Motivate Me with Lynette Renda

What happens when someone you love feels called to something big — and you’re the one asked to support it? Welcome to Motivate Me! with Lynette Renda. In today’s episode, my husband joins me for an honest conversation about the vision behind my journey to travel 50 states in 90 days and the book that came from it. We talk about how the idea was born, his role in bringing it to life, and the very real fears and concerns he had about me leaving on a long journey — especially with two women I didn’t know at the time. This episode is for anyone chasing a big dream, loving someone who is, or trying to balance faith, fear, and purpose in real life.

Welcome back to Motivate Me! with Lynette Renda. This episode is about staying committed to a big goal when the work becomes isolating. I’m continuing my conversation with my husband and sharing how his tough love and encouragement helped me stay disciplined while writing my book. Even though there were peaks and valleys.  If you’re working toward something meaningful, this episode is a reminder that finding the right support system is invaluable — and it can make all the difference in seeing your vision through. Let’s get into it. 

Season Five, Episode One of Motivate Me! with Lynette Renda — “What If This Is Your Moment?” — opens the season with an invitation to pause, reflect, and consider what’s possible. In this episode, Lynette encourages listeners to step into a life that feels more exciting and meaningful, while sharing her current quest of bringing her book to publication—born from a powerful journey across all 50 states in 90 days. This episode is about courage, timing, and saying yes to what’s calling you now.

Come get schooled in feeling flat! See who has the key, learn easy techniques to reclaim your passion, and set the expectation that you will. MM563 – Saying Goodbye to Season 4! Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! Our final episode of Season 4! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Saying Goodbye to Season 4! So what’s really crazy is that I sat down to write a journal entry reflecting back on this season of Motivate Me! and all my brain wanted to do was talk about where I’m headed, instead of where I’ve been. I had to pause my journal entry to write out some goals on a separate sheet of paper because I was too excited and distracted. My goals are for the book I’ve been wanting to write about traveling the fifty states in ninety days interviewing people about passion. During that journal entry I got the idea to set a goal to have my first draft done by New Year’s Day. I broke down the word count and it’s totally achievable. As you know, I began to fall flat after completing our trip of traveling the fifty states in ninety days interviewing people about passion. First, I was flat because I wanted to write about the trip but I struggled to find my value, and next, it was the pandemic. It was January 2021 when my family gave me the kind of tough love that makes you work hard to better yourself. And so, I began doing that. I utilized everything I’d learned in my personal study, in my coaching program, and in the almost 450 interviews I’d done over the seasons of Motivate Me! I dug in deep and I was able to get my head and heart back in the game. I was able to reclaim my passion – which brought me back here to you. I’m going to share here the list of techniques that helped me. There’s an episode focused on each of these techniques here in Season 4. So if you would like details and examples of how to use them, you can check out the episode. When looking at these steps, know that you can do them in the order I did or in an order of your design. You can do all, or some, of them. The goal is for you to determine what you need and just head in that direction. I will say, if some of these seem out of your comfort zone or something you’ve never enjoyed, like reading or journaling, please just try it. When was the last time you read or wrote? My suggestions in the episodes of how to read or journal or stretch, etc. may be different from what you remember – or maybe you’re different these days? OK, so here’s a list of each of the steps I took to reclaim my passion. There are 29 steps total, some are less time consuming than others, so don’t be overwhelmed by this list.  After incorporating these into my life, I was a new person. I feel like I sound like a commercial when I say this, but doing this changed me in only two weeks. Like, two weeks later I experienced euphoria! I was happy, I was excited – I had a clear direction! I had reclaimed my passion! 1. I made myself a priority 2. I took part in a fun 30-day challenge to start committing to something daily 3. I started stretching 4. I prepared mental and physical space where I could be a thinker 5. I rested my body and soul 6. I improved my diet 7. I meditated 8. I journaled with the intention to seek answers  9. I gathered creative materials to start to build my creative ideas 10. I read books and was an open-minded reader 11. I collected and organized my creative ideas 12. I opened myself up to feedback from others 13. I emotionally detached myself from the lives of others 14. I refused to feel selfish 15. I unplugged from technology 16. I got my blood pumping 17. I experimented with my craft (which for me is writing) 18. I took a small action 19. I connected with my people 20. I got more creative materials 21. I allowed myself to be vulnerable 22. I said no to negativity 23. I bailed on perfectionism 24. I battled fear and nixed excuses 25. I aligned to my life purpose 26. I took a big action 27. I embraced collaboration 28. I learned how to access flow state 29. I created an action plan Like I said, these topics are the focus areas of each of Season 4’s episodes. If you’re just joining us, I suggest you start from Episode 532, the “Welcome to Season 4!” Episode For whatever reason, you’re feeling flat right now, or you’re searching for something right now, or you’re trying to bounce back from some sort of life experience right now. There is a reason you are here with me right now. Maybe it’s just because you know there’s more to life than your current circumstance. I have to believe that you’re right: there is happiness and excitement and challenge and meaningful experiences. And if you feel you’re missing out of any of this, I’m here for you. I understand you. I have provided you with actionable steps to help you. I know where the power to change this is – it is all within you. You just need to claim responsibility for it! I don’t believe that we’re here to just exist. I believe we’re here to love each other and we’re here to learn lessons. Think bigger picture. Wayne Dyer describes our time here as being directed like a game of chess by a higher power. That we are just pieces in a game being moved around to impact each other. Whether we are helping each other or hurting each other, we are learning from each other. What would it hurt to approach life like a game? To challenge ourselves and to seek victory? We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else. I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: I really appreciate you spending your valuable time with us. I have really enjoyed my time with you. I am sending you all the love. I am sending you all the wishes that you are able take a step back from your life in order to focus on you – to make you the priority. I know that you have it in you to envision, explore, and execute the life of your dreams. I’ll be rooting for you.   Remember, you Motivate Me!

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Create an Action Plan So, when I began the process of creating this podcast, I had some really important things to figure out: what will my show be about? What am I about? How will I use my new professional coaching certification to help people? I had learned the kind of information in my coaching program that you can’t just un-know, if you know what I mean? And I wanted to share it with people. I wanted to use it to help people. In Episode 558 of this season, I talk about how to uncover your life purpose. That was my first step in the creation process of this show. I needed to do a deep dive into who I was and discover what I believed my purpose to be before I could move forward. In Episode 558, I walk through that process with you, so you can do the same for yourself. I discovered that my purpose is to empower others. OK, I thought, how can I live in my purpose while using my coaching knowledge? One of the greatest points I learned in my certification process is that we all have the answers we need; we just need to learn how to uncover those answers. And that in order for people to buy-in to change, it has to be their idea. My job as a coach is not to roll into your life to tell you what you need to do; a coach’s job is to roll into your life to ask you the right questions that will help you determine what you need to do. Nobody knows you better than you. Nobody knows what’s best for you better than you. Especially the people in your life who try to tell you they do. Chances are those people are trying to control you or control the direction you take in life. Sometimes people do this with the best intentions, sometimes not, but either way, this is your decision to make. Getting back to when I started this podcast, it was with the intention to help the masses. I wanted to help people live a life that was more exciting or more meaningful than their current one. And, to me, that meant passion. I wanted to help people discover or rediscover their passion, because I felt so many of us were not living lives we were passion about. We were just existing. Since I knew that people have to make their own discoveries, I devised a Motivate Me! plan. I thought, if I interview guests who are living exciting and meaningful lives, living their passion, then our listeners can learn from them in a non-threatening way. Listeners could then apply what they’ve learned to their own lives in a way that works for them. One of my favorite examples of this is show guest Chris Nordhaus. Long story short, Chris was blindsided by a divorce. His passion had always been sport cars, and he had an old one in the garage he would tinker with. Chris, ultimately, recovered from his divorce by buying himself a brand new Camaro and joining a Camaro club. The greatest part about his story is how he rebuilt his life through an old, rekindled passion. In a short time, he made friends outside of those that were a part of his marriage, he was taking road trips around the country to places like Sturgis, South Dakota, and he became part of the board of the club. He leaned into his passion and he used his passion to recreate his life. Similarly, when show guest Karen Babb Newhall was going through her divorce, she taught herself how to train Border Collies to herd sheep. When she got good at it, she started a business training other dogs and she has since built a Border Collie rescue on her farm. I think these are fantastic examples of how someone going through a divorce can hear these stories, consider their own passion, and pull from the practices of both of these show guests. This is why I started my show, then I thought it would be amazing to interview people in each of the United States. If you’d like to hear a detailed account of how that idea was conceived and carried out, you can check out Episode 533. So we did that, we traveled the fifty states in ninety days interviewing people about passion, me and two women I hired whom I’d never met. All of this brings us to where we are today – coming back from flat together. And while listening to the experiences of others can be a powerful and informative eye-opener, it means nothing if we don’t act. Motivate Me!’s foundation is based on an action plan. It’s based on the formula I use to make my own decisions, to take my own actions. And I’m going to share this with you today with the hope that you will write this down and fill in your own blanks. This action plan is based on three basic steps that are determined by your unique person and passion. The three steps are Envision, Explore, Execute. I’m going to explain each one and give you ideas on how to utilize each. Action #1 is to Envision Let’s say your passion is teaching. You’ve always enjoyed being class mom, the cheerleading coach, helping your kids with their homework and projects. But you find yourself in your thirties or forties and you don’t know if it’s too late to start a college career? You try to talk yourself out of it. You know it will cost money, it will take your time and attention away from your family, and you don’t even know if you have what it takes to be a college student. You don’t know if you’re smart enough? It’s at this point in the process you need to envision yourself doing the thing. See yourself working in a school. How does that feel? What are you wearing? What does your classroom look like? What does it smell like? What do your students look like? How old are they? What subject are you teaching? How do your shoes sound when walking down the corridor? What are you holding in your hands? See yourself designing lesson plans and grading papers. How does this feel to you? See yourself managing home-life. Are you sitting at the kitchen table doing “homework” with your kids – you grading and them working? Envision how this impacts the people in your world. Do you see a paycheck coming in that’s contributing to the family in a way you couldn’t before? Do your kids have a new perspective on the importance of education? Do you see yourself off from school when your kids are – during breaks, holidays, and snow days? Do you feel proud of yourself for accomplishing a teaching degree? Do you have more to contribute to the family conversation at dinner? Is your partner looking at you a little differently? How does this vision feel? Action #2 is to Explore Wow, OK, you didn’t talk yourself out of this yet. Nice! You want to take the next step and just explore what it would take to make this teaching thing happen. The Explore step is research. It does not cost a penny to explore your options. You could make a list of three or five or ten possibilities for yourself, and comparing them is probably not a bad idea! But there are things you need to know before making this decision. Is there a teaching certification program near you? Go to the school site, compare the programs, look at the course descriptions. Does this degree interest you? How much does it cost? What does the schedule look like? Do you need to take an entrance exam? Is there a way to prepare for the entrance exam? Do you need childcare or to carpool with friends? Do you need to work around a current job? Is this feasible? Can you make it work? What obstacles will you need to address? Action #3 is to Execute If you are at this step, good for you! You have decided just to take that first step towards getting your teaching degree. You may not be ready to sign up for the whole enchilada, but maybe you are ready to schedule yourself for the entrance exam. Maybe the results of that exam will give you the confidence you need to take the next step – or maybe it will inform your decision to abort this mission. It’s OK. It’s a small fee and a little time to figure out if this is your path. So you do it, you register for the entrance exam – step one taken! Next, you reach out to friends and see if anyone can tell you more about how to prepare for the entrance exam. You borrow the book from a friend and study like you never remember studying before. You take the test. You know the result of this exam will be the deciding factor, and when you open the results and see that you’ve passed, you know there is no stopping you now. You have made the decision to go for that teaching degree! And all you need to decide next is whether to start slowly with one class, or come fast out of the gate and take a full course load. Envision, Explore, Execute. We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else. I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: We have talked in many episodes about all the things we allow to hold us back. Not today. Today we are only focusing on those things that will move us forward. So, pull from the experiences of others, see that you deserve the same or better, and figure out what and how you need to do that. And most importantly, take that action – you are worth it! Remember, you Motivate Me!

