You're Lying to Yourself (And It's Keeping You Stuck) | Growth Mindset for Working Parents

If you're not growing right now, you're building a story to justify why standing still is okay. Today we break that story apart. | Confidence • Self Improvement • Growth Mindset • Working Parents • Entrepreneurs

What story are you telling yourself to justify staying stuck?

In this episode of The Business of Becoming, I'm breaking down the 5 lies working parents and parent entrepreneurs tell themselves — and giving you 4 real tools you can use TODAY to finally move. Not someday. This week.

We talk about:
→ Where self-deception actually comes from (the psychology behind it)
→ The 5 most common lies holding working parents back
→ Why "I'm doing this for my kids" can be the most loving excuse you've ever built
→ The difference between toxic positivity and growth-anchored self-talk
→ How to build real confidence — even when you're terrified

This episode is for you if you're a working parent, a parent entrepreneur, or anyone who has been "waiting for the right time" for longer than you care to admit.

I'm Steffany — owner of Preferred Claim Solutions, Inc., one of the largest public adjusting firms in Florida — and I built it before 30 while raising toddlers. This show exists because nobody talks about the real, messy, beautiful journey of becoming honestly enough. So we do.

🎯 YOUR CHALLENGE THIS WEEK:
Write down the one goal you've been postponing. Write the lie next to it. Then take ONE action in the next 24 hours to prove that lie wrong.

📌 SUBSCRIBE for weekly episodes on entrepreneurship, mindset, leadership, and the real art of showing up for your life while you're still building it.

💬 Drop in the comments: How long have you been waiting for "calm" before you start?

#confidence #selfimprovement #growthmindset #selfconfidence #selfdevelopment #selflove #buildingconfidence #workingmoms #mompreneur #entrepreneurmindset #businessofbecoming #howtobuildconfidence #becomingthebestversionofyourself #selftalks #impostersyndrome #workingparents #parententrepreneur #mindsetshift #growthmindsetcoach #selfawareness

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right. So how many of us have been standing in our kitchen or in our office Monday morning? And just for like one second, we're attempting to do what we're supposed to be doing, attempting to do the task that we've had shifted around for the last, I don't know, six months. And then you realize, well, maybe I'll start next Monday, or maybe I'll start next month, or I'm not ready. Many of us have given ourselves that lie, and we've believed it. And it's not just like a little lie, it is a lie that we have constructed and have built narratives to that become our reality. And today, we're gonna break down a lot of these lies. We're gonna break down what has impacted me the most. And this is a saying that I've had, and when I've heard it, it's just something that has not just sit in me, but like re-inspired me to have this conversation with you guys, which is stagnation leads to deception. Everything starts in our mind and the way that we view ourselves and the way that we think about ourselves. I want you to know that I'm gonna give you some real practical tools that are not just gonna be a nod and a yeah, and okay. No, if you actually apply these tools, things are gonna shift. And I'm not just saying today, but I'm saying this week, this month, for you they will shift. Because it's stuff that I've done in my personal life that I've actually seen real change and real shifts in my life. Welcome back to the business of becoming. I'm your host, Stephanie. And if this is your first time, welcome. I'm glad you're here to join us. I help high-achieving people who feel alone at the top find peace, purpose, and the next version of themselves. So, before the age of 30, I purchased and own now, still to this day, one of the largest public addressing firms in Florida. Uh, thankfully, I mean, we've been open for almost two decades now, and I've been working in this for over a decade and a half. And honestly, before I purchased it, I had given myself every excuse in the book as to why I shouldn't and why I wasn't ready, or why this just wasn't the right time. It wasn't for me. I had, you know, a marriage, I had my kids, and I it was just there were so many different things going on in my life. And to be honest with you, this show exists because of the journey that I've had to go through. Um, not just in my professional career, but handling both my professional and my personal life. And that's what this show's about, right? It's about the journey the messy, the beautiful, the chaotic, the diapers and the deadlines and everything else in between. A lot of people don't share, you know, so much of their struggles and what they have personally had to encounter to be able to get to a place where they feel like I'm somewhat successful or I somewhat tried to make it. And honestly, I don't really think that we talk enough about our journey as we're building it. You know, if you take a moment, you realize that the life we have, you know, we're building in between all of what I just said, all of the mess, all of our personal stuff. Like we need to take a step back and realize and self-audit, you know, what it is that we're trying to build and what are we trying to get to. And a lot of the challenges that I faced were mainly mental. Yes, there was a lot of natural and tangible things that were difficult and hardships, but so much of it was the way I saw myself. So much of it was the way that I was already counting myself out on several things, even though I was already successful enough to be able to, you know, purchase the company, and I was already