Transcript: 5 Thought Errors Wasting Your Time with Dina Cataldo

Hello, my friend. How are you today? I have got a really special episode for you today. This was originally part of a training I did a year ago. That was super popular and I received a lot of comments on it and I know that it is going to help you. I was gonna edit it down, but as I started re-listening to it, it was so good.

I was like, no, they just have to listen to the whole thing, cuz it is that good. So with it, through the end, it is gonna bring you so much awareness. It's gonna give you so much good stuff. You're gonna hear about the five thought errors that are wasting your time. And you are gonna hear that there are seven steps that you can take to help yourself. I have condensed those into the Busy Lawyer's Guide. So I did not include that audio part of this training. You can download that guide and I highly recommend that you do so at dinacataldo.com/busy lawyer. That's dinacataldo.com/busylawyer. All right, my friends. Enjoy.

If you don't know who I am, I'm Dina Cataldo. And I am the coach for lawyers who feel overwhelmed, stressed out and want to build their practice. Maybe even build a business on top of their legal practice, but don't wanna feel all the stress and all the overwhelm. And if you've been reading some of the emails I've been sending out, you know, how it feels when you are constantly putting out fires, it feels horrible. And we don't have any space in our lives for anything but work. And if you relate with this, let me know, like drop something in the Q and a, let me know what you're experiencing. Cause I, when I was a trial attorney, you know, pumping out trial after trial, I didn't know how to master the overwhelm. I didn't know what was going on in my mind that was creating that overwhelm.

I really truly thought it was the trials. I really truly thought that it was the stacks of case is on my desk. Okay. And right now you're probably in that mode of believing that everything that is on your desk right now, all the people in your life, all of the responsibilities that you have are what's creating the stress and what's creating the overwhelm. And I wanna bring huge awareness to what is really happening in your brain, cuz what is happening in our brain is not reality. And it took me a lot of time to learn this. And so I'm gonna distill it for you in this master class. This is what I teach my clients. This is what we work on. This is like getting your feet like into the water so that you can start to see how this is showing up in your life, where this is, undercuting your productivity, where this is even hurting relationships that you have because you're so tense and overwhelmed that you're unable to have the connections that you want and a half.

This is going to help you in every single area of your life. And one of the things that I really wanted to stress here about why this is so important is because we've got to create space in our lives before we can live bigger in our lives. When we are having feeling like we have work crushing down on us, we do not have space to dream bigger. All we have is enough space to grind out the work. And that might mean staying later at the office, it might mean trying to work faster. It might mean going in on the weekends, okay? Feeling like we're taking on too much and yet we don't know how to stop. So this is what I really wanna talk about. Today are five thought errors that we have that are, undercuting all of the efficiency, the productivity, but also denying us the space that we need to dream bigger in our lives.

Cause if we stay on the hamster wheel, we're not gonna be able to get anywhere. We're not gonna be able to build the business. We're not gonna be able to feel more ease in our legal practice. We're not gonna be able to create the relationships that we want. And what I'm doing is I have a full-time legal practice and I've built a coaching practice and maybe you've listened to the podcast that I have too. And all of that is also done while I'm still taking care of an aging parent. I still have pets and other responsibilities that I take care of. I still have friends. I still have managed to take, you know, care of the people who need to be taken care of in my circle and it can be done and it can be done without the overwhelm. It can be done without the, and the anxiety.

So I wanna show you how to do that today. Okay. All right. So we're gonna talk about the five thought errors that are really undercutting everything and what a thought error is, is a thought that is unhelpful. Okay. Cause thoughts are neither negative nor positive, right? You hear a lot about toxic positivity. Like we just gotta think positive and you also hear about don't be negative. That's not good. But all I want you to see here is that thoughts need to be evaluated every time you have them in your head, you just have to evaluate everything and decide if you wanna keep that thought, is it something that you wanna hold onto? So we're gonna talk about some of those thoughts that are impacting, how you use your calendar and maybe how you're not using your calendar at all. So you're not able to get the things done that you wanna get done and you can't follow through on the things that you wanna follow through on because sometimes they're not even on your calendar or other people, aren't aware of those things, your calendar.

