Episode 42: How to Make Progress from Abundance

Hello podcast universe! Welcome to Episode 42 of the 100% Awesome podcast. I'm April Price and I'm so happy to be here with you sharing the podcast universe. Today is a lovely cloudy day in Phoenix. We get them so rarely, we had rain last night, and now it's cloudy and dark and even a little bit cold.  So I'm loving it!

00:57
Today on the podcast we're going to be talking about how we change and improve from a place of abundance and love rather than a place of lack and self-loathing. And trying to improve from a place of already being enough might be a really new way of thinking about things for you. I really want to encourage you to sign up for some coaching this week and apply the concepts I'm talking about to your personal life, to the areas that you personally want to improve and change in.

I want you to see yourself in a way that you may never have looked at yourself before. That you are not lacking, but that you are enough in every way. And I have found that having a coach show me what my brain will never show me helps me so much.

So, if you're trying to change and grow while your brain is constantly and continually pointing out your flaws and offer these as the motivation to change, I want you to sign up for some coaching and I'll show you what you can't see from inside your own brain and you can sign up for a free session at my website www.aprilpricecoaching.com to get a spot on my calendar.

So as I said, today we're going to be talking about how to change, and grow, and improve, from a place of wholeness and even abundance. Meaning not changing to outrun ourselves, or not changing because we are so awful that we can't stand ourselves, but just growing and improving because it is your right, and your destiny as a child of God. So I want to start by just qualifying and explaining the word improve as I'm going to talk about it on the podcast today.

02:39
So, when we hear the word improve it usually implies some kind of betterment. That we're going from a state of less to a state of better, but I don't mean it this way as I talk about it today. When I say improve I don't mean that you will be better in any way as you pursue a course of growth. I have said it before and I will say it again you can not be better you can't get any better. There isn't a better version of you, in your past, or in your future, just as you cannot be better than another human being. You cannot be better than yourself at any point in your human journey.

So today as I'm talking when I say improve, I simply mean acquiring more skills in any area that you want to. When I say improvement I only mean that you always have the ability and the right to get more skill, or experience, or aptitude, if you want in any area of your life. But that makes you better at performing those skills not a better person or a better version of you.

Okay, so with that said I want to talk today about how we improve but how we do it from a place of love in abundance. And the reason that this has been on my mind so much is that I have recently been very overwhelmed by my own self doubts, and insecurities, and failings, and I want you to remember that this is the human condition, to question our abilities, and our worth, and our brains are programmed to notice problems and the problems with us, I say that in quotes are often the things that are most apparent and glaring to our brains. To our brains, we are always and forever the problem.

And so the work to overcome all this self-doubt and the questioning is constant, and continuous work that we're going to need to do over our lifetime. And I find that I kind of go through ebbs and flows where I'm really good at managing my brain and all of its fault finding expeditions, and bringing it back to the truth. And then there are times when I am just not good at it, and it feels like my brain is winning and it's staring me down and bullying me incessantly.

04:49
I hope that it's obvious to you right now that I am human. Holy cow am I human! You're like, "Yeah I know."

If you've been listening to this podcast for any amount of time I'm sure that has become obvious, and I would say that in the last month or so I have been listening to my brain more than I have been talking to my brain. And consequently I've really struggled with all the thoughts that tell me I'm not good enough, or I'll never be good enough or I'm sure to fail, or I am doing it wrong.

And I suspect that it's not just me that feels this way, that many of you have these moments where you feel like this. Anyway, in the last week or so I've just grown so tired of it! Feeling that feeling of defeat and self-loathing, and I finally decided to take the knife out of the hand of the toddler in my brain and manage it. Tell it what to think, and direct my thoughts on purpose.

So, I wanted to share some other things that I have learned as I have done this work, in the hopes that this will help you as well.

