bit, but also not in other ways, and more subtle forms of enticement mean that it’s important that I wait before making any decisions.
Why I wrote this
1 ~ To share about my experiences to contribute to anyone who resonates;
2 ~ To share about how I see this from the perspective of the Yeses and Noes work of The MM;
3 ~ Most importantly, to let you know, if you’ve been influenced by seeing my Yes to an online coach or mentor this year, to know that I now have a no for them. The more I understand the powerful effects of seeing other people’s actions, the more important I believe that is for me to share.
(For clarity, I still have a big Yes for the mentor I work 1-1 with, and for the health paradigm mentor I work with).
What I’m going away with
And although these were expensive lessons, I’m grateful for them.
My Yeses and Noes are even more nuanced and clear.
I know that I am susceptible to be enticed, which means I’m now willing to listen even more deeply to myself before I say Yes to something which has a large financial, emotional, or other outlay.
And I’m willing to be even more really really clear before I say Yes to something.
The experiences helped me dive deep into understanding enticement, the DDC, and what Bernays brought to the world (a lot of what I shared about in my last long-form article came from the research I did as a result of these experiences).
And at this time, as I shared in that past musing, I believe that having even more caution, awareness, and clarity about being enticed is even more important, as AI becomes even more rampant, and discerning reality becomes even more difficult and significant.
My own offerings
It’s also helped me have even more clarity about my own offerings.
And to be even clearer in asking people to connect in with their Yeses and Noes before doing something (which is something I’ve already focussed on a lot, and I have emphasised that even more this year!)
My values
If someone is really competent at enticing people to say Yes (what’s often referred to as “marketing” in the online world), I believe it is important for them to also be willing to hear a person’s No.
And going back to what’s been going on in the online coaching world recently, that’s what I see there too.
I deeply value honouring and hearing people’s Noes if they sign up for something and their experience isn’t a fit, and they understand that they were enticed into it, rather than having a true Yes.
Whilst also being able to understand the difference between when we are in younger parts and feelings from the past, and when what we’re experiencing really is about the present situation.
Which also means differentiating when someone is connecting with painful feelings from the past and they’re scared to take the next step, and actually when they simply have a No for what is actually being given in the present moment.
In creating offers, this also means a willingness to take responsibility for when we haven’t given what we said we would give, without hitting ourselves with guilt sticks, and repairing in a way that both people are happy with.
A No, rather than “settling for less”
What I’ve come to realise over years is that the way that our slug wisdom operates, through our feelings, especially to tell us when we have a No, is often in the coaching world judged as settling for less or “playing small”.
I was once talking to a coach in a DM, and she was clearly trying to use DDC coercion to encourage me to join her offer – and framing it as being about my belief in myself. Because I understood coercion, That time, it was clear to me that I had a No – in a way that I couldn’t see more subtle enticement until after my three experiences this year).
Why I don’t choose the word “resistance”
More clearly and deeply listening to our Yeses and Noes is what helps us be more connected with our Soul and with our Soul’s Callings.
It’s one of the reasons I don’t choose the word “resistance”.
I call it unwillingness.
And sometimes that unwillingness is a wise No.
Sometimes it is fear from the past.
In The MM, we learn which it is by offering the unwillingness lots of love, rather than judging it or ourselves.
With love, clarity comes about whether it’s from the past or the present, and even if it’s from the past, offering more love helps us move from fear to willingness, so that we never need to coerce ourselves into doing anything.
Other framings in the coaching world that I’ve seen over the years include those about taking time to make a decision.
That is often framed as limiting ourselves or not believing in ourselves, when actually, sometimes we do need time to listen in to whether we have a true full-body-Yes, or a full-body-No.
Younger parts feeling scared, or a No to the present offer?
Here again, the key is actually being able to differentiate between when our feelings and sensations are sensing a true No for us, and when those feelings are from the past.
Feeling scared, uncomfortable, or unsure may be our younger parts, but they may be our innate slug wisdom telling us we have a No for something.
Since most of in the DDC weren’t supported as children to listen to, understand, and trust our Noes, for most of us, this is a process, to learn to hear them and trust them again.
My invitation
If you’re still in the process of learning that you can say No AND be safe, be loved, and belong, I invite you to go slowly when considering buying things.
And the beauty is, even if we do find that we have a No after buying the thing, if we’re unwilling to judge ourselves, the process will have given us more clarity about our Noes, as the experiences I’m sharing here have done for me.
Slowing down, and receiving loving support (either from our outer loving community or our Inner Loving Presences, or both) at the times of decisions can help us really listen in to our inner knowing about whether this really is the most helpful thing for us.
The Disconnected Domination Culture
This is what the DDC does – it infiltrates places that appear to be about power and love – and means that coercion and judgment are much harder to see.
So much of what happens in the world is affected by DDC consciousness.
When we’re in it and identified with it, it’s hard to see and understand.
For me, even though I’ve been so aware of the more obvious forms of DDC coercion – the have to’s, should’s, shaming, war-words and coercion, I haven’t had that clarity in relation to some of the more subtle and enticing ways that coercion can happen.
Now I do, and now I understand how susceptible I am, I’m going to listen even more, and go even more slowly, and gather even more information before buying something.
You
I wonder if you resonate with any of this?
Have you experienced being coerced, or in a more subtle form, enticed?
If you want to share your experience, and how it relates to these MM maps, I’d love to read it.
And I’m sending you – and any painful feelings you might feel when reading this – so much love.
Marion xoxo
6th October 2026