I’m Diana Swillinger, and you’re listening to the Renew Your Mind podcast. Episode 42 on this episode, I answer listener questions.
DIANA: Hey. Hey, everybody. How y’all doing today? Welcome to, uh, the last podcast episode of 2020. I started this podcast in March. I can’t believe, uh, we’re already at the end of the year. What an interesting year too, right? Is anybody happy to be saying goodbye to 2020? I’m not sure how I feel about it. I just think it’s fine. It’s just like another year passing. I’m not really feeling too much about 2020 coming and going. In some ways, it feels like any other year. It’s got challenges. This year had challenges, right? Every year has challenges. This year also had tons and tons of blessings. And I’m so excited about all the things that were amazing about 2020. If you haven’t done it yet, remember the podcast episode on Gratitude where you can write things down you’re grateful for? You could do the gratitude exercise, uh, about things you’re grateful for from 2020. That would be a great thing to do. I think you might find that there was a lot so I think 2020 was interesting, though, because we went through a lot of the struggles, like, in a community together. We don’t always do that. We had so many things, like culturally, that we bonded over that we thought were struggles. We had the election, we had very, uh, important racial issues. We had the coronavirus we had going through all the shutdown stuff together, a lot of stuff that we were all relating to. And so I think that’s great because we can look to each other for support and help lift each other up. But one of the downfalls of that is that we end up sometimes we just commiserate together, and a, uh, large scale commiserating can just end up fueling dissatisfaction. And then sometimes things seem worse than they actually are.
Like, if everybody’s saying, 2020 sucks, we stop questioning it. We all just start saying, yeah, 2020 sucks. It’s kind of like a group think. If we all jump in the thinking pond together and everybody’s saying, 2020 sucks, that’s what we end up thinking. But I don’t know. I think 2020 really had so many amazing things, and there was a lot I liked about it. And it was just as good a year as any other, I think struggles. I embrace them because they’re an opportunity to grow. They’re like a, ah, gift that helps us learn how to mature and embrace new ways to be creative and new ways to do things. Bring it right. Maybe 2021 is going to have struggles too. Maybe. Why not let that be an opportunity to grow and mature and embrace being creative and practice trusting and relying on God more. Let’s do that. So I have a lot of appreciation for 2020, you all, and I’m very excited for 2021. No matter what it brings, it’s going to be a grab bag of all sorts of stuff, I’m sure. I’m excited for it. So since this is the week between the holidays, Christmas and New Year’s, and this is the time when nobody knows what day it is and we’re all off our normal schedule, I thought, hey, this would be an awesome time to record my podcast live.
So we are in the Facebook community The Renew Your Mind Facebook community. So if you’re not a part of that, that would be so fun for you to come over and join us there. It’s a community filled with awesome women, mostly women anyway, who love God. They want more for their lives, more peace, more hope. And uh, the community is where we work on it together. We have discussions, we do encouraging posts, we do Facebook Live videos, all of that stuff. And um, it’s also the place where if I have an AHA moment in my life, like I’m doing something and I was able to work through a thought or I had some brilliant idea, I get those sometimes. You all, I will jump in the Renew Your Mind Facebook community and go live and share it there. So it’s kind of fun. Good stuff happening over there. So this episode is basically an ask and answered session. People in the group, people in the Facebook community, people on my email list, Instagram, anyone who’s listening to the podcast, you all got to ask a question and it gets answered. If you didn’t hear, you have the opportunity to do that again. Just go join that Facebook group and you’ll hear all about this stuff. You won’t miss anything.
