So what are we going to talk about today? We are going to talk about lessons learned from my business journey and I wanted to talk to you about this today because when we get a degree or a job, we have a path. It's laid out for us, law school, medical school, all the things we need to do to get those things done to get our degree. It's all laid out. We get good grades. We do activities to boost our application. We apply, and then we..we do it for a job as well.

We need credentials, we apply. There's an interview, and it's pretty easy to go all in on these things because you see a clear path even if you've never done it before. What about when there's no path or maybe just some breadcrumbs of a path. We see these daily too. We experience all of these things daily. Whether it is trying to improve our health with a diet, maybe we want to improve relationships, create an addition to our house adoption, creating a family. All of the things I'm going to talk to you about today, apply to every area of our life where there's not a clear path and we're gonna talk about really living and thinking consciously and a of us gone through our lives pretty unconsciously. Maybe we've, you know, picked well like we've picked a really good road, it had a good path to follow.

It was already paved and we have been successful by anyone else's measure. We've got a house, a car, you know, we have some status in our community, but what if we became conscious about creating what we want in our lives and pursued goals even if it seemed crazy impossible or we just can't imagine what it would look like right now?

Imagine how much we could accomplish.

These concepts apply to you no matter what you're doing.
If you have a solo firm and you have revenue goals, if you want to improve your health, if you're taking a big step in your life, trying to find time for a family, maybe making your life easier at the office so you can do more of what you love or discover what you love because you've been working so much, you don't even know what you're interested in. Well, this requires thinking outside the box, getting super conscious of how everything we do impacts everything else in our lives.

Although some of these topics we're covering may seem foreign at first, these are things you're already doing or have done unconsciously in your life with some great results if you've achieved any kind of success in your life.

Before we get started, if you are a lawyer, I want to invite you to join my new free master class there. I'm sharing “7 Secrets to a Smoother Legal Practice (and banishing that overwhelmed, anxious feeling).”.

Go to www.dinacataldo.com/masterclass For all the details and only doing a handful of these live classes. So be sure to sign up and you can ask me your questions and at the end I'll share with you the Lawyer's Soul Roadmap. Now the Lawyer Soul Roadmap is my signature group coaching program and I have loved teaching. It has been a lot of fun.

Go to www.dinacataldo.com/masterclass now and make sure you mark it in your calendar.

Okay. All right. Let's talk about these lessons.

The first lesson from my business is to set goals intentionally.
Now, this might seem fairly obvious, right, but how often do you sit down and think about your goals, whether it's planning out your week, your month, your year, five years out from now? How often do you really sit down and think this through? Probably hardly ever. I mean, maybe if you have a partner, you have kind of planned things out. You know what you're doing together (hopefully). I have a friend who's really good at this. She and her partner, they have a plan. They sit down, they have a meeting, they know what they want, they have a direction, they get focused, they have a goal, and they take action towards that goal. So having that goal no matter what it is is incredibly important because that's going to impact everything else that comes after it.

Oftentimes we get so bogged down in our day to day life that we crash at the end of the day so we don't have time to create goals. We're telling ourselves, “We're too tired. We don't really need to have a goal right now. Do it later.” The thing is is that we're always pushing things off to later rather than getting started right now.

If there's one thing that you take away from this discussion, it's that you've got to start now.

You've got to start doing this now. It's not something that's going to come later. So many people talk about, “Well, I'm going to live later after I retire,” and that's just old hat. That is just something that is old thinking that we have not been able to erase yet. We're getting there. I think we're taking baby steps there, but we've got to get past this mentality that we're just going to stay stuck in a one place for the rest of our life and wait until we retire to think about what we want.

And I see that a lot with lawyers. I see that a lot with people who have established careers who keep putting off everything. So if there's one thing you take away right now is not to put off setting a goal, sit down after this podcast and just think. You can brainstorm, write everything out that you could possibly want to do and then you will decide on a thing. It doesn't have to be the thing you do for the rest of your life. It doesn't have to be life changing. It doesn't have to be world shattering. It's just something that you choose to start moving forward on. Once you start moving forward on a goal — and we're going to talk about how we do that, –then we can begin to decide, “Is this right for us? Is there another path?” But you have to get started. That is key.

The second lesson that I've learned from business is that you have to generate faith.
You can also call it a belief, a belief in yourself, a belief in the goal, however you want to phrase it, and really what this means practically is creating a relationship between you and your future-you, so you and what you're going to have or do or be in the future. You've got to create that.

Now we talk a lot about how you can do that in this podcast. I haven't talked about it quite in this way, but when you journal daily, when you write down daily what you want for yourself, what your goal is five years from now, 10 years from now, next week, then you are creating a relationship with your future self. When you visualize your goal, when you put yourself in the place of the person who's going to be you five years from now and you start feeling exactly what you're going to be feeling, then that is creating that relationship.

