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 everybody, and welcome to episode number 91 of the Bloom Your Mind podcast. Today I'm going to talk about two different things. I'm going to tell you a little story about my weekend, which was amazing, and then I'm going to talk about community.
But before that, I just got off of the Bloom Room alumni call, which is a call I do once a month for all of the graduates of the Bloom Room. It's like a reunion and also a brush up for those folks that are waiting for the annual Bloom Room, and there's a good handful of them that are waiting for this group more than a handful, if I'm honest waiting for me to get my stuff together and do my launch next month, in September, so that we can launch the Bloom Room annual experience, and I'll tell you a little bit about that later.
But I was just in the Bloom Room and I was talking to one of my alumni and he was saying that he and his girlfriend were listening together to the podcast and had a question for me and he said you know, I bet she'll, if we make a request for a podcast episode, she'll record one about it. And I said, yes, I sure will. I've done that many times before. And this question was what would she say about someone that just has tons and tons of ideas, just too many ideas? That just has tons and tons of ideas, just too many ideas. And here's my answer to that.
My quick answer is that I don't think there's ever too many ideas. And I have to say and I've told the story before on one of my episodes that in graduate school I actually had some one of my critiques where an instructor told me that she thought I should make a performance art piece about me talking about all of my ideas, because I have a very fast brain and I have a lot of ideas all the time, and I don't think that's a bad thing, unless you're all talk and no action.
So when we have all kinds of ideas and either we spend all of our time talking about those ideas in a way that doesn't lead others to action or lead ourselves to action, or create the fruition of those ideas in a way that we're happy with, or if we're always following ideas and starting them but not finishing them or letting them lead us off course. When we're in the middle of trying to implement one idea, when we don't practice constraint and practice discipline in following through on an idea, that's when it becomes a problem.
But you can have as many ideas as you want in the middle of when you're executing on one idea, just as long as you write them down. Let your playground of a brain explore the ideas, have fun with the ideas, let it bring you joy. As long as it's a positive feeling for you, a positive thing, just write them all down and then you can have a someday maybe list. It's one of my favorite lists to have someday. Maybe will I do this, will I do this next?
And I really like sitting with things, putting them down, saying if I'm still excited about this and still motivated to do this, if I still feel like this is going to meet a need in the world or it's something that I'm excited to create for myself, I will do that when I'm done with what I've already committed to. So have as many ideas as you like, just take them through the process and if you get into the Bloom Room, you can understand the process, first of all, looking at where an idea is coming from.
Is it an idea that's for you, or is an idea you've been socialized to want to do? Is it coming from true desire and self-expression? Is it coming from an authentic place? And then we have a regenerative idea model that we like to run things through, which basically asks a lot of questions about if this idea is regenerative for you and your life.
We like to live in a regenerative way where we put a lot of effort into something, then that thing, we put effort into our idea, the idea blooms, and then the idea puts energy or effort into the world, puts energy into the world, the world blooms and then the world puts energy back into us in the form it takes lots of different forms. And so that's this model that I created of regenerative ideas that are a cycle that feed back into us over and over again.
And there's lots that I can teach you about that model, that living regenerative idea model and it can be used both to create an idea and make sure it's something that feeds you and feeds the world in the way you want. It can also be something that can be used to diagnose what isn't working and where is it breaking down. In which of the three kinds of spokes of or circles in our Venn diagram? Where's the breakdown happening when something isn't working? And so, we learned that in the Bloom Room and that can really help you to narrow down.
Out of all the many wonderful ideas, which one do you want to be your priority? Because although we've co-opted the word priority to mean many things, our capitalist desire to have it all. We want to have all the priorities. The word priority actually the origin of it is singular, so when we focus on an idea, we want it to be a singular idea, one at a time. We can have three main goals for a period of 90 days, but we really want one big idea that we're focused on at a time.
And when we do that, we actually accomplish way more in the long run because we focus on and give all of our attention and energy to one thing. The book Essentialism talks a lot about this. We put all of our concentrated, high-quality effort into one thing and that thing gets taken really far and is very successful High quality, strong contribution to the world. When we don't prioritize and we put our effort into anything, it dilutes our effort, and it dilutes the quality of what we create in all areas of our life.
So, it might take us five years to get very far in anything, whereas if we focus on one thing at a time, it might take us one year to accomplish the same amount. All right, so that's my thought about many ideas. It's all about prioritization, commitment and dedication to accomplish your goal and then capturing all the other ideas, letting them be a playground, but don't let them pull you off course.
So, this past weekend I went y'all to Disneyland for my son's eighth birthday and it was so wonderful. I know that a lot of parents say they go there for their kids and they kind of grin and bear it. I loved it. I haven't been there in a long time, but I have to say that so much of my life is geared around sort of elevating the human experience, soaking up the moments of life, being in the miracle of our lives and all the ways that we can, and doing that through setting boundaries and saying no to the things that don't feel like a match to what we're okay with and saying yes to the things that do. Kids are really good at that. My son is really good at that. My daughter's really good at that and my son is really into the Mandalorian. He's never seen the show, he just loves this space cowboy.
So, he, for his birthday, wanted to go to Star Wars World at Disneyland and he chose to go to the park in his Mandalorian suit, head to toe. It was 90 degrees, and he was wearing a full head to toe. It was 90 degrees, and he was wearing a full Mandalorian suit with, like, all of this accoutrement, with these little like armbands, with a helmet. Most of the time word, all day. He had these little pink cheeks that were flush. I kept making him drink water. I kept asking him “do you want to take that off? And he did not. And y'all.
