Do you often feel like whatever you choose, you can never do it right. And you don’t really have the adventure and the life that you really want to have while you are in the right place. My name is Dara Tomasson, and this is the love yourself thin podcast 155. Choose your own adventure. Hello, everybody. How is your summer vacation going?

Are you enjoying yourselves? we’re definitely starting to make plans for summer adventures. If you have followed me long enough, you know, we have the summer bucket list. The women in my program right now in July are working towards their summer learning . If you want to have a part of that, you can definitely join us as we create the summer that we wanted to create

Just want to encourage you if that sounds fun to become your own best friend, then that is what’s going on inside my membership in July and August. Let’s dive into this episode, but of course, before we do, I want to share a win from one of my clients and the effects that it’s having on their family members.

This member. She is a grandma. One of the things that she does as a grandma is she takes her grandkids once they turn eight on a weekend away in a historical town called Williamsburg. Last year she took one of her granddaughters and she was very interested in all the historical aspects Of the place. She was interested in learning, going on the tours and just with a lot of interests. What was going on?

This weekend, she and her husband took a second granddaughter, which was an incredibly different experience. She was much more interested in the horse and his baby rather than all of the goodies that you can find there. The big win was she was able to rewrite the manual she had decided was the criteria for a good trip. She said to her husband, I think I need to rewrite my manual for what I expect from this trip. Her husband gently said, yeah, I think you’re right. This is a huge win because if we can’t edit, if we can’t switch gears or if we can’t think of something differently Then we get trapped and then we don’t have fun.

We feel like we’re doing it. something wrong where I feel like we are. messing up and whenever, when she was able to switch gears, she was now able to say, this is the kind of grandma I want to be for this particular granddaughter and for this particular experience. They were able to have a lot more fun, so huge win and everyone wins when you can do that.

The ripple effects of this work are huge and this granddaughter will always look back and remember how much her grandparents loved her and how they cared so much about what she wanted to do. As we think about choosing your own adventure in your life, I want you to reflect on, first of all, answer the question.

Are you living the life that you dreamed of as a kid? Now, I think it’s fairly safe to say that as a kid, you thought I wanted to, you know, Graduate from high school. Maybe go, you know, get a career of some sort. get married and have children. Then the rest was maybe not so clear.

Would she want to come and hang out with me? I think that’s a really fun question. Quite often, I imagine my younger version of me coming into my quilting studio. I’m saying, Hey, What do you want to play with today? What do you want to do? What do you want to. Learn how to do or ha. What, what colors do you like?

It’s really fun for me to imagine creating a really creative and beautiful space that she can feel comfortable in. If however you answer that. I just want you to answer it with loving curiosity because. I think our parents did the best they could with what they had. We also are doing the best with what we have.

It’s really nice to give ourselves. That, benefit of the doubt. However, if we are not living the life that we want, This is where I come in. This is what I do really well. Can I help you to figure this out? The next question I have for you is what are the main reasons you are not living the life you want? If you have a lot of, well, if my husband was like this, or if my kids didn’t need me so much, or if my kids didn’t live so close or if my kids didn’t live so far, or if the government was, if we didn’t have the current government or if the economy. If there are a lot of reasons outside of you, for the reason you’re not happy. I’m really curious about that. I would call you on that because those are all just circumstances.. What is it? If it was a hundred percent your fault, what would it be?

The next question I have is what are the main reasons you have all the awesome results in your life. So why do you live in a house with electricity? Why do you have a car? Why do you have insurance or maybe you don’t and if you don’t, why. Why do you have a lot of fabric?

Why do you have running water? Why do you have a husband? Why do you have money in the bank? Why do you have it?

Ask yourself what are, so first of all, what are all the awesome things in your life? I personally think that having a washing machine and a dryer is amazing. Running water is a huge bonus. I love my car. I love having a car. I love having insurance. I love having a business. I love having kids. I love having my husband.

I love having a beautiful lake, a six kilometer lake, just like a three-minute drive. And I love being able to go and run that whenever I want. I love having money so that I could go and do things like go to quilt Canada, which I’m doing this week. I love that I can go to thrift stores and find amazing treasures. There are so many things I love in my life.

I love God. I love my spiritual practice. I love reading. I love learning. I love warm fires. there’s all these amazing things. Then I want you to ask yourself, how did you get those things?

I’ve been married for 23 years in August. And I had no idea that I could love someone so much.

I had no idea I could be loved. My kids are getting older and I had no idea how. I had no idea that relationships could be so sweet. So tender. And, In my life I just had no idea. I’m so glad for it

The next question I have is what would have to change so that you can create the life that you really want. I have this exercise for you to remind you that the only way that you can have a truly amazing, abundant and wonderful life is if you become the driver of that life.

