Welcome to the Mom On Purpose podcast. I'm Lara Johnson and I'm here to teach you how to get out of your funk, be in a better mood, play more with your kids, manage your home better, get your to-do list done and live your life on purpose. With my proven method, this is possible for you, and I'll show you how.
You're not alone anymore. We're in this together.
Hi, welcome back to another amazing episode, and I'm so glad to have you here today. I wanted to tell you that I've had just launched a new website, larajohnsoncoaching.com, and on there I have an amazing guide for you that I made. It is pure gold. It is the discover your purpose guide. It's just a couple pages long, but it has everything that you need right now to start discovering your purpose.
It is a resource that every person should have in their hands and in their home, because I truly do believe, as you use the formula that I teach in there, that you will be able to start seeing some amazing things in your life. You're going to start making stronger decisions. You're going to be feeling more joy. You will start figuring out what that purpose is, as you are understanding who you're meant to be and who you're becoming. So go to my website, go find that, larajohnsoncoaching.com. Also, I am working on something really big for you.
It's something that I haven't spoken much about because I was still like in the very beginning phases of it, but I had the strongest prompting this year to create a program, something that is accessible to everyone, where it is not one-on-one coaching with me, but it's everything that I teach my clients put together for you. It's the six pillars of purposeful living. I'm recording all the videos right now for it. I'm prepping all the worksheets, so be on the lookout for that. Be watching your emails. That's going to be on the lookout for that. Be watching your emails. That's going to be in the next little while that that launches. All right.
So, let's go into the phrase go big or go home. Now I am someone that I will never say this to you, or I try, not to. Very few times Will I use this phrase. Another kind of flavor of this phrase is shoot for the moon. Worst case scenario you fall among the stars. Now you've probably heard this. It's very cliche in the self-help area and for some people it works fantastic. I know my mentor. Some people it works fantastic. I know my mentor. She always talked about setting impossible goals and I know there's an amazing book and I do love it and I'll talk about when it is okay to use this phrase.
Ten X is better than two X. It's Benjamin Hardy and it helps our mind to expand into dreams. But what I would say starts to happen is there's like two different ways that our brain thinks about things. It's like the dreaming of things and the doing of things, and what I have find most often with my clients is that when they have the mindset go big or go home, they are using it in the doing part of their mind and not necessarily the dreaming part of their mind, and more often than not they end up in this shame cycle vortex that has sucked them in and it's so hard to get out of that. They get so discouraged and they often give up on the things that they're working on.
So, here's why I wanted to talk about this, because I want you to not only discover your purpose, not only figure out what your dreams are. I want you to actually achieve them. I want you to be exactly what you are dreaming about. I want you to live in the way that you are dreaming about. So, my goal is never for you to end up in a shame vortex where you're discouraged, and you give up on the very things that you want. I want to teach you how to live that day in and day out, so that you can feel the joy that comes from living your purpose.
I'll give you a little bit of information first as to why I see this being a problem in my coaching practice. Then I will talk about ways that we can tweak it a little bit so it can be more effective for you. So, typically, when I'm coaching someone and they say some kind of phrase, we'll always break it down first as to okay, let's define these words, because what one word means to someone can be very different of a meaning to someone else. So, an example of this is the word debt. I love this because this is usually one of the first examples when I'm teaching someone how different our thoughts can be. Now, when you are an individual and you are carrying debt maybe on the credit card, maybe you have some student loans that you've yet to pay off, you have a mortgage, car payments, whatever it might be that debt may weigh on you and you feel very negative about debt. Now the difference, or I guess the alternative is when you are a large company that is working to scale, a lot of these companies will take on investors. That is an example of where a lot of investors come in and they give you money. You become in a very large debt to them, but that's actually a good thing for some of these companies, okay, another example of this is I had a client.
This was very early in my coaching practice. She kept telling me that she was in debt, in debt, and it was suffocating to her. So, I said, all right, we've really got to get down to the circumstances. What are the circumstances? And we listed how much equity she has in her home and the cars and the assets that she has, and what she actually carries on a credit card, how much is in her bank. And what was so fascinating is that she wasn't in debt at all. She had a $200 payment on her credit card that had kind of rolled over from a few months. So here in her mind she had made it out into this horrible, terrible thing when in reality she had significant amounts of money in assets, and she had this credit card that she wanted to take care of. So those are just a couple examples of how debt can really be different based on who you're talking to.