So I’ve had some questions submitted via, uh, Facebook Messenger and email, and I’m going to start with those. And I have people here watching live who are going to be asking some questions too. There is no main topic this week. Anything goes. Of course, my expertise is in helping people manage their thoughts and emotions to again experience more joy, more peace, all that great stuff that God promises us. Because I was a Christian going through life not feeling any of that stuff. And I’m like, where is it? How do I get this? Why isn’t God giving me joy and peace? That’s all available. I just had to figure out how to renew my mind. And I do it all the time. It’s a regular practice. I’m never going to stop constantly renewing my mind, checking in with my thoughts, all that kind of stuff. That’s how we do it. So that will be how I answer your questions, probably. I don’t think we’re going to change things in your life, the people around you or the circumstances around you. We’re not going to change them. But we can change what’s going on in your brain so that you feel better and that, you know, you get to show up better for everybody that you love and the people you don’t love too. You can show up better for them too. Why not? So let’s get started with questions. All right, here we go.
So the first question is from Angela. Angela asks, you have mentioned self talk, managing emotions, and feeling stuck. In the podcast you have said the feeling of stuck comes from our thoughts. What are some thoughts that I can think to renew my mind in the moment when I feel stuck and start shutting down? That is an awesome question. I felt stuck for so long, and it’s a term so many people relate to, I would say. Well, I think it’s my third podcast episode is Feeling Stuck. Take a listen to that. I haven’t heard it since I recorded it way back in March. But I think I probably say that feeling stuck is just coming from our thoughts and then it creates that emotion. I mean, if feeling stuck is an emotion, it kind of is, I think, like trapped, stuck, um, incapable, confused. I mean, those kind of emotions are wrapped up into it. But we feel stuck. The very first step, let’s see, what are some thoughts I can think to renew my mind in the moment when I feel stuck? Okay. The best thought I can give you is I only feel stuck. I’m not actually stuck. Or I feel stuck, but maybe I’m, um, not actually stuck. Because you open yourself up to possibilities. If we think I’m stuck, I’m stuck. All that happens is we so we have the thought, I can’t do anything about this, or it’s too overwhelming, or I have no idea what to do next.
Whatever thought we’re thinking that makes us feel stuck, then we feel stuck. And, uh, all of the things we do, all we end up doing is spinning our wheels and we never get any traction. I put thoughts through this test. What do I think? What do I feel? What do I do? So we think it’s too much and I don’t know what to do. Then we feel stuck. And then what we do is we spin our wheels trying random things and never getting any traction. You know, that idea of the self fulfilling prophecy, it’s really just what you think is what’s going to happen in your life. And, uh, this probably isn’t an absolute, but boy, if we put this to the test, it is the case a lot of the time. If you think I’m stuck, you’re going to feel stuck. And then m the actions that you take are actually going to keep you stuck. So start in the moment with, maybe I’m not actually stuck. I know I feel stuck, but maybe I’m not actually stuck. And you could even ask a question like, what if I wasn’t stuck? Then what would I do right now? And you might find more ideas coming to you, because basically you’ve just got to get yourself out of the thought that you’re stuck, because that will keep you there.
Here’s another thing you can ask yourself, what if I didn’t think I was stuck? Then what would I do? You don’t have to think of an entire long list of things to do. Just think of the one next thing you could do if you weren’t stuck. What would that one thing be? Thanks for that question, Angela. Next one is from Hope, and then I’m going to go to the Facebook group and get a question from there. Hope wrote in what are your top tips on being a good friend? OOH, that’s a fun one, right? Being a good friend. I spent a lot of time thinking about this one over the years because I thought there were a lot of things I needed to do to be a good friend. And I’ve had friends tell me the things they think I need to do to be a good friend. So I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and you know what it’s come down to for me, I don’t have a lot to say about being a good friend. Maybe it’s a lot about what not to do. I think the number one thing to do to be a good friend is to come with compassion and acceptance. Those are emotions you can bring into your relationship on purpose. Of course you have to think of thought if you want to feel compassion or you want to feel acceptance. But just imagine before we do that, imagine with me, if you came into a friendship and you were in the space of feeling compassion and acceptance, what kind of things would you do? You would probably say encouraging things. You would probably listen. Well, you don’t even need to think of this as a list. You all, uh because I don’t want us to skip ahead from let’s skip the what you think and what you feel and just go to what you do.
