Episode 4 - Unlock Your Limitless Potential

Unlock Your Limitless Potential

In episode 4 of "Life After Fear," Courtney explores your limitless potential and overcoming life's obstacles by harnessing hidden energy reserves through self-belief, precise planning, and a growth mindset. She shares her personal stories from a challenging childhood to her journey to becoming an airline pilot. The episode introduces and explains Courtney's RISE Process —Realign, Innovate, Strategize, and Excel—as a framework to break negative belief cycles and accomplish goals. Real-life success stories and recommendations from influential books such as "Atomic Habits" by James Clear and "Grit" by Angela Duckworth are provided to inspire and guide listeners in building positive habits, and resilience is provided to inspire and guide listeners in cultivating constructive habits and resilience.

MENTIONS

David Goggins - Can't Hurt Me
James Clear - Atomic Habits
Angela Duckworth - Grit 

Learn more about your host Courtney Schoch

Transcript

Courtney: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining episode number four of Life After Fear, Redefine Your Limits with me, Courtney Schoch. This is where you confront your fears and transform your life. Today, we are tapping unlimited potential. It is somewhat ironic that we're talking about unlimited potential because, as I am recording this, Hurricane Milton is churning in the Gulf of Mexico, and in just a day or so, it will be right on top of us.

I wanted to make sure that I took time out to get this episode to you. This hurricane is a definite reminder of how if the conditions are right, with a little bit of energy, you can turn into a powerhouse just like the storm is, but I'm not going to waste much time talking about the hurricane because I need to get this episode done and get back home and make my preparations for the storm.

Today we are going to discuss tapping into your hidden reserves of energy and motivation. A technique or two for expanding your vision of what's possible, removing some of the mental blocks to extraordinary achievements. David Goggins says, "Only you can master your mind, which is what it takes to live a bold life filled with accomplishments most people consider beyond their capability."

Have you ever asked yourself, what is limitless potential? What is your limitless potential? It's your capacity to achieve greater results in life than what you thought possible that thought changes as you become more motivated and encouraged because you take growth as an opportunity to take your life to the next level. It's tapping into yourself and finding skills and determination for a lifetime journey of the best that you can be. And it's not limited. Your potential is not limited, and you have to remember that. Your limitless potential is what you define it as.

You get to decide how fantastic or how high you want to reach. That's up to you. It can be being the best parent or the best cook. It can be a rockstar, being in some sort of hall of fame, whatever it is that you set your mind to, give it a shot. Why not?  But first, you have to realize your potential. You have to tap into that.

Initially, you'll most likely lack self-confidence. And if you do, which most of us do, let's be honest with each other, go back and listen to episode three to brush up on that. That is demolishing the walls of self-doubt. 

I'm a huge advocate for the underdog because I have been the underdog my entire life. From a violent childhood to being a high school dropout, a teenage mother, making some really poor decisions in my life, and also allowing circumstances to dictate a lot of my life. I managed to find ways to breakthrough many obstacles, despite what other people would say.  I remember when I was a bartender, I started flight school, and just the thought of me going to flight school and becoming a pilot a lot of people laughed at, and it was really hard to overcome their lack of confidence in myself when I was already struggling with it. I can remember going through flashcards behind the bar in between pouring drinks to the patrons at the bar I was working at; they would laugh and snicker because here I was in the corner of the bar, going through flashcards, trying to memorize different performance limitations for the aircraft that I was learning how to fly at the time and rules and regulations. Despite their really cruel jokes and ridicule of me, which hurt.

It was painful, but I still pushed through. I kept putting one foot in front of the other. I thought to myself, "I want to be able to encourage others because going from where I was to where I am now is incredible."

I don't celebrate that enough despite me telling other people to celebrate their successes, I have to walk the talk and have come a long way.  I know that you can do that too. If I can do it, you can definitely do it. So, let's dive in and start talking about how we could get on the right path.

I was looking at some examples of other people who have made it from nothing. Those people include Dolly Parton, Oprah Winfrey, and Howard Schultz. He was the CEO of Starbucks in 1987. All of these people came from a lot of challenges. They were not born into any type of situation that bred success, yet these people and many others have had the ability to overcome insurmountable obstacles in their lives.

