Stuck with a Past Version of You?

Let's Talk About What May Be Quietly Sabotaging Your Efforts! 

In this episode, we're talking about something many high-achievers  wrestle with: growing in life — doing all the right things — but still feeling stuck in how they see themselves.

Maybe you’re nourishing your body, learning new skills, showing up in your relationships, even healing from hard things… but your self-concept hasn’t caught up. You still tell your story through the lens of failure, loss, or not-enoughness.

It’s time to change that.

We explore:

• Why so many of us measure ourselves unfairly
• How to integrate our wins into our identity
• Why growth isn't complete if your self-image doesn't evolve
• The science of negativity bias and neuroplasticity
• How to reengage with life after discouragement
• What it means to fuel your cells, focus your mind, and anchor your habits
• The impact of judgment, comparison, and gossip on your self-concept
• How to narrate your life with clarity, compassion, and courage

This episode will encourage you to stop dragging around outdated stories — and give you the tools to tell a new one. 💡

🧠 Self-Coaching Questions to Journal or Reflect On:

Use these to go deeper after the episode. Take five minutes with a pen and paper, or bring them into your next walk, quiet moment, or coaching session.

1. What am I proud of that I’ve been overlooking?
2. Who do I want to be today — and what’s one small act that aligns with that?
3. Where have I stopped giving my all — and why?
4. Am I willing to try something hard again, even after discouragement?
5. What old stories or labels am I still carrying that no longer fit?
6. Where can I shift my focus toward goodness, possibility, and truth?
7. What new story am I ready to tell about who I am?

Favorite Quotes from the Episode:

You are not who you were. And who you are becoming? She’s powerful. Don’t stop your story at the pain. Your brain follows your focus — and where attention goes, neuroplasticity grows.

Practice This Week:

Fuel your body. Focus your mind. Anchor your habits.
 These small daily actions can begin to reshape how you see yourself — not just what you do.

And when you notice judgment, comparison, or gossip creeping in?
 Pause. Shift. Redirect.
 You are narrating your story now — make it true, make it kind, make it yours.

🌟 Final Words:

You’re not behind. You’re becoming.

As you get up every day and default to yes —
Yes to healing.
Yes to wholeness.
Yes to showing up with love and courage —

You step boldly into the truth of your extraordinary self.