When people create dream boards, anyone from Tony Robbins to Rachel Hollis (and if you don't know who they are I'll link to them in the show notes) but people who use dream boards are creating them so that they constantly remind themselves of their goals. So they are creating a relationship with them now in the present and they can already start generating the feelings, the faith, the belief in that future them. So we think we're going to be happier when, right? We think we are going to be happier when we have the new house, when we have the new job, when we have the new car. The thing is we actually have to start generating those feelings right now. We have to embody them now. And you've done this before.

You've done this when you've had any big goal, when you were going to law school and you were feeling like you had the weight of the world on your shoulders because you needed to study for civil procedure and you had absolutely no clue what was going on. Maybe that wasn't the class for you. It was for me. Then you just kept reminding yourself, I just have to get through this because when I get through this I get to the other side and for me the other side was the next semester, my job, my new life after I'd become an attorney. So you've already done this unconsciously. Now what we're doing is getting really conscious because when you don't have a clear path, you need to continually remind yourself to generate this faith in yourself. All right?

The third thing I want to talk about is taking action from that faith, from that future place, from that belief.
When we take action from that place where we generated the feeling that we want, we know what we want, we know we can have it, we have faith in it. You might have some self doubts every so often that is normal. You keep bringing yourself back to it and you take action from that place.

What does taking action from that place look like? What practically does that look like? When we are really clear on our goals and creating that faith, that belief, then it becomes a lot easier to take action. For instance, it becomes easier to say no when we're working from the goal and the belief. It could be you're having a diet plan, maybe then it makes it easier to say no to certain foods. When you get really clear on your goals, when you are really clear on your goals, you know which people you want to surround yourself with. You know what commitments you want to make. When you're really clear on your money goals, do you hold off on making a big purchase because you have committed to making the home edition happen?

If you're not clear on your goals, then you're going to say yes to all the wrong things. That's why steps one and two, setting goals intentionally and generating beliefs in that future self and creating that relationship between you and your future self are so important because that's going to make it easier to take action from that place. Another example of taking action from that place is learning how to say yes to yourself. Last week we talked about using meditation as a way to say yes to yourself, but what does this really mean? It means making you a priority and some people may hear what I'm saying right now and consider it completely self indulgent. Well, I have news for you. Self improvement and figuring your crap out is never self-indulgent. In fact, it's the only thing that can change the world because I have a news flash for you:

You can't change other people. They have to want it for themselves.
You can try to manipulate a result, but that never works well for a relationship. You can't have a relationship with another person that is healthy when you're using manipulation as a tactic to try to create change in your life. So if you were trying to manipulate your husband or your wife to take out the garbage, that's not gonna work, okay? You can't emotionally blackmail someone into getting what you want. You actually have to just change yourself, whether it's changing how you think about a situation or whether or not it's taking a different kind of action. You have to recognize that you've got to say yes to yourself. You can't change other people. Okay. That part of my rant is over. All right,.

“How do I say Yes to myself?”

A really big way of saying yes to myself is investing in myself.
Now I was all in on law school, right? Cause it's really easy. I already see a path. I can completely act on that faith. I know what's going to happen in the future. If I go all in and invest in myself, right? I could spend a hundred grand and I know I'm going to get a return. Then years later I recognized I hadn't really invested that kind of money in my brain and my well-being and I knew that I needed to grow. I knew I needed to change things, but how could I do it? So I started looking into different areas and I started to do things like coaching. I spent money on coaching and events and meeting people and doing things like a certification for coaching and you know, getting myself into that mindset of “alright, I have a goal. I want to improve myself. I know I can do it.”

I see other people growing in crazy, amazing ways. I know I can do it. How do they do it? And I start acting from that belief, that faith and so over the last few years I spent over $69,000 in personal development and that's something that I would invest in all over again and I would double it because I know that the more I invest in myself, the more I can give to others. The more I say yes to myself, the more I'm going to learn and grow and become the human that I know I can be. That is something that is incredibly powerful when you really start putting your money literally where your mouth is and you begin to see real change.

I learned that it's okay to want what I want even if other people don't understand it.
Even if people don't quite get why I coach and I'm a lawyer, like they don't quite understand that and that's okay. I am just doing what I'm doing because I'm acting out of faith for that future me.

Another thing I'm learning in this area is just enjoying all the moments, even the uncomfortable ones.
So time for myself can be uncomfortable sometimes, right? Because you are in your thoughts, you get to see all of the craziness that's happening and we talked a little bit about that last week: you actually get really uncomfortable being quiet with yourself, recognizing the kinds of thoughts that you have.

Just saying yes to myself in these areas has really opened me up to this entire new path. So this is definitely part of the next step in your growth if that's what you want.

The fourth thing that I have learned from this business journey that I've been on is to love the discomfort.
You know, it's funny because how do you explain to somebody else how awesome being uncomfortable is? It is not awesome. It totally just blows your mind because you get all those feelings that come up, the nervousness, the self doubt, the awareness that you don't know a lot of things and how is that going to impact you? And you know you can spiral if you let it. But if you are willing to really just sit in the discomfort and recognize your crazy thoughts, you know if you're making time for yourself and you recognize those thoughts, those thoughts are going to tell you something. That feeling that you have when you start tracing back the thoughts to that feeling.

