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.
Hey! Hi, everybody and welcome to episode number 29 of the Bloom Your Mind Podcast. We're going to talk about possibility today. I love this topic. It rules my brain most days and so, I'm real excited to get into it with you. So, first, though, I want to tell you something funny. Something that has driven me a little bit nuts over the years is how expensive it is to have friends.
Do you know what I'm talking about? I mean, I'm kind of kidding, but not really. In my twenties, it was expensive because I was like bartending and managing a restaurant as I was working through undergraduate education and we would work our booties off all night serving tables, bartending, and then we would go out to dinner or drinks afterwards and we would spend most of it.
And that was super fun, but also that kind of never ends as you get older. Hanging out with people can be so expensive, so many meals, so many tickets. And as you have families, you know the number of tickets, the number of meals, and the price tag just goes up and up and up. And for me also, I am not as much of a foodie as a lot of other people are.
I love food, I love flavors. I enjoy it, but I'm much more of an experienced person. So, I would way rather go skydiving or scuba diving with you, or even sit on the couch and massage each other's feet or watch a movie than just eat. I'd rather go see live music, go dancing, whatever, have an experience. I get really bored with food, being at the center of everything social.
And I also just feel like food is a vehicle for everything. We already use it for comfort, for celebration, for connection, for play, for exploration, and for socializing. It's really hard to make good choices for what to put in our bodies and to keep ourselves in balance physically when we're eating all the things for all the reasons.
So, I really like to come up with different ways of hanging out with people and spending time with people that don't require big restaurant bills or big grocery bills. Sometimes, I love going out to eat, sometimes I love cooking with everybody, but I also love to do other things. So, my closest friends and I, we go hiking or we go dancing.
But my best friend and I, we've been best friends since kindergarten you all, kindergarten. And we are in our early forties, and she and I, we now do Sauna Fridays. That's right. We sit in a sauna together on Fridays for an hour. It's an infrared sauna and it is hilarious. When I invited her, I was like, do you want to do this?
Completely thinking she would say no. She was like, I'm down. That's my girl. She's down. There is little to no clothing. There is so much sweating. There is laughing sometimes crying, so much talking. It's just the best. We look forward to it so much, and it's also so weird and so wonderful. So, I'm just telling you here and now so that you can get a good laugh out of imagining two best friends in their early forties that have loved each other since kindergarten, sweating their butts off on Fridays instead of going out to dinner.
And I know maybe, I don't know, it will inspire you to think of something that's not super expensive, but that's real and memorable, that you want to invite someone that you love to do. Yeah? Alright.
Please text me if you end up in a sauna with someone. So, we are going for a Bloom Girl Summer. Like somebody, you know, people talk about hot girl summers. We are going to have a bloom girl summer here, and I'm going to spend the next few episodes going through some of the fundamental steps of turning an idea into a real thing, starting today with possibility thinking. So, like in the Venn diagram of my brain where innovation and design thinking are in one beautiful bubble and coaching the conscious and unconscious minds is in the other bubble.
This podcast is that little pod where the two circles overlap and right there in the center of what unites both of these worlds and methodologies and ways of thinking. All the thought leadership in both of these arenas is in coaching and in innovation is possibility thinking. And we can call this so many things like blue sky thinking.
I love that one. It's luscious, right? Like, reaching into the realm of possibility. People call this the realm of possibility. We can call it future thinking, future trip in. But we're taking it farther today and getting into brainstorming, ideation, and idea generation. What we're doing today is sort of a little burrito of all of these things that we're talking about today, and it's responsible.
This possibility thinking is responsible for the whole life that I have right now, that I'm living right now, which I am so grateful for. When I decided to leave my job and start a new life for myself in terms of career and what my contribution was that I'm making to the world, because contribution is in my top five values, it's very important to me.
When I started thinking about what I could do next, I started with possibility thinking. So, for our purposes, we'll call this possibility thinking, and it's the first step. Once you have the glimmer of a possibility or an idea, it’s the first step to take to turn it into a real thing because glimmers of possibility are just that.
They're just a little something. It's a flash sometimes. So, easy to walk past, so easy to overlook, so easy to blink and let it be gone. They're easily shut down and snuffed out. So, our job is to use possibility thinking to open that glimmer up and crack it wide open to let it see all that blue sky.
See if a possibility that we're excited about decides to just take off to lift off if we give it some room to breathe. Two episodes ago in The Bloom Your Voice episode, we went through finding your authentic voice by listing your values, the things that you want, the things you love about yourself. And maybe in that process you found something that lit you up.
