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.
Well, hello everyone. How are you, my friends? Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind podcast.
I was just in a bloom room alumni call where all of the graduates of the bloom room come to hang out and say hi and tap back into the bloom room energy and it was really oh, it's always so good to see everyone's faces and reconnect again, and I was so inspired that I wanted to just share this. You know, people have been saying they want to kind of figure out how to reconnect and get back in, and I have a new offering that I'll tell you about for that. But what I just was so inspired by as we checked back in after, let's see, this has been about three months, four months after they closed out of their first round of the bloom room, and a couple of them were just talking about how much has changed and, looking back on, one of them said, looking back on a year ago when she and I started doing some work together. The things that she was dealing with then are just smaller. She said it's like looking in the rear-view mirror like they you know they're the same things that come up but they're so much easier to deal with. And she deals with a lot of imposter syndrome in a high-profile job with a lot of white men and a very sort of public profile and situation. And she said you know, I just I noticed how much easier things are for me to deal with after all of this work.
And then in another individual was looking back on where he's come since working on the bloom room and he said was looking back on where he's come since working on the bloom room and he said you know, I have more self-love, I have more self-care, and those two things were things that I just never could prioritize before.
He said I've lost 60 pounds in the past year. I have discipline. I feel this tremendous joy in a new relationship. And when we were starting our work in the bloom room, he was really seeing some patterns in all the people that he chose and really wanting to not make those choices and have those patterns again.
So just these beautiful joy in this relationship, just feeling more capable in all these other areas, in the beginning he was really wanting to expand his leadership, his clear communication, have better boundaries, be more aware of other people and all of those things that he was saying he experiences now that he's more honest, more capable, more honest with himself and has grown as a leader, has grown in his communication and his boundaries, and it's just so cool to just see this work in coaching and just even if you're listening to the podcast and applying these principles just how much life can change if you're spending the time doing this work. So good job being here.
I know we have a lot of fun, or I do anyways on this podcast. I laugh a lot and make myself laugh a lot. I was listening to a couple of the episodes, and I noticed how much I laugh at myself. I hope you like that, because I am unaware of it when I'm doing it, so I don't know if I can stop, but I do make myself laugh a lot and have a good time recording this and I hope that you are enjoying it as well.
But I just want to really highlight that sometimes, when you're doing the work to just own your own thought management, make your ideas real, be more of the person that you want to become, manage your emotions, practice emotional adulthood, develop failure tolerance all the stuff that we do here to build who we are on the inside, to be aware of our subconscious patterns, to get past that stuff so we can make a deep contribution to the world in the way that only we can.
A lot of it we don't notice in ourselves, because our systems, our world, is really built to recognize progress that looks like, you know, something that the external world can see and validate, and a lot of times we forget to take time to celebrate ourselves. So, if you've been listening to this podcast for a long time, or even for a while, and you've been applying some of the principles here, some of the doing, some of the practices I offer using thought management here, doing some of the practices I offer using thought management, allowing the feelings in your body instead of blaming it on other people.
All of the things we work on, just take a minute to look back at what you've accomplished. Take a minute to witness what has changed in you. How are you different? How are you different in doing this work and celebrate it?
Listing it out can be amazing and if you want a tool to help you do that go back to the episode called Look How Far You've Come, which is based on a practice from a fellow coach that wrote a book called The Gap and The Gain, and we practice measuring the gain, so looking at how far you've come instead of how far you have to go, because that is infinitely more effective, all right.
So, one of the things that I deal with a lot with my people is when people sort of like are trying to make a decision about whether or not to do something, and especially when those things would require a lot of change in our lives.
And also, many times, change also brings, you know, a bloom with it. It brings fruition, it brings new, unexpected, wonderful surprises Not always right, but usually the change that we're precipitating, usually the change that comes of our forward action, our aligned action that we're taking towards something we want, towards a goal, any momentum in that direction, usually brings about some cool stuff.
Now I've also talked on a podcast about gut feelings, and when you have that sense inside of you that says do this thing, go for this thing, follow this thing, I like to think of it as like what lights me up, what turns me on, when my animating presence, my spirit, whatever you want to call that, my internal light, my higher self, is like move in this direction, do this thing.
Or when it feels like a hell yes, that's another way of thinking about it. The other sense there, the opposite, the other pole, is when you get a hell no or a gut feeling that is like oh, this doesn't seem like a good idea. Usually for me it's a little bit milder like that. Sometimes I have a hell no and sometimes I just have a like ugh, this isn't feeling right.
And I've talked before about how, when I push past, that invariably turns out to not be a good idea. Invariably it takes more withdrawal than it does give deposits to my life, my energy myself, my idea for what's most important for me coming real myself, my idea for what's most important for me coming real.
