How are you doing today? So what do you have planned today? Because today I have the best things planned. So the very first thing that I am going to do is get ready for the day, right? So that means journaling and getting, you know, all prepped and all that good stuff. And then I'm going to take my dog for a walk and then I'm going to come back and I'm going to study some Italian and I'm going to start off my day at the office at home at the office. And I am going to work up a ton of files and maybe make some phone calls and do some emails, all that good stuff and get some awesome things out of the way. And then I get to take my mom to the dentist and, you know, maybe we'll, you know, grab something on the way back to eat.

And then after that, I am going to have a little bit of extra time to just do what I want in my coaching business and work on some videos. I have planned to send out to my email list. And then after that I have an hour Italian class and some, some break time in between. So it is going to be an awesome day. It's just going to, I planned it so that I would have all of the time that I wanted to have to myself and to do some fun things and to make sure that I'm taking care of my mom and taking care of my office work and all of that good stuff. And that's my day. So did you see what I just did there? I told you the story of my day, right? I told you the story of my day using the words that I intentionally chose to describe how my day was going to go, right?

And that is what we do with ourselves. Every single day. We tell ourselves a story about how our day is going to go. We tell ourselves a story about what things mean about how they are impacting us in our lives, how they're impacting other people in our lives, and that impacts everything. So it's incredibly important to understand the stories that we're telling ourselves and how those stories are influencing what we are creating in our lives. All right. What I want you to know are two big concepts. The very first concept is this. What we focus on expands. You ever notice that when you tell yourself that you're really tired, you get even more tired, or when you tell yourself you're not feeling well, you start to really feel not. Well, you start to notice maybe a little tingling in the back of your throat and you just start looking for all of these things.

What we are doing in those cases is focusing on something that doesn't serve us. And when we do that, anything, we focus on expands. Now, if we tell ourselves, gosh, I can't believe like how awesome this is going to be, how we're just gonna get through this day. And yeah, maybe we will be a little tired, but you know what? That's okay, because I am going to get so much done and I'm going to feel so good. That is telling yourself a different story, not focusing on how tired you're going to be, or how busy you're going to be and how you're not getting everything done that you want to get done. You're focusing on what it is that you want to focus on, which is making yourself expand those good feelings, right? Like you, you want to feel amazing. You're going to have all of this, this energy to get things done.

And you continually throughout your day, when you notice yourself focusing on, you know, being tired or having so much to do switching over to what you want to focus on. And that brings me to the second concept I want you to, to really take in. And we talk about this a lot, but I want you to really, you know, hold this to you, is our thoughts are completely optional. Everything thought running through our head is something that we have the power to change. At any moment, we have the ability to take a look at that thought and ask ourselves, is that serving us now, as I was thinking about this podcast and thinking about how I wanted to explain this concept, one thing I didn't want you to take away from this is believing that, you know, when things happen, that you want to feel bad about that you don't feel like you have to change your thought about it.

So for instance, when someone that we love dies or is in pain, you don't have to feel all rainbows and daisies about it. You can choose the thoughts you want to think. In fact, we do it all the time and you might want to feel bad about what's going on. And that is okay. It would be kind of weird if you wanted to be all happy and giggly about it. But what I want you to see is we are constantly telling ourselves stories to make ourselves better and to get the result we want. So even when a loved one passes on, we tell ourselves while they're in there, they're in a better place now, right? Like they're doing much better now. They're not hurting anymore. We tell ourselves the story and we don't have any way to believe any of those words are true, but we tell ourselves something to make ourselves feel better about the situation.

So I want you to understand that we tell ourselves stories all the time. It's just a matter of choosing the stories we want to tell ourselves so that we can create what we want. So what this looked like at that story that I told you at the very beginning of this podcast, that was the story of my day, the story I wanted to tell myself about the day, it would have been very easy for me to look at my calendar and tell myself a very different story I could have said, well, all right, I have a lot on my calendar today. So I really just need to get through this. And I don't know if I really want to take my dog on a walk this morning because I have a lot to do. And maybe that's not the best use of my time this morning.

So maybe I shouldn't do that. Maybe instead I should just jump into my work or I should just get ready earlier and just get going. And you know what, later on, I have to take my mom to the dentist, you know, like that. I didn't really want to do that. And it's taking away from my work and I could have been getting more done. And later on while I really want to make sure that I, you know, get some things squared away in my coaching business. So that way I can, you know, do what I want to do here, there, and whatever the Italian or whatever it is. So, I mean, can you just hear the energy in that? I mean, and that sounds like no fun, right? Like who wants to start off your day like that? And if you start off your day like that, telling yourself that story, you are not going to create the day that you want.

You're not going to feel as energized. I mean, you can even hear it in my voice, right? Like just talking like that, using those words brings the energy way down. So I want it, you to see that every time we talk about anything, anytime we use words, thoughts, any of that, it's all just a story that we are telling ourselves about what's in front of us, whether it is about our calendar or maybe it's about our practice. So you can, whether or not you own your own practice or not. I mean, really take a look at the way you talk about your practice. Do you talk about your practice in a really loving way, in a way that excites you to show up, you know, is your best self, or are you talking about it, telling a story about it, where it's kind of like this weight, this albatross that's keeping you you down and that you can't do what you want to do.

I mean, listen to the words that you use to talk about your practice with other people, that's really telling. I mean, that's why I spent so much time in that podcast on one 11 on thought downloads is because really understanding that you write down all of your thoughts and you start really taking a look at them. How you think about your business, your time, your calendar, whatever it is in your life. A partner. When you start looking at the story that you are telling yourself about that person, that thing, then you will get insight into why you are showing up the way you are showing up. And it takes practice, right? If you want to make this shift, if you want to begin moving from a story, that's not creating the results you want. Maybe you're not as energized around your practice, getting things done.

