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You're listening to the confidence podcast, your favorite coaching podcast oozing with motivation, inspiration, and confidence to help you boldly take action on your dreams. I'm your host, Trish Blackwell, internationally recognized Confidence Coach, Best Selling Author and founder of the College of Confidence, the most encouraging place on the internet. I teach go getters in life, how to take your thoughts captive, how to step out of the shadows of self doubt, and how to courageously step into their purpose. With competence. It's time to pump our competence muscles and train our thoughts, y'all. Let's get started. Hey, guys, it's Trish Blackwell, and you're listening to the confidence podcast. This is episode number 567. Today, it's a great simple approach to know what you want in life because here's the reality. So often, we don't know what we want, we think we do. But often we are just regurgitating and reliving that which has been passed on to us that what culture tells us the environment in which we were raised the expectations what our family thinks is prestigious or not. And we are a product of our environment, for better or for worse. And so we're gonna do something new today, we're gonna just get curious, because curiosity leads to good questions. And the quality of your life is really determined by the quality of the questions that you're willing to ask yourself that you're willing to wrestle with, that you're willing to find answers to. And that's why in my coaching, I teach, to get curious in order to get clarity, because when we get clarity about what we want, and very clear about what we don't want, then you can design your life on purpose, then, when you have clarity, you can think and show up with precision and with consistency. And when you know what you want, and you know that consistency is the way to get there, then you won't lose motivation, you aren't going to give up you will keep going. And when you are a person who keeps doing what they say that we're going to do, you will see results when you see results. It's really hard not to be confident. And the whole way, the more clear you are, the more confident you will be in your capability, and in your ability to shape your future. So it seems like a simple question, how do you know what you want. And it's way more complex. I spend sometimes months working with people and my one on one practice on how to figure this out. So please don't beat yourself up, please be patient, please know that it's a process. And also, it's okay for your desires to change. It's okay for your dream job to no longer be your dream job to see that underneath behind the doors, it was different than you thought to have a change of heart. But what's not okay is to just settle and believe you're stuck to say, Well, I'm in my mid 40s, I guess this is what it is. Or, Hey, I'm in my 20s. And I don't know my route, I don't know the next steps to get. And it doesn't matter how old you are, how young you are. It is never too late. You are never too far behind. And you never have to take the traditional path. There are so many approaches. So stop focusing on all the reasons you can't do what you dream of doing, and start tasking your brain instead, to find ways to figure out what you can do and what you want to do. So that is what we're talking about today. Today, we're talking about reverse inspiration. This is a term I have created in my coaching practice. And we're going to go into depth today about it. But in short, it really just means knowing what you want being inspired by first knowing what you don't want to let your bad experiences the jobs that were toxic the people's lives that you see that you go, do I want that do I want an 80 Hour Work Week, we get sure they might make this amazing income and have a lot of prestige. But do I want the behind the scenes, like when you can be inspired and impressed by others, but then to say to yourself, I don't want that for myself. I value them I value what they do. But I have reverse inspiration here. You could have reverse inspiration by looking outside, looking around and looking at your past. I have massive reverse inspiration about my past because it helps me know what I don't want in my future because there are certain things I went okay. It's good to know that that doesn't work for me. Because the reality is when you don't know what you want, like really know it it's hard to stay consistent. Consistency creates results. It's easy to be consistent when you know what you want. And the reality is To that most people don't achieve their goals not because they aren't trying, but rather, because they don't have a clear idea of what they really, really want in life. And sometimes, in order to know what you do want, you have to first get clarity of what you don't want. So that's what I call the reverse inspiration process. And in this episode, that's