The ROCKSTAR Mom

Five Questions To Ask Yourself Daily

• Megan Caldwell • Episode 11

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Ever catch your thoughts sprinting ahead without you?  To help release the overwhelm this episodes shows you how five simple questions can pause the spiral and pull you back into calm, aligned action. 

This is mindset mastery for real life: clear tools, zero fluff, and a practical look at how your brain decides what matters.

We talk about low-level vs high level questions and Megan shares her top 5 high-impact questions you can begin asking yourself today.  

You’ll hear how small, aligned choices start with how we're thinking, and then compound into big shifts.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a mindset refresh, and leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts. Tell us: which question will you practice first, and what’s the next best step you’re taking today?

We’d love to hear your feedback! Send us a text

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SPEAKER_00:

You are listening to the Rockstar Mom, a podcast for high achievers who are ready to get off of autopilot and live a life with more intention, peace of mind, and happiness. This is a space to expand, dig deep, get clear, and take action towards living your most authentic, aligned life. I'm Megan Caldwell. As a mom of three, two-time burnout survivor and empowerment coach and speaker, I've cracked the code on what it actually takes to thrive at work and home, ditch perfectionism and people pleasing, get your schedule under control, and live with more ease. So you've got more time and energy to do the things you love without the mom guilt. It's time to get out of your head and into action. Now is the time to live your most rock star life. Let's go. Hello, my friend, and welcome back to the Rockstar Mom Podcast. I am so thrilled that you have chosen to dive into this episode in particular today, because today we are diving deep into one of the spaces that I spend a lot of time supporting women in, and one of the spaces that has been absolutely instrumental and game-changing in my own personal wellness journey and being able to let go of the perfectionism and ditch the people pleasing and move out of states of overwhelm and exhaustion and burnout and into a life where I truly feel free and there's more joy and more ease. And it is such a pleasure to be able to support women in this space daily. But this space is the space of what I call mindset mastery. Mindset mastery is one of the four main pillars of the Rockstar framework. And it goes alongside our foundational Fab Five, our healthy habits, nervous system regulation and resiliency, the power of community in your Rockstar community. And these are all layered on top of your foundation. So today we're really talking about the power of our mindset and how our mindset truly, truly guides everything that happens in our day-to-day, everything in our life, everything in our world. I'm thinking back to when I was really in the depth, right in the middle of my second round of burnout. Again, I was operating this really, really big fitness franchise. On the outside, it looked like I had everything together with full classes, an amazing instructor team, special events, news coverage. Meanwhile, I schlepped my kids to class with me. But on the inside, the stories I were telling myself were completely different. There was a lot of self-sabotage, there was a lot of shooting, there was a lot of people pleasing going on, and there was a lot of just not listening to myself. In fact, I didn't take any time to really listen to the thoughts that were going through my head. And it can be such a game changer when we are able to pause enough to observe our thoughts and then what I call pattern interrupt to go ahead and shift them. And it is so, so, so important because there is so much, truthfully, clutter going on in our lives outside of our bodies and our souls and our minds in terms of what's happening in our home environment, what's happening in our work and careers, what's happening in relationships and in the greater world, is that really life is made up of the stories that we tell ourselves. So the way that we interpret all of these different pieces of our being is going to shift how we feel about different situations, is going to shift whether we get into action or get stuck in inaction. And one of my favorite tools to help women learn to adopt, live by, and integrate into their lives is the tool of asking yourself better questions. Basically, your brain answers the questions that you ask it. And so if your brain is constantly step in the loop cycle of, can I do this? No, I can't do this. Is this really right? No, this isn't what I want. Like we are gonna continue to be stuck and not make the progress that we need or want. When we ask ourselves better questions, we are going to get better outcomes. We are going to get more progress. And that's what this is about is helping you get into action to make progress towards wherever you're looking to go in life. But again, I know for so many women that I support, it is a life with more fun, with more of a sense of ease or peace of mind, with more personal fulfillment, with more clarity, with deeper relationships. So today I'm going to be sharing with you five of my favorite, most powerful questions that can really help you shift your clarity, shift your energy and alignment almost instantly as you begin to practice these. Before we get into that, I just want to break down like why this works in the brain. So our reticular activating system is the part of our brain that really seeks answers to whatever you tell it is important. So for example, wherever your focus goes, your