Motivate Me! with Lynette Renda

Come get schooled in feeling flat! See who has the key, learn easy techniques to reclaim your passion, and set the expectation that you will. MM563 - Saying Goodbye to Season 4! Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! Our final episode of Season 4! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Saying Goodbye to Season 4! So what’s really crazy is that I sat down to write a journal entry reflecting back on this season of Motivate Me! and all my brain wanted to do was talk about where I’m headed, instead of where I’ve been. I had to pause my journal entry to write out some goals on a separate sheet of paper because I was too excited and distracted. My goals are for the book I’ve been wanting to write about traveling the fifty states in ninety days interviewing people about passion. During that journal entry I got the idea to set a goal to have my first draft done by New Year’s Day. I broke down the word count and it’s totally achievable. As you know, I began to fall flat after completing our trip of traveling the fifty states in ninety days interviewing people about passion. First, I was flat because I wanted to write about the trip but I struggled to find my value, and next, it was the pandemic. It was January 2021 when my family gave me the kind of tough love that makes you work hard to better yourself. And so, I began doing that. I utilized everything I’d learned in my personal study, in my coaching program, and in the almost 450 interviews I’d done over the seasons of Motivate Me! I dug in deep and I was able to get my head and heart back in the game. I was able to reclaim my passion - which brought me back here to you. I’m going to share here the list of techniques that helped me. There’s an episode focused on each of these techniques here in Season 4. So if you would like details and examples of how to use them, you can check out the episode. When looking at these steps, know that you can do them in the order I did or in an order of your design. You can do all, or some, of them. The goal is for you to determine what you need and just head in that direction. I will say, if some of these seem out of your comfort zone or something you’ve never enjoyed, like reading or journaling, please just try it. When was the last time you read or wrote? My suggestions in the episodes of how to read or journal or stretch, etc. may be different from what you remember - or maybe you’re different these days? OK, so here’s a list of each of the steps I took to reclaim my passion. There are 29 steps total, some are less time consuming than others, so don’t be overwhelmed by this list. After incorporating these into my life, I was a new person. I feel like I sound like a commercial when I say this, but doing this changed me in only two weeks. Like, two weeks later I experienced euphoria! I was happy, I was excited - I had a clear direction! I had reclaimed my passion! 1. I made myself a priority 2. I took part in a fun 30-day challenge to start committing to something daily 3. I started stretching 4. I prepared mental and physical space where I could be a thinker 5. I rested my body and soul 6. I improved my diet 7. I meditated 8. I journaled with the intention to seek answers 9. I gathered creative materials to start to build my creative ideas 10. I read books and was an open-minded reader 11. I collected and organized my creative ideas 12. I opened myself up to feedback from others 13. I emotionally detached myself from the lives of others 14. I refused to feel selfish 15. I unplugged from technology 16. I got my blood pumping 17. I experimented with my craft (which for me is w...

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Create an Action Plan So, when I began the process of creating this podcast, I had some really important things to figure out: what will my show be about? What am I about? How will I use my new professional coaching certification to help people? I had learned the kind of information in my coaching program that you can’t just un-know, if you know what I mean? And I wanted to share it with people. I wanted to use it to help people. In Episode 558 of this season, I talk about how to uncover your life purpose. That was my first step in the creation process of this show. I needed to do a deep dive into who I was and discover what I believed my purpose to be before I could move forward. In Episode 558, I walk through that process with you, so you can do the same for yourself. I discovered that my purpose is to empower others. OK, I thought, how can I live in my purpose while using my coaching knowledge? One of the greatest points I learned in my certification process is that we all have the answers we need; we just need to learn how to uncover those answers. And that in order for people to buy-in to change, it has to be their idea. My job as a coach is not to roll into your life to tell you what you need to do; a coach’s job is to roll into your life to ask you the right questions that will help you determine what you need to do. Nobody knows you better than you. Nobody knows what’s best for you better than you. Especially the people in your life who try to tell you they do. Chances are those people are trying to control you or control the direction you take in life. Sometimes people do this with the best intentions, sometimes not, but either way, this is your decision to make. Getting back to when I started this podcast, it was with the intention to help the masses. I wanted to help people live a life that was more exciting or more meaningful than their current one. And, to me, that meant passion. I wanted to help people discover or rediscover their passion, because I felt so many of us were not living lives we were passion about. We were just existing. Since I knew that people have to make their own discoveries, I devised a Motivate Me! plan. I thought, if I interview guests who are living exciting and meaningful lives, living their passion, then our listeners can learn from them in a non-threatening way. Listeners could then apply what they’ve learned to their own lives in a way that works for them. One of my favorite examples of this is show guest Chris Nordhaus. Long story short, Chris was blindsided by a divorce. His passion had always been sport cars, and he had an old one in the garage he would tinker with. Chris, ultimately, recovered from his divorce by buying himself a brand new Camaro and joining a Camaro club. The greatest part about his story is how he rebuilt his life through an old, rekindled passion. In a short time, he made friends outside of those that were a part of his marriage, he was taking road trips around the country to places like Sturgis, South Dakota, and he became part of the board of the club. He leaned into his passion and he used his passion to recreate his life. Similarly, when show guest Karen Babb Newhall was going through her divorce, she taught herself how to train Border Collies to herd sheep. When she got good at it, she started a business training other dogs and she has since built a Border Collie rescue on her farm. I think these are fantastic examples of how someone going through a divorce can hear these stories, consider their own passion, and pull from the practices of both of these show guest...