How do you know when you are in “flow state”? What is “relaxed awareness” and what’s its connection to the creative process? Learn about all of this, as well as how to conjure up your flow and how it is connected to serving others. MM561- Find Your Flow State Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Find Your Flow State Wow. Flow State. Have you ever been so engrossed in what you’re doing that you’ve lost track of time? Have you ever been so involved in something that you’ve forgotten to eat? Has sleep ever become unimportant to you, and all you wanted was uninterrupted time with whatever it is you were working on? Maybe you were making a painting or a quilt or a webinar or remodeling a room? You may think that achieving flow state is a freak thing that only happens to the chosen, but I believe there are actionable steps you can take to encourage flow state. If you don’t know my story or what inspired this season of Motivate Me!, I suggest going back and listening to the first episode: Episode 532. Part of my story is that I’d been divorced from flow state for a few years, but then in an event that I discuss in Episode 532, I was inspired to aggressively seek myself again. To get my head and heart back in the game. Finding my flow is what brought me back to you. I became excited again. I started creating again. I wanted to help others again. And this is what I want for you. Before we move forward, let’s get a clear definition of what “flow state” is. Stick with me here, because gaining this new understanding was an enlightening experience for me, and I’m hoping it will be the same for you. Many of the guided meditations I do are preceded with spiritual teachings, something I really enjoy. One of my favorite meditations is by Mindvalley and its titled, “A Relaxing Guided Meditation to Boost Creativity.” (You can find it on YouTube.) It’s here that I heard a definition of “flow state” that resonated with me. The meditation guide said that to be in “flow” simply means to be in a state of relaxed awareness. OK. But, what does “relaxed awareness” mean? If “relaxed” means to “know without doubt,” and “awareness” means “knowing that you are not and never will be alone.” That “you are aware of the help and guidance of a higher power.” Then “relaxed awareness” means that you know without doubt that you are not alone, and you are aware that you’re being guided by a higher power. This is a pretty deep definition. But, as a writer, I have to tell you that I’ve experienced this. Writers are always looking to find solutions when writing stories. How best to show their audience without directly telling them? How best to move the plot forward? How best to describe characters indirectly without just listing details? It’s much more interesting to find out that a character has an addiction when the writer describes the bottle of pills that fell out of her purse, rather than simply stating it. I have sat back in my chair while writing or jumped in the shower or taken a walk to get distance from my work, so the answer would “come to me.” It may not be not right away, but the answer always comes… sometimes even in my sleep. I have always believed that these answers come from a higher power, and I know I’m not alone in this. So the idea of relaxed awareness and its definition in the meditation track struck me because it’s an understanding I have, and have had, for some time. Relaxed awareness is faith in the creative process, simply put. Have you ever felt an energy shift when you’re working on something? An excitement and a knowing that everything will work out the way it’s meant to? A knowing that you will find the answers and resolutions you’re seeking for your project? A knowing that you are not creating alone, that you are being guided? Have you ever felt the energy that comes from that kind of belief? That kind of faith? How about when we used to watch Michael Jordan play basketball when he was “in the zone.” Where he couldn’t miss a shot. Did you see that game where he closed his eyes on the foul shot line and made the basket anyway, as if to say to the other team that he was “in the zone,” and “on fire,” and that he was untouchable. That was a great moment. Man, I miss Michael Jordan! But in other news, other athletes and scientists, artists and entrepreneurs – all people – experience being in flow state. The question is: Can we capture this and can we control it? I am here to tell you that the answer is yes. This whole season of Motivate Me! has been about the individual steps I took to reclaim my passion. I suggest trying every technique I’ve shared with you this season, but here is a list that is a big picture perspective geared solely towards conjuring up flow state. 1. Still the chatter in the mind to let ideas surface (through meditation or exercise or prayer or sleep or reading) 2. Explore ideas that surface through journaling (journal seeking answers) 3. Refrain from passing judgement on new ideas (be open minded) 4. Express gratitude (be thankful for everything: the new day, your home, love, everything) 5. Give of yourself to others as much as possible (a call, a text, a tip, a donation, a compliment) 6. Be relentless in steps 1-5 I did all of these things, and when I felt or thought something, I sat down and journaled. When I couldn’t figure out what I was feeling, I sat down and journaled… and immediately ideas came and solutions came. I continued to do the other steps I talk about over this season, like give myself freedom of thought and physical space to create… and it happened. It took some time, but in a matter of weeks, I began to feel the flutter of passion. People, for the first time in about four years I felt passion! And not only that, I began to see what I needed to do next on my path – and I couldn’t do it fast enough. I came to see that I was in flow. I have had many conversations with people who don’t know what their passion is, and I have always wanted to find a concrete way to help them find it. Understanding how I could help others was the big revelation I made when doing what I’m suggesting here. Understanding how I could help others is what put me into flow. So find what you can do to help others. Aggressively seek this answer. That is where flow state lives. We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else. I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: We have interviewed almost 450 people about passion. Every single one connects back to how we can serve others. Every. Single. One. Finding your connection to this using the steps we talk about here and the steps we’ve provided this season will help you discover this. And when you do, you will be so on fire that you’ll be looking to purchase a “Don’t Talk to Me I’m in Flow” T-shirt. No… I don’t know if anyone is really making flow T-shirts, but if you find one, let me know! Being passionate about doing something that will serve others is the answer. Remember, you Motivate Me!

In this episode you will come to understand the meaning of collaboration, and you’ll learn it’s importance to our creative lives! You will explore the different ways you can work together with others, and you’ll receive four easy ideas on how to seek out collaborative partners. MM560 – Embrace Collaboration Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Embrace Collaboration First let’s discuss what collaboration is, then we’ll explore why it’s important in our creative lives, the different ways in which we can collaborate, and where we can seek to find it. I can only speak for myself and my husband when I say that we have had a history of being stingy with our creative and entrepreneurial plans and ideas. Have you been this way? We were always very guarded about sharing our ideas with other people and completely closed to combining forces with anyone. We have had business ideas in the past, product ideas, book ideas, website community ideas, this podcast, and more. Now trust me when I say, I believe we need to be very smart about how we do this. We need to make guidelines and boundaries, some in our own minds, some verbally with others, and some things need to be established legally on paper. My goal in what I would like to speak with you about today is really just the opening up of your mind to the idea of collaboration. To collaborate with others simply means to work together on a goal or project. When I think of the term collaboration, the arts are the first to come to mind, especially musicians. My nephew is a musician and producer out in Los Angeles and nothing is more free or open than the jam sessions he has with his peers. He’s living in a house with five other artists, and he has a white board set up in the house with a schedule for their collaboration times. They have writing sessions, brainstorming sessions on music and the business end, they have jam sessions. All they want to do is push and support each other and make great music. It’s pretty spectacular. They’re living their dream and striving to make it in their industry.   Think about all the famous musical collaborations of our time. We wouldn’t have had David Bowie and Mick Jagger’s, “Dancing in the Street,” or The Beatles and Eric Clapton’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” – or so many other amazing songs – without collaboration. Now here’s the thing about working with other people: We can only approach projects with our personal perspective that stems from our personal experiences and skills. Let’s say I want to start a craft business. I want to get a table at the local market and sell my crafts. OK, great. I can make a really great candle. The quality and color and scent is awesome! But I’m limited. I’m limited in my abilities to take my candle idea any bigger than presenting them in some type of glass container – as pretty as I may be able to make them look, I don’t have the tools or knowledge to do more. But I have a friend who says, “Oh, wow. Your candles are great, I could cut and stain wood and make iron candle holders for them, would you be interested in combining forces?” The idea of working together may make you nervous. But you think about it and you decide to combine forces. Next thing you know, another friend loves what you’re doing, and this friend is computer savvy, something you are definitely not, and not something your other friend has no time for. This person offers to set up an Etsy account and says they’ll handle posting pictures of the products, they’ll handle the processing of the orders, the packing, and the shipping. Wow. You just started a whole store, and all you’re doing is what you were good at in the first place – making candles. Maybe your candles were great for Christmas and Easter, but your one friend who is doing the wood and metal work is also Jewish and offers to make a minora. And your other computer savvy friend, who is a little younger than you, tells you how the new craze is receiving a monthly box from different companies. People can sign up to have clothing items or make up items shipped automatically to them monthly – why not do a candle of the month box? So, here’s my point: First, we need to share what we’re doing with others. Second, we need to be open-minded to new opportunities. That means we can’t be too tied to our original ideas, and we need to be open enough to entertain the suggestions of others. And third, we need to not be afraid to combine forces. I am not saying to blindly trust; I’m saying not to be attached to the end result of this collaboration. I’m saying stay rooted in why you wanted to do this in the first place and love the process! I know things can go wrong and people can disappoint you. This can happen just by even sharing your ideas and not signing up to collaborate. It happened to me and my husband. We shared an idea with some family, they took our idea and created their own version of it behind our backs. Their idea was unsuccessful and now we have no relationship. This is sad to say. In the end, I have to tell you that I’m glad it happened, because the character of these people was revealed. Because it meant that I could stop putting so much energy into caring about people who had no love for me. It hurt, trust me, but now at least I know. But regardless of experiences like this, we need to share our talents and we need to support others in their endeavors. You know why? Because what we put out into the world comes back to us. Because the more we interact with people, the more they know what we’re about, the more likely someone will connect us to someone else that will help us grow and create even more. Now sometimes, when we collaborate with others we are pushed out of our comfort zones. I’m pretty sure that’s the second most popular reason why so many of us avoid it. When I got back from flat and was so excited to share the steps I took to do that this season with you, my daughter, Mackenzie, offered to co-host and produce a Zoom program with me. Well, if you think for one second that I’d shrug off the opportunity to work with my daughter on something, then you don’t know me very well (haha). So, even though I was very much out of my comfort zone, we did this together. And no, it was not my favorite thing, but I saw it through to the end, and I also created materials that I’m using here on Season 4 with you because of it – not to mention how much I grew from the experience. We learn so much from others, and if we opt out of these relationships, we learn less in life. So, who can you collaborate with and how can you find them? Here are four easy ideas… First, start with those you love. Bounce your ideas off them and really listen to their input. Consider this a brainstorming session. Don’t go in believing that you’ve already got it all figured out, but also don’t feel as if you have to act on their suggestions. Second, look at your friend and business relationships. How can you and the people around you use each other’s strengths? How can you add value to each other’s lives? Just make sure you are giving to others before asking for anything. Third, search online. There are so many online groups where people with similar interests gather. There are also groups where you can find local people. Get to know people this way. You can learn a lot about someone’s personal interests and skills online. Always remember to be careful when meeting them in real life – I know you know this, just needed to have a little mom moment with you. Fourth, visit establishments that showcase your interest. If it’s crafts, find a market. If it’s cars, go to a car show. If it’s homebuilding or anime or romance writing, go to a convention. You get my drift. Get to know people there. Start conversations, give genuine compliments, ask for advice, pass out your card, exchange numbers, connect online. Get out into the world with your ideas. Engage those you know and respect, and immerse yourself into the world of what you’re exploring. There is so much right at our fingertips. We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else. I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: Collaborating with others is just another way to show our vulnerability. It’s another way to open the pathways in our creative brains. It’s one more way to surrender ourselves to the universe. What’s meant for us is coming; there is nothing we can do to stop it, but what we can do is free ourselves so we can enjoy it. Remember, you Motivate Me!