Because if you don’t support it with the actual emotions of compassion and acceptance and you just try to do these things, it’s not going to last. If you came with genuine compassion and acceptance, you listen, you share encouraging words, you probably think about them. You probably do nice things. It might just come down mostly to how you act with them, how you show up face to face on the phone, in a text. When you have compassion, you always care. You’re always interested, you’re always listening. And when you have acceptance, doesn’t matter what they do, doesn’t matter what they say, you just show up and be there for them. And you have no expectations when you accept someone as they are, there’s no list of expectations that goes along with it. I think that’s the number one thing that we struggle with in relationships is we tend to bring a list of expectations, okay? So if you have ideas of what you think you need to do to be a good friend I need to call every week. I need to send text messages. I need to send a birthday card. I need to take them out for coffee once in a while. I need to offer to babysit. I need to check in at the holidays. And you have this list of all the things that you think you need to do to be a good friend.
You’ve loaded yourself down with a list of expectations, and I guarantee you, if you create a list of expectations for yourself of how to be a good friend, by default, you end up assigning that same list of expectations to your friend. Now they need to call you on your birthday, right? I called them on their birthday. Why didn’t they call me on mine? Didn’t even remember my birthday, didn’t even say Happy birthday. And then we start feeling resentful because that’s what happens. If we have a list of expectations and someone doesn’t meet our list of expectations, we feel resentment. So let’s stay out of the what you do to be a good friend, and let’s just stay in. How do you need to think and feel to show up as a good friend? So if you want to show up with compassion and acceptance, what kind of things would you need to think? I think for acceptance, I’m just going to give you my top thoughts, and you can see what works for you. If you ever hear me offering thoughts that you could try, they’re all suggestions because different thoughts work for different people.
But when I want to have compassion and acceptance for my friends, acceptance is this person gets to be whoever they are. This person can show up as themselves. This person gets to do whatever they want to. And I’m not going to judge them. I just get to love them and then compassion. If we don’t want to hold our friends in any kind of judgment, have you ever had those thoughts like, OOH, they totally parented their kid wrong just now. That’s not compassion. That’s judgment. So I think the kind of general thought I apply to friends and relationships is this person’s doing the best they can. I have no idea what it’s like to be this person. They’re doing the best they can, though, no matter what it is. Or a thought like, it’s not easy be that person. And I’m not saying that in a condescending way. It’s just not easy being people in general. Right? And if we walk around with more of that for each other all the time. It’s not easy being you. I know. It’s not easy being me either.
So I’m not going to have a struggle of being me and then expect you to be better while I’m over here struggling. Why don’t we just all struggle together? We’re just muddling through the human existence together, and we’re all doing the best we can, and it’s okay. Everything’s fine. So let’s just show up without judgment and just a lot more love. I didn’t say love. You know, my good friend Natalie Clay, she always says, of all the emotions you can pick, love feels the very best. Can always feel love. And if you’re having trouble loving someone, i, uh, like to ask God, hey, help. God, help me love this person like you do. I seem to be struggling a little bit right now. So help me let go of any thoughts that are holding me back so I can just love like you do. Okie dokie. Facebook group, what you got for me? This question is from Christine. How do I keep from feeling temporarily cursed after a barrage of bad events during the past six weeks? Well, I mean, this is going to sound kind of direct, but just stop it. Stop thinking that thought. That thought is terrible. You could pick so many different thoughts. There’s thousands of thoughts you could think about the last six weeks of your life, but you’re choosing the thought, I’m temporarily cursed. I mean, at least you’re trying to offer some relief for yourself.
At least you’re not full time cursed. You’re temporarily cursed. Isn’t that interesting that your brain wants to hold on to the idea that it thinks you’re cursed? First of all, let’s just decide, is that thought even true? If you’re cursed, who cursed you? Um, what are the voodoo doctors called? Is there a voodoo doctor in your neighborhood that cursed you? Did somebody you hate curse you? They have the power to curse. I mean, if we really look at this, you’re not actually cursed. There’s nobody out there falling around, going, where’s Christina? I need to curse her. It’s not even true. And I bet you hearing me say this, you’re kind of like, yeah, obviously I’m not really cursed. So we tend to do this. We take things that are going on in our life and we add dramatic statements about them. Some events happened in your life that were difficult to navigate or required more energy to get through.