How do you know when you are in “flow state”? What is “relaxed awareness” and what’s its connection to the creative process? Learn about all of this, as well as how to conjure up your flow and how it is connected to serving others. MM561- Find Your Flow State Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Find Your Flow State Wow. Flow State. Have you ever been so engrossed in what you’re doing that you’ve lost track of time? Have you ever been so involved in something that you’ve forgotten to eat? Has sleep ever become unimportant to you, and all you wanted was uninterrupted time with whatever it is you were working on? Maybe you were making a painting or a quilt or a webinar or remodeling a room? You may think that achieving flow state is a freak thing that only happens to the chosen, but I believe there are actionable steps you can take to encourage flow state. If you don’t know my story or what inspired this season of Motivate Me!, I suggest going back and listening to the first episode: Episode 532. Part of my story is that I’d been divorced from flow state for a few years, but then in an event that I discuss in Episode 532, I was inspired to aggressively seek myself again. To get my head and heart back in the game. Finding my flow is what brought me back to you. I became excited again. I started creating again. I wanted to help others again. And this is what I want for you. Before we move forward, let’s get a clear definition of what “flow state” is. Stick with me here, because gaining this new understanding was an enlightening experience for me, and I’m hoping it will be the same for you. Many of the guided meditations I do are preceded with spiritual teachings, something I really enjoy. One of my favorite meditations is by Mindvalley and its titled, “A Relaxing Guided Meditation to Boost Creativity.” (You can find it on YouTube.) It’s here that I heard a definition of “flow state” that resonated with me. The meditation guide said that to be in “flow” simply means to be in a state of relaxed awareness. OK. But, what does “relaxed awareness” mean? If “relaxed” means to “know without doubt,” and “awareness” means “knowing that you are not and never will be alone.” That “you are aware of the help and guidance of a higher power.” Then “relaxed awareness” means that you know without doubt that you are not alone, and you are aware that you’re being guided by a higher power. This is a pretty deep definition. But, as a writer, I have to tell you that I’ve experienced this. Writers are always looking to find solutions when writing stories. How best to show their audience without directly telling them? How best to move the plot forward? How best to describe characters indirectly without just listing details? It’s much more interesting to find out that a character has an addiction when the writer describes the bottle of pills that fell out of her purse, rather than simply stating it. I have sat back in my chair while writing or jumped in the shower or taken a walk to get distance from my work, so the answer would “come to me.” It may not be not right away, but the answer always comes… sometimes even in my sleep. I have always believed that these answers come from a higher power, and I know I’m not alone in this. So the idea of relaxed awareness and its definition in the meditation track struck me because it’s an understanding I have, and have had, for some time. Relaxed awareness is faith in the creative process, simply put. Have you ever felt an energy shift when you’re working on something? An excitement and a knowing that everything will work out the way it’s meant to?

In this episode you will come to understand the meaning of collaboration, and you’ll learn it’s importance to our creative lives! You will explore the different ways you can work together with others, and you’ll receive four easy ideas on how to seek out collaborative partners. MM560 - Embrace Collaboration Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Embrace Collaboration First let’s discuss what collaboration is, then we’ll explore why it’s important in our creative lives, the different ways in which we can collaborate, and where we can seek to find it. I can only speak for myself and my husband when I say that we have had a history of being stingy with our creative and entrepreneurial plans and ideas. Have you been this way? We were always very guarded about sharing our ideas with other people and completely closed to combining forces with anyone. We have had business ideas in the past, product ideas, book ideas, website community ideas, this podcast, and more. Now trust me when I say, I believe we need to be very smart about how we do this. We need to make guidelines and boundaries, some in our own minds, some verbally with others, and some things need to be established legally on paper. My goal in what I would like to speak with you about today is really just the opening up of your mind to the idea of collaboration. To collaborate with others simply means to work together on a goal or project. When I think of the term collaboration, the arts are the first to come to mind, especially musicians. My nephew is a musician and producer out in Los Angeles and nothing is more free or open than the jam sessions he has with his peers. He’s living in a house with five other artists, and he has a white board set up in the house with a schedule for their collaboration times. They have writing sessions, brainstorming sessions on music and the business end, they have jam sessions. All they want to do is push and support each other and make great music. It’s pretty spectacular. They’re living their dream and striving to make it in their industry. Think about all the famous musical collaborations of our time. We wouldn’t have had David Bowie and Mick Jagger’s, “Dancing in the Street,” or The Beatles and Eric Clapton’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” - or so many other amazing songs - without collaboration. Now here’s the thing about working with other people: We can only approach projects with our personal perspective that stems from our personal experiences and skills. Let’s say I want to start a craft business. I want to get a table at the local market and sell my crafts. OK, great. I can make a really great candle. The quality and color and scent is awesome! But I’m limited. I’m limited in my abilities to take my candle idea any bigger than presenting them in some type of glass container - as pretty as I may be able to make them look, I don’t have the tools or knowledge to do more. But I have a friend who says, “Oh, wow. Your candles are great, I could cut and stain wood and make iron candle holders for them, would you be interested in combining forces?” The idea of working together may make you nervous. But you think about it and you decide to combine forces. Next thing you know, another friend loves what you’re doing, and this friend is computer savvy, something you are definitely not, and not something your other friend has no time for. This person offers to set up an Etsy account and says they’ll handle posting pictures of the products, they’ll handle the processing of the orders, the packing, and the shipping. Wow. You just started a whole store,

Uncover what is preventing you from taking big action, learn the value of small steps, differentiate between the journey and the outcome, and determine what is in you to do! MM559- Take a Big Action Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Take a Big Action So here we are in Season 4 of Motivate Me! working our way back from being flat together, getting our heads and hearts back in the game of life. Some of us have been deeply impacted by the chaos of these times. My head has been swimming, too. So many of us have been sick, so many of us have long lasting effects from being sick. So many of us have lost loved ones or jobs or just the motivation to engage in life. So many of us are living in fear, worried about falling ill or worried about getting the vaccine, or not to get the vaccine, or worried about if other people have gotten the vaccine, or not. And if you were already traveling through something and not feeling like yourself before all this, like me, then all of this just dragged you under deeper. Here is my general rule of thought in all things “life” - I believe that I’m here on this planet to experience all of life, to feel all that life has to offer: the love, the fear, the change, the challenges, the joy, the confusion… all of it. And I may not always know the direction I should be heading in my life, but I do know that even that not knowing, that the wait-time, the pauses in my life that I may feel stuck in, it is all meaningful, it is all powerful, and it is all meant for me. So, while I look around and cannot believe the state of our world and country right now, even though it scares the crap out of me and I fear for what the world will be like for my new grandson, I know that sitting idle and wasting the time I have here is not what I am meant to do. And I know that it is my responsibility to pull myself out of this because that action is part of what I am meant to experience. So, if you’re with me on this, if you’re ready to take charge of what you can control, because let’s face it there’s a lot out of our control right now, then I suggest you visit each of the episodes we’ve shared with you so far this season because each of the small steps I’ve taken have gotten me to this episode: Take a Big Action. In Episode 532, the first of this season, I share with you the details of how I’d fallen flat, about who and what inspired me to get my head and heart back in the game. All of this is what lead me back to you, because my passion, my calling, my person wants and knows that my purpose is to help you get your head and heart back in the game. And, Motivate Me! Friends, I am telling you, you can bounce back so quickly and it will feel incredible! I don’t want to sound like a fortune cookie, but I mean it when I always say that we are only a decision away from changing our lives. Whether you want to create art, lose weight, get in a relationship, travel, learn a new skill. It’s ridiculous how quickly we can change our lives. How quickly we can expand our person through new experiences and new people. If you’re home and unhappy, make the decision to change: add something new to your life or get rid of something old. I am pretty sure you know exactly what you need to do. Start small with this change. I did. And then keep doing what you’re doing. Enjoy what you’re doing. And when you feel the excitement come to you, ride that wave, and don’t be afraid to go big. This is what happened to me. I started doing all the steps I’ve included in this season. I was aggressively seeking myself, I had allowed myself the opportunity to become anything,

