Planting Seeds to Take Confident Action

We are right between winter and spring equinox, which is a time for preparing seeds to plant for the year. The next few coaching sessions I’m sharing in the next few weeks all centered around finding not only clarity to take action but uncovering the hidden blocks to confidence that were ultimately preventing that clarity. Ultimately this is a deeply personal process (as you’ll see in the coaching episodes) but there are some concepts that can help you engage your own process. 

In this episode of Unlimited, I’m diving into how to plant the seeds to take confident action. 

Some of what I’ll cover in this episode include:

• Overcoming the blocks of fear
• Tapping into your best self
• How to see yourself more clearly
• Pausing to process
• Gut vs Intuition
• Navigating Self Doubt

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot of the episode to post in your stories and tag me!  @unlimitedcoachval

I love to hear your thoughts and I'm always happy to answer any questions.
You can shoot me an email at valerie@valeriefriedlander.com or DM me on Instagram

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LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
Life is a Joke. 199 Life Lessons (with punch lines) by The Javna Brothers
In and Of Itself by Derek DelGaudio on Hulu

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Transcript

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Hello, my friends and welcome to another episode of Unlimited. Today we are talking about planting seeds to move forward with clarity and confidence. We are exploring fear and how fear blocks us engaging curiosity questions to ask to tap into who you want to be seeing ourselves more clearly through other people's eyes, pausing to allow ourselves to process feelings, the difference between our gut and our intuition and overcoming self doubt, this episode packs a lot into a little amount of time. So without further ado, let's get started. Hey, there, I'm Valerie Friedlander, certified life business alignment coach, and this is unlimited, this podcast bridges the individual and the societal, scientific and spiritual, positive and negative, nerdy and no, there's just a lot of nerdy, come on board. And let's unlock a light. That's as badass as you are. The last several episodes I've shared with you have been recorded coaching sessions. And I have several more to share with you. But I'm seeing a pattern with these. And I thought that we would take this lovely first episode of February as an opportunity to talk about that, because it also ties really nicely into the energy of this time of year. So what I've been seeing with the people who have come to me and signed up for these sessions is that they're really looking to move forward with clarity, and to feel confident in their next steps. At the time that they signed up, they were feeling stuck and wanting to make the right step or move in the right direction. And well stuck is kind of my specialty, as well as moving forward with clarity and confidence in a loving way, both for oneself and for the work in the world. So, hey, works out really well. For this episode, we're going to talk a little bit about self worth, and making choices from a place of confidence. This time of year is full for new beginnings. We haven't quite reached the spring. But we're right at that midway point between the winter Equinox and the spring equinox. And there's an energy around new beginnings and planting seeds. One of the sayings that I love is that if I want something I've never had, I have to do something I've never done before. And that's scary. It just is it's the unknown, we're naturally afraid of the unknown, because the unknown, well, exciting and full of potential could also be full of bears, not literal bears, but figurative bears, our inner critic naturally is going to jump out in those moments, because our inner critic is not there to be mean, it's there to keep us playing small, because it loves us. I know that might sound a little crazy, because the voice sure is nasty. But the reason it is that is because that is what keeps us from doing the big scary things. It's what keeps us from putting ourselves out there and risking our face. Basically, our ego is one way of looking at it. I come from a sociology background, and there's a whole thing around the idea of your social face, or what you think other people think of you the assumptions that are made by the roles that we hold our social roles that have an understood or assumed way of showing up. And we have a lot of stuff around our identity and what we want people to believe about us and the assumptions that we make about what people believe about us. And we have this whole mirror effect because we don't exist in isolation. We are communal creatures, so we exist together. But because our society is so full of this toxic individualism, we have a tendency to just get lost in our own heads. Instead of communicating with people and getting curious and having conversations and finding out things and exploring things. We just kind of shut down and think we have to do it all by ourselves. That's a whole thing in and of itself. But when you want to step into something new, it's normal to have doubt it's normal to have fear. And honestly even putting aside the potential dangers or risks, perhaps to one's face. You know, the the way that you're perceived by other people. People in your life or society in a bigger context, or risks to your well being or livelihood or any of those things, which oftentimes aren't as real as they feel, it's usually rooted more in loss, when we do something new, it means we have to let go of something old. If you want something you've never had, you have to do something you've never done, which means being someone that you've never been. Now, that's not always entirely true, either. Sometimes you get to be the person that you've then that you love that you forgot, but it does mean letting go of some aspect of who you've been, because who we're being in the world is made up of the thoughts that we have the feelings that we have, and the actions that we take, it's this holistic picture of who we believe we are to do something different means we're being different, which means a shift, it means a change. And the thing is that that loss involves some amount of grief. Even aligned choices can involve grief, even when you take action and you make a decision that fits with your best self that fits with the person that you want to be or that you're growing to become. There can be sadness involved, there can be loss involved with that. And it may mean letting go of certain things that you've done certain things that you've had, anyone who's done any kind of decluttering may have encountered this, where you decide that you're going to let go of something that perhaps had sentimental value, but is no longer bringing joy into your life, it may mean letting go of friendships and being open to new things coming in new people coming in. That happened to me recently, I was part of an amazing mastermind that lifted me up for the past several years. And we all over the past year went in different directions. And while we are still very much friends, it didn't make sense to stay as a business mastermind that held a lot of grief for me a whole lot of grief and and for the other women too. But it was time to let that go, so that we each had room for the new things that we were growing into. The hard part with this is that fear makes everything kind of blurry. So when our fear is triggered, our brain goes on guard for the danger, because there's that perceived danger, right? The the pain that could be coming. And so our brain will trigger into its self protective modes, our inner critic starts going and we start looking for evidence of the danger that we're afraid is going to happen. Well, when you look for something, you tend to find it, whether it's there or not, or whether it could be perceived differently. If you're looking through a particular lens, then it's more likely you're going to perceive something as dangerous or as a sign that this isn't a