Latest / Your Utmost Life / "Someday When Things Calm Down" Is Not a Plan. It's a Practice.
Transcript
- 0:00Your circumstances are not the obstacle.
- 0:02Your story about your circumstances is.
- 0:05And today we're going to separate those two things, probably for the first time.
- 0:09Your story, the story you've been telling yourself about why you haven't started yet, and about why now isn't the right time, and about why the women who seem to be figuring this out must have something you don't.
- 0:20Easier circumstances, more support, more time, more money, a life that is somehow less complicated than yours.
- 0:27I know that story.
- 0:28I used to have a whole list of reasons why now wasn't the right time.
- 0:31Real reasons, legitimate ones, the kind that you can't argue with.
- 0:35And I want to tell you today, with love and with complete directness, it took me a long time to understand that the list was never the problem.
- 0:42This episode is for the woman who is ready to want something for herself, but keeps running into the same wall.
- 0:48Not a wall built by her circumstances, a wall built by what she believes her circumstances mean about her.
- 0:55The woman who is looking at her life, the demands, the people, the obligations, the real and legitimate complexity of it all, and concludes that now is not the right time, that it works for other women, that her situation is different.
- 1:09If that is you, stay with me, because what I'm about to say is going to land somewhere specific.
- 1:14Here is what I know after years of doing this work, and I want to say it clearly before we go any further.
- 1:19Your circumstances are real.
- 1:21I'm not going to tell you that they aren't.
- 1:23The kids are real, the exhaustion is real, the financial pressure is real, the demands on your time are real.
- 1:29But here is what is also true, and this is the part that changes everything.
- 1:34The circumstances are the facts.
- 1:36The story you're telling yourself about what those facts mean about you, that is the frame.
- 1:41And the frame is not a fact.
- 1:43The frame is a choice.
- 1:45When you finally see the frame you've been living inside, clearly, without judgment, something is going to shift.
- 1:51So stay with me.
- 1:52Before we go anywhere, I want you to think about something.
- 1:55Think about the last time you talked yourself out of something you wanted.
- 2:00Not because you made a rational decision it wasn't right, but because something in you said, that's not for someone like me right now.
- 2:06My life is too complicated.
- 2:08I'm not ready.
- 2:09I'm not capable enough.
- 2:10Feel that for a second.
- 2:12Not the circumstances, the feeling underneath them.
- 2:15That feeling, the one that says, not for someone like me, has been making decisions for you for a long time.
- 2:22It has a name and it's not the truth about you.
- 2:25If you have ever felt like you're living for everyone else and losing pieces of yourself along the way, you're in the right place.
- 2:32This podcast is where you learn the principles and strategic tools to rebuild a life that feels like yours again.
- 2:38In your health, your relationships, confidence, goals, and even the deeper parts of you like purpose, growth, love, and parenting.
- 2:44This is where you begin the process of becoming your utmost self.
- 2:47Not by accident, not by obligation, but by design.
- 2:50Welcome to your utmost life podcast.
- 2:53Make sure you follow so you never miss an episode.
- 2:56I want to stay here with you for a few minutes before we move.
- 2:59There is a woman you keep seeing, and every time you see her, something in you does two things at once.
- 3:04Maybe on Instagram, maybe at the grocery store, maybe it's someone in your own circle.
- 3:09She's building something, working towards something, moving with a kind of intentional energy that makes you feel inspired and defeated in the same breath.
- 3:18Because she looks like she has what you don't: space, support, a life that is somehow cooperating with her goals in a way that yours isn't.
- 3:27You're looking at her and feeling something you couldn't quite name.
- 3:30Not envy exactly, more like evidence, proof that it works, just not for someone like you.
- 3:37Her circumstances must be different.
- 3:39And then there's the feeling you carry when you think about wanting something for yourself.
- 3:43It's not excitement exactly.
- 3:45It's heavier than excitement.
- 3:47It's the weight of everything that would have to move for that want to have any room.
- 3:53The schedule that is already maxed, the budget that's already allocated, the energy that is already spent by Tuesday afternoon.
- 4:00Wanting something for yourself inside that reality feels almost reckless.
- 4:04Like wanting is something you haven't earned yet.