Have you been plagued with the question, “What is my life purpose”? Get your answers here in six easy steps! And bonus, find out what differentiates you from others who have the same purpose. MM558- Uncover Your Life Purpose Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Uncover Your Life Purpose I am really excited to talk to you about today’s topic, Life Purpose. Life purpose is kind of a controversial topic. People have their own ideas about what exactly life purpose means, if it’s a real thing, or not; if it matters if you “achieve” it over your lifetime, or not. To me, the best part about the idea of a life purpose is that a) You get to a place in your own life and mind where your thinking is heightened enough to start questioning the idea “Why am I here?” And b) You go on your own journey of discovery, seeking knowledge about it. And that journey is a long one. It’s not about getting one person’s opinion and believing it, it’s about getting tid bits of information over time and piecing them together in a way that makes sense for you. Because similar to your life purpose, your discoveries and ideas about it are personal to you. Understanding what life purpose is and discovering your own is an intimate process. I don’t know in which stage of this process you’re in currently, but if you’re like me, you hit a place or will hit a place in your search for purpose where you feel like all you’ve done is random and purposeless. That either you’ve bounced around and done many things and none seem connected and you don’t feel like you’ve arrived anywhere, or you feel like you’ve arrived somewhere, but it’s not the right where. I want to share an activity with you that I created to help me figure out my direction and my purpose. I had completed a coaching program and was starting my podcast - but I needed to figure out what my podcast would be about? How could I help the most people with the amazing information and tools I had learned? Who did I want to help? What mattered most to me? What am I about? So here are the six steps I took to figure all of this out. (I suggest pausing this episode as we move along and doing these steps with me, but feel free to revisit and revise your answers over the next few weeks. It took me three weeks of revisiting this process to find the answer I was looking for. And before doing this, I just could not see any of what I found here.) Step One: I’d like you to make a list of all the jobs you’ve had in your life. For me, that included: working at a pizzeria, at a MacDonald’s, at a Macy’s, at a nuclear power plant, for an accountant, teaching high school English, running a karaoke business, being a Girl Scout Troop Leader, and more. So, Step 1, just list all the jobs you’ve had. (Feel free to pause here.) Step Two: Look at your list of all the jobs you’ve had and circle the ones you enjoyed most. The ones that made you feel a certain kind of way. (When I was doing this, I remember looking at my list and feeling almost a sense of shame in how disconnected all my jobs seemed. I had gone to school to be a nail technician; I had gotten my real estate license… I look back now and see that I didn’t even put those on my list!) So, circle the jobs you enjoyed most. Step Three: Of the jobs you circled, write a WHY sentence for each. Why did you circle them? Why are they important to you? What about them made you feel a certain kind of way? Here are the three jobs I enjoyed most from my long list, and here are my WHYs: Karaoke Host - I enjoyed my job as a karaoke host because I could help people make friends and find belonging,

Get ready to identify your fears, find out the key ingredient to facing them, and take actionable steps to move through them. We got this and we can do it together! MM557 - Battle Fear - Nix Excuses Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Battle Fear - Nix Excuses My goal today is to give you actionable steps that will help you identify your fears, control them, and dispel them, so you can get out of your head and into achieving your goals. Today’s episode is chock full of information. For the time being, kick back and listen in. After you do, you can head over to motivatemepodcast.com where all of this information is in print for you in the show notes. Just click on this episode and the show notes will appear. So, fear… I understand fear. The night before the crew I’d hired came to town, I was having dinner with my daughter. She had come to spend time with me before I ventured out on my ninety-day trip to interview people in each of the fifty states about passion. I’m pretty sure I looked like a crazed woman during our meal. I was unexpectedly overwhelmed with fear. I’m sure it was the feelings I had of not wanting to leave my home, my husband, my daughter, and my new puppy. I’m sure it was because I was going to be gone for a long time. I’m sure it was because I was taking a completely blind step off of a very high dive. But mid bite of I don’t even remember what, I just started to shake. The kind of shake that makes your hands tremble and your face quiver. And tears just started to stream from my eyes. Now, my daughter was 24-years-old, she wasn’t a young child, but she didn’t know what was happening, and it was apparent that my fear was scaring her. I remember her saying, “Oh my God, Mom.” Like, what’s going on? So on top of what I was feeling, I needed to find a way to comfort her. I looked at her with calm and honesty and napkins in my hand, and I said, “Mackenzie, don’t worry, I’m fine. What you’re seeing is fear. Sometimes fear can affect us physically. I’m sorry, I don’t want to scare you. I’m going to be fine.” And after a pause that included deep breaths and nose-blowing, I told her, “This is not a bad thing, and it’s not a bad thing for you to see, because you’re going to watch me push through this.” And she did. Whew. I get emotional just thinking about this. Now, my trip is an extreme example in many people’s standards, but any of us can have a similar reaction to any type of challenge we face. Especially, I feel, when these challenges are self-induced. I mean, did I HAVE to put myself through this? No, I could have very easily stayed in my comfort zone. In any case, the first thing we have to do is acknowledge our fear - especially if we’re allowing it to hold us back from achieving our dreams or goals. Many of us make excuses for why we’re not doing what we’d really like to do, instead of identifying it for what it is: we’re freaking afraid. We’re afraid we’ll fail. We’re afraid of what others will think about us. We’re afraid we’re not smart or talented enough. We’re afraid we’re not young, pretty, or fit enough. We’re afraid we’ll look dumb, etc. It’s important to know that the reason we stay inside our comfort zones all stem from our ego. Our ego communicates with us through our internal dialogue and uses the fear we create to control our actions. Two previous episodes come to mind for me when I think about the ego, so if you’d like to hear more on that, you can check out Episode 555, “Say No to Negativity” and Episode 550, “Experiment with Your Craft.” But the bottom line is that we can control the ego and the mind.