As he walked in for the first time to Star Wars land, this town that they built and, by the way, it is extraordinary, the craftsmanship in this area I'd never been before, and it was just phenomenal. It's called Mos Eisley and it's like the Star Wars town that they made Giant spaceships, incredible characters walking through I started crying. I mean I teared up, not bawling, but I teared up as he walked into this land because he's so passionate about it.
He plays Star Wars stuff all the time and he's wearing this full suit and he's walking into this universe that was created, that matches this imaginary play that he engages with all the time, and it was just so beautiful to see someone that I love experiencing something for the first time, being immersed in something that brings them so much joy. It was amazing and it was hilarious.
There were these storm troopers that were there in costume, so like such great costumes, and they saw him, and he walked up to them and just gave them a look and they said we got to get out of here and ran. It's just like, was this whole universe that was so wonderful? Got to get out of here and run? It's just like, was this whole universe that was so wonderful?
And it just reminds me that as adults, we're not so great at choosing the things to immerse ourselves in that just light us up. But watching a little human do that is so inspiring and just makes me want to remind all of us of what lights you up? For me, it's the ocean, it's the woods, it's yoga, it's my family, it's art, it's music. How can we put ourselves into the environments that light us up and turn us on?
That makes making our ideas real so much easier because we already are in that frequency of motivation, inspiration, joy. My husband and I have like six concerts that we're already by, we already bought tickets for in San Diego, like little ones, big ones, all kinds of stuff in the next few months because we love live music. It puts us into that frequency of just joy and play and feeling alive. What does that do for you and how can you get there?
All right, I want to spend the last few minutes talking about community, because I've just really been thinking about this lately for myself and had this experience for myself about how different the communities that we are a part of are in terms of how they influence us.
So I want you to take a moment now and list in your mind like four or five communities that you are a part of they could be school communities, work communities, friend communities, family communities, any different friend groups, whatever you know, it could be work communities that you used to be a part of and just list all of those, okay, in your mind, depending on if you're sitting down with a piece of paper or if you're driving or whatever walking maybe, list three if you want to keep them all in your memory, and then, for each one of those, answer this how do you feel in the days or hours before you're about to see people from that community, before you're about to be immersed in that community, how do you feel?
How do you feel when a text pops up on your phone from someone in that community or an email in your inbox? Chances are you have some really different answers. It has become just been at the forefront of my experience lately of how different communities are at pulling out the different sides of us and the parts of us.
There are some communities that I'm a part of that just make me goofy. I am silly and goofy, I'm like a standup comedian when I'm with them. There are other ones that make me super thoughtful and that make me inspired and motivated and really like in my mind, in my ideas, generative. There are other ones that stress me out. There are ones where I feel more tiptoe-y and eggshell-y.
There was one community that I have been working at making really positive and love-filled for a long time and I started in the past month getting headaches every time I was about to enter into that community because it wasn't working. What I was giving into the community, it wasn't what I was experiencing back.
Instead of it, I was trying to contribute love and goodness and I was experiencing like negative energy back and I realized that when I wasn't listening to that and limiting my time with that community, my body started showing me that I needed to limit my time with that community and it started giving me headaches every time I would be about to spend time with this community.
I would get really bad headaches Every time I would be about to spend time with this community. I would get really bad headaches as you think about the difference in how you feel with these different communities and what they from those communities, and how you feel when you see an email or a text pop up on your phone.
Those feelings are based on the thoughts that you have about the people in that group, about the experience you've had. Spending time in that group and some groups that we are in are just very calming for our nervous system. We don't have to work very hard to be ourselves, to be authentic, to feel like we belong in those groups and in other groups. We just have to work a lot harder to feel like we belong, to feel like ourselves, to feel loved, to feel seen. And if you think about this life and what's at stake, when you think about how you have this one time to live with this voice and this face and these ideas and this lived experience.
Do you want to spend your time in communities where you have to work really hard to shove down the negative beliefs that get triggered when you're in these communities, or when you have to work really, really hard to connect and get reciprocal energy back from the community? Or do you want to put yourself in the presence of people that bring out your best in regenerative, reciprocal communities that feed your spirit and that love you and that give you as much energy as you put into them?
Now we can always change our thoughts, so if there are some communities that make you sort of have imposter syndrome or make you doubt yourself, that's actually a great community to push yourself to be in sometimes and to do the work on your own confidence and your own belief in yourself.
And it's all up to you how much time, of course, you spend with each community, which ones you want to limit and which ones you want more of. But my invitation for you today is just to think about which communities bring out your best self and how can you put yourself in those communities more.
Because when we take away the work and the energy that we have to spend building ourselves up and making us feel okay and instead we can just put ourselves in environments where we automatically feel motivated and inspired and belonging, we are much more likely to have energy left to put into our ideas and making our ideas real in the world. We're starting the Bloom Room this fall. We're starting with October, November, December with foundational work in conscious mind work, unconscious mind work, feeling work, values work.
All of this groundwork, this foundational work. We're going to take it real slow so that in January we can launch our first year-long Bloom Room and making our ideas together in a group that brings out the best in one another, because communities and groups are a mirror and when you put yourselves in communities that mirror back the self that you want to be, it is much easier to remember that that's who you already are.
That's what I've got for you today 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.
