I’m Diana Swillinger, and this is the Renew Your Mind podcast. Episode 60 How to Do Amazing Things.
DIANA: Hey. Hey. What is up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the renew your Mind podcast. I’m so glad you’re here. So let’s just talk about it, y’all, I didn’t put out a podcast last week. I missed one. It’s the first one that I missed since I started over a year ago. But you know what? It’s okay. My work and life has been busy, y’all. My coaching program is full for the month of May. I’ll have some openings in June, though, if you’re interested. But it’s full, and I’ve been doing workshops and tons of free coaching calls. I did 27 free coaching calls in the last month. I’ve been busy. All right, so I missed a podcast. I’m doing my best, though, to keep showing up and serving as many people as I can and be there for my kids and family and do it all. So anyway, I missed one podcast. I’m not perfect, but that’s the way it goes, and I love all of it. This is the part where I don’t get my podcast out on the intended date. It’s fine. I like this part of the story. I learn a lot when things don’t go exactly how I thought they would.
Consistency takes energy and intention, and so I just didn’t have enough energy for it last week. But I realized that even though consistency takes energy and intention, I also kind of like it. I think good things come from it. So it’s been fun to take a look at that and see what my values are about it, what I think about it and all that. So it’s been a great little exercise. Everything’s okay. I’m still here, still serving you 27 free coaching calls, doing my workshops. I just keep going, and I’m doing the best I can. Um, and if you’re like, hey, I want one of those free coaching calls. Don’t worry, you can totally have one. I’m still doing them. Go to Rympodcast.com and sign up. It’s super easy. Everyone’s like, I really wasn’t sure you were going to be able to help me in one call, but you did just like you said, so give it a try. All right, y’all ready for today’s topic? I, um, am. Let’s do this.
Today we’re going to talk about how to do amazing things. The more years I have under my belt where I speak to women, get on stage and speak and meet hundreds of women, the years I have of coaching and mentoring and the masterminds. I’m in all of it. I have been noticing a lot of patterns. And don’t worry, I am making notes. I am keeping track of this stuff. And I’m noticing how things like how key emotions are linked to key thoughts. Like, if you have the emotion of feeling frustrated, it’s because you have a thought that’s going to be in the family of things shouldn’t be this way or this is wrong. It shouldn’t be happening like this. Those kind of thoughts have us feel frustrated. If you feel overwhelmed, I’ve noticed it’s from some version of it’s too much. There’s too much. I have too much to do. It’s all too much. If you feel peace, your thoughts going to be in the family of something, like, everything is okay as it is. I don’t need to change anything to be okay. So I notice this kind of stuff all the time. And one area I’ve been noticing things recently with the women I’ve been talking to is those who are wanting to achieve something in their life or they want to move forward, get out of being stuck. They want to feel better, they want to go for a goal, whatever amazing thing it is they want to create in their life and move forward. There’s some patterns of what we can do here. What is it for you? Do you want to yell less? Do you want to be physically stronger? Do you want to start a business? Do you want to do something great? Do you want to do something awesome? Something you’ve always been dreaming of, a new project. Do you want to grow? What is it with all of it? I just kind of lump them into doing amazing things. I’ve noticed that there is common things we can do to not be stuck and get to it and do those amazing things. So for those of you listeners who love it, when I teach three points when I was a kid going to church, I’m always like, there’s going to be three points. I guess I’m doing the pastor’s trick here. Three things. Ready?
Grab a paper, write them down. Not if you’re driving. No paper. So the three things you can do to get out of your way and start doing amazing things. Number one, let go of needing to know how. Number two, be willing to feel any emotion, even the uncomfortable ones. Number three, have a great relationship with you, be there for you. Have a good relationship with yourself. All right, so here we go. We’ll dive into each one of them. First up, let go of needing to know how. If you want to do something amazing, you don’t need to know how. I m love this one because I’ve noticed so many times, this is what I have to do. I had to do this when I started my business. I had to do it when I started my podcast. I have to do it for all the amazing things I want to do in my life. They all start with letting go of needing to know how and just being okay with that. I understand this could sound a little backwards. Like, how are you going to go do something if you don’t know how? Uh, you’re going to take a step if you’re letting go of how? Like, what do you even do? How can I do something new if I don’t know how to do it? I’m going to have to go figure out how first. Do you, though?
