Kari (00:00):
You are listening t the End of the Day Podcast with Kari Waterson. This is episode 58.
Kari (00:21):
The End of the Day Podcast is a show for people who want to better understand the mind body connection so they can stop sabotaging their own happiness and success. It's a place where we geek out about the science behind why we do what we do, so we can change what we want, but in an emotionally healthy and sustainable way. I'm your host, life and mindset coach, Kari Waterson. Each week I'll share tools and concepts to help you see through the thinking that's been holding you back in your relationships, your work and your life. If you're ready to own your thoughts, if you're ready to move on from your past, if you're ready to stop wishing and actually start doing, this podcast is for you.
Kari (01:05):
Hey everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. My name is Kari. I'm your host and I am so glad that you're here. For those of you who have been around this podcast before, you may have noticed that it's been a while since my last episode. I believe the last episode was published in July of 2022. And so the fact that you're here makes me all the more grateful that you're tuning in. And for those of you who are new to the podcast, thank you so much for joining me. I'm really excited to restart the podcast because I haven't been doing nothing the last year. I have been coaching, I've been reflecting, I've been studying, I've been learning new tools. I've been integrating and implementing those tools both in my life and offering them in service of my clients. So I am excited to use this podcast again as a way of sharing these tools so that maybe you can use them in your life to help you move beyond your blocks and help you think in terms of possibility and belief.
Kari (02:13):
I have so many different ideas and topics that I am excited to bring up on the podcast. So it was challenging to figure out where I wanted to start. I knew I wanted to dive back in talking about something that everybody could relate to, and it dawned on me, well, let's start with moving beyond stuck. So very often we want to do something and we hold ourselves back because we stay in this confusion or overwhelmed trying to decide what the next right step should be. Have you ever been held back by trying to figure out the next right step? Me too? And for me, it was weeks and weeks that turned into months and months trying to figure out what the next right step might be for the podcast. And here's the thing. During that time when the weeks and months passed, I didn't do nothing with the podcast.
Kari (03:07):
I have pages and pages and pages, notebooks filled with ideas for the podcast. I have journal entries fleshing out concepts and tools for the podcast. <laugh>. I have so many books with tabs of things that I'd like to discuss or bring up on the podcast, but what was not happening, the podcast. So the first thing I would like to say then is when you find yourself expending an exorbitant amount of energy trying to figure out the next right step, the first step would be to take a look at the words, the next right step for me, when I allowed myself to start there, maybe these words, the next right step is actually what is holding me back from getting any type of momentum on actually recording and producing a podcast and getting it published. I was able to say the first thing is who decides the right step?
Kari (04:11):
Whenever we are buffering or avoiding an activity under the guise of trying to find the next right step or to doing something right, what we're actually doing is delegating our agency to somebody else, an existing practice, an existing standard. And we forget that the first step is to actually say, I get to decide what the next step is going to be. I think in hindsight, where I was getting stuck was even though my brain kept on thinking that we wanted to really put some intentionality on the next step of the podcast, especially since there was such a hiatus, a year long hiatus, it felt then like there was a lot of pressure for this next episode, episode 58, <laugh> to be extraordinarily valuable. Interesting, exciting, empowering. Inspiring, right? So number one, I definitely added a lot of pressure to this first podcast episode that I published after the year long hiatus.
Kari (05:23):
That's number one. But also I forgot that I get to decide what my next step is, period. I can literally make this episode about anything that I want and trust that then my desire to provide value and not just fluff would come through and I would spend a little bit of time flushing things out, trying to organize thoughts so that the content would be receivable and digestible and actionable. So I could definitely put trust in the fact that that would be a process that I would follow once I decided on a topic. But what was happening in my quest to really find the best next right step was I was not deciding on a topic. If I have hundreds of ideas, it's only natural that my brain would go into overwhelm at the thought of trying to pick one topic from all those ideas add onto that the pressure that I put on myself to pick the right topic or the best topic, the most valuable topic for the first episode after the year long hiatus.