what we're going to cover, I'm going to teach you how to use your past, to design your future, we're going to talk about the secret to having unwavering confidence in the life you want, in what you want in life and what you want to create with your future, this commitment to the belief that the future is better than the past. And it can be you can create anything with your future. And I'm gonna give you five ways to have more fun while you do this. How to make creating the life of your dreams, way more fun, because look, there's work. There's work, there's inconvenience, there's uncertainty, there's a battle there things that fail, they're things that were don't work, there's doors that don't open, and you still keep going. That's the key. So before we dive into the coaching, officially, two quick announcements, number one, I'm doing a live webinar, a live free workshop happening on Tuesday, October 10. So that's 1010. It's at 6pm. Eastern Standard Time. It's called squeeze the day. We're going to not seize the day, but squeeze that a squeeze out everything you can from a day. Most of the people that I work with are first and foremost curious about how do I manage my day? How do I get so much done, and still have time for margin and I'm going to give you the steps on how to get more done, and how to get more out of life. Because the chances are, you're really good at working, you're really good at doing doing doing hard work, but maybe not as good at living. Or you spread yourself too thin and you're trying to do too much and everything gets half done. If you want to learn how to live beautifully and work beautifully and look at that no such thing as balance. But that ebb and flow between the two that is all happening in squeezed the day it's a 30 minute webinar, where I'm gonna talk to you exactly how to get more done and get more out of life. You can get your free spot at Trish blackwell.com Ford slash squeeze. And then our review of the week is from Kelly sky Kelly, thank you for this. Here's what she said. Five stars. Wow, thank you for rocking it. Hey, Trish, I just wanted to let you know that your show has already made an impact I'm only three shows in. And I'm already feeling more empowered in my work and life. I signed up for your college competence today and was just blown away by the output of quality content, care of process and beautiful thoughtfulness. I'm not religious, but your powerful vision helped me look past something that normally would have put me off talk of God. And I do believe in embedded knowledge and complex system of phenomena that is far beyond my mind. So I recognize what you're talking about. Anyway, basically, I just wanted to say thank you, you're a total Rockstar, Kelly, this resonates for me so on so many levels, what you said about the college or competence, that the quality content, the care of process, the onboarding, the beautiful thoughtfulness is profound. That is what I've been working at, we have been up and running for almost seven years, I'm so proud of the robustness and the next level coaching available in the college confidence, I truly believe it is the most effective and most affordable life coaching anywhere on the internet. And so I am so like that speaks to my heart. And I'm also so, so encouraged that the way I talk about my relationship with God allows you to feel welcomed as you walk in your pursuit of higher meaning and purpose of life. And you're that on in your own terms. And I just want you to know I love you for that. Thank you for sharing that. I'm always going to be unapologetically a follower of the teachings of Jesus, I walk with the Lord. It gives me my my purpose i I just want everyone to know how much God loves them. And it your relationship with God might look different than mine. But my deepest prayer is that those who listen, even those who don't share my faith would still feel God's love through the show. So thank you for that Kelly. Okay, so let's dive into coaching first and foremost, how to use your past to design your future. It's simple, instead of regretting your past, take from it. And even the things that you feel quote unquote took from you a toxic job, a narcissistic relationship. Wasted Years, bad decisions you can take back from them. And this is so cool because it all happens in telling your story differently. We get the power to rewrite our past you've can't change the facts. You can't change the circumstance enters, that you absolutely can change the way you talk about it. And the way you tell your brain, the story, and the way you believe that it's working for you, not against you that you're not behind because of something that happened. But actually because of what happened. Now, you know, you don't want, I can think about my, my relationship before my husband. And I was engaged. And it was very, very people listened to Episode 444, you know, my full story, but was very, very toxic, very abusive.

