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, my friends, and welcome to episode number 92 of the Bloom Your Mind podcast. Yo, that is eight away from 100. That is wild, okay.
So, last week we talked about reciprocal community, which was something I was really excited to talk about because I had been experiencing it lately and coaching a lot of people on it. Then I went to a thing this past weekend in park city. What is the thing, you ask?
This was sort of like organic mastermind. The word mastermind is something, if you're not familiar with it, that coaches do and that happens in other industries where practitioners of whatever it is so coaches in this instance get together and work. They have like a real concentrated period of work where they all put their heads down.
We do what we refer to as super thinking, so we'll take concepts that we're working on or structures for our clients, ways that we're serving the world, and we super think the best way to do them to serve the need in the world that we are trying to serve. I had one of my friends that I knew from the coaching world reach out to me and say, hey, there are limited spots, there's one spot left, there's only five of us and I really want for you to come to this.
And the person putting it on reached out to me and I said, yes, I didn't know half the people at this thing of the five people, and I went to park city last Thursday and I stayed until Monday, and we had this mastermind experience, this real organic one. What I mean by that is it's not like you're going to this mastermind experience, this real organic one. What I mean by that is it's not like you're going to a mastermind where there's like 200 people and someone's up on a stage.
We just went to a house and there are five coaches who a few of them by reputation very well, because they're very well-respected coaches and I love what they do and a couple of them I know more personally and love them and similarly, are very well-respected. So, it was exciting to go but, ironically, it was the most reciprocal community that I have ever been a part of. It was wild.
All four of these women were so generous with their time and their energy and it was so reciprocal with five people across. However, many days that was four days, I guess everyone just no one took up too much space.
Everyone was aware, self-aware and aware of one another. When someone had a headache, people just helped in whatever way they could. There was one person that's a retired doctor there, another couple of us practice Reiki and you know massage. A couple of people practice massage that were there and all of us are trained in certain, have multiple certifications in coaching.
So, then we also coached each other in between that. You know really hours and hours of focus time when we were working on our businesses and on our products. We were coaching each other around how to bring our ideas into real life. And this group of people is so amazing.
They all are so philanthropic; they're all trying to change the world and help people. And I just felt this wonderful satiation and satisfaction of having really talked about this idea of reciprocal community and then, by chance, was invited into this incredibly reciprocal community and it just made me want to double down on.
Hey, listen to that episode If you haven't yet. Think about the communities you're a part of. Are you getting energy back from them? Are they feeding you? Are they reciprocal? Are you getting out what you're putting in? We also went on long hikes, we danced, we took a bunch of photos of each other.
It was delightful and in other news, at the end of that episode, I told you about a concept that I am so excited about. Oh my gosh, I've been really incubating on this, which is what I do I ideate, I innovate and I incubate a lot, and I have been ideating on these different ways to serve my clients and different ways of articulating what all of my clients go through over and over again, and I did a super thinking session for a while, actually did a few of them and really meditated on this for a few months and came up with a new concept.
That isn't new, it's just said in a different way, but it really is the epitome of what all of my clients go through at many different stages, and this tool is central to the bloom room which is starting at the beginning of October. So, we'll be focusing a lot on this tool because it does so many different things. But before I share this tool with you today and I actually have a free PDF that I created for all of you, if you're interested in using the tool and doing this work. I highly recommend it. It will only serve you.
But before that, I also wanted to share that today was the first day of school for my kids and I now have a middle schooler. I gave birth to this child; she was a baby in my arms and now she wears the same size clothes as me. We share clothes, we talk about fashion. I now know the lyrics to Taylor Swift and my son is going into second grade and he's just you know so much more autonomous and joyful and it is just such a joy to see their sassiness and their indomitable little spirits.
It is quite an honor to be serving them as their mom. So, trips to park, first days of school, coming into the community where we go, our kids go to school it is so reciprocal and wonderful. I put a lot of effort into that school, and I get a lot of love and community out of it, in with yourself about what communities you're a part of All right.
