Transcript: The 6 Biggest Game-Changers in My Business & Life with Dina Cataldo

Hello, how are you doing today? How's your week going? I don't know if you've noticed this, but there's a lot of stuff going on in the world, but you know what? There's always a lot of stuff going on in the world. It's just this time around, it seems like there's more going on. We just have a hyper focus on it. So to move your focus just for a little bit today, we're going to focus on game changers, game changers. You can make to your business to your life. And it doesn't mean ignoring what's happening in the world. It's always good to have an awareness, but at the same time, when you are focusing on building your practice and you're focusing on being a better you in the world, that is going to be such a better use of your energy. And we're going to talk a little bit about this today in one of my biggest game changers is shifting my focus from what's going on outside of me to understand what's going on inside of me and how that really impacts how I engage with the world and how I not only decide to spend my time to spend my money, that it really helps me design my life in the way that I want to design it.

So today is going to be filled with some easy things that you can implement right away. And it's also going to be something you're going to find something in here that's meaty. That is something that you can really work on today. I really want you to take away if anything, from this, that it doesn't have to look just like this. All I'm aiming for here is that you have a takeaway and you are going to take something away. Especially if you have been in this zone where you've lost some momentum. I mean, we all do that sometimes. And a body that stays in motion generally stays in motion. And when we stop, we have to then act upon ourselves. We have to take a dive in, take a look at what's going on and move ourselves forward. So you will find something here for you.

Before we jump in on these game changers, I want to make sure that you have downloaded the quick start guide, the busy lawyers, quick start guide to get five hours back. And there I walk you through some really helpful strategies for you to begin getting some of actually what we're going to talk about today, which is designing your life. You can begin doing that with some structure. If you go to Dina, cataldo.com forward slash busy lawyer. And when you start building some structure, getting some thoughts around how you are creating, designing your life every single week, you will start getting your time back. And I show you exactly how to do that. Go to Dina, cataldo.com forward slash busy lawyer, to be sure that you're getting your guide there. All right, so let's talk about this. What are the biggest game changers in my business and my life?

I mean, I could point to so many things that have happened in my life, but when I look at what I have done for myself and how I have taken responsibility for my life and how I show up, that is where the biggest Jane game-changers are. So you know how we go around living our lives and big things happen to us. People do things things happen in the world like now, right? Like we have so much happening. We've got a lot that could be on our mind right now, right? It impacts us. But the biggest gain changes. The biggest things that can have the most far reaching consequences are the things that we do for ourselves or to ourselves, depending on what you are doing in your life. But I wanted to address this because when you decide you want something done different, you will create something different.

When you decide that what you are doing right now is not the way you will find a new way. So that is what I wanted to. That's why I wanted to create this because this is a roadmap, a roadmap to guide you. If you are feeling stuck, if you have wanted change and you haven't created change for yourself because you've been waiting, waiting for the perfect time, waiting for the pandemic to end waiting for the shops to open waiting till, you know, whatever it is to stop waiting, just stop waiting. This is the time right now, you're hearing this. And there's a reason you're hearing this. There's a reason you were drawn to this podcast. And I want you to fervently believe that because that is good to make the difference between whether or not you choose to do something different with your life or you choose to stay the same. So my wish for you is that you choose what you want to create in your life. And I'm going to show you the game changers and how the decisions I made

That changed me

And how they changed me. But I want you to really recognize that this is all within your power. So when I say changed me, this is what I mean when I was coming out of law school and I was working 50 to 70 hours for my bosses and I wanted to impress them. And I wanted to do the very, very best that I could not just to serve people, but also for that approval, because that was a big thing, gaining approval. And I had, and I didn't recognize this at the time, but I had in high school and college and law school built up this underlying anxiousness in my body. And I didn't recognize it because it had become a part of me. I would not have even been able to label it as anxiety because I was so detached from it. In fact, I very much detached myself from emotions because I was very much about work and work to me, not only signified re respect, success getting out of very low income.

I grew up in a very low income household. My parents didn't go to college. I wanted out of that. Like I, and I also wanted approval approval from my dad approval from society. Wanted to prove myself. I mean, there was a lot going on there and you know, for me, I can look out an outside circumstance for me, which was being diagnosed with breast cancer at 29 years old as being like the game changer. But that was not the game changer. And then I'll tell you why a lot of people in my experience will go through something like that. And they will decide that they are a victim. They will decide that nothing's going to change. And they will decide that you were, that they are just going to do the status quo and they won't do what I'm going to talk to you about today.

