A Season of Fun & Growth

In this episode, I share strategies for making summer a season of fun and growth.Living with greater self-awareness and intentionality can help put the fun back in your summer.

Here are 3  takeaways:

1. The foundation for intentional living-Notice & Decide.
   Before saying yes to every summer activity or routine, pause and notice what you truly want and need. Journaling morning pages as suggested in “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron—can help you discover your thoughts and feelings without judgment. Begin by asking yourself: What do I actually want this summer to look like?
2. Small, intentional choices shift your energy.
   Instead of striving for perfection or cramming your calendar with obligations, pick one thing each day or week that feels fun and energizing. Whether it’s a walk in the sun, a cozy afternoon with a book, or a simple gathering with friends, prioritize the experiences that bring you joy—and give yourself full permission to say no to the rest.
3. Practicing self-awareness leads to lasting change.
   Summer is a great time to experiment with new habits or practices, even if they seem small. Focus on progress, not perfection. Celebrate any positive change, and remember: You’re building a vibrant life not just for yourself, but for everyone around you.

Links

• Join my free  live group coaching calls
• Follow me on Instagram
•  Facebook
•  or visit KellyTibbittts.com 

 Let's connect.

I am cheering for you!

Transcript

0:00

Hey friends. This week on the podcast, I'm re-sharing a podcast I recorded a few years ago, and as I was listening to it, I realized it's still all true. We get to decide what we want and then align our thoughts and feelings to take those small action steps. If you're ready to create a season of fun and growth, I'd love to invite you to my next workshop. I host free workshops on Skool, which is my free platform. And you can find the link to Skool here at the bottom of the notes for this podcast. You can also go to kellytibbitts.com or my Instagram or Facebook and find out more, but I'd love to have you come. It's free. It's a great way to meet other people who are ready to live intentional lives. I hope you enjoy this episode Welcome to the Live a Vibrant Life podcast. I'm life coach Kelly Tibbetts, and each week I'll be here to encourage and equip you with the tools you need to grow in self-awareness and invest your best energy in your dreams and your purpose. I believe self-awareness changes everything. Let's get started. Friends What would it look like to have a summer where we are living intentional lives? Many of us have walked through most of our life not really aware of what we're thinking, feeling, what we want to do, and what we don't want to do. We tend to repeat thoughts that we have been carrying with us for decades. Do you remember that when you were younger, how fun summer vacation was, even if you weren't running around and doing a lot of things, just the slowness of the day without homework and without having to be pressured? And then something happens as we get older, is we tend to fill our summer with activity, and we often don't take the time to say, "Is this something I want to say yes or no to?" That's the power of noticing. My favorite book to help with the idea of the power of noticing is called The Artist's Way. It's by Julia Cameron, and in it, she encourages us to have time each day for what she calls the morning pages, where you take out a notebook and you just freeform write. And I want to speak to those of you who may not know your Enneagram number. Eights, nines, and ones, are wired to just somatically in your body know why you want to say the yeses and nos that you want to say. This might be a little uncomfortable because you might just notice a bunch of to-do lists. You sit down to journal and you don't know what you're thinking, and you don't know what you're f- feeling, but you know there's, like, a bunch of to-dos that you need to notice. Well, write those down first. Some of you are in the Enneagram two, three, four energy like I am, and instead of noticing your thoughts, you might notice your feelings. So start there. Today, I feel... and just allow yourself to notice. And those Enneagram fives, six, and sevens, you may notice your thoughts a little easier than others. So you might sit down and say, "Okay, this is what I'm thinking about today." The first step is just to notice without any judgment. I loved episode 50, where Ellen helped us to really notice what it looks like when we mix up noticing and judgment, and we put them together like they're one thing. What would it look like to just take a blank piece of paper every morning and notice your thoughts and your feelings? Notice the things that you've already said yes to, so you need to find the right time and energy match for those responsibilities. And then begin to notice maybe there are things that are coming up over the next few weeks that you've said yes to that maybe you've decided now that you've noticed you'd like to say no to. I think about the feeling that I'm hoping drives this year for me is the feeling of enthusiasm. So I'd like to still feel enthusiastic at the end of the summer. Now, the reality is I've been dealing with a physical condition that's very draining. It's just eczema on my fingers. It doesn't sound that bad, but it's amazing how many things you need your fingers for, and every time I touch something, it really, really hurts. So that pain has made me less than 100% physically. But it's also a little hard mentally and emotionally to constantly be struggling with something. Whatever you're noticing today, take a few moments to notice it without any judgment. Nothing's gone