good idea. It's also likely that you won't take action will avoid decisions to avoid potential pain. And by not deciding we make a decision. And then we get something back and go oh, well, there you go. See, I told you like you don't do the thing. And then something happens. You lay out well see, I couldn't do the thing I knew I knew I wouldn't do it. We self sabotage, right? That sounds familiar self sabotaging. Alright, well, we're not going to dig too far into self sabotage in this episode. But we are going to focus on doing the opposite of that, which is creating something and planting those seeds to cultivate what we want from a place of clarity and with a sense of confidence of self confidence, because that's really the only kind of confidence you can have when you're stepping into something new. If you've never done something before, you can't have confidence. That's not possible, because you've never done it before. So you don't have the experience to back up a confidence. But you can have self confidence, you can know that it's possible to do something different. You can look in the past and go, I've done hard things before I can do hard things again, I know that I fallen down before I've made a decision that didn't go well. And I then made a new decision and turned it into an opportunity. And it ended up working out better than I could have expected. I couldn't have planned this better. So who's to say that won't happen again, even if it doesn't seem like it in the moment, right? You can tap into your knowledge of your ability to be resilient and become willing to try something different with a sense of confidence in your self. Other than that, it takes courage. It takes courage to do something different. So I like to emphasize the courage and bravery. You know, Brene Brown talks about being brave while being brave is being vulnerable, putting yourself in that position to have it not go so well. Knowing that you'll be okay that you can do this, as well as having a support system to help you get back up when you fall down, because we all will fall down. I like the saying that pain is inevitable suffering is optional, right? So we are going to fall down, we are going to scrape our knees. But we don't have to stay on the ground crying to avoid skinning our knees again. So what do you do to step out of that blurry fear that does tend to take over and make it hard to make decisions. Curiosity. Curiosity helps to clarify things, looking beyond what you typically look at. It helps to have a mirror. So I like that saying that, you know, you can't see your own eyebrows. So having a mirror can help you see your own eyebrows. But asking those questions. And sometimes looking at yourself through other people's eyes. Now, not just anybody's eyes, you want to look through the eyes of people who can see your best self, not the people who put you down, but the people who lift you up the people who love you, it helps to get another perspective, or multiple perspectives. But even just asking yourself questions and digging in deeper than just the surface of something. So, let's give some examples here. The questions that I like to ask when we're trying to gain clarity, and we want to find a way forward or perhaps feelings of or fears of worthlessness or inability pop up. When we focus on what we don't want, we tend to create or feed what we don't want. So I like to start with, who do you want to be. That's the foundation is you your experience, your journey, you create your success, you create your experience of life, you create the impact, everything is about you. In this instance, at least not everything is about you. And when we get caught in everything being about us, that can be a little bit of a problem, and also cause some paralysis. But taking a moment to really dig into what do you want? Who do you want to be? And I say this a lot. If you've listened to me on any other podcast, or maybe even on this one I talked about, like what do you want being the foundational part of things? Who do you want to be? How do you want to experience life? And what impact do you want to make, those are some foundational vision things, not future vision things. But bringing that into the present moment so that you can then create stair steps towards that. So let's explore this a little bit. And before I do that, when I tell you a little joke that I recently read, the joke is from the book, life is a joke 100 life lessons with punch lines by The Javna Brothers. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. But I'll put a link in the show notes. It's chapter 41. "That's News to Me." This is a joke that's told another context, but I'm going to read it from this book and elderly woman goes to the doctor and tells him she has a problem with frequent gas. Fortunately, she says my farts never smell and they're always silent. As a matter of fact, I farted at least 10 times since I've been here, and I'll bet you didn't even notice. I see the doctor says handing her a vial of pills. I'd like you to take one of these every day, then come back and see me next week. The following week, the old lady returns. Doctor she says, I don't know what you gave me. But since I started taking those pills, my silent farts stink like hell, the doctor says, Good. Now that we've cleared up your sinuses, let's get working on your hearing. So that's why I mentioned you know, talking to other people. Now this is kind of looking at not exactly something that you want to create. But the reason I read that is because we often have blind spots to things. So we need to go deeper and dig into what's really going on that point of asking questions and talking to other people who you are is constantly evolving. You create yourself in each moment you choose where to put your focus and thus on what expands. So setting a vision for who you want to be so you can more effectively seek and find what helps you be that person starting with what are your best self characteristics. Maybe it's taking a look at someone that you admire, and writing down the characteristics that you see in them or thinking about something that you want to do your your big scary dream and the characteristics of the kind of person you think actually does that big scary thing or whatever it is. You may also find it helpful to ask people what characteristics they see in you. Because just like in that story, where the woman wasn't smelling her farts or hearing her farts, but the doctor was asking other people what they see can help you see things that maybe you have a blind spot to not just for the farts, but also for the things that you want to have more of. Now, if you're my son, and think farts are hilarious, you might want more farts. But we're not here to talk about farts. So starting with what are those characteristics? One of the Another one is, what are you good at? What are your gifts, other things that I'll I like to do, one of the other things I like to do is ask people when they're wanting to step into a space that they maybe are having imposter syndrome around. And they're thinking, Well, I'm not an expert, or I'm not expert enough, we'll explore "Well, what is an expert?" and dig into the characteristics of an expert, because sometimes by doing that, we discover that actually, they have all of the qualities, the characteristics of an expert, they just weren't acknowledging them, because they hadn't recognized themselves in that context. In that context, when we don't define things and go deeper, like I said, get curious about it, we often don't go deep enough, we just see the fear, the smoky, fuzzy fear that we can't quite see through and don't realize that it's our reflection. what comes natural to you, I had a client recently who was trying to do things that she thought you were supposed to do, and fitting herself into this role that I want to create this impact. And I feel like I have to do it like this. But it didn't match what her gifts were or what she really enjoyed doing. And with just exploring that and actually outlining what those gifts were, we were able to see how what she wanted to accomplish the impact that she wanted to make could be