#276: Calming Panic

Calming Panic

Hello, how are you today as you listened to this, I am in Sedona and I recorded this just prior to me leaving because I was thinking about what I hear so many lawyers come to me telling me. And I wanted to create an episode that could address this. And I've created lots of episodes in the past around this. Specifically I wanna refer you you to episode number 2 28 Nervous System Dysregulation. A really nice reminder about how you can calm your nervous system. And I give two really great client examples of how using the principles that you learned in Mindset Essentials episodes one and two that I just did the last couple of weeks, how you can begin making really big shifts in your current practice and how you feel day to day. And I want to address another aspect of that, which is a big nervous system dysregulation, which is this feeling of panic.

I hear so many lawyers tell me I'm very familiar with this feeling. I remember it very well. And every now and again it will pop up in my body and I feel frozen. But I recognize it happening immediately now so I can then take action and get out of it. I know that my brain's causing it and I don't have to stay in panic mode, that it has nothing to do with my workload. That panic has nothing to do with the work that I do. That panic is not something that just happens in my life. I am actually creating it with my mind. That's the only difference. And you can make that shift too, takes practice. And I'm gonna give you some steps to help you with this and I'm gonna give you some examples of this. So specifically I hear panic so often when it comes to just what they have to do, what lawyers have to do, or their belief that they're disorganized.

And if you feel disorganized, I want you to know you are not the only lawyer who feels disorganized. It is a thought that so many of us have. And when I work with those lawyers who believe that they are disorganized, we start working on how they think about their business, how they think about themselves in relation to the business, and we start calming things down. We start regulating their nervous system. Because when we are in that high panic stress, anxiety mode, our brain is fuzzy. We cannot think we can feel paralyzed. And until we start to recognize that we have power over our emotions, we will stay stuck in that panic. We will stay paralyzed. So if you are believing, let's say in this example that you're disorganized, you may feel anxious, you might also feel other things like shame. But let's stick with anxious.

And that panicked feeling. Well what you do, because everything we do is a result of how we feel, right? If we feel anxious or we feel panic, what you will do is do more of the things that create disorganization. So let me give you some examples. Like this is a real life case study, right? One of my clients, and I've had multiple clients who have the same pattern, who have this thought. So they'll show up and they'll tell me, I'm disorganized, I feel anxious. And I'll ask them, what do you notice yourself doing? Well, they're dropping everything to reschedule matters on their calendar without really thinking about the impact that doing so will have on their practice. Let's say they have a meeting that's rescheduled and they're not thinking, oh wait a minute. I had actually saved that time on my calendar to work on my business.

But they say yes so quickly that it doesn't even register for them to look at the calendar. So they're making those rush decisions. They're reacting when somebody throws what they might look at as a curve ball, right? They tend to not plan, right? They don't have a calendar or if they do, they just put hearings on it. And so they're unable to really think about their long-term strategy. Now, when we're panicked, we can't think strategy. There's no strategic thinking. It all flies out the window because you're in reaction mode. So you want to also, this is another pattern I see, say no, but you find yourself just saying yes to all the things. A client meeting, an early client meeting, a phone call, all of these things. Somebody walks in the door, you just find yourself saying yes over and over and over again. And afterwards you're like, why didn't I just say no?

That was just such a waste of time, <laugh>. And you regret your decision. And so you end up spending time just ruminating about it. You also don't really keep track of time. You're just moving from item to item. You're looking at what's on your desk and you're just reacting. You're picking one thing up, you're getting getting that done. You're picking another thing up, you're getting that done. Somebody walks in the door, you take care of that. Somebody calls you, answer the phone. Oh, there's email. Let me do email after email after email. And you can tell this frenetic pace of course contributes to the feeling of panic. When you are being in a state of panic, you will do these kinds of things. And then you'll also notice these kinds of things you won't delegate or you'll only delegate if you absolutely have to. You don't communicate things in a timely manner to your assistant.