Kari (06:34):
And it makes sense that I went into freeze <laugh> mode. So how do you get out of it? In this particular case, what I did was really draw upon some very specific quotes. I have two quotes from Marie Forleo that I find incredibly helpful. The first quote is, of course, everything is figureoutable. That's the quote that is most commonly associated with Marie Forleo. She has a book by the same name, and I find that quote incredibly helpful when my brain tries to tell me all the ways I can't do something, or all the ways I'm inadequate, all the ways that I do not have the skills or the personality or the technical know-how to do what it is that I actually would like to do. So everything is figureoutable is absolutely one of the go-to thoughts that I keep in my awareness when my mind and body are freaking out.
Kari (07:38):
<laugh>, it definitely is a nervous system regulation quote for me. I don't need to know everything. It is okay if I don't know my next step because I can trust that everything is figureoutable. And how do we do that? It could even be as easy as asking the question, if I did know, what would I do? What might I do? If I did know the next right step? What topic might I choose? Is it possible that instead of the right step, I was actually looking for intentionality? I wanted to actually bring some intentionality to the first several episodes that I offered following my year-long hiatus, when I realized that that maybe my brain was confusing, needing to find the next right topic versus just this desire to bring intentionality to the topics that I talked about, especially when resuming the podcast, when I realized that it allowed me to say, okay, let's explore this.
Kari (08:55):
What would be the things that I think people are most stuck on that could use help on? What is the thing that people Google a lot, that they expend so much energy trying to find solutions to? And that's how this podcast episode came about, Moving Beyond Stuck. The second Marie Forleo quote that really helped me out here was this thought, "Clarity comes from engagement, not thought." Now for those of us who have a bias toward overthinking versus a bias toward action, as Mel Robbins would say, the thought, "Clarity comes from engagement not thought" was really helpful because it reminded me that I've been thinking enough. That it's time to actually engage. So here I am engaging with you on the podcast versus continuing to think more about resuming the podcast. That alone is a huge weight off. Often it's this first effort that feels the hardest.
Kari (10:06):
They say, going from zero to one is so much more painful than from going from one to two, two to three, and so on. And I can see why, because once you get over this hump, this fear, this resistance of zero, you give yourself permission to actually start gaining some traction and building momentum. And when you're able to do that, you start building evidence. You start building experience, you start gaining more confidence in your ability to actually do the thing. You actually start believing that you are somebody who does the thing instead of just keeps talking about doing the thing. And that is definitely motivating in itself. So in this particular episode, what I'd like to do is actually share my process of working through some of my own blocks. This would be back in July. I'm taking a look at my journal here and my reflections.
Kari (11:08):
And this was when I was struggling with this idea of being just stuck or at a plateau in my coaching practice. And it was causing me a lot of anxiety, a lot of dread, and if I'm being honest, an overwhelming sense of powerlessness and helplessness because I knew that it was my own mind that was getting in the way. It was. Once again, my thoughts about myself, about my situation, about my capabilities, about what was possible for me that were getting in the way. And I know if you're like me, if you have felt that your mind was your greatest enemy most of your life, it's hard to lose that fear. What if despite having done all this growth work and all this thought work and all this mindset work, my thoughts continue to be the thing that holds me back? So now you have the context for the journal entry that I'm about to read to you.
Kari (12:13):
And what I love about these journal entries is that I can tell as I'm writing when I feel like I have stumbled across a breakthrough. And the thing is breakthroughs aren't necessarily complex. It's not like I solved an incredibly complex math problem, but it's just something that, as I was writing, I recognized a shift within me. I was able to hear something a little bit differently or see something a little bit differently. Or maybe subconsciously my brain had been working to try to find a solution for me, and it started knitting together different thoughts and concepts from what I've studied and from my experiences. And maybe it flowed out in the pen as I was writing this journal entry. But whenever I have moments of breakthrough in my journal entries, I literally stop and have to reflect on it for a moment because it does seem like it is a breakthrough in a problem that I have been trying to solve forever.