accomplished through her gifts, just in a different way. But she hadn't thought about that because we had before taken because she hadn't before taking the time to explore it. So looking at those things, and then digging into what are your values, what's important to you. Now, this one's tricky, and it probably deserves a whole nother episode all by itself, but your values, not fear based values, the ones that if you don't do this, or uphold this, then bad things happen. But the ones that you feel good when you honor the ones that you would do, regardless of outcome that are just because that feels like the best thing, the most loving thing, the right thing for you. This kind of taps into a little bit of the difference between your gut and your intuition. When we thinking about these next things about what you're good at, and what actions you take. A lot of times people use gut and intuition kind of interchangeably. And they're not the same thing. your gut is more of that radar that tells you that there's potential danger. And it's important to listen to it. One thing that comes up with a lot of women that I've worked with and known and myself, for that matter over the years is having been through a period of time where we didn't listen to our gut, that something was saying this is not okay, this is not safe. This is not healthy. This needs to be let go of and our fear kept us holding our fear kept us holding on that fear of loss. And we learned to question ourselves and question our guts, we may have been involved in relationships where we were gaslighted. And we start to doubt ourselves in our own beliefs. There's a lot of that going around right now to with the dynamics that are happening with COVID. So we've all experienced this at some level. So knowing that your intuition and your gut can say the same things. But your gut is more of the there's potential danger here to look at real or imagined doesn't matter. Hey, there's danger. And your intuition is more of that deep sense of knowing that piece of truth that we all have access to. And it's going to speak more to possibilities to expansiveness rather than protection of our human selves. So values and then how do you feel what are your true goals? Our true goals are the way we'll feel once we achieve whatever that future goal is. Rather than getting attached to the outcome, we take a look at what do we think that outcome will do for us? How will we feel once we achieve that potential outcome? Because that's the real goal, it doesn't actually matter about the outcome, the outcome will help it be great. But it doesn't mean that we can't achieve what we're looking for, in a different way. Sometimes the answer as we're stepping into something is no as my kids know quite well, when they want to play video games. But there are other ways to create that experience of enjoyment and fun and playfulness than video games, right? I keep trying to explain this to my children, but we're getting there. Getting there. Anyway, the feelings part is important. But it's also important to remember that sometimes we're really powerless over our feelings, they get triggered in a subconscious space. So we take in information, our brain puts it into a bucket, it releases hormones, and those are the feelings that we have. So sometimes, especially when we're trying to change our experience of life, it takes a little bit of time for that connection to be made. And this is where action is particularly important, because action is what teaches us that things are different action and thought, consciously engaging the thoughts that we have, and where we're putting our focus. One of the tools that I love when it comes to that is allowing for a pause, there's an acronym for pause, it is postpone action until serenity enters. Now, this can be tricky if you don't have a strategy to access serenity. But it means giving yourself a little bit of space to check in, not to use as an excuse to not take action, but to ask yourself the questions to clarify things. So going back to something like values, when you list out your values, when you say, creativity, accomplishment, intimacy, partnership, professionalism, freedom, altruism, whatever words jumped out to you that you find for your values, asking yourself, what are those mean? What does that word mean? To me? What does that word look like in practice? Oftentimes, we find ourselves using words that we haven't clearly defined that we haven't given a picture for us to tap into. And so it stays in that fuzzy zone, where it's like oobleck, well, what my mom used to call oobleck, which is when you mix cornstarch and water, when you do that, it makes this kind of goopy stuff, where when you're rolling it, it's solid. But if you squeeze it, it's all liquidy and just kind of runs through your fingers. So when we don't define things, it's like squeezing that oobleck. And it just kind of runs through your fingers. Whereas when you work it and you engage it and you explore it, and you understand it, then you can play with it. And while that analogy fails, when it comes to creating something with it, it's just fun, but but allowing yourself to have that pause to retrain those old reactions to go, okay, no, I, my focus is going here. And this is what I want to create. And this is why I want to create it. And this is the kind of person that creates something like this. And here's how I'm like that person. And here's the next step for me to take in alignment with the way I want to experience life. And here's the support that I want to be able to do that. Because we don't exist in isolation. As I mentioned before, there's a really powerful production that is currently available to watch on Hulu, if you have it. It's called In and of Itself. And the artist who created this production, it was shown on a it was shown in a theater in New York City for a long time. And now it's and they've turned it into a film since COVID. It's this powerful look at being human and seeing ourselves because we don't exist in isolation of each other. We see ourselves through other people and we see other people through ourselves. And it's just a powerful exploration of understanding our connectedness and the depth of who we are being so much greater than, than what we often give ourselves space to acknowledge. So reaching out and connecting with people is a really valuable way of seeing yourself now. One of the places that we often will do that though, is with family and friends. And the trouble with doing that is they want us to be safe. They want us to be comfortable. They want what's quote unquote best for us, but that can often lead to us playing smaller and staying stuck and not doing the big scary things that have the impact that you want to have, they will, as I like to say, get in the box with you, we all have this box of stuff, and they'll get in the box with you and they'll start moving things around with you reorganizing your closet, but not helping you let go of any of the things that while they may hold sentimental value don't actually fit anymore. So finding people who will help you see your best self and people who will push you who will challenge you not in a triggering your fear way, but in a trusting your potential kind of way. That's why people hire coaches. So there's your blatant self promotion for this podcast episode. Anyway, checking in on those things and going a little bit deeper is going to be the key to being able to tap into that clarity, and that self confidence to start something new. And I highly recommend taking little bit of time to explore this. And I highly recommend taking a little bit of time in this season, this week even to just jot some things down, write that out, plant those seeds. In your mind, putting pen to paper can be a powerful way of bringing four things you don't have to do a big old vision board, which can be lovely, if you have the space and time to do that right now with kids in school and hold the things going on. I find that a little bit challenging to create that level of space. So I want you to know you don't have to create that level of space, you can just give yourself that little bit of