If you go and read up on any of these people, they've all written books or have some type of biography or autobiography written about them. You'll find a lot of encouragement. With doubt, procrastination, and regret, all of them and all of us experience those, and it's just a form of resistance and fear.

We've spoken about that, and you can listen to episode number two as a refresher on fear and what it means to be fearful.  It's important that we highlight strategies. And that starts with challenges and embracing those. There is no limit to the amount of challenges you're going to face, and also the opportunity to learn from what I think would be the best described as a failure.

I'm not a big fan of that word.  I like to think of failures more as opportunities. It's more empowering, and It just feels better. Focusing on the process and the outcome, knowing where you wanna go and the steps to get there. It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to know what your destination is. Make sure that you have the right mindset, a growth mindset because scarcity is not going to get you anywhere. Keep in mind that there is plenty of success to go around. Plenty of it. And when you keep your mind small in a scarcity mindset, you are less likely to knock it out of the park.

It's a waste of energy. There's also an abundance of lessons to be learned. Which means plenty more challenges, which takes us back to embracing challenges and learning from the failures or opportunities.

So what is your map? Where do you want to go, and who do you want to be? We have to start there.  It's important to know what you're trying to achieve. Without a plan, it is hard to achieve a result that will keep you moving along. I learned how to fly. I'm going to be honest. I really didn't know.

I had no idea that it was going to take me in the direction that it took me. I did not have a map. To be honest with you, I was throwing the equivalent of spaghetti at the wall, hoping things would stick. For a good majority of my life and until I became aware of how much further I could go and how much faster I could go if I knew where I was going. If you don't have a plan, it is so hard to keep your eye on the ball. It is so hard to remember where you're going when the road gets rough and why you're going there.

When things get hard and tough, I'll be the first to admit that I've quit in the past, and I still quit some things. We are not machines. We're human beings. It's vital to know what your potential is.

There is this cycle, I'll reference Tony Robbins, it's a success cycle, I believe he calls it. So this goes on the concept that and the belief that your potential is amazing, but if you don't believe it, you're not going to get that far because you have a fear of failing, which we've discussed. And heck, that's the name of the podcast.

When we have a limited belief, a low belief in ourselves, that lowers our potential.  So if we're trying to lose weight and I don't really think that I can do it, maybe because I've tried it in the past and my mind's telling me you've tried to lose weight before and it hasn't really worked because here you are again trying to lose weight.

I have a belief that is not very strong in my ability to lose the weight and then that lowers my potential, right? So, by lowering my potential, I may take less action.  I believe that I'm going to lose weight, but not really. So my actions aren't really super strong. They're not disciplined.

The boundaries are a little wavy, so I don't take the amount of action that I need to take because I don't believe in myself, and I have limited potential. I take minimal action. And you know what I end up getting? I end up getting a minimal result. So if I'm trying to lose 10 pounds, I don't think that I can, or it's going to be really hard, and I'm probably going to fail anyway.

It means I'm probably going to sneak in that Oreo cookie here or there or waiver on what my plan is.  Then the result might be I lose a couple of pounds or maybe I even gained a couple of pounds.   My mind tells me, see, I told you you couldn't do it. So it reinforces this negative belief cycle. This success cycle is broken because I'm not being successful. The only thing I'm being successful in is not achieving my goal and satisfying my mind, and proving it that I couldn't lose the weight. I took little action or incorrect action and I got crappy results and therefore I didn't achieve what I set out to do and I'm less likely to achieve it next time because I just don't believe that I can because uncertainty limits your full potential.

When there's a limited potential, there's a lot of uncertainty in what it is that you're trying to do. But if you change that belief in yourself initially, if you gain some certainty, if you tap into confidence, some type of confidence, you know that you can do it. Remember, we change the way that we use our mind because the mind is a tool and if you don't use it correctly, it can end up really messing your life up and limiting your potential.