Description: Too often we allow feelings of perfectionism to stunt our progress. Find out if you’re a perfectionist, learn why, and see how it’s holding you back. Next step: complete the Push through Perfectionism Activity to understand that you win the majority of the time - even when you feel far from perfect! MM556 - Bail on Perfectionism Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Bail on Perfectionism Too often we allow the idea of perfectionism to hold us back. We let it stop us from attempting something new, and we let it stop us from creating. Let me give you some examples. For starters, I never saw myself as a perfectionist but my husband and daughter started pointing out some of the ways I do things differently than them. For example, the way I cut vegetables! My husband used to be a line cook for Perkins, so breakfast at our house can be pretty spectacular. Since I’m his prep cook, I start cutting the vegetables for our omelets and home fries before he gets to the kitchen. I, basically, got kicked out of the kitchen because I take “too much time” cutting the peppers, onions, and mushrooms because I try to make them all the same size. Isn’t that what you need to do so they cook evenly? My husband comes barreling into the kitchen and he cuts everything in the same haphazard way he folds his laundry or makes a ham sandwich. That’s something I can never understand: throwing all the ham into the middle of the bread in one big lump. You can bet that my ham is dispersed evenly throughout the whole sandwich. I will tell you something, though, his tastes better! My daughter is similar to my husband, she’ll approach a project and boom! it’s done. And I’m on the other side of the room not having even started yet because I’m feeling anxious about it not coming out right. Of not having exactly what I need to do the job. I, literally, write with mechanical pencils because I don’t like seeing things crossed out on my paper. Even though I’m only writing notes or journaling. Pen is a big commitment, you know what I mean? But here’s the thing: If we don’t act on an idea in the first five minutes from the creation of it, chances are we never will. And in order to act this quickly, we have to get past our feelings of perfectionism. When I finished my undergraduate degree in English and Education, even after all of my student-teaching experiences, I didn’t feel ready to be in the classroom. I didn’t feel educated enough. I felt imposter syndrome, I felt like maybe if I had a master’s degree I would be better prepared. My husband’s like, “What do you need a master’s for, you just got your teaching degree, that’s what it’s for?” I said, “I don’t know, I don’t feel ready!” Our perfectionism is driven by fear. Fear that we won’t be smart enough, talented enough, attractive enough, perfect enough. We have to determine a jumping off point. We have to decide to take that leap of faith. We have to accept the fact that we will be nervous, that we may feel like a fake or a fraud, and that once we do get started, we may need to pivot or edit. But if we don’t act at all because we are too scared of not being good enough, or because we never feel ready, we stay stagnant and risk becoming bitter and resentful. I really had to push past these feelings when I got the idea to travel the fifty states in ninety days interviewing people about their passion. I did act in the first five minutes by sending a message to someone I knew to see if she’d be interested in accompanying me on a trip like this as my assistant. But here I was a new podcaster and new professional coach,

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Say No to Negativity Nothing is more detrimental to our goals and our mental health than negativity. And in order to make change in our lives, we can’t allow naysayers and emotional drainers and doubters to dissuade us or invade us. Before we get started today, let’s talk about what negativity is and where we often see it. The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of negativity is “the expression of criticism of or pessimism about something.” First let’s talk about a few obvious places we can easily spot negativity, and then we’ll talk about why it keeps showing up in our lives. First: The Internet As much as I love the Internet, it’s an absolute breeding ground for negativity. - People come on intentionally to antagonize others - and sometimes even to “troll,” as they say, which means to post inflammatory statements just to watch people fight - People are cruel to each other - they say things to people they probably would not say in person (Or at least I hope they wouldn’t!) - People judge each other and their opinions or actions harshly (without even knowing details to a person’s story) - People log on to “rant” or “vent” (I can tell you right now, if a post starts with either of these words, I scroll right on by - there is no value in that for me?) Second: Work As much as you may love your coworkers, work can become a feeding frenzy for negativity. - People hone in on what’s wrong, instead of finding solutions because then they can play the victim - People like to complain because, as they say, “misery loves company” - People show their value under the guise of dissatisfaction (“Look at everything they have me doing!”) - People dissuade each other because they don’t want others to become more successful than them Third: Loved Ones The attitudes and opinions of close friends and family carry the most weight for us and their negativity impacts not only our actions but our belief in self. - They dump their emotions on us, sometimes often and often abruptly - We feel a sense of responsibility for their happiness - They try to control us through fear - to keep us safe - They cause us to doubt - to keep us from being more successful than them - because our success will make them feel like less These are just a few examples, but I’m sure it’s easy to identify the negative situations and people in your life. My question to you is: Why does this negativity keep showing up for you? Here is my guess: The Law of Attraction dictates that whatever we put out into the world comes back to us multiplied. If this is so, could you just be getting back to you the negativity you yourself are putting out into the world? Maybe you’re thinking right now that this is impossible because you are a kind, solutions-based, non-gossipy kinda gal. But can I ask you to look one more place? A place where only you inhabit? A place where all things you stem? How is your internal dialogue? Are you one of those people who encourages and supports others? Someone whose heart hurts when someone you know can’t see their own worth, yet you beat yourself up every chance you get? What names do you call yourself when you’re frustrated with your own actions, when you had cookies the same day you started your diet, when you made a mistake at work,

Being vulnerable can build confidence and clarity, even when the outcome can be seen as disappointing. Touch base with your passion here, see how you can redirect it, if that’s what you need to take a more vulnerable approach! MM554 - Seek out Spaces Where You can be Vulnerable Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Seek out Spaces Where You can be Vulnerable If you’re joining us for the first time this season, welcome, new Motivate Me! Friend! Our goal at Motivate Me! is to inspire you to live a life that’s more exciting and/or more meaningful. We do this in Seasons 1-3 by interviewing people who are living passionate lives, so you can steal some of their tricks to apply to your world. But here, in Season 4, we are sharing tips, tricks, and techniques that will help you reconnect with your passion or redirect your passion so you can get your head and heart back in the game. There are many ways we can connect with our passion. Sometimes it’s through our careers but often times it’s not. Sometimes it’s something we make money at, but that’s not always the case either. Passions are so unique to us. You may be into creating art through paintings, sculptor, music, writing, interior design, food, or photography. Or you may be driven to help people or spread joy or be an advocate for the under-privileged or the under-represented. Your passion might be about the environment, horticulture, animals, or even architecture or teaching or textiles. The list is truly endless. Can you see how exciting it would be to be part of the world of politics or in the Olympic arena or behind the scenes in the fashion? I find all of it exciting! That’s why my passion is exploring all of this with all of you. Over the past few years and through the pandemic, I fell away from my passion for a time. It was the prodding of some loved ones that motivated me to aggressively seek myself again, and the steps I took to reconnect with myself is what I’m sharing with you here in Season 4 of Motivate Me!. This is the 23rd episode of this season, and it’s during this part of my journey that I decided I wanted to be more open, more honest, more vulnerable. I think because I’m a positive person people think I don’t have struggles, I assure you I do. We all do. It was scary to be open in this way but it was also exciting. One of the ways I decided to put get out of my comfort zone was to share my intentions and my greatest struggle with a group of people in a small private Facebook group. I was very honest about what I was trying to accomplish with my podcast and I was ver honest about what I feel is my greatest struggle, which is finding my value. How do we know if what we find important will be valuable to others? And don’t we need to feel like what we’re doing is important to people in order to push through, in order to put our hearts into something, in order to put our hearts on paper or out onto the airwaves? I kept the post simple, but it was heartfelt and direct. And I subscribed to the idea that this post would help me become a more transparent person, that it would help me articulate my goals, and it would help me put my intentions out to the universe. Now, I want to make sure I’m clear about this: just because we decide to be more open as people and put ourselves out to the world, people are not obligated to respond to us in the manner we seek. So if you choose to do this, know that with this comes risk. Here’s what happened for me: I shared the post and while I waited for responses, I refocused on the idea that the sharing of my doubts were the important part here.