Uncover what is preventing you from taking big action, learn the value of small steps, differentiate between the journey and the outcome, and determine what is in you to do! MM559- Take a Big Action Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Take a Big Action So here we are in Season 4 of Motivate Me! working our way back from being flat together, getting our heads and hearts back in the game of life. Some of us have been deeply impacted by the chaos of these times. My head has been swimming, too. So many of us have been sick, so many of us have long lasting effects from being sick. So many of us have lost loved ones or jobs or just the motivation to engage in life. So many of us are living in fear, worried about falling ill or worried about getting the vaccine, or not to get the vaccine, or worried about if other people have gotten the vaccine, or not. And if you were already traveling through something and not feeling like yourself before all this, like me, then all of this just dragged you under deeper. Here is my general rule of thought in all things “life” – I believe that I’m here on this planet to experience all of life, to feel all that life has to offer: the love, the fear, the change, the challenges, the joy, the confusion… all of it. And I may not always know the direction I should be heading in my life, but I do know that even that not knowing, that the wait-time, the pauses in my life that I may feel stuck in, it is all meaningful, it is all powerful, and it is all meant for me. So, while I look around and cannot believe the state of our world and country right now, even though it scares the crap out of me and I fear for what the world will be like for my new grandson, I know that sitting idle and wasting the time I have here is not what I am meant to do. And I know that it is my responsibility to pull myself out of this because that action is part of what I am meant to experience. So, if you’re with me on this, if you’re ready to take charge of what you can control, because let’s face it there’s a lot out of our control right now, then I suggest you visit each of the episodes we’ve shared with you so far this season because each of the small steps I’ve taken have gotten me to this episode: Take a Big Action. In Episode 532, the first of this season, I share with you the details of how I’d fallen flat, about who and what inspired me to get my head and heart back in the game. All of this is what lead me back to you, because my passion, my calling, my person wants and knows that my purpose is to help you get your head and heart back in the game. And, Motivate Me! Friends, I am telling you, you can bounce back so quickly and it will feel incredible! I don’t want to sound like a fortune cookie, but I mean it when I always say that we are only a decision away from changing our lives. Whether you want to create art, lose weight, get in a relationship, travel, learn a new skill. It’s ridiculous how quickly we can change our lives. How quickly we can expand our person through new experiences and new people. If you’re home and unhappy, make the decision to change: add something new to your life or get rid of something old. I am pretty sure you know exactly what you need to do. Start small with this change. I did. And then keep doing what you’re doing. Enjoy what you’re doing. And when you feel the excitement come to you, ride that wave, and don’t be afraid to go big. This is what happened to me. I started doing all the steps I’ve included in this season. I was aggressively seeking myself, I had allowed myself the opportunity to become anything, to recreate myself AGAIN – but it brought me back to you. And I fought it. But it happened: I had a brainstorm that what I was going through, the steps to climbing back from feeling flat, could be exactly what you needed, too. It made me understand my struggle, my pause, my frustration with feeling stagnant. I believe I was meant to travel through that so I could share all of this with you. My story is important to this episode because I had to make a decision. I had to decide if I was going to take the big action of reconnecting with you. There is a commitment in doing this that I take very seriously. Mentally, I needed time to prepare for this, so with my brainstorm came the idea of starting slowly. That I would just share notes and photos with you of what I was doing on my Instagram. But, I quickly realized that some of my followers are only on Facebook, so I thought: “No big deal, I’ll just also share these steps on my business Facebook Page.” Then I realized that I needed to also keep my Motivate Me! Friends in my private Facebook group in the know, so I decided to share there, too. And well, I already had my Twitter account established, so I should share there as well. Most important to know is how excited I felt about this. How good my person felt getting engaged with you again. Creating again. Having a voice and a point of view again. I went from, literally, ordering groceries, cooking meals, and watching Netflix all day to reading and writing like a beast, to posting all over social media. To utilizing all of the avenues I had established years ago to communicate with you that had been lying dormant for years… except for one more thing: my podcast. And I let that idea sit for a hot minute. I had been low-key, low-commitment minded. I wasn’t looking for the big action. So, I just got started with those smaller steps, but it didn’t last long. I came to understand that I had more to say than could be translated in a social media post, and I had a website and podcast sitting there waiting to be used. I came to find out later that my podcast actually did need to be reinstated because I had turned a blind eye to it, feeling too disappointed in myself to check on its progress. During those few years, even hearing the word “podcast” filled me with self-loathing. Ugh, I felt like I’d failed. Like I’d lost. Like I let myself and my loved ones down. But here I was, filled with happiness and joy again, and ready to push through that sadness and disappointment to get that podcast up and running! To get to you again! To take that big action – and I understood the commitment of this action. And here we are, 28 episodes in and only four more episodes to go for this season, and once again, I proved to myself that I can do big things. And I have bigger things planned for after this. Because one small step leads to many small steps, which leads to big action, which leads to bigger actions – even if you experience failures in between. I’m on this path now, and you can be, too. I’m sure you can feel my joy and excitement here? These are much different feelings than I had the first time around when we were starting this show. Then, I was so much more afraid of failure. I was so insulted when friends didn’t listen, subscribe, review, and share my episodes. Didn’t they know what it took to put myself out there like this? Didn’t they know what I was risking? I’m in a different place these days, mostly it’s a place that has proven to me that despite it all, despite the opportunity for success and the risk of failure, empowering others is my purpose, and for now, doing this show with you and writing my books is my path. It’s important for me and for you to understand that as we reach for whatever it is that’s calling us, we pay attention to the journey and not the outcome. I sure am growing from my time with you. I sure do enjoy this. And despite anything, success or not, it’s something I am called to do. Thank you, for making my life more exciting and more meaningful. We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else. I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: You don’t need to start your endeavors with a big action. I started with many small ones. But what you do need to do, is recognize when it’s time to take the leap into making it something bigger, and then do it. Not for any other reason except for the fact that it is in you to do. Find the joy you want to have in your heart, it’s out there waiting for you. Remember, you Motivate Me!

Have you been plagued with the question, “What is my life purpose”? Get your answers here in six easy steps! And bonus, find out what differentiates you from others who have the same purpose. MM558- Uncover Your Life Purpose Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Uncover Your Life Purpose I am really excited to talk to you about today’s topic, Life Purpose. Life purpose is kind of a controversial topic. People have their own ideas about what exactly life purpose means, if it’s a real thing, or not; if it matters if you “achieve” it over your lifetime, or not. To me, the best part about the idea of a life purpose is that a) You get to a place in your own life and mind where your thinking is heightened enough to start questioning the idea “Why am I here?” And b) You go on your own journey of discovery, seeking knowledge about it. And that journey is a long one. It’s not about getting one person’s opinion and believing it, it’s about getting tid bits of information over time and piecing them together in a way that makes sense for you. Because similar to your life purpose, your discoveries and ideas about it are personal to you. Understanding what life purpose is and discovering your own is an intimate process. I don’t know in which stage of this process you’re in currently, but if you’re like me, you hit a place or will hit a place in your search for purpose where you feel like all you’ve done is random and purposeless. That either you’ve bounced around and done many things and none seem connected and you don’t feel like you’ve arrived anywhere, or you feel like you’ve arrived somewhere, but it’s not the right where. I want to share an activity with you that I created to help me figure out my direction and my purpose. I had completed a coaching program and was starting my podcast – but I needed to figure out what my podcast would be about? How could I help the most people with the amazing information and tools I had learned? Who did I want to help? What mattered most to me? What am I about? So here are the six steps I took to figure all of this out. (I suggest pausing this episode as we move along and doing these steps with me, but feel free to revisit and revise your answers over the next few weeks. It took me three weeks of revisiting this process to find the answer I was looking for. And before doing this, I just could not see any of what I found here.) Step One: I’d like you to make a list of all the jobs you’ve had in your life. For me, that included: working at a pizzeria, at a MacDonald’s, at a Macy’s, at a nuclear power plant, for an accountant, teaching high school English, running a karaoke business, being a Girl Scout Troop Leader, and more. So, Step 1, just list all the jobs you’ve had. (Feel free to pause here.) Step Two: Look at your list of all the jobs you’ve had and circle the ones you enjoyed most. The ones that made you feel a certain kind of way. (When I was doing this, I remember looking at my list and feeling almost a sense of shame in how disconnected all my jobs seemed. I had gone to school to be a nail technician; I had gotten my real estate license… I look back now and see that I didn’t even put those on my list!) So, circle the jobs you enjoyed most. Step Three: Of the jobs you circled, write a WHY sentence for each. Why did you circle them? Why are they important to you? What about them made you feel a certain kind of way? Here are the three jobs I enjoyed most from my long list, and here are my WHYs: Karaoke Host – I enjoyed my job as a karaoke host because I could help people make friends and find belonging, I could create the kind of fun that pushed people’s boundaries, and I could provide a medium where people could showcase their talents. Girl Scout Leader -I enjoyed my job/role as Girl Scout Leader because I could expose my troop to new experiences that made them feel powerful and important, where they could be creative team players, and where they could formulate ideas and have a space to communicate them without judgment. Teacher – I enjoyed my job as a teacher because I could provide students with opportunities to achieve success where they could be in control, take creative risks, build relationships, and see their potential. (So take the time to write a detailed sentence for each of the jobs you’ve had that really spoke to you in your life.) Step Four: Identify similarities between your WHYs. What are the common denominators? (It is here that I started to find the connections I was searching for because I could see that while the jobs seemed very different, what moved me about them was very similar. So I paired this information down further.) Here are my responses: I like helping others find a sense of belonging and belief in self It is important to me that others feel important I enjoy creating risk-taking environments that inspires personal growth Step Five: Sum up your common denominators in one phrase (If it’s easier for you to put it in sentence form, that works too.) Phrase: belief in self, risk-taking, sense of belonging Step 6: Distill this phrase down into one word – what does this phrase make you feel? This is your purpose. (You have to do some magic here, look at your common denominators and take a step back to see the BIGGER picture. What is the feeling behind it?) For me, the word is empowerment My purpose is to empower others One of the biggest things I would like you to take away from this is experience is that life purpose is not a role that we play, it is a feeling we get. This feeling is what we need to be chasing. Now, we know there are many other people who share our same purpose, so what makes us unique? It is these three final components that I’d like to share with you today that cause us to live our purpose out differently from others who share our same word. The first component is the characteristics of our core self. Listen, when you leave this body behind, your soul will still be that energetic, giggly self, or it will still be that chill, methodical self, or it will still be that sensitive, gentle self. Our soul self or true self or our core self remains with us – this is your personality!   The second component is our personal passions. Our personal interests must come into play when considering one’s purpose. Maybe activism is your word, but is your focus on marine life, rain forests, feminism, politics, race, gender, sexuality? Your interests are important; they determine your direction. And the final and third component is our personal talents. While you may be a great public speaker, someone else may fear public speaking but be an excellent writer. You may be an amazing performer and get your energy from playing on stage with a band, but someone else may be a skilled teacher or producer in the same industry. Know this: Our purpose is seen in everything we do. Big and small. If empowerment is my word, then I am going to bring it to every experience of my life, whether I am playing with my two-year-old neighbor, I am helping a friend pack her home, I am supporting my husband with his career, or I am writing a book about traveling the fifty states in ninety days to inspire people to live a life that is more exciting or more meaningful. We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else. I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: No experiences are wasted experiences. They are all meant for us. We are meant to take away knowledge, skills, and lessons from all of the roles we play in life. There are stepping stones that may look like diversions and there are pauses that may make us feel like we’re stagnant, they have each brought us to where we are now and each leading us to where we go next. Find the common denominators that will prove to you who you are. It’s who you’ve always been. Then use your interests and talents to get that feeling you love so much back into your life. Remember, you Motivate Me!