- 4:07Like wanting has to wait until the circumstances cooperate.
- 4:10So you put it down again.
- 4:12You tell yourself when things settle, when the kids are older, when the money is less tight, when life gives you a little more room and there is a voice underneath all of it.
- 4:20Quiet, persistent, the one you've gotten very good at not hearing that keeps whispering the same thing, not loudly, just steadily.
- 4:29You are wasting time.
- 4:31You are letting it slip.
- 4:33You are going to look up one day and realize you have been waiting your whole life for circumstances that were never going to arrive.
- 4:41You've heard it, you've pushed it down, you've told it, not now.
- 4:44The circumstances aren't right.
- 4:47Here is what I want you to understand before we go any further.
- 4:50That voice is not your anxiety.
- 4:52It is not self-sabotage.
- 4:53It is the most accurate thing inside you right now.
- 4:56And the circumstances you've been waiting to cooperate, they are never going to be ready.
- 5:01Not because your life is unusually hard, because life is always hard, because there will always be circumstances.
- 5:07And the woman we are moving, the one you've been watching, comparing yourself to, and collecting evidence from, they're not moving because their circumstances are different from yours.
- 5:17They're moving because they made a different decision about what their circumstances mean.
- 5:22That decision is available to you right now in this exact life.
- 5:26That is what we're talking about today.
- 5:28Every woman I talk to has been waiting for the right time, has a version of the same story.
- 5:33The details are different, the feeling is identical.
- 5:36You are not alone in this, but I also need to tell you, you're not stuck.
- 5:41And today we're going to prove it.
- 5:43Now, I know what you're thinking, not approximately, specifically.
- 5:47It sounds like this.
- 5:49I want to, I genuinely do, but my life right now is a lot.
- 5:54Even though the kids are getting older, they still need me.
- 5:57The finances are tight.
- 5:59My husband is supportive, but he has his own demands.
- 6:02I'm already running at capacity, and I look at women who are doing this kind of work on themselves and I think, how?
- 6:08How do they have the time?
- 6:10How do they have the energy?
- 6:12Their circumstances must just be more manageable than mine.
- 6:15And then there is the other thought.
- 6:17The one underneath, the one you don't say out loud, not even to yourself on most days.
- 6:22It sounds like, or maybe I'm just not the kind of woman who figures it out.
- 6:26Maybe other women have something I don't.
- 6:28Maybe I'm not as capable as I thought I was.
- 6:31Maybe I missed my window.
- 6:32That second thought, that is the real one.
- 6:35The circumstances are just the cover story that makes it feel more acceptable, more logical, more like a reasonable conclusion rather than a belief about your worth.
- 6:43And here is what that belief has been costing you.
- 6:46Not just the time you've lost, but the version of yourself you've been postponing.
- 6:50The woman you have always been capable of being, ambitious, alive, intentional.
- 6:55She has been sitting in a waiting room you built out of a story that was never true.
- 7:00The circumstances are real, but they are not the reason.
- 7:03They never were.
- 7:04The reason has always been the story.
- 7:06And the story for the first time is about to change.
- 7:10There are two beliefs running underneath everything I just described.
- 7:13And I want to name both of them because most people only ever name the first one.
- 7:18The first one is safe to say out loud.
- 7:21My circumstances are too complicated.
- 7:22That works for other women, but not for me.
- 7:25The second one is harder.
- 7:26It's the one underneath.
- 7:28I'm not capable.
- 7:29Other women can overcome their circumstances because they are that kind of woman.
- 7:34I am not.
- 7:35You have been living the surface version because it's easier to hold.
- 7:39Circumstances are external.
- 7:41Capability is personal.
- 7:42And personal is harder to look at.
- 7:44And I want to honor this before I dismantle it because it makes complete sense that you arrived here.
- 7:50You have tried things before.
- 7:51You have set intentions on Sunday nights and lost them by Tuesday.
- 7:55You have started routines that dissolved.
- 7:57You have made promises to yourself that you didn't keep.
- 8:00And when something doesn't work repeatedly, the conclusion that you are not capable is not irrational.
- 8:06It feels like evidence.
