183. Achieving Mastery to Create the Life You Want

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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Full Episode Transcript:

Dara Tomasson Podcast Episode 183 

183. Achieving Mastery to Create the Life You Want

I just heard that after 19 days of making a habit, that is a take or break day. And so I’m recording this on January 19th and as the weight loss coach for quilters, the accidental weight loss coach, I’m here to help you so that you don’t fall into those statistics of making a goal and then falling short.

So my name is Dara Thomason and this is the podcast for quilters or any woman that resonates with what I’m saying. And when I say I’m the accidental weight loss coach, I truly mean it because I struggled with my weight for since my first year Early 20s and until I got life coaching tools in my mid 40s I did not know how to break that yo yo cycle of Defining my worth by my weight.

And so as I learned life coaching tools I was able to work through and see

And that’s when I found true freedom and liberation from needing to lose weight to feel good. And so I actually started losing, I started feeling good and then I was able to lose weight. And that’s what I’m interested in is helping you all create permanent weight loss. So if you’re interested in taking this work even further, I have a master class for you that will take these life coaching tools and help you to dig deeper.

So if you want to just click on the link below, I have darahthomason. com slash free class. You can go register for that and then make sure you put that on your calendar and come and show up. You will be amazed. Mark my words at how different your life is when you see the problem shown you a different way.

Go and register now. I have a free class, a free masterclass coming up and I do not want you to miss it. All right. Well, let’s start in this podcast. Now, before we start, I always share the wins of members in my membership because, you know, a lot of women will listen to my podcast and they want to have this transformation and they think about it.

But they are just, these women that I’m sharing, they’re just like you. They’ve just learned how to apply these tools. So I’m going to share a story about one of the ladies in my membership. And she’s in her mid sixties and her parents got divorced when she was at a young age. And it was a really nasty divorce.

There was a lot of manipulation with the kids and, um, moving different states. It was, it was really, really hard. And not only was it hard that way, but everything that she grew up with, that stability was taken away. And. You know when we have trauma, it’s difficult because we don’t necessarily know how to resolve it And we wasn’t modeled to us when we were young of it’s okay to be sad and we can work through this We didn’t know about my growth mindset.

We didn’t know about our nervous system and and how Like we just didn’t know those things. You know, we just knew if you’re sad eat a cookie. So Anyhow, one of the things that I just wanted to share was that this client of mine recognized how many decisions She was making out of fear and when she realized she was making decisions out of fear those decisions created her identity.

And then she realized her identity. She would then, that’s how she went to solve problems. So she actually never truly resolved the problems that she was having. And so she kept her old habits and because she kept her old habits, then of course all the decisions she was making were coming out of fear. So she’s living this life that doesn’t really feel like her, but she doesn’t know how to change it.

so as she came to the coaching, she said, listen, I don’t want to live this way anymore. I know I have these fears, but I don’t know what to do. And so what we did is we looked at her identity as a person. What did she make her parents marriage mean about her? What did, what identity did that create in her life?

And then we’re able to get some resolution. And she was able to actually say, okay, this is why from this experience, this created this part of my identity, this created this. And so she was able to tie those things together. And then when she had that understanding, she was able to come to a resolution.

That resolution led to some new habits, which mean, Oh, I’m not doing that anymore. I’m not going into my fear. I’m actually just going to give myself compassion. I’m just going to give myself some understanding. And now she has these new habits. And so she now has autopilot new habits every day that help her.

So she’s able to take that pause and create the life that she really wants. And the reason I share this with you is because, um, we don’t know what we don’t know, and I’m so happy that you’re here. I. truly want to change the way people look at themselves and their life. And when we can open up our minds, we are creative, amazing people, and we can create that safety to be creative and to look at things from a different lens.

we can create permanent change. And it is so exciting. Now talking about permanent change, today’s episode is really talking about how do we achieve mastery. And it’s tricky when we talk about achieving mastery because so many of us tend to beat ourselves up. So we’re going to start really, really simple.

And I wanted to walk you through this exercise because I think it’s going to be super helpful. When I, when you think about what is mastery level of something. So mastery means that you can do something. at a very high level. In fact, you can define what you think mastery means. I was thinking about that myself.

I was like, what does it even mean to like mastery? So one of the things I thought about was brushing my teeth. I have mastery of brushing my teeth. It means that I do it on autopilot. Um, it’s just a habit. I don’t even think about it. It’s something that takes really good care of me. Um, So that is one thing.

Praying, I feel like I am, I am very masterful in praying because it’s something that I do regularly. Um, clean clothes. I’m really good at being someone who wears clean clothes. Um, also paying bills. I would say I’m mastery of paying bills. I pretty much never have a late payment. It’s very, very seldom. So I’ve created mastery in these areas.

So I want you to think and, and be really generous with yourself. Say, what am I really good at? What do I have mastery on? And recently I was at a, I took a, um, a webinar. I was in, I went into a webinar and she asked the question, how do you define success? And I really enjoyed that. I really enjoyed coming up with my own definition of success.

