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What you’ll learn in this episode:
Happy new year to you all!
Have you ever reached a goal and felt like you needed to set a new goal in order to find the happiness you were looking for in the first place?
This shifting of the goalpost is what leads many people to think that they aren’t winning when they reach their goals.
Today, I’ll be giving you three things that I want you to do so that you can do so much winning in 2022, and celebrate those wins, no matter what they are.
Here’s a glance at this episode:
- Being in a place of discomfort isn’t what we’re avoiding. We’re avoiding the joy and pleasure of winning.
- Recognize your wins and where you’ve missed them. Celebrate how far you’ve come.
- Ending up where you thought you wanted to be and realizing it’s not where you want to be anymore, is still a win.
- Make winning a habit and talk about yourself as someone who’s winning.
Mentioned in this episode:
Work/Connect with me:
Business and Rejuvenation Retreat
[01:00] Jessica: Well, hello, everyone and happy new year. Welcome back to the practical mindset podcast. I hope you all had a beautiful holiday season and a wonderful new year.
[01:12] The start of a new year is always one of my favorite times of year. New beginnings, reflecting on the last year, and thinking and planning what we’re going to do in the year ahead is one of my favorite things. This exercise, although really valuable, is often heavily focused on what we plan to do in an attempt to create the life we want – often, a life where we get the results we want and feel good all the time. It has become a common practice to think that once we achieve something, whether it’s success, the perfect partner, or a dream job, then we will have the happiness and the good feelings that we’re seeking and, although the research suggests that when we look at pleasure and pain as motivators, we see that pain or moving away from pain, or avoiding pain, is more of a motivator than seeking pleasure. I have been noticing that, both in my own experience and in the experience of my clients, that the opposite is true.
[02:06] Being in pain, pushing through, hustling, withstanding pain or discomfort, is actually not the feeling we’re moving away from or spending the least amount of time in. It’s actually the pleasure, that joy, the feelings of accomplishment and fulfilment that we are not able to access, and are spending the least amount of time in. Not that we are avoiding the positive feelings, but it has become a habit and has become easier to withstand the discomfort, hustle, grind, than it is to tap into and stay in the positive energy, and as a result, we end up skirting right past our successes, sometimes without noticing them at all.
[02:49] This first occurred to me a few weeks ago when I was driving back from Maine with my family, and I was listening to a podcast about success. The premise of the podcast was that if you want to succeed, you have to get used to being uncomfortable. This is not a new concept. How many of us have heard that discomfort is the currency for success? I know I have, and I believe that. I teach my clients this, and I think it’s true. However, during the segment of the podcast where this coach was asking for volunteers to get coached, a young blonde woman, maybe in her 30s, raised her hand and shared that she felt that she had mastered the uncomfortable emotions. She shared that she had built a successful business, was making close to $200,000 in her business with her now-husband, and that they had gotten comfortable with being uncomfortable and with the pain, but that it was actually the opposite emotion – the celebrating, the being happy part, the feeling fulfilled that they were struggling with.
[03:49] In that moment, I felt my whole body in that car seat yell, “yes, that is it.” It’s feeling the joy that’s actually the problem. Over the years that I have been coaching, I have spoken to hundreds of people, entrepreneurs, corporate employees, CEOs, entry-level employees, rich people, poor people, and the vast majority of people were not struggling with the pain part, the discomfort, the overworking, the hustling, etc. All the things. They were driven, motivated, and almost always successful by some yardstick, but what they didn’t have was the enjoyment, the pleasure, the fun, and what transpired from that was that they were chasing this destination, some dollar amount or thing that they wanted, or accomplishment that they would fully believe would give them the joy, fulfilment, and lack of discomfort that they were seeking, that when they got there, the struggle and the pain, and the friction, would be gone. What they actually found when they arrived was their same struggles and feelings, and that same person that they were at a different destination, and because we haven’t been taught that we create happiness or how to really do that, how to create that happiness, although we’ve heard the saying thrown around a few times that money doesn’t buy you happiness and things don’t make you happy, we think we just arrived at the wrong goalpost, so we move it.
[05:21] If we thought our corporate job was the issue and that we would find more freedom and happiness as an entrepreneur, for example, and then we get there and we don’t feel free, then we think that we must need a different kind of business. Or if we thought it was making $100,000 that would make you happy, and now you’re here and you’re not happy, then it must be $200,000 that you need, and so we go after that and we repeat the process, and we keep moving the goalposts, and then we get to the $200,000 and we still feel the same way, so then we move the goalpost again, “well, it must be $1,000,000 if the $200,000 doesn’t make me feel any better,” and so on, and we get into this cycle of chasing and grinding, and hustling, and being in unhappiness and pain, and living with it because we think that that’s what we mean by the currency of being uncomfortable to get what we want to ultimately make us happy.
[06:17] We hear this thrown all over the place, “no pain, no gain,” “a good hard day’s work,” etc., and any of the accomplishments that we are having, we are not enjoying, and we just glaze over it, and we run onto the next thing because we think that the golden ticket, all the good feelings, the lack of struggle, the emotional experience we seek is at the next checkpoint, and the net result of this is that, although we are succeeding and winning, we are missing it. We are missing our accomplishments, we are missing our wins, and most of all, we’re missing the joy.