- 8:08It feels like you have been watching your own track record and drawing a reasonable conclusion.
- 8:13But here is what that evidence actually proves, and it's not what you think it proves.
- 8:18Every failed attempt was aimed at behavior, at habits and at systems, not at identity.
- 8:24And behavior attempts cannot fix an identity wound.
- 8:28You were trying to act like the woman you wanted to be without first deciding you were her.
- 8:33That is not failure.
- 8:35That is attempting the wrong solution.
- 8:37There is a difference.
- 8:38But here's what this belief is costing you right now.
- 8:41Today, it is costing you the beginning.
- 8:44Every day you wait for circumstances to cooperate.
- 8:47Every day you postpone the start until the life gets easier.
- 8:51Is a day the gap between who you are and who you were made to be gets a little wider.
- 8:57The circumstances do not improve on their own.
- 8:59The calendar does not clear.
- 9:01The money does not get less allocated.
- 9:03The kids do not suddenly need you less.
- 9:06What changes is not the circumstances.
- 9:09What changes is the woman standing inside them.
- 9:12And she can only change if you decide before the circumstances cooperate, before the timing is perfect, before you feel ready that you are the woman who handles them.
- 9:22That decision is available to you today, right now, not when things calm down, in the exact life you are already living, with the exact husband and kids and calendar and bank account, not a different life.
- 9:34This one.
- 9:35But here is the cost I need you to see underneath that.
- 9:38Every time you tell yourself my circumstances are the reason, you hand your power to your circumstances.
- 9:45And what you hand your power to becomes the thing that runs your life.
- 9:49When circumstances are the reason, you need circumstances to change before you can move, which means you are waiting for something outside of yourself to give you permission to start.
- 9:59And circumstances, by definition, do not give permission.
- 10:03They just exist.
- 10:04They were never going to give you what you are waiting for.
- 10:07The hidden cost is this every year you spend waiting for circumstances to cooperate is a year you spent teaching yourself that your life is something that happens to you rather than something you design.
- 10:19And a woman who believes her life happens to her does not build the life she was made for.
- 10:25She manages the one she inherited.
- 10:27Twenty years from now, your circumstances will have changed.
- 10:31The kids will be grown, the financial pressure different, the schedule unrecognizable from today's.
- 10:36And you will look back at right now, at this exact season, with all of its real and legitimate complexity, and you will either think, that is when I decided I was capable, that is when everything changed, or you will think, keep waiting, and the waiting became my life.
- 10:51The woman who is waiting for the right circumstances to become herself, she does not suddenly wake up one day and find them.
- 10:58She wakes up one day and realizes she has been waiting herself in theory, in practice, for longer than she can account for.
- 11:06That is the trajectory of this belief left unchanged.
- 11:09And you are not that woman yet.
- 11:11You are here listening to this, which means something in you is already choosing differently.
- 11:16So here's the truth I want to replace this belief with.
- 11:19Separate the facts from the frame.
- 11:22The facts are real, the kids are real, the exhaustion, the financial pressure.
- 11:27Those are facts, and I honor every single one of them.
- 11:29They are not small, they are not excuses, they are the real conditions of your real life.
- 11:35But the frame, and therefore I am not capable, and therefore this is not the right time, and therefore this works for other women, but not for me.
- 11:44That is not a fact.
- 11:45That is a meaning you are attaching to the facts, and you can attach a different meaning.
- 11:51The frame available to you right now today without a single circumstance changing is this.
- 11:56I am the kind of woman who figures things out.
- 11:59My circumstances are real.
- 12:01I am the woman who handles them, not because you have already proven it, but because you have decided it.
- 12:07Identity does not follow circumstances.
- 12:10Circumstances follow identity.
- 12:12Decide who you are first, then watch what becomes possible.
- 12:17I know this because I lived on the wrong side of that decision for longer than I want to admit.
- 12:22And I want to tell you what it looked like when it changed.
- 12:24I want to tell you a story about a decision I almost didn't make and a dream I almost let die because I had convinced myself I was no longer the kind of woman who could have it.
- 12:34The identity eraser effect does something specific to a woman's sense of capability.
- 12:39It doesn't just make her feel invisible, it makes her feel incapable.