And so you end up having these calendar mishaps. We'll talk a little bit about that. We're also gonna talk about the solutions to everything. OK. We're we're gonna talk about the solutions to all of these thought errors. And at the very end, I'm gonna take you through this seven step process. Okay? We're gonna, I'm gonna walk you through this. This is what I do. This is what I teach my client about how to use their calendar, how to manage what is going on in their life, right? Every single one of these. Even if you think that it doesn't apply to you, I want you to listen hard because in some way, shape or form, you've probably had a thought like this, and this is what I want you to take out of this going forward after the masterclass, when you are working on this in your own life, because I can be here for an hour with you, I can talk you through this for an hour.

And you could say, yes, this is really great. I'm totally gonna start this. This is gonna be just life changing, which it will be if you let it, but you've got to take, take action. After this master class, you've got to be there understanding what's going on in your brain. You have to be able to see it and remind yourself of what's happening in your brain. Or you will fall into the same traps that you have over and over again. You hear something really great. It sounds fantastic. I'm totally gonna do it. You're all gung ho. And then, then real life hits you. And next week you decide, you know what? I just don't have time for it. I'll do it later. Right? I don't want you to do that. I do not want you to take what you learn in this masterclass and flush it down the toilet because it's so easy to do that.

And it's natural because our brain doesn't wanna do hard things. Our brain wants to the old way of doing things because that's how it knows it's survived this long. You made it through law school. You've gone through as far as you have in your legal practice. And you've been just fine. But what I wanna show you is a better way, a way that is gonna get you the results that you want and a way that is gonna help you live bigger in your life, because you're gonna create the space so that you can actually dream. Cause right now I'm guessing you don't have time to dream. You don't have time to think about other things right now. All you have is fire after fire that you're trying to put out. So I want you to take what you get here and I want you to implement it. And about halfway through, I'm gonna talk to you what coaching is cause I'm gonna tell you exactly what our brain does with this kind of information and why coaching helps counteract it and want you to see what happens. And you can coach yourself. Okay? You can coach yourself. If you take the time to every single day, every single week, check in with yourself and see what's going on in your brain. You can do that yourself too. Okay. All right. So let's get started, right?

Let's talk about number. I never have enough time. I don't have enough time to work out, relax, journal, fill in the blank, whatever it is. I just don't have enough time. Excuse me. So how do you know you're having this thought, right? This is the first thought error. This is how you know, right? You find yourself constantly skipping what you enjoy in favor of work. Cause you might enjoy going on a walk, but you know what? You gotta work. You might skip the gym because you gotta work. Right? Notice if you are skipping out on what you really enjoy in favor of working, you don't have any hobbies. That's another thing to look out for. You don't have hobbies cuz you don't have time for them. You don't have any space in your life for things that you enjoy. So you don't even have hobbies.

You can't even think of anything that you might enjoy doing outside of the office. You work later than you need to. And you tell yourself that it needed to get, even if the assignment that you had was not due. This is something that I notice with my clients. Sometimes they'll tell me, they'll be like, yeah, I stayed really late tonight. Say, why'd you do that? He said, oh, well I feel like I just needed to get caught up. I said, do you feel caught up? And they said, no, but you know, I'm glad I stayed. I said, well, did you stick with your calendar? Like, did you decide to do anything else that night? Well, I wanted to spend some time with my partner that night and I, and you didn't, you didn't get a chance to do that. No, I, I didn't. I said, well, that's why just notice this like this.