So, let's talk about regenerative design. Now. I thought about what to call this as I was coming up with it. I think regenerative design is really what it is, and I'm used to innovation and design thinking right. So, the word design I'm really comfortable with, but I also just batted around the idea of regenerative living.
So, I want you to choose the one that fits best for your life, because this is a design cycle that applies to anything in your life. It applies to an idea that you want to make real, whether that idea is something you want to improve in a relationship, something that you actually want to create in the world like an album.
One of my clients just released an album that he made with his dad and Anderson Paak. Oh my gosh, I listened to it, and it was so beautiful. And he was in the bloom room when he was working on some of the songs. I don't know if they were actually for that album or his next album that he's working on, but you know whether it's an idea like that, that's very, very tangible.
You know, one of my clients was the facilitator for Mushroom Summit. I've done an interview with her on the podcast. For 10,000 people, which was a very tangible idea. Someone else started a medicinal honey company. Somebody else wanted to go live on a boat. These are people that I've told you about before. That's less tangible, like evolving a leadership style or changing habits in.
You know, this is tangible but maybe less visible to the world, but changing habits in your lifestyle, with sleep or with food or alcohol consumption or exercise, or maybe it's with self-talk and how you treat yourself. Whatever that idea is.
The regenerative design tool is incredibly helpful when you're considering whether to put your energy into an idea. Some of my clients say, well, I want to be in the bloom room so bad, and I don't know what the right idea is, which always cracks me up because I say over and over there is no right idea. All roads lead to Rome. You can use the tool on anything, and you'll learn the tool right.
You'll learn the process of making an idea real on anything. Just pick something that makes you happy because you can apply it to as many things as you want over and over again. But if you have a list of ideas many of us are idea factories, myself included have a very generative idea brain. You can use this tool to pick which one you want. You can use this tool to look at an idea that you want to make real and really vet whether that idea is realistic, whether it's going to work.
You can use the tool when you're trying to figure out what's in your way. So, when you're you've decided on an idea, you think it's going to work, but now you're getting into the planning of how you're going to make it real.
You can use the tool to anticipate obstacles, but not just in this vague way. Like what are the obstacles that might get in your way? In an incisive way, right that the tool leads you through. It's the most helpful tool I've ever seen for anticipating obstacles and planning around them before they happen. The other way that this tool is so helpful and my favorite way of using it honestly, is to diagnose what isn't working.
When something is not working in an idea, in a relationship, in a community, in something that you're creating, whatever it is, when something isn't working, we can use this tool to figure out what's not working and to make decisions based on ROI, meaning return on investment, but not in the way you're thinking, and we'll get into that in a little bit.
But the other way that this tool is really helpful is in setting boundaries. I know we all know this word. I know it's a buzzy word, I know it's all over the place. Boundary, boundary, boundary. And let me tell you every single client that I work with in my groups individually, all of them are doing some kind of work on boundaries groups. Individually.
All of them are doing some kind of work on boundaries. It's amazing. I did not realize what a fundamental challenge this is to us, just because we're humans, or maybe because we're humans right now in this society.
So, this tool helps you figure out boundaries, because so many of the people that I work with are like I want to get better at setting boundaries, but how do I even know what my boundaries are? I don't even know what they are or how to set them. This tool will help you figure out what your hell yeses are, and if it's not a hell yes, my friends, everything else is an F no.
So, it helps you figure out what your yeses and your nos are and based on that, you can set boundaries. It also just helps you figure out what those boundaries need to be to protect your energy, so that you can put your energy into the things that you most want to create in your life. So, I did create a free PDF for you. I recommend that you go to Instagram @the.bloom.coach and in my link tree, which is linked in my profile, you can grab the link to grab the free PDF.
So, if you're interested in doing this, you can actually have the visual in front of you. I'm a very visual person. You can pull the visual PDF. So, if you're interested in doing this, you can actually have the visual in front of you. I'm a very visual person. You can pull the visual up. Soon. I will also have this tool on my website, but my website is under construction right now.
