When it comes to making decisions, there’s the decision itself, and then there is everything we make that decision mean. For instance, if you’re thinking about quitting your job, there’s the decision to quit that job or not, what you might do next, and then the layers of meaning behind the decision, like maybe that we’re unsuccessful, unworthy, whether or not we’re intelligent, or whether we’re allowed to be happy with our decision.

Whatever we perceive about someone else, if we’re not aware of how we’re choosing who we’re going to be and how we want to show up, we may mirror that person. This can happen emotionally or behaviorally, and there are upsides and downsides to how this plays out.

You might have heard of virtuous or victorious cycles, but these words don’t give me gooey, delightful, yummy feelings, so we’re going with delicious cycles for this episode, because who doesn’t want something delicious?

In the coaching community, there’s generally this idea that you can think thoughts on purpose that set you up to have the exact experience you want. Now, while I agree that this is possible, in my own lived experience, setting high expectations has left me disappointed with the end result on multiple occasions. And when I have low expectations, I’m often wowed by what actually happens.

We don’t like feeling disappointed. Some of us don’t even like trying new things because we’re afraid of feeling disappointed. But the truth is, disappointment is incredibly difficult to avoid. In order to create your wildly satisfying career, you must be willing to encounter disappointment and feel it. While this doesn’t sound sexy or fun, it is necessary for building a delicious life you truly love.

There has been a lot of stuff going on in the world that, if you’re a listener here, you probably find upsetting. We’ve had shootings, supreme court uncertainty, and everything feels pretty fucked. We’re feeling sadness, grief, rage, and despair, just to name a few. So, how do we carry on when the world feels like a dumpster fire?

A dealbreaker is something that you have decided you don’t want to accept. So, when something comes up in your career that you see as a dealbreaker, that’s your decision. You don’t always have to change your thoughts about something, and you can leave it behind. However, if you knew that happiness was something you could create in any workplace, what would you want to create?

Sometimes, especially in our careers but also in our personal lives, there are things we simply cannot undo. So what happens when there is no going back? Find out in this week's episode.

When you have issues at work and you come to coaching trying to create some kind of transformation, like switching industries or feeling less stress and getting a raise in your current job, there’s always a long-term process for achieving these goals. But we also need to alleviate the pain and create a better experience in the immediate future.

The truth is, with a growth mindset, you can be the kind of person who does whatever you decide you want to do. So, tune in this week to see why who you are is not fixed, and growth is always possible, even if it isn’t always comfortable.

Experiencing pleasure and gratification is a skill and one that we need to practice. If we aren’t practiced at feeling enjoyment and satisfaction, those feelings aren’t going to last long when they do come up.

I’m thinking about exquisite self-care in terms of sickness, however, this advice applies whenever you feel like you need to take a moment for yourself. I’m sharing how to overcome the discomfort of prioritizing yourself, and how it serves you and everyone around you when you can give yourself the self-care you deserve.

When it comes to goals, there is one thing I see people doing that makes it way harder for them to actually achieve them: weaponizing them. What I mean by weaponizing a goal is when we take a goal that we have and make the fact that we haven’t met it yet mean something bad about us.

When we overachieve, we’re often neglecting something else. So if we’re overachieving at work, we might be neglecting our bodies, relationships, hobbies, whatever. This is also true on the emotional level. When our anxiety is overachieving, this leads to underachieving positive emotions and leaves us unable to focus on what is actually working.

You might define success as getting a certain title, making a bunch of money, being a leader, or breaking into a certain industry. Whatever it is, I’m showing you how to get clear on the way you currently view success as a concept, how you think about your own success, and how to decide on a new definition of success for yourself, if that’s what you want or need for your life.

You are allowed to do things your own way. Sure, there are experts out there who’ve achieved what you want and they’ll tell you how to do things. But I’m all about possibility, so in this episode, I’m encouraging you and inviting you to believe you can do things in ways that have never been done before.

Sometimes, our complaints can feel serious and heavy and a big deal, and we want to take them seriously. But being able to step out of that headspace can be incredibly useful. If you find yourself complaining, focusing on the negative, obsessing about what’s not working, nothing has gone wrong. But you don’t have to be stuck there either.

As a coach, I teach that thoughts are optional, and they come from our socialization and the inputs we’ve had throughout our lives. And sometimes, these thoughts lead to our brains coming up with conclusions that aren’t authentic to who we are in this world as adults.

None of us are ever going to be perfect. We are all humans who make mistakes and do things we wish we hadn’t. But the do-over is an opportunity to try again and do things the way we wished we had the first time around.

Oftentimes, we’re looking around at our lives and our career and we see things aren’t exactly the way we want them to be. Even if we’ve done amazing things, we still have goals we want to achieve, and we focus on that. So today, I’m sharing with you the concept of looking to your past first to discover what you did well and how you can be grateful to past you for the things they did, even if you experienced negative emotion about them at the time.