Get ready to identify your fears, find out the key ingredient to facing them, and take actionable steps to move through them. We got this and we can do it together! MM557 – Battle Fear – Nix Excuses Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Battle Fear – Nix Excuses My goal today is to give you actionable steps that will help you identify your fears, control them, and dispel them, so you can get out of your head and into achieving your goals. Today’s episode is chock full of information. For the time being, kick back and listen in. After you do, you can head over to motivatemepodcast.com where all of this information is in print for you in the show notes. Just click on this episode and the show notes will appear. So, fear… I understand fear. The night before the crew I’d hired came to town, I was having dinner with my daughter. She had come to spend time with me before I ventured out on my ninety-day trip to interview people in each of the fifty states about passion. I’m pretty sure I looked like a crazed woman during our meal. I was unexpectedly overwhelmed with fear. I’m sure it was the feelings I had of not wanting to leave my home, my husband, my daughter, and my new puppy. I’m sure it was because I was going to be gone for a long time. I’m sure it was because I was taking a completely blind step off of a very high dive. But mid bite of I don’t even remember what, I just started to shake. The kind of shake that makes your hands tremble and your face quiver. And tears just started to stream from my eyes. Now, my daughter was 24-years-old, she wasn’t a young child, but she didn’t know what was happening, and it was apparent that my fear was scaring her. I remember her saying, “Oh my God, Mom.” Like, what’s going on? So on top of what I was feeling, I needed to find a way to comfort her. I looked at her with calm and honesty and napkins in my hand, and I said, “Mackenzie, don’t worry, I’m fine. What you’re seeing is fear. Sometimes fear can affect us physically. I’m sorry, I don’t want to scare you. I’m going to be fine.” And after a pause that included deep breaths and nose-blowing, I told her, “This is not a bad thing, and it’s not a bad thing for you to see, because you’re going to watch me push through this.” And she did. Whew. I get emotional just thinking about this. Now, my trip is an extreme example in many people’s standards, but any of us can have a similar reaction to any type of challenge we face. Especially, I feel, when these challenges are self-induced. I mean, did I HAVE to put myself through this? No, I could have very easily stayed in my comfort zone. In any case, the first thing we have to do is acknowledge our fear – especially if we’re allowing it to hold us back from achieving our dreams or goals. Many of us make excuses for why we’re not doing what we’d really like to do, instead of identifying it for what it is: we’re freaking afraid. We’re afraid we’ll fail. We’re afraid of what others will think about us. We’re afraid we’re not smart or talented enough. We’re afraid we’re not young, pretty, or fit enough. We’re afraid we’ll look dumb, etc. It’s important to know that the reason we stay inside our comfort zones all stem from our ego. Our ego communicates with us through our internal dialogue and uses the fear we create to control our actions. Two previous episodes come to mind for me when I think about the ego, so if you’d like to hear more on that, you can check out Episode 555, “Say No to Negativity” and Episode 550, “Experiment with Your Craft.” But the bottom line is that we can control the ego and the mind. We get to choose what we believe. All we have to do is flip the script on our internal dialogue. Let me give you an example of what I mean here. Maybe this idea: “I don’t have enough experience” is holding you back. But, what if you change that notion to “I have a unique experience worth sharing”? The idea that I have a unique experience worth sharing is the affirmation I use to share my ideas with you. Do you see what I’m doing here? Here are three more examples of how you can “flip the script”: We can change the negative thought, “People won’t find what I have to say important” to the positive idea that “Many people share my interests.” We can change: “People won’t like me” to “Not everyone will like me, but many will.” We can change: “I am too old” to “I bring the kind of wisdom that comes from experience.” You know, there is really ONE main idea that we keep revisiting in one way or another throughout Season 4 of Motivate Me! One main thing we MUST do in order to come back from flat and regain our passion again. To sum this main idea up in one word, it’s “control.” Here’s a list of The Seven Things We Need to Control to Battle Fear and Nix Excuses:             1) our direction in life             2) our egos             3) our beliefs             4) our decisions             5) our internal dialogue             6) our feelings             7) our actions I understand that life takes its turns and things like accidents and illnesses sometimes take priority. But even during those times, we can dream and we can envision the future we want for ourselves, so that when the time comes we’re ready to act. For some of you this conversation is making you anxious. Why do you think that is? What thought are you having right now that makes you nervous about taking control of your direction, inner dialogue, and life? I’m going to give you a second to think about this, and then I’ll take a gander. Maybe you need to hit pause for a second? Is it my turn now? Here’s my guess: Is it your self-doubts? I happen to have an activity prepared for you that will help you Kick out Your Self-Doubt, and after that, we are going to get into the elephant in the room that we need to address! To Kick Out Your Self-Doubt, when you get some quiet time, I would like you to answer these five questions (You can search Motivate Me! with Lynette Renda on Facebook or Instagram to see printed versions of this activity). 1. What you would like to achieve? 2. What is your top self-doubt? 3. What is the worst-case scenario of you attempting this? 4. What is the best-case scenario if you attempt this? 5. How will trying to achieve this change your current situation? Here are my answers to this as an example: 1. I would like to achieve getting my book about traveling the fifty states in ninety days published. 2. My top doubt is that the book won’t be good enough to get published. 3. The worst-case scenario if I attempt this is that I’ll take the time to write it and it won’t get published. 4. The best-scenario if I attempt this is that I could get my book published. 5. Trying to achieve this will change my current situation because I will have no regrets about not writing a book about my trip, I will always have a book I wrote about my trip, I will make connections with people in the publishing industry, and I could possibly receive feedback that will help me better the book. Now, writing a book is just extremely time consuming but the risk is low. You may need to invest money or change careers, or you may just need to start a side hustle or volunteer. I’m not sure what fears and doubts you need to move past and why. Maybe you want to audition for the local theater or want to get the courage to sing karaoke. This exercise will work for all doubts big and small. Put it on paper, look at it, determine if you’re allowing fear to deter you. So, here is the elephant in the room we need to address. We need to distinguish between excuses and obstacles, and we need to provide you with the right armor BEFORE you begin your battle. What’s an excuse? It is a made-up illusion we create when we’re afraid to proceed, one we use to make us feel better about not doing what we know we should. What is an obstacle? It’s a hurdle that pops up on our path to going for what we want. There’s a fine line between excuses and obstacles and that is simply wanting it badly enough! So what if we prepare for our obstacles before we even encounter them? It is as simple as these two steps:             Step One: List three obstacles you project encountering on the path to achieving your                                    goals.             Step Two: Write a solution for each of the obstacles you project encountering on the path                                          to achieving your goals. You and I both know that you are aware of what your challenges will probably face. Maybe it’s childcare, maybe it’s marketing knowledge, maybe it’s transportation? Find solutions for these obstacles BEFORE starting. Maybe you can swap babysitting dates with a friend, maybe you can take a short marketing webinar or sit down with a knowledgeable friend, maybe you can figure out how to use the transit system to get where you need to be. We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else. I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: I have given you solid actionable items to work on here. Hopefully, you don’t find it overwhelming. Hopefully, you take some quiet time to revisit this information and apply it to yourself. There’s so much in our control, and yet, we pretend it isn’t. It’s human to be afraid, but we can move through the fear if we see that our doubts are unfounded and that we can resolve our obstacles before we begin. I am just like you. I’m moving through my own fears and doubts, and I’m leaning on my problem-solving skills to prevent me from being deterred. We can do this. We can do this together. I’d really love to know what you’re working on achieving, big and small, so come find me, friends! Remember, you Motivate Me!

Description: Too often we allow feelings of perfectionism to stunt our progress. Find out if you’re a perfectionist, learn why, and see how it’s holding you back. Next step: complete the Push through Perfectionism Activity to understand that you win the majority of the time – even when you feel far from perfect! MM556 – Bail on Perfectionism Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Bail on Perfectionism Too often we allow the idea of perfectionism to hold us back. We let it stop us from attempting something new, and we let it stop us from creating. Let me give you some examples. For starters, I never saw myself as a perfectionist but my husband and daughter started pointing out some of the ways I do things differently than them. For example, the way I cut vegetables! My husband used to be a line cook for Perkins, so breakfast at our house can be pretty spectacular. Since I’m his prep cook, I start cutting the vegetables for our omelets and home fries before he gets to the kitchen. I, basically, got kicked out of the kitchen because I take “too much time” cutting the peppers, onions, and mushrooms because I try to make them all the same size. Isn’t that what you need to do so they cook evenly? My husband comes barreling into the kitchen and he cuts everything in the same haphazard way he folds his laundry or makes a ham sandwich. That’s something I can never understand: throwing all the ham into the middle of the bread in one big lump. You can bet that my ham is dispersed evenly throughout the whole sandwich. I will tell you something, though, his tastes better! My daughter is similar to my husband, she’ll approach a project and boom! it’s done. And I’m on the other side of the room not having even started yet because I’m feeling anxious about it not coming out right. Of not having exactly what I need to do the job. I, literally, write with mechanical pencils because I don’t like seeing things crossed out on my paper. Even though I’m only writing notes or journaling. Pen is a big commitment, you know what I mean? But here’s the thing: If we don’t act on an idea in the first five minutes from the creation of it, chances are we never will. And in order to act this quickly, we have to get past our feelings of perfectionism. When I finished my undergraduate degree in English and Education, even after all of my student-teaching experiences, I didn’t feel ready to be in the classroom. I didn’t feel educated enough. I felt imposter syndrome, I felt like maybe if I had a master’s degree I would be better prepared. My husband’s like, “What do you need a master’s for, you just got your teaching degree, that’s what it’s for?” I said, “I don’t know, I don’t feel ready!” Our perfectionism is driven by fear. Fear that we won’t be smart enough, talented enough, attractive enough, perfect enough. We have to determine a jumping off point. We have to decide to take that leap of faith. We have to accept the fact that we will be nervous, that we may feel like a fake or a fraud, and that once we do get started, we may need to pivot or edit. But if we don’t act at all because we are too scared of not being good enough, or because we never feel ready, we stay stagnant and risk becoming bitter and resentful. I really had to push past these feelings when I got the idea to travel the fifty states in ninety days interviewing people about their passion. I did act in the first five minutes by sending a message to someone I knew to see if she’d be interested in accompanying me on a trip like this as my assistant. But here I was a new podcaster and new professional coach, I had just resigned from teaching to work on this career, and I was talking about taking this huge, very expensive, very timely, very complex step. So much could go wrong. And the timeline only allotted me so much time to prepare – but honestly, would I ever REALLY feel prepared for a trip like this one? I go into detail about how I acquired a crew and planned the trip in Episode 533, if you’re interested in that, but important to note here is that I had A LOT to push through to go through with this trip. Like all the things I just mentioned and the fact that I was a 48-year-old chunky mother figure who just decided to hit the road and interview people in each of the fifty states. I needed to buy equipment, I needed a new van, I needed to learn how to run body mics and record, and edit the show from the road. There was a huge learning curve in a lot of areas and many points of exit where I would have been justified in cancelling this trip because I felt ill-prepared. But I pushed through and I know you can too! Here’s what I’d like you to do: I’d like you to make a list for yourself of all the things you’ve done in life where when you started you were panicked. I want you to list them all, and when you do this, envision yourself at the start. Reconnect with the feelings you had at the start. Make your whole list! When you’re done, I want you to go back to the list, start at the top again. Look at what you have written there, envision how you felt at the end of that moment in time, and write a number. I want you to write a number on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the best) that represents how confident you felt when this moment in time came to an end. Now listen, I am not saying you won’t have a thing or two on your list that you think you could have been better off not doing, and I’m not saying you won’t look at something on your list and wish you did it differently. But I think you will overwhelmingly see that much of what you pushed yourself to do is what’s shaped you as a person and moved you forward in your life. So do this for your entire list. Walking into teaching, I would have given myself a four on this list, but when I left, I would give myself a nine. Walking into my Fifty States in Ninety Days trip, I would have also given myself a four on this list, and after completing it, I would have also given myself a nine. I’m seeing a trend here. For me, I am tough on myself and the fours are because I feel I have so much to learn, but they are no lower than that because I know my intentions are true and I have a want to be all-in. On the way out, I feel confident and capable but know there are always things I could have done better. Always people I could have treated better. And maybe this is my perfectionism creeping in, but I am good with nines, I am proud of my nines. This list you just made would be really great to share with a friend who thinks that you are braver than them, that you always have it together and are never fearful. Or maybe there’s a child in your life who would benefit from seeing how human you are; that you have had to push past fears in your life, too, but that you emerged on the other side glad you did. We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else. I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: The truth is that if we allow perfectionism to keep us grounded, we will have no one to blame but ourselves. And yes, we may try something new and feel like we failed. Or when we look back, we may see all that we should have done differently. But we will have walked away stronger, smarter, more interesting, and more knowledgeable than we would have ever been. And most importantly, we will never have to wonder what if… Remember, you Motivate Me!

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Say No to Negativity Nothing is more detrimental to our goals and our mental health than negativity. And in order to make change in our lives, we can’t allow naysayers and emotional drainers and doubters to dissuade us or invade us. Before we get started today, let’s talk about what negativity is and where we often see it. The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of negativity is “the expression of criticism of or pessimism about something.” First let’s talk about a few obvious places we can easily spot negativity, and then we’ll talk about why it keeps showing up in our lives. First: The Internet As much as I love the Internet, it’s an absolute breeding ground for negativity.             – People come on intentionally to antagonize others – and sometimes even to “troll,” as                   they say, which means to post inflammatory statements just to watch people fight             – People are cruel to each other – they say things to people they probably would not say in               person (Or at least I hope they wouldn’t!)             – People judge each other and their opinions or actions harshly (without even knowing               details to a person’s story)             – People log on to “rant” or “vent” (I can tell you right now, if a post starts with either of               these words, I scroll right on by – there is no value in that for me?) Second: Work As much as you may love your coworkers, work can become a feeding frenzy for negativity.             – People hone in on what’s wrong, instead of finding solutions because then they can               play the victim             – People like to complain because, as they say, “misery loves company”             – People show their value under the guise of dissatisfaction (“Look at everything they               have me doing!”)             – People dissuade each other because they don’t want others to become more successful               than them Third: Loved Ones The attitudes and opinions of close friends and family carry the most weight for us and their negativity impacts not only our actions but our belief in self.             – They dump their emotions on us, sometimes often and often abruptly             – We feel a sense of responsibility for their happiness             – They try to control us through fear – to keep us safe             – They cause us to doubt – to keep us from being more successful than them – because our               success will make them feel like less These are just a few examples, but I’m sure it’s easy to identify the negative situations and people in your life. My question to you is: Why does this negativity keep showing up for you? Here is my guess: The Law of Attraction dictates that whatever we put out into the world comes back to us multiplied. If this is so, could you just be getting back to you the negativity you yourself are putting out into the world? Maybe you’re thinking right now that this is impossible because you are a kind, solutions-based, non-gossipy kinda gal. But can I ask you to look one more place? A place where only you inhabit? A place where all things you stem? How is your internal dialogue? Are you one of those people who encourages and supports others? Someone whose heart hurts when someone you know can’t see their own worth, yet you beat yourself up every chance you get? What names do you call yourself when you’re frustrated with your own actions, when you had cookies the same day you started your diet, when you made a mistake at work, when you forgot to pack your child’s snack for camp: “stupid,” “idiot,” “loser,” or worse? We are so hard on ourselves. And negativity is so detrimental to our person. I do have some amazing news, though: We can control the negativity in our lives. The first step is to know where you will encounter it and the next step is to nix it! Because regardless of any situation or any person, no one controls our feelings but us. We cannot control others but we can absolutely control how they make us feel. I have made a list for you of the ten ways you can nix negativity in your life and let positivity become your habit! 1. Remove toxic people from your life             – delete the toxic people (those that you can) from your social media, your e-mail, your                   phone contacts (don’t forget, you can “silence” people online without deleting them 2. Make the decision to be a positive person. 3. Do not judge. Appreciate people for who they are and where they’re at in their journey. This is not always easy, but if you take a step back and look at the big picture, you’ll understand that we’re all just learning… including you. 4. Actually believe your positive thoughts: Yes, you are awesome! Yes, you got the promotion because you are the best candidate, not because no one else wanted it! 5. Flip the Script in your head: When negativity creeps in, change the narrative. For example: Your coworker didn’t ignore you this morning because she doesn’t like you, she just didn’t see you, or she was in a rush, or she has something on her mind. 6. Understand that the cliché “ignorance is bliss” works in your favor – let’s say your coworker did see you and didn’t say hello… that’s her problem, not yours, and you’re better off believing that “she just didn’t see you, or she was in a rush, or she has something on her mind.” 7. Assume the best to attract the positive! Because why not? How will assuming the worst in any situation change the situation, make the situation better, or help you in any way? That was so nice that your mom bought you new bath towels – it’s not because she thinks your old ones are ratty, it’s because she knew you’d like them! (We can get so negative about the actions of our family, can’t we? About what we THINK their intentions are.) 8. When you see and feel the negativity brewing, pivot! Find a way to leave the situation. 9. When you feel yourself becoming negative, refuse the thought and distract yourself with a positive thought about something else- do not entertain negativity. 10. Truly love and accept yourself. Just know that you are awesome – you are perfectly imperfect, just like God intended! When you don’t play the negativity game, people will stop bringing it to you because you will make them feel small. So rise above it. Put positivity out into the world and THAT is what you will get more of in your life. We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else. I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: When you refuse negativity, positivity becomes who you are, and what you put out into the world you get more of. This new habit will help you easily identify and walk away from negative people and situations. You will feel the weight of it, like a sickness, and you won’t tolerate it in your life. Remember that it’s all a decision, and if you’re like the rest of us, your internal dialogue will be your greatest conquest. Remember, you Motivate Me!