But saying that you’re temporarily cursed and you’ve had a barrage of bad events, terrible, terrible words to pick. Don’t use them at all. You just need to stop. My next thought kind of the same line. Is it true that there was a barrage of bad events? Were the events even really bad? Do you want to call them bad? Were they bad? Who decides if they’re bad? How bad were they? On a scale of one to ten? Maybe you’d give them. On a scale of one to ten, these events were a six, so that’s pretty bad. Maybe somebody else would give them a two. Maybe somebody would give them a ten. Who decides if they’re bad? And a barrage. She’s laughing. Uh, if you all are in the Facebook group, you get to watch these comments live. It’s kind of fun, but yeah. Ridiculous. The thoughts are ridiculous. Christine is realizing how ridiculous they are. We just don’t want to do ridiculous thoughts. Let’s take the drama out. That’s the first thing. You know. In November, I had a series of challenging things happen.
People around me had fires and death and cancer, and I had some difficult medical news for myself. Everything’s fine. You all. It’s dental stuff. I’ll probably talk about it someday soon, but I have a lot of issues, and it’s going to be a long road if I want to fix what’s going on with my job. Anyway, I had some other things going on. A, uh, family member tracked me down on Facebook and said some not so nice things, and there was more. And it was all happening within two weeks of each other. So I could decide it was a barrage of bad events and I’m cursed. But that would not help me at all. That leaves you as the victim. And I know sometimes we find some comfort in being a victim because in a way, it can take some responsibility off of ourselves to do the work we need to to manage our thoughts and tell a new story about what’s going on. It can feel easier to just sit back and be like, all the stuff’s happening to me, all the stuff’s happening around me, and I have no control and I’m cursed. But when you feel like a victim, you feel incapable or attacked or oppressed. That’s the emotional space you’re working from. Now imagine what kind of action you’ll take in your life. What will you do from a space of feeling oppressed and inadequate? And if this is a bunch of things happening to you and you want to be creative and find solutions, you sabotage your ability to show up and be creative.
What you’re doing? Like when I had, uh, several things happen to me at once, I got coached. But what I was doing, on top of feeling the stress of all these difficult things happening, and I was saying all these difficult things, right? That’s part of my drama story. Then I was beating myself up for feeling anxious about it, and I was adding more stress and anxiety on top of it. So similarly, when you say you’re temporarily cursed and it’s a barrage of bad things, you’re adding more emotional difficulty, more emotional challenges, on top of whatever kind of difficult emotions might come just from having several things happen together. So, Christine, what we’re going to do is we’re going to stop thinking about being cursed. We’re going to stop using the word barrage. We’re going to stop saying they were bad events, they were just events. Life happens. It’s just life happening. Your brain might keep offering those thoughts to you and M, I want everyone listening to know that as you try to change your thoughts to something more helpful, your brain is still going to offer the other ones. That’s not you being stuck on thinking your old thoughts.
You’re not stuck on thinking those old thoughts unless you’re like, oh, look at the thought my brain offered me. It’s telling me I’m temporarily cursed. That’s right, I remember now. Let me think about that for a while. Let me look for evidence about why that’s true and let me just sit in it and feel the pain of being temporarily cursed. That’s what you don’t want to do when your brain just says you’re temporarily cursed. Remember, you can say, oh, there’s that thought again. But that’s kind of a dramatic thought. It’s not true that I’m actually cursed. So I’m just going to recognize that I had several events happen that took more energy, it took more thought work. I felt drained. I had to manage more emotions. And that’s okay. That’s just life. I’m not a victim of it. It’s not a problem here. This is just being a human. There’s ebbs and flow and it goes up and down. It’s not a problem. Next question sent into me is from Jenny.