Kari (13:22):
So let me just go ahead and refer directly to the journal entries. Okay.
Kari (13:27):
It dawned on me, I've been in the identity of the person who can't get beyond her current level. I've been stuck in thoughts of someone who feels made helpless by her thinking. I've been unconsciously walking around in the identity of the person who feels despondent over the seeming inability to overcome her own limiting thinking and her body's fear-based emotions. Then I'm making this seeming inability to overcome and manage my thinking and feeling mean that I'll never evolve, I'll never grow beyond my current level. And of course, that leaves me feeling utterly helpless and powerless and like a failure yet again. So this next part of my journal entry, I wrote in brackets, or I'm sorry, I bracketed. I'm starting to see more clearly now how hard it is to change your life when you haven't yet changed your self-concept.
Kari (14:26):
And then the next part goes, if your self-concept is still the person who feels like a victim of her thoughts, any actions to the contrary will feel so much harder. This is what Rich Litvin meant when he said that goals are a place to come from, not a place to go to. So if I were to come from the place of having already achieved my goal, then my actions and self-concept would naturally be much different, right? And in my journal entry, I go on to write, in order to create something different, we have to think new things, feel new things, do new things. It's challenging to do these things with an overriding belief that nothing's ever gonna change. It's like two forces working against each other. And I have this line, I have like a vertical line and then two opposing arrows. And on the left pushing to the right is my new self-concept. And then there is an arrow pointing to the left, which is the old self-concept. So they're like working against each other. And I put: the stronger force always wins.
Kari (15:54):
In this case, the stronger force is, or are, our old beliefs, our old self-concept, I suppose you could actually call them our current beliefs, our current self-concept where we limit ourselves with our own minds, but they're simply stronger right now because they're the ones that we practice the most. They're the ones that we think the most. They become so ingrained in us, and they become such automatic thought patterns that we're not even aware that they're running in the background. They've become so habituated that our brain has deemed it unnecessary to put attention to it because it can just do it by itself. That's where the danger lies -- in not being aware of how your thinking is actually showing up in your life and what it's allowing you to do or preventing you from being able to do.
Kari (17:00):
So going back to the journal entry, I write, so how do we overcome this?
Kari (17:08):
And I go back to my diagram of the vertical line with, it's like a door, and then the opposing arrows with the new self-concept, the arrow to the right, pushing against the door. And then on the other side of the door, the old self-concept, which is the left arrow pushing in opposition. And the way I diagram this out was, how do we overcome this? Well, our new self-concept is actually the one where we do the thing, the one where we go after our dreams, the one where we commit to doing the mindset work, to removing the mindset obstacles that are currently preventing us from doing the thing. So in this diagram I wrote with the new self-concept, I don't let my thoughts limit me. I use my mind to create what I want, and I refuse to be the reason why I don't go after what I want.
Kari (18:20):
I ask myself, where am I in my own way? And then get to work. So number one would be the old self concept. What can we do about this? We turn our volume down on those thoughts. So the thoughts that come up where it's like, am I ever going to overcome this? Am I ever going to be able to go beyond my current level? We turn the volume down on thoughts that limit us, but then we focus our attention on our new self-concept. Again, if we're following Rich Litvin where he says, goals are a place to come from, not a place to get to, we step into the identity of the person who's actually already accomplished the thing or achieved the thing or created the thing. And from that mindset, we say, what did I start doing? What did I stop doing? And what did I need to believe to create the results that I did? Again, it is the idea or the process of reverse engineering. So what did I need to believe? Well, I believed that my actions would get me the results. I believed I had the power to influence my own life.