We talk about so many great things here: about where you can get information that will help you discover a passion or goal, about the power of having the right materials, about universal materials we all need on our creative quest, and about how to acquire materials on a low budget - and who doesn’t want that? MM - 553 - Get More Materials Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Get More Materials Episode 542 talks all about gathering the necessary materials - materials that will help rev your creative engine and reconnect you with your passion. If you haven’t listened to Episode 542, I think it’s a great idea, especially if you’re someone who’s in search of their passion or in search of a goal to achieve. Because in this stage of my process, I knew I was searching for something but I had no desires. So maybe Episode 542 can help you, too. The general idea of gathering your materials in the first place was to kickstart your exploration process. It was to get you to play again, play with the materials that speak to you. Now, I wonder when you reached out to gather materials, did you, like me, have some around your home that you could start to play with? Did you have a good idea where those materials were, and you went over and just picked them up again? I knew were mine were because I had a sense of guilt every time I saw them, because I knew I should be using them, and I wasn’t. My materials are writerly things. I knew exactly where I kept my blank notebooks and favorite pencils, so I started this process by picking up one little, one-subject notebook. I grabbed one pencil. And that is how this began. Very quickly, though, I felt myself being pulled in many creative directions when I sat down to write: I wanted to collect notes on what I’d been reading, but I also had begun writing non-fiction and journaling. And I wanted to write down other writing or business ideas I was having so they didn’t distract me, so I would finish things I was currently working on. All of this began to overwhelm my little notebook, so I went back into the cabinet and pulled out five more one-subject notebooks. I went back to the drawer and pulled out a black marker. I labeled each notebook by subject making sure to have one about my “50 States in 90 Days” book that I’m writing and one about this journey I am taking with you: “Coming Back from Flat.” I had all the notebooks labeled and I was filling pages in each one, and you know what happened? So many ideas began to flow that I needed better organization, and I wanted to collect all of my ideas in one place because I know that this way they would have more weight. That they would have a better chance of materializing. So I went back into the cabinet. This time, I pulled out a brand new, fat binder and a brand new package of dividers with tabs, it was like they had been there waiting for me. Then I grabbled a stack of lined paper, my colored markers, and my clipboard. I labeled the tabs with the colorful markers and began ripping the pages from the notebooks and filing them into the binder - not caring that the notebook pages are smaller than the looseleaf ones. Then I put a stack of paper on the clipboard and I began to write. If I needed to, I added a note to a page already started in the binder, or if I needed to, I’d start a new page on my clipboard. Everything got dated and everything got filed. Before long, I ordered more looseleaf paper, a ten-pack of legal pads, some more pencils, and a few more books to read. The more I used my materials, the more I needed them. Let me say that again: The more I used my materials,

Connecting with our people is vital to the human psyche. The question is: How can we nurture this connection without losing ourselves? How can we use this connection to fill us instead of drain us? Great ideas and examples of exactly how to do this in this episode! MM552 - Connect with Your People Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Connect with Your People Today we’re going to talk about the importance of connecting with your people and its role in helping you reclaim your passion. How doing this can help you get your head and heart back in the game! First, let’s talk about why we should connect with our people, and then we’ll talk about how. Every action we take in life is done out of either fear or love. Fear is what holds us back and love is what propels us forward. Connecting with friends and family is all about love and it serves multiple purposes. For one, it clears our conscience. It clears our conscience because we know that our friends and family are doing well, because they know we care, because we are pulling our weight in our relationships. It keeps us grounded, and it’s good for our soul because caring about others is a form of service. We have to have a clear conscience if we’re trying to achieve our own goals. I don’t know about you, but if something or someone’s on my mind, I can’t focus to meditate or read or write or create anything. However, when I sit down with a clear mind and feel good that I put effort into my relationships, I’m much more creative and productive. It’s similar to when we talked in another episode about how much easier it is to focus on our wants and needs when our other responsibilities have been met, like how when the house is clean, the family is fed, and the day job is in order. Now, there’s two types of relationships we’re reaching out to when we connect with our people: one is those people who fill us with all the feel-good hormones, and the other is those that drain us. The thing is, sometimes we have relationships that are draining and we aren’t willing to walk away from them. That’s fine, I’m not here to lecture you on your relationships. I’m here to say that you need to do whatever it takes for you to free up your headspace. For many of us this means making sure we’re playing our part in our relationships. And if some of these people are the kind that bring you down, that’s fine, just mentally prepare yourself for those people and know that you need to keep an emotional distance. It’s not that you don’t care about them, it’s that you don’t allow them to consume you. Chances are, these are the relationships you most need to nurture in order to keep a clear mind. Either way, back to you! So, if you’ve been following our steps for Season 4, you’ve been journaling and writing and playing with your craft. You’ve gathered some materials that will help you explore your passions more, and you’ve been making yourself a priority. That’s awesome, and I really hope you’ve been working on this for yourself. Now it’s time to take some of that time and reinvest it in your relationships because doing so will refill you. The quandary is: How do I make time for everyone and everything in my life and still have time and energy leftover for me? Well, here’s a list of some simple ways you can stay connected to your people, ways that have a big impact but don’t create a big time commitment for you or them. Please don’t get me wrong, there are times when we can sit on the phone or FaceTime with friends and family, but there are also ways we can achieve a similar outcome without depleting our precious personal time.

Revisit what it means to feel “flat. Be inspired to take a small action in a direction that will get you loving your life again. Get ideas on actions you may find inspirational! This week’s “truth talk” - at the end of the show - is a personal one. Lynette knows that together, we can find passion in life again. MM551- Take a Small Action Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Take a Small Action Somebody asked me recently what it means to feel flat; what it means to “come back from flat”? So before we talk today about taking a small action, I think we should clarify our goal. If you’re new to Season 4 of Motivate Me!, I suggest listening to the first episode of the season, Episode 532, where I go into detail about my personal journey into and out of feeling flat. But for right now, here’s the nut shell version: Feeling flat simply means you’ve lost your verve or your passion for engaging in life and for being creative. That you’re not moving forward in life, you’ve stopped striving for something you used to really desire, you’re not taking part in things that previously made your life more exciting or more meaningful. That your head and heart are just not in the game. I fell flat after traveling the fifty states in ninety days interviewing people about their passion. Once I got all the interviews from the trip edited and posted on my podcast and on YouTube, and my responsibilities for the trip were over, I crashed. Not because I wanted to but because I was unclear of my next moves, so I began to wait it out, and during that, I allowed life to swallow me up. That’s kind of it. But then the pandemic and quarantine came and I fell further, which is what I go into more detail about in Episode 532. But the outcome was that I drew a line in the sand and made the decision, because that’s all it is a simple decision, to reconnect with myself and my passion for life again. And I began to aggressively seek myself again. The secret to all of this is just to make an intentional effort. The steps I took to do this are what we are sharing with you all through this season. It’s the tips, tricks, and techniques I used to get my head and heart back in the game. To get back to being excited about something again. To get back to creating. I knew what I needed to do, so I just got back at it, and these are things anyone can do, that’s why I’m sharing them. All we need to do is make the decision. Life can change so quickly for the better and the worse. Have you ever had an experience where you met a new person and your whole perspective on life changed? Whether it was a romantic partner or a new friend, but you just felt so amazing about yourself and about what life now had to offer? Or have you ever started something new and it just opened up a whole world you didn’t know about? Like for example, I was just on the International Volunteer Headquarters’ website where you can select a country and get involved in helping their community, whether it’s teaching or building or community projects. The United States has opportunities on there too. Imagine how exciting getting involved in something like that could be? The people you would add to your life, the new experiences you would have. It’s like when we step out, the world opens new wings up to us. I experienced something similar to this when I joined a new exercise program and again when I started taking classes at the community college. Life shifts like this for us when we take small actions and it’s exciting and fun and illuminating, and it moves us in our next direction. Did you have desires that you know you’ve detached from?