She says, I need help stopping a bad habit. I sleep past my alarm when I intend to wake up early. I’ve been trying to make getting up early a new habit. Then I feel guilt or shame not doing what I plan to, and I tell myself I’ll do better tomorrow. But then the next day I do the same thing. How do I get more self discipline and wake up early and accomplish what I have to do in the morning? That’s a really good question. And this is kind of fun coming at the New Year’s time because a lot of people talk about new habits and New Year’s resolutions and I think we get bored in January. So we try to fill it up with like, I’m going to change my life, which is a great topic for another time. I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, you guys, and I think that they’re a waste of time just throwing that in there. So Jenny, you want to change a habit? A couple of things stood out to me. I notice right away you said, I need help stopping a bad habit. Let’s just talk about the words again. The words you’re choosing is bad. When you say your habit, you do not have to describe your habit as bad. It can just be something you wish to do differently. So you don’t need help stopping a bad habit, but you’re looking for new thoughts to help you get better at doing something differently. See how you can think about it differently. Because when you say I have a bad habit, that’s why you’re feeling guilt or shame, because you’re judging yourself and you’re thinking you’re doing it wrong or there’s something wrong with you. The problem with that is, how are you going to get better at waking up early if you’re busy feeling guilt and shame? When you’re feeling guilt and shame, what are you going to do? I know when I feel guilt and shame, I don’t get inspired to do things differently or wake up and do more. When I’m feeling shame, I like to stay under the covers and hide and be alone. And then I just end up sitting in self judgment and commiserate with myself about how bad I am at getting up in the morning and, uh, how I’m a bad person and I have so much stuff to do and there’s something wrong with me.
Okay, so let’s not call it a bad habit. You’re just waking up in the morning. You’re waking up at whatever, I don’t know what time. Let’s just say it’s eight. You’re waking up at eight, but if you woke up at six, you’d have more awake hours to handle some do some things you want to do. That’s it. It’s just a number on a clock. And if you wake up at a different time, a different number on the clock, you’ll have a different experience. Neither one is good or bad. I think it’s great to sleep later and get less done and you can think that too. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Who says you have to get a certain amount of stuff done in the day anyway? Which is the other thing I noticed you said, I want to get more self discipline and wake up early and accomplish what I have to do in the mornings. You don’t have to do anything in the mornings when you say you have to. You know what we do? You all we put pressure on ourselves. We burden ourselves. We feel weighted down.
We feel overwhelmed when we think, there’s all the stuff I have to do have to, so we don’t have to do any of it. So before you even work on waking up early, uh, I’m not going to help you wake up early yet, actually. I want you to work on being okay with waking up whenever you wake up. It’s not a bad habit to wake up later or earlier. Neither is good or bad. It’s just a time on the clock. And however much stuff you get done in the day, you don’t have to do any of it. And it’s not good if you get 20 things on your to do list done. And it’s not bad if you get five done. Two days ago, the weekend after Christmas, I had a day where I did nothing. Was that a bad day? Heck no. It was an awesome day. I did nothing. Well, I didn’t really do nothing. I watched Hallmark and I read some books and scrolled Facebook, looked at the Christmas tree, hung out with my kids, but there was nothing on a to do list. I got done. That was great. Jenny, you need to start with changing how you’re thinking about it now, before you’re going to have success, you need to stop thinking thoughts that make you feel shame and guilt about it.
Now there’s nothing you have to do, and it’s not a bad habit and start being okay with that. I think you might find when you do that, waking up earlier, it’s probably not going to be that hard because you let go of all the self judgment and expectations, and then you just get to wake up because you want to. It’ll be super fun. Here’s another question that I got in Facebook. Uh, messenger from Cindy. It says, I know you are a life coach, but I still don’t know exactly what that means. Sometimes I wonder too. No, I’m just kidding. I’ll answer it. So it goes on. I’ve gone to your free monthly webinars and all that, but what do you do with someone as their coach? Oh, okay, cool. For coaching, we just get on a Zoom Call video chat, and I pretty much do what I’m doing right now. That’s it. I have tools. I have worksheets and tools. And so I guide you through some very specific steps on how to do what I am doing and answering these questions on a deeper level and maybe on some bigger issues. But this is it. So coaching one on one, you get all your specific questions answered. So it’s just you get to do this stuff that we’re doing right now, but deeper and faster. That’s about it. Pretty simple. Next one sent in from Facebook is Hope. Hope’s question is neighborly advice. How to give it when it’s not wanted but very much needed. Okay, so basically, how do I give advice to my neighbors that they need but they might not want? Well, that’s an interesting one because the advice is wanted.
