Hi, how are you doing today? It's been a rough couple of weeks, huh? There's been a lot going on and there has been a person or two who might not be handling this quite so well. Maybe you're one of them, but I highly doubt that. I do think that there is a lack of education on how our brain works and how we can help ourselves in times just like these.

And that's really why I love being a life coach is because we're taught tools and we apply tools to ourselves that basically nobody else has. And unless you are actively seeking a podcast like this one, you probably are not applying these kinds of tools and these are essential. These tools are essential for times like these for the times when we are stressed out and overwhelmed and now more than ever. So I want to make available to you these tools and a really clear and concise way. I'm going to walk you through something that I have walked you through before in earlier episodes, but I think that right now is a great time for a refresher and I want you to take these to heart. I want you to recognize that whatever you're feeling and thinking right now is not wrong. What you are feeling and thinking right now is based on how your brain works.

Our brains are made to seek danger and that right now is what is being propelled in the news. That is what we are putting in front of our brain, pretty much 24 seven whether it's on the news or scrolling through Facebook or Instagram and our brain is seeking it out. Our brain is actually looking for the danger. It was not meant to be sitting in front of a television or listening to the news all day long. But somehow we evolved so that we now have that available to us all the time. So today we're gonna learn, you're gonna learn some tools that will help you right now. And if you've been joining me live on Instagram, you know I did one on anxiety earlier this week. I've been talking about how people are showing up bigger and better in their practices. There are some practices that are doing that.

Anyway, I think that there are a lot of lawyers who've pulled back and they're afraid to really talk about what's going on. They're afraid to communicate. They don't know how to communicate with their clients or with the people that might be their clients one day in the future. And because of that, they're missing an opportunity to connect. So I'm hoping that if you were one of those lawyers who is pulling back from your leadership role, who's pulling back from connecting with clients, I want you to hear this. It is okay to feel and think what you are right now. But if you stay in a negative space, you will not move forward as quickly as other people will. You will not be able to connect with people like others will be able to in the future. Because this is going to pass. Coronavirus is not something that is a permanent thing and back.

This is something that comes and goes. The stock markets go up and down. It is a cycle. We've not seen this to an extreme like this, but you know what? It's going to be fine. So I want you to know it's going to be fine and I want you to understand that these tools so that when you don't feel fine, you can have an understanding of how your brain is working. You can then start to search for what do you want to feel right now and start to think the way you want to think. And I'm going to suggest to you that if you are in a place right now where you were feeling anxious, that you have an option to either feel anxious or you can choose a different feeling. You can feel more certain about your future. And I'm going to show you how you can do that.

So I want to walk you through the tool. And it is the thought cycle. So you have circumstances in the world right now. There's no toilet paper on a shelf. There's Corona virus. It is a circumstance. It is a thing in the world. And what happens is that our brain then makes an interpretation, right? Our brain is looking to create a story and understanding of what's going on in the world. And it does it in a very quick way. So we might get a knee jerk thought, but we have the ability to have an intentional thought. And those intentional thoughts can really help us be more productive in our lives and feel better too. So let's say coronavirus in the world, right? And you have a thought, you think, Oh my gosh, the sky is falling and you feel anxious about it. You feel upset, maybe angry.

You have different thoughts about people and how they're behaving, how they should be behaving in the world. For instance you know, there's no toilet paper on the shelves. You think, who are these people? They're just being irrational and they are. That's a thought. I'm having irrational. It's silliness. And then there's other people who were thinking thoughts like, I need more toilet paper. Where am I going to get toilet paper? Oh my gosh, I'm going to run out of toilet paper. So there are different ways to think about the exact same circumstance. Those thoughts are what guide are in. Those are our interpretations of the world and those, those are what create our feelings. So if you're thinking that's a rational less just selling us, then you're going to be dismissive of it. And it's not going to be a big deal. But if you're thinking thoughts like, Oh my gosh, we're not, we're going to run out of toilet paper.

