182. Unexpected Ingredients for Delicious Results

Are you craving more joy and excitement in your life? Maybe you feel like you’re going through the motions, stuck in a cycle of routines and expectations. What if you could rewrite the recipe of your life, adding just the right ingredients to make it uniquely yours? This episode is all about discovering three unexpected ingredients to create the most delicious and fulfilling life, tailored to your dreams and goals.

In this episode, Dara shares her journey of transforming her life by embracing curiosity, fun, and intentional questioning. From achieving her dream of becoming an international quilting instructor to helping clients design lives they love, she explains how these key ingredients lead to clarity, freedom, and lasting happiness. You’ll also hear inspiring stories of clients who broke free from societal pressures and created their own paths, whether in business, weight loss, or personal growth.

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If you are ready to lose weight and change the way you think about hunger, sign up for the lifetime access of The Pieceful Heart Membership! Doors are open and you can find all the information by clicking here.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

  • The importance of curiosity in breaking free from judgment and experimenting with new approaches.
  • How infusing fun into your daily life and decisions can make even challenges feel lighter.
  • Why questioning long-standing habits and expectations helps you take ownership of your life.

Dara’s insights will inspire you to rethink the way you approach your goals and create a life that truly reflects who you are. Tune in for actionable tips and real-life examples that will help you find freedom and joy in your unique journey!

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  • If you are ready to lose weight and change the way you think, sign up for the lifetime access for The Pieceful Heart Membership! Doors are open and you can find all the information by clicking here.
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Full Episode Transcript:

Dara Tomasson Podcast Episode 182

182. Unexpected Ingredients for Delicious Results

This episode is so much fun for me to share with you because I have so many different emotions as I share it with you. So as we grow older, we are able to have different perspectives on things and as we evolve and change, think about how when you were first, if you had children, Like when they were first little, like how you reacted to what they were doing versus when you became more experienced.

Or I think about when you first learned how to drive and how every little thing was just such a big deal. And then as you got the skill of driving and it became more automatic, you could do so many more different things. You could, um, like to listen to music and chew gum and have conversations all at the same time.

And so we are always going to be creating new experiences for ourselves. And today’s episode, I’m going to talk to you about these three unexpected ingredients to make the most delicious life. And as I reflect on these past four years of being a coach and looking at what I’ve been able to create.

In my life, what my clients have been able to create for their lives, I get so excited because each one of their lives are super unique and different. They are all creating, they’re all cooks of their own life. They’re creating their own unique dishes. They’re baking their own unique treats. And that is the beauty of life coaching.

That is the beauty. of truly embracing the creation of whatever kind of life you want. I will never forget when I said to my dad out loud, we lived in Red Deer, Alberta. I had five kids that were 12 to two. And I said to my dad, I want to be an international quilting instructor. And I honestly thought that the lightning was going to strike me and say, There is no way that you could be someone like that.

And I wanted to be an author and I wanted to travel and I wanted to take my family with me as I traveled and taught quilting. And it is so much fun now for me to think, look at what I’ve done. I’m so glad I decided I was going to nail that recipe. I looked, it’s like looking at Pinterest and saying, that’s what I want, right?

Like I want to be an international quilting instructor and then just going for it and figuring out what. What does that recipe look like? And it was so fun because I was able to go to Riley Blake. I stayed at their home. I made two videos. I have published many books on free motion quilting. I have taught internationally, got quilting awards.

Like, I have done it. And I’ve taken my family on these different trips that we would never have been able to do otherwise and so Same thing with weight loss I said I am going to be at my naturally thin weight and I’m gonna do it without counting calories or tracking steps I’m gonna do it the Dara way and I have been able to keep that weight off since 2019 and it has been amazing Such a crazy ride.

And I get to be in this seat watching my clients doing the same thing. Members in the lifetime membership that the doors are open so that, and these women are doing it. It’s so fun. In fact, I want to share, um, one of the things that one of my clients has done recently, she was realizing, and she’s getting coaching on this, that she was overscheduling herself like crazy.

And she felt like there were so many things that she had to do as a business owner. She’s a very successful quilter and has a, has a great, um, makes amazing designs and really talented, but she was kind of on this, it felt like a treadmill because she was running really fast and she was signing up for all these things that she thought she had to say yes to.

And she was getting some coaching and she realized, wait a minute, wait a minute. You know, she did that whole burn the boat kind of thing. And one of the, what, what that looked like for her was for November and December, she completely underscheduled November and December. She just took off so much on her plate and she prioritized coming to the coaching calls at least once a week.

And it was fascinating to watch because. Her daughter called and said ” Hey mom, where do I have these extra tickets for the nutcracker?” Do you want to come? She was able to say yes. And then a little while later, another daughter called and said, Hey mom, we’re making gingerbread cookies, uh, gingerbread houses.

Do you want to come? And she was able to say yes. And so she is able to now give herself permission to make the dish, her recipe, her own way. And that is what coaching does. It gives you permission to create the life that you want. And um, it’s funny, I have, there’s a story, my mother in law is an amazing uh, cook and uh, baker.