I’m saying anytime we do something new, we really don’t know how. We never know how. Even if we come up with some amazing plan, we’re just kind of making it up based off what we think or other people’s experiences. But it’s never exactly the how for us anyway. Because as we go, things unfold and we modify and change. We spend so much time thinking of the how, but it’s all new. We’ve never done it before. Why not just be okay with not knowing how? I’m telling you, we don’t need to know how to go do something amazing when we think we have to know how. So many of us get paralyzed because it’s a lot to figure out. Or we can’t figure it out, or we’re getting conflicting information. Or as soon as we think we have a plan put together, there’s something that doesn’t make sense. Or we start on the plan and it doesn’t go the way we planned. I was talking with a client recently. She wants to start a new business. So I was coaching her around what emotion she would need to generate on purpose to fuel the next step in her business. So we started talking about what she needed to do and how it made her feel. What she thought her next step to do was to create the master plan.
Guess what she felt when she felt like she needed to create a master plan for this business and outline all the steps. The emotion she felt was overwhelm. You know what we do when we feel overwhelmed? You all we spin. We do random tasks. We don’t make a lot of progress. We feel terrible. Or we say, screw it and we stop doing it. Trying to create the master plan, trying to figure out the how to do it, was paralyzing her with overwhelm fixating on, um, the how was keeping her stuck in spinning and not creating anything amazing and not moving forward in her business. So to get her back on track and creating her new business, we had to throw out the how. We got rid of it and accepted we don’t need all that. We don’t need to know how. We don’t need to know all the contingencies. We don’t need to predict all the curves in the road and what the various steps should be and in, uh, what order and for how long, and all of it. We don’t need to know all that. Trying m to figure out the how for many of us is going to just paralyze us. Now, I know there’s probably somebody out there listening right now who always figures out the how first, creates an amazing plan, and is a rock star at everything she does.
Okay, cool. You keep doing that. You just go keep figuring it out and keep being you figure out your how. But I’m saying for most of us, or for many of us, or maybe even all of us, at least in some situations at some time, trying to figure out the how will stop us dead in our tracks and will spin. Forever searching Google for the right way, forever interviewing people, forever researching, trying to figure out the right way, the right steps, and not, uh, being able to figure it out, staying stuck and just not doing anything. It happens to so many of us. So I want to free you up from having to know how. I’m telling you, you don’t need to know how. You only ever need to pick one next thing to do. Sometimes, uh, I think of it like going forward in a fog. And I don’t mean in a bad way, I just mean the reality of what it’s like in a fog. If we’re in a thick fog and we look up out into the future, we look down the path in the thick fog, it’s m cloudy, it’s murky, it’s foggy. There’s no clarity. We can’t see it all.
In a car, you can’t turn on the headlights and see more. In fact, it’ll blind you more because it just reflects the fog back to you. It’s very, very hard to see where we’re going, and it seems overwhelming and hard. But have you ever noticed in a fog, when you look down at your feet, when you’re standing in a fog, everything’s clear. You can see your feet, you can see the ground, you can see a few feet in front of you. You, uh, can take a step. You can take a step forward when you don’t try to look outward at everything and figure it all out, where it’s cloudy and murky. If you just look down for a moment, you can figure out how to take one step. And I’m not saying we never plan. I plan. But I don’t have to figure out all the details. I don’t have to know every single step. I like to create kind of some looser generalized plans and not straddle myself with having to know all the how or have it all figured out because it keeps me stuck and not moving. If I make a loose plan, fine, but put your head down and take one step. I can always figure out one next step to take with my client, remember I was coaching her. She’d wanted to put together a master plan. She’s feeling overwhelmed. To move out of that, we had to decide not to worry about step three, four, five, and six in her new business. She was just finishing up, uh, step one, and all we needed to do was decide what step two was.