Isn't about beating yourself up for following this exactly and being perfect in every way. This is about noticing what's hap happening in your life. How your thoughts are dictating, how you act in the world. Cause our thoughts generate our feelings and our feelings are always gonna drive whatever actions that we take. So every single action that we take during our day is the result of a thought that we have had. Okay. So when you're thinking the thought I never have enough time, right? You do these things. Another thing that you might do is you might fiddle on social media and you check your email instead of doing the work that you had planned. And of course, when we do any of these things, what we're doing is undercut the fact that we had plans at all. So of course we never time because we are just kind of spending it everywhere.

We're not paying attention. We're not focused. We just give it away. And this is the fix. Okay? The fix is, is first off. Just plan you time first. And I'm gonna talk about this. When we get into the seven steps on your planning, your calendar, you planning your week because when you plan you time first, you're gonna wanna protect it. When you start savoring, the time that you have to spend with yourself, the time you get to dream so that you can dream up all those big things that you wanna do with your time, you are gonna wanna protect it. And so you will start to learn that this is something that is a fixture in your life. Something you wanna keep, right? Then you start entering in commitments with your friends commitments, with your family and then you put in everything else, work comes last, right?

Never thought you'd hear a lawyer say that, right? Because everybody in the legal profession says work first, be a people, pleaser first, do everything for everyone else. First I'm telling you to put you first and that might sound really selfish, right? You might feel kind of like, whoa, can I do that? Almost like you're, you're doing something wrong. I'm gonna tell you you right now. That is the only way that you are going to create more ease in your life. More peace and freedom in your life is to put yourself first. And I'm gonna tell you right now, it is not the easy thing, but it is the necessary thing in order for you to create the space that you want. Okay. We'll talk more about that. I know. I know putting yourself first is not the thing that people like to say. It sounds like it's selfish.

It sounds like it's, you know? Yeah. Right. But how many times do you put other people's other people first, but you don't put you first. I'm betting. Very few of you who are on here right now have put yourself first. Now is the time to start learning the better way to do it, to create time for other people, to be able to serve other people better. It's gonna come down to serving yourself first, to filling up your cup first. So the second thought error calendars, they don't help me get things done. This is a thought that people have, you might have it right now. And this is what happens when you think this thought these are the actions that come from this thought, you know, you're having this thought because you jump into projects without a plan. You start your day, you sit at your desk and you're like, okay, they're to my inbox.

I have my phone messages. I gotta check. Okay, what do I start with first? Okay. I guess I'll just pick something and then just go, okay, what's the next thing that's due today. I'll pick that and just go without sitting, taking a breath and planning out what needs to be done. If you're jumping into your projects without a plan, you are going to be frittering away time necessarily. And you're going to be distracted throughout your day. I'm just gonna let you know that right now. Cause you're not gonna have the focus that you need to focus intently on that project. You're gonna wait until the last minute to do projects because you're relying on that adrenaline rush, not ease to do the work. You, when I first understood that I didn't need an adrenaline rush to get things done. It was like a revelation to me when I stopped procrastinating and I started planning, it was like magic because I suddenly realized that I could get more things done if I planned ahead and I focused.

And that's something that you return to over and over again. And whenever I'm in a situation where I have multiple tasks that I wanna do, I mean, today's an example. I have multiple things going on. I took my mom do a doctor's appointment. I had my regular office duties. I had this master class. I was sending out emails for it. I had a coaching call this morning. I had my podcast I needed to re-upload it because my, my client let me know that it wasn't uploaded properly. I mean, there were things that were coming up, things that were popping up and that was just handled because I had a plan and I'd already had had a plan for it. And so even though little things were popping up here and there, it was easier to navigate my day to stay focused on my work and then just shift myself into a new task that I needed because I planned ahead.

And I'm gonna show you how to plan ahead. I don't want you to worry about that. I'm gonna show you how that's all. And I want you to know you don't have to rely on the adrenaline rush. All you need is a plan. And even if you can't apply perfectly that plan to your day because things happen like they do, you will be able to find more ease in your day more space in your day because you had a tempted, a plan, right? You have this thought, right? If you're thinking this thought calendars, don't help me get done. You believe that it's the tight deadlines that get you done. This is related to that adrenaline rush. You think that because you only have an hour to do it, that that's why you're so much, much better focused that you were able to get that project done so quickly.