- 12:42Because when you have been pouring yourself out for everyone else for long enough, when your own needs, goals, and desires have sat at the bottom of every list for years, you stop being someone who executes on their own behalf.
- 12:55You stay in motion for everyone else, but for yourself.
- 12:58The muscle has gone quiet, and the quiet muscles feel like lost muscles.
- 13:03The woman who hasn't tried something for herself in years look at the women who are trying and thinks, they must be built differently.
- 13:11They must have what I don't.
- 13:13She doesn't recognize that the difference isn't capability, it's practice.
- 13:17She stopped practicing, choosing herself, and she mistook the restiness for permanent incapacity.
- 13:24That is the mechanism, and I know it because I lived it.
- 14:09Twenty plus years ago, I wanted to get my real estate license and I didn't.
- 14:13It wasn't a passing interest, it was a real goal, something I had thought about, researched, felt genuinely excited about.
- 14:20I remember sitting with the course materials, actually sitting with them, holding them, feeling something I hadn't felt in a while, excited about something that was just mine, a future I was going to build that had nothing to do with anyone else's needs or wants.
- 14:34And I didn't do it.
- 14:36Decades later, I let that dream resurface, and again, I almost didn't do it.
- 14:40Not because the circumstances made it impossible, because something in me had already started to shift, already started to question whether I was that kind of woman who did things like that anymore, whether I was still capable of pulling off something that was just mine, whether that version of me who had that kind of ambition and follow-through was still available.
- 14:59So I set it down and I settled to help other agents with their business.
- 15:03And I told myself someday when the circumstances are better, what I wanted underneath all of it, underneath the reasons and the waiting, was something I couldn't have named clearly then but can name now.
- 15:14I wanted proof that I was still her.
- 15:17The woman I had been before everything else got loud, the one who set goals and moved toward them, the one who believed she was capable of building something that was hers.
- 15:26I didn't need the real estate license specifically.
- 15:28I needed the evidence that I was still that woman.
- 15:31But every moment that passed without it, the belief got a little more entrenched.
- 15:35Every time I thought about it and didn't move, the story got a little louder.
- 15:39You had your window, you let it pass.
- 15:41You were not that woman anymore.
- 15:43Maybe you never were.
- 15:44Other women have something you don't.
- 15:46You have circumstances and excuses and a long history of setting things down, and I believed it.
- 15:51The circumstances were real, the belief was not, but I couldn't see the difference yet.
- 15:56What shifted, and it didn't shift overnight, was understanding that I had been waiting for circumstances to give me permission to see myself as capable.
- 16:04And circumstances were never going to do that.
- 16:06They don't work that way.
- 16:07No circumstances ever looked at a woman and said, now, now you're ready.
- 16:11Now it's safe to try.
- 16:12I had to decide that I was capable before the circumstances cooperated.
- 16:17I had to choose the identity first and let the evidence follow, not the other way around.
- 16:22I got my real estate license, not when the circumstances were perfect, they weren't, not when I felt completely ready, I didn't.
- 16:28I got it because I decided I was the woman who was going to get it.
- 16:32Before I had proof, before the timing was ideal, before every condition I had been waiting for was met.
- 16:37And a few months in, I was driving to a real estate appointment, living a dream I had set down 20 years before in the middle of a life that still had all of its complications, and the tears just came.
- 16:47Not grief, something entirely different.
- 16:50The specific feeling of a woman who chose herself before her circumstances were ready and discovered she was actually who she had always thought she was and capable of being.
- 17:00I thought about sitting in that car years earlier.
- 17:03The woman still at the red light, the one who was still waiting, who had convinced herself that the complexity of her life was the reason she hadn't started, who hadn't yet understood that she was always the answer to her own circumstances.
- 17:15I went home that night and talked to my husband for over three hours.
- 17:18That conversation became your utmost self.
- 17:20What I discovered, not from reading it somewhere, but from living it, is that capability is not a fixed quantity.
- 17:27It is not something you either have or don't have.
- 17:29It's something you built with every kept promise to yourself, every small visible win, every moment you choose to act before you feel ready.
- 17:38I didn't find my capability by waiting until I felt it.