You don't communicate things in a timely manner to your clients or opposing counsel. And you don't think about any planning on how to make your life easier. 'cause You're in this frenetic state. You cannot calm your nervous system enough to get a clear head and ask yourself, what would make my life easier? Like, how do I get the phones answered even when I'm in a client meeting? Like how do I make decisions around my next year when I am so busy just trying to close out the last quarter? 'cause We're getting to the end of 2023. And if you are not making long-term plans, if you're not creating a larger vision for your practice, it's just gonna happen to you. And that's a lot like what panic feels like, that life is happening to you, that you have zero control. So if you relate to any of this, I wanna show you that when you believe you're disorganized or you believe that in your feeling panic or any other feeling that creates that state of feeling panicked, you cannot create clarity for your next move that this is a lot of times the state lawyers come to me with.

And so we are at the very baseline, we're creating clarity for them. We want to create clarity on what they want their practice to look like, which they never give like even five minutes <laugh> to how they want their practice to look like because they're in such a state of panic. And we want to just take the time that they have with me to just clarify what it is they want so we can start building a solid foundation for it. 'cause Once you have clarity, you can then begin seeing a path through the woods. Like right now, panic is like seeing a block of trees in front of you and having no idea how to make your way through the woods. You feel totally lost. And then once you get some clarity, you get an idea of where the path is and you just start moving step by step through it.

‘Cause Creating that path, knowing where you wanna go, helps you prioritize what's most important to you. And when you can prioritize what's most important to you, you can then start placing things on the calendar. And this is something that a lot of lawyers tell me they have a hard time doing is prioritizing. And it's not because you don't know how to prioritize because you do. I guarantee you, you do. If if somebody came up to you and said, Hey, I have a deadline. It's happening tomorrow afternoon, I need you to get this document done. And somebody also came up to you and said, Hey, I have an emergency and next week I have a deadline due, you would for sure say, well, I'm gonna handle deadline A because that one's coming up first, right? That is how you prioritize is you just look, you just look and see that.

Now, if they're the same time, right, the same timeframe, then you're like, okay, well how do I wanna prioritize? Then you just decide, okay, well I'm gonna spend half my time on this project and half my time on that project. And then they both get done. Like, you know how to prioritize. Logically what's happening is, is that when we don't prioritize, it's because we're in a sense of either panic or overwhelm or confusion that we've created by the way we think about our business by the way, we think about our capabilities. So once we create clarity, you know what you want, then you can start prioritizing. And once you start prioritizing, then you have a timeline. You can place things on the calendar and then you just take step by step one at a time through the woods, right? This is a problem a lot of lawyers have, and it's not your fault.

Nobody has broken it down like this in a way to say, Hey, the reason you're having a difficult time isn't because you're incapable of prioritizing. It's because your nervous system is in such a state of dysregulation. It's in such panic and overwhelm that your brain is foggy. It's literally why you can't think your way through the problem <laugh>. Like it, it is not your fault at all. And only you know if you feel panic or not. I know for a fact, so many of the lawyers that I was working with felt panic all the time, but nobody felt comfortable talking about it because if anybody expressed that it would be seen, it would seem like a weakness as if there was something wrong with us. And I want you to know that there's nothing wrong with you that this is something that is very common and we don't address it in our society generally, but specifically with lawyers, where we have this culture of doing more and us never doing enough that we really foster this culture of panic.

And I wanna share with you that you can start calming your nervous system so that you can think with more clarity. 'cause When you do, you are better able to problem solve for things. And one of the the ways that we start calming this panic is by normalizing what you're going through. Okay? And, and I, I work with my clients so much on just building awareness. Like we talked about in mindset essentials, episode two, we were really talking about one of the things that nobody talks to us about, which is compassion. We are not giving ourselves enough credit for what we have done and what we are capable of and how far we have come in our lives. We don't put any attention on it. And we put all of our attention on what we haven't done and why we're horrible at what we do and why we're not capable.