successful enough in the company. But I still, when I faced things that were a stepping stone for me to get to a higher place, all of these like crazy insecurities and all of these crazy self-doubts just started coming and rushing back to me. And I feel like so many of us are trying to do something else, right? Or we're trying to take a next step, or we're trying to build around our kids and our families, or starting relationships and just trying to do so much at a time that we forget to talk to ourselves and see internally how are we doing and how do we see ourselves? Because that is the most important thing you can do, because you will lose yourself, whether it's in a relationship, in a business, in leadership. You will lose yourself if you don't hold on to how you even see yourself. Because then the only way you're gonna see yourself is how others, you know, talk about you, whether that's praising you or just bringing you down. And nobody in this world will be influential if what they hold their value to or who they are is based on what others think of them. So before we get into these, before we get into the lies themselves, uh, I actually read this research that I want to share with you guys. There's a group of researchers that they grabbed a group of people and they drew scars on their face and they sent them out to have conversations with others. But the tricky part is before they actually sent them to go have these conversations with people, they took off the scars without obviously the subjects knowing. But when they came back and got the feedback of how the conversations went with their subjects and the people who they were talking to, each one of them said that they felt judged, that they felt like they were, you know, just not looked at the same way, that they weren't appreciated, that they were just automatically icked, if that's a better word. And funny enough, the researchers they call this expectation bias. And what does that mean? That just means that we create the narratives for ourselves. And we create what we think is our reality and how we already expect people to see us because of a scar or because something that they are carrying that is now visible and it's not you know hidden behind one of their dark closets. Why am I saying this story? First, I think it was super cool and super genius. Because it tells us so much about the world that we create for ourselves, not the world that we genuinely see. Because these people were having full-blown conversations with you know others, and they had no scars. They could have been completely natural, completely themselves, but they already carried such an insecurity because of this thing that was on their face. That in reality wasn't there, but they thought was. So my question here is what scars are you carrying into your workplace, into your relationships, into your friendships, into your parenting. Like all of us have parent guilt. If you are a parent, and if you are a decent parent, you carry some of these scars of our traumas, of our past, of how we were raised, how we were parented. And if you have kids, you know you can, you know, get mad at them for one second, and then you know, two minutes later, they're they just want to go back out and play. You know, okay, they weren't time out. All right, you know, they're they're ready. And I think this is such a great way to start this conversation before we break down into the nitty-gritty because I want you to understand, I've lived through so many seasons of my life where I was wearing or feeling like people were judging me for something that honestly they they really weren't. The big one was my divorce. Like, how can I go back into the dating world being a single mom? You know, how can I go back to face my team that knew me as this married, you know, person that had like her life in order and now it's not? I struggled with those scars that were not visible and were not the way that people saw me, but was the way that I was seeing myself, hence, made me react different as an individual, made me react differently in my workplace, made me react differently in my friendships, and honestly made me struggle in trying to think that the possibility of a relationship was even possible for me. And that's where this whole stagnation leads to deception comes back into place because you think you have these scars, you think you have these things that people are gonna judge you for, and they're gonna knock you down because you're gonna have this idea and they're gonna say you can't do it because you're this or because you're that or because you don't have the time or whatever the case may be. And you stop moving and you create these calcifying stories that build this reality for you, that tear down any kind of motivation, any confidence that you even had in yourself in that moment. And again, you're letting everything around you, including your environment, your friends, your group, your circle, your situation, dictate your future. And I'm gonna tell you the truth. Don't. I know this sounds so simple, like, oh, I'm gonna tell you the truth. No, like don't. Don't. Because no one will stand up for you but you. You can go to a Tony Robbins conference or you can listen to this podcast and feel great for two seconds. But the reality is if you can't find out who you are inside and you can't battle these questions and actually start creating a different narrative for yourself and your mind, it's gonna be a vicious cycle where you find yourself being at an emotional high of I can do everything, I got this, to going right back down when you hear you really can't, or you know, you've got kids, they're too little, or you've you know got too much going on in your plate right now, and