- 17:41I found it by acting before I felt it and watching the feeling follow.
- 17:45You do not wait to feel capable and then act.
- 17:48You act even imperfectly, even incompletely, even in the middle of complicated circumstances, and the feeling of capability follows.
- 17:57Identity follows behavior.
- 17:58The story updates when the evidence does.
- 18:01What I found, what I'm still finding, is this.
- 18:19Before the circumstances cooperated, before I felt ready, before I had proof that I was her.
- 18:25She was always in there.
- 18:26She just needed to be chosen.
- 18:28I know what just happened to you while I was telling that story.
- 18:31Something opened and then something else came right behind it.
- 18:34A voice that had something to say.
- 18:36Let me name them.
- 18:37But my circumstances are real.
- 18:39I genuinely don't have time or money right now.
- 18:42Yes, they are real.
- 18:43I said that at the beginning and I mean it.
- 18:45The facts of your life are real and I honor them completely.
- 18:48But here is the distinction that changes everything.
- 18:51Honoring the facts does not require adopting the frame that you are therefore not capable.
- 18:56You can hold both.
- 18:58The circumstances are real and you are the woman who figures them out.
- 19:02That is not a contradiction.
- 19:03That is the frame of a capable woman.
- 19:05High performers don't have fewer constraints.
- 19:08They have a different relationship to them.
- 19:10The voice says, other women who do this don't have what I'm dealing with.
- 19:14I need to say this directly.
- 19:15You don't know what they're dealing with.
- 19:17The woman who looks like she has it figured out from the outside from your vantage point, she's juggling something too.
- 19:22Everybody is.
- 19:23The difference is not that her path is clean and yours is uniquely messy.
- 19:27The difference is standard, structure, and the decision to show up as capable before the circumstances cooperate.
- 19:34You can make that decision right now, not when things settle, not when you've earned it, but right now.
- 19:39Not to her, but to you.
- 19:41The voice says, I've tried before and it didn't stick.
- 19:44That evidence is I'm not capable.
- 19:46It's not evidence you are not capable.
- 19:48It is evidence that you were trying to change behavior without changing identity.
- 19:53Every attempt that didn't stick was aimed at the wrong level.
- 19:56This is different because we start with you, who you are, with your identity, your worth, your standards, and the behavior grows from that root.
- 20:04When the root is healthy, the behavior doesn't require force, it becomes natural.
- 20:08That is not something you ever have to try at.
- 20:10Life will always have circumstances.
- 20:13That is not a season, that is the condition of being alive.
- 20:16The woman who is waiting for circumstances to cooperate is not waiting for the right time.
- 20:20She is practicing waiting.
- 20:21And the longer she practices, the better she gets at it.
- 20:24The time is not later.
- 20:26The time is the decision you make today in the middle of the complicated, real, legitimate life you actually have.
- 20:32That you are the woman who handles it.
- 20:34Before I paint this picture, I need to say something you may not have heard in a long time.
- 20:39You, my friend, are capable, not as a thing I'm saying to make you feel better, as a specific, true, already demonstrated fact.
- 20:46The evidence is this.
- 20:47You kept showing up through everything your life has thrown at you.
- 20:51You are still reaching, still looking, still refusing to accept that this is all there is.
- 20:56That is not the behavior of an incapable woman.
- 20:58That is the behavior of an extraordinary one who hasn't yet turned her capability towards herself.
- 21:04You are allowed to be that woman.
- 21:06You don't have to earn it first.
- 21:08Right now, today, you wake up and the circumstances are already running before you open your eyes.
- 21:13The list, the demands, the weight of everything that needs to happen today for everyone who needs it.
- 21:18And underneath all of it, the quiet story.
- 21:20I'll start when this calms down, when I am more ready, when the circumstances give me a little more room, and they don't, and you don't.
- 21:28And the day happens to you instead of by you.
- 21:31That is the Tuesday you've been living in.
- 21:33Now picture a different one.
- 21:34Same house, same husband, same real complicated, legitimate life.
- 21:38You wake up and something is different before the list starts running.
- 21:42Not because the circumstances have changed, but because you have.
- 21:45You can see it in how you move.