That's not the case what's really happening is you're creating a situation where your body has to create adrenaline so that you can focus rather than practicing how to focus without needing the adrenaline long term. That is really unhealthy because it's a chronic condition in which we are feeding our body adrenaline. And we are falsely keeping that elevated in our body. And that is going to cause things like well cancer, it causes things like heart disease when we're doing that. And we're keeping that constant adrenaline up. We are hurting our bodies. The only reason we have adrenaline in our body, the only reason we have that reaction is if we're trying to survive, if we're trying to run from a tiger, if we are trying to avoid a collision on the freeway, we have that adrenaline rush so that we can focus. Hyper focus, save ourselves.

And then our body regulates itself gets rid of that. Adrenaline. It's supposed to get rid of that adrenaline, but when we have it artificially raised all the time because of the way that we are working, the way we are artificially creating these deadlines for ourselves, then we are going to cause long term health damage. That's just a little side note and we're always gonna feel stress and anxiety. That is what we're trying to avoid. We want more freedom. We want more fun. We want more ease. We don't want more stress and anxiety. Okay. This is the fix. The seven step process. I'm gonna show you. That's the fixed, it's thoughtful planning. That's what it is. It's just thoughtful planning. And it's always going to keep at the forefront, ease and fun. I want you to keep those in mind, ease and fun. So let's go to thought error.

Number three. Well, you know what a different, well, that would help me. Right? And you know what another thought you might have is related to this multiple planners would be so helpful. So helpful. No. I want you to recognize this different planners are not going to change things for you. And if you are into this, then you have probably noticed this. You've probably noticed that when you have a different planner, maybe things are a little bit better for a little while and then they go downhill and then you get another planner thinking like it's the planner's fault that you're not getting things done. No, it has nothing to do with the planner. It has to do with our thoughts. How you know, this is a thought that you're having you keep buying new planners. You think that's gonna solve the problem. Maybe you miss appointments or they pop up unexpectedly.

Your assistant schedules appointments. When you have something else planned, those things will show up in your life. If you're having this thought, the reason I'm putting so much emphasis on these thought errors is because if you want to move into a system like the seven step, I'm gonna show you where you are creating more ease in your day. You're gonna have to pay attention to what your thought errors are. You're gonna have to pay attention to the beliefs that you currently have about your calendar. The beliefs that you currently have about time that are preventing you from implementing the plan that are preventing you from creating efficient efficiency in your practice that are preventing you from having more ease in your practice and your day. So pay attention to these thoughts. If there's ones that resonate with you, write them down, recognize them, recognize how they feel in your body.

Do they feel anxious? Do they feel, do you feel stress, anxiety when you think those thoughts? Because when you notice that feeling, you know, aha, I'm having that thought again and you can stop these actions from taking place and remind yourself, oh yeah, I'm not paying attention to the process. I'm not paying attention to what I really need to be doing. And that's paying attention to my thoughts. So here's the fix for this spot error. First off, just decide on one planner. I don't care. What kind of planner you use? It could be Google calendar. It could be Cleo. It could be anything you want, but use one calendar. I have clients who start off and they're like, oh, well, I like to write in a book. And I like to use Cleo. And I also use Google go calendar. No, you pick one calendar and you go with it.

If you want your assistant to have access to it. Great. You can do that. Use Cleo. That's fine. You don't even have to tell her what you are doing during your day. You can have blocks of time off for yourself. You just say block time off. So your assistant does, doesn't put anything there or block half appointment. So your assistant doesn't say, oh, let's fit in this consult right here. That's great. No block off your time. Make sure that your assistant knows that you use one calendar and that she's not to, or he is not to put any other items on that time. The next thing use a, it do not let it sit. Do not let it languish. It's gotta be used. It's gotta be kept up to date or you are gonna have these same issues. And the next thing to do is have a conversation with your assistant. Make sure that you are having a line of communication with them that allows you to let them know what you need and they will then be able to help you better.

