Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want, and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach, Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.
Hello, my friends, and welcome to episode number 27 of the Bloom Your Mind podcast. I am so glad to be here with you today. I just had the most beautiful weekend with my family, enjoying the sunshine and the company of so many people that I love. We've got only two more weeks of school for my kids, so we are looking forward to this summer. As a family, we are figuring out what we want.
We're all putting our heads together and creating our summer bucket list, which I highly recommend that you all do. You can do it for any season. We love doing it for every season, and in the summer, because there are four of us, whether there's one of you or multiple people that you spend a lot of time with, you can come up with your bucket list. What do you want to experience? What do you want? What do you want to do? Who do you want to see? What's most important to you? Then put it somewhere where you'll check it out all summer. What's going to be on that list? It's really fun if you have children around you that you spend time with, to help them think of what they want. Put some things on the bucket list, help them create the vision for how you're going to spend your time together.
So last time on the podcast, in episode number 26, we took a deep dive into why we care so much about what other people think of us and how the old wiring in our brain has us terrified a lot of the time of other people's judgments and how we come across to other people. Today, we are going to build off that idea that we knocked down last time. We burned down this idea that it matters what other people think of us, and now we're going to grow something new in its place. This time we're going to talk about how to find out what you think of yourself because, you know what's true; that's all that matters anyway. We teach people how to think about us based on what we think of ourselves. We teach people how to interact with us. Just think about it. Think about how true this is.
We do it through the words we say. I used to have people tell me, "Oh, I know you're really busy. I just know you're busy." And I was like, where is this coming from? I realized I was showing people that I was teaching them that I was too busy. I did not have time in various ways. And now, I'm very careful. I never say I'm busy. I always say, "Oh, this week is kind of full." But I also took a lot of things out of my life because I didn't want that to be the reality for all these people that I love. So we do it through the words we say.
We do it through our body language. Just think about that. Do you ever apologize for yourself and how you carry your body? When you walk into a room, when you're walking past someone coming through a doorway – sorry, sorry – or just when you're in a group, do you kind of look down? Or do you just notice other people doing that? We can teach them through our body language that we respect ourselves and we are a person to be respected through making eye contact and having our shoulders back, right?
We do it through the decisions we make and the life we lead. Whether we're always putting ourselves aside and doing things for other people, we're teaching others. We're willing to put ourselves aside; they follow our lead. So all we really need to focus on is what we think about ourselves because that is the middle, like a rock being thrown into a pond. That's what all the ripples come out from. That's the center point. Everyone else in our life and the things around us in our lives ripple out from what we think about ourselves, how we treat ourselves, and that all starts with finding our authentic voice.
Before I teach you some ways to find that voice and do this reflection, which I would argue is one of the most important things you can do in your life, I'm going to tell you a little bit about examples of things that people found when they connected to their authentic voice. These are some examples from people that I've coached and worked with or those who are very close to me.
They came to coaching to figure out how to scale their business to the big leagues and found out that what they really wanted was to restructure their business into something entirely different and more in line with the lives they wanted to create.
Someone came to me to learn how to work harder, faster, and do more, only to find out that what they really wanted was to take a year off and slow down. One person came to me thinking that those around them were not listening or respecting their boundaries, then realized through introspection that they weren't valuing their own boundaries. They were whispering their "no" and learned how to say no with strength, clarity, and love.
Another person came with a desire to lose weight, and while she did lose weight, she found out that she wanted to love the body she was in and build an influencer program that encouraged others to love their bodies as well. That was way more important to her than any number on a scale. People have discovered that they want to live abroad in Ireland, live on a boat, switch careers, or start Kickstarter campaigns to fund projects that would take the challenges, pain, and trauma they lived through and turn them into programs, companies, and projects that would heal the world and help others experiencing similar challenges.