And particularly today, I want to address the idea of how we grow, and change, and evolve, from a positive mindset. So as I see it, we have all these flaws, and faults, and shortcomings, that our brain is very good at identifying. It's an expert in our faults, and at the same time we all had this innate God given desire to change, and improve, and grow. The trouble is, these kind of get mixed up together and so it's really easy to use all our flaws and mistakes as a way to beat ourselves into growing, and changing, and becoming. The trick is to be able to nurture that desire to improve and grow, without falling into the trap of just being so aware of our faults and using them against us.

So, last week I was listening to an old podcast in which the host Alexander Cortez was talking about how he sees so many people, and women especially, who try to make changes in their health, in the health of their physical bodies. And they say it and they do it in the name of health, but then it's never done in the spirit of health. And he points out that when he talks to his clients he says "Why are you here?" He says "Then they just give me a list of things that they don't like about themselves and it's just like this really big list. A list of things they wish were different."

07:15
And he says "It's really obvious why these people who come with these huge lists of things they don't like, have never solved for their health." He says "When everything you do is designed to get rid of everything about yourself that you don't like, you're never going to be happy, you're never going to arrive at a state of contentment, and it's a perfect setup for failure." And he says that "people are always just in this kind of battle with themselves, and then it's no wonder that they can't create the change they want."

Now this just rings so true to me in terms of where I have been mentally for the past month or so and I don't even mean it in terms of health. I mean it in terms of like my character, my traits, the way I am running my business, all these things and I have this long list of everything I don't like about myself. So it turns out that in all these areas of my life, in my relationships, or in my business, or in my personal life, I'm working on this long list of everything I don't like about myself, trying to get rid of all these parts that I find unacceptable and then there is no end to that war with myself.

There is no end to the amount of things my brain can find wrong with me. And so, there's no end to the battle that I am waging against myself. Now I want you to think about this for a minute, as you think about the things that you want to change in your life, is it a list of things you don't like? Is it a list of things you want to eliminate or destroy? Very likely right? Because this is the default model of change that our brain has always offered us. Notice all the things that are wrong, and then be yourself up until you change. And P.S. you can never change enough, so just beat yourself up forever! It's like a perfect plan!

Our human brain always offers us a perspective that is based on everything we want to get rid of. And Alexander Cortez points out that this paradigm of change is based on what he called "the cut down model." Make it less. So he was talking about it in terms of health, but I think it applies to any area of our life. He said "You want your body to be less than what it is, you want your diet to be less than what it is, you want your clothing to be smaller than what it is, you're bent on getting rid of everything you don't like and making it less. Let's get rid of all these things in our lives so that we can be happy, but then we never get to happy."

09:39
So think about this in terms of other things that you might want to change. We're constantly noticing all the things we want to remove in ourselves, or destroying ourselves, eliminating ourselves.

So let me give you a little example, I was recently working with my coach in our mastermind group, and she was talking about the idea of being obsessed and thinking about our faults. And so she asked us to identify what is the fault that is getting in the way of your success? Think about your business, what is the fault that you think is getting in your way and what does your brain say is the problem that is keeping you from reaching your goals?

So some people in the group are saying like "Well I could be successful if I wasn't so busy." Like "I could have a successful business if I was good at technology, or I could have a successful business if I was confident, or if I was a better coach."

And my brain was saying "my business would be successful if I wasn't the one running it. If it wasn't my business then it would be successful. I could be successful if it wasn't me in charge. If I could just eliminate me, then I could totally be successful."

And when I heard my brain say this, I could see how this paradigm of the cut down model, was showing up here in my business, as it was in so many areas of my life. If I could just remove me, then I would be acceptable and be able to create a good business, which doesn't even make any sense of course because, without me there isn't a business. But this is what we think, we want to cut out all these parts of us, so that we can change into a better version of us. But it just doesn't work.

When you set up your life so that you are in a continuous battle against you, you're going to lose. It this is not a war you're going to win, no one wins a war. One side just loses more, and not only is this a very painful way to live, it actually doesn't work as a model for change and especially in the long term.