And so I’m going to invite you to do the same thing. Come up with your own definition of what does it mean to have something mastered? Okay, because this is your life. And, um, so knowing your own definition, your own way is going to be really, really helpful. The second part is like writing that down. This is in the, if you’re in the worksheet, writing down, what do you have mastery of?

What about manners saying thank you? What about, um, your driving habits? So just be drinking enough water or whatever comes to your mind. And it’d be fun just to like, leave that, that up and to think about what do I have mastery of? Okay. So I wanted to talk about, um, this, I came across, I just did a masterclass and.

We talked about failure trauma and um, it was interesting because I found a quote by J. K. Rowling on the importance of failing. And then the very next day I found this book, it’s called Very Good Lives by J. K. Rowling and it was her speech she gave at Harvard University. Um, she says, we do not need magic to transform our world.

We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. And actually at the end of this masterclass that I taught, um, if you’re watching the YouTube channel, you can see I have a, or if you’re not, I just have a visual where I have a circle and in the middle of the circle it says, um, your inner wisdom and knowing, and then there’s all these circles that go around it.

It’s kind of like a target. Um, like a bullseye and we have a lot of layers to go through to get to our own inner wisdom and knowing. And that’s what she means here. We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all the power we need inside us already. That’s our inner wisdom, our intuition, our inner knowing.

And so she said there’s two things that we really need. to, um, create a life that’s, that’s really wonderful. And, um, and that’s what, that’s what I’m wanting for you. So when I talk about achieving mastery, because the reason we, I talk about this as the accidental weight loss coach is that. 95 percent of our 60, 000 thoughts we have every day are unintentional.

they’re habit thoughts. They’re, they just, you just kind of go to it. So the more that we can clean out those unhealthy thoughts and then create new pathways, new habitual pathways that are really, really beneficial, we will create the life that we really want. And so that’s what I’m, I’m wanting to help you see is that you actually have the skills to achieve mastery.

You’ve already done it in lots of areas. And so as we talk about this, this idea of mastery, and you’ve now defined what mastery looks like for you, she talked about the, the two things that have helped her the most in life. And it’s ironic all this Harry Potter because my son has just been watching Harry Potter all this week And I’ve you know kind of come in and out and watched little bits And oh, I just love that.

I’ve read the whole Harry Potter series at least five times out loud and I absolutely love it. Um, anyway, so she says we need both failure and imagination Does that surprise you? And um, she’s, because I, you know, I asked myself, well, what is real life? What is like, what even constitutes your life is a pattern of behaviors.

It’s a bunch of experiences and decisions that you make and them all put together is your real life and life changes. I have five kids. I have now three kids that aren’t living at home. And in a month and a half, I’ll have a daughter come back

and then a month from now I’ll have a son come back and they’ll be home for four months and then they’ll go off. It’s always changing. My, my life is always changing. Our lives are. And so learning how to master our life is probably one of the greatest gifts you give yourself because life is always lifing and we get to, if we don’t feel that we have the tools to life properly.

Then we’ll always be in a state of fear. So, she talked about the importance of, um, failure and imagination. And I, I have a question, some questions for you. How much time do you spend thinking of who you want, like, sorry. How much time do you spend thinking about who you want to be, or who you aren’t, or who you’re afraid to be?

So how often do you just sit and think about the kind of life that you have and the kind of life that you want to have? How often do you even just sit and think? And when I’ve talked about this tool, it’s called equal airtime. So the acronym is EAT. So how much time do you think of who you could be or what you can achieve or what is actually possible?

So what’s going to get your attention? So our brain is wired for danger. So if there was a grizzly bear Or a rainbow, what are you going to pay attention to? Exactly. You’re going to pay attention to the grizzly bear because that is immediate danger and so, um failure feels like immediate danger and If we are constantly driven by fear of failure versus the desire for success then we’re never going to turn the needle.

We’re never going to create these healthy habits. And I really like what JK Rowling said. And I don’t know if any of you are familiar with the story, but her parents really, her parents were very poor and they wanted her to be really successful. And she’s really wanted to be a writer. She got married, she got, she had a child, she got divorced.

And she was just like, so frustrated because. Um, she, um, she said, I think it’s fair to say that any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. And Exceptionally short lived marriage had imploded and I was jobless, a lone parent and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless.

The fears that my parents had had for me and that I had had for myself had both come to pass and by every usual standard I was the biggest failure I knew. And then she said, I’m going to stand here and imagine she’s in front of the Harvard graduating class and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as kind of a fairy tale resolution.

I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time any light at the end of it was a hope rather than reality. So, the story goes that she went to cafes during the day because In England in certain, um, places where you lived, you literally had to put in the money into the, um, the wall that had the heat.

My cousin lived in England and that’s what she’d have to do. And so because she didn’t have the money to heat her house during the day, she would go to these cafes with her child and she would write her book, um, Harry Potter. So then she says, why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the unessential.

I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was and began to direct all of my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might have never ever. found the determination to succeed in the one arena where I believed I truly belonged.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive and I still had a daughter whom I adored. And I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation, which I rebuilt my life. You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable.

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously That you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you fail by default. Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way.