it's gonna knock you on your ass. And I will be the first to tell you rock bottom is a good place to start. Rock bottom is a great place to start a foundation. It's a great place to look and say, let me look back and really build my identity off of the good that I've done and the good that I want to do. My failures just taught me. My stresses, my day-to-day, they're gonna teach me how to muster through all of this. But they're not gonna stop me from getting to where I want to get to. So I want you to try something with me right now. I want you to look in the mirror. If you are an audio listener, look in the mirror, unless you're driving or anything crazy, but take a look in the mirror, right? Because when I did this many times in my life, the first questions that would usually come to my mind was, crap, I should have been further in my life right now. You know, what's wrong with me? Why can't someone love me enough? Right? Why can't I have the life that I thought that I was supposed to have by now? Right? I was supposed to have another kid by now. I was supposed to, you know, live in this other state, whatever the case. But those were things that were for me, right? Those were the questions that I didn't even want to look in the mirror to ask because there were doubts of myself. And they were the way that I saw myself. Stay with me. Okay. I want you to picture a golf ball and a cup of water. And when doubts come to your mind, okay, there's some doubts that float, meaning you acknowledge it and you say, okay, life's a little messy right now. Life's a little not my favorite, right? Not my favorite season of my life, or my favorite episode of my life. But then there's some that sink. There's some doubts that don't just float, there's some doubts that sink. And those doubts are the golf ball. Because you throw a golf ball in water, it sinks. What am I trying to tell you? Why the hell am I talking about golf? I don't even play it. But those doubts that you tell yourself or that you that come out of you, or that they go into your brain, that really start changing the way you move and that you operate, those are the golf ball doubts. And those are the ones that I really want you today to identify because you can't let those doubts change how you move. You can't let those doubts maneuver you really and completely alter the way that you handle your life, your business, your parenting skills. You can't let that. Doubts will happen, just like fear, doubts will happen, but they need to be able to float because at that point they're not messing with your internal system. They're there, you acknowledge, all right, goodbye. They're not sinking down deep to the core of who you are, and they're not rewriting your identity. And our work today here is to rewire your brain to understand, and that's why I'm giving you guys these stories and these analogies, so that you can actually physically, tangibly, like in your mental picture, see oh, that's that's a golf ball doubt, or that's a floating doubt, right? Because it's gonna happen, bro. Like, we're gonna have doubts. If you're a parent, like I said earlier, you're gonna doubt that you're a good parent. But let me tell you something that somebody told me that honestly can make me cry right now because it changed my parenting style. And I was, you know, I was in therapy, that's the truth. And I was going in and I was saying, I was going in and I was saying, I feel like I'm a bad mom. You know, I I I want to be there so much more. And I just started going down this spiral of like, you know, why I feel like this and that. And she stopped me and she told me, she goes, can I just tell you something? She goes, the fact that you're even acknowledging that you want to do more and be more present is a sign that you're a great mom. Because, oh, wait, actually, she said, you want to know who doesn't think about wanting to be there more for their children and provide a better life for their kids. A bad mom. And that changed so much for me because now this obsession of I need to do everything and then I also have to make time for everything for them, changed because I was like, oh, I am a good mom, I am a good parent. You know, everything I am doing is for them and to think of them. So did I want to be better? Of course. There's always room for growth, but that I'm already good enough for them. That golf ball doubt went from being a part of what I was carrying as an identity to now going all the way and not being who I was to my core. Now I was able to remove that and say, I am a good mom. And when sometimes I feel like I'm not, those are just doubts that are floating that I can take away and say, okay, how can I be better now? How can I show up better for these kids that absolutely adore me and are obsessed with me, and that I'm absolutely obsessed with them. Now we're gonna get into it. So here are the five lies that every working parent tells themselves. And the first one, and I first of all, I want to tell you, I have told myself all of these, and I have drafted these notes from the things that I have had to really like really do the work to overcome. Okay. So the first one is the lie that I'll start when things calm down. If you have children, you know that things never get calm. That on the week of one of your most important meetings or biggest client or whatever, something happens, bro. You're something happens, like your kids get sick, or they have a recital, or they need to do this, or they have a dentist appointment, they have that. Like things just don't calm down as a parent. They can sometimes find the groove and find some steadiness, but they just they they never calm down. Because especially if you have younger kids, it they need a lot