So today I want to offer you another alternative to be able to get change and growth in our life, and I want you to know that I am doing this work right along with you. It is the work that never ends for us, there is no end to our ability to progress, and grow, and gain skills, and evolve, if we want to forever. But we have to give up that "cut down model" and take the opposite approach, and I want you to know that this is so powerful to create what you want in your life.

So the opposite perspective says that, instead of wanting to become less of what we are and remove all these parts of us, what we want to focus on instead is becoming more. We want to become more of what we are, not less.

12:28
Building on what we are and who we are, and then simply choosing to love all of that and becoming more. Just because you can, because it is your right to progress, it is your right to grow, and change, and become forever, not because you have to, and not because you'll finally arrive at a place where you like yourself, but because progress and becoming more, is your divine inheritance. Now, it's not going to work if we want to become more from a place of lack. We want to become more from a place of wholeness from in fact a place of abundance and enough ness, which means "I am enough and more than enough, and there is no end to what I can learn or the ways that I can grow." Improving and evolving is a process of becoming more of what you are, not a lessening of what you are.

So I loved where Alexander Cortez said in this podcast he said that "self destruction is not a creationary process." Now, I don't know if creationary is even a word. But I really like this thought! "Self destruction is not a creationary process."

I want you to think about that for a minute. We often think of change as a destruction, as self destruction. Like a dismantling of all that we are, and wish that was different about us, but destruction is never a "creationary process." When you think about creation right, creation takes the elements that already exist and forms them over time, organizes them over time, it turns chaos into beauty over time, using the materials that are already there. Not by destroying the elements, not by negating what is there, but by building with it.

And in many ways it goes back to the difference between scarcity and abundance. When we look at ourselves from the mindset of scarcity we see all that we lack and we want to remove even more. Scarcity for ourselves and our own abilities and our own worth is grounded in disgust. It's grounded in taking away from ourselves, and it produces feelings of hopelessness, and apathy, and discouragement, and it is so hard to act from these emotions. It's so hard to create change from these emotions to grow and evolve. it's impossible from hopeless.

So the alternative is an abundance mindset, which means seeing all that we are and learning, and building, and becoming, more of what we are currently, not less.

15:06
We are either becoming or we're lessening. You really do have to pick one. Do you want to grow from becoming or lessening? Now our brain says that we should hate ourselves and just notice and focus on our flaws. This as it turns out is the very best way to stay alive, but it's not what creates growth.

And as Brook Castillo is always saying we've reached a point in our human evolution where it's not just about staying alive. It's not just about survival. It's about now how we grow, and evolve, and change, and to do that we have to not fall prey to the default thinking of our brain that thinks the only way to change is to find the problems and then beat ourselves into submission.

We have to stop hating all the things we hate about ourselves. This is the only way to change. We have to give up our list, our long list that we don't like about ourselves, and decide to get stronger, to gain more skills, and to grow what we already are.

So I want to give you a little example from my own life. When I started doing the work on my money, there were so many parts of me that I wanted to get rid of. There were so many parts of me that I was ashamed of, and wished were different, and that it didn't like it all, and I just wish I could destroy.

For years I had done an excellent job of pointing out all my flaws with money. "I spend too much, I don't save enough, I spend money I don't have." I bought things that I don't need to feel better about my shame,  which ironically only created more shame for me, and for years I hated all these parts of me. But guess what? Even though I hated them, I continued to act and behave in the same way. Despite my bullying, despite my shame, and my self-loathing, despite the long list of things I didn't like about myself, I stayed the same.

16:58
So, my coach offered me the idea that instead, I could just be proud of the way I spent my money, that I could be happy about every decision I had ever made with my money and love those decisions. When she said this to me I was like appalled, I was horrified! "I can't do that." I said, "If I am proud of myself for this then I will never change!" She just stopped me and dared me to give it a try. She wisely pointed out that hating myself hadn't made me change either. She said "You have nothing to lose."

So I started being proud of my money. I looked at all the decisions I had made with my money and I thanked myself for making them. I decided I was happy with every single one of them. And I realized actually I really was grateful for the way I had spent my money, and what I had done with it.