Amazing. In fact, the reason I don’t make pastry is because I just can’t make it as good as her and I, I don’t, I don’t. have the time or a level of commitment to put towards it. So I’ve just made a decision. She can just do the pastry. I’m not gonna worry about it. Um, but it’s funny how they always like to tell the story about the one meal that she made that was terrible.

And it was my mother in law’s from England. And so meatloaf wasn’t really a thing that she grew up with. But my, um, my, her mother in law, so my, my Husband’s grandmother. She made the same meal every Monday, every Tuesday, every Wednesday. So when she went to the grocery store, she bought exactly the same ingredients because she knew every Monday was meatloaf.

Every Tuesday was whatever, shepherd’s pie or whatever it was. So my mother in law, newly married, was trying to make one of her husband’s favorites, which was meatloaf. And it was, she used um, veal, I’m pretty sure. And it was super dry. And it’s just hilarious because of like thousands and thousands of meals she’s made, they’ve all been amazing except for this one.

And um, and so I love that story because she needed to learn what makes a good meatloaf. And in order to learn how to do those things, we have to trial and error. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna share with you three ingredients that really helped me to create the meatloaf. results that I wanted and that have helped my clients create a lot of these results.

And, um, one of them drives my dad bonkers. He hates that I talk about this and he, my dad, has dementia now. And, um, so we never know what version of him we’re going to get when we have conversations. But when we have those times where he is more on his game, he just starts to laugh when he says, so Dara.

How’s business? Are you having fun? Because I always say to my dad, my dad, one of the ways that I have had my most success in my business is because I’m always making sure I’m having fun because I don’t want to build a business that doesn’t feel fun. I don’t want to lose weight that doesn’t feel fun or exciting or doesn’t feel like I don’t want to live a life where it’s always the grind.

I don’t want to live like this when I do this, then I can be happy. I don’t want to live that way. Because if we want permanent weight loss or permanent freedom, like my client who decided I’m going under schedule, I guess I want to feel joyful and I want to feel abundant. She was able to, um, implement that.

Okay. So these are the three ingredients that are going to help you. Now, remember you’re the cook. So maybe one ingredient, you’re going to put more of that in. another ingredient, you’re going to put a little less in and then depending on the season or depending on, you know, where you’re at with responsibilities or whatever it is, you can decide, Oh, I’m not gonna, I’m not going to be baking right now.

I’m not going to be spending a lot of time even putting this all together. Okay. So these are the ingredients. The first one is curiosity. So when you’re curious, it allows you to not judge yourself. You’re able to say, Hmm. I wonder if this will work, right? You think about little kids, they’re building blocks or they’re making a sandcastle or they’re, and they’re just like, I don’t know.

Let’s see. Let’s see what happens if I do this. And then they don’t beat themselves up afterwards. They say, Oh, I thought that was going to work. Some of it worked. Maybe I need to have the sand a little bit wetter. If I have the wetter, the sand, it will stay. But if it’s too wet, it’ll just wash away. Okay.

So curious. So you’re not judging yourself. That has been. one of my most successful, um, strategies. Okay. The second one is fun. We need to have fun because if you’re having fun, then you’re going to just bring your A game. So I’m recording this on December 19th. Our house is a disaster because, um, we have drywall and we’re building a new kitchen and there’s drywall dust everywhere.

Um, yeah. And we don’t have, you know, we have, it’s, it’s a bit wild. And yesterday I said to my son, um, and he actually, he’s 12 and we usually wrap presents together. So I said, okay, you have to leave for a little bit. And um, I put all of the presents in boxes and I put their names on it. I said, okay, now you can come back in and we wrap presents and we watch Scrooge.

We created fun. That could have been drudgery. We wrapped 27 presents, 30 presents. We had so much fun with it. We just went for it. So we created it out of fun. And when we think it’s fun, then how do we act? Do we feel heavy? No, we just are playful. Um, and then the third one is I really love to question, is this even, do I even need to do this?

And so even with wrapping presents, it’s like, do I need to wrap presents? Do I need to buy presents? Or do I like, maybe we just go somewhere or maybe we. do something different or whatever that is. And then you can just question it. And so the beautiful thing with that is when you question it, then you get to decide, Oh, I actually like presents.

And even for that, like me I’m one of those moms that writes down all the presents because I want everyone to have an equal number of presents. And so I went to the store yesterday and I bought a bunch of really spicy noodles, noodle soup. My kids love Ichiban. They love these, they like the really hot challenge.

So I went to the Asian section and got these really cool different kinds of noodle packages and each kid got a couple of different types and I wrapped them and because it’s, I love, I love opening presents. I just love them. Like the fact that they’re opening them, they don’t even have to be very expensive.