And so when you decide to change things, which is what I did, you will find the Gamechangers within you. You will look for those things. You can take upon yourself in order to live better. And I recognized it was really just a wake up call, right? I recognized I wasn't living to my fullest potential. I recognized I was looking for outside, like external circumstances to validate me. I was looking for external things to, to help me feel taken care of, right? Like money, you know, making it feel like I'm being taken care of when that's not what takes care of me. I am always taken care of because I am always deciding to do what is best for me. And that is something that has taken me time to learn and to see. And really when I decided to do that,

These six things, they change, they shift

Did things in me that I didn't realize were going to be. So so impactful. So this, this is the first one I want you to see here, which is designing your life first, designing it with intention, prioritizing and within all of that, designing of your life also comes talking to yourself better. And I've talked about this extensively in this podcast, like basically click on any podcast that talks about time management or calendar. And I'm going to talk to you about how you talk to yourself about how you love on yourself, even when you don't do all the things on your calendar. Because until you start changing the language that you use around how you are creating your life, you are not going to make the shifts that you want to make. You're just not. And if you are berating yourself for not getting things done, it's not going to make you more likely to do them next week.

So I want you to recognize that our, our dialogue in our head impacts how we are creating our life for me. Like I created that five-hour busy lawyer's guide, which gives you the snapshot of really designing your life and using it to design your week, using that tool to design your week. What I also recognize is that I needed to think about what I wanted because I had been on autopilot so long. I simply did, as I had always told myself, has I had always been told work, work, work, keep going, keep going, keep going. And even when I came back from time off, I would find myself going into the exact same habits of going, going, going, and not evaluating what I was doing, how it was impacting me, how I felt about it. And what did I want to prioritize? Did I want to prioritize, work above all else above relationships, above my feelings, above how my health, like, how did I want to prioritize my life?

And even now I reevaluate how I want to prioritize things. So I started for instance, a workout routine that I did not anticipate. I'm like, I knew it was going to be very time consuming, but I didn't anticipate how much it would cut into where I wanted to prioritize my time for my business, for my for, I have like, I'm learning Italian right now. Like, those are two things I'm prioritizing, you know, on top of my legal practice. So it's, if I'm coaching people and I'm like working out four hours a day, that's not going to work. So I decided that I'm still gonna do it, but I'm going to do it on my terms. I am prioritizing my health, but I am also keeping as a priority. Cause you could have multiple priorities, my coaching practice and my Italian lessons. Like those are things I'm prioritizing right now outside of my legal practice.

And I need to recognize that I can still prioritize my health, but I'm going to pair down some things so that I can keep that balance within me. And that is mind management, like recognizing what's going on. Like, do you, you feel like, do you see parts of your, or priorities, maybe degrading, maybe your relationship priorities degrading because you're devoting time to something else and recognizing there's also a season to things. So I know people who have children like especially small children right now, right? Like you are prioritizing taking care of them over. I don't know, maybe keeping your house clean right now. Like those are real priorities. So recognize that that is okay. Like there are a seasoned to priorities, your priorities will shift. And to watch how your brain works. There was this this podcast I did on it was a steady and distraction.

That's what it's called. I'll link to it in the show notes. And a study in distraction really walks you through how I, when I am distracted, how I think and how my brain breaks things down. And that is not always been that way. I've not always been that way. I used to be very much stuck wins once distracted, like not getting any work done. And that's the same thing we do when we're designing our life is we will start beating ourselves up over not getting things done. And instead of recognizing, that's what we're doing and say, Hey, that's okay, this is normal. I'm just going to take a step back and recognize what my priorities are here and devote time where it needs to be devoted right now, instead of doing that, sometimes we do get, get stuck. So you can listen to that and you can kind of see that difference in our brain of really paying attention to how we're talking to ourselves.

And that's the difference between designing your life with intention using mind management versus being on autopilot. Okay. So that's game changer. Number one, game changer. Number two, thought work. Okay. Spot work came for me after getting my time in order. And then I could devote some of that mind management to designing my life. But thought work for me was a huge game changer because it helped me see what was on in my brain and that it was totally normal that everybody, everybody went through it, they were distracted. They were procrastinating. They had big goals, they were stressed, they were anxious. And then they found their way to creating the goal that they wanted to create. Right? So it's really interesting how, when you start watching your brain and you start seeing this in other people's brains who are super successful, you're like, Oh, I'm totally normal.