All right. So, oh yeah. This is one, one of my S I can't I take and related to this is always pop up. I just can't. Let me put an end to this today. Okay. You can use the seven step process that I'm gonna tell you about. Even if you have an emergency, even if you think you cannot plan things, right? Cuz you just don't know how long things are gonna take. So here's how this is show up. Okay? First off at the end of the day, you are just wiped out. You end up staying later at the office, then you think you're gonna stay. You end up skipping out on, you know appointments with, I'd say appointments with your partner. But like you've, you've made a date with your partner and you end up skipping it because you had to stay late. Cuz you didn't even try to guess how long something was gonna take.

You don't use your calendar or if you do, you totally ignore it. You get frustrated at other people for taking your time and you start and stop your calendar use. So sometimes you use it. Sometimes you don't, you go back and forth. You're kind of, wishy-washy about it. You're just not really committed to your calendar. It's just kind of like, eh, if I wanna use it, I'll use it. This is what I want you to see here. Using your calendar is gonna create freedom. If you are stuck in this mindset that you cannot structure your time, that you cannot manage your time, that you are unable to use a calendar effectively. You're never gonna be able to use a calendar because you keep thinking and keep telling yourself, you can't use a calendar. Makes sense. Right? Like if you're telling yourself you can't use a calendar, you're not gonna be able to use it.

Right. Let me put this in perspective here. Okay. Let's talk about the fixes. This'll this'll put it in perspective. So the very first fix is to just estimate. You don't have to know for certain that something is gonna take one hour and 30 minutes. You can estimate it's gonna take 90 minutes, two hours. We always have the ability to estimate. And I wanna tell you whenever I was in trial and a judge told me that I needed to have something researched and it needed to be done by the end of lunch hour, you knew I was gonna have that completely researched in that one hour that I had before I got back to court. Meanwhile, if, if they had given me all day, I could have spent all day researching the same topic. But because I had constraint around the time that was allowed to me to focus on that topic, I was able to complete that research project in one hour.

This is important because what's happening when you're not using your time, effectively is you are not constraining your time around your assignments. You're not cons draining your time around different projects that you have. And you're allowing yourself to get pulled in different directions when you're not using your calendar. If you use your calendar, you will be able to put aside 90 minutes, 120 minutes. Be able to put that aside so that you can focus on it. You are not being distracted by phone calls or emails because that's not what you, during those two hours, those things are set aside because that's not your focus. When you use a calendar, you're gonna have that 90 minutes, 120 minutes exclusively for that project. And then you're going to have time allocated, to check emails, allocated, to check phone messages. So I want you to recognize that the calendar is your key to freedom here.

It's your key to focusing. If you are not getting things done, it's just because you're not focused. And there's just some mindset that's going on. This is what I help my clients with. So I don't want you to feel like there's anything wrong. Okay? There's nothing wrong with your brain. We've never been taught this. No one pulled us aside law school and said, Hey, you wanna learn how to manage your calendar? Let me show you how no. What they've taught us to do is grind. And to grind out work, we get to a law firm. They want us to grind out work. They want us to be a bunch of people pleasers so that we grind out more work. And we stay later at the office. What we're learning here is to trust ourself. What we're learning here is to really build self confidence. We're building self confidence in how long it takes us to get things done that we can get things done that we can create space in our day.

So that, that way we can have some space so that we can dream. We can dream about the things that we want, that aren't work related maybe. All right. So another fix is, is to drop perfectionism, drop perfectionism. This is not meant to be perfect. I do this. I'm not perfect. I don't look at my calendar and say, wow, I'm just gonna get like, you know, I look at my calendar. I say, okay, well that's my day, you know? But does it have to be perfect if I miss something? Like if I, if I miss a what I gonna say, like miss a workout, right? Like there's a workout. I miss. I'm not gonna beat myself up over it. And the reason I don't beat myself up over it is because it's not helpful. First of all, it doesn't feel good. But also, so because I trust myself that I'm gonna get back into it the next day, right.

