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184. Powerful People Acting Powerlessly · Impact Ready

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  Welcome to Impact Ready, a show dedicated to helping you elevate
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  your impact in the world. I'm Steph Safra, your host.
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  Let's explore the power of showing up with intention and
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  energy each day. This is for those who seek to
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  make life truly meaningful. Get ready for impact.
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  Hello team. Thank you for being here.
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  In this episode today, I want to talk about something that I've
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  been thinking a lot about lately.
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  It's something that is a little bit vague.
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  When you first start talking about it, it can mean a lot of
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  different things. But once you start to grasp the
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  idea of it, people can really run with it and they can apply
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  it to lots of different areas of their life.
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  And it's this idea of personal power.
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  Every single person on the planet is inherently powerful.
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  They have capacity to do incredible things.
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  They have a lot of potential. They have a lot of access to
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  intelligence. They have the ability to learn
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  and be resilient. And yet what I've seen for so
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  many years in all different capacities is that many powerful
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  people are still living below their power.
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  They're living below their capacity or their potential.
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  They aren't using their voices. They're not standing up for
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  themselves. They're not setting boundaries.
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  They just aren't living in their power.
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  They're not standing up as powerful people and acting that
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  way in the world. And it's not because they aren't
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  capable, because they are. They're a lot of them are really
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  smart. So it's not because they don't
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  have intelligence. They have all these qualities
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  and these skills. It's not because of any of that.
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  It's typically because they refuse to take full ownership of
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  how they're showing up in their life.
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  And that's really what I want to talk about today, what it means
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  to show up and be impact ready. Whether you like it or not, your
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  impact is always happening in the world.
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  You're always broadcasting a message through your energy,
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  your tone, your reactions, your communication, your follow
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  through all of it. It's always, always broadcasting
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  a frequency that other people can interpret and feel, even if
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  it's unconscious for them. You are always shaping rooms.
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  You are always shaping relationships.
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  You are always shaping your own nervous system.
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  And we've established that many times.
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  But the question isn't am I making an impact?
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  Because we know you are. It's happening whether you
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  wanted to or not. The question is, am I making it
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  intentional? And that's what we often come
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  back to is how do I show up with intention?
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  How do I make my effect and my influence on the world on
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  purpose and not just accidental or random or inconsistent?
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  It's funny because this is a lot like breathing.
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  We're always breathing, all day long, every day.
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  You and I are breathing oxygen into our lungs, out of our
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  lungs, and we very rarely think about it.
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  Our bodies just do it automatically.
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  It's part of the autonomic nervous system.
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  It's on autopilot. That's great.
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  We don't think about breathing until something goes wrong and
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  we can't get the air in that we need or until somebody mentions
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  it. So right now you're probably
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  sitting there thinking, God, I'm not breathing very deeply.
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  Or you have a keen awareness of what your breath is doing, and
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  that's just like impact. Until somebody brings our
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  attention to our impact, we really don't think about it that
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  much because we get so used to the fact that it's always
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  happening. And this is a good thing in
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  general. But it can also be problematic
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  in that if we aren't using our skills to make it purposeful, we
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  can easily get into long periods of time, seasons of our life
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  where we're not having great impact at all.
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  Sometimes it can even be negative.
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  And one of the ways that our impact can go sideways is when
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  we forget that we are powerful people.
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  Frankly, in our culture, we've normalized powerful people
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  behaving powerlessly. We do things like shift blame to
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  other people. We point fingers, we make
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  excuses for why we didn't show up on time, or we didn't follow
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  through on that thing or we didn't deliver on something.
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  We criticize often. Spend 5 minutes on the Internet
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  and you will see that our culture is so accustomed to
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  criticizing other people. We get in the habit of having
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  opinions about what other people are doing when we're not even in
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  the arena, when we've never even come close to doing that level
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  of work that somebody might have been doing.
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  But yet we still feel that we have the right to have an
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  opinion and criticize. We gossip endlessly as a
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  culture. We do.
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  I mean, it's something, it's part of human nature, but it's
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  very much problem energy. It's a powerless behavior.
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  We tend to react emotionally as humans.
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  I think being emotional is an asset as a human.
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  But to be reactive and not self regulate emotions, that can be
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  very problematic. We don't follow through.
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  As I said, we make excuses for that.
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  And then we wonder why we don't feel free.
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  All of those behaviors, Gossiping, criticizing, blaming,
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  judging, bitching, moaning. And then we sit here and we
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  wonder why we don't feel freedom in our life.
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  Why we don't feel happy or appreciation or gratitude or
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  joy. Why our marriages feel strained,
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  why our teams don't trust us, why our success feels hollow.
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  It's not that we have a problem with our strategy.
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  It's not that we're lacking skills or intelligence or
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  capability. It's an ownership problem.
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  We are not taking ownership of the power that we hold and the
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  impact that we have. Let me pause here for a second.
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  If you're listening and thinking I'm capable of more or this is
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  the level I want to operate at, this is for you.
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  I work privately with a small number of high performing
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  leaders who are ready to elevate how they show up in their
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  business and in their lives. This isn't motivational
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  coaching, it's precision work. We refine your energy,
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  strengthen your ownership, and eliminate inconsistency so your
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  impact becomes undeniable. If you're ready for that level
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  of growth, book a private call through the link in the show
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  notes. We'll see if it's a fit.
