Hello. How are you doing today? So today I want to talk to you about questions. And the reason I'm talking to you about this today is at the suggestion of my client, Andrea. And she was asking me specific questions that she could begin asking herself in order to move into the direction she wanted to move into. And she started recognizing that she needed to ask her brain different questions, and that was going to create different thoughts, more productive thoughts to create what she wants to create in her life. So I put together specific questions for her because she had a specific circumstance. And that's what I do with my clients is when I work with them, I learn about them. We get to know each other, and then I know the questions they need to ask their brain so that they can come up with the right answers.

And that's a big part of coaching is having the ability to ask questions. Because when we ask a question to ourselves, our brain automatically wants to come up with the answer. And while there's no such thing as a stupid question, there is such a thing as a bad question, an unhelpful question, and actually a harmful question. Because when you ask a question to your brain, it wants to figure out the answer. If you're asking it things like, why can't I figure this out? Or why am I so horrible? Why isn't this going faster? Am I doing enough? What's wrong with me? Those kinds of questions, your brain is going to get to work, finding you answers. And you're going to not get the result that you want because your brain is just going to keep working to build evidence, to show you why your thought is true.

I really wanted to break down how we talk to ourselves. I mean, that's so much of what I talk about in this podcast is the mindset and the ability to shift your mindset by how you talk to yourself and that in turn changes everything for you, whether your goal is to get more done during the week or your goal is to get more consults or it's to build a stronger relationship or to stop overdrinking or overeating every single goal. It's the same thing, how we is, how we are going to build our future. Because if we're building from our past and what we've already created, we'll, we're just going to create more of the same. We're going to have the same thoughts. We're going to create the same things in our life. And if you want any change, you have to do things completely differently.

You have to think completely differently in order to do those things. And why is it so important for us to ask these questions? Because our primal brain is going to do those same things over and over again. So until we start asking our brain different questions and questions that are more productive, more helpful, we're not going to be able to make the shifts mentally. We need to achieve our goals with me so far. When I work with my clients, I work with them on the model, right? And the model is com is made up of five different components, circumstances, all the things that are going on in the world, everything it's very factual, right? Like there's no emotion tied up in it. It's just dry, cold facts. Okay. That is what a circumstance is. There's no emotion. It's very neutral. And then we have thoughts about the circumstances in the world.

And those thoughts can be questions too. Right? And how do we know that a question is a thought because we have consciousness of it. We can actually see it. We get quiet with ourselves and we can hear ourselves ask ourselves those questions. That is a thought, most of us don't slow down long enough to recognize we're asking ourselves questions or thinking thoughts. But that's where the power is, is when we start recognizing what we're thinking about the world around us, we are not the world, right? We are not defined by the word the world. We define ourselves. By the way we think about ourselves in the world, our brain, our thoughts are not us. Hey, our brains are completely separate from us. We can have these thoughts. They run in the background all day long and we don't have to be them. That's why I can think a thought, you know, 10 years ago that, you know, like I have no idea how to run a business versus a thought that I might have now, like running a business is easy.

Like I've got this. There is a massive amount of difference between the thoughts that we have in the past and the ones that we have now, if we really take a look at them and how they can shift, and if they're not different, well, clearly we can change them because we don't think that hopefully we don't think the same way that we did 10 years ago as we do now about a problem. Because when we start addressing those issues in our lives, that's when we can begin making the change we want to make. And it's all about how our brain works and what we're thinking. The third part of the model are our feelings. And it's everything that we feel, anxiety, anger, resentment, overwhelm,

All of that is caused by.

I thought that we have in our brain, our thoughts literally create a chemical reaction that pours through our body. And that chemical reaction is the feeling. I love the science behind it. I just think it's so cool. And then whatever we're feeling is going to impact how we behave in the world. Everything that we do is because of how we feel. If we snap at somebody, we love it's because maybe we're feeling anxious about something that we thought about earlier in the day about work. I mean, it's all interconnected. And if you're following me on Instagram, you're seeing some of the stories that I'm doing. Some of the posts that I'm doing, you'll see this interconnectedness between work and home life and what we're thinking and feeling and doing and all the results that we're getting in our world, it's all interconnected. And the last thing, the fifth thing, part of this model are the results that we get.