We could let go of step three, four, and five, and beyond for today, and just do step two. It’s the next step right in front of her. With doing that, with figuring out what the one next step was, she was no longer overwhelmed. She didn’t feel confused. Her new emotions, what she felt in that decision, was confident and committed in taking that next step and going forward unstuck, on her way to doing something amazing. And once she finishes step two, she can just figure out step three won’t be that hard. Eventually, she’ll be on step six and seven and eight and have an amazing business. So if you are willing to let go of the how you get to move forward and take a step, all right, next thing, be willing to feel any emotion, even the uncomfortable ones. One of my favorite coaching moments ever was when a client was super excited to tell me that she was embarrassed. A few weeks prior, when I was coaching her, she was telling me how she wanted to improve her communication with coworkers in the office and when working on projects and just whatever, she wanted to be a more efficient communicator and not get wrapped up in drama. So we were talking about how whenever we have a goal, one of the main skills we need to get there is to be willing to feel uncomfortable emotions. So one of the things she wanted to change about her communication was to let go, uh, of defending herself or over explaining her position. Like, if something didn’t go the way she thought it should, she wanted to keep talking with people and try to sort it all out and get to an understanding. But her coworkers, they just wanted to get back to work. And, uh, when she really thought about it, that’s what she wanted to do, too. She didn’t want to be wrapped up in it. She didn’t want to get derailed. She wanted to communicate more about the work and less about be less worried about proving herself or making sure everyone understood her motives and defending herself and all of that.
So to do this amazing thing, she said she was willing to embrace discomfort, and she did not have to wait very long to practice it. I don’t even recall what the exchange was about, but the next time we had talked, a coworker, she told me, had been in her office. And after he left, she was uncomfortable and she wanted to get up and go talk to him about it and explain herself and all this. And she was like, uh oh, this is my moment. This is my moment, what she decided to do was not follow that instinct to get up and go talk to him. She was going to feel uncomfortable. She’s telling me about it and she says, I was sitting there, Diana, and I’m like, what is this? What am I feeling? And then she realized it. And this is how she tells me. I was like, I’m embarrassed. I’m embarrassed. She was so excited to be embarrassed. So you know what she did? She didn’t go chase the person down and try to prove herself and escape her emotions. Instead, she was willing to be uncomfortable.
She sat with herself and she allowed herself to feel embarrassed. Her face was hot. She didn’t love how it felt, but she was willing to be there in it and allow it. She processed it. And in that moment, she kick started her new path and she made huge leaps of growth in her workplace communication to the point where the people around her noticed a, uh, difference. She was being amazing. And for me, when I started my business, I m was willing to feel self doubt many times. I still do. When I quit drinking ten plus years ago, I was willing to feel all the painful emotions that I had been trying to cover up with drinking. Being sober is amazing, y’all? And so to do that amazing thing, I was willing to feel grief. I was willing to feel shame. I was willing to feel all sorts of uncomfortable things. And when I wanted to grow a relationship with a new friend, that was going to be amazing, I was willing to feel vulnerable. When we have goals, have you noticed even emotions like feeling determined aren’t always comfortable, right? I don’t think feeling determined is comfortable for me. Not much of the time, but I do it anyway. Feeling committed is uncomfortable. Doesn’t feel great to me. But both of these help me do amazing things. I’ve been feeling both of them as I’ve gotten into some strength training. Nothing like, I’m not going to be on Instagram with an awesome body. You all I was doing no strength training. I’m doing some strength training because my body is getting older and I want to stay strong and I don’t want to get injured just doing daily things. I have to feel determined. It’s uncomfortable. I have to feel committed. It’s uncomfortable.