This is normal. And when we start recognizing it's normal, it helps us to then move through it faster, to get to the result we want to create. I want to, I've talked a lot about that work in this podcast, but the main components for me are journaling, writing everything down. That's in my brain, focusing on a goal. When I am talking to my clients, I, and they have a very specific financial goal. They have a very specific number of clients they want in their practice. They focus on that goal every single day, they refocus their brain over and over and over again. And then they watch the thoughts that come up. I give them some questions to ask themselves. They start thinking about them. And every single day they start asking themselves those questions and they see what's coming up for them. And they can see if those thoughts are helpful or not.

And if they're not helpful, they can address them. They can like say, Oh, okay, I see that thought that's totally normal, but that's not super helpful right now. And they can talk to themselves, right? They can walk them selves through it and work on looking for the evidence that what they are doing is working and, and thinking about their clients in ways that help them see what their biggest needs are so that they can start shifting their thoughts, their focus to them, rather than looking at all the external reasons why it's quote unquote, not working. They can start shifting their thoughts to more helpful practices, more helpful thoughts. And that helps them get their results faster. Cause what we focus on expands, the other part of thought work for me.

And this was really, this was really

Before I even had a solid journaling practice that was meditation and not everybody likes the word meditation. It kind of freaks them out. They think of like some monk on a mountain top. And what I like to do is just normalize the idea of sitting quietly with our thoughts for me, meditation was perfect though, because it was the perfect way for me to begin seeing my thoughts. Most of us kind of walk around in a fog. We're not really thinking about, like, if you just kind of look around at people, you'll see that they're all in their own worlds. They're all kind of like in their own fog, right? Of social media, of podcasts, of the news of, you know, things that are going on in their personal life, it's constantly flowing. And that can be for us too sometimes. Right? We might have a lot going on and our brain has trouble managing it.

But when we sit quietly with ourselves, we can begin really feeling into our body rather than just being on autopilot. Rather than like before I was saying like that underlying anxiety can actually feel it dissipate. If you sit quietly and you breathe and do it, and if you have a focused meditation practice, you can drop in and you can just see your thoughts. Right. You see a thought coming, you see it. And you're just like, Oh, there's another thought, right? Like last night, like this is like the perfect example. My, my brain was buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. A lot of us have trouble sleeping because our brain is just buzzing with the, to do list. And so if you have trouble sleeping, you can have a sit with yourself, right. And just have a sit with yourself. Think I'm watching too much British TV's too much BBC lately, have a suit with yourself. And just sit there

And watch your thoughts.

No, that there's nothing wrong with them. That you're not crazy because your brain is buzzing. It's just buzzing. And if you sit with yourself long enough and you practice this over and over and over again, you'll notice your brains start to calm down. And then you're outside of your brain. It's really interesting. You're outside and you see your brain buzzing and you're like, Oh, that's interesting. And your brain gets quieter and quieter that it takes patience and that patient's needs to be cultivated. So if you are impatient, it's going to be tough. I was super impatient. I did not want to do meditation, but if I've done podcasts on meditation to all link to those in the show notes as well, so that you can just have an idea of what to expect, but this was an incredibly game-changing thing for me because I could begin calming my central nervous system down enough so that I could bring more distance between an input from the outside world and my output.

So, you know, like when we talk about re reacting and responding, reacting is like, when we have that snap that snap reaction, maybe we shoot out an email that could have been worded better, or we are angry with someone. And then we think better of it later. The reaction is having that measured time. Like even if it's like a second or two, to give you a pause, to think before clicking send on the email or snapping at your partner, like that is what you want to cultivate. That's what we work on cultivating and in thought work. And in my coaching practices, that is how we can begin creating what we want in the world rather than simply reacting to the world around us. All right. Let's move on. Okay. Game changer. Number three, watching what I put into my brain. Okay. When I started paying attention to the crap I was putting into my brain, I saw a huge difference in how I felt about myself and how I responded to the, and this could be a few things I'm, you know, I think this is pretty self evident, but for me, I stopped buying magazines.

Like I stopped buying cosmopolitan or Vogue or whatever magazines it was that I was getting, because it was just like horrible for my body self image. First of all, like all of these people in that were beautiful. I mean, why would I want to put in the input that I'm not enough? Right? Like every time I put like, look at that, my brain automatically says, Oh, I should look like that. You know, our brains are very susceptible to those kinds of messaging, which advertisers obviously know. And that is what builds up. This need to go buy things, to help us feel better. Right. We're looking for the external to help us rather than looking internally. So if we get rid of that external out input like the magazines or the news or whatever it is, then we can look at ourselves and look into ourselves because that is where the, the best input really is, is when we start looking internally and we start watching our brain and we start looking how we're talking at to ourselves and start talking to ourselves better.