Here’s an example: You’re a great writer but are having trouble getting that novel published! Have you ever thought that maybe non-fiction or essay writing would be a better fit for you? Have you ever thought about sharing your love for writing in other ways, such as becoming a teacher or translator? All sorts of great ideas for you here! MM - 550 - Experiment with Your Craft Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Experiment with Your Craft I’d like to start off this episode with a favorite quote, it’s a Buddhist proverb that says: “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” Some people feel proverbs have one specific meaning, but that’s not the way I look at it. I feel they’re like songs and poetry: we connect to them in our personal way, and our interpretation of them changes over time as we evolve. Here’s what I mean, my first experience with this proverb was when I was in college to become a teacher. As a teen, I was much more focused on my social life than school, so I got off to a slow academic start, and I didn’t go to college until I was in my 30s. So when I first saw this quote, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears,” I felt like it was speaking to me. At that time, I took it to mean that until a person (the student) is ready to learn, the teacher is just not visible. And no matter how hard or long the teacher tries to reach the student, until the student is ready, the teacher might as well be trying to get a tangible hold on something like smoke or water. It’s impossible. On the other hand, when the student is ready to learn, the student will seek out the teacher, and they’ll go to great lengths to do their learning. Which is what I did when I was ready. From my first year of teaching high school English on, this quote has always had a place in my classroom. Of course, the irony is that I’d gone from being the blind student to the teacher who was now trying to grasp in my students what isn’t, necessarily, tangible. What I did do is try to help my students see what I couldn’t at their age, and I did that by enlisting them in my process. The reality is, I learned more from my students than they did from me, which is the second experience I had with this proverb. I came to understand that we’re all students and we’re all teachers. I let them know that I was learning from them, and in doing that, I empowered all of us. My third and final experience with this proverb is its connection to the ego, that to be an authentic student, one must shed their ego. And that’s a really humble, vulnerable, and daring place to be! I’ve spoken about ego on the show many times before. Ego is what controls our feelings and inspires our action or inaction. It’s our mind where all that thinking and overthinking comes from. The ego’s intention is to keep us safe and keep us comfortable, but it does that through keeping us afraid. Afraid of failure, afraid of looking dumb or silly, afraid of physical harm, afraid of risk. Our ego is what keeps us inside our comfort zone. So what does all this have to do with experimenting with our craft? We have to allow ourselves to become the vulnerable student again. We have to give ourselves the freedom to “try things on for size.” We need to broaden our perspective: Am I in the right niche of what I’m doing now, or can I use what I’m good at in an entirely different field? You may be someone who’s already aligned with your passion, or you may be someone who’s trying to figure out what your talent is. Either way, how will a pastry chef know if he should be making and decorating cakes unless he experiments?

When your whole body is activated you get excited about life! You get inspired and motivated to participate in the world! Connect with what sets you most on fire, get suggestions on how to activate that, and receive tips on how to get your loved ones on board when they fall short of seeing what is important to you in this process. MM549 - Get Your Blood Pumping Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Get Your Blood Pumping I have a disclaimer for today’s show: This episode is not a lecture on the benefits of exercise! And I have to tell you, of all the tips, tricks, and techniques I used to get my head and heart back in the game when I fell flat, this technique is one of my absolute favorites. And I think it’s one that most of us just don’t do enough. I’ve come to understand that from a very early age, freedom has been a core value of mine. The day I got my driver’s license remains one of my most favorite days of all time. I was, literally, hooting and hollering for ten straight minutes at the top of my lungs on my first solo drive. Another example of when I felt deliciously free was when I moved from New Jersey to California eight days after graduating high school. I only knew one person who lived there, and I knew before I went that two months after I got there, he’d have to go out to sea for six months. But, I wasn’t scared by this, I was excited by it! Then there’s our podcast tour where we traveled the fifty states in ninety days interviewing people about passion. I’ll tell you something about that, I did feel fear before I headed out on that bad boy trip, lots of fear. But once I hit the open road, it was like my heart split open and I experienced actual bliss. I felt so alive. I felt so free! Can you feel my blood pumping in these examples? Now, here’s the thing, we can’t do one thing, no matter how big it is, and ride that out for the rest of our lives. If we don’t continuously nurture this side of ourselves, we will continuously lose ourselves, and we disengage from the world, our passions, and joy. In this way, it is like diet and exercise, this is another way we sometimes “let ourselves go.” We need to do things that excite us often, and when we’re off, we need to recalibrate. So, let’s talk today about ways we can get our blood pumping again because this will increase your motivation, ignite your excitement about life, make you more creative, and improve your mood - and who doesn’t want all that!? And after I share my list of ideas with you, I will share a struggle I’ve been having within my marriage about exactly this. OK… so if you want to feel great but you’re short on ideas on how to push yourself into that, here’s a list of SOME things to consider: -get in the sun - for some vitamin D -connect with nature - especially walking barefoot in the dirt -take a risk - call that guy, invest in that stock, take that trip -play like a kid - get on your bike (I’m in love with my electric bike), paint with your fingers, role play -tire out your body - go for a hike, do yardwork, clean your basement -meditate - you know I’m a fan! It can be exciting! -watch a scary movie - not my favorite, but it will get your blood pumping -listen to music - make different playlists: one for stretching, one for outdoors, one for cleaning, one for sexy time -be curious - learn all the things! Why is NJ the only state where people can’t pump their own gas? How was the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup really invented? What’s Pink’s real name? -visit new places - go on an adventure, explore, try new foods, take pictures