of attention. And then when they're older, they just need you there. They don't need you to talk as much or be the you know wise point of counsel every five seconds, but they just need you there. And they don't my my sister, she has, you know, uh almost 17-year-old, almost 15-year-old, almost 13-year-old, and uh three-year-old. And she's in the thick of it. And I've asked her a thousand times, because my kids are only, you know, three and five. I've asked her, like, what's the difference between that little toddler stage and the stage that the girls are now that they're you know teenagers? And she's like, no, it is so damn demanding. She's like, it is the most demanding part right now. Even before it was a little easier when they were younger. Now it's just like I have to just be there. So can we acknowledge that things never calm down? The people who are growing, and this is something I really want you to understand, the people who are growing, they grow in the midst of chaos. They grow in the midst of things not calm. Because there's no other option. It's either you grow or you stand still and you stay in stagnation and you just keep the rhythm that you have with no future to change, you know, with no possibility to become anything greater. Here's the reframe from all of that. I want you to understand that life is never gonna get calm. And the people who wait for the perfect moment never become the best version of themselves. Because that version needs to take risks. That version needs to stand up for themselves and be courageous. That imperfect person and the imperfect time, those are the people who get there. Whoever there looks like for you deserves that imperfect person of who you are right now to stand up, take courage, take a risk, and start fighting to get there. And I want to ask you, I'm just checking in, how many of you have been waiting for a calmer time to do something? Drop it in the comments. I'm being serious. I want to, I want to know. I want to invest myself more with you guys. How many of you have been waiting for a perfect moment for something? And what is that perfect moment supposed to look like for you? And if that perfect moment does come, what are you gonna do with that? What are you, in your perfect world, gonna do to get there? Because I guarantee you, if you tell me what that perfect moment looks like and what you're trying to do when that happens, we can find out how you can fit that into your life. I promise. It's just, you know what it's gonna take? It's gonna take a lot of courage, it's gonna take a lot of long nights, it's gonna take a lot of work, but that it can happen. I don't doubt you. So why are you doubting you? Lie number two I can't take the risk. I'm doing this for my kids. And this one I want to be very gentle and very cautious with you because I know that this is a emotional loaded doubt and lie that we told ourselves. And I can only speak for myself here, right? But in my personal story, I never wanted to uproot my kids from the life that they had. I never wanted them to deal with what they're dealing with now, right? You know, shuffling back and forth and you know, having two homes now, having to celebrate, you know, two birthdays and all this other stuff. Like that is the hardest thing I'm dealing with as a parent, if I'm real with you. But how many of us have used our kids as a shield because we weren't brave enough to take a stand for ourselves? And your kids, no matter what age they are, especially if they're younger, right? But they are looking at you on how you pursue your dreams, how do you pursue what relationship standards look like? They are downloading all of this information by what they're seeing through you. They are downloading what they want from what they see you do, and what they see you passionate for, and what you stand up for, and the way you treat yourself, they're looking at that. Every time you shrink a dream, even if it's quietly, your kids are looking. At that. They're looking at what an ambitious adult is and what to do when they get to that point. I'm telling you, my daughter's gonna turn five. And I I asked her, you know, what does she want to be? And whatever, and she says, Me. My daughter walks around this office and she's like, I want to be like you. I love you. And then the other day she told me she wanted to be a baker, which I was like, wait, hold on. Like, what are we selling, baby? Like, what are we selling? How are we gonna make money off that? But, anyways, that's uh it's a passion, I'm not gonna kill it. But, you know, she's looking at me. Every time we are scared to take a step, they see that. But you want to know what else they see? They see courage and the steps you take that are courageous, and they see, at least in my life, that we do hard things. Because if they're in the best interest of our safety and our life and how we believe our life should look like, we do hard things, courageous things. Courage is making a hard choice, and my daughter says this all the time, and even my son is starting to say it now too. You know, we do hard things, we are courageous, because being strong and being courageous means a lot of times, in my case, was saying goodbye to a life that I wanted so badly, and saying that's not gonna fit us anymore. That's not the way that mommy wants to be treated. That's not the way that, you know, again, very emotional loaded questions, so I I get it, but I really want you to understand, especially if you are a single parent and you're listening to me right now, you are so strong for leaving a life that you thought, because no one gets married with the intention of getting divorced. You know, no one has kids with the thought that they're gonna have to live two