And I really believe in all of us focusing our time and energy, because we can get pulled in so many different directions. Life will pull us, people will pull us, requests for our attention and time will pull us in so many directions if we don't decide what is the most important thing that I'm doing with my life, with my time, with my energy, with my resources. And so, I am such a proponent of deciding on that.
What is your deep passion and your singular, unique gift? Where do those two things meet? What the world needs most, needs most how can you change the world in a positive way through what you love doing and who you love being? That's what we're all about here on the Bloom Your Mind podcast.
All right, so when we follow those yeses and we listen to those no's, it can really be a helpful internal compass. We also can use the tools of our value system, our pillars, our purpose, and really use those as a gauge when we're making a decision. So, is this decision in line with my values? Is it in line with who I want to be in the world?
Even if we don't know what our number one purpose is, it's like okay, when I think about who I want to be, when I think about how I want my children or my friends or my family or people that know me to describe me, is this decision in line with that person, with what that person would do, or is it in line with my values?
Those are great decision-making tools, but sometimes we have a choice in front of us that is just not clear, and I also have made a podcast on decision-making. You can go back to that, but I want to deepen it here, the conversation here, because sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between a gut feeling of, I don't know if I should do this and fear or self-doubt, and I coach people through this a lot.
So sometimes people will say to me I don't know if I'm being fear-based, which I don't want to be, or if I really am having this gut feeling that I shouldn't do this.
I want to talk about some different ways that you can get to the root of that answer. So, first of all, when you ask yourself whether or not you want to do it, you can close your eyes, ground yourself in your body, envision a cord going down from the base of your spinal column down into the earth. Fill yourself up with your own energy. Clear your mind. Fill yourself up with your own energy. Clear your mind.
Even turn a volume dial on the thinking part of your brain to turn it down and just ask yourself is this something I want, when you're asking your true intuition, your gut, your higher self, without the thinking mind pitter-pattering around like toddler feet running around your brain. When you turn that volume down, then what do you hear? Okay, so that's one way.
A second way is to meditate. I have some meditations that I record and give to everybody in the bloom room where you, you can do an induction, you can, you know, do a countdown. You can walk down a set of stairs and see a beautiful door, open the door and behind that door is your wise advocate, and walk through the door and find out whether you should do a thing or not. So, these are some ways to like, deeply touch into your intuition. But still, what if you don't know? That's what I want to share with you right now.
I have a little practice that you can do to get into the nitty gritty of you know whether you're just being fear-based or whether you're worrying or being self. You know, really listening to self-doubt too much, or whether you really have an intuition that you should do something, all right.
So I'm going to give you an example of this, and this example is going to include the tool that I've shared in a podcast before and that I use often, which is a decision-making tool, and then I'm going to add to it this layer, for when we're really stuck in the decision, we don't know what we should do, especially when we can't tell the difference between a gut feeling and something we don't want to listen to, like fear or self-doubt, something we want to push through.
I'm going to talk about this in two ways. First, a way that you can kind of really suss out what you want to do and whether you want to push past something or whether you really want to listen to a gut feeling. And then, if your decision is sort of interdependent on another person a business partner, a friend, a partner, a family member that you're going with, that you're making the decision with I'm going to talk to you about some tips for how to make a decision really clearly communicated between you and somebody else that is interdependent on what you do.
So, first of all, let's take an example about whether you should move to a new city. Let's say you're trying to make this decision and you don't know, you can't tell if that feeling that you have inside, that's kind of holding you back, is just nerves, it's just fear, it's just self-doubt, it's just not wanting to go into the unfamiliar, or whether your gut is really telling you this is not the time I should not move. And you can apply this to anything in your life. If you're listening, you can apply this to moving houses, moving cities, moving jobs, moving relationships. Okay, you could apply this to anything.
For now, let's say we're making this decision about moving cities because it seems pretty straightforward to think about. We're going to look at the reasons why we might want to move and the reasons why we might not want to move. Another way to think about this is to think about the parts of us, the part of us that wants to move and the part of us that doesn't want to move. We're going to give those two parts a voice. So, first of all, we'll write down the reasons why we want to move.
What is the part of us that thinks it's a good idea to move has to say? What does that part have to say? So maybe the things on that side of the list would be like well, we'll figure it out. We always do. Maybe that part's going to say change is always good, change always makes me grow. Maybe that part of us is thinking well, it's important to the people I live with, it's important to my family, they're interested in going, they want to go.
Maybe there's that part also feels bored in our current life and wants to mix it up. You know, write down all those reasons. And then we're going to write down, we're going to hear from the other side. Write down all the reasons why we wouldn't go. We're going to check in with a part that doesn't want to go. What do they have to say?
Maybe there's a lot of questions about whether we actually responsibly can pay for a move. Where are we going to live? What job are we going to have? Maybe we would have no social system in that new place, and it would be a lot of pressure on the one or two people that we'd be going with. Maybe we don't know a lot about the culture there, about what people do. Are we going to like that? Are we going to enjoy living there?