We're not going to have any toilet paper. Then you're going to become anxious. You're going to feel anxious. So I want you to see that you can choose your thoughts. You might have an initial knee jerk reaction of, Oh my gosh, I'm going to run out of toilet paper. Where am I going to get toilet paper? Oh my gosh, there's not enough. Or you can take a look at your thoughts and understand, Hey, this is natural. The thought that I'm having is creating my, my anxiety right now. And I'm going to take a step back and think about this. Like if, if you continue down that feeling of anxiety and you don't take a, take a moment, take a pause and just feel in your body that you're anxious, what's going to happen is that you're going to take those actions that come from that feeling, right?

So you're going to search for toilet paper all over the place on the internet. You're going to maybe complain to some people, maybe you'll gossip about, you know, somebody who's got too much toilet paper. You're going to look at social media posts with people who posting somebody who posted a picture of a throne made out of toilet paper and you're going to be upset. You're going to, you're going to become even more angry, right? And then you are going to be that obsessive person over the toilet paper. You are going to become more anxious. You're just like, it's a self fulfilling prophecy, right? You have one thought and you just keep getting more and more anxious about it. Now I want you to take a look at that model of thinking, right? That cycle of thinking. If you do not take a moment to pause when you are feeling what you're feeling and understand the thought that is creating it, then you're going to be reacting rather than acting out of intention.

So same thing goes with if you were in your practice right now, you've totally gone radio silence, right? Like you haven't posted anything on social media. Maybe you haven't emailed anybody in your practice except you know, Hey, I'm closed down for the foreseeable future. If you were doing that, which I hope you're not because this is the opportunity to start getting your clients really engaged with you online while people are searching for things online, people are bored right now. They are looking for someone like you. But if you are choosing not to connect with them, your circumstances coronavirus right? Your thought is a, I don't know what to say. Maybe that's what it is mean. You just don't know what to say right now or I feel overwhelmed. Those are disempowering thoughts that are going to lead to feelings of uncertainty, right? And out of uncertainty, you do not take positive action.

You do not take the action that you need to connect with your clients to act in the world in a way where you are certain, right? You're not. You may be you're on the couch eating a bag of potato chips. I don't know when we, you know, are you buffering? Are you using the energy that could otherwise be used to create something in the world to do nothing? And then the result that you get from those actions that came from that feeling of being uncertain is that you do nothing. And so of course you do not know what to do if you were doing nothing. You don't know what's going to work, right? Like you've got to keep at it. You've got to keep working at it to see what will work for you. So let's look at this in another perspective. So someone else in a legal practice can think very differently.

In fact, there's a couple examples of this that I've put over on my bl**@di*********.com forward slash law firm marketing, and I've put a couple of examples there that I think affirms that are that I've seen good messaging and I haven't seen that many firms on social media really working their messaging, which is really surprising to me. So you have an opportunity here to do better and you have the thought that I can connect with people right now or I know that this will pass those thoughts. Either one, that you choose better than, I don't know, anything's better than I don't know what to do, right? Then what's going to come from that thought is a feeling, a feeling of certainty. You could have a feeling maybe of you're energized, something that is going to lead to positive action. Now, when I'm saying that you are going to feel something as a result of that thought, I am giving you an example.

I want you to really use your own words. Maybe you have a word that is more motivating, that is more inspiring to describe the feeling that you want to have and that thought is something that is going to be created by your thoughts. So what you're really doing is you're working backwards. You're saying, Hey, I want to feel really energized about helping people right now. I want to feel really energized about doing the best I can to lay the foundation for my future in my practice. And then what thought is going to bring that to you? Maybe it's the thought of, you know what, I help some people right now or I, I know I can do this. I know that this is going to pass. Only you are going to be able to come up with the thought that is going to lead to that feeling.

And you might be hearing right now that I want you to go from, you know, the sky is falling to, I'm gonna rock this. Well that's not what I'm asking you to do. I'm not asking you to jump from a thought to another thought. What I'm suggesting is that you already believe that. You know exactly what to do. You already know that you want to connect with people and create a better experience for them to add value to their lives, to connect with them so that when things do calm down, maybe they do see you as a leader in your field. You already believe that thought, otherwise you wouldn't think it. Okay? So I want you to really take a hard look at the thoughts you're thinking right now. This is really the time to do this. This is the time to check in and say, Hey, am I thinking in a way that is benefiting me?