But if we can shift that focus even just a little bit to having compassion for ourselves and saying, Hey, you know, panic is a normal feeling in my body. I don't want to feel panic all the time. It's not super helpful for me. I wanna learn how to get out of it, but there's nothing wrong with me. I'm not weak because I feel it. It doesn't mean I'm a bad lawyer. It doesn't mean that I'm not capable of becoming organized. It doesn't mean that I'm bad at doing business. It doesn't mean any of that. It just means I have a feeling in my body and I don't know how to regulate it yet. That's it. That's all that it means.

And then once you have that awareness with compassion, then you can start just being honest with yourself and just saying, okay, yeah, I, I feel panic. And start asking yourself why you think you feel panicked. And so I have a couple questions specifically if you're feeling panicked to ask yourself so that you can just get some awareness of why you feel panicked. So the very first, first thing I want you to do before you answer any of the questions if you're in this state of panic, is to breathe like really deep breaths. Because when our nervous system is in this heightened state of reactivity, in this heightened state of emotion, like panic or stress or anxiety, our breath is super shallow and we're not getting what we need to like move oxygen to our brain to really notice our body. So I wanna offer to you to take three deep breaths in all the way, hold them at the top for the count of three, and then open up your mouth and sigh something out.

Like make a noise. Like it really releases something from your body when we do that. So do that three times. And then as you feel a little bit more calm, I want you to then ask yourself why you think you feel panic. And your brain will offer you all kinds of thoughts. I don't want you to believe any of them. I want you to just write them down. They're just sentences in your brain. Just notice them, okay? They might be thoughts like, I'm disorganized, I have too much to do, I'm never gonna get it all done. All of those thoughts, just write them all out. I want you to just notice them and not believe them. I want you to kind of look at them as if your best friend has said these words to you. Not that you have. Just put these words down on paper.

Give yourself some distance between yourself and the words you just wrote down on the paper. Because we wanna start becoming observers of our mind that our brain sometimes feels create has these thoughts and then we feel panicked. And then once you have all of these thoughts written down, I want you to ask yourself, what do you think should be happening right now? Right? Ask yourself exactly what you think should be happening right now. Your brain at first will offer you things very generally. Our brain's not really great at being specific. We have to ask it to be more specific. Let me tell you what I mean. Our brain will say things like, I need to get more done. Well, more isn't gonna cut it. It is way too vague. And we are gonna put ourself in a state of panic if we look at that sentence and say, oh my gosh, I do, I have to get more done.

So what we want to do is say next is ask ourselves what exactly does more mean? Because it's gonna give you some answers. Your brain is gonna tell you, well, I need to figure out a strategy to get the phones answered while I'm on a sales call. I need to figure out how to teach my assistant what it is I want so that she stops scheduling calls on days. I wanna work on my business instead of in my business. Get very specific here because when you have some specificity, you can then start creating a roadmap and you can start prioritizing. Your brain might also say things like, well, I need to delegate more, right? That's a really easy way to shame ourselves. 'cause You know, we can tell ourselves, you know, I should be doing this, I should be doing that, but I'm not doing it.

But instead of shaming ourselves for what we're not doing, instead just ask yourself, well what does that mean? Delegate more? What do I think I could be delegating? And then for those items that I think I could be delegating, what would make it really easy for somebody to take that over? And it might mean creating a system. It might mean thinking about how to do a an a SOPs on it, right? Like having standard operating procedures on that particular task so that you can just hand it to somebody. Yes, those things take time. But here's the thing, when you write them down, you can begin creating a task. Instead of having just some vague thing in your head that says, I need to be doing more. I need to delegate more. You now have concrete tasks you can now place on your calendar and you can get them done, right?

And if you haven't downloaded my Busy Lawyers Guide, you can download it dina cataldo.com/busy Lawyer. I talk about how to manage your time every single week. And we talk about this concept of specificity and how you can apply it to your calendar. So go download that if you haven't already. But that's something that is really important because once you start creating that specificity, then you have the beginnings of a roadmap. So the next thing to do after you brainstormed, brain dumped everything that's been going on in your brain telling you like, Hey, what could, what could I be doing right now? And getting really specific about it? Then I want you to go through and ask yourself, well, what's one thing on that task list that I could do right now that will make the biggest impact? And that's the first thing that you do. That's the first thing you put on your calendar that is the priority for helping you take the next step.