And as I started to think about my money in terms of being proud of it from this place of abundance, I wanted to be even more proud. From that place of love and abundance I wanted to create even more things to love, I wanted to grow even more. It totally changed everything for me about my money.

And I tried to apply it to my spiritual life and it worked there too. Instead of hating myself for all the things I wasn't doing I noticed all the things I had done.  All the connection I had made with my God, and all the ways I had served other people, and I saw my efforts as worthy, and good, and enough. And from that place I only wanted to get stronger. I only wanted to increase my capacity.

It's the same when I started my weight loss journey. At first it was about becoming less, but the more I got into it the more it became about how I wanted to be stronger, how I wanted to be more, how I wanted to be able to use my body for more things in my life.

18:58
Capability, and strength, and health, became my focus. What could I do to become? What else was I capable of doing? And I want you to know that this applies to any characteristic, or habit, or trait, that you want to grow and improve. You want to be more patient. I want you to start by noticing how patient you really are, and then from that place you'll have a desire to be even stronger. You want to be more compassionate, notice all the times you've been compassionate and then become more of that.

I have in this last week started applying this to my business right instead of trying to eliminate all these things that my brain thinks I'm doing wrong, I've started asking myself, what if I was more of me instead of less? Then what would I do here?

If I wanted to be more of me in the decisions that I make in my business instead of less, instead of trying to like negate myself, what would this look like? How would I move forward? And I'm telling you, this is the way to becoming who we want to be. How would it change things for you, if you didn't want to be less bad or eliminate all these parts of you, but instead you just wanted to be more of what you already are.

In the scriptures there's that part that says that "Christ progressed from grace to grace until he received a fullness." He became more and more, he grew and grew. He became more and more of who he was, until he received a fullness. And this is the key to becoming. Now, this view of change from abundance is the exact opposite of what your brain thinks will be effective.

20:35
So a couple of weeks ago in my weekly email I was writing about this experience I had with one of my clients, and so if you get my email you've already heard this story. And hey if you don't get my email you totally should. Then you could hear from me twice a week and not just once! Right? Which is amazing I'm sure.So, if you want to get my email go to my website and you can sign up.

Anyway, in the email I was talking about my client who is just so frustrated with herself. She had like all of us a long list of things that she wanted to change about herself, and things that she didn't like about herself. She thought if she could just change and finally get her act together, then she could find peace, and then she could find happiness.

So she was using thought work and the things that she was learning through coaching to try and fix, as quickly as possible, all these things that were wrong with her. To like go down the list and fix all the things. She was thinking like "I'm not taking the action I want, so I'm just going to fix my thoughts, and that will fix me and then I'll feel better."

But the trouble was that underneath all these lovely thoughts that she was trying, was the primary thought that she was awful, and flawed, and broken, and not acceptable in every way. She's like "I've got to clean this mess up and then I'll be okay!" And this thought, which is creating so much lack, which is coming from a desire to eliminate all the parts of her, was underlying all these changes that she was trying to make.

And on top of that, her own humanness was just getting in the way, she still made mistakes, she sometimes chose unhelpful thoughts, she didn't always show up the way she wanted to. But that was only exacerbated because, underneath she was working from that cut down model. Cut me out, and then I'll be acceptable. Cut me out and then I'll finally be okay, just like I was thinking with my business.

So that day she came to me she was so upset, she said "It's not working, changing my thoughts isn't working." She said, "I'm still a mess." And the thing is I knew exactly what she meant. I remember being exactly where she was when I first found thought work. I was so excited to think I was finally going to be able to clean up all these awful parts of me and be better in every way.

But that is not what doing this work is about. It's not about eliminating all the parts we don't like, and what I told my client, I said, "the power of this work is not being able to fix the mess. The power of this work is that it allows you to love the mess."

23:08
Love yourself in your mess, maybe for the first time in your life. To love what is, and then to decide to be more of that if you want. This is where it becomes so powerful to be able to manage your mind, to decide with your mind to love and accept all the parts of you, and then decide where you want to be more, where you want to grow, where you want to evolve.