You know, all of that. Then I want you to start recognizing that thoughts are optional. And this is a cool tool. If you want to use this, I heard a variation of this the other day. And I thought this is really great. So I want you to pick a situation, you know, in your world, whatever it is. And I want you to make it really factual. Right? And so for a practice, this might look like writing down just the numbers of your, your practice, right? How much money are you making? Just the dollar signs, right? Like what are you making? How many consults are you getting each month? How many clients are you getting each month? And I just want you to put that in a little box. Oh, and write in how many clients you do want and how many consults you do want and how much money you do want.

Just write those numbers in a box. And when you, those numbers in a box, you're going to have all of these different thoughts about those numbers. Okay? Your brain is just going to come up with all kinds of stories about what those numbers mean. And when we look at numbers and we don't have any thoughts behind them, they're just numbers. They're just these very dry, boring numbers. Well, that's even a story, right? Like telling it that saying that it's boring or dry, but they are neutral. They have nothing behind them. Right? You think of the number one that has no real charge behind it. There's not really a story there that we can tell ourselves. But when we start using numbers, if they're not neutral, we're telling a story about those numbers. What is the story you have behind those numbers? How much money you make how much money you want to make the clients, the consults, all of that.

I want you to consider the thoughts that have, write them all down. Maybe I should be doing more. There's not enough. I don't have time. Like all of those thoughts that come up and then I want you to consider the opposite of those thoughts and write those down. What are other possible thoughts you could have about those numbers? Maybe instead of thinking, well, 10 consults. Isn't what I wanted. You can say something like, well, 10 clients is one more than I had last month. Like 10 consults is more than I had last month. I want you to start seeing the story that you're creating and understanding the emotions behind it. When you say I don't have enough consults, I should have more consults. I'm not going to make the money that I want to make. Unless I create more consults. Then you're really telling your sad story in your brain.

When you can be looking at it in another light, say, Hey, you know what? I bet I can make more consults this month. I wonder how I can do it. I bet that there is a way for me to create more clients this month. I wonder how I do it. When you start considering that there are other stories you can be telling yourself about what's going on in your life. Then you open up possibilities for creating exactly what you want. You begin to start asking yourself questions like, wow. So somebody else could look at 10 consults and think that's a lot. Meanwhile, I'm looking at tens consults and I'm thinking that's not a lot. That's interesting. And then you can start asking yourself questions like, well, how do I create more consults? What else can I do here? And you know, what other things can I be thinking to help me get there?

Because really we're creating everything in our brain. If we stick with the sad sob story, we're not going to generate the energy that we need in order to create what we want to create. And you know, I see this all the time in myself. So it's not as if this practice ever goes out of style. This is something that you were constantly choosing. Our thoughts are optional. We are constantly having to choose what we want to focus on when we practice this over and over again, it becomes easier to begin shifting over to the thoughts we want to have. But those old thoughts, they never really go away. Right? If you have doubt that you are going to be able to create what you want to create, that's okay. Like I have doubts sometimes, but I don't focus on them. What I do is I recognize they are there.

They are along for the ride in my life. And every time you create something or you do something new, of course, you're going to have some doubts because you've never done it before. You don't have that evidence for yourself. You're not creating the evidence for yourself. Instead. You're focusing on the lack of the evidence, the lack of the evidence that you can create something in your life that you've never created before. Every single entrepreneur, every single person who has done something new in their life has had some doubts because it's normal. But what we're doing is we're choosing what to focus on. Do we focus on the doubt or do we focus on the possibility? Do we focus on the disappointments or do we focus on creating something amazing and looking at how we can begin thinking differently to get our energy going in the right direction?

Because we could focus all of our energy into that disappointment doubt mode, right? All those feelings. And then that just expands. You ever notice when you are thinking about something and you're ruminating on it, and it's something where it's really painful, you just kind of want to spin in it and stay in it. Well, the practice is, is if you find yourself doing that to recognize it and then begin refocusing your brain on something else. Hey, I used to do this years ago, I would ruminate in these really just painful areas of my life. And I would just focus on them. And on the outside, it didn't seem like anything was really wrong with me, but I knew that I was wasting all of this energy, all of this time, ruminating on, you know a bad relationship or, you know, something that didn't go right in my life.

That didn't happen the way that I wanted it to happen. But when I learned to shift my thoughts to move away and start creating something that I wanted to create and start focusing on those things, I wanted to focus on, you know, moving it to look, do I want to spend my energy ruminating on something that really doesn't serve me and sure. Doesn't feel good to moving into shifting my focus into, you know, working on something that I'm creating and that can help people. What do you want to focus on? What do you want to expand in your life? Because now when I find myself ruminating it before I could spend forever in that rumination period, now I notice it. And like I could snap my fingers and be like, Whoa, Hey, I noticed that's where that's going. And I can shift over into the areas of my life that I want to shift over.

To know that this is a practice, know that you can do this. Watch the stories that you're telling yourself, watch how you show up in your life. Watch how you think about what is in your life. Try that practice, right? Those facts in a box, right? Tell the story of your calendar, the story of your numbers, the story of your relationships, and tell that story from different perspectives. Show that you can have different thoughts. And when you focus on the thoughts that you want to have, you will find that those expand and you will have more of that in your life. I hope you have a wonderful day. Tell yourself a really nice story. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.

If you love what you're learning on the podcast, imagine how you'll evolve when you start implementing what you're learning. You can learn how to work with me to do just that by scheduling a free strategy session. Go to Dinacataldo.com. That's Dinacataldo.com. Talk to you soon.