separate lives. You know, they're gonna have to live over here one time and over here one time. Like no one wants that, right? And I just want to give you a round of applause for being courageous and stepping up for yourself when the easy thing would have been to stay. And the easy thing would have been to, you know, live a life that wasn't for you and wasn't fulfilling you and was belittling you and just quieting you down, right? And again, I'm not putting blame on anybody or whatnot, because sometimes things just happen, right? But you need to stand up for yourself, and your kids will see that. You need to believe that you deserve better and the best because that's what you want for your kids, right? You want them to have the best, you want them to believe for the best in themselves, you want to mirror a relationship where they can see that for themselves. Self-love means betting on yourself and showing yourself and your kids that you are worth that risk, and they are worth that. They are worth you making a decision to better their lives. So don't count yourself out. I know it gets dark, I know there's days you are just in the trenches, but you're betting on yourself, and what you're doing is courageous. And I really want you to ask yourself in any situation that you're in, if you're maybe just too scared to do something and you're just using your kids as a shield. Like, is this really for my kids, or is this the most loving piece of excuse that I've ever had? Line number three, I'm not ready yet. Told myself that a thousand times. When I took over this company, the whole nine, I was not ready. Before I even press record on this podcast, I was not ready. And we're what, like episode 43 right now, Frankie? Yeah. So I was never ready. Rarely are you are ready. And there's a study, I'm giving you facts today, right? There's a study that shows when you try to over-prepare for something, because preparation is a key, right? But when you try to over-prepare for something, you realize how much you don't know. And then you psych yourself out heavily. Readiness is not a feeling that shows up before the action. Oh, I like that. I'm gonna say that again. Readiness is not a feeling that shows up before the action. Readiness is the feeling that you get when you are in action. Because every day you're getting up and you're saying, I'm gonna do this. I'm ready to try. I'm ready to make something out of what's right in front of me. And you're ready to take a chance on yourself. So readiness doesn't come to you before you actually make a move. A lot of times you're freaking scared, you're freaking out before you feel like you're ready to do something. I did a whole episode on confidence, and to bottle it down is every time you take a chance and you do something before you're ready, with you know, proper steps, right? But you're depositing into your confidence bank account. And every time you stall and you stop to do something because you don't feel ready and you're scared, you're withdrawing from your confidence account. Think about it. Every time you start to try and do something, you're depositing into your confidence. When I press record on this podcast for the first time, I was freaking out. Lucky, I kind of almost like cringe looking at the first episode, but I was like, okay, it went out, it's great, it's fine. But in reality, like I deposited it into my confidence account. I said, I'm gonna do it. I don't know how, I'm gonna try it, we'll see what happens. And now I have people from all over the world, you know, subscribing and connecting and sharing, you know, what has these episodes meant to them. And it's deposited into my confidence account every time. And it's made me accountable to you guys to know, hey, every Tuesday, your girl gotta drop an episode. She's gotta take time to tell you how I've gotten to this point and how it has saved me from the worst moments of my life, and has made me somebody through them, made me somebody to leave a legacy and to influence and to build and to learn to be successful all through my chaos. Because life happens. And I will remind you that because life happens and it gets hard, it doesn't mean it's over, and it doesn't mean that chapter's dead and ended for you. It means you gotta write another part to it now. You've gotta see what is next for you. Lie number four. This one is funny. This one is I tried, it didn't work, it's not for me. I'm gonna move on. I'll give you the simple answer to that. Um, all teenagers or all young entrepreneurs, you know, you you go and you apply for a job, and they don't call you back. You tried, it's not for you, let's move on. Okay. I own the company, I hire tons of people. I have hired tons of people, and I have done interview processes for years. Do you want to know who actually gets the job? Those that keep trying. Those that come back and tell me, hey, I know I couldn't get that job. What could I have done better? What can I learn? What skill set do you need me to know so I can get this job? That is music to my ears. Why? Because it's not about the first failure or the first setback. It's what are you doing with that data to say, oh, let me try this again in a different manner, or let me get a skill, or let me learn something so that I can be fruitful in this, or so that this can actually take off and work? That is the simplest way for me to tell you, because so many of us are like, oh, well, I tried it, I don't know, it's not really for me. Okay, did you try again? Did you change something up? Did you uh try to see if there was a better way for you to market yourself? Or did you just give up at the first sign of a stop sign? At the first fear, at the first rejection. You know how many doors I've had