Hello everybody. I am so excited to welcome you to the very first inner love diva podcast. I feel like it’s been a long time coming and I am so happy that you’ve decided to join me. You know, if you would’ve asked me two years ago, if I ever saw myself doing a podcast, I would have been like, no way, what do I have to say? That would interest anyone. I admit that I love listening to other people’s podcasts. When I was in the car, instead of listening to the radio, I would turn on a podcast. And when I would do yard work, I totally would just listen to a podcast, even mowing the lawn. I just turned it up a little, you know? And so I consumed a lot of podcasts and in all these podcasts, they had so much good information and it really seemed like these people had their lives together.
What I knew about myself was that so far, my life had been messy and dramatic and jumping from one fire to the next. So, no, I absolutely did not think I had anything to say that would interest anyone. But then about a year ago, I started playing around with the idea of becoming a public speaker and then a little bit later, which just seemed like to be out of the blue. I decided I want to be a life coach. I really never thought of myself as someone’s life coach. Like I said, my life had been a mess. In fact, it felt like nothing was going my way and life was too hard, but here’s what I didn’t know. I thought these things were happening to me and I had no control over it. I felt like a victim at the mercy of the situation. Then I found life coaching and I learned that I had the power to be the hero of my own story.
It doesn’t mean that my life is all sunshine and daisies. What it means is that no matter the circumstance, no matter what is going on around me, I get to choose the results. I get to choose how I feel. And my friends, that has been the most freeing information I have ever learned. So a year ago, I was asked if I’d consider doing a podcast, my answer would have been maybe, but what made me really take the plunge and the reason I decided that life coaching was going to be okay. My thing was because people are my passion. I love, love, love people, genuinely. I believe we all have something unique and interesting about us. And I truly love hearing everybody’s stories. I love going to socials and feeling the energy of the room and getting to know new people. And I also love reconnecting with longtime friends.
I really love what they add to my life. So yeah, I am actually, we’re really excited to be able to share what I’ve learned from my coach training and hopefully be able to add to your lives in the way that they’ve added to mine. So in celebration of my podcast launch, I am giving away four things that I know everyone is going to want. The grand prize winner will get four private coaching sessions with myself. The second prize will get a pair of air pod pros. Third prize is a hundred dollar Amazon gift card, which, who does it use Amazon nowaday, right? And for everyone who enters, you will get a worksheet that will help you refocus and start achieving your goals today. If you want to learn more about the contest, just visit my website, myinnerlove.com/podcastlaunch. And I will be revealing the winners on an upcoming episode.
Okay. So a little bit about me. I was a happy and adventurous child. My mom says that when I was little, I would dance around the house and sing songs about the color of the carpet and the furniture. When I was about five, our family went to Disneyland and I desperately wanted to ride the teacups. Apparently they were taking too long to ride the other rides And so when no one was looking, I took off on my own adventure and I kind of freaked out my mom. I really love to sing. As I heard you mentioned, um, I started honing those singing skills in high school and I started singing and dancing and did it through high school and through most of college. So now fast forward, I am happily married with three, three kid adults and one teenager, I still love to sing and I love it when music can move me to the core.
I’ve had a really supportive family, all of my life, which I am really grateful for. Oh yeah. And I’ve also lost over a hundred pounds and guess what? I’m not done yet. I am still going strong. Oh. And the one other thing that I need to mention, I’m going to admit, I am addicted to sparkly things because I really feel that dopamine rush every time I see that warm, sparkly glow. And then when you have billions of them all at a time, I mean, come on, who wouldn’t have that rush? I grew up in California. And so I did not have a lot of experience around the snow. And now I live in Utah and I have a lot of experience around the snow. However, I have to say the only time that I really love the snow is when it blankets the Hills or blankets our yards and it’s been undisturbed and then the sun hits it.
And if you just move your head just slightly back and forth, you will see all these tiny little ice crystals starting to sparkle. And I just sit there mesmerized. So I love sparkles. It’s just my thing. So that’s my social media version about me. And now I want to introduce you to what was going on inside my head up until recently, before I start, I want to tell you that, yes, I’m excited about this podcast, but I’m also pretty terrified because I’m going to share things with you that are very personal to me. And these are stories that I haven’t even shared with the people closest to me. I’m going to be getting personal and feeling quite vulnerable. But here’s the thing. If what I share ends up helping you, then I’m all in! And I’m going to talk to you a little bit about identity, as in, what do you identify with, how do you identify yourself as a person?