Transcript

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0:59

welcome to another extraordinary week. Today we're gonna talk about something that might be quietly sabotaging your growth. My name is Julie Reynolds and I am on this journey with you. I am a nurse coach and a certified Roma therapist, and I have over the past decades dedicated myself to simple strategies. bringing these tools together for holistic health and really wrapping our mind around how we can get up every day and default to yes, yes to extraordinary, yes to you, yes to the opportunities that come and really yes to the life that you're created for. so let me ask you a question first. Maybe you're learning new things, building healthier habits, even healing in ways you never imagined just even a few years ago. But you still don't like yourself. You still see yourself. Or maybe you like yourself, but you don't see yourself any differently than you did before. You still narrate your life through the lens of the person who messed up, who lost, who wasn't enough. So I wanna ask you today, what then are you measuring? Most of us are using an unfair, outdated, or just plain, unreal standards to measure our self-worth, and we don't even realize it. We compare our behind the scenes to someone else's highlight reel, and we fixate on the one failed relationship, the loss. We didn't deserve the job that went all wrong. The lack of appreciation that we got in the situation where we felt like we were right, we rose to the occasion, and then we just didn't get the acknowledgement that we thought we deserved or were looking for. Maybe it's a mistake that we can't forget. We measure our value based on words of someone who never really saw us clearly in the first place. And maybe that was a family member, maybe it was a spouse or a friend or an employer, whatever, that, wherever that, that, those words anchored into your story or entered into your story. Let's just agree that that stops today and let's go to work. I realize that this isn't going to be listened to this podcast and immediately these things go away. But I have some ways that we, I think we can work through this now. First of all is integrating wins. Your nervous system is wired to remember pain more vividly than progress. It's called negativity bias. We've talked a lot about that in the culture recently. It's a really a protective mechanism, but it also can be a trap. If we don't integrate our wins, we get lost in the noise of old narratives. So let's just pause and ask ourselves some questions, and this is where self-coaching comes in. And it, and this is a really hard thing to do. You've gotta get out of your head for this, whether you journal or whether you, uh, hire a coach, talk to a trusted friend. Get out of your head with this. So I wanna ask, let's ask ourselves, where have, where have I grown that I haven't given myself credit for? And then when did I show up with courage, even if the outcome didn't look perfect? How can I tell a new story, one that includes the hard stuff, but doesn't end there? These are all questions that I've asked my coaching clients, and they will change everything. If you're able to get out of your head and really answer those and see what is the reality. Okay, so first we're going to need to start integrating some wins that is so important. You may have, in the last 20 years, accomplished amazing things. Maybe you got the degree that was on your heart to get, maybe you changed a system, maybe you took the stage. In a way that you never thought was possible. You wrote the book. Maybe you raised some children that, that have graduated from college now, and you're seeing them figure things out and you know that you did a good job by them. What are those things that you always dreamed of doing and then you did it? I'm not saying it was perfect, but you did it. Did you integrate that into your self concept or are you still back 20 years ago before any of those things happened? Did you change and integrate that into your self concept? So we're gonna talk about fueling cells, focus mind and anchor habit, because I like to think in frameworks and. I think this speaks to the whole person, so maybe we can do a little better job of integrating. I love to break this up into fueling your cells. Are you treating your body in a way that it matters? You can't think clearly or love deeply when you're running on caffeine in cortisol. So nourishment is not optional. It's foundational. And then focus your mind. Are you training your brain to, to cooperate with you in the way that you want to show up? Are you paying attention to what's good and what's possible and what's true? Your brain has neuroplasticity and it will follow the path that you carve most often. So if you walk the path of defeat and loss and failure, your mind's gonna pick up that. It's not differentiating whether that's good or bad. It's picking up on that that's important to you. All right, so then anchor your habits are your rhythms. Setting up, setting you up to remember who you are and what you care about. Habits are not about perfection. They are about direction. They are about intention and moving about in the world in the way that we really. Want to. So growth is not just doing new things either. It's about becoming someone who, because you believe differently about yourself. Alright, so let's instead talk about reengaging with your life. Maybe the real question isn't, why am I stuck? Maybe it's where have I stopped giving my all and. maybe am I willing to try hard things again, even after disappointment? Sometimes we expect some things to get better, but we don't wanna put the work in. And I've heard many people in the 40 50 plus, uh, category be kinda like, I've been there, done that, and I don't have the desire to strive like that. Well, your future doesn't really need you to be perfect or to be striving all the time. I guess if you have that idea that striving is work and making things harder for yourself, but it does need you to reengage, to choose courage again and again to get up and discover what is possible in your life. That's how we default to, yes, that's how we. Experience the extraordinary. That's how we get to exceed those things that go, that exceed what we can, beyond what we can think or even imagine. and then let's go back to what's, what you're getting stuck on as well. let me be clear, you are not the worst