Connect to your mission- How Did I Get Here?

Today we explore the way in which we connect to our mission and purpose. September is Suicide Prevention month and what better way than to reconnect with what wakes us up each day to choose to live.

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Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants: 0:05

You're listening to Leading Victory and I'm your host, Amanda Nicole. Today, we are going to talk about connecting to mission, the journey of how did I get here? How did you get here? And I hope to shed some inspiration today for you to connect to mission. Take the next step in your journey towards living bold and courageous. Let's get started. Today is special. Today is my birthday and I chose to launch on my birthday for so many reasons. One is that. September is Suicide Prevention Month and I will explain a little bit later, but on my journey of choosing to launch a podcast suicide prevention played a bit of a role in it. Over the last year as I've been contemplating What I put out there for content on this podcast, I realized that to support suicide prevention is. To help you connect to a deeper purpose and to become fully alive, to remember that you are unequivocally loved and blessed for just being a human. And it's okay if today you don't believe that because I hope that we're going to hang out for a while and over time you will see the incredible value that you have and you will see that you. are called for such a time as this and you have a unique purpose to offer the world. So today is launch day and I want to look at a bit of how did I get here? We're going to be spending a lot of time together and I think it's fair for you and I to get to know each other a little bit. So I'll go first. Did you remember as a kid reading the choose your own adventure books? I remember these so clearly, my sister and I would read these you go through a chapter and it's like a mystery almost, you get to a point in the book where you have a choice do you open the door and go down the hallway or sit down and eat the meal whatever you choose, It would tell you to flip to a certain page, and that would be the next part of your adventure. And you could reread these books so many different ways until you got through all the different adventures and outcomes. been married for two years and have an amazing teenage daughter. And I definitely cannot say that life has been easy, but It's been my adventure. And that's the biggest thing that I want to equip you with is understanding that life in no way is happening to us. It happens for us. There are so many crappy things that can happen in the world but at the end of the day, you get to choose how we respond to the things that happen to us. And so I chose this launch day for a couple of reasons. One, September is Suicide Prevention Month, and that is a cause that is near and dear to my own heart, and I'll unpack that more in future episodes. But I want you to know that, a huge part of what I believe in my mission is to help people become fully alive. And I can't think of a better way to launch into Suicide Prevention Month than to celebrate and invite you to start the journey of becoming more fully alive. Maybe you don't have all the tools for that right now, but as we hang out together, I hope that I equip you with those. I hope that you will lean into the tools that I'm offering, not just from podcast, but through my community. Through my emails through my Instagram, I want to equip you with the tools to understand yourself more, to understand your habits of thinking, to understand what holds you back and to gain clarity and confidence around what it is that's going to move you forward in living your purpose with joy fun and expression of who you are. I don't even know who's on the other side of this, but I want to tell you that you're amazing. Sometimes we need somebody else to tell us how amazing we are. But I have a secret for you that it's taken me about 41 years to find out. We have to believe. that we're amazing ourselves before we're even open to understanding or hearing that from somebody else. We have to be willing to look ourselves in the mirror, give ourselves a high five, and say, yeah, you're amazing. Because other people can do it for us, but I will tell you it's got to be really frustrating for somebody to say that over and over again, and to have somebody on the other side of it throw it on the floor like trash. My hope is To give you the courage to believe in yourself again, to give yourself permission to dream again, and then to equip you with simple action steps to make that a reality. I used to be a super big dreamer and I still am. I'm a visionary in many ways. Something that is really interesting about being a dreamer is that it can be used as a form of escape. And this is called fantasy, right? Fantasy or catastrophe in the habits of thinking mindset that, we evaluate through Habit Finder. Maybe that's you. Maybe your dreams take you to either fantasy, living in the clouds, escaping your current reality, taking vacations on the beach, or catastrophe, like you're living in a van down by the river. Dreams that drive you are those you can take action on through baby steps and winning in the millimeters. I want you to know I was not always this way and I'm still learning. There's one thing that's remained really grounded for me since I landed in faith there's something about me, that has always been true. I've always been ambitiously curious. When I was 15, I came up with a life mission statement. If you don't have a life mission statement, don't judge yourself, borrow mine if you want to. But my life mission is to call people out of fear and lead them into the wholeness that God made them to be. There's two action words there, calling and leading. And what's so interesting that I've learned in 17 years of running a business and coaching is that you can only lead someone who desires to follow, you can't lead someone that's constantly running away. And with this idea of leading victory, it's equipping you to lead your own life. We can't lead our lives if we are in constant escape of our current reality. The best way to healing is through. To move through the pain and