Kari (19:49):
Again, if goals are a place to come from, not a place to get to, what was my mindset? What actions did I take? What did I stop doing in order to create the results? So in my journal, I reflected on it, and I thought about it. If I was in my future identity, where I actually achieved the results, where I have a full coaching practice, full meaning the number that I desire, working in the way that I desire, which right now is one-on-one deep dive coaching, this is what I imagined I would've done. And I put, I stopped colon and I wrote a list. I stopped engaging in thoughts that were part of my old self concept. I stopped staying stuck in helplessness by reminding myself why I felt helpless. That is, my brain was believing that anything that I was doing wasn't going to influence the outcome.
Kari (20:58):
I stopped habits and behaviors that I knew distracted me from being the person who achieved the goal. I stopped blaming anyone else for my thoughts, feelings, actions, and results. I stopped indulging in energy-draining, negative, destractive -- is that a word? -- and destructive emotions that took me away from being the person who achieved the goal. Then my separate list for what did I start doing -- and again, this list is from the mindset of my new self-concept, the person who created the results, who wasn't limited by her thinking, who didn't let her thoughts stop her. And so on this list I wrote, I started every morning with intention. And in this particular case, I have been experimenting with starting the day with Hal Elrod's Miracle Morning Routine. And I don't know if you have read the book, but if you just Google Hal Elrod and type in SAVERS, which is the acronym for his morning ritual, he actually calls it his Life S.A.V.E.R.S. And each of those letters stands for a specific thing.
Kari (22:25):
In his book, Hal Elrod says, how you wake up each day in your morning routine, or lack thereof, dramatically affects your levels of success in every single area of your life. By simply changing the way you wake up in the morning, you can transform any area of your area of your life faster than you ever thought possible. Where you are is a result of who you were, but where you go depends entirely on who you choose to be from this moment on, and that includes your thinking. And so I, when I was looking for a really powerful morning ritual, I remembered hearing about The Miracle Morning on a podcast, oh my gosh, years ago. And I decided that I wanted to really, once again, start my days with intention from the get-go. I was finding that I was losing so many hours to not intentionally remembering what it was I wanted to do with the day, and the things that I needed to accomplish that day.
Kari (23:37):
And in order to do those things, I needed to have a certain mindset. It's very easy in this day and age to just wake up in the morning and just start the day, okay, first I have to do this, let the dog out, then I want to exercise, and then maybe throw in some laundry and then, you know, get the kids to school, et cetera, et cetera. And pretty soon your minutes just bleed away. And then you feel like, wait, I haven't even accomplished anything that I actually want to accomplish. So choosing Hal Elrod's morning ritual was very intentional for me because his acronym S.A.V.E.R.S. really helps my brain. I have a teenage daughter who was recently diagnosed with ADHD and they say that if you have a child with ADHD, then most likely one or more of the parents is an undiagnosed ADHD individual.
Kari (24:34):
And between my husband and I, I could definitely say it's me, <laugh>. And so that alone was really eye-opening for me. When my daughter got her diagnosis, I started looking at my past struggles in a much more compassionate light. I started looking at my brain as instead of my enemy, as something that -- a precious thing that is going to be my greatest asset, or that is my greatest asset, but I just haven't been using it properly. I have been expecting it to operate a certain way, but my brain doesn't operate that way. And so it's been really eye-opening the last couple of years to allow myself to say, what does my brain need? What works for my brain? And for my brain? For a morning ritual, I was finding that I wanted to do little bits of lots of things, but my brain would just kind of get overwhelmed by it, and I would try to remember a lot of it.
Kari (25:32):
And instead, having an acronym like S.A.V.E.R.S. is really helpful. And so S stands for silence, A affirmations V vis visualization, E exercise, R reading, S scribbling. Now, you might think that that sounds overwhelming, but the idea is actually to do all those things in a short period of time, like let's say all those things within an hour. If you can, obviously, I always say, take whatever tools are out there and try them, and then if it doesn't work for you, see if it's not working just because it's something new and stick with it or adopt it to, or adapt it to a way that actually works for you, your lifestyle, your circumstances, and your situation and what you want. So for me, I love the idea of silence. They didn't say meditation, but I like the idea of actually just sitting in silence. For those of you who like me, have a bias towards thinking and overthinking, sometimes my greatest desire is to have a quiet mind.