You want to give the advice, they don’t want it. You want it. I’ve got to ask why. This is a written in question, so I’m going to have to do a lot of speculation on this one. But why do you want to give them advice? Why do you think they need it? Do they really need it? Are they going around going, i, uh, need advice. I need advice. I don’t want it, but I need it. Or are you just seeing some behavior of theirs and you, uh, have decided that they need it? Why do they need it? I don’t know what they’re doing. For all I know, they have parties where people get drunk and they don’t mow their lawn and they yell in the yard. I don’t know. What do they do? You think they need. Some advice to change their behavior. Is that because you want them to be happier? But maybe they’re super happy. Maybe they love their life just like it is. However it is that you think it needs to be different, they could be totally fine with it. So my guess is that you want to give them advice that you think they need so that you can have a better experience. Like if they lived in a different state and you never met them and you never saw them, would you need to give them advice? Would you think they need advice? Like you would just ignore them. Even if you drove by their house on a vacation and you became aware of their lifestyle, somehow you would just move on.
Because they’re just out there living their life. And it’s fine. People do behaviors that we don’t agree with all the time, but we don’t need to give them advice. Why do you need to give your neighbor advice? Because they’re your neighbor. They’re next door, and you’re wishing they were different so that you could feel better. So hope you’ve really got to start with why. Because if you’re judging them because you think their behavior is out of line, it’s not neighborly. It’s not okay? It should totally be different. You’re coming from a place of frustration, and however you go communicate with them, if your emotion is frustration, then what you do is you’re going to act out of frustration. And it’s probably not going to go very well. But my guess is if you worked on how you thought about it and you let them be whoever they are, let them. Here’s my mug. My Facebook group gets to see the mug. It says, Let them. My clients send this to me. I love it if you just let them be them. Let them be your neighbors that do whatever they do. And you stopped thinking it should be different. You stopped judging their behavior, you’re not going to feel frustrated anymore. And, uh, most of the time, then you’re not even going to care to give them advice. If you’re not feeling frustrated, you won’t care.
But let’s just go one other place before we, um, move on. Because what if their behavior is affecting you? What if they’ve crossed a boundary? What if they put their trash out in unacceptable receptacles? No receptacles or bags. And then the raccoons come rip open the bags and all their trash blows in your yard? Well, they might not want your advice about how to put their trash out, but maybe it’s needed because now it’s actually encroaching on your life. It’s not just a preference. You wish they would act different, like your yard is getting filled with trash. Then before you go to give them advice, you want to know how to give them advice. Get your thoughts and your emotions straight about it first. Maybe go to a place of compassion like I don’t know what’s going on in their life, but obviously being them is hard. So hard that they put their trash out in bags for raccoons to rip open and they don’t care because they’re so distracted with everything else. It’s hard being them. Um, it’s hard to get the trash out correctly. Get to a place of compassion first. Okay. Then you get to go approach them. The way you show up and communicate with them, if you’re starting from a place of compassion is going to be so much better. It might not even matter what you say. If you’re coming from a place of compassion, you’re just going to be like, hey, I know it’s not easy putting the trash out.
You have so many other things going on in your life. I’m wondering, can I help you? Could I come collect your trash and put it in? Uh, I have an extra trash can and I’ll take it out every week. I’d totally like to help you with that. Or if I gave you a trash can, would you guys use it? I’m just looking for a way to stop having the raccoons, rip them open and trash it up in my yard and just wondering how I can help. See how that would be very different than showing up and being irritated or frustrated. But again, if your neighbors are just annoying you because they’re not being the kind of people you think people should be, you get to work on your thoughts about that first. Maybe you’re wrong about it. Maybe they’re exactly the way they should be. It’s possible. All right. I have another question. This is from Amy in the Facebook group. How does someone figure out a different career path after 25 years in one and burned out in it or has outgrown them? Yeah, this is kind of fun. I think the best thing you could do if you think you need to figure out a new career path or you want to, how does someone figure out you didn’t say if you need or want to.