slammed on my face? Guys, I was a door knocker for a long time. Do you know how many doors I had slammed on my face? You know how many times I was telling, hey, get out of here. It just taught me to refine my skill. It taught me to, okay, how can I get their attention quicker? I had to teach myself, I had to learn, I had to be studious. And I'll I'll be very honest with you guys, because that's what we do here, right? Uh, countless of times in my faith, I've felt that this is I can't do this anymore, this isn't for me, it didn't work. Maybe it's just not gonna work again. And what a lie! Because nobody in this world, and this I'm I'm talking for myself, nobody in this world wants you to succeed more than God. And I have failed countless of times, and countless of times I have come back and have realized I need more help, I need more prayer, and I've humbled myself to not think that I know it all and say, what areas do I need to be better in? Just like if it's an interview. Like, what areas can I be better in? What areas do I need to be a better human being in? Where can I be centered to make sure that my life is on a trajectory going up and not on a trajectory going down? Do not let the fear of failure rob you from the courage that you have to try. Because so many of us, before we even try to do something, we automatically start panicking and start creating this narrative that I'm gonna fail, and if I fail, this is what's gonna happen, and if it's gonna happen, and I've wasted all this time, I've wasted all this money and this investment, and you know, and you create this narrative of like, why do I by the time you finish telling yourself this story, you're like, why am I even gonna try? You convinced yourself that you're not good enough, and you've robbed your courage. You've robbed yourself from the courage that you initially had to try and step out of your comfort to do something courageous, to do something that is even fulfilling, forget about it, just making money, but that is gonna be something to fulfill you. Like, I traveled most of my youth through mission trips, and let me tell you, I freaked out because I was like, oh my god, I'm traveling, I'm also going to school full-time, I'm also working full-time. Like, how is this really a reality for me? But I knew I wanted to do something that wasn't for myself. I wanted to give back, and I made it happen. For two years, I traveled so much every month or every other month, and I did something for somebody else. I still worked, I worked harder, and I was fulfilled. Like it was such a fulfilling thing in my life for me to do. So, yes, okay, I agree. Do things that are gonna make us money, but also, what if you're psyching yourself out from things that are just fulfilling you as a human being right now? Are you letting fear rob your courage from even trying to attempt to do something that is not just gonna change your life, but maybe somebody else? Lie number five is one I've told myself time and time again is now it's not the right season of my life to grow. I have told myself that lie so many times. And one thing I have learned, which I am going to share these golden nuggets with you, is we are supposed to grow in every chapter of our life. Every single one of them creates an opportunity for, creates an opportunity for us to really grow and grow wiser in what's going on. There are chapters that you need to grief, there are chapters that you need to rest, there are chapters that you need, you know, a lot of different things. But if you're in a chapter or a season or whatever, I don't know how else to put it in your life that's taking longer than a year or two, that is not a season. That is a pattern. That is a pattern in your life that you need to acknowledge and you need to go to your root and find out what is causing you to be in this cycle. And guys, I promise you, I have had to do lots of inner work to realize that I was stuck in this cycle for two years. And I thought it was just me. I thought it was, well, maybe I'm just not, this is not my time to to grow and to learn. It's maybe it's just my time to just go through it and suffer. And it's not, it's it's realizing that there's so much inner work that needs to be done because there's so many fears that I couldn't even name them. I had to go deep. I had to go real deep and realize that I was in a pattern. And there were things in my life that I was stopping and not doing and limiting myself from growth because I wasn't acknowledging the things that I needed to, the hard questions I needed to ask myself, and the hard, you know, decisions I had to do, I was being avoided. And I was just going through my day and going through work and going through everything else that was distracting me. So yeah, ask yourself, like, have I been in this for way too long? And if I have, what is this pattern that I need to break? Because it's not just a season anymore. Because we're not meant to be stagnant, we're not meant to just exist. We're meant to grow and help others around us grow. So, what pattern do you need to break in your life? So now I've told you the lies, and now I'm gonna give you the tools. Because even though I've told you some of the tools in those lies, I'm actually gonna give you some practical, practical tools, okay? The first tool is the lie audit. So, what are you gonna do? You're gonna audit your lies. I want you to sit with yourself, grab a piece of paper, write down the lie that you've been telling yourself. I can't do this because of this, or I am not good enough because of this, or I can't hold a relationship because of this. Okay, name it. Say it out loud, as crappy as it sounds, name it. Because after you do that, now you're gonna tame it. And you are