It is your right to progress and grow, but it is only available to you when you want to build on what is, from a place of love, and acceptance, and abundance. All that you are and then working from there to become more of what you are. This is the only way to access your unlimited ability to change anything, and grow in any way that you want.

So here at the end I want to give you a couple questions and tools to help you as you go to do this. You can start by asking yourself, Am I trying to change from scarcity? Am I thinking I'm not enough or I need to eliminate parts of me in some way or am I trying to change from abundance? Am I trying to become more of what I am?

And one clue that can really help you see where your mindset is whether it's in scarcity or whether it's in abundance, is the amount of desperation you feel to change. How in a hurry are you to change? How fast do you want to change or be different? How quickly do you want to leave this version of you and get to the new version of you? Because if you're in a hurry it's because you are operating from scarcity. You want to be different so that you can not lack so much, and not feel so insecure, and not feel so bad where you are. If you feel peace about who you are, where you are, where you're going no matter how long it takes, then you're settling into abundance.

Another really good question to ask yourself is: What will I believe about myself when I change in this way? So we often hold our good feelings hostage, until we somehow some day reach an acceptable version of ourselves. When we think like, when I lose weight or when I'm out of debt or when I don't yell at my kids anymore, when I don't resent my husband, then I'm going to feel good about myself.

25:25
But again this is a thought error, because first, the things we do don't make us feel anything about ourselves and when we operate from this mindset what we do is never good enough for our brain.

On the podcast that I mentioned earlier that trainer said his clients would come in for one thing but it was never enough. They'd come in to fix this part of their body and then it was never enough, they never got satisfied. Remember, that it's never better there than it is here. You never feel better there than you do here.

If you hate yourself here you're going to hate yourself there. There are circumstances, our actions, our results, those never create our feelings, only our thoughts do. So we need to generate the thoughts we want to feel now, so that we can feel them then as well. It is never better than this, and I know this is a really easy trap to fall into. I think like "when my business is this big, or when I finish my book, or when I'm earning this much, then I can feel proud, and happier, and secure, and worthy." But none of that is true, your brain just moves the marker.

Whatever you think you will believe about yourself when you have changed, you get to believe that right now. And in fact you need to believe that right now, it's not coming. That belief about yourself is not going to be bestowed upon you at arrival. It is what it always has been, it's a choice. Believe what you believe about yourself is a choice.

Choose it right now! If you find your mind really resisting the idea of loving yourself as you are ask yourself, how has hating myself helped me? I know you think that hating yourself is the only way you'll ever change, but I want you to ask yourself what if I'm wrong about that? What if I just wanted to be more of what I am? Has hating myself ever changed me? What we want to do is turn that around and just become more of what we are just because we can. Just because it's our right, and our destiny, as children of God. You get to grow forever.

27:38
Now believe me I can hear you, you're like "April, you don't know how bad it is. You don't know how bad I am. This will never work!" I have news for you— hating yourself isn't working either. You have nothing to lose. Try me. If it doesn't work you can just go back to hating yourself, it's always an option. Seeing yourself from lack is always available, I know from experience.

But I also know that the only way I truly make progress and grow in the ways that I want to, is when I love and accept all the parts of me as I am, and then build from there. Now, thinking about yourself from abundance is not easy, because thinking of yourself in terms of lack is the default programming of our human amazing brains. You're going to have to manage it. You're going to have to direct it. You're going to have to take the knife from the toddler running amuck in there.

That happened to me just this week, I said "Enough is enough! I've let my unsupervised brain be in charge of my feelings about me for far too long." And I don't beat myself up about that! I just appreciate all the work I've done, and decide I want to grow, and evolve, and do even more. Change and grow and improve from abundance! Love all the parts of you as you are, so that you can stop fighting a war you only ever lose. And decide to become more of who and what you are, grace by grace, until the fullness.

There is nothing you can't become, if you love what you already are! And that my friends is 100% awesome!I love you for listening and I'll see you next week!