So let me go through that again. All right? After you notice that you feel panicked, there's, there's three questions I, or four questions I want you to ask yourself. One, ask yourself, you know, why do I feel panic? And then write down all of the sentences in your brain that tell you why you should be feeling panicked, right? I'm disorganized, I have too much to do. All of those thoughts. And then I want you to ask yourself, well what do I think should be happening right now? Your brain is gonna offer you a lot of things. Making a plan, getting more done, delegating more, write it all down. And then I want you to go back to each one of those things, sentences that your brain offered you and ask yourself, this is the third question, what specifically do you mean by that? So if your brain's telling you I need to delegate more, ask it.

Okay? Specifically, what do you think I should be delegating more of? And to whom should I be delegating these things to really question yourself. And then the fourth question to ask yourself is what one of those tasks that I just listed above would make the biggest impact right now? And take that one step. Just one step. You don't have to take all of them. A lot of times we create panic by thinking about the big picture. And the big picture is, is you are running a practice, you are working in a practice that you have tasks to do in, that's the big picture. And then you make the picture smaller by just asking yourself, well what's one thing that will help me get to the next thing that makes sense for me to do? But we can't even get there when we feel panicked. Our brain is a fog.

We cannot strategize, we can't do any of that. But if we start asking ourselves questions and get awareness of what is going on in our brain, then we can make so much progress to clear our brain and like just get rid of some of that fog. The reason why I think that working with a coach is so effective is because we don't even know we're in a fog. We just think that all of the fog is how life is, right? Of course we feel in a fog because we are a lawyer because we have so much to do versus no, the fog is optional that we can actually clear a path. And until we understand that we can't make the progress we wanna see in our lives or in our practice and we can't be the people that we wanna be for our clients, for our families, we just can't do it.

We can't even be there for ourselves. How are we gonna be there for anybody else? If you are in a panic, the last thing you're thinking about is getting that gym workout in. The last thing you're thinking about is meal planning. The last thing you're thinking about is, oh wow, I can't wait till date night. No, your brain is so busy and panicked about all the things that could go wrong that your brain cannot enjoy life. You can't enjoy life. So if you notice yourself feeling panicked, I want you to know it's okay. You're normal and that exercise will help you. But I also wanna offer you this 'cause I was thinking about like what would be required? How would you need to be in your practice in order to be the kind of person who is calm, deliberate, peaceful, right? It's the polar opposite of feeling panicked.

And that person doesn't think I'm disorganized. That person doesn't think I have too much to do. That person doesn't think I'm never going to get it all done. I will tell you that right now. I used to have all of those thoughts. I no longer have them. I choose other thoughts. I consciously choose other thoughts because I know those thoughts that I just mentioned. They all create panic. Why would I choose those? And you might be thinking, oh my gosh, I can't choose my thoughts. How does that work? Go back to mindset essentials one, listen to that episode because all of our thoughts are stories that we have about the world and they feel just like we're breathing the air. That's just how the world is. But that is not the world. And it took me forever to realize this. And the more you hear this, like there's a reason you're listening to this.

You've probably listened to multiple episodes if you're here. My people tend to listen to a lot of my podcast because it helps reinforce the understanding of the way we need to be thinking about our lives in order to create the results that we want. And when you are listening to this one and you wanna feel calm, you wanna feel deliberate and peaceful about your practice, you don't think those thoughts. You are thinking thoughts like I'm in charge of my business. Or yeah, right now things are disorganized in my practice, but they're changing. Just adding that little sentence, right? Right now, yeah, right now they're disorganized but they're not gonna stay that way. Just adding that in can reduce the panic, pay attention to what's going on in your brain. 'cause Your, your mind is creating your reality right now. So let's say you go in and instead of choosing that thought like I'm disorganized, instead you think I'm in charge of my business, I'm in charge.