So sometimes, finding your authentic voice means discovering where your heart's deep longing to experience or see change in the world meets what the world needs most. When you find your authentic voice, it shows you what you don't want to be doing anymore, things you've been doing for a long time. You find out that you've been pasting your past onto your future, thinking that what's possible for you is limited to what you've seen and experienced so far. In reality, there is an infinite number of possibilities in the world, and we don't recognize them because we haven't opened our minds to them. That is what happens when we're not in touch with our authentic voice – we repeat the past
So when we find that authentic voice inside us and get curious about what we most value, what we want to experience and create, and who we want to be and who we want to be with, we find out what those puzzle pieces are missing from the life that we're living so far. What missing pieces would lead me to feel more like I'm holding nothing back, going all in on this life? I'm not doing what's expected of me or what I'm supposed to, but I'm living my life my way, in line with my values, with my wants and my dreams, and using my voice. When you feel like that, that real deal voice, you don't dim it down anymore, you don't turn the volume down on it for anybody. We start to notice our yearning, our desire, and we start seeing the things that we're overdoing in our lives that aren't actually what we want. They're what other people want.
One client, when she found her authentic voice, started being able to sleep again because the anxiety of all the things she was telling herself she wasn't doing that she should be doing evaporated as she really came to terms with what she wanted and who she wants to be. It gave her internal peace and confidence. Another client had her blood pressure go way down for the same reasons. Another stopped fighting with her husband entirely, like from everyday arguments to nothing, because she realized that her authentic desire was having a loving, peaceful relationship, and that was more important to her than anything they ever fought about. So she decided to learn a bunch of new tools and made it her mission to use them in her relationship, no matter what.
Another story about finding an authentic voice can look like this: I had the most extraordinary, wonderful neighbor. One evening in the San Diego evening, the sun is going down, and the sky is all like tangerine orange with little shots of raspberry in it, against the fading turquoise blue. I see it outside the window, and someone knocked on my door. It took me a minute to open the door. When I opened the door, I saw a beautiful wooden platter of chili Rellenos with a little flower sprig and a little vase, enough food for my children and my husband and me. This woman, who lived next door to me and is now one of my very best friends, would cook food for her family and then come and leave food for me and my family on my doorstep. It was just her language of love, her joy to serve people, the food she loved cooking so much. It was her authentic voice. She did it all the time, and it brought her so much joy.
There was another time when I got COVID last year, and I had posted about it. As I returned home from running an errand, I pulled into the driveway and saw a beautiful glass jar with twine around the top, sitting on a small piece of paper with a sprig of rosemary sticking out the side, placed on my fence. I opened the paper, and a woman whom I didn't know very well had seen the post and left an amazing concoction she makes for sick people, containing Manuka honey and other amazing ingredients, in the jar. I texted her, and she said that this was her calling and her voice in the world. She makes this potion for people in need, having perfected her recipe over time, but doesn't give it out to just anyone, and only brings it to people when they're sick. Now, she's considering joining my group program in the fall to turn her love for this healing potion into a business that can serve the world.
When I found my authentic voice, it meant leaving my career as a vice president in a company that I loved and my 15-year career to go out on my own, where I could create content that I thought would help people get out of pain and into lives that reflect their values and what they love. And here we are on this podcast now. I'm now coaching amazing, beautiful people to put their ideas into the world every day. It also meant that I realized I'm okay with all the little ways I've been told over the years that I'm a bit too much. We all have ways that we think we're too much of one thing or another, like when I'm roasted.
When people give toasts and roasts, I'm always roasted for being an awkwardly long hugger, having too much eye contact, sinking in too deep with people, or caring too much. Now, I don't think about it anymore. I mean, I love being roasted anyway, but I used to take those things and think that I should be less of them. I should be less of the things that people tease me about, like being too hopeful, positive, future-oriented, and not risk-averse. I try things out and create things all the time. I want to use my life to offer peace and power to the world and the people around me, and I believe that it's possible. I always get teased for how much I believe that things are possible.
I've gotten feedback that I forgive too fast, that I see the good in things and in people too much. I mean, I've seen it. I have interactions sometimes where people give me these googly, suspicious eyes because they're like, "Wow, are you being nice to me? Why are you this warm and connected? I don't really understand or trust this." I tend to love people. I tend to believe in them and the things that they want. I forgive people fast and I let them start over. And for a long time, I dimmed all of that down, and now I just don't. Instead, I say, "Hey, if you don't want this, go find somebody else to hang out with. That's going to judge you some more. Just do not apologize anymore." That's what it looked like for me.