That sometimes things happen and I'm okay with that. I don't beat myself up over it. I don't feel guilty about it. If it gets done, it gets done. If it doesn't get done, it's fine. I mean, we are still here. You are still alive. I am still alive. And I'm sure that over the course of our lifetime, we've had things that we have missed and we're still here. We're still surviving and we are still excellent at what we do. So I want you to recognize that you don't have to be perfect at this, and there's no need to beat yourself up. If you're not perfect at it. In fact, it's impossible to really feel good about your calendar and creating space while you're beating yourself up. It's just you, you can't do them. You have to love yourself the whole time you're doing this process.

And that's part of the reason why I love working with lawyers on this kind of stuff is because it brings up so much of the brain junk that we have around our cell worth around our confidence, our trust in ourselves and our self love. So if this, if that's coming up for you right now, because you're hearing some of these things just know that that's completely normal. All right. So I want you to also look at this as a commitment, like really working on your calendar and your skills as is a total commitment to yourself. It's a commitment to living better. And if you look at it in terms of like how you would talk to your toddler, right? You have a, you have a toddler and they're not walking. You would, you wouldn't yell at them or berate them because they weren't walking yet.

Right? You're like, come on. Why aren't you walking already? You're taking too long. I don't have time for this. No, you would never do that. You would be loving to them. You would be kind to them, whether they were walking or not. You would love them no matter what, that's what I wanna see you do when you're, when you start implementing what we're talking about here today. Okay? Just look at this as a commitment, you're committed to them, right? You'd be committed to your toddler. You'd wanna help him get it. You wanna help him walk, do that for yourself too. Like be committed to yourself in this process. You want peace. You want freedom. You wanna trust yourself? This is the process. This is where it all starts. Next is to take responsibility. And when I say take responsibility, here's what I mean. We tend to want to blame outside things for the problems that we're having.

We wanna blame a client for dropping something on us. In the last minute. We want to blame our assistant for not looking at our calendar or not asking us first, whether or not we wanted that consult. At that time, we tend to look at those things and say, ah, yes, that is the problem. What if we turn that around and always, always took responsibility for what didn't quite work out. Because when we do that, then we have more power over what is happening in our life. When we start looking at okay, the client, then my thought was, and the client dropped something in my lap last minute. What about how I have worked with that? Client gave the client the impression that that was okay. Right? Okay. So my assistant, she scheduled something in a space where I had, I had it blocked out.

What about my communications with my assistant allowed that to happen? When we start turning it, when we start looking at ourselves and how we can be responsible for what's happening on our calendar in our day to day life, then we have control. We can start looking at how our actions are influencing the actions of others. How our thoughts about ourself, our thoughts about our time are influencing how other people treat us and how other people treat our time. Write that down. That was good. Think about how you are influencing everything that's happening around. You think about it. Think about how, when you don't feel like you have enough time, because your first thought somebody else is cutting into your time. How you can turn that around and say, how did I make that possible? Because then you can start using your brain power for good. You can start saying, ah, yes, yes. I know exactly how to solve that. I know that there's a boundary issue happening with my client. I know that I'm not communicating effectively with my system. Like when you start really looking at these things, that's when you can make change. Ah, that was good. I hope you watched the replay that is coming. That is gonna come to you. Right? Number.

Okay. This one comes up a lot. Okay. I have to get it all done right now. This especially comes up with a to-do list. So you might have had this experience where you just do this brain dump on a piece of paper, all the things that you need to get done, you write it all down. And then you look at the paper and you just freeze like a deer in the headlights. You're probably thinking something to the effect of, I need to get this all done right now. You'll know that you're having this thought. If you're stressed out, looking at your to-do list, or maybe you don't even write a list because it feels so overwhelmed. Even thinking about what you have to get done. And then you also have this, okay? If you don't get it all done by the end of the day, by the end of the week, you start beating yourself up.