I can figure it out. When your nervous system is more calm, when you feel more deliberate, you can act more deliberately in your practice. So when you feel calm, you are going to do things that naturally create organization in your practice. You're going to see the gaps, right? This is what I help my clients with. If they can't see the gaps, I offer them the gaps. I show them like, Hey, here's a gap in your practice. You might wanna take a closer look at that. And then they get, have the opportunity to take a closer look at it and create a solution and implement the solution. But we can't always see our gaps 'cause our brain is so foggy, we just believe the fog is the way it is in life and then we cannot clear it for ourselves. So sometimes we just need to have that outside perspective to see the gaps.

We also start to communicate more effectively. We start communicating more clearly with assistance. We start communicating what we want to our clients. We start to like really delegate more quickly because we see, oh you know, my time isn't so well spent here. I need to start moving this task somewhere else. I start to be honest with myself, right? Like if you're calm and deliberate, you're gonna be honest with yourself about what you want. So you're gonna say no more often, you're gonna be honest with other people and you're gonna tell them like, Hey, no, that's not something I wanna do. You're gonna use your calendar to problem solve ahead of time. You actually, that's the whole point of a calendar. Like the calendar isn't just one day at a time. It's let me plan my week so I can problem solve what's happening by Friday.

Like it, it's great to have one day planned, but the whole point of a calendar isn't to just take it one day at a time. The point of a calendar is to use it as a tool to problem solve. And so many lawyers have a hard time problem solving because their brain is foggy. They can't think past. Today I teach my clients to think a year in advance. I teach my clients how to think three years in advance because they get the kind of clarity they need to clear the fog and then begin taking action towards what they want without the panic. Because when you remove the panic and you start taking calm, deliberate action, then you're taking aligned action action that feels good. You're no longer using deadlines. You're no longer using dread to kind of fuel your push to the next day and the next day and the next day.

‘Cause Now your brain is so clear you can begin thinking further ahead. And then another thing that you're doing when you're in that calm, deliberate state is you actually make time outside of work to do things you enjoy, to spend time with people you wanna spend time with to do things without thinking about work constantly. You can go out on date night, you can have those conversations with your partner and say, Hey, let's, let's like spend some conscious time together. Let's really go out on a date night. We haven't done that in a while. And you start to get really honest about what you want in every area of your life. 'cause You now you start noticing like, yes, I'm present for them and I want that same, that same feeling. And so you connect with them and you start asking for what you want.

And then you start making that happen in your outside relationships. And you also start being kind to yourself. You start taking responsibility of how you're showing up in your practice. But you do it in a way where you're not beating yourself up or telling yourself you should be doing things better, you should be doing more, you should be staying later. I should be learning more. Instead you're just like, oh, I see what my brain's doing. It's creating that sense of panic, that sense of anxiety. That's optional. So where do I wanna go from here? Let me take a breath and let me figure it out. 'cause You know, feeling panicked isn't working for me. What do I wanna do instead? And when you do all of those things from a calm, deliberate place, you ensure your practice is organized. You ensure that your practice has a future. That you have a future. As a lawyer, I hear so many lawyers who think I, I shouldn't even be in this profession. Like it's just too hard. There's just too much and they cut out so much possibility for themselves. Ultimately maybe they decide they don't wanna be a lawyer or they wanna change their practice, that's fine. But know that your brain is gonna go with you wherever you go. So to clean this up wherever you are right now is gonna help you so much when you decide to make the move.

So let me kind of go over what we just talked about and I wanna ask you some questions about what you think is possible for you when you remove the panic. Because when you get to that place where your thinking is clear, where you begin to stop judging yourself, like we talked about in mindset essentials too. And you start just thinking clearly about what you want and making clear action steps for yourself and making a clear roadmap for yourself and prioritizing what comes next and what comes next to help you get what you want. A year out, three years out, your life is completely different. You're no longer reacting to the things that are on your desk to the people walking into your office. You're no longer feeling like there's this heavy weight that you're carrying around all the time and you feel more powerful. This is what is waiting for you when you clear the panic and that takes recognizing that you have power over it, that it's just an emotion in your body. It's just a vibration that's there because you're having thoughts about your practice, about yourself.