In the meantime, I want you to picture in your mind's eye a very, very simple picture for me. There are three circles. One is at the top and two are at the bottom, sort of like a triangle, okay, and arrows flowing between the three. They're all flowing to the right. They're flowing clockwise. The top circle is you. There's an arrow that flows to the second circle, which is your idea. There's an arrow that flows to the third circle, which is your idea. There's an arrow that flows to the third circle, which is the world, and there's an arrow that flows from the world back to you.
Okay, so it's just a circle of flow and a clockwise direction between you and then your idea and then the world. So, let's talk about what the heck I'm talking about.
Let's hope you have that picture in your mind when you are choosing an idea, you start from you and you put energy, all kinds of energy, whether that's time, money, brain power, love, physical effort, resources of any kind, connections that you have, favors people owe you. You put your energy into your idea when you're creating it. Maybe that energy is saying no to a bunch of other things so you can work on your idea.
So, you're putting an energy into your idea to bloom your idea, to make your idea real. All that energy that you're putting out, that you're not putting into other things but you're putting into the idea, blooms that idea. Then your idea starts moving into the world. That's that arrow between your idea and the world. The energy goes from the idea to the world. So, your idea puts energy into the world.
Maybe the energy that takes the idea into the world is marketing. Maybe you're emailing people. Maybe you're having conversations about the idea. Maybe you hire someone to get your idea out into the world. Maybe you're selling the idea. Maybe you're cooking for people and the energy that gets that food out into the world is just you serving a plate, right? However, the energy transfers from the idea to the world. The circle continues. The energy transfer continues Once your idea is out in the world. People in the world have your idea. People are eating your idea. You are experiencing your idea.
In some cases, in the case of personal change, then ideas worth doing any idea worth doing, just like communities worth being a part of are going to have energy that flows back to you from the world back to you in the same volume or quality as the energy that you put into the idea. So, it refills you and it's reciprocal. We want to choose to put our time and energy into ideas that are regenerative, that fill us back up with energy, so we can put energy into another idea or continue to put energy into this original idea. We want them to be reciprocal. We want them to give us energy to fill us back up.
That energy transfer from the world back to you could look lots of different ways. In an actual product or a business. It might look like money you might actually be making your income or taking the fruits off of an investment. It might be words of affirmation that you're getting back. Maybe that's the energy you get back.
It could be just the sense of fulfillment, of seeing a project that is completed and feeling pride or fulfillment or happiness at the impact that you've had in the world through your idea becoming real. If you're making a habit change, maybe you feel so much better because you've actually put the effort into going to bed on time and then you experience going to bed on time and waking up early the next morning and that gives you energy for the rest of your day to keep you going right.
So maybe that's a reciprocal thing that you do. It also could be exposure. Maybe the energy that comes back to you from putting your idea into the world is just that you get out there more, you meet more people, you form community. You get exposure for your idea or your business. Or maybe it's just joy, maybe it's lightness, maybe it's laughter, maybe the energy that you get back is just joy.
We use this cycle in the bloom room and I use it with my clients to determine what things in our life are reciprocal, are regenerative, because we only want to be in relationships, be in communities, be doing work and be working on making ideas real that are regenerative, that are filling us back up with the same amount of energy or joy or love that we're putting into them. And this also works with relationships and communities, as I've said a couple of times.
So, I'm going to give you a couple of examples now, and I just want to remind you that, if you want the visual, which would be really helpful for this conversation, there is a free PDF that you can get from going onto my Instagram. You can download the PDF and that will help you to understand it, has guiding questions on it, will help you utilize this resource to apply to your own life.
You can also, if you're just really excited about this idea after I give you these examples, or even just right now, and you're like, oh my gosh, I can already see how this would really help me, I feel like I have energy draining in all of these directions. I feel like I'm always tired. I feel like I'm putting energy into a lot of things that aren't actually filling me back up with energy. I'd like help. You can get onto the wait list for the bloom room. The bloom room doors open October 1st and that's when we'll start enrolling for the bloom room. It's a very low-cost community that is going to be year-round and we are going to use all of these tools and help you make your ideas real. So, if you want to do that, you can't.