So we are going to retrain our mind and use it as a resource. You can go back to the previous episodes to listen to how to do that. So if we have more certainty, we're more likely to increase our potential output, take better action or more effective action, and get better results. And then our minds like, see, I knew we could do it.

And you're like, hell yeah, I could do it. So you keep repeating what it is because you're building that confidence, and you're building that certainty. I think about this frequently; some of my experiences and experiences of friends people that I've seen overcome incredible challenges and they had a belief they knew where they wanted to go, they knew why they wanted to go they go there, and they created a map, and if they had to change the map or the action plan then that's what they did.

They modified it.  Similar to flying, if I'm flying to a location and the wind is stronger than what I thought it was gonna be or there's a storm ahead, I make some changes. No, I'm not going to continue going on the course when I see that it's taking me off the path because maybe I'm trying to get to Nevada, and I'm going to end up in Washington State. That's not where I want to go. So I have to make some changes and modifications.   That's what we do in our life in order to achieve our goal back in 2020, perhaps 2021. It was around COVID. I had a private Facebook group, and I came up with this process, my own process that I realized I had been using for years, but I didn't have a name attached to it.

So when I sat down and wrote it out, I was like, wow, this is how I have been able to overcome so many things. So the process is called RISE, R.I. S. E. In another episode, we can dive deeper into it. 

But just to touch on it, R stands for realign. Realign, get yourself together. If you're scattered, if you're feeling spaced out, or not exactly sure where you are, you need to realign. Figure out what we just talked about. Where you want to go, why you want to get there, and how you're going to get there. 

The next step is to innovate and come up with some innovation that's your own innovation for you. Create something that works for you in order to build the certainty and the belief so your potential is greater, you take better action, and you get better results. Which falls into the strategize. category. This is all part of it. 

You innovate, and then you strategize. You strategize with how you're going to implement what you've come up with in your own personal plan. The next step is to excel. Go out there and knock it out of the friggin park, 

So it's Realign, Innovate, Strategize,  and Excel. Those four steps got me to where I wanted to be, and I continue to use them to this day. But here's the deal: you don't just use it once after you Realign, Innovate, Strategize, and Excel. You're not going to get there immediately; once you're excelling, you are going to have to recalibrate again, which is realigning.

And the process starts all over. If you're constantly doing this process, realign, innovate, strategize, and excel, it keeps you on the path, and it's an easy acronym.  I came up with the acronym because it was so easy to remember. And you're rising up; you're going to a different level. So keep that in mind.

Realign, innovate, strategize, and excel.  That should keep you on the right path. In addition to that, before I get moving along to go do my hurricane preparations, I'm going to leave you with two references that I have found incredibly helpful over the years. 

The first one is by James Clear. titled Atomic Habits, this book is great because it provides some tips for designing and creating habit stacking, leveraging the power of small, consistent actions, because that is very powerful.

The second reference is titled Grit by Angela Duckworth. She discusses the role of resilience, and the focus is on a growth mindset in order to develop grit to overcome challenges. 

Those two books are must-reads, in my opinion, and there are so many other references out there. There's just a wealth of information to get you on the right path and try and use my process.  R.I.S.E.,  realign, innovate, strategize, and excel. It could work for you. It's worked for me. It's worked for a lot of my clients in the past, so give it a try. We'll dive into that in a later episode. But if you can just remember those four things, it will give you some type of guideline to keep you on the right path and keep you moving forward to unlock your limitless potential. 

So that's it for episode four, everyone. I need to scooch out of here to get my hurricane preparation completed. It is raining cats and dogs; I appreciate you spending time with me today, and I am looking forward to episode number five next week; we're going to be talking about how you can escape the comfort zone trap. 

I'd love for you to check out all the links and resources in the show notes. Also, subscribe, share, and leave a rating with a review. That helps a bunch. Please don't forget I want you as part of this growing community. You can follow me on social media. That would be a great way to find out what fears you were facing or have faced.

We've added a link in the description page so you can text the show directly and I can read what you have to say and share it with other listeners if you'd like. So once again, thanks for joining me and until next week, keep reaching for the sky and never settle for less than what you can be. 

Take care, everyone.