And when you start implementing what we're talking about, so much is available to you. I see it all the time. And I saw this with myself too. And when I was beating myself up, I wasn't able to work in my practice the way I wanted to. I wasn't able to work in my coaching practice either, right? Like I was just so in that panic state, that overwhelmed state that I could not see beyond the trees that were in front of my face. I needed a coach to really help me ask the questions like, Hey, where are you spending your time right now? And what do you feel day to day? Right? Like how are you showing up for the people in your world? How are you showing up for yourself? So I wanna ask you some questions. If you removed the panic, what do you think would be different about your life?

If you removed the panic, how would you show up for yourself? Would you be more compassionate? Would you find yourself making time to go to the gym and do more of the things that you like? Maybe get your nails done, maybe take some more baths. You know, things that are actually fun for you. Do you think you would be creating more opportunities to have fun in your life? If you were to remove the panic, how would you be in relationship to the people in your life? Would you be more present with them? Would you have fewer arguments with your spouse? With your spouse? Would you be able to have dinner without checking the email? Would you be able to take a vacation without bringing your laptop? Would you be able to take a vacation without constantly thinking about work? If you removed the panic in your life, how would you show up differently for your clients?

Would you be more present with them during sales calls? Would you be able to talk to them more clearly about the problem that they're having? Would you be better able to see when they are having some strong emotions around whatever it is that you're talking about so you can question them more? You can ask them, what's coming up for you? I, how are you doing? I know this must be tough for you and really acknowledge them and what they're going through. How would you be able to better serve them if you removed the panic? How would you be better able to market your practice? Because you might not be doing any marketing at all. I have a lot of successful lawyers who come to me and they don't really do a lot of marketing 'cause they have so much word of mouth. They maybe have a website and they have, you know, people coming through on the website or maybe they have, you know yeah, I don't even eat some social media presence, but like they don't often come to me with like huge marketing plans.

So I want you to know that sometimes that happens because we feel so panicked that we cannot think through a marketing plan and we tell ourselves it's just too much. I don't know what I'm doing. I have no idea where to start. And I help my clients figure out where to start. There's one client I'm working with right now. We're actually designing a plan for her podcast. Like she's creating a podcast to talk to her ideal clients and to give them what they need. And that is going to be one part of a marketing funnel for her. And it's something that she's never done before and it's been scary and she, you know, it's something that she kind of resisted for a little bit, but that was okay 'cause we just had to work on some thoughts that were coming up. And now she's able to really think more clearly about the one year plan for this podcast.

Like what is it gonna look like? How is it gonna impact her business a year from now, maybe three years from now? So if you removed the panic, how might you be growing your practice in ways that maybe you haven't even thought of right now? Maybe you have a social media presence. Maybe you start to create a blog or you start writing articles or you start doing more trainings for people who are interested in your industry, who are your ideal clients? Everything is possible when you start removing the panic. But until you do that, you're going to feel fuzzy. You're gonna feel paralyzed. You're gonna notice yourself resisting doing things. Your brain tells you you should be doing. Your brain's like you should be doing this, you should be doing more of this, you should be doing that other thing. And you notice yourself not doing it well, that's the resistance.

And we've gotta resolve, dissolve the resistance before we can get you taking that clear action where you can prioritize, you can make that roadmap for yourself and you can start really creating a practice that you can see a future for a year, year out, three years out in a way that you wanna build it not in a way that's just automatic on autopilot. 'cause When you're on in panic mode, you're on autopilot. We wanna take you out of autopilot. We wanna make you conscious. We want you to be making conscious decisions for yourself, for your practice, and how you wanna show up. Start by answering the questions I have asked in this podcast. I also want to invite you to book a strategy session with me. If you are resonating with what you're hearing here, clearing this up is going to help you in so many ways.