energy flows. If you are car shopping and shopping for a, hey, our most recent car purchase five years ago was a massive Yukon XL. It's just like a suburban. All of a sudden, that was top of mind. And all I saw on the road was big cars, suburbans and Yukon XLs, these massive, massive vehicles. Yes, it fits all of our kids and our dogs in there, plus all of our gear for the weekend away. Anyways, sidetrack. Your reticulator activating system helps seek the answers and it helps kind of process some of that outside information. And so if we're asking it low quality questions, we're gonna get low quality answers. Why can't I get it together? Oh, because you're always failing. Why can't I just be consistent? Oh, you can never be consistent. Whereas high quality intentional questions really open up and allow us to get curious. It allows for creativity, problem solving. It can even support us in emotional regulation. Being able to observe our thoughts and catch our thoughts, which again, I often refer to as a pattern interrupt, is a very powerful tool for when our thoughts are spiraling. All right, you know, you've been there, where it's like you just can't get out of the same loop. Maybe it presents itself as anxiety. And being able to pause the spiraling and really redirect it. And one of the ways to redirect it is with these better questions. So here they are. One of my all-time favorite questions to ask myself, but to also ask women I work with, as well as women that I'm meeting for the first time, is what is it that you really, really want? Yes, take a moment to think about that. What is it that you as an individual woman want? And now you can interpret this in a couple different ways. You can sit down, we could do a whole 60-minute coaching session on this and go deep in terms of what you want bigger in life, but it can also be a powerful question in the moment in terms of when you're feeling overwhelmed, when you're unsure, just asking yourself, what is it really that that I really want in this moment? This matters because it forces us to stop. It cuts through the autopilot and obligation and really gives us the opportunity to check in with ourselves. For example, we could ask ourselves what we want when it in regards to work decisions or family boundaries or even health habits and what we want to engage in. So I'm gonna invite you to just pause for a moment and actually just ask yourself this first question What is it that you really, really want? If you're getting really curious, maybe even pause this for longer, do a little journaling on it. The second question is does this align with the life I'm wanting to live? So powerful. Again, each of these questions is we can take shape and we can ask ourselves when we take the time to slow down and pause. Okay. We can use this concept of alignment. Sometimes people refer to this as harmony, others might refer to it as balance, but it's really that internal feeling that you are feeling in tune with yourself, feeling aligned. And when we use alignment as a filter, it can really connect us with our energy, with our values, and with the season of life that we're in. When we think about our own alignment and what truly feels good, we're avoiding shoulds or what we think we should be doing is no, how does this resonate with me right now? And it can be all of these small little daily micro decisions. If we pause, and I'm not saying to pause for every single decision that goes through your head because there are thousands of those per day, but those ones that kind of catch you off track or when you feel like something's a little bit off, asking yourself, does this align with the life I'm wanting to live? These small little micro decisions and micro shifts will change your trajectory. They compound over time. Okay. Change builds more change, success builds more success. And shifting our mindset into a space of tuning into our needs and desires can be so powerful. This third one is so important, and one that I think so many of us don't even give ourselves the credit or time to think about. And it is, what support do I need? We as women have been conditioned and have been practicing for decades, doing everything by ourselves. I know for years I wore that badge of honor as I am an independent woman. And don't get me wrong, I am 100% still a very independent woman. I am raising a very independent daughter. And it is okay and almost necessary, I would say, to lean into support. So asking the question, what type of support do I need, or who can support me can be so powerful. Again, we have been taught to be strong and to struggle and to not ask for help. In this moment, I want you to give yourself permission. I'm giving you permission to know that it's okay to lean in for support. You don't have to do this alone. Whether that's asking your mother-in-law for support and watching your kids, or whether it's leaning into a coach or a mentor to say, I'm stuck and I need help finding clarity or the next steps. It starts by just leaning in and saying yes. And again, there might be different types of people that can provide different types of support in your life. Maybe it's your spouse, maybe it's your kids, maybe it is a coach. Support could also be the systems that you have or the routines that you have at home. That can also be support. It could be delegating different things. It could be leaning into peers or leaning into community. And again, when we lean into support, it helps us emotionally regulate. It can help with logistics. It can help our physical and mental state. So, so powerful. I know that this one is really hard for people, is oftentimes we might be able to think about the support we need. The next step is actually taking that support. We could go on a