Am I thinking in a way that's serving me or am I being self-destructive right now? The next thing that you're going to do is you're going to think up all of the things that are going to lead you to the, the result that you want, right? So let's say the result you want is you want to be more connected with your clients or you want to create you want to create offerings for them that they can purchase online. Let's say you can work backwards. You're working up from the result to the actions that you're going to take. So what actions are you going to take in order to create that result? Are you going to sign? Are you going to email them? Are you going to post more on social media? Are you going to create a schedule so that you are actually staying in the habit of creating content, of creating connection with them on social media?

Maybe you do some Facebook lives. What are you going to do? Those are all the actions that you're going to take and what feeling do you need to have in order to take that? Is it energized? Is it certain that you've got this right and the thought is maybe it's you, you've got this, maybe it is, I am capable of handling anything and that is the thought that is going to get you to that result. It's a through line. That's what I want you to see that there's a circumstance in the world that is just a fact. It doesn't mean anything. What makes it mean anything is always going to be a thought. It's always going to be how we interpret it. Are we going to interpret it like the sky is falling or are we going to interpret it as, Hey, this is an opportunity for me to play bigger in my practice, and then what feelings is going to come from that thought?

Maybe it's more energized. You're going to act based on that feeling and then you were going to create the results that you want. Now here's the thing. You've gotta be diligent about this. You've got to actually write stuff down. You've actually got to pull out a journal and start writing all this out because if you don't write it out and you're not taking action, what is the point? You are not going to be able to see your thoughts unless you start writing them down. I'm going to tell you that from personal experience, you can think all the thoughts you want, you can think this practice through and you are not going to get the results that you could get if you just write it down because that's when you start seeing your thoughts. That's when you start to see all of the strange connections that our brain will make with things that you can then start to consciously break apart and start working on yourself.

Okay, this is important. You are important. Your mind set is important right now. Your mental health is important. It's more important than it is ever been. This is why life coaching is so important is because the work that you do will take you through a crisis. This is why I do this is whether or not you have a crisis with a health condition like cancer, whatever it might be, or it could be a business that is taking a hit right now, or maybe you've got a family member that you're caring for and they're having a tough time. Your mental health is what's going to take you through these crises every single time, and that's why I love life coaching. That's why I love the fact that it is like magic only. It's not. It's just understanding how your brain works and being able to take a peek inside your computer.

You're able to take a peek inside, kind of be able to dig around, pick out the thoughts that you want, see what thoughts are actually holding you back, and then say, Hey, I want to reprogram this. I don't like what's going on. I'm going to reprogram my brain. That's what life coaching is all about. So usually I don't do single session coaching, but if you are facing a really tough time right now, I want to be available to you. I've opened up some single sessions. If you go to Dina cataldo.com forward slash single session, you will be able to get hooked up with a single session. I will make sure that that is a link that **@di*********.com. Forward slash 93 you'll find the resources that I mentioned in this episode, including that law firm marketing link. I'm also want to make sure that if you are serious about really laying the foundation for your practice right now, that you join in Selena's Facebook group.

In fact, she's going to have the very first training video for promoting your business. It's really for all entrepreneurs. You want to get in on this. You want to be able to see exactly what she is thinking. She's created a multimillion dollar business and I think that it's nice to get up peak inside somebody else's head and see the thoughts that they are thinking to understand the processes that they go through to understand what makes them tick. So if you want to do that, go to Dina cataldo.com forward slash 93 I am hooking you up with everything right there. All right, I will talk to you soon. I hope you have a wonderful week. Okay. Take care of PS. I am also going to be doing a few extra podcasts here, some bonus episodes to help you with your brain managing your brain, and really getting you through this if you need it. All right? Talk to you soon.