Welcome back! This is episode #020 of To Take It Or Leave It, a podcast to help you change the way you look at things, end your mental suffering and give you some motivation and inspiration to live your best life! I’m so glad you’re here! I’m Val Poirier and I’m your host. If you haven’t done so yet, please hit that subscribe button so you never miss another episode. Today’s topic is: 7 habits for growth – Part One
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Why is growth important? Growth is how we learn and improve. Think back to when you were young. Our first years are spent learning how to survive and to do things for ourselves. The more we learn, the more independent we became. For some people, growth doesn’t continue into their adult lives but personal growth is meant to be a way of life.
Tony Robbins says “If you are not growing, you are dying.” Personal growth means learning from your lessons and other people’s lessons. If you do something wrong, you learn what’s right, and the next time that thing comes up, you do the right thing. Learning what’s good for you, what’s bad for you. And just becoming a better person for yourself and for others around you.
There are so many things you can’t control in your life but your growth is not one of them. You can set yourself up to experience the kind of growth you need in order to meet the next version of yourself, and create the kind of life you’ve always wanted. But you gotta do it on purpose.
I’m gonna walk you through the first three habits for growth this week:
- Doing healing work. This will be some of THE hardest work you ever do but the most rewarding. Healing work can involve physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual work. Healing is about restoring your wholeness and living a balanced life. The first step to this is self-awareness. You can’t heal something unless you know about it. It’s like the illness you find out you have. You couldn’t begin to heal from it until you knew it existed. How did you find out about it? You noticed that you didn’t feel right and then you did something to fix it. Maybe you heard that how you felt wasn’t necessary and could be changed to something that feels better. Sometimes that means rest and recovery. Sometimes that means that you need to learn how it happened in order to fix it and not repeat it. Often times you have to talk to someone who is knowledgeable in this area and knows the solution you’re looking for. Also, often times someone has been through what you’re struggling with, so why do you continue to struggle? Ask for help. It’s that simple, yet such a hard thing for so many people to do. Admitting you need help does not make you weak, in fact it makes you brave. Brave enough to face your struggle to get past it. Right now, I’m healing my diastasis recti. This is an abominable separation. What caused it? My assumption is those four babies I carried had a lot to do with it. So I found a physio who specializes in this area to teach me what my body has forgotten to naturally do and walk through this with me.
- Self-acceptance. You are who you are. That includes all the beautiful things about you AND it includes your flaws. Accept them. Everyone has them since perfection doesn’t exist. If there’s something you don’t like about yourself, then change. The first step to change is acknowledgment of a problem or recognition that there is a better way. You will always expect other people to show up in a certain way until you accept yourself. Once you learn how to accept yourself as imperfect, then accepting that other people have flaws will become much easier.
- Personal responsibility. Somewhere along the way, you might have learned that you can justify your actions based on things outside of yourself. Maybe it was the angry parent who yelled at you and then told you that it was your fault because you made them mad and if you would act in a certain way, then they wouldn’t need to get mad. There is nothing true about this. We all get to choose our emotions. These come from the thoughts we tell ourselves which come from our beliefs. I had a friend who had some stuff stolen from his car and most people would get mad at the thief but this isn’t what he did. He showed empathy for the thief by saying that the thief must have felt he needed the stuff more than he did and that it was his fault for not locking the doors. No anger, only sadness. Regardless of if someone did or said something that you don’t agree with, you have a choice about how you want to show up in this world. And when you react and show up in a way that doesn’t align with the person you want to be, own it. We all make mistakes and we can all do better. We are generally doing the best we can at any moment in time and we won’t always choose the right option. Take responsibility for your words and your actions and that will help you sleep at night. You don’t need other people to take responsibility for their words and actions to do this for yourself. Yes, you may feel hurt or sad, but you can’t control if other people want to take responsibility for themselves. You can only control yourself. For you parents out there, when you model this behaviour for your kids, they learn how to do this. Kids will be kids and maybe you had a bad day and were feeling emotionally drained and the smallest thing set you off and you yelled at your kids. If you come back later and apologize for this, not only will you be repairing the relationship, you will be modelling personal responsibility to your children and you will see them start to do the same. We are all in control of our own words and actions.
Quickly, these are: doing healing work, self-acceptance, and personal responsibility. We’ll cover the last four next week!
If you’re having trouble implementing these habits into your life then it’s time to change your approach. The pain or void you’re feeling in your life is telling you that something isn’t working. You’re feeling it because you know things could be better or there’s something missing. You know this isn’t working so you ask yourself what you’re going to do better. It’s really important not to wallow there but instead to do something about it. The best thing you can do is look at someone who’s helping others get the outcome you want and do what they tell you to do and follow a proven system because that is one of the biggest shortcuts you can possibly have and if you don’t take advantage of that, I mean why wouldn’t you? You make your road a lot shorter and you get to that destination a lot shorter if you follow the strategy.
I can make it simple but no one can make it easy. I’ll tell you step by step how to implement these habits into your life and really tap into the life and life purpose that you want to be living! You’ll feel better physically and mentally and improve your relationships in your life as well! You’ll start chasing and achieving your life goals! But no one can make it easy. You’re going to have moments of fear and doubt and overwhelm.
The power of being in a good coaching program is that you’ll have someone who will hold your hand and walk you through it which is what I love to do. It’s my joy in life. But those moments are still going to happen because that’s the journey but if you’re willing to step forward with some courage and embrace that and dive in and take action despite your uncertainty, you’ll be shocked at how fast things can grow or evolve. You’ll look back and think it’s so amazing, you couldn’t have imagined how good it could be. It’s ten times better than struggling in the dark. If you’re not taking advantage of that shortcut, then you’re not giving yourself every advantage that you can.
If that is what you want, I’d love to see if I can help you do that. So go to totakeitorleaveit.com/coaching and reach out and book a call with me. That’s what I do everyday. I’ve accomplished all these things already that you want to accomplish, I’ve helped others accomplish them so why don’t you let me see if I can help you do some of those things too. It’s not going to be easy but it’s going to be easier with my help. I can promise you that. Go to totakeitorleaveit.com/coaching and book a call today.
That’s it for today! Please share this podcast with someone you know and help share my message. The goal is to grow the podcast and I can only do that with your help so I appreciate it. I do this for you! Remember to love yourself first. You know yourself better than anyone else and be confident that you will make the right decisions for how to live YOUR best life.
If you’re looking for more motivation to achieve YOUR goals in life, join my Facebook group! This is an amazing community of like minded people! You can find it in my profile on Instagram @valcpoirier. Also, tag me in your stories with my podcast and what you think or what you’re doing while you listen to it and I’ll share it right back in mine! You are worthy and you are beautiful and I truly appreciate you all. Keep reaching for your goals….you got this! See you next time!