time to go through: 26:44

What are your best self characteristics? Write down five? What are those gifts that you naturally have, that you're good at that people come to you for? That they ask you about? That they want your help with? What's important to you? What are your top values? What do they mean to you flush them out, write them down? Again, five, just five. Now that may seem overwhelming to narrow it down. But guess what you can actually pick wrong, you can always redefine them, you can always come back when we have life shifts, they usually shift to so it's totally okay. This is just for right now, to help center you to help ground you in what you want to create. Now, how do you feel? What are those true goals that you have? And what are you doing? What does someone who is good at those things that feels that way? That's honoring their values that has those characteristics? What does that person do? And it doesn't have to be some big amazing thing. It could just be this week. What is that person do this week? When you're being that person? What is the one thing that you need to do this week to honor that person? I would love to know from you. What are you stepping into? What seeds are you planting as we head into the springtime and I hope that you enjoy the next few coaching sessions, where you'll get to see the process of digging into this and creating that clarity to move forward with confidence from a place of love. So, with that, I'll talk to you all next time. Thanks for listening. I so appreciate you being here. If you got something out of today's episode, please share it. Leave me a review. Take a screenshot and post it on social with a shout out to me, send it to a friend or you know all of the above. Want to hang out more join me on Instagram, or better yet, get on my mailing list to make sure you don't miss out on anything. And remember, your possibilities are as unlimited as you are. Allow yourself to shine my friend. The world needs your light. See you next time.