I have these questions for you. Don’t know if I shared this in the podcast already. But this story really resonates with me and it really helps me.

It’s really funny to me. How much of an impression the story has had. I’m curious if I’ve shared it before. I can’t remember. If I have something great, but I’m going to do it in a different way. I’ve been reading the gap in the gain. The retreat that I’m hosting in September and as of the time I’m recording, I now have four spots left. One person cancelled. It’s an incredible experience. One of the books that we’re focusing on is the gap and the gain. I found this story here that really impacted my life . From 1984 to 1988, this woman, Kim Butler was a college soccer player at Principia. College. It was a small college and women’s college soccer was a fairly new concept.

The team was made up of several girls who had never even played soccer before. Because most members of the team were not skilled players. The coach focused on two key metrics, mindset, and the ability to run and keep running. For the first several games. This ragtag team got crushed by their opponents. Each time they lost, they were emotionally broken. But their coach had a rule where he allowed them to be down in the dumps for only five minutes. They had five minutes to be in the gap. And then they needed to move on.

The gap of course is in the lack. There were no locker rooms. So after the games, the muddy and sweaty players and coaches would get on the bus and drive the hour or two back to principal. The coach would start a timer for five minutes. Okay. You’ve got five minutes to Salk. The bus would be dead silent for those five minutes.

As the players were devastated and depressed about getting destroyed in the game. After his five minute timer went off the coach set a time minute, 10 minute timer. On his watch. For the next 10 minutes, he had them talk about specific, good things that happened during the game. He has helped them focus on the positive. He solved the gap problem by going straight to the game. After the 10 minute timer, the coach would then set a 20 minute timer. During the next 20 minutes, he had every player point out a specific, good thing.

Another player did during the game. After the 20 minute timer went off the coach didn’t allow them to talk about that game again. He helped them measure themselves backward. Then after framing the experience as a gain, he let the past go. No more talk about the next game. Move forward to the next practice. During practices, the coach would also give them five minutes if they went into the gap. If one of the players was feeling down or got hurt or was in a funk, he’d send them away. Give them five minutes and then let them come back. When there was evidence that the gap was gone. By training these soccer players to stay in the game.

By focusing on the highest leverage, leverage metrics, they could control mindset and endurance. The team started winning. In fact, during the first half of the year, they lost all of their games. During the second half of the year, they won all of their games and they ended up winning the NCAA division two championships that year. They literally won the championship with a very simple strategy. They gave themselves five minutes in the gap and they shifted immediately to the game. I love calling this the 5, 10 20 principle: five minutes in the gap. Five minutes complaining. 10 minutes celebrating and then 20 minutes being very specific. So when we think about choosing our own adventure and we think about creating the life we want to live, it does seem a little bit daunting and it does feel. Kind of like altruistic or unrealistic.

What I thought would be really helpful for you. Is to look at these six activities that I want you to do. I just cannot emphasize enough how powerful your brain is, your brain is your best investment.

Your brain is your best asset. Because of our houses, burned heaven, forbid, or car, or we lose a job or whatever that is. If we have our brain. We can rebuild anything. We truly can. The first step is you have to know what you want.

And it’s interesting because I remember talking to a really good friend and I said, well, what do you want?

And he said, I don’t dream anymore. I don’t let myself dream. It was really sad to watch this person who I cared about so much. Just said it was just too painful to dream and not to have. To have the risk of not having those dreams. It’s been very interesting to watch this person. As I’ve shown the example of what it looks like to dream and to keep pursuing that dream, even when we don’t have any evidence that I could accomplish it. Because of watching me this dear friend of mine has created this incredible new love Talent. Drive wakes up every morning and pursues this and has found success over and over because they finally let themselves dream.

This is what I want for you. If you don’t even give yourself a chance, if you don’t even plant the seed, it’s not going to grow right. But if you plant the seed and it’s not growing well, then you can at least figure out, oh, maybe I need some different fertilizer or maybe I need to. Set a timer to weed it or to water it or whatever that is.

The second one is to dream and brainstorm what you want. So first of all, you have to know what you want. You have to want something. You have to just decide, I want, I want this. The second one is to dream and brainstorm what you want. So open your higher brain and look for all of the ideas and desires. What sounds fun to you? What sounds interesting? What sounds crazy? What sounds completely outlandish?