So, let's now take that example and bring it to the go big or go home phrase. So, the first thing when I'm coaching a client, you know going back to defining it is I would ask them define big, like how do you know if it's a big goal? Someone might say well, it makes my stomach flutter, or I start feeling a little nauseous when I think about it and my next question will always be but how do you know it's big enough? I mean, if it says, you know, go big. Like, how do you know it's the right one? How do you know when you've landed there? So, the first thing we start doing is just exploring this phrase like big.
Now, typically at this point someone will start getting very excited and they can't wait to hit the ground running and up until this point in their life, that excitement is what is flipping the switch of motivation in their body. So then, once they feel that motivation, they start going to work. Now, typically when I see this with clients, this motivation feels so good, it's so fun. They go, start working on it somehow and they hit some kind of snag. Or there's something they don't know, or there's something that is so fearful to them that they feel like they can't move past it very quickly. They go from like, imagine your comfort zone is a smaller circle, then you've got your discomfort zone. That's the bigger circle, but then the outside of that discomfort zone is your panic zone, and most people, when I see this, when they're going big is that at some point, once they start using that motivation and then they hit the obstacle, they're immediately slingshotted into the panic zone.
Once you enter the panic zone, your nervous system will start to shut down. The fight flight freeze response will become so overwhelming in your body that it'll feel like you're hitting a wall over and over and over. This is usually, I'd probably say, a couple of weeks into whatever goal you're working on. And at that point, when you hit that wall, there's a couple of things that will happen. One you'll tell yourself well, you need to change the goal, you've got to get that motivation back. Like, as soon as I have that motivation, I can keep going on this. So, you think motivation is the answer.
The second thing is that there's very specific healing that typically has to happen that you're not aware of to your nervous system. And if you don't know what that healing is or how to do it, then you'll keep hitting this wall, you'll keep changing your goal, you'll keep looking for that motivation and you'll spin out. So, let's say, okay, your nervous system's gone offline, you need some very specific healing, but you don't get that healing for your nervous system. Then suddenly you start asking the question okay, there's something wrong with me. Sally over there is doing the thing that I want. So clearly there's something wrong with me. I keep hitting this wall. I don't have the motivation. She's doing exactly what I want to do. What's wrong with me Now? The cool thing but also the hard thing is that your brain is an expert at answering questions. As soon as you start asking your brain what's wrong with you, your brain will answer. It's an amazing thing, like when you ask yourself what's wrong.
It'll just list off all these things that are wrong with you, but we don't want to listen to that. That's not effective. I mean, you could just as easily say brain, like what's right with me. And it'll tell you. But in this situation what I've typically seen is then we start asking, like what's wrong with me? Your brain starts to answer and that at that point you start feeling so much frustration, so much shame, you're broken, you can't do this, and you go into this horrible like vortex where, if you think about in the cartoons or in movies, where the tornado is like going through the city and it's sucking up all these things the barn and the tractor and the cars and all these things are being sucked into the tornado. It's essentially what it feels like when you're in the shame vortex, like you will spin and spin and spin in that shame vortex and it will just keep sucking up more evidence on why there's something wrong with you. So that's one example of what I have seen.
When people use the phrase go big or go home, that's how it plays out for them. Go home, that's how it plays out for them. The other example that I see a lot is that at some point someone will get discouraged right from the get-go and they will do the quote unquote, go home part where there's so much fear of failure that they give up before they've even started to avoid any kind of potential rejection, potential, failure potential like anything mistakes, you know, being visible, someone not thinking that they should be doing this like judgment. So, then they just take themselves right out of the game before they've even started playing it and then they go right to the what's wrong with me and then they go. Their brain answers. Then they go back to the shame vortex and what I've seen is that if someone comes to me and says I've, I'm really stuck. I've been here for years. I can't seem to move forward. Most of the time it's because they've been in the shame vortex. Most of the time it's because they've been in the shame vortex. It's incredible how that can last for years.
So, when I'm working with a client, one of the things that I challenge them to do from the very beginning is to go small or go consistent. Forget the go big or go home. We're not going to do that. We're going to go small or go consistent. Now your brain and your body will fight small goals. We're not going to do that. We're going to go small or go consistent. Now your brain and your body will fight small goals because you will not feel excited or motivated about them because up until this point that's what you've been using, that's been your fuel to actually work on something. But remember, chances are you're already ending up in the shame vortex, so that's not really working for you to go off of that motivation.