It's gonna help you just show up the way you wanna show up. It's going to give you exactly what you need so that you can create the connections you want with your family so you can create the practice that you love. And I can help you clear that we start by creating clarity, right? I ask you questions. Even in the strategy session. I start asking you questions about where you are now and where you wanna be. But when we start working together, I really dig in deep around where are you in terms of your mindset? Where are you in terms of what, where you're spending your time, where you are spending your finances, where your energy is being depleted. We get all of that, we figure that out and then we start to understand where are the obstacles to you creating the plan you wanna create for yourself.

And then we start looking at the strategies. 'cause We start calming your nervous system. We start finding strategies to deal with every single problem that comes up. Every obstacle has a solution. And so we start finding the solutions ahead of time so that every time you hit a obstacle, you're like, no problem. I have the solution. I already know the solution. We've already thought it through. We start looking at your roadmap a year out, three years out, and we start prioritizing what is going to make the biggest impact to create the reality you wanna see. And once you start learning how to prioritize that, then you can begin making your roadmap. You start to just add those things on your calendar. Now, in fact, you know, I'm, I was saying earlier I think about designing like this whole other program that I'm gonna be offering that is also gonna be given to my current clients. It's going to be a one day event where we're just planning your one year out. We're just, we wanna get your brain clear before that. That's why this is the perfect time to sign up, sign up for a strategy session with me and start working with me because we want your brain clear before that so you can start planning a year out. So you can start really thinking about what you want in the future, and then we can start designing a plan in that workshop together to make that happen.

So once you start understanding the roadmap, prioritizing putting these items on the calendar, then you have a much easier time of things because you're able to see what's on your long-term plan and is what you have on your short-term plan, meaning you are week, is it in alignment with my long-term plan? If you're saying yes to committees, if you're saying yes to things you don't wanna do, if you're saying yes to clients you don't actually want, then you might be out of alignment with your long-term plan. But you won't know that until you've cleared the fog and you've created that plan. So we wanna dissolve all of that and we wanna at the same time start to calm your nervous system down so you're not in constant reaction mode. You're not constantly saying yes when you wanna say no, you're not constantly doing all those things we talked about when you're in panic mode.

Because when you do that, you're acting from hustle. You're not acting in aligned action with your vision. And we want to create such a solid vision that you feel pulled towards it, that every time you make a decision today, tomorrow for the rest of this week, those decisions are in alignment with what you want. Kind of like when you think about like if you have a fitness goal, you're like, Hey, I wanna be able to lift, I wanna deadlift like 500 pounds just making this up, right? You are gonna have a plan from point A to point B. You are not going to go straight from zero pounds lifted this week to 500 pounds next week. That's just not reality. What you wanna do is be able to see clearly enough and say, okay, well what do I think I can lift now and what are some progress points I wanna see along the way and what will need to change in order for me to have the protein levels I need to have the fitness levels I need in order for me to deadlift that 500 pounds?

You're not gonna go from zero to 500 in a week, but you might in a year. You might in six months, but you have to have a plan first. And you can't make that plan If you're so worried about next week hitting 500 pounds. Like you can't, you'd be in total panic. It's like somebody told you like, okay, tomorrow you have to lift 500 pounds. You'd be like, what? I can't do that. So we wanna clear the panic and we wanna create a game plan for you. And when you do have that game plan, then you can just take consistent action towards it. And even when there's something uncomfortable that comes up, you have the skills that you learn in coaching to handle anything, to be able to deal with any uncertainty and take action anyway. Just like the client that I have who's creating the new podcast, right?

Like she has uncertainty. She's never done it before, but she is doing it. She's learning what she needs to learn in order to take action on it. So what I wanna offer to you is that this is available to you to book a strategy session with me at dina cataldo.com/strategy session, and we will start taking the steps that you need to get you where you want to go. We will make a solid foundation for what you wanna create for your future. Alright, my friend, I hope this was helpful, especially if you're feeling panicked right now or at any time. Just listen to this episode, answer the questions that I shared here and start making the shifts that are needed to clear the fog and take that consistent action towards your goals. All right my friend. I will talk to you soon. Bye-Bye.