And sometimes, finding your authentic voice comes in the form of finding your own style in the way you want to decorate your house or your body, the clothing, the textures, the colors that you like around you, that you wear, the way that you like to look. That feels just like you. And sometimes, finding your authentic voice might have contradictions, but it doesn't need to make sense to anybody but you, as you find more and more what is true for you and can separate that out from all the voices in your head that have been there your entire life telling you what's true for you. Here's what it does: It allows you to make decisions clearly and easily. When you make decisions, I have a framework that I use for making decisions, which I will not go into here, but part of that process is looking at my values and saying, "Okay, well, which decision is more in line with my values?" This makes things really easy and simple to do. It gives me confidence. I'm not afraid of what other people think.
When you find your authentic voice, it gives you more and more confidence and less and less anxiety about what anybody else thinks. It allows you less conflict in your relationships because you're not trying to get other people to like you. You're trying to be in line with your values, your purpose, who you are, what you want, and what you want to experience. And when you know your purpose and your values, and you know how to differentiate between the voices that come from other people, society, your parents, and the systems that have taught you how to play the roles you play value, you can distinguish between those influences and your real, true, authentic joy and values. Your life becomes more and more comfortable to be in for you. It becomes more and more of a fit for you. It becomes more relaxing, empowering, and motivating because it's yours; it's truly a reflection of you and not the rest of the world. When you're living in line with your values, your authentic values, your life becomes more valuable to you. It starts feeling like walking into a room full of people that love you. You have that sureness and confidence much more often, and you lose that imposter syndrome.
So let's talk about how to figure out what you value and what your authentic voice has to say. First of all, every day, you can list the things you most want and need today. Make a little list and then make that little list more important than anything else you need to do. Maybe it's getting some movement, meditation, play, or time with your friends. You choose. Maybe it's productivity, but you choose. Journal about some of this.
You spend time with a lot of people. Which of them do you actually enjoy spending time with? Which do you feel comfortable with? Do you feel like yourself with them? How do you spend your time? What do you do for fun, and do you really like it? Are you doing what you want, or are you doing what everyone else wants to do? How do you spend your money? Do you want to spend your money on those things? Is there anything that you're spending money on that actually gives you a sick feeling in your stomach?
How do you feel about your relationships, your closest relationships, and how you're showing up to them, and what you're putting up with? What comes up for you? How do you feel about your career, your job, your work? Does it feel good? What are your opinions politically, in your community, socially? Do you voice them out loud? Do you actually care about them? Do you spend time talking about things that you don't actually care about? What do you spend time talking about? Is that what you want to spend time discussing? Journal on this stuff.
I highly recommend downloading a PDF I created which you can find on my Instagram, @the.bloom.coach Go to the link in my bio and download the PDF that goes with this episode. My website is under construction right now, but it should be up by the end of summer. We're doing a bunch of branding and fun stuff, so later on, you'll be able to find it there. For now, find it on Instagram. In the PDF, you will see a list of values. Print that out, sit with it, and determine which ones are your top five values. What do you value? What are the top five values that you want to live your life in line with? Decide on those top five.
Also, in the PDF, you'll find a line where you can write what your purpose is in life. That's a big question, so go back and listen to episode number three. Turn up your desire to find that. Exercise writing out your purpose in life, as well as your top three to five values. That becomes your guiding star and the headline to your authentic voice.
But then, under that, you can do a couple of other things that are in the PDF:
- Write out 25 things that you want most in your life.
- Write two things that you want that you already have and one thing that you want that you don't have yet.
- Write out 12 things that you love about yourself the most.
This exercise may seem simple, but it has brought my clients so much clarity and joy.
So, these are your journal prompts: what you want, what your values are, what you love about yourself, and just that general journaling on how you're spending all your time, energy, and resources and if it's what you want.
And then, lastly, think about what you would want to change about the world. If you could change anything about your own world, the world you share with others, or the big, wide world, and what would it take for you to be that change?
What small step could you take in your day, in your life to be a little piece of that change? So, either do one or two of those or all of those reflection prompts that I just gave you.
And then, as you look at all that journaling, all that writing that you did, and as you see what's in your mind, heart, and spirit, that is where you'll find the ideas that you most want to make real – right there inside your mind, body, and spirit, just waiting for you to light them up.
That's what I've got for you today, my friends. I hope you have so much fun finding your voice this week, and I will see you next week.
Thanks for hanging out with me friends. If you like today's episode and you want more of them, please take two minutes right now to subscribe and give me a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Then send this episode to a friend. See you next time.