So, if this is the pattern that's happening for you, we want to start small. It won't be sexy. You will have to learn to work from a different emotion. That's not excitement or motivation. Different emotion that's not excitement or motivation.
So, think about it this way, where, let's say, you're running on excitement and that motivation and that's kind of like a candle and that candle those fires, having been lit, but slowly the wax is getting smaller and smaller and your candles getting smaller and smaller and eventually it burns out. Okay, that's kind of what it feels like to be running on excitement and motivation and when you're practicing going small and working on small goals, it's not as pretty as a candle, it's like electricity, it just flows, and it moves consistently. Okay, sometimes you can't see it because it's on the walls, but you can feel it when it's turned on. You can see when it's turned on. It doesn't mean it says pretty, okay, sometimes you can get pretty lights I love pretty lights, but I'm talking more about, like the wiring in your home Okay, so it will just kind of flow through. It will be very unsexy, but what will happen is you then become the person that reaches your goals.
Again, your brain will want to discredit that these goals aren't a big deal, it was just something so small. That's your job. Then. That's where the real work begins to teach yourself that skill of celebration and actually seeing what a big deal it is to be reaching these small goals, because it's evidence that you're not stuck in a shame vortex. It's evidence that you are moving forward and progressing. So, as you start on those small goals, as you start with some kind of consistency, you start creating a proven track record that you are someone that reaches goals, and that's where the most power comes in.
So again, let's go back to what some of these small goals will be and finding that evidence and teaching yourself that skill of celebration. I want you to go and find evidence today of small goals that you've reached. Now you may not call them quote, unquote goals, but remember, a goal is just something that you want. It's measurable, it's time bound. Chances are at some point you got up right. That was probably a goal you had, and your brain already is like oh, I know, but I should have gotten up earlier. I slept through my alarm.
The result you wanted to create was to get up, and you did it. Way to go. Okay, that's an example of a small goal. At some point, you probably wanted to shower. Maybe it didn't happen today, maybe it happened three days ago, but you did. Maybe it didn't happen today, maybe it happened three days ago, but you did. You wanted to shower. That was the result you had, and you did at some point, and you will again in the future.
You are someone that reaches goals. So, I want you to show your brain every single day the goals, the things that you want to do. Okay. Something else might be you want to fuel your body and you're going to say, yeah, but I ate like a cookie. Or I ate, you know, a whole bunch of chocolate chips. Or I ate my kids leftover mac and cheese that was in the pan, and I didn't want it to go to waste, so I just had some bites of it. Okay, your brain already is going to start creating some kind of story. But if the result was to fuel your body, just to put some kind of food in your body, great, you did that.
You're someone that reaches goals. Even going a little bit bigger and looking at some of the things you've done in the past. Did you want a driver's license? Chances are you reached that goal. I am here to bet that most of you have your driver's license. Maybe you wanted to graduate college. Maybe you wanted to have a pet or some kids or a plant to keep alive, even if you kept that plant alive for a day that is your track record.
You kept your plant alive for a day way to go. Now you're going to try two days, okay? So, like I mentioned, like this will feel not as fun, it will not feel as sexy, but the fun part is showing yourself and proving to yourself that you have a track record, all right. So, when can we use the go big or go home? What I anticipate you're thinking right now, I would use this instead of the doing part. I would go back to the dreaming part when I think about my future and I think about all the things that I want to create, most of which I have at this point in my life, and there were times where I just wrote some things down that just sounded fun to do. That, just I let my brain go to the playground and just play with things that I thought would be cool. Those are most of the things that I've created. So that's where I would challenge you.
If you are wanting to use this phrase, or if you like this phrase and you want, but you're worried about being in the panic zone, or you have been for a while, use the go big phrase as like the big slide on the playground where you can go up and you can look down and it's so exciting. Okay, but maybe, if it's a little scary right now, you're going to be practicing on the smaller sides. That's where I want you to spend time. Go small, go consistent. Again, it won't feel sexy, that's okay. You are learning a new skill of using other emotions, outside of just excitement and motivation, to reach your goals. All right, send this to someone that you love in your life, because I know everyone needs to hear this message, because we all have things that we're working towards and discovering our purpose and answering it. Have a wonderful week.
Thank you for listening. Please share, review and subscribe to this podcast so that together we can live life on purpose.