Being vulnerable can build confidence and clarity, even when the outcome can be seen as disappointing. Touch base with your passion here, see how you can redirect it, if that’s what you need to take a more vulnerable approach! MM554 – Seek out Spaces Where You can be Vulnerable Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Seek out Spaces Where You can be Vulnerable If you’re joining us for the first time this season, welcome, new Motivate Me! Friend! Our goal at Motivate Me! is to inspire you to live a life that’s more exciting and/or more meaningful. We do this in Seasons 1-3 by interviewing people who are living passionate lives, so you can steal some of their tricks to apply to your world. But here, in Season 4, we are sharing tips, tricks, and techniques that will help you reconnect with your passion or redirect your passion so you can get your head and heart back in the game. There are many ways we can connect with our passion. Sometimes it’s through our careers but often times it’s not. Sometimes it’s something we make money at, but that’s not always the case either. Passions are so unique to us. You may be into creating art through paintings, sculptor, music, writing, interior design, food, or photography. Or you may be driven to help people or spread joy or be an advocate for the under-privileged or the under-represented. Your passion might be about the environment, horticulture, animals, or even architecture or teaching or textiles. The list is truly endless. Can you see how exciting it would be to be part of the world of politics or in the Olympic arena or behind the scenes in the fashion? I find all of it exciting! That’s why my passion is exploring all of this with all of you. Over the past few years and through the pandemic, I fell away from my passion for a time. It was the prodding of some loved ones that motivated me to aggressively seek myself again, and the steps I took to reconnect with myself is what I’m sharing with you here in Season 4 of Motivate Me!. This is the 23rd episode of this season, and it’s during this part of my journey that I decided I wanted to be more open, more honest, more vulnerable. I think because I’m a positive person people think I don’t have struggles, I assure you I do. We all do. It was scary to be open in this way but it was also exciting. One of the ways I decided to put get out of my comfort zone was to share my intentions and my greatest struggle with a group of people in a small private Facebook group. I was very honest about what I was trying to accomplish with my podcast and I was ver honest about what I feel is my greatest struggle, which is finding my value. How do we know if what we find important will be valuable to others? And don’t we need to feel like what we’re doing is important to people in order to push through, in order to put our hearts into something, in order to put our hearts on paper or out onto the airwaves? I kept the post simple, but it was heartfelt and direct. And I subscribed to the idea that this post would help me become a more transparent person, that it would help me articulate my goals, and it would help me put my intentions out to the universe. Now, I want to make sure I’m clear about this: just because we decide to be more open as people and put ourselves out to the world, people are not obligated to respond to us in the manner we seek. So if you choose to do this, know that with this comes risk. Here’s what happened for me: I shared the post and while I waited for responses, I refocused on the idea that the sharing of my doubts were the important part here. And then I waited and didn’t check the post until the next day: 8 people in the group of 16 had seen it, only 2 “liked” it, and only one person left a comment – a comment that felt more obligatory than anything else. There was opportunity for disappointment here. Not just because, yeah, it would have felt great to get some feedback about how what I was doing was important, but because I had hoped for any kind of engagement in what I’d said. I mean, couldn’t they see my vulnerability? But guess what? I learned something pretty great here! I learned that while I was disappointed, more than that, I remained undeterred in my direction. Because through the conception of the post, the writing of it, the posting of it; through being vulnerable, I had gained confidence in my message and in myself. I learned a little more about me that day, mainly that I don’t need validation as much as I thought I did. Learning more about yourself – THAT is what I want for you. And you can gain this by being a more vulnerable person. Here is someone elses story that is pretty neat, and it will show you two really interesting things: 1) how we can approach our passion from different angles and reap maximum reward, and 2) how we need to practice vulnerability in order to do that. When I taught high school English, one of the history teachers I worked with also played guitar in a low-key band. He was really into teaching and history, he really loved what he did, but playing the guitar brought something very different out in him. I can see now where these two things collided for him: teachers are part entertainer, and this man was just as in the know about the history of music as he was about the subjects he taught. He took his passion for history and paired it with his musical talent. This makes so much sense to me now and I always found it amazing that he would perform at school events with current and past students – do you find this brave? To be an equal on stage with your students? It’s a really humble and vulnerable place to be, don’t you think? We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else. I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: Being vulnerable is hard and most of the time we don’t know what we want to get out of being vulnerable – and when we get it, there’s a really good chance we’ll be disappointed in it. But that must not stop us because in the end, we get the opportunity to learn more about ourselves and gain the clarity we need to move forward, which is all we’re looking for anyway. Remember, you Motivate Me!

We talk about so many great things here: about where you can get information that will help you discover a passion or goal, about the power of having the right materials, about universal materials we all need on our creative quest, and about how to acquire materials on a low budget – and who doesn’t want that? MM – 553 – Get More Materials Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Get More Materials Episode 542 talks all about gathering the necessary materials – materials that will help rev your creative engine and reconnect you with your passion. If you haven’t listened to Episode 542, I think it’s a great idea, especially if you’re someone who’s in search of their passion or in search of a goal to achieve. Because in this stage of my process, I knew I was searching for something but I had no desires. So maybe Episode 542 can help you, too. The general idea of gathering your materials in the first place was to kickstart your exploration process. It was to get you to play again, play with the materials that speak to you. Now, I wonder when you reached out to gather materials, did you, like me, have some around your home that you could start to play with? Did you have a good idea where those materials were, and you went over and just picked them up again? I knew were mine were because I had a sense of guilt every time I saw them, because I knew I should be using them, and I wasn’t. My materials are writerly things. I knew exactly where I kept my blank notebooks and favorite pencils, so I started this process by picking up one little, one-subject notebook. I grabbed one pencil. And that is how this began. Very quickly, though, I felt myself being pulled in many creative directions when I sat down to write: I wanted to collect notes on what I’d been reading, but I also had begun writing non-fiction and journaling. And I wanted to write down other writing or business ideas I was having so they didn’t distract me, so I would finish things I was currently working on. All of this began to overwhelm my little notebook, so I went back into the cabinet and pulled out five more one-subject notebooks. I went back to the drawer and pulled out a black marker. I labeled each notebook by subject making sure to have one about my “50 States in 90 Days” book that I’m writing and one about this journey I am taking with you: “Coming Back from Flat.” I had all the notebooks labeled and I was filling pages in each one, and you know what happened? So many ideas began to flow that I needed better organization, and I wanted to collect all of my ideas in one place because I know that this way they would have more weight. That they would have a better chance of materializing. So I went back into the cabinet. This time, I pulled out a brand new, fat binder and a brand new package of dividers with tabs, it was like they had been there waiting for me. Then I grabbled a stack of lined paper, my colored markers, and my clipboard. I labeled the tabs with the colorful markers and began ripping the pages from the notebooks and filing them into the binder – not caring that the notebook pages are smaller than the looseleaf ones. Then I put a stack of paper on the clipboard and I began to write. If I needed to, I added a note to a page already started in the binder, or if I needed to, I’d start a new page on my clipboard. Everything got dated and everything got filed. Before long, I ordered more looseleaf paper, a ten-pack of legal pads, some more pencils, and a few more books to read. The more I used my materials, the more I needed them. Let me say that again: The more I used my materials, the more I needed them. I started slowly with one one-subject notebook, but because I stayed organized, because I remained committed to the process of reconnecting with myself, because I gave my thoughts permission and space to expand, I paved the way for ideas to flow and I found the value in what I had to share. That’s when I realized that this whole time that is what I’d been looking for: my value. The more materials you have to play with, the more you will create… if you commit to it. And the more you do anything, the more you build your skill, develop your talent, understand your purpose. Doing this is how we are able to impact the lives of others, which is what I believe we’re here to do, which is why it’s so important that you don’t hold yourself back from what you’re meant to create. Before we go today, there are some universal materials that can help us all when we’re on this creative quest and I’m sure you’re not at all surprised that I made a list of these things for you to consider. As always, my lists are a smattering of ideas meant to help you get thinking about what would work best for you. A catalyst, if you will, because no one knows what you need better than you do. Sometimes we just need to be asked the right question or be exposed to the right thing. So, I’m going to share this list with you, then I’m going to give you a bonus list of ideas that will help you acquire materials on a low budget. First, here’s a list of materials we may not think about right out of the gate. It’s six ideas that will help to protect our physical and mental health when working creatively. 1. Diet (prepared meals or food delivery service to maintain energy, clarity, and overall health – planning is key!) 2. Exercise (gym equipment, outdoor spaces, indoor spaces, online program – schedule time to keep your body strong and healthy) 3. Meditation (meditation programs, prayer, music – whatever gives your mind a break and connects you to a higher power) 4. Personal Safety (safety gear, buddy system, support system – we have a friend who texts us when he goes out and comes back on his kayak – have a safety plan) 5. Pysical Well-being (use the proper equipment, stretch, be aware of your posture – take care of your physical self for the long game) 6. Physical Space (lighting, temperature, asthetics – it should be safe and inspirational. I currently have the blinds down, a sage and lavender candle lit, spa music playing, the light is low, there is a sleeping puppy on the chair next to me, and there’s a perfectly mixed iced coffee on the table. Because doing this with you is my passion, and I want to enjoy the process, all of it. So think about what you need to make what you’re doing enjoyable.) OK, as promised, I have another list for you: 7 Ways to Acquire Materials on a Low Budget. (Even if you don’t have a low budget, who wants to waste money?) 1. Borrow from the Library 2. Borrow from a friend 3. Rent – maybe even split the rent with a friend 4. Barter or trade (think products and services) 5. Buy used 6. Post on social media what you’re in need of – don’t forget, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” You may be helping somebody by doing this; maybe it would make someone happy to see this item being used by someone who appreciates it? 7. Get a job some place where they have what you want, so you can get what you need for free or discounted – Examples: Want to be a travel writer? Become a stewardess. Have fitness goals? Work at a gym. Need craft supplies? Get a job at a craft store. Other tools and supplies, how about Home Depot or Lowes? Want flight lessons? Maybe you could volunteer at the school in exchange for flight hours? Basically, get creative! We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else. I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: All things needs replenishment: body, mind, soul… and materials. So, keep nourishing and nurturing your gifts, talents, and goals, and seek the materials that can best help you progress to the next level – even if you have to get creative about it! We don’t do excuses here at Motivate Me!, we do actions. You got this!    Remember, you Motivate Me!

