Default to Extraordinary: A Framework for Aligning with Your Best Self

Embrace Extraordinary Living: Aligning Mind and Heart with Purpose

In this episode, we delve into the power of adopting a 'yes' mindset to live an extraordinary life. Our discussion covers overcoming stagnation, breaking limiting beliefs, and maintaining purpose through life's unexpected challenges. By aligning choices with core values and visualizing our best selves, we can ensure that our actions contribute to personal growth and well-being. Practical strategies such as the 10-10-10 rule and mind-body-spirit checks are introduced to help navigate decisions. The episode concludes with a heart alignment meditation, guiding listeners to reconnect with their inner wisdom and achieve a life of purpose and fulfillment. 

00:00 Welcome and Introduction

00:27 Engaging with the Community

01:28 The Power of Saying Yes

02:48 Overcoming Stagnation

04:47 Breaking Limiting Beliefs

05:21 Addressing Analysis Paralysis

06:13 Confronting Perfectionism

07:10 Finding Purpose Amidst Challenges

08:22 Dealing with Fear of Rejection

08:55 Combating Decision Fatigue

10:15 Aligning with Your Best Self

13:21 Breaking Down Long-Term Goals

14:07 Aligning Daily Choices with Goals

15:44 Decision-Making Frameworks

17:01 Listening to Your Inner Voice

17:52 Review and Reflect Regularly

20:02 Heart Alignment Meditation

Transcript

0:59

Welcome to another extraordinary week. I'm happy that you're here and thanks for listening. And I hope you share this with your friends so that we can be on a journey together of defaulting to extraordinary. I have a dream of having a community that just gets up every day, defaulting to extraordinary, working it out, being on the journey together. so thank you for joining in on that journey. And I hope I'd love to hear from you. I want to point out at the beginning of this, instead of the end, maybe share it, give me a review. There's also a voice recorder in my notes. So I'd love to hear from you. You just hit that button and record a message and I'll get back to you. The other way that you, we can connect would be to get on the list on my email list and then share your stories with me, what it looks like for you to default. To yes, I, at one time early on in the podcast was sharing a lot of those stories and I've gotten away from that. I'd like to go back to that and share more of what it looks like for you to default to yes, because I really don't want this all to be about my voice and my experience. I'd love to share it with you. If you have a moment this week to share with me what it looks like for you to default to, yes, I'd love to hear from you and I'd love to put you on the show. so we can include your inspiring voice in this. On this journey. So let's talk a little bit about that. What does it look like to default to? Yes, because I, when I say yes, I mean that your extraordinary self, that doesn't mean that you're going to say yes to everything, right? Sometimes knowing when to say no is a way to say yes to everything. To your extraordinary self. It means embracing a mindset and a way of being that aligns with your highest potential, your authentic self, what you are created for. It encourages that proactive approach to life and where we are intentional that when we say yes to. Opportunities and challenges and growth that allows you to step into who you are meant to be and what you were created for, because I believe that you're listening to this because you believe it too, that the world needs your voice. We need your gifts. We need what you bring to the world uniquely and community contribution as well. And I'd love to see that at work at its best. So that's why I do this. And I know I talked recently about what it means to default to yes, and we're going to break it down a little bit more today. So there are problems that this solves. So it's not just for the sake of being positive or being inspiring or Living our best life necessarily, there are problems that we overcome by taking this mindset and making our default mode extraordinary. So I'm going to go through some of these that This has been a solution for me for, and how it comes up in my coaching practice as well, for those that choose to go on this journey in that deeper way, first of all, overcoming stagnation, many people fall into routines, defaulting to comfort or indecision, which can lead to stagnation. And we stay in jobs and relationships and we live in towns, we live in homes, we live in situations that. We do so because we're, it's comfortable and we understand it, not necessarily because it brings us joy and this default to yes, pushes, pushes us to embrace action and momentum and intentional living and helps us to overcome that trap of being coming complacent and drifting to a place in our life that we don't want to be. Now, I think most listeners are in, we're probably in that midlife area, that midlife season, where we're making decisions for the last half of our lives. And we never really know how long we have. And we're thinking about all of that. So the last thing that we want to do is become complacent. We want to be able to enjoy the every day of our lives and continue to grow. I don't believe there's ever a time where we retire in the way that we just stop growing or stop learning, stop living, stop loving. by defaulting to yes, and being intentional about defaulting to extraordinary, again, it's going to look different for everyone, but that's what it means to it'll help us from getting to that place where we drift. To that unintentional place where we wake up one day and we go, how did this happen? What happened to me, what happened to my dreams? because obviously we want to live a life of no regret. having this mindset of defaulting to extraordinary or defaulting to yes, helps