Kari (26:43):
And so for S for Silence, it was very welcome. And so I wouldn't do anything fancy. I'm trying to make this as easy on myself as possible. And I would just sit in my chair where I actually would do my journaling and my studying. I sit in my chair, close my eyes and try to be silent, <laugh>, imagine the most spacious blank space in my mind and just let it be. Now, I can tell you that what ends up happening is I'm quiet. My mind is quiet. There's not a lot of thoughts racing around. But what has been happening, which has been amazing, is that after some quiet, there will be like a pinging of a thought that is actually part of a solution to something that I've been struggling with. Or what will happen is I will have this fragment of an idea. And what I realize is it's actually an idea to help me with one of my clients with something. And so what I often find is I give myself permission to let S be what S is, rather than making it mean like I have to do a forced meditation.
Kari (28:01):
It is very possible that S for me means if we quiet our mind intentionally, we will be able to mine our own wisdom. And so that has been really interesting. And after I sit still for that period of time, I will break out my notebook and immediately jot down what came to mind. And actually what I've been doing is I'll grab actually loose leaf paper instead of a notebook, and I call it, Wisdom From the Silence. And so, because I like to just remind myself that, that I have wisdom if I can just quiet my mind enough to listen for it. Anyway, that's been fascinating. And for a affirmations, I don't necessarily love the word affirmations, but I'm not sure why. I think I just have some sort of prejudice against the word just because it seems to have a certain connotation where it gets a lot of ridicule. But actually affirmation, you're just affirming something, right?
Kari (29:07):
And so affirmations are very helpful, especially if they're your own or you have pulled affirmations that definitely help shift something in your body and resonate deeply and remind you what you're trying to do or what you want to do. And so I have a list of thoughts and beliefs. Some are aspirational and some are value oriented that I currently believe and I currently want in my business, in my personal life. And so it's been very powerful as part of the morning ritual to literally read those out loud to myself. It is like a personal manifesto. It is reminding my brain, setting my brain up for success for the rest of the day by giving it things to focus on.
Kari (29:57):
And so I will have a podcast episode later down the line that I'll go ahead and share the affirmations that I've been using, and it's been really, really helpful, especially to read those out loud first thing in the morning.
Kari (30:12):
V stands for visualization, which of course, we all know the power of visualization. We know that's what athletes do when they're preparing for, for example, the Olympics or when they are even preparing for routines or certain types of, you know, defensive tactics that the opposition might use and how they might respond to it, et cetera, right? <laugh> You get what I'm saying. But the power of visualization is it expands your brain's awareness that something that is currently not possible could be possible. Something that is not currently available to you or you don't currently have, you could have just by the fact that you are directing your brain to flesh out some details to paint the picture.
Kari (31:14):
The reason why this is so powerful is because if we're trying to create something, create results that we've never created before, the only thing our brain has to go on to determine whether or not things are possible for us or whether we feel we can do something, is by looking to our past. Because up to that point, that's the only thing that it has to go by. But when you practice mental rehearsal or visualization, you're now giving your brain more things, more input to pull up when you think about what's possible, because you have rehearsed the future, because you have visualized yourself creating results, visualized yourself working through difficult times, visualized yourself picking yourself back up from setbacks or emotional trauma or working through failures and fears, visualizing yourself standing up on stage, confident, visualizing yourself being the person that you actually want to be. Because you have mentally rehearsed that, now that mental rehearsal is part of the data points that your brain can search. When you think about this thing that you wanna do, it's like, oh, wait, wait a second, because it can't necessarily tell the past and the future, and you can't necessarily see the difference between the present, all of it is a memory now. It's kind of meta, I know, even though visualization and mental rehearsal is actually rehearsing or imagining something out in the future that does not yet exist, the fact that you have done this exercise in the present means at some point it will become a memory.