Yeah, start with wanting to. Let’s make sure that’s kind of like not muddled down with stress or fear or doubt by thinking you have to come up with a different career path. You don’t have to come up with a career path, but I’m hoping that you want to. And when you want to find a new career path, even after 25 years, it could be kind of like an adventure. It could be exciting. You could be curious. You could be fascinated. You could wonder how things are going to unfold. What does God have for me? Where am I going to go next? What might it look like? I wonder if I’ll go back to school. I wonder if I’ll do something I’ve thought of before. Something I’ve never even thought of. How you think of things you’ve never even thought of before. This is going to be fun. So how does someone figure out a different career path? I love coming from those better emotions first, then just go do things. Just go ask people questions, research things online. Try things. Take a step. I’ve done that before.
Before I became a life coach, I didn’t know I was going to become a life coach. I really didn’t. I had all sorts of different ideas, and I would take a step. I thought, maybe I’m going to become a Disney travel agent. These are the real ones, by the way. Maybe I’ll become a Disney travel agent. What’s the next step? I talked to people who were Disney travel agents. That was my next step. Didn’t feel right to go much beyond that. So I took one step back, and I’m like, okay, maybe put that on the sideburner. Maybe I’ll become a virtual assistant. All right, let’s take a next step. I took a free mini course on becoming a virtual assistant. I’m like, I think I might actually do this. Not sure yet, though. I went on job interviews in different careers, and I researched the companies, and I had great interviews. Oh, I thought I might become a consultant for fundraisers. I had spent a lot of years fundraising, and I learned a lot. And I’m very good at relationship development. I could teach small nonprofits how to do that, right? And so I started looking into that, too. And I talked with people in similar careers, and I talked with executive directors, and I found out what they might be interested in. And I kept trying things until I was like, oh, my gosh, I know what I’m going to do. Which, by the way, I had no idea. I never thought of becoming a life coach, but I had three people in a two week time frame say, you would make a great life coach. And I’m like, what the heck are you talking about?
I better figure out what they’re talking about, because I don’t know. And I started researching it, and I was like, oh, I found my job. I have to do this. This is a career for me. And it might not happen that way for you. You just might end up at a job interview, and you’re like, uh, I love it here. This is it. Just keep trying the next thing. But definitely come from a place where you’re feeling curious or excited about adventure, and you might have doubt and fear. I promise you, I had doubt and fear every step of the way. I mean, it would come and go, and I was just like, all right. Doubt and fear are part of doing something new and big. After 25 years, a new career, you’re going to feel some doubt and fear. That’s not a problem. You can just keep trying the next thing anyway. All right, doubt and fear a little uncomfortable. So what? It’s all right. You’re totally going to figure it out. And it’s going to be fun. Okay you all. This was super fun. My very first asked and answered session. Live for the podcast. Thanks everybody who joined me from the Facebook community. I am so glad you were here. So excited that you were all a part of this podcast episode. And if you want to join the community, all you have to do is go to Rympodcast M.Com and then I think it’s at the bottom. Scroll down and find Facebook community. Just join and I’m looking forward to seeing you guys there. 2020 was an amazing year. I’m so excited for what 2021 might bring. Going to have all of it, you guys, the good and the bad. Bring it. Let’s be in for all of it. Do it together. And that’s it for today. So I will catch you all next week. Take care of you.
As an advanced certified life coach, I help Christian women trying to live their best lives, but they still feel unsatisfied and stuck. I teach thought management skills that work so you can enjoy life again and step into who God has created you to be. Don’t forget to head on over to Rympodcast.com to get my free resources or a free coaching call.