We have the power to unlock the secret to childhood creativity and it is SO simple. Learn how to step away from the world, how to reinvigorate your mind, and how to find you again. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Unplug to Recharge Listen, it’s no secret that in today’s society many people are trying to mimic the highlight reel they see of the lives others share on social media. And, it’s no secret that we pick up our phones twice as much as we think we do. The NY Post estimates that we pick our phones up eighty times a day, which is every twelve minutes. I’ve seen other reports that say that number is even higher. For the record, I’m a cell-phone, Internet, social media, people-loving person myself who really enjoys staying connected with friends and family online. And I’m curious and I love to watch all different kinds of videos: true crimes, inspirational, historical, etc.… all the things. I get “sucked down rabbit holes” all the time, as they say. If you’re not familiar, getting “sucked down a rabbit hole” looks like this: You think to yourself, “Oh, Billie Eilish has a new song out!” So you search YouTube, play the new song, then play three of her other videos, then watch videos about her life. Then you decide to search for footage about her and her brother recording their first album in their bedroom, which leads you to search to see if her brother has an album of his own. Yep, he does! So you flip through all his songs on the app Spotify. Then you go to Billie’s Instagram to see how her new album is being received and get sucked into reading pages of comments by her once adoring fans who are bashing her because they think she’s doing something called “queer-baiting” - because she titled one of her posts, “I like girls.” Now her fans think she’s just baiting a specific fan group in order to build her base. On one hand, all this searching and watching was interesting and entertaining, it was also informative because “queer baiting” is new to me. On the other hand, I lost an hour of my life, and I walked away feeling horrible. I couldn’t stop reading the posts, one after the other, bashing Billie. And I thought, “Wow, fans! Where’s your loyalty?” Shouldn’t fans show support until they at least know what they’re bashing? Isn’t Billie allowed to be human? I understand what they’re upset at, but they’re making assumptions and they’re judging - judging harshly - and I’m not about it. It honestly made me super sad, it’s still resonating with me. Like, I hope Billie Eilish is OK right now. I hope people who’ve been through this reach out to her. In the rabbit hole, I did see that she’s become friends with Justin Bieber, so maybe him or Pink or Gaga or Britney or Lindsay or anyone else who’s been put on the pedestal to be ripped down is giving her perspective. I had a whole conversation about it with my husband because this is one of the ways celebrities end up in rehabs. Billie Eilish has a strong support system, I just hope it’s enough to get her through this, because she’s 19-years-old and that’s a crazy place to be in all of this. Anyway, do you see how invested we can get when we get sucked down the rabbit hole? How much energy we put into things that have nothing to do with us, things we have no control over? Now, I’m not saying to never explore random things and people online. Sometimes we do this as a family, and we learn new things about people, their life, their craft. I just found out some pretty interesting things about Louis Armstrong’s life! I’m just saying that sometimes we need to unplug from it all to recharge who we are,

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Say Goodbye to Feeling Selfish This topic has evolved for me over time. What does “say goodbye to feeling selfish” mean? At first glance, we probably think about how hard it is to let go of our daily responsibilities just long enough to embrace a personal interest, but is that it? Is that all there is to feeling selfish and is it that easy to just let go? I mean, where did the idea that we’re selfish begin for us? We’re not born believing we’re selfish human beings. This goes deeper than that. Really deep. And, if we feel like at our core we are truly selfish, how will we ever be able to dedicate the time, space, and energy we need to create, to evolve, to flourish, to deeply love? How will we ever feel worthy of success or abundance if we are heavily rooted in the belief that we don’t deserve these things because we’re not good enough? I think the fundamental idea we need to prove to ourselves first is that we are good. So let’s start there, let’s prove it. Here’s what I would like you to do: I would like you to take some time to look past what you think you already know, to look past what anyone in your life has told you, and I want you to write down some facts. Just list examples of when you know you did good for someone. Think about times when you sacrificed your time, your effort, your energy, your money. Think about the times you have prayed for someone, times that you sincerely wished well for someone, think about how you have shown love to others. Here’s why this is important: You may have been a bratty, selfish teen who was trying to fit in and put friends before family, but are you that person now? Have you been that person for the past twenty or thirty years? Or maybe the person who called you selfish used that term to get you to do what they wanted, because, in reality, they’re the selfish one? Maybe no one called you selfish at all and you just assumed people thought you were because of a story you created in your own mind about a situation? The funny thing is, none of that stuff matters, that’s why we need to focus on facts. So, first make that list of all the good you have done in the world. See that you are not a selfish person, that you’re, actually, quite a giving person who has true and pure intentions. Someone who wants good things for others. Know that people who believe they’re selfish are most likely not selfish - why? - because a selfish person would never put the time into caring about how what they want impacts others. Wow, that would be a big contradiction! I will warn you that gaining this awareness is not a magic cure. Even when you see the facts on paper, you will probably make excuses about how you have done good things but that doesn’t make you a good person. If this is you, you will just need to continue to prove to yourself that you are good. Continue to revisit this in your mind daily - and sometimes you will have triggers that set you back. Especially because people who believe they are selfish have the hardest time protecting their personal boundaries. OK, so let’s say that you got this down. You made your list, you’re proving to yourself, “Hey, self, I’m a pretty damn good person, I’m not selfish at all,” and you are reinforcing that idea daily through your giving thoughts and actions - what next? Do a chore a day. Sounds so simple, right? It is. Do whatever you need to do to feel as if you’re pulling your weight in your world so you can spend untethered time on something you’re passionate about! You may be laughing at the idea of having to do only one chore a day,

What does it mean to emotionally detach yourself? What are the benefits to doing this, how can doing this help to build relationships based on respect, and how can doing this increase your personal support system? MM546- Emotionally Detach Yourself Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Emotionally Detach Yourself Where did we start believing that if we don’t care with every fiber of our being, or become consumed with the lives of our loved ones, that we don’t care? How many times have we allowed what our spouse or children are going through to consume us? I can think of many times I’ve done this. One example would be speaking to my husband during the work day and hearing about how he got ripped to shreds during a big meeting because he didn’t have something prepared. This will weigh on me all day, and at dinner I’ll empathize with him and how embarrassing this experience must have been - only for him to tell me that his boss realized that he’d never passed along the material and let everyone else know it. Similarly, say I was concerned about a situation where my daughter called for a freak out session about a fight she got into with her college roommate. She’d get me all spun up, and I’d be concerned about her and the situation. But later, when I’d ask how things were going, she’d say that the issue had been resolved for hours or sometimes even days. In both of these situations, I’m sitting over here with a knot in my stomach over things I have absolutely no control over. I’m distracted and less productive in my own life because I’m worried about my family - when their situations have been resolved and I don’t even know it. Does this happen to you? I know I’m not the only one! This is why I want to talk to you about the importance of detaching emotionally from friends and family. I want you to think of emotionally detaching as just taking a small step back from the details of their everyday lives. Think of this more as creating just a little bit of emotional distance, where you are just not quite so invested in the outcomes of their situations. Why do this? Because it’s not your job to solve their problems. Why else? Because you need to be focused on what you’re here to accomplish. I’ve learned a lot about emotional detachment, and I practiced it a lot until it became my natural behavior. I’ve learned that if it’s not in my control, I can give it less weight in my heart and my head. I have whole-heartedly accepted the idea that 99% of what we worry about never occurs, and that whatever my family experiences in their journey that is out of my control is meant for them and has nothing to do with me. Now, this doesn’t mean that I don’t care, I care a ton. And it does not mean that I love them less or am here for them less. I always want to hear about their jobs, their friends, their lives. These are my favorite people! I just don’t wear their challenges. I don’t own them. I don’t feel like I need to fix them. I focus more on asking questions that help them make their own decisions than giving advice. So Motivate Me! Friends, the reality is that our focus should be on our own paths, and we should allow our loved one’s focus to be on their own paths. Our lives will naturally and lovingly intertwine. We are all teachers and all students in each other’s lives, and I have learned so much about my family and myself from creating some emotional distance. On one hand, it’s freeing to let go of feeling responsible for everyone else’s happiness. We think we do, but we really don’t have control over other people’s happiness. This is a personal journey based on a person’s p...