I used this tool twice this past weekend to coach people around two different things that I thought would be very clear examples. I used the tool to coach someone who is writing a book. So, she has the idea, she knows what she's going to call it, she's stoked, so excited to write the book. And we were talking about how her book is regenerative for her. So, as she's planning to do the book, we look at the energy flowing from her to her idea.
We can start to plan what are the things that might get in the way there. Maybe she'll get too busy. She won't have time to work on it. We can start to plan for those. Maybe she'll procrastinate when she actually has time to sit down and write. Maybe she'll procrastinate. We can start to work on that. Maybe she will run out of ideas.
Maybe she has ideas for the first four chapters, but she doesn't know. Start to work on that. Maybe she will run out of ideas. Maybe she has ideas for the first four chapters, but she doesn't know what to do after that. We can plan for that. So, we started using the tool for that.
In the second part, when she's written the book and she has bloomed her idea, her idea exists, then she needs to get the book into the world. So, the energy moves from the book to the world. Right, the book is the idea that's moving into the world to bloom the world. Now, what might get in the way there?
What is the effort that it's going to take to find a publisher, to get it published, to get it into the hands of people? How is she going to do that? What is needed to get it into the world? Who is her audience? That's a fit for this book? And lastly, once it's in the world, what kind of reciprocal energy will be regenerative enough to make it worth it? So, once the idea has bloomed in the world, what kind of energy will flow back from the world to her in order to make it worth all of the energy she needs to put into making the idea real?
Is it money? Is it book sales? Is it reputation from having written a book? Is it the fulfillment from having followed through an idea she really wants to do for a long time? Is it all of the clients that will come to her after they read the book and are familiar with her work? When we went through all of the things, she decided that it is more than enough energy that will be coming back to her to make it worth all the energy that she needs to use to put into the book and create it. So that's an example with an actual, real idea, a very surface example.
We can get much more in depth with this on how we used it to anticipate the things that will get in her way and how we use it to really audit whether the idea is worth it for her.
Secondly, I used this tool to help someone understand a friendship. She wasn't sure that the friendship was still feeling good for her. So, we talked about the energy it is taking her to be able to stay in the relationship, because the individual is doing some things that are triggering her. The individual is doing that she's friends with her friend is doing some things that require her to really regulate her own emotions because she really doesn't like what's happening sometimes.
So, we use this to say okay, you're putting your energy into the relationship. The relationship is feeding into the other person. Is the other person giving you back the same amount of quality energy to make it worth all the work you're needing to do to regulate yourself and get over yourself and manage your disappointment and manage your frustration and think through all the weird things that are said. Is it worth it? What are you getting from the relationship?
And so, we talked through what she's getting back, all of the different ways that the relationship feeds her, and within that it seemed like, I don't know, maybe we're putting more energy, maybe she's putting more energy into the friendship than what she's getting out. So, we used it to start deciding how might you put less energy into the friendship? So, it's not so hard. How might we reimagine from a design perspective?
How can we step back and not think about what exists right now, but from a place of possibility, how can we redesign what you want this relationship to be like, such that you're putting in energy into the relationship that's feeding the person and the person is giving back to you in a way that is worth it and it was really cool. So those are two examples.
I'm going to say it one more time. I hope you enjoy this tool. I would love to work with you on it. I've seen it help so many people and now I have it really like succinctly in place. We're going to use it throughout the bloom room. Please come, get on the wait list for the bloom room.
If you want to start this work and engage in this work and be in a community that is very reciprocal and supportive, and if you just want to test it out, give it a little road test go to the link in my Instagram profile, @the.bloom.coach, download the PDF, try it out, ask me questions, tell me what you think. I'm super excited about this road test and would love to hear anything that you get.
I've been testing this for a long time with many people, but I'd love to hear what you think. All right, my loves, that's what I've got for you 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.