So I like just knowing my reasons and then liking them. So some presents are more expensive. Other presents are literally noodles from the Asian section at the grocery store that probably cost me 5. Okay. So when I can look at things like, what are my reasons? What do I like? Then I allow myself to just own it and if my kids later on don’t like it they’re like my mom is so weird.

Do I have to do other people’s laundry or would it be better for them to do their own laundry? Or if you’re worried about water, then you could say, Hey, this is when we’re doing laundry. If you want laundry done for the week, I’m doing it now. And if you don’t, you’ve missed the boat. Like you just get to decide, but when you can just slow down and ask yourself why it’s so helpful.

Now I have shared this story before, but I love this story. And, um, it’s the story about the woman who gets out the saw and starts sawing off like an inch from the bone of this ham. And, um, one of her friends or daughter or someone says, Why are you cutting off that bone? It looks like a lot of work.

Like, that’s, you know, I didn’t know you had to do that if you’re making ham. And the woman said, I don’t know why. I just, that’s what my mom did. And so she, contacted her mom and said, mom, what is the purpose of cutting off this bone of this ham? It’s a lot of extra work. And the mom said, what are you talking about?

She said, well, I remember when I was a kid and you were making this, this, um, ham and you, you cut off the bone. And the mom said, well, I might’ve done that once, but that’s only because the pan that I had was too small and I had to cut the bone off cause I wanted to put the lid on. And so it’s just, it’s.

really fascinating to me of how many times we do things? Because we think that’s just the way it is, but unless we slow down and look at it, is it actually, so I want to just, um, give you permission, To look at different patterns in your life. Why am I even doing this? And like I say, I teach weight loss completely differently than pretty much I don’t know the most people. I would say I’m sure there’s other people that have similarities to me but I literally teach you that number one, your worth is already determined.

You don’t have to lose weight. You don’t have to look a certain way. You don’t have to have a certain number of Instagram followers or any of that. Your worth has already been decided. Okay? So you don’t have to earn your worth. You don’t have to prove yourself. You don’t have to do any of that. That’s the first thing.

I don’t know how many people know that. And I think that the world actually all knew that and people can embrace it. Like what a difference it would be. The second thing I teach is that weight loss science is actually simple and you can just learn how it works and then you can just start creating your own rules around that.

And then the third thing I teach is that you can just stop shaming yourself and you can stop blaming other people for things. And then I teach you to embrace your current body, feel all the feelings and um, Stop pressuring yourself to change and actually address the real issues, right? Look at why aren’t you, why are you putting on this extra weight?

Why do you, um, like eating in the pantry secretly? Why are you, like, why do you have this extra weight on? Like, let’s address it. Maybe you were sexually molested as a child, so it doesn’t feel safe to be thin. Maybe you were, um, teased or maybe you don’t feel worthy of having a beautiful body. Or maybe you don’t think you should lose weight because if you do, then your mom and your sisters will reject you.

And that feels terrible. Maybe you think you have to look a certain way to be approved by certain people. Like let’s get to the root of it. Maybe you just don’t know how to feel your feelings and have to work through things. And so this is just a subconscious habit of turning to food. You don’t even realize how often you’re overeating.

But unless you can slow down and use curiosity and use fun as one of the parameters and like to question the basics, then you’re not going to get anywhere. I love this expression. If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got. And when you learn these life coaching tools, you start to really slow down and look at what’s really going on.

And that has been such a joy for me to watch how the eyes, like the twinkle in people’s eyes, the clarity in the membership. It’s so exciting to watch. Because you’re literally taking that key that you had, you put yourself in food prison or in shame prison or blame prison and like that, you’re given that key that says, I don’t have to do this anymore.

I don’t have to take a saw and saw off the end of this ham. I don’t have to even like, you can just be who you are. You don’t even have to change. And if people don’t like it, that’s on them. Because guess what? You can’t make anybody feel anything anyway because our feelings always come from our own thoughts.

All right. So if this is resonating with you and you’re like, Oh my goodness, this makes so much sense. I have a lifetime membership and it’s kind of like a cruise where you are at a resort where you pay one price and you, you’re in for like, you don’t have to pay anymore. So it, or you can do a payment plan.

But basically what happens is when you buy my membership or you come in, there’s, I have, uh, the rapid fire five coaching calls, sorry, five modules that do the overview of how to create permanent weight loss. And then I have a 90 day workbook that every day you get a three to five minute video and it helps you to really reinforce these concepts.

And then we have three coaching calls a week. So you can come and ask for help. We also have a feature inside the modules where you can ask me any questions anonymously and I will answer them and you will have all these other people asking all these other questions. You have a community of women.

There’s so many benefits to this membership and you have a 20 pounds down in 90 day money back guarantee. So it’s risk free. So that is something that’s interesting to you. interesting for you and that you can like really buy into, um, check it out. Also, if you want some free coaching or just an idea of what coaching looks like for now, I can offer some free, um, coaching calls.

You can just book a 20 minute free call, um, do it while they last. And, um, you can ask me any questions and we can see if this is a good fit for you. All right. Take care everyone. Bye.

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