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And it took years for me, and it took my confidence for me, I was at rock bottom from that. But it didn't take from me, I'm able to take back because once I knew what I didn't want in a husband, I knew what I did. Once I knew how I what it looks like to not be treated well, when I knew what it looked like to be a shell of a person. I knew what how I could not live in the future, right? I knew I had a lot of work to do on myself. And I was able to take back from that season of my life. And here's the bottom line, you're always winning, when you're growing or learning. You're always winning. As long as you grow, we're learning you're winning. And so you have to do the wrong people to know who the right people are, you have to have the jobs you don't know No, you don't love to know what jobs you do love. You have to try things to know what you like and what you don't like. And I have two exercises for you here to help you design your future based off of your past how to know what you want. The first one is to categorically label each decade of your life. So this is going to work for you if you're in your 30s 40s or 50s. If you're 21, it's going to be a little bit less impactful. And if that's the case, I would encourage you to break it down into five year clumps. Or if you prefer, hey, in elementary school, this is who I was. And this is how I would describe that season in my life. In high school. This is how I would describe that season in my life. In college. This is how I would describe that season my life. In fact, as you do this exercise, I can remember mission to do it, however, so just segregate and separate sections of your life. So you see them as seasons. And that's either it can be based on relationships you've had, it could be based on five year increments, or 10 year increments or different maybe, you know, elementary school, middle school, high school, university, grad school, it depends upon your story and where you are. But pick seasons. And then I want you to describe each season in two or three words. And what this is going to do, it's going to one help you decide what do you want to take away from that season. And then thinking about that, describing your past will tell you what parts of each season worked for you. And which ones didn't. You can say this is the season where I felt empowered. But I didn't take don't know how to take care of myself yet. This is the season of my life where I was obsessed with self care. But I allowed myself to get walked on emotionally by others like to get separating it that way. But also when you look back on your past, and the pain and the struggles and the stories, because look, everyone has pain. Everyone has a story. Everyone has things that has happened that just are not fair. When you see the bigger picture, and you decide to believe that in every season, there was a purpose. And every season, there was a takeaway, and they just take ways are stepping stones that build upon each other. Now you can look at your future seasons and say, What do I want this decade to be? What do I want this season of my life to be I often? Well, transparently having just turned 40 It was a huge journaling session I did. And it was what do I want my 40s to be? What do I want this season where I have two children in elementary school? This is a sweet season. What do I want it to be? What are my values? What do I want not what do I want to do on what do I not want to do? I want to keep them involved I want to travel the world. And I also don't want to overcommit meaning I don't want sports on every single day. But by the way, that's counter to my personality. I'm like, oh, let's do it all. So I have to know. What do I want? When I look back on this season? When I'm 60? What do I want to remember about how I lived my life? Use that vision of what 20 year is from you first choose excuse me, 20 years from now you is going to think and say I'm glad I lived this way. And the other the other exercise I have for you today is called the WL web list. I was just talking with my friend Vidya who's a neighbor and we had a great treadmill session this morning and we were talking about this way and life works best. Now I got this exercise from my mentor Todd Durkin. And it's an incredible simple exercise W L WB. And simply it is you can put that at the top of a journaling page. And I want you to ask yourself, What's my WL WB? What is the in this tool is a list that you're going to build for when life works best? Here's what I do. It helps you really reflect on what you do. Now you can even say when life works best for our family. Here's what it means. It means that we need three dinners in a week where we are all at the table together. It means that we always go to church on Sundays make it a priority, it means that we wake up early. So we have time, like what does it mean? It means that we always have a date night, what a note you can think about as a family or you can think about it as an individual. And when you know, when life works best, and you're if you're not sure where to start with us think about the last time you were super happy the last time you had just an amazing day. What were the habits you did? What were the things? Was it waking up early and going for a walk right away? Is it having quiet time with God in the morning? Is it writing your gratitudes if for me it's it is all of those things, putting on good music, having written gratitude, having an active prayer process, prioritizing quiet time organizing and scheduling my day. So I can