wrong. This is just where we are. But is it where we want to stay? Especially in the summer. It's such a precious time of year. It's the time where many of us go out and do a few more things. Maybe you spend more time with friends. Maybe there's a little bit of relaxing because the daylight is a little longer, so you gift yourself with a short walk in between meetings. Whatever you're noticing, let's just decide for the summer, what's important to you? You've heard me say this a bunch of times. We notice first, and then we decide. Decisions are one of the best gifts you can give yourself because indecision is exhausting. Letting those thoughts run on repeat, am I going to say A or am I going to say B? Am I going to there or am I staying here? And staying in that indecisive energy can be really draining, so decision can really bring our energy back. And because our human brains love us, we're going to tend to have five, six, seven things that feel like they're all really important and all necessary for us to decide today. Let's just decide one. What would you like for the end of summer? Is there a thought you'd like on repeat? I'll tell you the new thought that I had as I created my Live a Vibrant Life program. Ready? I want to live a vibrant life, and that's new for me. As an Enneagram 2, I've lived most of my life with my heart-centered, you know, thoughts, feelings, and actions focused on other people. And as a mom, that was pretty common. I was surrounded by other moms whose energy went into their children's thoughts, feelings, and actions. But I've decided that I want to live a vibrant life. I want to take the energy that has gone out and served other people and put some of it back into my own life. As I began to do this work, I realized that since 2015, I've been choosing a word each year that kind of aligns with the energy I want to live with. Words like wisdom and brave, intentional, integrated, generous. And for 2023, the word is enthusiasm. I want to do things that I'm enthusiastic about. So I took out my Notes app and I began to write down all the things that my husband and I had already agreed to do and things that we were excited and planning to do. And now I have this Notes app filled with so many fun things, including, you know, spur of the moment decisions to go to a concert because someone had a free ticket. Normally, my human brain would say, "Well, here are all your responsibilities. This is where your energy should go." So I have to kind of speak over my own mind and say, "I'm living a vibrant life. I'm doing things like driving down to Washington, D.C. to see my daughters and go to the Noah Kahan concert. I'm going to just, you know, be intentional making sure I get to the ocean or some form of water in the summer." Now, in all honesty, the day I'm recording this, it is pouring out, even though it's July, and the weather says it's going to be that way for the next few days. And currently, my mindset doesn't say, "Let's go to the ocean anyway." I'd like to get there, but currently, I'm looking to go to the ocean or the water on a day when it's sunny. So for this summer program, I'd love to have you join us live. The value of being live at any of these coaching opportunities that you might come across is it's such a gift to be around other people who are also doing this work. Sometimes something they say will really open up and allow you to have that aha moment that you might not get doing the work on your own. But I also want to make my program fully accessible, so I always record things so that you can watch them as they serve you. I know not everybody is free when I'm free. But getting to a place where you've decided, "I am worthy of 30 minutes once a week to join a group program, to join a group program and be with other people who are trying to live an enthusiastic life, a vibrant life." And so starting this summer, like putting the joy and the fun back into summer. What is fun for you? Do you even remember? At the end of this podcast, put on a song that you love, something that really gets you in the right aligned, vibrant energy. Dance, move, walk, whatever serves you. When it's over, get out a piece of paper and write down all the things that you actually think are fun. Now, I love sometimes on a rainy day just sitting and reading a book. That's really fun to me. But I also love visiting people that I enjoy. One of my friends had the most fun event the other week. She just invited us to sit on her porch. It was a nice night. She made some iced tea, lemonade, and popcorn with butter on it, and it was so fabulous. We just hung out for two hours. There was a beginning time and an end time, and not, incredibly elaborate where it was exhausting to her. She just decided, "I'd like to have some of my people around, have some good conversation, enjoy the beautiful weather." Maybe that's something you enjoy, and your human brain keeps telling you, "Oh, it'd be so hard. You'd have to clean the whole house. You'd have to make a meal. You'd have to go get some wine." What if it wasn't hard? What if you just decided to invite people over for two hours sometime in the next two weeks, and you were going to make it so simple? "You know what? I'll have some bottled beverages. Bring a little snack if you'd like. Let's just hang out together." If that sounds fun to you, or maybe going for a walk alone sounds fun to you. What if this is the summer that we put the fun back into our summer? What do you think the result could be for you? I know the result for me when I've turned and started putting this energy back into my own life, and I've been doing this work in some form since 2003. So it's not a one and done, as my friend Ellen likes to say. It's not an instant gratification. All