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  All right, back to the episode. And a lot of this starts with
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  self-awareness because frankly, you can't own what you can't
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  see. And to be self aware means that
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  you're familiar with the stories that you're telling yourself
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  right now, with the patterns that you keep repeating, with
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  the way that you react instead of choose in your day.
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  It means that you have knowledge of that, that you can see it
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  when it happens. This type of awareness actually
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  requires quite a bit of courage, in my opinion, because it makes
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  us uncomfortable to look at things that openly, to look at
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  it with that clear of eyes and not make excuses and not go into
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  criticizing, blaming, judging mode, that takes a lot of
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  courage. It's not always fun to look at
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  our blind spots. It's not always fun to
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  acknowledge God. The story I'm telling right now
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  is really negative in in fact, I'm probably the one standing in
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  the way of my own success because of the patterns that I
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  keep repeating or the way that I keep reacting.
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  That takes courage. It takes humility.
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  It does. I'm going to be the first one to
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  say it. It's not always comfortable, but
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  what it is is a gateway to the things that we want on the other
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  side. It's the gateway to things like
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  freedom and joy and peace and less stress.
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  It truly is the gateway to really beautiful experiences
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  that we want. When I was thinking about all of
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  this years ago and I started to think about it through the lens
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  of impact, it became really clear to me that none of this is
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  a destination that we arrive at. I don't think we ever get to the
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  place in our life where we are completely self aware and 100%
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  self regulated and fully taking radical ownership of everything
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  in our life. I don't I don't know that that's
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  possible. But to be in the practice of it,
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  to be sort of existing in that space, more often than not,
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  that's kind of what I'm thinking about when I say to be impact
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  ready. It's a state of being, not a
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  destination. It's the decision that we make
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  that says ownership isn't an optional thing anymore.
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  It's just something that I do. It's something I take on.
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  And ownership doesn't mean blame.
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  It doesn't mean accepting fault for everything.
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  It doesn't mean that the things that happened in our childhood
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  were our fault or that we should just accept them and move on.
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  It doesn't mean that we are taking ownership of the economy
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  or the political happenings or what's happening in the larger
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  world. It means that we take ownership
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  of our energy, of our reactions, of our presence.
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  It's everything that we can control in our own sphere that
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  is within us, especially when we're under pressure.
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  Because when somebody lives this way, everything changes.
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  Their life gets cleaner, their leadership gets steadier, their
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  relationships get stronger, they have more opportunities.
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  They start to feel all the things that they've been
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  striving to feel and trying to get to through achievement and
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  grinding and hustling. Like I said, it's not always
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  about more strategy. Sometimes it's just about more
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  ownership. I talked to a lot of people.
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  I'm the person who will talk to anybody and any situation that
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  we're in. It's very annoying to my wife.
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  She told me that I'm not allowed to make any more friends at the
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  airport. But through those conversations,
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  I've learned that a lot of people want the same things.
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  We want peace. We all want freedom.
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  I don't know anybody who doesn't want freedom.
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  We all say that we want joy, but many of us live lives that don't
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  reflect, that we behave in ways that don't reflect what we
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  really want. But as I witnessed people doing
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  the work and practicing this idea of being impact ready and
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  getting into that state of being, I've realized that all of
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  that stuff that we want, it lives on the other side of
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  radical ownership of self-awareness, of self
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  regulation. It lives on the other side of
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  being impact ready. And that's why I don't think
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  that any of this is a destination.
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  It's not just some program that you go through.
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  It's a standard. It's a way of living in a way of
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  being that is so powerful and so beyond what many people set the
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  bar at. It's a place where powerful
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  people don't get to behave powerlessly anymore.
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  And the question becomes really simple, are you showing up in a
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  way that reflects your power? So my challenge to you for the
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  rest of this week and into the weekend is twofold.
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  The first part is asking the question, am I giving my power
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  away by behaving powerlessly? Am I getting to those problem
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  energy behaviors? The gossiping, the criticizing,
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  the judging, the blaming, making excuses?
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  Am IA powerful person who's living powerlessly?
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  And then the second part is how can I show up in a way this week
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  that reflects my actual power? What can I do to show that I'm
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  taking ownership in my life and that I'm raising the bar on my
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  own standards and my own way of being?
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  If you can answer those two questions, I think that alone
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  will create a powerful intention and start to shape the rooms
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  differently that you walk into. This is something that I have to
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  work on every single day. It's something that I fail at
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  often and that I need to keep at the top of my mind because like
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  breathing, we lose our awareness of it.
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  And so this episode is just to bring it all back up to
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  awareness so you can remember and be thoughtful about how
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  you're moving around in the world.
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  I'm going to do the same this week and throughout this
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  weekend, and I hope this serves you.
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  I'm glad you're here. Thank you for listening, and as
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  always, team, thank you for being ready to Impact.
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  Thanks for listening to Impact Ready.
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  I hope today's episode inspired you to own your impact and
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  recognize that you are powerful. By elevating our energy and
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  awareness, we can create exponential change in this life.
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  If you enjoyed today's insights, share them with a friend and
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  subscribe to the show for more. I truly appreciate you.
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  Thanks again for being here.