thing that ever happened to you. You are not the moment that you didn't show up and you're not the comment that shattered you or the decision that you regret. You are the one who got back up. You are the one still here, and you are the one writing your story now. So be the narrator, not the victim of someone else's version of it, right? there are some sneaky little saboteurs that are along our, along our pathway as we get up every day and default to, yes, we set our intentions, we maybe have our habits, we have our tools, we know all the right things to do. I believe that you have the wisdom and the insight. your body is full of wisdom. Your brain is brilliant and you know all the right things to do. It's just a matter of getting past some of those sneaky little saboteurs that are along the way, and those saboteurs can be gossip, comparison judgment. Judgment Rod robs us of compassion and comparison blinds us to our own lane. It takes us into someone else's lane. Um, one of the, one of the most significant pieces of advice that I got decade, like probably, uh, years and years ago was stay in your own lane. I asked somebody who was experiencing some success that I also aspired to what her, what she thinks, what her top tip was. And that was stay in your own lane. Don't pay attention to everything else everyone says and does. Gossip also is another one of those saboteurs 'cause it disconnects us from integrity and real connection. I tend to miss out on a lot of the gossip in the workplace, and a lot of that is intentional. Just kinda steer clear from those conversations as much as I, I can. if you ask my coworkers, I'm not sure that they would notice that I'm trying to avoid it, but I allowed somebody to start talking about someone that I had been working closely with, and she said something about that person, about something that that person said about me, My initial reaction was. I was really hurt. And then I went to being like, well, if she, if that's, if, if that's how she feels, that's on her, not me. And then. I processed all the way to, unless I hear from her, I'm not really going to act on it. But I did. I noticed after a couple weeks that that was still lingering in my mind and I was protecting myself from that, and that was affecting our relationship and so. That is something that really is something to pay attention to, whether that be in family, in friendship circles, in the workplace, wherever that is, really watch that. Those things that you don't, you think you handled well and it's seeded back in there. It's those, this is why I call them sneaky little saboteurs. All right, so we're gonna shift our attention. Uh, you always have a choice in where you look. And do you look for what's missing or for what's good? Do you echo criticism or do you amplify Hope The thing that to remember here is that your brain will follow your focus. We've heard it said that where attention goes, energy flows. That is one of those things where we can train our brain to really focus and and act on the things that we want to act on. So do you echo criticism or do you amplify hope? Neuroplasticity is at play here, and we can wear those new pathways in and really, again, train our brain to show up with us, to help us show up in the world in the way we really want to. So I have some questions. Some these are self coaching questions that will help us to create a new narrative. you might wanna write these down and again, get outta your head with this journal or. Get a coaching session scheduled, whatever, however you do this with a friend or a coach or a journal, get out of your head with these questions. Externalize them, actually answer them out loud on the paper. What am I proud of that I've been overlooking? And are you willing to say out loud to your friend, and do you have a friend or someone that you can say, I'm really proud of myself for doing this. and who do I wanna be today? And what's the one small act that aligns with that? Just choose one, one thing that that will align with who you want to be today. Where can I show up with more love, including towards myself? And what new story am I ready to tell about who I am? You are not here to play small with a story that isn't even yours. You're here to fuel your body, focus your mind, and anchor your habits, and narrate life in a way that reflects the strengths and the softness and the sacredness of who you are and who you're becoming. You're growing and it's time to Bring yourself concept into alignment with who is who you really are and who you are becoming. So if you're stuck and you have not integrated all of those wins into your self concept, it's time to start that work today. And. I wanna invite you to schedule a discovery, a no regrets discovery session with me. I, it's only 20 minutes. We'll get on the phone and chat and get you pointed in the right direction. we can talk about a specific action plan or a strategy for you to get you pointed in the right direction and set on, and really anchoring yourself in the wins and integrating your wins Into your life today. Alright, if you have been growing in life, but dragging around out the outdated self image, and if you've been measuring your worth by someone else's ruler, if you've stopped trying because the last time just hurt too much, it's time to come back to yourself. It's time to reclaim the narrative, fuel your body like it matters. Focus your mind on what's true and good, and. Anchor your habits in love, not pressure. You are allowed to integrate the wins, and you're allowed to forgive the missteps. You're allowed to try again, and not because you're broken, but because you're becoming, there's nothing wrong with you. You are just fine the way you are, and it's time to love that. Don't stop your story at the pain and don't let that judgment and comparison or old beliefs write your ending. And because you have the power, you can train your brain to help you show up in the way that you really want to. Because you are not who you were. You are who you're becoming and That is so powerful and a feeling that you have no idea. So as you get up every day and default to yes, yes to healing, yes to courage, yes to growth, and that transforms how you see yourself, it's time to integrate those wins into your current self-concept as you walk in truth of your extraordinary self and you get up every day defaulting to yes, your extraordinary self.