Kari (33:15):
And what is fascinating about that is now you have a memory of you advocating for yourself, setting yourself up for success in the future, using tools to help you in any way possible to overcome your mind and your body. You have, imaginations or memories of you doing the thing, being the person, being the confident person, having this business or being the parent or being the partner in the relationship that maybe you don't yet have but you desire, right? And so what's fascinating about that is the more you do this visualization work, you will eventually, when you eventually create the results, it will feel like deja vu. Why? Because you have spent so much time visualizing it and then taking action so that when you finally do create the results, it feels like you've already created it. I love that idea.
Kari (34:25):
I heard it from Kate Hanson, a coach I had on the podcast. I think it might've been podcast episode 51. She had some wonderful concepts that I hadn't heard of, but the way that she talked about it was so brilliant and it made total sense. And so definitely the V in Hal Elrod's Morning Ritual, S.A.V.E.R.S., is very powerful. And I was excited to have that as part of my morning ritual. The E then stands for exercise, which we definitely know the benefits of R stands for reading. And to me, that's synonymous with studying, right? And so when I'm listening to a podcast or listening to a book on Audible and I take notes, I count that as reading. I count that as me intentionally choosing input that is actually going to serve me and serve my client, serve my family. So I definitely count that as reading. Then the last S stands for scribbling <laugh>, which is basically because J doesn't fit in S.A.V.E.R.S., you know, J for journaling. S for scribbling works just as well.
Kari (35:30):
And scribbling actually is to me, when you're thinking about something and you jot your thoughts down, when you take notes on a podcast that you listen to, when you have your moment of silence in the morning to quiet your mind and to mine your own wisdom, and something comes up and you jot it down. To me, that's part of S in scribbling. Or it could be sitting down and journaling, maybe journaling your emotions, maybe journaling, you know, a struggle that you're working through, maybe journaling your gratitude, et cetera, right? Whatever you decide to do.
Kari (36:09):
Okay, so I digressed a little bit. So let me go back. So in my future or my new self-concept, what did I do? I started every morning with the Miracle Morning Ritual S.A.V.E.R.S. Then I also started calling in my new self-concept first thing in the morning and working my day from there.
Kari (36:28):
I also imagined with my new self-concept that I started planning my days two weeks in advance with five things to do each day to reach my ultimate goal, and then doing them before I go to sleep. Now, some of these are aspirational. I don't necessarily yet do them perfectly, but they are something that if I were to be able to do that and to implement that, it would have a dramatic change in the way that I work. And just accelerating growth. Also on my list of things that I started with this new self concept, when I'm working backwards from the goal, I started doing weekly assessments of my time, my results, my behavior, and looking at it from a holistic level, like am I living life the way I would like to live my life? I started recommitting to my goals every morning, noon, and night.
Kari (37:25):
I put down three times a day. It's so important, right? And then I put, I started reviewing my calendar for the week every night. I think maybe I meant like the night before, and getting excited to do the things that will get me to the goal, the goals that I set for myself, whether it's personal, whether it's in my business, whether it's for life, right? And then I started writing down my wins each day. And doing so is me actively asking my brain to come up with evidence to show that what I'm doing is working. So setting the intention to find wins or ways that you moved forward made some progress, is such an important thing for your brain to see, because of course, as you and I both know, our brain is definitely wired to look for everything that's negative, the things that we're not doing, because those signify danger and a threat. In that case, it signifies danger, like, hey, we're not doing the thing, we're not gonna reach our goal.
Kari (38:35):
Whereas if we have the wins -- that doesn't activate our nervous system, that doesn't create a fear response within us. And fear responses are prioritized for us, right? As human beings. If there is something that activates our nervous system, that makes our brain say, hey, focus on that. But for wins, of course not. But celebrating the wins is so important. Whether you celebrate them or silently fist bump yourself because you did them, you made progress. You ask yourself to do one scary thing toward the goal that maybe you've been putting off forever because you were afraid. Those are the types of things that you want to keep bringing up into your awareness. And so writing a list of those wins nightly or weekly, is just one way that we can use our brain in our favor.