going to write down is this a logical thing or is this just an emotional thing? I promise you, a lot of you guys are gonna even know you're gonna know the answer even before you finish the sentence. But sometimes you need to say it out loud and be real with yourself. Tool number two, replace that toxic positivity language and replace it with real growth self-talk. That's the second thing. So instead of just like, I'm bold, I'm confident, I'm strong, those are great and they work, and you know, I think the way you speak to yourself is super important. But for those of us who have been on the struggle bus for a long time, sometimes even just saying it, it just feels like you're singing and it's like you're redundant, like, okay, I've heard the song before, I get it. Try changing that a little bit. It's it's helped me so much. You know, instead of saying, I am successful and I I'm gonna do this, you know. You can easily tell yourself and anchor yourself in I am doing everything I can to be successful in this. I can do hard things. That is my go-to line with my kids. You know, oh, I've tried it, uh no, I can do hard things. I'm gonna try again. I'll make this work. That's real growth anchored. That's not just, you know, you're shouting from the rooftop or you're you're in that like uh what the roof of Wall Street like moment where you're like, oh like those are great, awesome, but sometimes we need a little bit more of a realistic, like, okay, today was really good. I did enough. And tomorrow I'm gonna do more. Growth anchor talk. The next tool is the 24-hour move. This one, this one I really had to do because there are, I mean, I do hard things, right? So there are a lot of conversations that I just didn't want to have. And I just I didn't want to make that phone call, or I didn't want to make, you know, that email. And I would make an executive decision and say, I give myself 24 hours to make it, you figure it out. And it put this pressure on myself in a good way to say, okay, I'm gonna knock down that thing from my list that I haven't wanted to touch in ages. It works. It works for me. And honestly, I think if you put a deadline on yourself, it's gonna work for you too. Again, these are practical tools, guys. And if you don't use them, then yeah, they're just gonna be great words. But if you do, you're gonna see your life change. And you want your life to change. You're not here because you want it to be the same. Tool number four, I've said this a few times, change your environment. Change your circle. We're talking about these lies that we tell ourselves, and some of the some of the times the people that are in our circle and are in our environment, they don't let us forget these lies. Or they're part of the reasons why those lies even exist. Um, sometimes you do need a change of space. Sometimes you do just need a different person to talk to, you know, or a different person to look up to to guide you, to advise you in the level up seasons of your life. You gotta find people who are gonna challenge you. You gotta find people who are gonna pull you from where you're at and test you, you know, give you the kick in the ass that you need to say, I can do this. I can, I've been telling myself that I can, but I I actually can. I could walk, you know, away from this toxicity relationship that I have, or I could, you know, stand up for myself at my workplace, or I could start this business, or I could lead this team, and I could be successful in what I'm doing. You need that. Do you want to see breakthrough? Do you want to see success? Do you want to live a life that you've hoped and wanted to, like your whole life? Like, do you want that? To get up and do it. Get up and do it, because you can. Thank you guys for listening to my TED Talk. Um, I'm gonna leave you with one last thing. Okay. Elizabeth Gilbert, you know, she famous, wrote e pray love. If you haven't read it, do so. If you haven't watched the movie, do it. Julia Roberts, love her. But, anyways, she wrote this book, and she was saying that she had such a hard time to try and write this book. That she would write, delete, write, delete. And one day she had this like coming to Jesus moment, and she said, I didn't promise the world that I would write brilliantly. I just promised that I would write. And when she did that, she unlocked this whole version of herself that was just free to be her. And what came out of it was incredible. I mean, one of the best selling books of all time. So I want to leave you with that. This week, find something that you've been trying so hard to be perfect at, and give yourself the grace to say, I'm not gonna do this perfectly, but I'm gonna try. Write down the goal, write down the dream, write down the business plan, and don't aim to be perfect. Don't aim to be the best, even. Just aim to move. Move in that direction. Put one foot in front of the other. All right. So thank you for listening to the business of becoming. I am so happy that you found your place here and that this feels like home. You know, so many of the people that are on this channel, I see you guys, I see the views, I see you guys right. All I'm asking is share this with somebody that you believe really can make a difference in their life. And don't forget to like and subscribe because I want to keep doing this. And I think it's really been helpful, not just for you guys, but for myself, because I say things out loud and I realize how much of a difference it's made in my life and how much I want to do that for you. Again, it's not about being super rich and amazing and crazy, it's about being influential and with the resources that we got. So help me do that. Thank you guys so much. I'll see you guys on the chair next week.