I discovered that I had a strong will and more discipline than I had suspected. I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly beyond the price of rubies. And so we talk about adversity and really putting that to the test. And I,

and then I think about imagination. And so when we can fail and when we can allow ourselves to we can allow ourselves to look at really what’s going on. We then give ourselves power and permission to just imagine, imagine what would happen if you just felt your feelings instead of eating, eating them.

Imagine if you just shared. what was really going on with your family or your friends and then they would be able to have a deeper connection with you. Imagine what would happen if you just let yourself dream. I remember listening to a podcast years ago and this woman, her husband had cancer and he lost part of his leg.

They are going through a really hard time and their bed was really uncomfortable. And now that he had his, his surgery, he was spending more time in his bed and then she was uncomfortable. And one day she was just like, imagining what it would be like. If someone just sent her a beautiful new bed. And then another day she was looking and there was this woman on Instagram who was doing these incredible retreats, artistic retreats in France.

And this woman lives in Manitoba. So if anyone’s been to Manitoba, there’s beauty in the prairies, but it’s not, it’s not like. You know, this beautiful retreats in France and she just let herself imagine what would it be like if she could go to an event like that and be a part of it. And she would give herself permission to just imagine and just let herself picture herself seeing herself there.

And shortly after both of those things happened. She was invited. as a collaborator for the retreat in France and someone just decided that they would send her bed. And I, um, I could, I could give you lots and lots of examples of my own personal life and those people I know who allowed themselves to imagine And the more that they allowed themselves to believe that imagination, the more it became reality.

So I’m going to give you a little mind hack, a brain science hack. That’s so cool. Our brain doesn’t know the difference if something is real or not. Let me give you an example. So I always think of this example of watching little woman in the movie theater with my daughter and my friend Deb. And I don’t know if you’ve seen the one with, um, Oh, who are the actresses?

Anyways, it’s the one that was like four or five years ago. It’s really, really well done. And there’s the part where they go to the beach and the one sister is, is really, really sick. And I am just bawling. I’m bawling. I, my eyes are like, the tears are just flowing. I’m bawling. And I know that it’s not real.

I know it’s just a story. I know it’s just a classic. But in that moment,

I let myself go. I let myself imagine what it would be like to take your sister, who is dying, to the beach. I allowed myself to feel all of those feelings and I, it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a beautiful thing, right? It ended at the end. I won’t do all the spoiler alerts, but chances are you’ve probably read it, but at the end it was just such a beautiful wrap up and you could just appreciate all of it.

I want you to allow yourself to imagine more. And I want you to stop letting fear take such center stage. So at the conclusion of this podcast, I want to challenge you. I want you to, I want to challenge you to live a life of mastery, to live a life that you are so proud of. Um, I think one of the reasons I’m a little bit emotional as I share the story about how little woman is I, I’m thinking about, I think it’s Joe, the sister who’s the writer, and she has a deep passion for writing.

And she was before her time. It was not common for a girl, a woman to be published. And she had to fight against a lot of challenges. And

I don’t know what your story is, but as I think about like today and yesterday, I was able to coach So many amazing women inside my membership and I am just so thrilled for them. I get overwhelmed with emotion of joy and gratitude that these women finally said, enough is enough. I’m going to do this. And, um, as I share these wins with you in the podcast, I really want you to imagine what would be the win that I could share for you.

So again, I want to invite you to take It’s a two part step. The first step is to go and register for my free trainings. Okay, go, go and register. And then the next step is to actually show up because I’m so grateful that I showed up I was scrolling on Instagram. I was struggling in the summer of 2018 and I felt like I was at the end of my rope and I just felt so deflated and so discouraged.

And this girl said, I can solve it. I can help you solve any problem. And I thought, what the heck? So I had a coaching, I had six coaching calls with her and those have completely changed my life. And now because of that, yeah. I’m able to change so many lives. It’s like, it was like a, someone gave me a flower and then that flower germinated, pollinated, and then grew more.

And then all those flowers grew more. And it’s just, it’s like spreading. It’s just so beautiful. So if you want to give yourself that same gift of learning how to solve any problem, learning how to live a life, That you actually are really proud of. This is the last challenge I’m going to give you. You can go and do my free training, that’d be great, but if you’re really, you’re like, let’s go Dara.

I’m really curious about why I haven’t got the results. I have a few spots on my calendar that I can meet with you and I can give you free coaching and I call them curiosity calls or a discovery call and I can give you that free coaching and then you can make a decision for yourself. I can tell you about my membership to 2, 000 lifetime membership or the, or maybe coaching one on one is a better fit, but unless you actually make that change, nothing’s going to change.

Everything’s just going to stay the same. And like I say to my husband this morning, as I said to my husband this morning, I’m like, you can pick your heart. You can pick the heart of having had that conversation with that person and feeling all of the distress from that. Or you can pick the hard of picking up the phone and saying, Hey, I really like to resolve this with you.

You pick that. So maybe I can help you with a hard to conversation that you want or why you keep quitting on yourself or why you keep making goals and not achieving them. Let’s do it. All right. So fun to be with you. Take care of everyone.

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