let ourselves heal. To move through the fear and find courage on the other side. To move through the scary thing and to find confidence. On the other side to love yourself with grace and laughter through that process. So my invitation to you is to not run away. I hope that as we navigate this podcast together, you will take advantage of the resources that I'm offering to you and that you will plug in to the journaling, to the community, to the emails, and begin this journey of leading victory in your own life. Leading victory as a title came to me. several years back, I was in the process of rebranding my business. I started with massage called Rising Lotus I was looking to shift in 2019. And spending some time on it, I had this inspired idea of really thinking about what does my name mean? I believe that our name serves as a tribute to who we are. I believe that we're given our names for a purpose. Amanda means worthy of being loved, Nicole means victory of the people. I sat with that, and was so on board with it, my name is exactly what I stand for, which is love and victory. I'm going to title my business, Amanda Nicole, right? And as I got into mindset coaching through Habit Finder, it was time to shift again. In my business adventure, I moved from rising Lotus to Amanda Nicole wellness and wellness is this beautiful umbrella that covers mind, body and spirit And when I shifted become a certified habit finder coach, I wanted to open that up. I had this title of leading victory. But what is leading victory? I believe that we are leading our own lives and we're leading in victory sometimes in the definition of victory can be the idea of overcoming a battle, right? victory and the champion of winning a race. But the other side of victory is about the achievement of mastery and success in a struggle or endeavor against odds or difficulties. in my own journey of leading my life in victory and overcoming, there's been several moments in my story that I wanted to give up and I imagine that maybe that's true for you too, but I didn't because I was curious enough to explore what was on the other side. So if my life mission was to call people out of fear and into the wholeness that God made them to be, what would that be? Everything that I've done as a major decision in my life I've wanted to make sure that it aligned with that purpose and that includes this podcast. This is such a fun platform to open the door to getting to know people all over the world. I've been a teacher at heart since I was a teenager for as long as I can remember. So it made The most sense hop on a platform that can connect with people worldwide to offer tools to offer inspiration to give you an opportunity to take courage one day, one week at a time. One thing that I have seen in my years of personal development and growth is there is so much mindset work, and I am all for understanding that mindset work because that is, the veil that gets pulled back that allows us to begin to expose The ideas that can be holding us back or the limiting beliefs. however, something that I don't see a lot of is tools to drive action. there are methods of driving action my goodness, there's everything from the five second rule to affirmations to using planners. But have you ever noticed that there's a level to which you can take on or learn about all of these incredible tools. but you still aren't taking action towards them. What is that about? Because you are not alone in that. It's so frustrating. There's a verse in the Bible that says, the things that I want to do, I don't do. And the things that I don't want to do, I do. You are not alone. This is an age old dilemma of being a human. And yet, I want to empower you with a tool, some knowledge that I learned for myself and became certified in, which was this habit finder assessment that measures my habits of thinking. We know that our thoughts drive behavior, our thoughts create emotions and our emotions over time when memorized become our personality. But it still starts with our thoughts. It comes back to the root of what is our thought that is driving behavior. I want to equip you to be connected to what makes you come alive and have the courage to not write that off, to begin taking baby steps towards. that thing that makes you come more alive. For me, what makes me come alive is seeing people connect the dots with their purpose I've always thought I was a little bit weird. I didn't have a ton of hobbies as an adult or as a young adult. I didn't have a bunch of sports or anything that I can hang my hat on in terms of identity, but something that I knew to my core is that I love people and when someone asks, what do you want to be remembered for? What legacy do you want to leave? My legacy and my hope is to be remembered for loving people well. Do you have a legacy of something that you want to be remembered for? If you do, please share it with me. I believe that when we speak things out, they begin to become a reality the more we speak them out. I remember being a young adult in college and my one prayer was, God, let me love people like you do. I went to school in Chicago and when you live in a city coming from Highlands Ranch, if you guys don't know where that is, that's where I grew up was Highlands Ranch. It was a beautiful bubble suburb. It was an amazing place to grow up and it was incredibly privileged in a sheltered kind of way until it wasn't. I was a sophomore when Columbine happened and that directly began to shape my sense and appreciation of how fragile life is. Then I went to school in Chicago for psychology and I was a freshman when 9 11 happened. I was so grateful to be on Loyola's campus where it's an open faith campus and we got to stand up for people who were on campus that were different than us. living in Chicago was incredible for me. It was an opportunity to grow, to heal, to learn about myself, to learn about others. But when I think about how did I get here, sitting in front of a microphone, sharing this podcast with you, my life, and I imagine so is yours, is this beautiful journey of a domino effect. It's the choose your own adventure of life, but it's your life we can't go back and change the adventure that we chose in the first place. Some