Connecting with our people is vital to the human psyche. The question is: How can we nurture this connection without losing ourselves? How can we use this connection to fill us instead of drain us? Great ideas and examples of exactly how to do this in this episode! MM552 – Connect with Your People Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Connect with Your People Today we’re going to talk about the importance of connecting with your people and its role in helping you reclaim your passion. How doing this can help you get your head and heart back in the game! First, let’s talk about why we should connect with our people, and then we’ll talk about how. Every action we take in life is done out of either fear or love. Fear is what holds us back and love is what propels us forward. Connecting with friends and family is all about love and it serves multiple purposes. For one, it clears our conscience. It clears our conscience because we know that our friends and family are doing well, because they know we care, because we are pulling our weight in our relationships. It keeps us grounded, and it’s good for our soul because caring about others is a form of service. We have to have a clear conscience if we’re trying to achieve our own goals. I don’t know about you, but if something or someone’s on my mind, I can’t focus to meditate or read or write or create anything. However, when I sit down with a clear mind and feel good that I put effort into my relationships, I’m much more creative and productive. It’s similar to when we talked in another episode about how much easier it is to focus on our wants and needs when our other responsibilities have been met, like how when the house is clean, the family is fed, and the day job is in order. Now, there’s two types of relationships we’re reaching out to when we connect with our people: one is those people who fill us with all the feel-good hormones, and the other is those that drain us. The thing is, sometimes we have relationships that are draining and we aren’t willing to walk away from them. That’s fine, I’m not here to lecture you on your relationships. I’m here to say that you need to do whatever it takes for you to free up your headspace. For many of us this means making sure we’re playing our part in our relationships. And if some of these people are the kind that bring you down, that’s fine, just mentally prepare yourself for those people and know that you need to keep an emotional distance. It’s not that you don’t care about them, it’s that you don’t allow them to consume you. Chances are, these are the relationships you most need to nurture in order to keep a clear mind. Either way, back to you! So, if you’ve been following our steps for Season 4, you’ve been journaling and writing and playing with your craft. You’ve gathered some materials that will help you explore your passions more, and you’ve been making yourself a priority. That’s awesome, and I really hope you’ve been working on this for yourself. Now it’s time to take some of that time and reinvest it in your relationships because doing so will refill you. The quandary is: How do I make time for everyone and everything in my life and still have time and energy leftover for me? Well, here’s a list of some simple ways you can stay connected to your people, ways that have a big impact but don’t create a big time commitment for you or them. Please don’t get me wrong, there are times when we can sit on the phone or FaceTime with friends and family, but there are also ways we can achieve a similar outcome without depleting our precious personal time. After we discuss this list, I’m going to share a fun and unexpected ending of what happened after I took one of these ideas to task! 6 Simple Ways to Stay Connected with Your People             1. Send an actual card or letter. This doesn’t sound super inventive, but in this day and   age it is pretty uncommon. The note can be handwritten or typed, it’s a nice gesture, it’s something you can do any time of day, and it feels nice to receive. I suggest adding a fun   sticker to the envelope or hand drawn picture, and you can also address it in a way that will make the person smile, like Jess Hottie Casiano, Justin Da man! Silva, Kelly             Awesomeness Trombley. These are actual examples… I have many more!             2. Drop off a homemade meal or dessert. To me, it’s a small amount of effort to send a     big amount of love. And, it’s really not that time consuming to put a couple of portions of a meal you’re already making into a container and run it over to a friend’s door.             3. Send a gift from Amazon. If you have Amazon Prime, shipping’s free. I just sent a             pool net to my friend for her boat… she’s always leaning over the boat to scoop garbage             from the river. What little item could you send to a friend? A funny T-shirt you know             they’d love, a specific color of nail polish? One time a grieving friend was visiting and she took comfort in my slide-on sneakers, I surprised her and shipped her pair. She felt the love.             4. Hide a gift for someone to find. I hid a Tennessee ornament under the Christmas tree at a friend’s house last year, since we’d both just moved here. Recently, she hid a NJ   ornament that was in her house in my bag. So small, but so big, right?             5. Pass along news articles or tag people in things you see online. I shared an article about sharks with one friend and tagged another in a hat I knew she’d love. They felt so seen.             6. Send a low-commitment text. A low-commitment text is one that doesn’t take much time to read or respond to. This is the story I wanted to tell you about. I’m close with many of my nieces and nephews and no matter how crazy life gets, I try to make sure they remember that I’m here if they need me, that I care about what’s happening in their lives, that I’m interested in all they’re striving for. But at the same time, I don’t want them to feel like I’m putting expectations on them. So, a few months ago, I sent a simple text to three of my nieces and three of my nephews that said: “On a scale of 1-10, how’s things?” Now, I’m expecting simple answers, I would have been happy with just a number in response, to be honest, but what I got was quite the surprise. My first niece said she didn’t know how she was doing yet, that she’d let me know as soon as she got out of the job interview she was about to walk into. (She told me later that she got the job, and she also shared with me that her fiancé had just been diagnosed with Covid.) A second niece responded right away with, “I’m in class what’s up, what do you need?” She’s fine but wants to know what she can do for me… while working full-time and going to college full-time. And my third niece sadly said she was only at a 5/10 because she’d been struggling with getting accepted into a master’s program. Then I heard from the boys. My first nephew responded that he’s at an 8 or 9 out of 10, only because he can’t live on his college campus due to Covid. But then he opened dialogue with me and seemed genuinely interested in how life’s been treating me. My second nephew asked if he could FaceTime me because he’s out in L.A., he wants to show me his new apartment, and he wants to tell me a long sorted story about an agent who wants to sign him. Then he sent me the song he’d just recorded. And my third nephew, well, he said he’s at a 5/10 because he feels he “doesn’t need to be wonderful all the time.” Hahaha. Wow. Right? One simple text that I sent to six people I care about, and I got a window into their worlds and they got to see that I care. I remember that I was working at the kitchen table the day I did this. I remember that doing this sidetracked me for a small period of time. And then I remember putting my nose to the grindstone feeling contentment in my heart and connection with my people. What can you do that will give you this same sense of contentment? Who do you need to reach out to so you can quiet your subconscious? We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else. I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: Connection with others is probably the greatest need of the human psyche. We can allow this need to drain us or to we can allow it to fill us up. The thing is, there are many aspects in life we cannot control, but this is not one of them. We can get creative in how we reach out to those we love, we can put some planning into building these relationships, and if we do this, we will feel fuller than when we started and excited to get back to achieving our own goals. Remember, you Motivate Me!

Revisit what it means to feel “flat. Be inspired to take a small action in a direction that will get you loving your life again. Get ideas on actions you may find inspirational! This week’s “truth talk” – at the end of the show – is a personal one. Lynette knows that together, we can find passion in life again. MM551- Take a Small Action Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Take a Small Action Somebody asked me recently what it means to feel flat; what it means to “come back from flat”? So before we talk today about taking a small action, I think we should clarify our goal. If you’re new to Season 4 of Motivate Me!, I suggest listening to the first episode of the season, Episode 532, where I go into detail about my personal journey into and out of feeling flat. But for right now, here’s the nut shell version: Feeling flat simply means you’ve lost your verve or your passion for engaging in life and for being creative. That you’re not moving forward in life, you’ve stopped striving for something you used to really desire, you’re not taking part in things that previously made your life more exciting or more meaningful. That your head and heart are just not in the game. I fell flat after traveling the fifty states in ninety days interviewing people about their passion. Once I got all the interviews from the trip edited and posted on my podcast and on YouTube, and my responsibilities for the trip were over, I crashed. Not because I wanted to but because I was unclear of my next moves, so I began to wait it out, and during that, I allowed life to swallow me up. That’s kind of it. But then the pandemic and quarantine came and I fell further, which is what I go into more detail about in Episode 532. But the outcome was that I drew a line in the sand and made the decision, because that’s all it is a simple decision, to reconnect with myself and my passion for life again. And I began to aggressively seek myself again. The secret to all of this is just to make an intentional effort. The steps I took to do this are what we are sharing with you all through this season. It’s the tips, tricks, and techniques I used to get my head and heart back in the game. To get back to being excited about something again. To get back to creating. I knew what I needed to do, so I just got back at it, and these are things anyone can do, that’s why I’m sharing them. All we need to do is make the decision. Life can change so quickly for the better and the worse. Have you ever had an experience where you met a new person and your whole perspective on life changed? Whether it was a romantic partner or a new friend, but you just felt so amazing about yourself and about what life now had to offer? Or have you ever started something new and it just opened up a whole world you didn’t know about? Like for example, I was just on the International Volunteer Headquarters’ website where you can select a country and get involved in helping their community, whether it’s teaching or building or community projects. The United States has opportunities on there too. Imagine how exciting getting involved in something like that could be? The people you would add to your life, the new experiences you would have. It’s like when we step out, the world opens new wings up to us. I experienced something similar to this when I joined a new exercise program and again when I started taking classes at the community college. Life shifts like this for us when we take small actions and it’s exciting and fun and illuminating, and it moves us in our next direction. Did you have desires that you know you’ve detached from? Was there a college degree, a promotion, a business, an art project, a health and fitness goal, a book idea, or something else that you know you want to achieve but you’re just in a funk? That’s what feeling flat is. If this is you, I’m glad you’re here because our goal is to help you get your mojo back. Whatever that means for you! Now, this isn’t where I tell you what your next move is, what the small action is that you need to take. I will give you some ideas on that, but this is where I tell you that moving forward begins when you take that one small action, the one that is personal to your unique talents and interests. You may know what that is right now, you may need to journal and meditate to figure that out. All of the tips, tricks, and techniques I share with you are meant for you to make your own. They’re meant for you to travel through in your own time, space, and order. I’m sharing them in the order they worked for me, but it’s your job to do some introspective work, to take time for yourself, and to figure yourself out. Find the time and make yourself a priority, our lives are only what we make them. I’m going to share with you an example of a small action I took when I started out on this journey, and then I’m going to give you more ideas of simple small actions that may or may not pertain to you. I’d been following the steps I’ve already shared with you this season. I was reading, taking notes, and journaling for starters. And in doing so, I noticed that two of the authors I was reading got book deals through publishing an essay on Medium.com. They each wrote it, submitted it, it got a ton of likes, and they were approached with a book deal. Well, wow! It had already crossed my mind to tackle an essay about my fifty states in ninety days trip, and since the book is a much longer process, why not write an essay and submit it on Medium.com? I loved the idea and you know what? It was free to do, there was no danger in it because I could always decide not to publish the essay after writing it, and the essay-writing process would be great prewriting for the book. It felt like a win-win all the way around. All I had to do was decide to do it and then follow through. I immediately got to writing. I wrote the essay and I sent it to two lifelines: 1) my daughter because she’s one smart cookie who always has great feedback and is really current, and 2) a friend who was in my master’s program and is a college English professor whom I adore. (Now notice, these are people I trust with my heart and mind, people I know will give me helpful and honest, but kind, feedback.) They gave me pretty exceptional editing ideas and I applied them. Did I submit this essay yet? No. You know why? Because writing it was the small action and submitting it is much bigger. I wasn’t ready then – but maybe I am now! You see this? Because of you, my Motivate Me! Friends, I’m feeling encouraged to submit my essay on the day this episode airs. At the end of each episode, I tell you that you motivate me, and I mean it… see! I am just like you. I am taking small actions, I am fearful, I am brave, I desire to love the life I live. We can do this together. So, I promised a list of small actions that may inspire you to get on this train with me and accomplish some cool stuff! Here it is: The Small Actions Inspo List – deeply listen to music (this inspires all art forms: writing, painting, photography, dance, etc.) – create a Pinterest board (of whatever piques your interest: interior design, fashion, woodworking, all the different diets and cooking styles, make up, etc.) – leave your gear out (want to walk more, get to the gym, rollerblade? Leave your gear where you can see it.) – make a vision board (map your brain to achieve your desires – start believing) – verbalize your ideas (but only to supportive people, find the language for your idea) – put your ideas on paper (and let them grow there – brainstorm) – research social media (is there a tribe of people you can connect with online?) – research your community (is there a tribe of people you can connect with in real life?) – play with the materials of your craft (feel them in your hands, smell them, envision what you will do with them) We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else. I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: If you know anything about Motivate Me!, you know that we’re all about: Envision. Explore. Execute. Well, if I were to take a guess, I would think that you’ve envisioned yourself doing whatever it is you want to do long before now. And if I were to take another guess, I’m thinking you have done some exploring about it. So now it’s time to execute one small action in the right direction. You don’t even have to pick up a pen if you don’t want to, it can be as small as you need. Motivate Me! Friends, you are what I’m hoping to accomplish. Helping you to live a life that is more exciting and more meaningful, one you are excited about living, has been my goal from the start of this show over five years ago. I picked up this project, I created it from nothing, I searched deep into my person to find out what truly mattered to me, and it was you. I tried to put you down. I tried to walk away. I couldn’t. I’m back at it again, trying to reach you from a different angle, because helping you is who I am. I don’t know how to explain this any differently, I just know I wish this same passion for you. And I know we can get there together. Remember, you Motivate Me!