squeeze the day right so to speak. That's when life works best for me on my WL web is also setting up for the next day the night before. But it's so great because I like this this these are the microscopic ways which we have control over our life this one of the things that causes the most stress and overwhelm in life. And burnout is when you feel out of control. When you feel you have so much obligation. So many things to do for so many other people, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that you can still design your day. Even if you have a pretty terrible nine to five, even if you're stuck in some old habits, even if you've got restrictions, you still have power. The minute you give away your power mentally the minute you say I can't help it, I'm just stuck here you go victim, you're starting to lose already stay in a victorious mindset. So how do you know what you want? Well, reverse inspiration, what is reverse inspiration, it's being inspired by what you don't want. And you can do this by looking at your own life you can do it and looking at the lives of others and and the behaviors of others. There are some things I used to think were my dream. And then I got to see the inside of those jobs or those those those opportunities. And I realized, actually, I don't think I want that. It's reverse inspiration. And I can be still be inspired by the people who are doing that. But I've decided that it was shiny and cool, but not really what I want. I am also very reverse inspired by my 1.0 version of myself. Oh Who is that? That's why I call her trashy. Trish, if you're new to my content, there. It's the old version of you as your 1.0 you your upgraded version of you is the 2.0 just like an iPhone, we're upgrading all the time. And my trashy trash, y'all she's stressed she's on the go all the time. She's has no margin her life, she's constantly thinking she's a hot mess. And when I find myself cutting corners in my timeframe, when I feel behind when I feel like I'm not doing enough I am reverse inspired to not go back and revert into the stressed out overachieving burnt out, unbalanced, unhappy version of myself. So the secret to having unwavering confidence in what you want is to know what you don't want. So here are some questions to ask yourself, what do I want my life to look like? And really map it out. Like what is a perfect Tuesday. And go ahead, say five years from now 10 years from now. Because you're you might be working in a job and go Well my perfect Tuesday is to walk through us walk to the farmers market and then log on and write my book for a couple hours and then do some you know some work in my virtual business and you go that's feels so far away. That's fine. What does your perfect day look like in the future?

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Now how do you want your life to feel? How do you want your life to feel? I want my life to feel invigorating, exciting, fulfilling, joyful, engaging. Now, what do I not want my life to look like?

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And more importantly, what do I not want it to feel like? I don't want it to feel stressful. I don't want it to feel like a grind. I don't want it to feel anxious, I resonate all those relived experiences for me. But when I decided I don't want my life to feel like that I was able to change how I showed up and designed my life. And another really great question to ask yourself is what makes my soul sing? I want to give you five ways to have more fun as you do this, number one, take it all that seriously. Truly ask yourself what you want to create, go try it and you don't have to have the perfect answer. You are allowed to course correct, you're allowed to go one way and then shift another, I think you might have if you've been a long term listener, you know that a few years ago, I got into ice skating, I started taking figure skating lessons as an adult and had a lot of fun with it when my kid about probably six years ago. And I actually thought maybe I'll take it really continue this and pursue it and I enjoy it. But I enjoy it once every now and then not three times a week. But that doesn't mean that the money the time, the skills that I put in, are wasted. They're a great skill. So you can pursue something and pivot. And it's easy to think about a hobby that way. But it goes with anything could be a job could be as a side gig, a passion project. But just give yourself permission to go. It's not that serious. I just want to have fun. I'm going to create something fun. Number two, decide that you make life happen. Life doesn't happen to you. This is a really big distinction between a victim mentality and a creator mindset. Life doesn't happen to you. Life happens and you decide if it's happening for you or to you. The third thing, be be proactive, not reactive. Stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. Stop worrying if it's appropriate. Ask a question or not just ask you beyond vocalize what you want. And advocate for yourself and ask will open opportunities and have the courage to ask for what you want seems simple. It's actually a lot harder to execute than you think. And I need you to remember the worst thing that somebody can say is no. And at the end of the day, you'll be proud that you had the courage task. Number four, make an assign time for what matters to you. Prioritize, not just work, not just everyone else, but what matters to you. And I think sometimes we we go well, when I eventually have time you don't. We don't find time we make time. And if you want to learn