And when I started putting things into my brain that were helpful, things from people who were they were successful and they had a brain that I admired. Like, you know, when you listen to somebody in your life, Oh, I really like how she thinks I listened to for those people. And then I want more of their brain and my brain find those people, find those people and then model them that's number four, game changer. Number four is modeling them, find a role model for me. I had a lot of different role models and it wasn't necessarily because they were doing exactly what I wanted to do. It was because they had thoughts that seem to be really helpful for them. Like they like Tony Robbins. A lot of people love him or hate him. Right? Like it depends on, you know, how you think about them.

But I loved him. He was somebody who was fascinating because he was in my life in the eighties and nineties. And he just kind of seemed like that annoying infomercial guy. And I did a podcast on him too. I will post that in the show notes, but he had such a presence about him. He seemed to be helping people. He seemed to be something one who knew how to grow his resources, not only financially, but connection wise. And he had this expansive ability to touch different people's lives. And he was living a really big life. Same thing with Oprah. She's actually said this about herself. Like she's lives a big life. And that allows her to do really big things. She has a huge capacity for success. She has a huge for for helping people like she has this ability because she's cultivated it.

And so I was looking for people like her there's people in business like Amy Porterfield and Brooke Castillo who have these large capacities to build businesses, to think highly of themselves too, create themselves. And so I wanted more of those thoughts in my life. That's what I brought into my input into my world, their podcasts, their, you know, their teachings, all of that. And then I use them as role models because I took on their thoughts. Right. Like I recognize, Oh, that thought's really good. That's really good serving them. And what do I think about that? What do I, I think about my business. Do I have the same thoughts as she does? Why don't I have the same thoughts as she does about her business? What do I think about my clients? I don't know. I think that about my clients, thoughts would better serve me to think about my clients.

What happens in my life when I begin thinking in these ways I begin building my capacity to serve. I begin building my capacity to build my financial reserves like that. What happens in my life when I started looking initially it's outwards, right? Like you're initially looking at outwards to see wow, who is doing life in a way that seems really fulfilling. And I want to just kind of check them out. And then I decide, okay, what feels right to me? And then I start asking myself questions so that I can start, you know, taking on what I want to take on in order to change my life. So that's the internal part of that. All right. The fifth game changer for me was really learning how to connect with people. And I'm still learning that. Like I am a very gosh, I considered my well, I'm an only child, first of all.

So I always was able to do things on my own. In fact, I was encouraged to do things on my own. My dad had a business, my mom would work, you know, like I had to entertain myself. And so I was really good at it. And I'm really good at being alone. Like I have no problem with that. Like I can talk into this podcast. And even though like, I'm sitting here by myself, I know you're out there and you're listening and it's like, it's, this is not a problem. Like, I, I love just being by myself. I love being with my thoughts. I want to connect more with people and that's why I've really taken on in social media, especially Instagram. That's really where I hang out. You can find me there at Dina dot Cataldo. And so I have really taken off on this this disease prior to connect more with people.

And when I do that, I notice a difference in the quality of the people who are drawn to me. I notice a difference in the people that I'm coaching. Like these are people want connection and an eye to crave connection. It's not as if I don't crave that connection. It's just, I can go for longer periods of time, I think without it and not notice it. And I, and that's something that I need to pay attention to, that I want to pay attention to because that connection is really fulfilling for me. And it helps me serve my clients better. Like the more connected I am with myself, the more connected I am with those who I want to serve, then my clients can mind me. And when my clients can find me, they can get help.

So, so they can't find me, right.

They can't get help. And I'm here for them. Like that is why I do what I do. And if I don't promote myself, if I don't tell people what I do, if I don't tell them I'm a coach and that I can help them build their their finances, help them build their client base, help them build their self esteem and their willingness to break through procrastination. If I don't tell people about that, they don't know about it. And so I need to connect with people. And so that has been a really big game changer. And I noticed this with my clients too. Like when they start busting down their barriers to connecting with people, they begin building client bases that are bigger. Like that is just how we work. Like you have to work on ourselves. And then we work on that connection when we're afraid to get on video, when we're afraid to do the podcast. When we don't want to, that is when we have the biggest opportunity to connect with people is when we can start working on ourselves to go through all of that discomfort and do the video anyway and do the podcast anyway, whatever it is, that's, what's going to help us build our connection is starting by working on ourselves. Okay. Number six.

Okay. This one, number six.