whole other tangent about why we have trouble with that when it comes to perfectionism, when it comes to people pleasing, when it comes to the guilt, but I'll save that for another day. The next powerful question is what's actually true here? What's actually true here? When we are in heightened states of stress, anxiety, overwhelm, oftentimes it's because we are what's called catastrophizing. We are thinking about the worst case scenarios. I know that you're you've been there before. It's not just me, right? Where when your kid is late from getting home from school and all of a sudden your mind goes to the worst case scenario. Again, the the examples can go on and on. But when we ask ourselves what is actually true here, it really can de-escalate again that overwhelm and stress. It really can help us separate the facts from what is true in my present environment from our feelings. And we can let those facts influence our thoughts versus our feelings, which again, our brains are wired to keep us safe, which means that oftentimes it they're in that negative capacity. So for example, if a thought going through your head, and I hear this often from women, is I just feel so behind. There's so much to do. What is actually true there? Okay. What's actually true is you might have tons of things on your to-do list. You could then even get a little bit more curious, ask another great question as to what is actually most important right now? Or back to question one, what is it that I actually want right now from this to-do list? One that often comes up is this thought that we have of I never follow through. Well, what's actually true? You never follow through, never is one of those extreme words, right? That's not true. Maybe you have trouble following through and you've adopted a pattern of not finishing what you start or following through. But what is actually true is that you could actually find and point out success of when you have succeeded or when you have made progress forward. The fifth question I want to share with you today is what's the next best step? What's the next best step? The very next step. Oftentimes, when we're in states of overwhelm, again, it's because there's too much to do, there's too much stimulation. If we can just really narrow in and think about what I often refer to as the MVA, minimal viable action, what is the very next best step? What is the smallest next step you can take? Kind of a bonus question for you, which I love and I encourage clients to use often. I think of often myself and my own kind of metacognition and processing my own thoughts is in terms of the next best step, how can I make this as easy as possible? Oftentimes we overcomplicate things. Think about what is just the very next step, not the perfect or the final, but what is going to be the next thing that helps you get to that larger project or goal, that helps you get to that vision that you've created. When we break it down, it can really stop paralysis, perfectionism, procrastination. Sometimes we just have to take that very next step to get into action to move us forward. So there I've presented with you again five quote, better questions that you can ask yourself in terms of how to actually use these. One is in the moment, again, observing the thoughts and being able to start practicing what I call this pattern interrupt is when you notice that negative thought pattern and that spiral coming in, interrupt it, ask yourself a better question. These can also be used as journal prompts. There is such power in putting pen to paper to help you work through hard situations. There is no shame in that. I know oftentimes we have a belief that maybe that takes time or it's too much, or I'm not good at journaling. Give it, give it a try. It can be such a huge relief. And again, these are great questions to kind of practice with. You could choose one of these each day for the next five days and really just focus in on it and see how it can guide you to feel and act differently throughout the day. And really, this whole power of pause and being able to ask yourself these better questions before making decisions is going to allow you to make decisions that are more aligned, that feel more true to you. So you get out of the habits of overcommitting. So you get out of the habits of self-sabotaging, and they can be really, really powerful in moments of overwhelm, transition, or even when you're in that space of feeling stuck. So again, as a quick recap, here are those five questions again. What is it that I really want? Does this align with the life I'm wanting to live? What support do I need? What's actually true here? What's the next best step? I'm going to invite you to try out using one or more of these in the next 24 hours. If you do so, send me a message on Instagram, send me an email, tag on social media, and I'd love to hear your biggest takeaway. Which one is gonna help you move that dial forward to take that next value-aligned action towards living your best, most rock star life? As always, my friends, I am cheering you on always, and I can't wait to see you again soon. Thank you so much for tuning into the Rockstar Mom Podcast. If today's episode resonated with you, here's how we can keep this momentum going. First, be sure to subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. Next, I'd be so grateful if you took a moment to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback helps us reach even more women who are ready to live more intentional, fun-filled lives. Lastly, please share your insights on social media and be sure to tag me at Megan Caldwell PDX so we can connect and inspire other rock stars to live their best lives too. Again, I am so glad that you are here, and I'll see you next time.