Transcript: How to Connect More Deeply with Ourselves with Dina Cataldo

Hello, how are you doing today? So today I want to create something for you that you can keep for yourself. Sound kind of funny? I want to create connection. I want to help you learn how to create connection with yourself because I'm imagining if you listen to me, you do a lot of work. In fact, that is what you have done your whole life. You have worked your behind off to get to where you are and you want to take yourself further. You're ambitious. You want to create something amazing, maybe something that even outlives you or can sustain people outside of just yourself. You want to be someone who can create something using your imagination and using your creativity. But sometimes, maybe a lot of times you disconnect from your creativity and you can't create what you want and you feel stuck. And I want to speak to you because that has been my work.

It continues to be my work, to create connection with myself so that I can maintain the connections that I need mentally and physically and spiritually and emotionally to create what I want to create in my life. And right now, especially in this world where there's so much disconnect and so much Inkster and anxiety and worry, I want to help you create that connection with yourself. Maybe there's been some disconnection over the last few months, maybe even years. And so today we're going to talk about it. We're going to create some connection and help you get back to the person you've always been, because this isn't about creating something brand new. This is about getting back to center about grounding yourself in who you already are. And that's kind of the amazing thing about connection is you already have it. You might have just lost it temporarily, but you always have it.

So we're going to talk about how to cultivate that more and draw your attention to it more because if you listen to this podcast regularly, you know, that we are, our attention is so let's draw our attention to creating that connection and then creating from that more of what you really truly want in your life before we get started, I want to tell you about something I'm really excited about. It is a masterclass for procrastinators and I was a procrastinator for a very long time. It was very painful. I found myself in a lot of suffering because I was not taking action on my dreams. And it really took me understanding how my brain works to get reconnected and start doing the work that I was putting off and that I knew I was capable of, but I wasn't doing so. I want to invite you to view the masterclass that I've created for you.

It's how to stop procrastinating and finally get unstuck. If you go to Dina, cataldo.com forward slash masterclass, you will find there a free master class, just sign up and you will get it free right away. And I take about an hour with you really walking you through how our brain is wired and how we can begin taking action and learn how to overcome procrastination. Because that is something that shows up with almost all of my clients. We don't have trouble doing the work, but we're working from the wrong place and we're doing the wrong things because of it. We're doing a lot of things, but we're not doing the right things to get us the results that we want. So I want to share with you what I have learned over the years. So go to Dina, cataldo.com forward slash masterclass and get that training because it will change your life.

I'm not even kidding you. This work will change your life. All right. So, you know, that's there for you. Let's get connected. Alright. So let me tell you something about what a lot of us lawyers do. We do a lot of working. We are really good at doing things, whether it is I'm doing the busy work or it's doing the legal work, whatever it is, we're really good at working so good at it. In fact that we skip all of the things that we know are good for us, but decide that we need to work. Instead we skip the gym, we skip those walks. We say, well, I guess we're not even skipping the gym right now because we can't even go to the gym, but we're skipping all those things that are really nurturing to us. I noticed recently for me, I had a really strong meditation practice and during COVID I have let that go.

I had a really strong yoga practice. And then after COVID I let it go, right? Like I made conscious decisions and said, Oh, well, right. That's not something that I'm doing. And I have gone into my brain and started recognizing, okay, these are things that are disconnecting me and I need to get reconnected with myself. So I am creating a home gym. I am reincorporating my meditation practice, and I already feel amazing in comparison. Like I could feel some of that disconnect seeping in, and I know if I'm feeling it, then you're probably feeling it too. The doing, I want you to know is an effort to control our world, all that work, all of that energy flowing out of us to do all of the things, whether it is taking on more clients or working on our website, doing busy, work on our website, heck even snacking and being on social media more than you're used to, right.

Or watching television more than you would. That is all our effort to control our world. I noticed that. And I was looking back in my journal and it's something that I have a pattern of doing, which is doing something in an effort to disconnect from my feelings. Okay. So not only is doing an effort to control our world. It's also a distraction from feeling our feelings, because if we don't have to feel our feelings, they don't exist. That's one way of controlling our world. We might snack. I was snacking and sipping tea instead of just sitting and being silent without movement. And that is really difficult for a lot of us. I didn't find that for myself until I was doing a regular yoga practice and I was doing a lot of physicality. And when I needed to take rest, I found myself kind of dropping into the space I'd never been before and it was peaceful.