Putting our ideas and work out into the world for feedback is a vulnerable place to be. Learn why it is imperative that we go through this process, and how best to protect ourselves when met with negative energy. MM545- Be Open to Feedback, but not Too Open Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Be Open to Feedback, but not Too Open So hopefully, you have been taking a deep dive into yourself in order to reconnect with what excites you. I’m wondering what you have you discovered? I’m wondering if you have shared your new ideas with anyone? If not, I recommend that you start thinking about with whom you can share these discoveries. If you’ve been meditating and journaling, chances are your energy is shifting and your perspective is changing. Are you gaining clarity on who you are, who you’ve always been, and what drives you? Have you gathered materials and begun to create? Are you starting to see that a new pathway could be opening up for you? Have you started a new project or business plan? If you are making mental or emotional moves, or if you’ve begun to work on something tangible, it’s important to verbalize these new ideas. To learn how to articulate them. To see how they feel when they hit the air. Doing this will inspire even more clarity and even more ideas. It allows us to voice our excitement and build human connection. By speaking these changes or new ideas, we claim this direction for ourselves. We start believing it for ourselves. We map our brain to achieve it. We put it out to the universe. We practice being vulnerable. We gain confidence. And also in doing this, we open ourselves up to feedback from others. Being open to feedback is a big part of the creative process, the part that is not always easy to do, so it’s important to know how to protect ourselves after putting ourselves in such a vulnerable space. We want to approach this feedback with an open-mind, we want to listen deeply to the ideas of others - not spend this time building a defense against what they’re saying while they’re speaking, we want to learn from them and their perspective. However, in the end, we need to make our own creative decisions. This concept is easy to understand if you’ve ever seen the reality show Project Runway. Tim Gunn comes around and critiques the show’s contestants as they’re working. Well, he doesn’t always get it right, and sometimes the fashion designer sticks to their vision. This is not always the right call by the designer, but there have been many times where that look wins the episode. There is something to be said for sticking to our vision, but like in the show, sometimes we have to “edit” that vision to make it better than our initial idea. We cannot distinguish between holding our ground or editing our initial idea if we’re busy being defensive. So we have to really take in what others have to say, consider their opinions, revisit what we want to accomplish and why we want to accomplish it, and then make the decision to either pivot from our original direction, tweak it, or stay rooted. Now, what happens if the feedback we receive is not what we had hoped for or needed? What if it sucks the wind out of our sails? That moment where we were so excited about it until, for whatever reason, the person or people we shared our ideas with is not? I have three suggestions for this. 1. Sometimes we need to take a short break. Whether it’s days or two weeks, create space between what you’re working on and where you want to take it. Maybe your aspirations are a little ambitious and you need to break your plans into smaller steps.

So often incredible ideas surface in our minds and we discount them and discard them. What if you went on a journey to generate more ideas, and what if you knew how to manage them in a way that would help you bring them to fruition? MM544- Managing Your Creative Ideas Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week’s episode of Motivate Me! It’s Me! Time here on Motivate Me! and we are working on coming back from flat. Before we start, let’s get into the right headspace. Let’s engage in the idea that this is time where YOU are the priority. Let’s take two slow, deep breaths to get us centered. Just follow me. Today’s focus is: Managing Your Creative Ideas When do you feel most passionate about life? For me, it’s when I’m creating. And when I’m in my creative zone, ideas upon ideas continue to come to me. Being open to these ideas is part of why and how I believe they flow so fluidly, but it’s my job to manage them - and to organize them. When I was working to reclaim my passion, I had to make changes in my approach to being creative. At one point, I had found legal pad after legal pad that was filled with ideas and fiction writing I had put on paper, but I’d put those pads down and never looked at them again. I knew I couldn’t let that happen this time around, because I was setting the intention that this time wasn’t going to be like the rest. That this time I would collect and categorize my work, and that something substantial would come from it. So, I took all the notes I’d been writing in my little one-subject notebooks, I busted out a big blue binder and an un-opened pack of dividers with tabs, and I set up my organizer. I labeled each section: “Reading Log,” “Journal,” “MoMe!,” “Zoom,” “Biz Opps,” “Writing Ideas,” “Podcast,” and “Flat.” And I set out to fill these sections but in a compartmentalized kind of way that was not overwhelming. I had loose notebook paper on a clipboard, and whenever I had a question or idea, I wrote it out, I journaled, I found an answer, and I locked it into the binder. If I had an essay idea or product idea, I wrote that down, too, and locked that into my binder. You get the picture. I wrote everything and I dated everything. Why date what you write? Because it gives our ideas value, because every important document is dated, because what I wrote on this paper was important. And won’t it be fun one day to look back on where it all began? Yes, I set that intention with every step of my process. They say if we collect our ideas and keep them organized and together, the weight of them will carry them to fruition. Why not give that theory a shot? During this whirlwind of a time, something happened. I had been meditating and journaling and excited about helping people with what was bringing my passion back, and I was reminded how much I enjoyed the process of creating. That, yes, I want to produce something valuable to help as many people as possible, but I was filled with actual joy just in the doing of the thing. And that’s what I continued to focus on: the process. Now more than ever, I realize that I am in love with the process of creating and not the outcome of it. Elizabeth Gilbert really put my feelings into words when she said, “Creativity itself doesn't care at all about results - the only thing it craves is the process. Learn to love the process and let whatever happens next happen, without fussing too much about it. Work like a monk, or a mule, or some other representative metaphor for diligence. Love the work. Destiny will do what it wants with you, regardless.” I love getting immersed in what I’m creating. To give you an idea of what I mean, here are some of the projects I have worked on: I have completed the writing of two novels (they’re not published, but they are written!), and I have two other books in the works. I’ve designed a podcast, a 50-state tour, and now this program about reclaiming your passion and coming back from flat.