Maybe you found a glimmer of possibility. You know, like in movies, how there'll be forested mountains, all these green trees everywhere, and then you just see this flash, this glint of something off far off in the distance. It's like a glass that's catching the sun or a mirror or something, and it gives away the location of something that, that the main character starts moving toward.
That's what we're talking about here. We're taking a glimmer of something that turned you on and were putting it center stage. Examples of things that I've done this with in the past are this podcast. It was a vague idea and I just started a possibility thinking session about what this could be. What would I make a podcast about if it were my authentic voice, meeting what I think the world needs?
I have recently done this with a group program that I'm finishing up designing. I just went through this with that process of that glimmer and now it’s real thing. I'm about to launch it this summer and I'm doing a photo shoot and a branding and a full on website that I'm just starting this with.
There are all kinds of glimmers of possibility there that I'm doing this with, but you could do it with anything in life with how to spend time with the people that you love, with what to do next with your career, with where you want to live in the world with anything. So, what is it for you? Is there a glimmer of possibility that you've been thinking about?
In those furry, fuzzy, piney mountains. There’s something flashing off in the distance that you're like, I want to move towards that. We're going to take that, and for our purposes, possibility thinking is the next step. So, what is possibility thinking? What is all this that I'm talking about? It's when we open up our minds and hearts to listen to.
All of the ideas and all of the inspiration that we can come up with related to that glimmer of possibility. What are all of the ideas we possibly have about ways we could approach this glimmer of possibility? How can we open up, take the lid off our mind and just let all the ideas flow for with no constraint?
With no relation to what other people are doing or what we've done before or what we think is possible for us, what are all the different approaches we could possibly take? Let's list everything. So, when I was coming up with this group that I'm doing this summer, I'm launching this summer and doing this fall, I was like, should I mail everyone packages?
Should I have a dance party? I could make the group free forever, and it could be a lifetime group, it could be two months, it could be six months. I could meet with everyone individually. I could never meet with them. I could meet with a group only together. I could track results. I could not track results.
We could have a retreat in person. We could report on things. I could let them talk to each other offline without me, or maybe we on a Facebook group, maybe I publish a book to go with this. So, they have a journal they work with every day. I could have nicknames for everyone. I could have a metaphor.
The whole thing is built around just letting my brain play with so many ideas before I narrow it down at all. Possibility thinking is a time to say no to nothing, to list all the ideas, to not be constrained by the reality that we're in right now by what we've done before or by what anyone else will think.
I have a client that's brainstorming on bringing in other revenue streams, and when we started this, we realized it would be so easy to just think in one stream in what she'd been doing before, but instead we went to the realm of possibility and we ideated and listed everything we could think of from driving an Uber to getting an executive level job, to opening up a restaurant, to working in a restaurant, to starting an online education program.
Just everything she could think of. And by doing that, she felt so free and excited and she chose something that never would've occurred to her otherwise. And she's testing it out now. This is a time to go for quantity, to list everything, to get wild, to have fun with it, and to build off of ideas. So, if it's for a project, we'll think of all the ideas for that project.
If it's for our life and we just want to ideate and get into possibility about what our life could look like, we can think of all of the different roads we could possibly walk down next. What could we possibly even entertain? That doesn't even sound like something we would do. Where would we live? If we could live anywhere, what kind of people would we want to be around?
What are all the jobs we could do? Let's list them all. What are all the looks we could wear? What, you could just do this with any part of your life, but why? Why is possibility thinking so important? Let's talk about that. Mostly because the future is our property, and we forget that when we don't think about the future, we repeat our old programming, our old pain, our old shame.
The ways we hide the ways that we failed and the positive things too, but we repeat them over and over again. There's an author named Dan Sullivan who really started this theory that the future is our property. It's our space. We own it. We can do whatever we want in it. We can build anything in it. We can try anything in it.
It's only ours. And when we really own that, in our minds, we become so much more free and expressed. We get to do really cool stuff. I recently did a summer bucket list with my kids, and the reason I engage in possibility with thinking with them about that is because we're creating it together and instead of learning to do what somebody else comes up with, I go through possibility thinking and say, okay, let's think about the things we've done in the past.
Sure, but let's think about all the things we could possibly do in the summer. And we get wild. We like go to a different country in our heads. We, you know, do all kinds of things. We list it all and then we narrow it down, creating it together, engaging in possibility, thinking together, makes them feel powerful.
Makes them participate all summer long. They own the successes. They get excited about the places we're going in, the things we're doing, because they, came up with the idea instead of just saying they're bored all summer, why do we have to do that? That doesn't even come up when we come up with a whole list together.
So, that's another example of possibility thinking and ideation is how you can do it with other people. But it helps us in, in big projects, in big decisions, and in everyday life because it opens up whole worlds of possibility and opportunity that enhance our overall wellbeing. It expands our creativity.