us overcome that the other thing that this helps us with is breaking those limiting beliefs. A lot of times, self doubt, fear of failure or past experiences can hold us back from becoming who our extraordinary selves. So this mindset challenges those limiting beliefs and allows you to see the challenges as opportunities for growth and learning. And this takes some intention. It's not always easy to confront those things. Another thing that we overcome with this mindset is that confronting that analysis paralysis, we can get stuck overthinking and weighing every option, which can prevent us from making decisions. I see this a lot with With job situations and people who have dreams of starting a business or starting talk to nurses who want to start their own coaching practice or want to release a course or teach a class on something that is meaningful to them, something that solves a problem for the people they serve and then they overthink weighing all of the options and how to do it perfectly when we could default to yes, and solve this by encouraging that forward moving attitude, trusting the action, even imperfect is better than inaction. Another mindset that comes up is perfectionism. Perfectionism can prevent us from starting or finishing things because nothing seems good enough. I don't know enough. I had, don't have that experience. I could never do that. Those are all really common things that I hear from the people I talk to with a yes mindset. You can focus on that progress over perfection. And It's empowering to just move forward despite imperfection, and you don't need to know everything, And I have yet to really encounter someone who has an idea and wants to move forward with it and doesn't know enough to get started. if that's you, schedule a chat with me, just go to the link, schedule a no regret discovery session, and we'll talk through it and get you pointed in that direction and see what it is that, that one of these mindsets is holding you back. Another away thing that gets in our way is that addressing that lack of purpose, I think without a clear direction, we can start to feel aimless and defaulting to yes, reconnects us with our purpose, reminding us to align our actions with what brings out our purpose. And this can be really difficult in times of, I'm in a season right now where my husband had a heart attack, had to have open heart surgery, and then following that recovery, which has been a long process, my dad had surgery, my sister had surgery and I Now, while my sister's probably done more to take care of us than I've done to take care of her, It's a season where most of my time is spent doing things that I didn't plan on doing before, and so it's an adjustment. And in those times, we can start feeling out of alignment, and I've had to be really intentional about staying in alignment. Aligned with my heart and my purpose and recognizing that the things that I do and the actions I take can still be in alignment, even though they aren't what I planned. another problem that we sometimes face is fear of rejection or failure. And if you make, Your extraordinary self, your default mode, that mindset pushes you to view that potential rejection or failure as part of the journey towards growth, rather than reasons to avoid taking action. because your mind will automatically go to what does this make possible and maybe be being able to see that these things happen to or for us instead of to us. And how we view. The world and the actions that we're taking. Another thing that I see that's common that I think this mindset addresses is decision fatigue. I think there are a lot of times when in, in the entrepreneurial journey, in the nursing practice both worlds that I live in. There's a lot of decisions to make and constantly debating between options can lead to that decision fatigue with a mindset that is a default to your extraordinary self, you can simplify the decision making by aligning choices with your best self, your goals, and your values. This is when you decide to whether you're going to hire a coach, who you're going to hire, Are you going to take that course? Are you going to get that degree? Are you going to change the jobs? Are you going to open the business? Are you going to consider who it is that you're hanging out with and those relationships that are informing your life and playing that role? so by committing to default to yes. To default, to making your default mode extraordinary, you're committing to living purposefully confronting the challenges with resilience and turning them into opportunities for becoming your extraordinary self. Now, I said before, it's not easy or everyone would be doing it. Aligning your choices with your best self and goals and values requires intention and reflection on practical steps to ensure your actions reflect the life you want to create. And I can honestly say that in this season of my life, I've found that when it's your default mode, it's not so much work. You recognize when you're off track, you recognize when you're out of alignment, and it's not. scary, and it's not hard to pull yourself back into alignment. You can do that by clarifying your core values. And if you've done the work of defaulting to extraordinary, you've probably clarified your values because that's important to the foundation of this mindset. Because your values are the foundation of your decisions and to align choices with your best self, you have to identify what truly matters and spend time reflecting on your core values, like integrity, growth, compassion, creativity, write them down so that you can They are top of mind that they are visible to you so that when you start to feel a little out of alignment, you can revisit them very easily and use them as a filter. When you're faced with a decision, ask