Here’s an example: You’re a great writer but are having trouble getting that novel published! Have you ever thought that maybe non-fiction or essay writing would be a better fit for you? Have you ever thought about sharing your love for writing in other ways, such as becoming a teacher or translator? All sorts of great ideas for you here! MM – 550 – Experiment with Your Craft Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Experiment with Your Craft I’d like to start off this episode with a favorite quote, it’s a Buddhist proverb that says: “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” Some people feel proverbs have one specific meaning, but that’s not the way I look at it. I feel they’re like songs and poetry: we connect to them in our personal way, and our interpretation of them changes over time as we evolve. Here’s what I mean, my first experience with this proverb was when I was in college to become a teacher. As a teen, I was much more focused on my social life than school, so I got off to a slow academic start, and I didn’t go to college until I was in my 30s. So when I first saw this quote, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears,” I felt like it was speaking to me. At that time, I took it to mean that until a person (the student) is ready to learn, the teacher is just not visible. And no matter how hard or long the teacher tries to reach the student, until the student is ready, the teacher might as well be trying to get a tangible hold on something like smoke or water. It’s impossible. On the other hand, when the student is ready to learn, the student will seek out the teacher, and they’ll go to great lengths to do their learning. Which is what I did when I was ready. From my first year of teaching high school English on, this quote has always had a place in my classroom. Of course, the irony is that I’d gone from being the blind student to the teacher who was now trying to grasp in my students what isn’t, necessarily, tangible. What I did do is try to help my students see what I couldn’t at their age, and I did that by enlisting them in my process. The reality is, I learned more from my students than they did from me, which is the second experience I had with this proverb. I came to understand that we’re all students and we’re all teachers. I let them know that I was learning from them, and in doing that, I empowered all of us. My third and final experience with this proverb is its connection to the ego, that to be an authentic student, one must shed their ego. And that’s a really humble, vulnerable, and daring place to be! I’ve spoken about ego on the show many times before. Ego is what controls our feelings and inspires our action or inaction. It’s our mind where all that thinking and overthinking comes from. The ego’s intention is to keep us safe and keep us comfortable, but it does that through keeping us afraid. Afraid of failure, afraid of looking dumb or silly, afraid of physical harm, afraid of risk. Our ego is what keeps us inside our comfort zone. So what does all this have to do with experimenting with our craft? We have to allow ourselves to become the vulnerable student again. We have to give ourselves the freedom to “try things on for size.” We need to broaden our perspective: Am I in the right niche of what I’m doing now, or can I use what I’m good at in an entirely different field? You may be someone who’s already aligned with your passion, or you may be someone who’s trying to figure out what your talent is. Either way, how will a pastry chef know if he should be making and decorating cakes unless he experiments? How can a novelist know if they could also be a poet if they don’t try it? How will the corporate attorney know that they’d rather be a public defender if they don’t explore? Or how will the science professor realize she is better suited for cancer research if she never considers it? I always think about country music star Darius Rucker at times like this, do you know who he is? You probably know him as the front man for Hootie and the Blowfish! He went from rock a sensation to a country sensation. That took guts. What’s most important about this is that experimentation doesn’t just breed creativity; experimentation creates who we are and the life we live. And as far as your ego is concerned, it will be on this journey with you, and you will either let it limit you or you will limit it. So, if all of this is so important, why do so many of us choose not to explore when it comes to our gifts and talents? Why do we stay pigeonholed where we are or never take chances? Here are some basic reasons why people choose not to experiment with their craft: – we’re afraid we won’t be good at it – we’re afraid of what others will think about us – we don’t want to look dumb or silly – we fear we’re letting other people and their expectations down But, here’s the thing: exploration is a process, it’s not a permanent decision. It is no harm, no foul to envision yourself taking your gifts and talents and using them in a new way. I put together a list of seven simple tips that will help you take your craft to the next level – or to a different level. 7 Tips to Help You Level-Up Your Craft * Read and watch movies (about others in your field – learn about their life and work) * Play (without having expectations of the outcome of what you’re creating) * Take yourself less seriously (let creativity in) * Take yourself more seriously (believe in yourself) * Let go of judgement (your own and that of others) * Practice positive self-talk (You’re the best, baby! Say it with me!) * Invest the time it takes to better your craft (beauty is painful!) We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else. I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: We take ourselves and the opinions of others too seriously. We take life too seriously. Leave your ego at the door, envision other ways you can utilize your talents, and then experiment. Our goal is to get our head and heart back in the game, to reclaim our passion, what if the reason you aren’t all in is because you have been missing the target? Find the target and you will find yourself again. Remember, you Motivate Me!

When your whole body is activated you get excited about life! You get inspired and motivated to participate in the world! Connect with what sets you most on fire, get suggestions on how to activate that, and receive tips on how to get your loved ones on board when they fall short of seeing what is important to you in this process. MM549 – Get Your Blood Pumping Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Get Your Blood Pumping I have a disclaimer for today’s show: This episode is not a lecture on the benefits of exercise! And I have to tell you, of all the tips, tricks, and techniques I used to get my head and heart back in the game when I fell flat, this technique is one of my absolute favorites. And I think it’s one that most of us just don’t do enough. I’ve come to understand that from a very early age, freedom has been a core value of mine. The day I got my driver’s license remains one of my most favorite days of all time. I was, literally, hooting and hollering for ten straight minutes at the top of my lungs on my first solo drive. Another example of when I felt deliciously free was when I moved from New Jersey to California eight days after graduating high school. I only knew one person who lived there, and I knew before I went that two months after I got there, he’d have to go out to sea for six months. But, I wasn’t scared by this, I was excited by it! Then there’s our podcast tour where we traveled the fifty states in ninety days interviewing people about passion. I’ll tell you something about that, I did feel fear before I headed out on that bad boy trip, lots of fear. But once I hit the open road, it was like my heart split open and I experienced actual bliss. I felt so alive. I felt so free! Can you feel my blood pumping in these examples? Now, here’s the thing, we can’t do one thing, no matter how big it is, and ride that out for the rest of our lives. If we don’t continuously nurture this side of ourselves, we will continuously lose ourselves, and we disengage from the world, our passions, and joy. In this way, it is like diet and exercise, this is another way we sometimes “let ourselves go.” We need to do things that excite us often, and when we’re off, we need to recalibrate. So, let’s talk today about ways we can get our blood pumping again because this will increase your motivation, ignite your excitement about life, make you more creative, and improve your mood – and who doesn’t want all that!? And after I share my list of ideas with you, I will share a struggle I’ve been having within my marriage about exactly this. OK… so if you want to feel great but you’re short on ideas on how to push yourself into that, here’s a list of SOME things to consider: -get in the sun – for some vitamin D -connect with nature – especially walking barefoot in the dirt -take a risk – call that guy, invest in that stock, take that trip -play like a kid – get on your bike (I’m in love with my electric bike), paint with your fingers, role play -tire out your body – go for a hike, do yardwork, clean your basement -meditate – you know I’m a fan! It can be exciting! -watch a scary movie – not my favorite, but it will get your blood pumping -listen to music – make different playlists: one for stretching, one for outdoors, one for cleaning, one for sexy time -be curious – learn all the things! Why is NJ the only state where people can’t pump their own gas? How was the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup really invented? What’s Pink’s real name? -visit new places – go on an adventure, explore, try new foods, take pictures -plan a surprise – that always gets my heart pumping! -make plans – to see friends, to see family, to relax, to have coffee, to go boating, to get excited for the future -exercise – hit it hard or take it easy, but we can’t talk about getting our blood pumping without including the physical body A favorite of mine is to do something that intimidates you. What intimidates you? Have you ever gone on a solo trip? Like, taken a flight, rented a car, explored a place you’ve never been all on your own? Even if you stay with friends or family, have you ever given yourself this kind of space? Space to think, space to make decisions that pertain to only you, like, where to eat or which route to take? Recently, I spent a week back in New Jersey. I did just what I was saying above, I flew alone (without the dog or the husband), I rented a car, I drove all around New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I visited my dad’s grave alone. I ate and drank what I wanted, took the routes I wanted, listened to the music I wanted – and because I was alone, I could even wear headphones in the airport. Doing that is like giving life a soundtrack, it was amazing. I love to travel with my husband, but I’ve been married since I was nineteen, so this was a new experience, and I wasn’t sure why, but I was having a lot of feels. During flight delays and all the air time, I had a lot of time to analyze these feels. I was also able to speak to many female friends and family members in all stages of life and relationships about what I was feeling and get their perspectives. Timing is everything, and this trip was right on time for me. Let me share with you how my thought process evolved: I started thinking about if I was single. I asked myself: What are the first three things I would do if I suddenly found myself single? (If you would like to try this exercise, stop here and take a few minutes to really consider this. I suggest writing down your answers.) If you decided to put us on pause to make your list, welcome back! The first thing I would do if I suddenly found myself single is make less of a big deal about meals. I thought it was interesting that this came up for me, especially first. I’ve never really thought about this before, but the funny thing is, I’d probably save money and lose weight if I did this. The second thing I would do is drive a convertible, instead of a minivan. I thought it was really wild that I had this idea, too! I have been considering the idea of having a convertible just because it’s so freeing, but in this scenario, I also saw something else. I, all of a sudden, felt like if I’m a single person I don’t have to worry about taking care of other people, I can focus on taking care of myself. I like to have a bigger car and bigger home so I can accommodate other people. I don’t know if this makes sense to anyone else. So I envisioned myself in a small, cool car and even pictured a small, cool living space. The third thing I would do is allocate money to attend professional development workshops and some kind of retreats. I’ve always wanted to do this, but my husband isn’t into it because he already does this kind of thing at work. Well, I don’t get to and I think I’d enjoy it, so I want to do it. So, these are my three big things. Nothing crazy. In doing this little exercise, I had a big realization, though: I was irritated. And I was irritated because I felt trapped. My go-to was, of course, to blame my husband for my feelings, because this had to be his fault. His asking, “What are we doing for dinner” or saying, “I don’t want to get into another car payment” or me having to justify to him why a professional development opportunity is worthwhile. I felt like a cat trying to get out of a bag. I felt trapped and suffocating… I just want to do what I want to do, stop controlling me, I can’t get excited about life if you are holding me down. These were my thoughts. Is he, though? I am well aware that no one can make us feel any kind of way. We make ourselves feel what we do. And I know this, so what’s really going on? I looked at the three things I would do if I were single again, differently this time. And I realized that if I boil them down further, I think what I want is to simply worry less about others and do more for myself. That this isn’t about anybody but me. Now, I am sure you have come to the same conclusion I finally came to: Why do I have to be single to do this? I don’t! And I also don’t want to be single, I adore my husband – I just want to be free. We can be free and still be married and still be a mom and still have a career and still be all of these things together. We just need to have the freedom to do things that get our blood pumping! Unfortunately, this does not mean that we may not be met with resistance. Sometimes it’s difficult to get what we need; family, responsibilities, and money come into play. Dometimes we know we need to do something for ourselves but somebody doesn’t see its importance, which makes us wonder if they see us and our happiness as important? And sometimes we feel resentful because we are made to justify what we want, like we need permission, like we’re begging for our own freedom. All I can tell you is that each of our situations is different, but here are four tips that will assist you in getting a partner on board when you feel the urge to take part in an experience that they may not quite understand. 1. Know what you want and be able to clearly state it. 2. Know what you will be willing to compromise to get it. 3. Don’t assume you know what another person is thinking. 4. Don’t be afraid to have difficult conversations. We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else. I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: It is vital that we activate our feel good hormones! Doing this inspires us to participate in the world around us, it inspires us to create, it inspires the kind of happiness that we project to others, and when we do these things, we feel valuable and important, we impact the world and live our purpose. And here is a bonus, ladies and gentlemen: When you engage your whole body in an experience, you are focused on the present…it is in the present that we find true peace and happiness. Remember, you Motivate Me!