[06:46] What is this really costing us? Besides the obvious, what is staying in the pain and discomfort producing? Well, first of all, it’s making struggle a habit. This spills over into everything – our personal life, our business, our money, our health. We have this struggle story, and thus, nothing can ever be easy or happy for us. Second, it’s costing us our true potential and success. From this place of struggling, we create more struggle. Third, it’s costing us the present moment. We are missing and not appreciating what we have because we think there’s something better ahead, and the crazy thing about this is that if you rewind back, let’s say maybe six months ago, and you thought about what success would look like for you, everything you’re standing in right now is often that thing that you said would be success, that you wanted to experience, and yet, in this present moment, we’re missing it. Fourth, it’s costing us our life. Our life is made up of the moments in it. Most of us want to live a life of success and enjoyment. The more we miss this joy in the moment, and the success we have right now, the more we have the experience of a life that we technically don’t want to be living, and we miss the life we do want to be living. Fifth, it’s costing us our magnificence – the experience of doing what I think we were made to do, which is thrive and shine, and share our gifts, and win.
[08:30] So, my point for telling you all of this is this: I believe you were made to win, and the more you win, the more others win, too. So, here is my New Year’s gift to you, in the form of three things I want you to do, so you can embrace how much you’re winning, how to make sure you’re not missing it, and how to make 2022 filled with an encyclopedia’s worth of wins that have been truly witnessed.
[08:57] Number one. Notice where you’re winning and missing it. Where can you be celebrating and owning, and really feeling what you’ve accomplished and created? How can you live in the full-blown excitement and joy of it all? Slowing down and noticing it, and allowing yourself to be really present with it, and let it fill you up and become part of your identity is what it’s all about, and often, what we need is that shift in perspective, that pause to take a step back and recognize how far we’ve come, and how awesome we are, and how we’re doing the damn thing.
[09:34] Number two. Know that if you arrived at a place that you planned on, and you have found that it’s not actually where you want to be, and that you thought it was the thing you wanted, and now that you’re here, you recognize that you actually don’t want to be here, this is not any less of a reason to celebrate. Now, I know you might be saying to yourself, “that Jess has completely lost her mind,” but stay with me here. It’s 100% okay to course correct. It’s 100% okay to decide you were wrong and you want something different, but not from the headspace of shoving it under the rug and not giving it the airtime or telling yourself you’re crazy to have thought that this was going to be the thing, or that there was something wrong with you for what you created and it not being the right thing, the right place of your happiness destination. You want to pause and recognize that, even if you want something different or more, you are still winning, it is still fabulous, and you should feel it and own it, and from that space of emotion, the emotion of winning and really internalizing it, you can pick where you want to go from there to create more of the thing you really want. It’s this space over winning and feeling it that will show you your path and propel you to the next best place to get closer to where you want to go and what you want to create.
[11:05] It is okay to celebrate and love, and embrace, where you are right now, even if it’s not what you thought it was going to be, or if you want something different or more, and go out and get that next thing, but it is that momentum that is going to push you into the action and the creation, and all of the energy that’s going to lead you to your next best place.
[11:32] Three, it’s to win a lot. In 2022, I want you to make it a habit to win, and I want you to document and notice your wins. I want to say that many people do not think of themselves or talk to themselves or talk about themselves as someone who’s winning or who loves to win, and this is especially true for my female listeners. As women, we don’t talk about being born to win, or winning. We don’t talk about it like that, and I want to offer that it may sound a little strange, but the more that you talk about it, and you own it, the more it weaves itself into your identity.
[12:16] Now, this may sound kind of cheesy, but most recently, I went through this exercise with some of my clients in my 10K accelerator group where I taught them to capture their wins every day. They titled the document “how I’m winning today.” I instructed them to spend 5 minutes every day writing down any and every win without throwing things out or thinking it’s dumb, no censoring, to write down every win that they could come up with. This created such a massive shift for so many of them. Some of them were moved to tears just thinking about it. Some had more energy and drive for their business than they had had in months. One of my clients in particular, who has been really struggling to move one of her programs forward and kept telling me she wasn’t getting anything, anywhere, she was feeling totally defeated, she couldn’t move forward, she showed up to one of those sessions with a list of 25 things that she was winning at. This list spanned from getting up early and curling her hair to spending an hour on a passion project, to getting her landing page up and running for that program that she was struggling with. After she had gone through this exercise to take inventory and see just how much she was actually winning, she showed up in her business with a new sense of purpose and energy, and accomplishment. The week following, she signed two new clients and found that she was able to get everything done that she needed to, so she could spend a Friday off with her kids and going shopping.
[13:49] I can’t wait to hear about, and to witness, all the things you’re all winning at, and as you move into this year and beyond, celebrating you one win at a time as you move closer to where you want to be, owning it, celebrating it, and letting it become all that you are and all that you are becoming.
[14:07] If you’re ready to take your business to the next level and to finally nail your irresistible offer, find and convert clients, and set your business up to make money consistently, head over to the 10K accelerator page at the link in the show notes and book a call to chat with us now. Doors are open and seats are filling fast. You don’t want to miss out on ending your year in celebration and setting yourself up to make 2022 your best year yet.
See you all next week.