of these practices take time. But I love the fact that I'm now living a life that really aligns with what I think is important and is creating the feelings that I want to live life with. And this was not the way I was wired. That's why I love sharing this, because sometimes we need someone else to have the thought before we can think it. And so here's your summer thought. Let's put the fun back in summer. When you have choice A and choice B, which one sounds fun? Let's do more fun and easy because it not only changes our life. When we become self-aware, everything changes and everyone around us truly gets the best of us. So again, I'll be hosting a free workshop we're gonna be meeting on Zoom. You can go to kellytibbitts.com, and there's a way to contact me there. You can find me on Facebook or Instagram and send me a private message. Let's decide -whether you join me live or not- to make this the summer where we put the fun back into summer, where we notice what we're thinking and feeling, and we've made intentional decisions to focus our best energy on what we want to accomplish this summer. My hope for you is as the fall begins to roll around, or again, if you're listening to this as another season rolls around, you're gonna look back at the season that you just walked through and notice that you are important. Your thoughts are important. Your feelings are important. Your desires and your hopes and your dreams are important. And because of the work that you're doing, you're starting to notice the results that you would like to create in your own life. And we are the only people that can create these results in our own life You know, one coaching tool that I have shared many times comes from the Life Coach School, and that is the regular cognitive behavior idea of thoughts creating feelings and feelings creating actions. Results in our life are created from actions. But what can be very frustrating and why the second tool I use is the accept, courage, wisdom model from the Serenity Prayer, is we can do action after action after action, but it doesn't always create the result. When I was in college, I had many professors who used the bell curve, and that helped people who needed the C to move over to the C level of grading. But it was really hard on me because I wanted an A, and with a bell curve, you only get a few A's, and sometimes I wouldn't get it even if my grade was a ninety-seven. Your actions don't always create the results you want, but creating those small practices on repeat often move us in the direction we want to go. So what do I mean by this? How many of you have decided, "I want to be a healthy weight. I want to be strong. I'm gonna commit to going to the gym. I'm going to commit to eating healthy food." And you do that for a day and a week and a month, and then your brain starts to notice not a lot is changing. The clothes are still tight. You don't feel any stronger yet, and so you make it mean that it's not working. But what if it just wasn't working in the timetable that you hoped it was working? What if you notice that you're on the right path and you decide in advance to stay in sort of acceptance-aligned energy, that you're in it for the long run, that you will continue to do the small practices because being strong and vibrant and healthy matters? I've been trying this in my own life for quite a while, and some days I wonder, "Is it all worth it?" But like I said, I went to the spur of the moment concert. And I went up and down quite a few stairs three times, and it wasn't great. It wasn't super easy. I know I have to get stronger, but I also did it! I wasn't past, my energy level of going up and down a lot of flights of stairs three times. So keeping that thought, "I want to be strong and healthy at seventy," keeps me aligned and moving forward, even if I don't today see all the results I want. Having a decision like, "I'm going to put the fun back in summer" doesn't mean that every minute of every day we're going to be living in enthusiastic, excited, fun energy. We live in the real world. We have all the responsibilities and all the relationships that we're in, and we're not a hundred percent of the time going to be in flow energy and nothing's gone wrong. But what I think, and the reason that I share this tool, is that if every day you found three small practices that you think align you to a thought like, "I want to have fun this summer," you will be further at the end of summer than you would've been if you didn't find the thoughts and the feelings that create the results you want. So again, start each day with noticing. If you would like a book to help you with that, I highly recommend The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, taking the time every day to write some morning pages. Make a decision. Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way calls it an artist date. Do something at least once a month, maybe once a week, that you think is incredibly fun, and then find the small practices that move you closer to the result that you want. I want to have a summer where I've put the fun back in summer. So small practices like what would I like to do this summer? Make a list. Maybe it's I want to make sure that I have time for homemade iced tea every day. Nothing has to be elaborate. There are so many things that bring us joy that don't take a lot of time and don't take a lot of money. They just take a few moments of noticing, deciding, and practicing. I'll talk to you next week. Thank you for joining the Live a Vibrant Life podcast. I hope our time together encourages and equips you to move forward in your vibrant life. To learn more, you can follow me on Instagram and Facebook or visit my website, kellytibbitts.com. See you soon.