And I had to practice it though because I couldn't maintain it very long. So I kept practicing it and practicing it. And that's what you have to do. And I have a ton of podcasts on meditation. If that's something that interests you, I'll link to them in the show notes at Dina, cataldo.com forward slash one 17. If that's something that interests you, but you don't have to do meditation in order to do this work, you can sit quietly, right? You don't have to be someone who sits for 30 minutes at a time, you know, just trying to make your mind, you know still it helps, but you don't have to do that. And that's why I teach what I do with the model. And I teach it in depth in that masterclass. And when you get into this kind of thought work and recognizing what your mind is doing, you automatically begin creating connection with yourself.

You connect with yourself instantly. When you ask yourself, what am I thinking? You connect with yourself instantly. When you ask yourself, what are you feeling? We are where we focus on. So anything that we're focusing on that is when we're what we're going to get more of in our life. And if we're focused on connecting with ourselves, even if we're just taking, you know, five minute check in, in the morning, five minute, check in. Before we go to bed to ask ourselves those questions, we are bringing our attention to ourselves. We're bringing our attention to connecting with ourselves and we're creating more connection just by that simple, simple act. It's the same thing. When we focus on those things that we don't want, right? We focus on lack. We don't have enough. We get more of not enough, right? We keep getting more of what we focus on.

So to create that connection, focusing on ourselves, our feelings and our thoughts that is going to create more connection for us. Another thing that creates more connection for us is compassion. I find when I'm talking to my coaching clients, that they usually lack compassion for themselves. They find themselves, be rating themselves and creating those disconnecting emotions. When they are telling themselves that they're not doing enough work, that they are not creating what they want to create. And I have done this too. And I still do it when I'm not getting the results that I want. I have to ask myself, okay, what am I creating with this? Because if I'm creating emotions that are fear, lack, guilt, shame, all of those emotions are disconnecting. Those are taking me away from my true self. And that's really what I wanted to get out. When I was beginning this podcast, talking about how we already have this connection. We already are everything that we need so many times when I talk to my clients, they don't recognize this. It's not something that we're taught. It's not something that our attention is brought to because we're always taught. We need to learn more. We need to do more. We need to be more successful. At least if you are in a high, high achiever mode, which I imagine you are. If you're listening to this,

I want you to recognize

That you don't have to look outside of yourself for answers that you are enough, that you have the answers already. That's really what coaching is about. Coaching is about getting to those answers that we don't necessarily get to on our own, because you're not being told what to do by a coach. You're just being asked questions to get to the heart of who you already are and what you already have within you. So, one of the things I want you to recognize is that you are the guide. You are the guide. You are the one you can trust completely. And when you build that trust and yes, you've got to build it. You've got to think the thoughts that you trust yourself, that you do things on your own behalf, that you can create what you want to create. Whether it's a healthy body, a healthy practice, a healthy relationship that you can do.

Those things that you are the one who knows the answers, who can create that connection. When you seek answers from outside of yourself, when you're asking others for their opinion, when you're looking obsessively at your statistics, when you are, you know, looking to someone or something to tell you what you should do or how you should be, you are giving up your power and you are no longer the guide you give up your connection. You give up your trust to build up that trust, to build up that connection. You've got to get quiet with yourself. You've got to ask yourself questions. Like, what am I feeling? What am I thinking? Am I coming from a place of compassion right now? Those will get you to your center. They'll get you grounded. And you can't be, I want to bring this up. You can't be in a disconnected feeling, right?

Cause I mentioned all those disconnected feelings like guilt and worry, anxiety, fear, stress, all of those are very disconnecting and will keep you away from the answer that you're seeking. You. Can't be in one of those disconnected feelings. When you feel gratitude or compassion, there's a lot of other feelings you could be feeling, but I want to bring your attention to those particular feelings and compassion. Isn't always the easy one for people. Gratitude is oftentimes a lot easier for us to access because we can turn our focus from that lack that we might be feeling. That's creating worry, thinking. Maybe I don't have enough clients. I don't have enough time. I don't have enough energy, whatever it might be. And we can turn our thoughts, our attention, our focus onto a thought like I have so much right now. And you can start looking around you and asking yourself, why is that true?