yourself, does this align with my values? And if the choice conflicts with those values, it's likely not to be the right one for your best self. The other thing we have to do is define what your best self is to make aligned decisions. You need to have a clear vision of who you are at your best. And that means being able to, visualize your extraordinary self. Imagine a version of yourself that is thriving at every aspect. What is it that you imagine your best life to be? How is your health, relationships, your career, and that overall well being, all of the dimensions that we talk about. What qualities do you embody? Confidence, discipline, compassion, creativity. What does it look like for you? What does your extraordinary self look like? And then acting like your best self every day. Before making decisions, pause and ask, what would my best self do in this situation? What would be good for my future self? Those are really good questions to ask yourself. What does my future self need from me right now? What would my best self do in this situation? And that'll ensure that your actions are aligned with your higher potential. You'll be less likely to fly off the handle. You'll be less likely to per to ruminate on events of the day that were more, a little more discouraging or frustrating if you ask yourself those questions. another thing that helps is goals, stay focused and ensure that your choices lead to growth. I have my goals written down and I had to revisit it this week so that I could see that even though my goals are out there. And even though maybe today I had other things that I needed to attend to, I still have those goals out in front of me. The path might, the timeline might shift a little bit. Sometimes the focus shifts a little bit. But the goals stay the same, break those down, start with long term goals. Maybe it's a, if you're talking about a career challenge, improving your health or starting a business, all of those things, some, all of those things are out there can be done in a decade, maybe not a year. And so it's important to keep those in front of us. So break them into short term, actionable steps, and then align those daily choices with the goal. If we are taking one step forward every single day, that's enough. Sometimes we're going to take more. We're going to take several steps forward in a single day or a great big leap. Sometimes it's really tiny steps or even just maybe even not going backwards. Align the daily choices with goals. Each day, ask yourself, is this decision moving me closer to my goal? so for me, for the period of time that we were in the hospital, I didn't have the same access to foods and things that I would normally have had access to. So I had to ask myself about snacks. Or is this decision going to move me closer to my goal? But I had to know what my goals were. I wanted to feel good. I wanted to not go backwards. I didn't want to gain more weight. I didn't want to load myself up with sugar. So I would be tired and fatigued and be unable to make decisions. I couldn't let that go for my own sake and for the sake of the rest of the journey that we were on. For. So if health is a priority, choosing to exercise aligns with that goal. Skipping workouts does not. So when I was in the hospital, I, again, I didn't have access to, I, I was, I had a little bit of a routine of going to yoga once a week of doing my walks and doing our hikes and all of that needed to change. I mapped out a route around the hospital and I took laps when I could and I made sure I got my steps because I knew I would feel better that way and I wouldn't get to the other side of the months of recovery process and just letting my health goals go. because That was, I knew that was important, whatever that is, it's that using a decision making framework, a structured approach that can help us align our choices. so one I want to show you is the 10 10 10 rule. Ask. How a choice will affect you in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years. This framework helps us to focus on long term alignment and rather than short term satisfaction, although you have the 10 minutes. So the choice will affect you in 10 minutes, 10 months, 10 days, or 10 years. You could do three, three, three, three, three minutes, three hours, three days, three months. That's going to give you a lot of information too. How do I want to feel three minutes from now? Because sometimes that does the anxiety or the stress is If we just put it on hold for even a couple minutes becomes less of a big deal. So there's that you could set yourself up a framework of 10, 10, 10. And then of course, there's the mind body spirit check assessing that. So this is where you assess if the decision positively impacts your mind. Is there learning or growth involved? Your body? What, how is this going to affect health and vitality and spirit, that sense of purpose and fulfillment? So taking those two frameworks, this is how you can tune into your intuition. Our intuition points us to the choices aligned with aligning our choices with our values and our best self. And that requires listening to that inner voice and I'm not talking about the inner critic. There's a difference. Sometimes that inner voice can sound more like an inner critic, in which case we have to revisit our alignment and we have to revisit our, some of our mindsets and our, those thoughts and re examine that. When you listen to that inner voice, When you start to feel a sense of peace or excitement about a decision, it's often a sign that you're aligned with your authentic self. if you're not feeling that, if you feel that resistance or doubt, that might be a red flag. and regular mindfulness practices like meditation and journaling are going to help you tune into that inner guidance and make those decisions that feel