What sounds so wild? That someone like you could do something like that. Much of my story, I will never forget when I set out loud, I wanted to be an international quilting instructor. I thought that was the craziest thing ever. I have five kids. I lived in central Alberta, it was just so crazy to me, but let yourself. Desires like a flashlight that helps guide you along.

The third one is, write them down. Even if it sounds. ridiculous. In May, 2019, I did this exercise with Kim Klassen. Every day we wrote down the things that we wanted. But we wrote them as if they had already happened. Do you know how many of those things have happened now? I remember writing them down and I felt like the biggest ridiculous person ever, because I was like, there’s no way.. I wrote it as if it already happened. And so many of those have happened.

If you want some research on that, Dr. Joe Dispenza, there’s lots of neuroscience research about, The writing, writing as if it already happened. That’s like. Future podcasts. Touched on it before. All right. So now this is really interesting. I feel it in your body, what would it feel like to have what you want? Imagine it already happened. I just have been for the last two weeks.

This is week three. I have been going for a run, walking and jogging. I kind of decide what I want to do. It’s and I am waking up at six in the morning, which is not like me. but I’m changing. I’ve been reading this book. I should say I’ve been listening. To this book by Dr. Benjamin Hardy.

The science of intentional transformation by Benjamin Hardy. It is amazing. I love it so much.

In that book, he talked about. The power of going to your future self and the future self, then talking to you and telling you.

Like giving you that wisdom. But one of the things he talked about in this book was the importance of feeling. Like it already has happened. When you feel like it’s already happened, there’s like a level of gratitude in your body. It allows your body to believe that it’s possible. That change is possible. but I do want to just kind of. Fill you in on one of the strategies of creating permanent change. Being able to change yourself. No matter how old you are, how many times you failed, but using different strategies and techniques is going to be really, really helpful.

Now number five, watch out for the villain who doesn’t want this for you make a plan for what to do when he or she comes lurking. the villain is like that nasty voice in your head. it’s the voice that says you can’t do this. You failed too many times. Who do you think you are? you know, our family just doesn’t do these kinds of things.

we aren’t that great or don’t be pretentious or, whatever that voice is, that voice has lots of practice. And so when that voice comes, you’re like, Hmm. Sorry. Not interested.

The last one that I really want to emphasize is to cheer yourself on. Your life is going to keep on going. You are, and this is something he talks about in the book. It’s like you have this,

Your life is going to keep on going, but who are you going to let steer the ship? Are you going to let the nasty voice steer? Or are you going to be the one in charge? And are you going to be a nice mom? Who does the course correction? You know, if your child is having a temper tantrum or is not towing the line. You know, how are you going to step in as the nice mom to say, Hey, listen. This isn’t acceptable. This isn’t how we’re going to act.

With that adventure, you are allowed to have five minutes where you just would things you picked up. Let’s say you picked the wrong adventure. You picked. Them going to the. You know, and, and then choose your own adventure books. There’s, you know, a, do you go to the village?

And tell the sheriff that there’s trouble in the mines, or do you go in the mines and try to discover it yourself?

Or do you? Go through the trap door and try to. Solve it. So even in choosing your own adventure books, you always have a choice of what you want to do. And sometimes you mess up. But, that’s all part of the adventure and you learn you are going to. Any time you create new results in your life. There’s always going to be the trial. So give yourself, put five minutes on your timer and just let yourself complain and then do 10 minutes where you. Say all the things that were good and then 20 minutes. You can do this too. Five and 10, you can just decide how long you want to do this.

Then I want you to be very specific about what you specifically did. These tools are for your mind. Your mind is your best investment. And as a life coach, what I spend all of my time doing is helping you get into your mind, connecting your mind to your body, and then getting the feed fam back from your body.

Going back to your mind and like creating that really healthy loop. Where you can process all the negative emotions you can process all the positive emotions. You can make it. Life changing. habits and. To create that for your life. It’s so awesome. . Thanks for joining me. I can’t wait to hear back what you thought of this episode and for sure, keep rating this podcast. You can follow me on Instagram and I can give you all the help.

Take care everyone. Bye.

If you want more help with learning about your body and how it’s changing through menopause, perimenopause, through whatever it is, my program is focused on helping you truly become your own best expert. So as we go through June, uh, working on our menopause, perimenopause experiences. July, we’re focusing on becoming our own bestie July and August actually with our summertime, um, challenge.

And then in August, we’re really diving into how to lose the physical weight when you focus so much on the mental. I have an incredible program for that coming in August. So there’s so much to look forward to. You truly can make your own transformation and I love helping you. Find that inner knowledge and wisdom.

That’s just waiting for you to unlock so that you can create permanent change for yourself.