Let's say you feel anxious or overwhelmed, whatever it is, what is that feeling telling you? So for instance, when I'm growing my business, one of the main components of this is putting myself out there in bigger and better ways. So for me that's creating video, whether it's on Facebook or Instagram and I'm not comfortable in front of the camera.

I did not grow up in front of a video camera. There was no such thing as social media when I was a teenager. This is not something that you just come out of the womb knowing. What are the things that you say, how do you look, how can I look better? Cause I didn't really like the way I looked when I looked at myself in the camera. How do I make myself feel more confident? How do I feel more put together? I had to start really understanding that this comfort and the discomfort that I had was that I didn't value myself the way I could. The discomfort was I was afraid of judgment. That judgment that people would think I didn't know what I was doing. And all of that, well that's something you have to work through and when you feel it, it means you need to move forward anyway.

Anytime you have a fear, you gotta recognize is it real fear? Is it fear that you're going to fall out of an airplane without a parachute or is it fear that's holding you back from growing into the person you are supposed to become? Is it fear that's preventing you from starting your own firm? Is it preventing you from creating the relationship in your life, you know you deserve? Is it preventing you from telling somebody what you need and if you don't get it, are you willing to walk away? Those are the things that you really have to think about when these feelings are coming up. And that's what I mean by loving the discomfort. I mean the love is recognizing what the discomfort means and when we get really comfortable in our lives, when we start working on autopilot and we're not doing the things that we love, but we know we need to do them cause we got to pay the bills, or you have these feelings that are generated maybe in a relationship or when it's in relation to your body, your self image, then it's time to start taking a deeper look and asking yourself: You love the discomfort, how do you work with it? How do you work through it?

For me, it was doing more videos. For me it was putting myself out there with other things, podcasts, going to networking events, doing things that brought up all those uncomfortable feelings. That's something you work with and that's how you grow. That's how you get to the next step. And the fifth thing that I've learned from creating this business and going for those goals, that big goal that I have, you know, maybe whatever your goal is, I want you to imagine it. I want you to imagine it right now and then I want you to remember number five, which is…

Five: Taking a hundred percent responsibility for your actions — whether in your life or business — is power.
Why is it power? Because then I have control of the outcome. So often we are grasping at having control in our lives, but this is the one place where we can really have control.

So for instance, future me, future business owner five years out from now wants to have not created more work for myself but created less work for myself, future me wants me to hire all the right people to take over all the jobs, all the tasks that future me doesn't want because she's off to bigger and better things. So what do I have to do now? I've got to make sure I have systems in place, that I start recording systems so that whoever it is that I hire has that information already in place. I already have a head start on that. So that's one example.

That could be you. If you're creating a business, if you're trying to create less work for future you, then right now you got to start taking the actions of “where do I delegate, what do I do to make this happen?”

And that is you taking a hundred percent responsibility for what's happening in your life. And so often I hear, you know, whether it's at the office or on the street, people complaining just to complain. They're just complaining. And I understand that, and I do it myself. Sometimes I have to catch myself though because that is a complete low energy activity and we are working from an unresourceful place. When we do that, I notice it and I have to stop it when I see it. That's where all of this becoming really conscious about what we're doing comes in. When we are creating anything in our lives, we got to be really conscious about it because we can sabotage ourselves with little things like the words we use. So think about it, whatever you might complain about, you really have two choices. One, you change the way you think about it,: “not that big a deal. Yes, that person's annoying. And it's okay. Whatever you know, you're over it.”.

The other thing you can do is take some kind of action. If it means that much to you, if it's something that you feel like you need to complain about, but it's not enough for you to take action on, stop complaining. That might sound kind of harsh, but that's the honest truth. If you are spending your time complaining rather than moving towards the goal you want, then what's the point? And I have to keep this in perspective because I know I do it too, but every time I do it, I think to myself, what was the point of that? Why did I do that? “All right, do overs, next.” I don't spend time beating myself up. I just move on and I refocus on my goals. “What do I want to accomplish right now?” “What is the next best step for me?”.

All right, so we're gonna recap this real quick.
1. Set your goals intentionally.

2. Begin generating that faith, that belief in your future self and create that relationship with your future self. Journaling, visualization, whatever you need to do, and then you'll be able to…

3. Take action from that future place to create the result that you want.

4. Love the discomfort. Really feel what you're feeling and start asking yourself why you feel it, what is happening in your life right now to create that emotion and how can you move towards the growth?

5. Understand that taking 100% responsibility for our actions really is power. You really do feel more powerful when you understand that you are in control of moving forward towards your goals.

Wow, we covered a lot. Now that you consciously know these five lessons, how are you going to apply them to create the life that you want? You can tell me when I see you at the master class. Go to www.dinacataldo.com/masterclass.

You're going to learn “7 Secrets for a Smoother Legal Practice (and banishing that overwhelmed, anxious feeling.) I know you have it if you're a lawyer. I had it for a really long time.

Until then, have a wonderful rest of your week. Bye!