And we know that we need to work on our thoughts when we're not getting the results that we want in our life. So if we're not getting the consults, if we don't have the relationship, if we're not if we're not at the place we want to in our life, whether it's our way or drinking, whatever, I want you to recognize that it doesn't mean you have to do more. It means you got to take a look at how you think and what kind of questions you're asking yourself and how you're getting your brain to intentionally help you find the answers. And it's important to recognize when you're asking yourself those unhelpful questions, the ones that are actually harmful to you, because they are not going to help you find the answers to the problem you have. They're just going to help your brain focus on all the things you think are wrong with you. So here's some general guidelines before I give you some examples, cause I was kind of hesitant to just make this a

Like

Question Palooza, where you get all the questions and it's just, you know, you sit down and you answer them. I don't, I don't want you to do that because it's so personal, these questions and every time I'm in a coaching session, I'm very present to the fact that the person on the other side of the zoom camera is someone who has a very unique set of circumstances in their life. And a very unique way of talking to themselves. Everybody talks to themselves just a little bit differently. And although we have a lot of similarities, right? Like, especially as lawyers, we have the same and you see them showing up again. And again, it's, it's important to recognize your individual needs when creating questions for yourself. Because I really want to encourage you to start thinking on your own about how you can create helpful questions for your particular situation. And whatever's going on in your life. Why not ask yourself like, Hey, how can I make this even better? Right. All right. So I'm getting into the question part a little bit early, but what I want to give you these guidelines for

Is to just check in before

Four, you start asking yourself questions before you start creating questions for yourself. Check in to see if your questions do these. Okay. So helpful questions, focus on solutions and they give us a hundred percent responsibility of our results. Okay. Let me say that again. So if you're asking yourself a question, make sure that it's focusing on a solution. It's not focusing on the problem. It's focusing on a solution and you are asking a question that is putting all the responsibility for your results on you. You're not putting it on somebody else. It's all about how you are going to create something for yourself that can be with love. Like in relationships, we always were taught that the other person needs to meet our needs. And I think that is just such a harmful thing to teach people like, Hey, I have these needs. Will you meet these needs for me?

I mean, that is just putting all of your power in someone else's hands. Why not take a hundred percent of responsibility for your needs, take care of yourself. And then the other person take care of their own needs. And then you meet together in the middle and you have a loving relationship, right? Why not take full power for what's going on in your life? And that is what a good question does. That's what a helpful question does it puts you in the position of power and creating these solutions for yourself. They do not focus on someone else, right? That gives away all of your power. We ask ourselves, well, what should they do to make me happy in this situation? That is the wrong question, right? We need to look at ourselves and how can we make ourselves happier in this situation? What is it that I need to do in order to create that?

And maybe I don't want to feel happy in this situation, right? Maybe you're in an abusive relationship. Do you want to be happy in that relationship? That's the question you have to ask yourself because the goal of life is not to be happy all the time. Like these questions are not going to be designed to make you a hundred percent happy all the time, because the life it's 50, 50, 50% of the time, you're going to succeed in 50% of the time. You're going to 50% of the time it's going to be so freaking awesome. And then 50% of the time something horrible is going to happen. Right? I want you to look at these questions more as how to live a full human life. One where you get to experience everything in its

Fullness and

Look at your own life in terms of how can you live bigger into it? How can you live in alignment with your values? What are your values, right? Are you like, do you know what you want, what you value most and are you showing that value in your day to day life? If you value, love, and connection, are you loving and connecting on people all day long or at all? If you value hard work, are you sitting in front of Netflix all night?

So you just kind of think about this,

Not in a judgemental way, like there's no judgment with these questions. These questions are really analytical and just meant to get your brain thinking like, Hey, what do I value? Like, am I showing, am I doing that in my life? Like, is it showing up in my life that way? So as we're kind of talking about this, I'm throwing out some questions and if any of them resonate with you, you might want to write them down. All right. So there's so many questions to be asking yourself. So I want to do this in terms of kind of a focal point. If you are using this podcast and using these questions to do a journaling practice, which I highly encourage everyone to do. I basically mandated for my coaching clients and kind of like check in every week. I'm like, Hey, are you doing your, your daily practice?

You're doing your daily practice. Because when we do a daily journaling practice and we're constantly thinking, and we're like practicing using our brain consciously, we start to see the gaps in our understanding and the gaps in what we're creating in our life. So if we aren't creating the consults that we want in our practice and we can ask ourselves, okay, well, what do I think about consults? What are my thoughts about consults? What do I think about my clients? What, and there's like a whole section I do when I, when I'm talking to my clients, it's like really focusing on what are all of their thoughts about their clients, about selling, about getting on the phone call with someone. And we talk about like, what, what are your thoughts? What do you believe about making money? Because when you start asking yourself questions, just simple questions like that, you start to see that there may be some spaces where you have some negative thoughts about people who make a lot of money, or you have some negative thoughts about selling or negative thoughts about getting on a consult.