Why is it true that I have so much right now? And one of the big realizations for me when I started focusing on gratitude rather than lack was that I felt deeply connected to myself when I felt deep gratitude. And not just the kind of gratitude where you're saying, thank you, thank you for, you know, having a roof over my head and thank you for having clothes to wear and food and relationships. I mean, all of these things are great, but when you really sit in it and you sit in a really quiet place in yourself and you take a few deep breaths and you think about all of what you have to be grateful for, and you get to this place where your heart feels like it's going to explode. I think it's that kind of gratitude that puts you in full gratitude. You cannot feel disconnected when you have that feeling. You are accessing your whole body with this energy. And that is the power of having a thought. Being able to create a feeling that connects you to yourself, being able to create a connection with yourself, lets you create from that place from a place of abundance, from a place of compassion.

And when you are focused on those feelings, those feelings of connection, you can do things that will get you what you want. Because if you are acting out of those disconnected feelings, you're spinning your wheels. You're doing lots of things, but you're not doing the things that will get you. The results you can grind, but you won't create what you want with ease. And yes, you can grind your way through. You're welcome to do that. I did that and I discovered that I can create all the things I want to create without feeling that I discovered that there was a different way. I'm not saying you're not going to feel like crap sometimes because life is 50 50. You're going to feel 50% of them. The, you know, I'll say negative emotions. I don't like calling them negative emotions, but they are the, the opposite of the ones that we attribute to being like the ones we should be feeling, right? Like we should be feeling happy all the time. We should be feeling just joy all the time while you know, that's not true because half the time you don't feel joy half the time you don't feel happy. And that's okay.

When you want to connect with yourself. When you recognize that you're feeling all those disconnected emotions, then you can tell yourself like remind yourself to refocus your brain because you have the power to refocus it. You are not your thoughts. You think your thoughts, that means you have control of your thoughts and you can choose to refocus your brain to create connection with yourself. And that's really the fun part about this is that that he and I make it sound like it's super fun. I find it interesting. I find it fascinating that we can create this within ourselves and we neglect to do it. We do. We neglect ourselves. We don't treat ourselves with compassion. With love. We focus on the doing as if that is somehow going to create ourself worth. When we are already worthy, we are already 100% worthy. I want you to recognize that. And I've been bringing this up the last few episodes in particular because I see it coming up a lot with my coaching. Clients is not fully valuing themselves, not fully valuing that they can trust themselves, not fully understanding that they have everything they need right now.

But once they get the coaching, then they can refocus their brain. And that's the practice it's refocusing over and over and over again until you get the result that you want. It's not giving up. It's understanding it's trusting yourself to get the result that you want and not giving up before you hit the finish line. I was reading some of my notes in my journal. I was listening to a lot of Alan Watts at one point. And you know, a lot of what he talks about is well, one of the things that he talks about is how like when we're trying to create results in our life, right? Let's say you want to make a, you know, six figure seven figure practice, or you want to create a loving relationship or you want to create, you know, a, you want to stop over drinking, right?

Like you want to enjoy wine, but you don't want to over drink wine. You want to lose some weight. You want to fitness goal, whatever it is you want, it's a game, right? It's a game to create the results, changing your mind, changing your thoughts, your mindset, to create what you want to create. And he said, fight. See if I can remember this. He said, you know, wouldn't be a game worth playing. If we knew we were going to get what we were going to get, right? Like if we knew we were going to win, it's not a game. So we have to come from a place of lightness and a place of connection within ourselves. Knowing whether or not we achieve whatever it is we want to achieve. We're whole right now, we're complete right now. We think we're going to be happier whenever we have whatever it is we want.

The truth is is when we are connected with ourself right now, we have everything we need and want. Everything else is just a game. Everything else is just for fun. Everything else. Doesn't matter. Once you create that connection with yourself, you can create lightness around creating what you want in your life. Because feeling connected doesn't mean that you give up your goals doesn't mean that you say, okay, while I'm present and I should be happy right here right now. Very Zen. What it means is that you are connected with yourself right now. Know your value right now. And you're going to play the game. You're going to play. It's super fun. Okay. So remember the masterclass. It's going to give you a tool to help you work through what we talked about today, specifically around procrastination. But connecting with yourself can look like a lot of different things.

So I don't want you to feel like you have to make it look a certain way. It doesn't have to be meditation. It doesn't have to be yoga. Doesn't have to be any of that. It can be sitting on the porch with a glass of water, a glass of tea, something that's not numbing your emotions. Something like wine or food. It's something that allows you to just sit right? Just sit with yourself and your thoughts and just be that, knowing that your whole right, where you are right now is being connected. All right, 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.