how to do that sign up for the squeeze the Day on October 10. That's Trish blackwell.com forward slash squeeze. And yes, I will be sending out a replay. So even if you can't make it live, do sign up, you do need to be registered in order to get that replay. And then finally, number five, my gosh, put yourself around other people that are fun other people who are joyful, other people who are happy, not who are complaining about everything wrong with politics, everything wrong with the world everything wrong in work and gossiping. Look, you know that we become who we hang around, are you hanging around the right people. Put yourself around others who are going after life who aren't just settling who want more, and who are going to build you up along the way. You can do this in your local community. You can do this through meetup groups, you can do this by getting in a book club. You can do this by getting in a church group, a Bible study, you can do this by joining the College of competence. That is what we are, we are a group of people who said I'm going to make a difference with my life. And my life is going to matter. I'm going to impact others and first women to make the changes in myself. I'm going to live life to the fullest. So that is a great place to go. You can check out more at College of confidence.com. And then the final this bonus reminder. Give yourself permission to have fun. And the more pressure you put on yourself, the less effective it is. You're going to mess up. They're going to be things that don't work. It doesn't matter how many times you fall, what matters is how many times you get back up. It's okay to not be 100% sure what you want and just start anyways because then you can pivot the biggest key is to create momentum to be an action taker to say I'm stepping into my my discomfort zone. I'm stepping out of the comfort zone into the discomfort because I will not settle in life. I will not settle for a life half lived I will not settle for justice. Looking forward to Friday. I will not settle And I'm going to pursue figuring out what it is that I actually want. And that's a process. So let's say, you might just simply say, I'm in the process of reverse inspiration. And that just means you gotta go test, you gotta go taste, you gotta go see what is you don't want so that you do know what you do. If you resonate, if this topic is speaking directly to you, I want to encourage you listen to a couple other episodes that we have where we've covered some of the same content, but in a very different way. So those episodes that you will love are episode 418. So these are a couple of years old. Scroll back and be and by the way, you can always go to my website I have, I think on the podcast apps, there's only about 300 episodes available. But if you go to Trish blackwell.com forward slash podcasts, all the 567 episodes are available for you and we have a search engine halfway down the page where you can type in a keyword and find every episode related to that keyword. So or if I ever mentioned the episode title, you can go to Trish blackwell.com forward slash that episode number. So the show notes and some of the takeaways for today's episode aren't Trish blackwell.com forward slash 567. But the episodes you're gonna love are Episode 418, which is how to figure out what you want. Episode 453 Why you're not doing what you want to do. And episode 473 How to know exactly what you wants. You guys, I want to personally invite you into October fest, it's October Fest in the College of confidence which we are actually calling confidence fest. And the coaching content this month is amazing. If you've considered the COC, there is no better month than now to join us. When you join it's absolutely 100% risk for your 14 days. So let us know if it's working for you. If it's not if you don't feel more confident and more supported in the first 14 days, then you have in past year, just let us know. And we happily give you your money back. It's that risk free. So in our confidence fest we're going over the core competence habits, we're going to go and talk about we have a whole workshop on how to teach your kids competence, how to be a living example of competence in your household, have confidence in work, how to have confidence in your relationships and in your friendships, how to have confidence in your potential, how to have confidence in the unknown, and we have so much more it is an incredible month competence best don't miss it. You can get started at Collegeofconfidence.com. Now in the meantime, make sure you subscribe to the podcast, share the show with a friend. And if you haven't yet, leave a review on iTunes. I'll see you guys next week and I'll see you in the COC Now go out there today. Go be more of who God created you to be. Be you.

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Be free. If you loved today's episode of The confidence podcast, I invite you to check out the College of Confidence at www.collegeofconfidence.com.. The COC is where your next step is. In the COC we cultivate confidence create courage and spark change. It takes everything we do here on the podcast to the next level and our members get crazy life changing results. I'm so confident that you will find that the COC is the most encouraging place on the internet and that it will so wildly exceed your expectations that it comes with a money back guarantee hate joining is completely risk free you owe it to your future self to take your growth to the next level by coaching with me in the COC. Join me today at www.collegeofconfidence.com