of us maybe wish we could, heavens knows I've made plenty of mistakes that I would love to change, but if I had changed any one of those mistakes, I wouldn't be who I am today. And neither would you. We can be empowered about. The next adventure choice that we choose every day we have an opportunity To make choices that will move us forward. the more we are connected to our purpose, what we want to be remembered for, what we're truly living for and having the courage to lead. victory to overcome, to create mastery in making those choices that connect you to purpose at a deeper level. The more we're excited about the book we're writing, you guys, this is your life. Leading victory is about living your life. This podcast is a love song to the people of the world to call you up and call you out to live your life so much fuller and with so much more courage because this is your one shot and I want to equip you with the understanding of how to manage your habits of thinking so that you can get into that adventure faster that you can get into action faster. What's the first step? The first step, if you've never identified your purpose, can I just encourage you that you might be thinking of it too, systemically. Most people, when they think about their life purpose, they think, what am I meant to do? What am I meant to do to create to whatever here on earth? And I want to offer you a perspective. That what if your purpose wasn't about what you did, but more about who you are. We are human beings. Not human doings. We are human beings that do things, but to do well, we get to learn how to be. I've talked with a lot of people in my coaching that struggle with this concept of having infinite value, just for being a human. And if that's you, I want to offer you some encouragement today. If you gave yourself permission to know that your habits of thinking aren't wrong. They're where your brain takes you. So that's you, someone that struggles with holding on to purpose for just being and breathing and being here. Know you don't have to get there today. Know that this is a journey and the more you connect with what it is that makes you come alive, the more you'll be able to. See your infinite worth. It's okay that it takes time. There's a lot of stinking thinking to navigate through. To clear the path to clarity my promise with Leading Victory is to help you connect with your purpose through the stories I share the interviews on Thursdays and the resources via email social media and the community pages. This is a journey. It took you a lifetime, however old you are, to get to the point that you are now of whatever thinking that you're in. And so it might take you, a little bit of time to get to the other side. To begin to shift those habits of thinking. My question for you to start with is, are you willing to do the work? I have this image in my head as I'm sharing about this big wheat field if the stocks are above your head, you can be trudging through this wheat field and not see what's in front of you, but still be moving through to your destination. But what if there's something on the ground? What if there's a snake on the ground, a hole, a pit, something that you can't see just a few steps ahead of you, what if you were to clear a path for yourself? Let's be honest, just walking through a field probably is easier, maybe it's more enjoyable, around the ease of moving through something. It's gonna take some work to make a path. But just know that you are leading that path for your life in order that others may follow behind you. If you're listening and you have kids, maybe that path is for them. the victim mindset would say nobody laid the path for me. And that's okay. If that's where you want to think nobody laid the path for me, woe is me. You can continue down that path, but when you're ready to start living and leading life, we step into nobody laid that path for me. And I know what that feels like. So I'm going to do the work to lay the path for others. And maybe that's for your children because the buck stops with you. If you have. A lifetime of doubt, shame, fear, low self worth, low self esteem, not something that we can just fake it till we make it when it comes to our children and leading them in being their best selves. So I want to encourage you to partner with me in this podcast, in this journey to develop mastery over the struggles in your life. And to connect deeply with what makes you come alive. Hey, it's my birthday and I'm so thankful to be alive. I'm so thankful to be here for 41 years, living my purpose, choosing my own adventure and having an opportunity to be on this platform to invite you to come fully alive. we are going to go on an adventure together and I want to get to know you. So help me to not make this just a one way street. If you're on socials, share, comment, leave a review. And if you haven't yet plugged into the community via email, then go to the link in the bio and get yourself registered. the link is in the show notes as well as in the leading victory bio or coach Amanda Nicole on Instagram bio. You can connect there and make sure that you are receiving emails to receive the tools and next steps for each week. Are you ready for an adventure? Are you ready to look at what makes you come alive? Are you ready to lean in and start living your legacy? Because I can say this until you believe it, you were made for such a time as this. You have such an incredible purpose. We don't ask what the world needs. We ask what makes us come alive. And then we go do it because what the world needs is people who have come fully alive. I hope you've had an incredible Labor Day weekend. So the challenge that I have for you this week, the action step for today is if you have a life mission statement. Share it with me, put it out there, share it with someone, or if you have a legacy that you know you want to live, put it out there, share it with someone. For me, my mission statement is to call people out of fear and into the wholeness that God made them to be. my legacy. Is wanting to be remembered for loving people well, Thank you for listening. Let's stay connected, share this with someone who needs some encouragement today, and I will catch you on Thursday.