We are better problem solvers when we consider multiple solutions. It boosts our resilience because it instills in us a sense of optimism. By focusing on what's possible rather than dwelling on limitations, we develop a mindset that enables us to bounce back from all the times we trip, to adapt to things changing and to overcome obstacles and it helps us grow as people.
We're more likely to set goals when we do this, and we're more likely to get excited about pursuing them and stay on the path. As we fail and as we try again, it encourages us to step out of our comfort zone. It sparks innovation, allows us to challenge the roles we think we're supposed to play, question the things that exist, and it helps us have a positive mindset, create a positive feelings in our body.
By shifting our focus again from limitations to the potential, it encourages us to continuously learn because as we think about what's possible, we have to learn how to get there. It keeps us focused on a beautiful, bright, hopeful future full of possibility rather than sort of putting on autopilot and letting that autopilot drive our life.
So, let me give you a few tips for possibility thinking and another couple examples, example or two. So, when you're thinking about all of the possibilities, when you're in this stage of taking a glimmer of possibility, a glimmer of an idea, something that lights you up and turns you on, and you're going to start generating ideas, creating possibilities, it's a time to use that improv technique of yes and.
To build on ideas, you're not crossing anything off the list until the next step. This is the part where you put everything down, and so if you have a little thought that's not realistic, you pause yourself and say, yes, I'm going to write it down, and how can I make it even bigger? You're going to build off of ideas.
You're going to go for quantity over quality. You're not going to consider what anyone expects of you that will. Shred possibility immediately. I'm coming up with this branding for myself and y'all. It is a trip to come up with a brand for yourself as a human being. And if I come from the place of, well, who am I now?
It is such a more boring brand than if I come from the place of what lights me up, what inspires me, what makes me feel like it is this just wild expression of me, right? So, I put all these ideas down on a list and you know what we're doing for my photo shoot. I am wearing a giant thing of wearable flowers that my amazingly talented friend who owns a flower shop.
It's a few, a series of flower shops called Native Poppy in San Diego. She's going to make me like wearable flowers that I can do. I can wear like a flower wig; wear flowers all over the place. I'm going to use these giant flowers that I made for my wedding, and I'm going to make some more and do a photo shoot in my art studio with all of these flowers.
I'm also going to do a bunch of other photos. I'm thinking about people that inspire me from out in the world and, and there's just so many bright colors and just fun ideas and so many fewer rules. I'm not thinking about what anyone's expecting of me, and I'm not thinking about what I've done before. I'm not thinking about my age.
I'm not thinking about what's respectable or what is, you know, I'm going to make people laugh. What's going to look ridiculous? I'm just brainstorming all of the ideas of how much fun I could have. I'm not thinking about, and so don't think about what other people like, what other people are doing.
This possibility thinking is just for you. It's a time when you're not thinking about if anybody else is going to judge you. You're just thinking about what lights you up, what turns you on. Our last episode, episode 28 with Kathryn Morrison, Ziggy Stardust Energy. She is an expert at this and she got into talking about this, so go back and listen to that if you haven't yet.
She is a riot. Very fun lady. So, this phase possibility thinking is when you tap into what lights you up and gives you a buzz and you let yourself get wild. It does not have to have anything to do with what you're doing now. It doesn't have to look like, smell like, taste like, feel like your current life or what you are, what exists in your life now, this is a mental exercise. Get wild.
Doesn't have to look like anything you've ever done before. And you can give yourself prompts. I like prompts that contradict each other. So, how could I do this in the way that's the most fun, in the way that's most fulfilling in the way that's most wild? What's the most moral idea I have?
What's the most responsible idea? What's the most irresponsible idea? What feels the most like me? I would never do that. I really try to go for those ones. What's the idea that's outta the question? What's an idea? That's very obvious, and with some things you can start to ideate around what would this look like in 10 years?
What would this look like in 20 years, in 30 years, depending on the thing that you're ideating on? So, we are reaching out into the realm of possibility, the world of possibility to build up all the ideas for what we could do with a glimmer of possibility that we have.
Maybe that glimmer of possibility, for you, is something in a relationship, maybe it's something with your health, maybe it's something that's a next step in your career or your life, or maybe it's something you want to build and create and put out there like me, a podcaster, a group or a book you're going to write, or a trip you want to take or a community you want to start.
Choose one thing this week, one thing, no matter how small that lights you up and engage in possibility thinking about it, what are all the different ways you could approach it? See what you come up with, and then zoom in on the one or two ideas that light you up the most. We'll talk about what to do with them next week.
That's what I've got for you. My friends have so much fun with this. I love you all and I'll see you next week.