But I’m six weeks in, and I just keep doing it. Sometimes I feel disappointed when I miss a day. I’m disappointed in myself, okay? I’ll feel disappointed. Sometimes I feel guilt if I miss two days, okay? But I’m willing to feel them. If I wasn’t willing to feel them, I might just stop. I might be like, well, forget it. This is hard and I’m not doing good at it, so forget it. But I’m willing to feel those emotions and process them, and then I don’t stop. We stop when we feel shame, like something’s wrong with us. We stop when we feel it’s too hard. But if we’re willing to feel the uncomfortable emotions up front, it allows us. And if we lean into them and notice that they’re normal, we get to decide, nothing’s wrong with me. I’m a human who sometimes feels embarrassed. I’m a human that sometimes feels determined. I’m a human that sometimes feels disappointed or grief or guilt or whatever it is, and I’m willing to feel it, process it, move through it, and then get on with it. All right. Be willing to feel uncomfortable. Leads right into the last point, which is, have a great relationship with you, love you, encourage you, be there for you.
You know how people on the sideline of a marathon will cheer on runners at the end? You can see their runners are uncomfortable. You can see they’re determined. You can see they’re still moving. Heck, even if you’re on the sideline in the middle of the race halfway, doesn’t matter what part of the course you’re on. All of us on the sideline, we cheer on these runners. We’re like, you can do this. You got this. Don’t worry. Take a breath. Keep breathing. If they stop, if they trip, we check on them. We’re like, Are you okay? Do you need help? They’re like, nah. When they stand back up, we’re right back at cheering them on. You got this. I believe in you. Keep taking the next step. There’s so many circumstances in life where we encourage all the people around us in sports, in difficult relationships. We’re encouraging our friends, coworkers, family members with their goals. In school, at work. We offer help. We tell people we believe in them. We walk side by side with them, and we encourage them. And we can do this for ourselves, too. I’m telling you, if you want to be amazing, you need to do this for yourself. Have your own back, encourage you. I know we doubt ourselves sometimes, but when we do, we don’t have to fall into the temptation of telling ourselves we suck. We can encourage ourselves. Instead. We can make it a habit of being there for ourselves if we want to. Just like the person cheering on the runner in a marathon, we’d get to do it with ourselves.
Have you ever looked in the mirror and said, well, for me, I say my name. So I say Diana. You would say your name, obviously. But look in the mirror and say, hey, Diana, I think you’re doing a great job. I m believe in you, Diana. Don’t quit. I know it’s tough, Diana, but you’re strong. You got this. I’m here for you. I think you’re doing great. You’re amazing. If you’re not doing that, I strongly encourage you start. I almost want to say should, but you all know I don’t like the word should. I strongly encourage you to be a cheerleader for yourself. Be your biggest cheerleader. It makes doing things that bring up uncomfortable emotions. A lot more fun to do. I’m telling you, the people on the marathon trail are uncomfortable people. Um, cheer them on. It makes it a lot easier. It’s fun having people cheer you on. Did you know that during the pandemic? Okay, any of you who are NFL fans, you know, but some of you aren’t. When the NFL stands were emptied during the football games, they piped in sounds of fans cheering for the players to hear. It was good for their brains to be cheered on and encouraged, even by imaginary fans. It’s easier to do hard things when we’re supported and people are cheering for us, and we don’t need to drum up an audience all the time and look for that approval outside ourselves if we’re willing to cheer ourselves on. Um, now that I think about it, wouldn’t it be fun to have the sounds of fans cheering us as we do things? Like, you could put it on your phone and hear the crowd cheering. Nice job, Diana. You did your walk and your core exercises today. Oh, my gosh. That’s so awesome. All right, y’all. You hear that sound effect? It’s on YouTube. Just search cheering fans. Get it for yourself. Put that sound effect on your phone because you’re doing amazing things. You’re moving forward one step at a time without needing to know how willing to feel uncomfortable. You have your own back, and you have a great relationship with you. You love you, you think you’re doing a great job. Yes. Do all of that, and you will be on your way to doing whatever amazing thing you want to do. Sky is the limit. Actually, wait, the sky is not the limit. There is no limit. You can go do whatever amazing thing it is you want to do. Yeah, you got this. Now go get to it. All right, y’all, that’s it for today. I’ll catch you next week. Take care, 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.