You start saying things to yourself. Like I need to work harder. I should be working harder. Maybe you stay later at the office. Maybe you eat through you work through your lunch time. Maybe you workouts, you're working, working, working, grinding all the time because you think it needs to get done right now. And instead of getting things done, you just keep checking your email and social media. Cause you're feeling this anxiousness and, and your brain wants to feel better. And so what it does is it goes to these different things to numb out. It could be social media, media checking, email. A lot of people it's drinking wine after work. Cause they just don't wanna think they totally wanna shut down. Instead of feeling the emotions instead of just working through it and processing it, they'd go for a glass of wine or they'd go for extra food.

Right? Real easy with COVID when you're at home and you're stressed out, working on your computer, just think, oh, well the refrigerators like 30 feet from here, I can just get up and go walk over to the fridge. Just like when you're sitting here and you're like, you know, at your desk and you're working and you're grinding, you're having a thought and needs to get done. And you're starting to feel more stressed and anxious. You might notice yourself starting to go and eat more. Just notice if that happens. Now I'm saying I do it too, right? Like this is how it works. What happens is, is we start noticing it more and more. And we spend less time in the overwhelm, less time in the stress. We start noticing when we are stress eating, we start noticing when we are checking email and social media, instead of getting things done.

And then we start making changes and you do it faster and faster and faster. The more you do it, the more you practice it, the better you get it managing your time. Okay? So here's some, some EAs easy fixes. I said, they're easy fixes. They're easy when you work on them. Okay? When you are really paying attention. So the fixes do the seven steps, which we're gonna get into in just a minute. These seven steps are going to be revolutionary for you. They are gonna change everything. If you just are committed to doing it, if you are committed to working on this, if you're committed to seeing the thoughts that you have and how they're impacting your life, you will be able to make change in your life. You're gonna be able to create that peace and ease that you want. Give yourself permission. Not to be perfect.

You do not have to be perfect. You don't have to be perfect to do these seven steps. You don't have to be perfect to get more done. You don't have to be perfect. It's okay. You will be fine. Everything will be fine. Okay. You're gonna get more done. You're gonna feel better. Especially if you release all the perfectionism. And the other thing is know that all the things don't have to be done right now when you have this huge to-do list and, and we will work through it. When we talk about the seven steps, you're going to S spread them out. They're gonna put them on multiple weeks. And when you start doing this process, you're gonna have fewer and fewer things that are on that to-do list. What I want you to see is that there's no such thing as having to get it all done right now. Things can be spread out. Doesn't have to be done this week. Doesn't have to be done this month. A step out, put yourself first, make it easy, make it fun. And then this process is gonna work for you. Okay?

So this is, you've seen all the problems. Well, you've seen five of the major problems. These are five of the major problems I see. When I talk to clients and your brain might want to revolt right now, it might be thinking something like, you know what? I've tried calendars before. I've tried organizational systems before planners, before it's, it's not working for me. It's just not working for me. Another thought your brain might be having is this sounds hard. It sounds like this is a lot of work. Another one is, is this is a lot of information. What am I gonna do with all this information? I don't know where to start. I want you to know all of this is normal. Every single thought that you're having right now is totally.

You can be having all of these thoughts and still know that you need to have a system. Okay? But your brain wants to make things really easy. It's not really built to use a lot of energy. What it wants is to have habits in place that will help you survive. And so far, you've created a lot of habits in your life. I mean, we are our habits. Our identity is the habits that we create. If we wanna change our identity, if we want to live bigger, if we wanna create more peace in our life, if we want things to be easier and more fun in our life, while working the hours that we do while having the commitments that we do, we have to start doing things differently because everything that you've done so far has kept you alive to this point, right? Like everything that you've done has made you incredibly successful to this point.