And let's say you don't have negative thoughts about the consult. Well, what do you think about what you are talking to your ideal client about? Like, how do you begin to attract your ideal client? What do they like? Like how do you get yourself in their brain? Start asking more questions along those lines. If you're looking at this in terms of a relationship, what do you want in a relationship? What do you value? What do you want to create in a relationship? How can you show up as that person in the relationship a hundred percent? What are you feeling in your relationship right now? And do you want to feel that, I mean, if you're cheated on, do you want to be happy about that? I mean, a lot of people they'll come and do a coaching session and they will think that they're supposed to feel differently about the situation that they're in.

Like they have these thoughts, like it's wrong to be cheated on. Right. Do you want to change that thought? Do you want to change that feeling? I say, no. I say, I want to feel that because I want to learn from that. And then I can choose to take myself out of that situation with as much grace as I can muster. Right. That is a decision that you can make when you're conscious of your thoughts. You're conscious of how you want to feel. You're conscious of how you want to think and how you want to be in the world. That is the power of asking questions and these questions. We don't often think about what we're asking ourselves and how we're asking ourselves, because there's a big difference between asking ourselves a question like why can't I get any consults versus, huh? You know, I wonder how I can create more consults in my business.

That is a big difference there. And we don't always recognize the subtleties. That's part of the reason I like the video in zoom when I'm doing my coaching calls, because then I can see my client's body language, because what they're saying, doesn't always match up with the body language that they have. So I know that what they're saying, isn't helpful. If I see their body kind of like closing down or they look down, you know, they have like, everyone has their own little thing. And that is really telling. And are you paying attention to how you are asking these questions of yourself? Are you asking them with compassion? Right? I'm always talking about compassion on this podcast. If you're not down with compassion, calm with me, go on that journey, because that is probably the hardest work any of us have is just to have love for ourselves to value ourselves more, to, you know, find ourselves worthy.

Cause we are, we are worthy 100% it's by default, we can't even help it. Everything else in the world, it's just like bonus. It's us playing the game of life and all of it. We just take so darn seriously. I'm guilty of it too. I take it. So darn seriously, sometimes. And then I come to this podcast or I come to a coaching call or I, you know, go out for a walk and I reconnect with myself and I have compassion for myself. And it all comes back to me. And that's the practice. The practice is recognizing how we're feeling, what we're thinking. Are we asking helpful questions? Are we getting ourselves in the state of mind that we need to create what we want? And yes, I said, are we getting ourselves in the state of mind? It doesn't just conduit us. It's not like super easy.

You've got to practice this, this isn't something that is like built in. And our society definitely does not teach us this kind of thing. It's something that you are meant to. If you want, if you want to do the work, if you want to create your life consciously, it's something you really have to be conscious about because life's going to happen to you one way or the other. The big question is, are you just going to let it happen and see where the chips fall? Or are you going to have some say in it, are you going to control what you can control? Are you going to create something amazing? Are you just going to kind of wait around, see what happens? Cause that's not fun for me. The waiting around seeing what happens. Nah, I want to be the one who purposely designs my life.

And yes, things are going to be different than I expected. There's always going to be something that pops up, but I'm going to have fun along the way. And I'm going to create as much as I can create and help as many people as I can along the way. And I'm going to keep improving and growing. And that's all going to be because I ask myself questions, the questions that I need to grow, the questions that I need to hear the answers to and our brain always comes up with the answers. If we ask the questions, are you up for it? All right. So, Hey, if you haven't joined me on Instagram, I really want to see you there. I'm having a good time there. I do stories just about every day. So if you go to at Dina dot Cataldo, you can find me there. And if you want to book a strategy session with me where I will ask you lots of questions, you can go to Dina, cataldo.com forward slash strategy session. And that's a free session that I do to just see if we're a good fit and to ask you questions, to get your brain going. And yeah, we'll take it from there. All right. I hope you have a wonderful week. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.

If you love what you're learning on the podcast, imagine how you'll evolve. When you start implementing what you're learning, you can learn how to work with me to do just that by scheduling a free strategy session, go to Dina, cataldo.com. That's Dina cataldo.com. Talk to you soon.