We have the power to unlock the secret to childhood creativity and it is SO simple. Learn how to step away from the world, how to reinvigorate your mind, and how to find you again. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Unplug to Recharge Listen, it’s no secret that in today’s society many people are trying to mimic the highlight reel they see of the lives others share on social media. And, it’s no secret that we pick up our phones twice as much as we think we do. The NY Post estimates that we pick our phones up eighty times a day, which is every twelve minutes. I’ve seen other reports that say that number is even higher. For the record, I’m a cell-phone, Internet, social media, people-loving person myself who really enjoys staying connected with friends and family online. And I’m curious and I love to watch all different kinds of videos: true crimes, inspirational, historical, etc.… all the things. I get “sucked down rabbit holes” all the time, as they say. If you’re not familiar, getting “sucked down a rabbit hole” looks like this: You think to yourself, “Oh, Billie Eilish has a new song out!” So you search YouTube, play the new song, then play three of her other videos, then watch videos about her life. Then you decide to search for footage about her and her brother recording their first album in their bedroom, which leads you to search to see if her brother has an album of his own. Yep, he does! So you flip through all his songs on the app Spotify. Then you go to Billie’s Instagram to see how her new album is being received and get sucked into reading pages of comments by her once adoring fans who are bashing her because they think she’s doing something called “queer-baiting” – because she titled one of her posts, “I like girls.” Now her fans think she’s just baiting a specific fan group in order to build her base. On one hand, all this searching and watching was interesting and entertaining, it was also informative because “queer baiting” is new to me. On the other hand, I lost an hour of my life, and I walked away feeling horrible. I couldn’t stop reading the posts, one after the other, bashing Billie. And I thought, “Wow, fans! Where’s your loyalty?” Shouldn’t fans show support until they at least know what they’re bashing? Isn’t Billie allowed to be human? I understand what they’re upset at, but they’re making assumptions and they’re judging – judging harshly – and I’m not about it. It honestly made me super sad, it’s still resonating with me. Like, I hope Billie Eilish is OK right now. I hope people who’ve been through this reach out to her. In the rabbit hole, I did see that she’s become friends with Justin Bieber, so maybe him or Pink or Gaga or Britney or Lindsay or anyone else who’s been put on the pedestal to be ripped down is giving her perspective. I had a whole conversation about it with my husband because this is one of the ways celebrities end up in rehabs. Billie Eilish has a strong support system, I just hope it’s enough to get her through this, because she’s 19-years-old and that’s a crazy place to be in all of this. Anyway, do you see how invested we can get when we get sucked down the rabbit hole? How much energy we put into things that have nothing to do with us, things we have no control over? Now, I’m not saying to never explore random things and people online. Sometimes we do this as a family, and we learn new things about people, their life, their craft. I just found out some pretty interesting things about Louis Armstrong’s life! I’m just saying that sometimes we need to unplug from it all to recharge who we are, to evolve in our own right. So, what does it mean to “unplug to recharge”? Here’s my definition: To “unplug” yourself means to step away from the world at large and let your mind be still. And to “recharge” yourself means to refresh and reinvigorate your state of mind. So, what kinds of things is it important to unplug from and for how long do we need to do this? In general, I recommend finding space and time away from the things on this following list, and doing this for at least thirty minutes once a week (much longer, if you can). You will need to say NO to:             – Internet             – telephone calls             – social media             – YouTube             – video games (all games)             – television             – music (optional) The only reason I suggest avoiding music is because we’re constantly being stimulated by something, and nothing manipulates our emotions more than music. What would you think about and what would you do if you were surrounded by total silence? If you were sitting in a room and everything was just off? Just still? Something would happen. If you didn’t fall asleep, your mind would probably become restless and very quickly you would start thinking about things, like, maybe I should paint these walls or make a pillow? Or where is that book I’ve been wanting to read? Or I should try that new chicken recipe for dinner tonight. Or maybe your mind starts envisioning story lines or begins to hear new melodies or starts to plan a surprise for someone you love. You may have experienced this when we were forced to quarantine if you weren’t busying yourself with distractions, like binge-watching television, scrolling through social media eight hours a day, drinking all that wine. I’m not here to judge. I had days doing all these things, that’s how I know what you need to get yourself back on track. That’s how I know that in order to recharge, we must unplug. Here is the only thing you are not allowed to do during unplugged time – and it will be your first go-to! – when you have these delicious, creative ideas, you CANNOT pick up your phone. When the ideas come, jot them down, jot down a few notes to look into later. Yes, on paper – not on your phone. You don’t have a phone right now, remember? Just keep gathering ideas. Draw out your idea, create steps, do all the things, but the longer you wait, the more you gather this information, the more developed it will be, because you are giving yourself space and stillness to delve deeper. So often we use all of the things we are plugged into as distraction, it’s a form of escapism that is different than but similar to drugs, alcohol, excessive exercise, a shopping addiction, etc. All of these distractions take our minds off of things. But if our minds are distracted, how will we ever grow or change or create? If you really want to give yourself this opportunity, if you really want to see what could stem from this kind of quiet time, try to manage these four additional distractions, too. These will take more planning. The first one is: Work – Work is the first of these. It’s very easy to throw ourselves into making other people successful. And very often, work can bleed into our personal lives and drain us. Even if you’re someone whose work is a passion, getting that thirty minutes to an hour of quiet time a week could enhance the work you are already doing. Work/Life Balance is vital to the recharging process, so it’s important to value this time and honor it. The second one is: Chores – Chores are an obvious responsibility we can’t get away from, but we can absolutely give ourselves an allotted amount of time a week to ignore what needs to be done. The third one is: Pets – Pets seem like a silly thing to bring up here, but have you ever finished all your running around, you pour yourself a nice cold drink, you sit on the couch, and Fido goes into a full-blown temper tantrum? Exactly. And if you’ve only allotted yourself thirty minutes to unplug, then taking the dog out and getting their treat, their dinner, their fresh water, and then getting your head back in the right headspace could cost you at least ten minutes of your thirty! So take my advice, take care of any needy pets before you start your time. The final and fourth one is: Relationships – Relationships is the most important and final point I’d like to bring up. And when I say relationships, I mean any and all that leave you with a sense of responsibility. Yourpartner, children, family, neighbors, friends… whoever could commandeer your quiet time, physically or mentally. Again, plan ahead to get the most out of this time, and remember that you are not required to respond to calls and texts on demand. Your work lunch break may be the best time for you, when you are padded by your work day? And, maybe you can utilize these relationships to help you achieve your goals; could someone in your life assist you in getting this quiet time? We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else. I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: What happens when kids are home and bored? They begin to create. They make forts and draw and have talent shows and play teacher. Make it your mission to find time to get bored! Unplug, be idle, stop the multi-tasking. I know some pretty important people and they manage to unplug – because none of us are so important that the world will not go around if we dip out for an hour. So claim your time, it’s yours to take, and see what you can create with it! Remember, you Motivate Me!

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Say Goodbye to Feeling Selfish This topic has evolved for me over time. What does “say goodbye to feeling selfish” mean? At first glance, we probably think about how hard it is to let go of our daily responsibilities just long enough to embrace a personal interest, but is that it? Is that all there is to feeling selfish and is it that easy to just let go? I mean, where did the idea that we’re selfish begin for us? We’re not born believing we’re selfish human beings. This goes deeper than that. Really deep. And, if we feel like at our core we are truly selfish, how will we ever be able to dedicate the time, space, and energy we need to create, to evolve, to flourish, to deeply love? How will we ever feel worthy of success or abundance if we are heavily rooted in the belief that we don’t deserve these things because we’re not good enough? I think the fundamental idea we need to prove to ourselves first is that we are good. So let’s start there, let’s prove it. Here’s what I would like you to do: I would like you to take some time to look past what you think you already know, to look past what anyone in your life has told you, and I want you to write down some facts. Just list examples of when you know you did good for someone. Think about times when you sacrificed your time, your effort, your energy, your money. Think about the times you have prayed for someone, times that you sincerely wished well for someone, think about how you have shown love to others. Here’s why this is important: You may have been a bratty, selfish teen who was trying to fit in and put friends before family, but are you that person now? Have you been that person for the past twenty or thirty years? Or maybe the person who called you selfish used that term to get you to do what they wanted, because, in reality, they’re the selfish one? Maybe no one called you selfish at all and you just assumed people thought you were because of a story you created in your own mind about a situation? The funny thing is, none of that stuff matters, that’s why we need to focus on facts. So, first make that list of all the good you have done in the world. See that you are not a selfish person, that you’re, actually, quite a giving person who has true and pure intentions. Someone who wants good things for others. Know that people who believe they’re selfish are most likely not selfish – why? – because a selfish person would never put the time into caring about how what they want impacts others. Wow, that would be a big contradiction! I will warn you that gaining this awareness is not a magic cure. Even when you see the facts on paper, you will probably make excuses about how you have done good things but that doesn’t make you a good person. If this is you, you will just need to continue to prove to yourself that you are good. Continue to revisit this in your mind daily – and sometimes you will have triggers that set you back. Especially because people who believe they are selfish have the hardest time protecting their personal boundaries. OK, so let’s say that you got this down. You made your list, you’re proving to yourself, “Hey, self, I’m a pretty damn good person, I’m not selfish at all,” and you are reinforcing that idea daily through your giving thoughts and actions – what next? Do a chore a day. Sounds so simple, right? It is. Do whatever you need to do to feel as if you’re pulling your weight in your world so you can spend untethered time on something you’re passionate about! You may be laughing at the idea of having to do only one chore a day, maybe you typically do twelve? But, maybe you’re someone who is currently struggling to get even one chore done a day? There is really so much to say on this topic that I know I’m going to struggle keeping this episode around ten minutes, so I am not going to beat around the bush here. If you are someone inundated with chores, always racing around to get it all done, with no time left for yourself – ever, like nowhere in a week can you find a few hours for you, you need to look deeper into that for yourself.  Something else may be going on, like staying busy stops you from facing reality, like you don’t feel worthy enough to focus on you, like you are making yourself a martyr. If this is you, before you can move on with any other ideas shared here, make sure you take an honest look at this. Discussing this with a loved one, friend, or therapist, journaling about, and being honest with yourself is really helpful here. If you are someone who struggles to get even one chore done, you have to remember that decluttering your space will declutter your mind. This may be as simple as doing the dishes or organizing your junk drawer or cleaning out the refrigerator. Whatever is wearing on you, tackle it in pieces. You can always tell the health of my mental state by my laundry room: if it’s in chaos, so am I, if it’s under control, so am I. So… let’s start this by understanding we are worthy of time to ourselves to feed our interests. Then, let’s see responsibility and creativity as equals! Next, let’s make a plan! The Four Simple Steps to Guilt-Free Creativity 1) Make a “Do List”             – Label your To Do list by days of the week:                         *Labeling this list “Do Monday” will set the expectation that you will attempt to                                     complete these tasks on this specific day                         *Rather than having one large list, this breaks down your responsibilities into                         smaller chunks, helps you prioritize, and helps help pencil in time for you             – Include on this list everything you want to accomplish on that day:                         *Include the chores, the hours you will work, appointments you have, phone calls                                    you need to make, questions you need answered, the dinner menu, any exercise,                                   reading, or journaling plans                         *Include your creativity goal             – Mark things off as you go:                         *At the end of the day, try to fit in what you missed – maybe it’s your stretches or                                   your meditation, maybe you can change your nail polish right before bed (I know                         it’s risky, you’ll have to wait until morning to see if they dried without blanket                             wrinkles!) Checking items off the list is pretty motivating, I’ve been known to make a mad dash late at night. I’ve been seen on the couch nails wrapped in aluminum foil soaking of my gel polish, heated eye moisturizer mask prescribed by my doctor on my face, and headphones on getting my meditation in – that is                                some multi-tasking! I feel so good afterwards.                         *Whatever you don’t get to, don’t sweat it, just add it to tomorrow’s list.                         *Take a moment to look at all the things you did get done! Be proud of yourself. 2) See Yourself as Important             – What lengths would you go to if your child wanted to learn a new instrument, take             dance classes, or become an athlete? Would you talk them out of it? Would you fill them   with fear and doubt? Would you make excuses over money and time?             – Or would you make it happen because you love them that much? This is how much you need to love yourself. This is the kind of support and encouragement you need to show yourself. Do not feel selfish – just love yourself as much as you love everyone else. 3) Give             – If you want to fill yourself with love, joy, and abundance give of yourself. Care about             others, help when needed, show kindness, care, be connected, be compassionate.             – Give without any expectation of reciprocation. Give without being attached to what             the other person does with it. Let’s say you gave someone a meal or money and they gave             it away to someone else, this does not change your act of kindness. And, who knows why             they did what they did. That’s not part of your story.             – Remember: You cannot feel selfish when you’re giving. 4) Make Believing “I am Good” a Habit             – Revisit the knowledge that you are good by writing a new list of facts that prove it.             – Change how you view yourself.             – Change how you value and honor yourself.             – Believe in yourself – this is the foundation of the Law of Attraction.             – By doing these things, you control what you actually accomplish! We would love to hear your thoughts. Join us in our Private Facebook group: Motivate Me! Support System and checkout MotivateMePodcast.com for anything else. I am going to leave you with some truth talk from me to you: Selfishness is such an important topic. Feeling selfish runs deep, it holds us back, it controls us, and in the end, it will have been pointless. Let go of whatever created this in you the best you can, and keep working at understanding how truly good you are. Make believing in yourself a habit. No one has the power to change this narrative but you – and that is only a decision away. Remember, you Motivate Me!