right to you. The other thing that we really want to do is review and reflect regularly. This is something that a lot of times in my coaching practice, if that I will encourage a regularly, put it on your calendar and schedule a time. my routine is to daily divert, to weekly withdraw, to monthly maintain and annually abandon. These times are on my calendar, so I have times to review and reflect. regularly reviewing our choices and assessing whether they align with our best self and goals, because if not, we can just adjust our approach. Ask for feedback. Sometimes others can see whether your choices are reflecting your values more clearly than you can. So seeking advice from trusted mentors, a friend, have accountability partners who support your growth. committing to personal growth is investing in yourself and making choices to expand your knowledge and your skills and well being. and embracing challenges when faced with difficult decisions, Ask yourself, how can this help me become more aligned with my best self and stay flexible. Now, life happens and sometimes we hit, we have to hit the pause on all the forward moving and just exist in the moment and take it as it comes. If we've done this work, it won't feel like drifting backwards. It will feel like we are prepared for such a time as this and life evolves. So do your goals and your values. So stay adaptable to that new information or experiences that might require you to adjust your alignment. this is all going to happen as you reevaluate regularly. And as you grow. revisit your vision for your best self and your goals to ensure that they still resonate with where you want to go by consistently aligning your choices. And I'm going to share with you in just a minute, a heart alignment meditation, and I'm going to invite you to participate in that. If you are driving, you're probably going to want to come back to this. So I'm going to wrap this up, but then come back to it and listen to the end of it. I'll also make it a special episode that I'll single it out. So it's going to be right here. So stay with me. If you are listening somewhere where you can do a meditation, if not, if you're driving, Come back to it later by consistently aligning your choices with your best self goals and values. You can create a life of purpose and fulfillment moving steadily towards becoming the person that you are meant to be as you get up every day and default to yes, your extraordinary self. Now I'm going to invite you to a heart alignment meditation to it's a time to reconnect with your inner wisdom. Align with your highest self and open your heart to peace and clarity. So I'm gonna invite you to find a comfortable seated position with your spine straight and your hands resting gently in your lap, palms facing forward, and just close your eyes and allow yourself to relax in this moment. Take a deep breath in through your nose, feeling the air, fill your lungs and expand your chest. Hold it for a moment. And then gently exhale through your mouth, releasing any tension or stress. Again, take a deep breath in drawing fresh energy. As you exhale again, take a deep breath in drawing in fresh energy. And as you exhale, let go of any thoughts or worries from the day with each breath, feel yourself becoming more grounded, more present. Your body relaxes, your mind quiets. And you feel fully here in this space of peace. Now bring your heart awareness to your heart, that space in the middle of your chest. As you breathe, imagine each inhale is drawing in light directly into your heart. The light might be golden, white, or a color that feels healing to you. With each inhale, this light expands, filling your heart with warmth and peace. If it helps you to focus on that, place your hand over your heart. On each exhale, imagine any tension or heaviness or negative energy dissolving away, leaving your heart lighter and clearer. As your heart fills with light, allow yourself to feel gratitude for this moment of connection. Visualize your heart as a flower gently opening with each breath. With every inhale, the petals expand. And with every exhale, your heart opens wider to receive love and peace and alignment. Take a moment to sit with this openness and let the light within you radiate outwards. Now bring to mind your highest self, the version of you who is filled with love and compassion, wisdom, and peace. As you breathe, feel this connection deepening. Imagine your heart aligning with this higher self as if you're tuning into a frequency of unconditional love and inner clarity. Feel the energy of your best self emerging with your heart, infusing it with confidence and grace and purpose. In this aligned state, ask your heart a question. What do I need most in this moment to align with my highest self? What do I need most in this moment to align with my extraordinary self? Pause and listen. You may receive a word, an image, or simply a feeling, trust, whatever comes up, your heart holds deep wisdom, and it always knows the next step on your path as you breathe in, repeat silently to yourself, I am aligned with the wisdom of my heart, I trust its guidance as As you breathe out a firm, my heart leads me to my highest good. Now I invite you to take a few more deep nourishing breaths, feeling the alignment with your heart and the peace that it brings. And when you're ready, slowly bring your awareness back to the room, wiggle your fingers and toes, gently move your body. Knowing that this feeling of heart alignment is always with you. You can return to this space whenever you need to center yourself, seek clarity or connect with your inner guidance. When you feel ready, gently open your eyes, carrying this sense of alignment and peace as you move through the rest of your day. As you go out there and default to your extraordinary self.