Kari (39:29):
I also wrote down as part of my self-concept -- the new self-concept, the one who gets the goal -- I started writing down areas I want to refine, polish, improve, and get excited to be working on those areas so I can become stronger. I started writing down how I created my results, both positive and negative, so I know I'm always influencing my own trajectory. I started making sure I'm growing my relationship with myself. I started working on my beliefs about myself as a person, period. When I'm not "doing the work." There's a part of me that feels like when I'm not "doing the work", that maybe I'm not a good person. That thought creeps up every once in a while, and man, if I'm not careful, I will definitely swim in it and I will find all the evidence that everything that I've been doing so far is delusional because I'm not a good person. It makes no sense, and it's definitely an energy and time waster, not to mention, it doesn't feel great <laugh>.
Kari (40:39):
So also on the list of things that I started from the new self-concept, I started getting to like love, respect, and trust myself. I started opening myself up to liking, loving, respecting, and trusting others and wanting the absolute best for them, too. I started fully embracing the power of the human mind to evolve and grow and flourish and make things right. I started having so much fun and letting myself have so much fun while growing stronger and being more grounded and centered, solid, responsible, conscientious, dependable, valuable, trustworthy and fun, influential, content, satisfied, and grateful. That's a long list, but it really spoke to me at the time, and it does now, too. So when we talk about moving beyond stuck -- so many ways we can do that. In this particular episode though, I just wanted to give you an idea of how we can coach ourselves and help ourselves to go from beyond stuck.
Kari (41:51):
I always am amazed at how quickly we can turn ourselves around, even in the same day, even in the same hour, even in the same five minute period, if we reach out for these tools and try them. You know, having something like a morning ritual like Hal Elrod's Life S.A.V.E.R.S. is something that, again, works very well for my, I would say, neurodiverse brain, because I don't have to think about six different things and trying to keep them all in my mind. I just have to remember S.A.V.E.R.S. and I actually on my paper in the morning, I will write down S.A.V.E.R.S. above my schedule for the day, and when I do it, I just check it off. There'll be a little check mark above the S. And then when I read out my affirmations, when I'm affirming and reaffirming what it is I want to believe about myself, how I want to live my life, how I want to pursue my goal, how I want to show up for my business and my clients and my loved ones and the world <laugh>, I'll go ahead and put a check mark above the A on my notebook paper to show that I did the affirmations, right?
Kari (43:04):
And of course, the goal is to be able to do those maybe consecutively. But there are times when I don't get the E done or I don't get the second S done. That's not actually too often 'cause I actually pretty much write something every day. But you know, sometimes I don't get the V. And my goal is to really make it a priority to do all of those things within a certain period of time. I'm gonna hold that as one of the ways that I know can really help dramatically accelerate my own growth in all areas of my life if I allow myself to commit to doing that in the morning.
Kari (43:46):
So that is something, again, these, all of these things that I wrote down are definitely aspirational things that I would love to do, even though I was coming from the mindset of the person that that's what she did to create the results so I know to bridge the gap between where I'm now, which is the person who doesn't yet have the results, and that self-concept that I was talking about that actually does have the results. The way to bridge the gap, according to my journal entry, is I got really serious about what I let my, what I chose to believe in, what I chose to believe about myself, what I stopped doing, because they were energy wasters, they were capacity stealers, <laugh>, bandwidth takers, and they were distractors. Anything that distracts you and takes you away from the direction that you're going, the things that you want -- we're human. It happens. But what I've come to realize is if you realize that your goal is inevitable, you also recognize that the limiting thoughts that you have, that you don't challenge, that you don't address, that you don't intentionally decide to do something about actually slows the speed of your growth.