Then we're going to look at both of the lists. We're going to read what each part of us wrote and we're going to look at both of the lists. We're going to read what each part of us wrote and we're going to decide which reasons we like better. What this might sound like is when we see well, I'll figure it out, I always do I might say, okay, let's do some of that figuring out right now, before we go, and I'll tell you what I would do in just a minute to do that.
We go and I'll tell you what I would do in just a minute to do that. Maybe when we hear the part change is always good and I'm bored here, we see those listed on our reasons. Maybe we would stop and question that. Okay, well, wherever I go there, I am. So maybe I want to look at why I'm bored and what I could mix up in my current life.
Maybe there are things I could do to juice it up here without uprooting everything and leaving. When we know that our partner wants to go that list, that part of the list when we said that the people around us really want to go, okay, that's great data, that's a great reason to take into account Then we're going to look at the other side and start to actually answer some of those questions.
This is the third part of this tool. We look at both sides. We look at what reasons we like and what reasons feel better in order to make the decision. But if we still don't know, we say what would I need in order to feel great about saying yes to this decision? So, in our list, in our circumstance, if we thought of all the things we would need to feel great about moving to a new city. We'd start answering some of the questions in the list of things that were our concerns.
So, first of all, we'd research the cost of living in the new city. If I really research the cost of living in the new city, I make a budget for myself. Let's say we include the cost of restaurants and going to the gym, going out to see live music, anything that we like to do, and we make a budget that feels like we could really handle the initial cost of moving and the additional financial investment or responsibility of living there.
What if we also had a good friend that lives there and we found somebody or met some people and could answer that if we knew we could afford living there and we had a good friend that lived there and we had a job that we loved and we had a house that felt wonderful and all of those things were intact, if we had all of the things that our mind is worrying about, we make a list.
We say okay, if all of those things are good to go now do I want to go? So what we're doing is we're clearing out all the mental chatter and the logistics and the reasoning, minds, needs and, and if all of those things were set and we're really listing out all the things we need to have in order to make a strong decision, to feel good about saying yes and all those needs are met, and then we check in with our gut again. Is the answer yes now, or are we still hesitating? Sometimes we don't know the answer right away and we need to sit with it for a little bit. But this third step can really clarify whether we are being fear-based or whether we have a gut feeling and intuition that we want to listen to.
The reason this works is because it breaks it down into logic and we take care of all the logical pieces, get them out of the way, and that clears us to be able to really tap back into our intuition and our senses. If all these reasons that I'm saying are my reasons for not wanting this are answered, do I still not want to go?
Then we have some good information there, all right. So that's the third layer of really telling the difference between whether something is a gut feeling or whether there's just a fear that we want to push past. Now, if you're making a decision, if we're making a decision with somebody else in our life and it's a big change, whether that's in our business, in our family life, in a partnership or a friendship.
Here's some things that I recommend doing. First of all, set some expectations. Let's take this example of moving to a new city. We make some ground rules. Some ground rules might be we are going to, no matter what, make our relationship the top priority. Let's say that's one of the ground rules.
We want to make sure that, no matter what we're doing in this new city, we get to spend a lot of time together. No matter what our new jobs are, we get to spend some quality time. We get to explore the city together. We get to have a lot of fun. What does that look like? Like at least three times a week we're hanging out. Okay, that might be one of the ground rules.
Another ground rule might be like well, how long do we want to try this out for? If we're really thinking of a minimum amount of time, let's take six months at the least, okay, so we're going to try this for six months and then we're going to check in every week and we're going to see how we're doing. And with these three ground rules.
We feel like we're on the same page about what's happening here, and each week when we check in, we're going to say, okay, Sunday night, what worked, what's working so far about us living in this new city, what's not working and what do we want to do differently. We're going to do a retro every single week, and what this does is it aligns expectations.
When you're making a decision and you choose to do something and you're doing it with somebody else, oftentimes we have different pictures of what it's going to look like in our minds. So when we can just spend a little bit of time setting ground rules, we know that we're setting ourselves up in relation to a person that's important to us, we're setting ourselves up for success, we're setting ourselves up for aligned expectations and then we're setting some ground rules so that, along the way, we can check in and make sure that it's going okay.
And this is the way that we can not only feel like we understand what our gut is telling us versus what our fear-based mind is telling us. We can really understand our reasoning, we can make a clear list about what we need in order to be a hell yes, and we can set clear expectations and set some ground rules with the people in our lives if we aren't making a good change.
So, I hope this was helpful for you. Let me know if you have questions about any of this. This has been really helpful for a lot of my clients, and this is a tool I wanted to extend to you. I hope you have a beautiful day. That's what I've got for you, 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.