So for example, I thought that my identity as a mom came from how well my kids behaved. I thought I’m a good mom if my kids are happy and they get along with each other, and their friends and they get good grades and they do their chores. And I’m a great mom if my kids can just contribute something positive to the world. Here’s another example, for decades I truly believed that my identity as a person was based on a number. Yeah. A number on the scale. That somehow that little piece of machinery was the conveyor of whether or not I was someone of value, whether I was someone who was beautiful or even who mattered in the world. It sounds kind of ridiculous when I say it like that, but honestly, how many of us don’t want to step on the scale for fear of what it’ll say. Whatever number it illuminates will ultimately determine our mood for the day.
How has one little object been able to so much frenzy in the world? I believe that my identity as a wife came from, if my husband was happy all the time, I was a good wife. If I looked beautiful and I was skinny, because that would make him think, wow, my wife is amazing. Oh, and the house needed to be spotless. And the kids were happy. So they didn’t bug him. And there was a warm meal waiting upon his arrival from work every single night. If I was a good wife home life would be bliss. I believed my identity as a daughter was to prove to my parents that they had done a good job raising me. I got good grades and I tried to be nice to everyone. Most of the time. I also hid my mistakes and I also felt very ashamed when I let them down.
I felt like I had to be a good mother. So my success as a mother would honor my mom and dad. It’s crazy. I had so many unrealistic expectations of myself. Listing them off like this seems obvious that I was in for a world of hurt and disappointment, but my primary thoughts weren’t as obvious as I made them out to be. They sounded closer to, I just want my children to be happy. So all my expectations were disguised as thoughts that sounded so lovely and honorable. But my sponsoring thought that I wasn’t hearing clearly was you’re a terrible mom if your child is sad. So now it makes sense why the thought, “I just want my children to be happy,” made me feel terrible when they weren’t happy. I’m just wondering, do you have primary thoughts? That sound really lovely, but then make you feel terrible or aren’t possibly serving you?
They would sound something like, “I wish I were a little better at…”, Or “I wish I were a little more put together like so-and-so. Her kids have such good manners.” Or “I just want to be likable.” And then the first time you’re not invited to something your sponsoring thought is “what is wrong with me?” Could your weight identity be, “I’m a foodie. I just love food” or, “yeah, I’m the big friend.” Like it’s no big deal that you think that way. Which side note, it is totally fine if you think that way, as long as you’re not making it mean “I will never be the small friend.” See how that feels a little more icky and shameful? Here’s the reality. No matter how hard I tried, my kids came with their own personalities and their own path in life. And they weren’t meant to be happy all the time.
And no matter how much I hated how I looked, I couldn’t lose enough weight to find happiness. No matter how spotless the house was and good those meals were, my husband wasn’t always going to be happy and no matter how good of parents, my mom and dad were, which they were fabulous. I was bound to disappoint them sometime. So with the help of coaching, I’ve arrived at a new identity for myself and it encompasses all of my identities. Here’s my new identity. Now I’m 50% a mess and 50% amazing. I’ll talk a lot more about 50-50 concept in a later episode. But what you need to know is that I didn’t arrive at the 50% a mess and 50% amazing overnight. It actually started at why couldn’t it be 90-10, or I’d even be happy with 80-20. I hung on to that idea for quite a while, but the shift started happening when I asked myself, why? Why does it have to be 80-20?
What are you making 50-50 mean about yourself that is so unappealing to you? I realized I was still holding on to perfectionism and the need to be accepted. I believed if I’m perfect, everyone will like me. If I’m the best, then I’ll be accepted. But the truth is for me to feel accepted the only person who has to accept me, is me. It’s my thoughts about myself that are going to generate the feeling of acceptance. Knowing that I started to shift closer to the 50-50. And in fact, when I did mess up, I felt a little freer because I thought, oh yeah, that must be the part of me that’s 50% a mess. I started to see my mistake side as more endearing. I’d make a mistake. And I think, ahh, that’s the messy 50%, got to love her. So what I hope this podcast does for you is to help you learn to open up your mind at seeing life in a totally different way. Start questioning the beliefs that you have for yourself.
So this week, as you ponder about your identity, some questions you could ask yourself are, is this identity helpful? Is it getting me closer to where I want to be in life? Do I want to keep it? What is the story behind why I identify this way? What are the reasons my brain thinks identifying this way is useful to me? What are the drawbacks to identifying this way? There was a time that I felt completely lost about who I was. I felt like someone who was stuck in a body that wasn’t mine and someone who had so much potential, but certain things had to happen first. Then I learned that absolutely nothing has to change. And I had all the power within myself to reach that potential, regardless of what was going on around me, I now am becoming the hero in my own story. And that is what I hope for all of you. Don’t forget to head on over to myinnerlove.com/podcastlaunch to enter to win some killer prizes. Thanks for listening and have a fabulous day!