Now, if you wanna change things, if you wanna grow, if you wanna do something different, you've got to do things differently. That's the essence of what I am training here tonight on is if you really wanna make change, you've gotta just totally spin it all up. You gotta say brain. I see you're having all of these thoughts about how scared you are, that this isn't gonna work. That this is gonna be hard. That this is a lot of information that I don't know where to start with this. And then you have to say, okay, I'm gonna go for it anyway. I'm gonna be uncomfortable because it's gonna feel uncomfortable. Creating change. It always is. Anytime there's any growth it's gonna to feel uncomfortable. We think it's gonna feel exciting and new and just like super shiny. And like, we're getting a new car, but really it feels like we're gonna throw up a little bit.

That is what growth feels like. So I want you to really be aware of what your brain's telling you right now. And I want you to comfort it. Yeah. You heard me, right? I said comfort it because this is all about love. We want to love ourselves through this process. There's no room for beating up on ourselves or hating on ourselves, cuz we're not perfect here or devaluing ourselves because we haven't gotten the process right by now. Cuz our brain's telling us, we should know how to do this by now. You know, we shouldn't know how to do this by now. And if you're here, you know that what you've done so far has been great to get you where you are. I mean, you've got a roof over your head. You're doing really well, but you don't feel right. You know, there's something off. So that's why you came here tonight that you wanted to have something that would help you move past that to help you live the life that you knew you could have. Right? So just recognize like all the emotions that might be coming up right now after just hearing that first half of what we talked about in the master class and I walk you through something is coaching. Coaching is.

And if I didn't have coaching, I don't know where I would be. Cuz I went, what, how many years? 10 years of my legal practice without coaching. I don't know how I did it. I was grinding all the time. And when I found coaching, it was like a light bulb went off and it made my whole life easier. Coaching is about understanding your mind instead of fighting against it. Like how many times do you feel like you're just like bumping up against this wall because you're just not getting things done. And it feels like you're not making any progress. I mean, that's how it felt for me. But once you start recognizing what's going on in your brain and stop fighting and just start understanding it and having a conversation with it and recognizing that, you know what, the thoughts that we're having. Aren't true.

And I get to decide what I wanna think when we start to really know that, right? Cause right now you might be hearing that and you're like, eh, what is that? But when you really start to know that that's when the change happens and you can't calm your mind down until you learn how your mind works. So if this is like, what I've talked to you about so far has resonated with you. I want you to do something right now. I want you to book a strategy session with me. I'm not gonna charge you for anything. I'm not gonna sell you anything unless you wanna know more about coaching and how you can work with me. But what I'm gonna do is show you how your mind's working. Like this is what coaching is, learning, how our mind works, learning exactly what is happening when we're stressed out.

When we're overwhelmed, when we're not getting our work done. When we are snapping at our partner and we're apologizing constantly, instead of just having a relationship that's easy and fun. Like when we start recognizing what's happening in our brain, that's when we can make change. Like the biggest thing I can do for you here in this masterclass is to give you huge awareness about what's happening in your brain. And I know that if you go through this and you go back and you watch the replay, I want you to see what your thoughts, what thoughts are coming up for you. I wanna see, I want you to see where your brain froze up on you and where your brain wanted to argue, because those are the points where your brain is having difficulty getting through to what I'm teaching and that's cognitive dissonance and that's totally normal.

And I could tell you more about cognitive dissonance. That's a whole other master class, but basically your brain has, is trying to hold two concepts in its in its hands. And it can't, it can't make them work together. It just doesn't work, right? You're like, wait a minute. How do I have these two, two different concepts? How am I supposed to make them work together? So if you wanna learn more about how your brain works, if you wanna get more awareness around what's happening in your brain and why it's impacting your life the way it is, I wanna invite you to a strategy session. You can go to dinacataldo.com and you can open up your browser right now. And it has a work with me button at the top click there. If you click the red button that is on the top of the page, it will take you to a little scheduling calendar, pick a day and a time that work for you. And then we'll have a chat.