- 21:47You have a 90-minute block protected on your calendar, not found, protected.
- 21:51Before anyone else's needs have first claim on you, you have honored yourself.
- 21:56And inside that block, you are working on the thing that matters.
- 21:59The needle mover, the one output that proves to your brain one more time that you are the woman who executes.
- 22:05You can hear your own voice when someone asks, What are you working on?
- 22:09You have an answer.
- 22:10Specific yours.
- 22:11You talk about it without apology for it.
- 22:13Your daughter hears a woman who knows what she's building and something in her straightens slightly, watching.
- 22:18She is learning what a woman who chooses herself looks like.
- 22:21She is learning it from you.
- 22:23That is a gift no circumstance can give her.
- 22:26Only you can.
- 22:27You feel the difference in your body, not the bracing of a woman waiting for her circumstances to cooperate, the steadiness of a woman who decided she was capable before she had proof and is now collecting the proof.
- 22:38Every kept promise to yourself is a deposit.
- 22:41Your account is growing, and that growing is a physical feeling, a quiet confidence that is not bravado, not performance, but the simple felt sense of I said I was going to do this and I did.
- 22:52Your circumstances are still real.
- 22:54Those you love still need you, the calendar is still full, the money is still allocated, nothing external has changed.
- 23:00Everything internal has.
- 23:02That is not a fantasy.
- 23:03That is what becomes available the moment that you separate the facts from the frame and decide before the circumstances cooperate, before you feel ready, that you are the woman who handles them.
- 23:13She was always in there.
- 23:15You just chose her.
- 23:16Let me leave you with what is true.
- 23:18What was true before this episode and is more visible now.
- 23:21Your circumstances are real.
- 23:23They're not the reason.
- 23:24The reason, the belief underneath the surface story, is that you have concluded you are not capable.
- 23:29That it works for other women because they are the kind of woman and you are not.
- 23:34That belief is not evidence, it is a frame, and you can choose a different one.
- 23:38The facts stay the same.
- 23:40Your interpretation of what those facts mean about you, that is what changes.
- 23:44You are not waiting for circumstances to cooperate.
- 23:47You are deciding right now, in the middle of all of it, that you are the woman who handles them.
- 23:52Capability is not a fixed quantity.
- 23:54It is built with every kept promise, every protected block, every small visible win that gives your brain evidence that you are her.
- 24:02Identity follows behavior, and behavior starts with a decision made before the circumstances are ready.
- 24:07So here's what we do next.
- 24:09I want to give you something to carry with you, not a to-do, a truth.
- 24:13Say it out loud if you can.
- 24:14Mean it even if it feels like a reach right now.
- 24:18Say this.
- 24:18My circumstances are real.
- 24:20I am the woman who handles them.
- 24:22I do not need conditions to be perfect before I choose myself.
- 24:26I choose myself first.
- 24:27And the woman I have always been capable of being, she is not waiting for the right time.
- 24:32She is available right now, and I am choosing her today.
- 24:35And when you close this episode, the voice is going to say, That was inspiring, but your life is still complicated.
- 24:42Nothing actually changed.
- 24:44Answer it with this.
- 24:45One thing changed.
- 24:46I separated the facts from the frame.
- 24:48My circumstances are real.
- 24:50They are not the reason, and I am the woman who figures it out.
- 24:54Hold on to that.
- 24:55It is enough to start.
- 24:57If this episode met you somewhere real, if something cracked open today, will you rate the show 15 seconds?
- 25:02There is a woman out there right now using her circumstances as the reason she hasn't started.
- 25:08Your rating is how she finds this episode.
- 25:10She needs these words.
- 25:12Help her find them.
- 25:13And if you know her, the woman in your life who keeps saying someday when things settle down, send her this.
- 25:19You don't have to explain it.
- 25:20She'll know.
- 25:21Make sure you follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode.
- 25:24And if you want to go deeper, the best place to stay connected with me is in my email list.
- 25:28That's where I share my best insights, resources, and updates you won't hear anywhere else.
- 25:33Remember, you are more than everyone's everything.
- 25:36You are someone.
- 25:38Take the journey back to you.
- 25:40You're worth it.
- 25:40I'll see you next week.