Kari (45:03):
So really all along we have had the power to determine the speed to which we create our goals. If we've been maybe operating with, as my friend Matt would say, with the handbrake on all our lives, the handbrake could be the limiting thoughts, the self-doubt, the time that we spend questioning, second guessing, not believing things. That's like us trying to reach for a goal that we desperately want, but with the handbrake on, or maybe going in reverse. I'm not sure, you know. And so once I realized that the only thing in our way is us, and by us we're referring to the thoughts in our head that create those emotions or resistance in our body. If we're the things standing in our way, then we are also the solution. So how can I use my thoughts for me instead of letting them be used against me?
Kari (46:03):
How can I use intentional thought creation, which I heard from a coach, Stacey Boehman, I found very powerful. I intentionally choose these thoughts. I intentionally choose these thoughts to create the results that I want. I also intentionally choose how I want to be feeling and how I want to experience the process as I go after what I want. I know that so many of you can relate when we talk about maybe experiencing success in our life, but like killing ourselves in the process to the point of burnout. So many clients that have come to me with that way, and what happens is because they have created success with burnout, it is very difficult for them to imagine being able to create that amount of success again, or more, or an unlimited amount of success far beyond what they could ever believe, without that same intense, crushing mind drama. It feels very hard to see how you can create success without self-sacrifice.
Kari (47:06):
And so what I also notice is when you get to that point, there is definitely a period of time where then you feel like skittish about trying to work hard at anything, and you start doubting your ability to accomplish big things like you used to, which makes you think, gosh, if I could at least go back to the way I was, at least I was accomplishing something big. But then we forget, oh wait, oh wait, how do we work on accomplishing what we want and changing our relationship with ourselves and changing the way that we think about things so that our inner dialogue as we're moving forward is actually a place where we wanna be. Our minds aren't a place where we wanna escape and avoid. It's actually a place where we love being because it's the place where we get to create amazing things in our lives.
Kari (47:53):
Right? Okay. All right, I think that's enough for this podcast episode. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate it. So excited that this first episode after a year is finally in the books, and I would love to hear from you if you have any thoughts about anything, my website, which is actually currently -- if you go to my website, which is KariWatterson.com, you'll find a one-page that says, Hey, I'm in maintenance mode. I'm working on streamlining my website, trying to make it much more clear and direct. And that is definitely gonna be upcoming, but at least there's ways that you can work with me on the website. Also, you can reach out to me via email. You can email me directly at kari@kariwatterson.com. Let me spell that for you. It's kari@kariwatterson.com.
Kari (48:46):
I'm also on Instagram under the handle @_this one life. I'm not quite as frequently on there as I used to be because I have decided to make this podcast and putting all my efforts into this podcast be. my number one priority as the way to get the message out to as many people as possible. What I was finding was I prioritized Instagram posts first, and then it just left me feeling like I didn't have enough energy for the podcast, so I just decided to reverse it. So if any posts come out, it's something that's either easily done or it's actually sampled from the podcast episodes that I do put out. So that's also something that I had to give myself permission to do, to say, wait a second, what if I actually had one focus moving forward? And that was to make this podcast as valuable as possible for as many people as possible. Let's focus on that. And it's been extremely motivating.
Kari (49:45):
So, all right, my friends, thank you so much for listening. I will talk to you next week. Thank you. Have a great day. Bye.
Kari (50:10):
Mindset coaching isn't just for athletes or select special people, it's for anyone who wants support while doing the inner work to grow. I'm Life and Mindset Coach, Kari Watterson. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to work with a mindset coach, I invite you to sign up for a free 90 minute, deep dive coaching call. We'll talk about where you're struggling, what you really, really want, and mindset, tools, skills and resources to help you start bridging that gap. If what you've been doing so far hasn't been working, let's talk. I work with clients one-on-one for 6 to 12 months. Each week, I help you clean up your thinking so you can stop holding yourself back in life. If this support sounds like exactly what you've been missing, let's talk. Go to KariWatterson.com or email me kari@kariwatterson.com to book your free call this week.
Kari (51:05):
At the end of the day, we have one life. How do you wanna live yours? Think about it. And then, let's get to work.