This might be a little controversial and I am not telling people that you have to do this. Okay. In order to have a successful practice in order to have a successful life. I'm not telling you how to do this,

But I am going to tell you that this was a huge thing for me. Okay. This was

Huge. And I didn't realize how big it was going to be for me. I didn't realize how big it was. Well, I knew it was going to be big for my clients when they did this, but not everybody's open to this. Right. Is when I stopped drinking. Yeah. Right. Like if you're a wine drinker, like I used to be, you might be thinking to yourself like, Nope, you lost me there. But stick with me here. Stick with me here. At least is the last one. So come on, just stay with me. So I guess it's been about a year and a half maybe. Yeah. Over that right now. And I stopped drinking and I had wanted to just decrease my alcohol input for a while. Right. Cause I noticed a few things that was happening as a result of drinking. I noticed I wasn't feeling good in the morning.

I noticed I wasn't being able to sleep all the through the night. Like I'd wake up after just a couple hours. I noticed that I wasn't as motivated to get things done and those different factor. And when I say get things done, I mean, get things done in my business. Like I could obviously am I could function, no problem. But you know, sometimes I just wasn't as energized to work on my business. And when I had toyed with this idea of drinking less, I was really thinking, okay, well I'll find that perfect drink. And that is going to lessen all of those things. I just talked about. I'm going, if I'm going to be able to sleep fine, I'm going to be able to, you know, be motivated, whatever. I could not find that perfect drink. Let me tell you I tried everything. Okay.

I was not there. And then one day, like, I guess I had worked on my thoughts enough where I knew that this was not a beneficial thing for me to do one day. I just decided I'm not interested in drinking anymore. This is not for me. I don't like it. It's not fun. And I stopped drinking it. It took work. Right. Some mental work, but I figured out, okay, this is how I did it. And then I taught it to my clients and I got the same responses from them. Like they noticed I was talking to one client not too long ago. And she said, I would not have been able to build my practice the way I'm building it. Now, if I hadn't have stopped drinking. And she had like a bumpy road too. Right? Like she like looked at, you know, some of the teachings we were working on some of the coaching we were doing in session. And she was like, this isn't working, you know, like, you know, and then it worked right. Like when we keep working on ourselves, when we keep devoting time and energy to ourselves and what we want and refocusing our brain, cause really, it always comes down to refocusing our brain. She let it go. Like, she's like now I don't even want it. Like, I don't even think about it. Like I don't even spend time thinking

About it. And I use that time on my business

Business now, and I have more clients and more money because, because of it. So, and she's helping the people she wants to help. So it was really interesting hearing that from her and that recognition that she saw that all the work she put in herself paid dividends in terms of her business. And that was a huge game changer for me. And I know that there are some people listening to this right now and they're like, no, I'm not doing it. But if you want to really start making, like, if you just even want to see that you can set a goal and achieve it, that you can create this for yourself. That is such a great place to start. Like if you're just kind of like, Oh, I don't know if I need coaching for business, but you want some coaching for not drinking anymore or not even.

Yeah. Just like lessening what you drink, like having some control over it. I coach on that too simply because I know it has such a huge impact on our business. And when we are in our lives, really like the connection that we have with our partners, the connection that we have with our friends can be so much deeper when it's not superficially there with alcohol. It's fascinating. I know that this was a big thing for me. So I'm putting it out there. But I do coach on that because it is a game changer. Well, there you have it. Those were the six. So this is, this is if you're taking notes, this is what the six were. Okay. Design your life, prioritize and manage your mind around what you were doing. Okay. Talk to yourself in a very loving way. When things don't get done, you will figure out a way to get it done.

You will design your life in a way that will help you create what you want to create. And you can use that busy lawyer guide to help you get a good start on that. The second thing to do is work on your thought, work, your thought practice, whatever that looks like, journaling meditation. Those were the big ones for me. That that is when we start recognizing what's going on in our brain and learn how to refocus it. Number three, watching what I put into my brain because our brains are little sponges. Like we talk about that with kids, but our brains are sponges. We absorb everything. So really pay attention to what you were allowing in your brain for finding a role model who thinks thoughts. That sound really good to you. Like you want to have their brain start, start looking at what they're doing in their life, what they're thinking in their life. More importantly, and see how you are thinking in your life and start to kind of recognize, make connections between what works, what doesn't work and what you want to create change with. And number five, creating those connections. And number six for me was stopping drinking so that there you have it guys. That is the big stuff there. And if you want to get anything that we talked about in our show notes, go to Dina, cataldo.com forward slash one 23. And I will 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.