00:00:00
Christine: You are listening to the Your Empty Nest Coach podcast with Coach Christine, episode number 92: The CEO Toolbox Part 4A: When Your Life Stops Moving Forward. I work with mothers of high school students and beyond, who are in the trenches with sad and possibly, overwhelming thoughts about what their life will look like when their baby heads to college and begins to leave the nest. My clients’ big question is what will I do with my time? Is this you? I’ve been there, and I get it. Empowering you to write the next jaw-dropping, amazing chapter in your life is my passion. I am energized by leading you in the process of exploration and am thrilled when you unlock the power that lies within you. This podcast is my gift to you.
00:00:48
Hello, my empty nest friend and CEO of Your Life! That’s quite a title, isn’t it? This episode is in a series of episodes about the toolbox for your life. If this is your first time here, know that I reference topics introduced in prior series of this podcast in this episode, making this episode a more advanced topic. If you find yourself wondering what I’m talking about, head back to the prior series and work your way through. I’ll have links in my show notes. Also, I almost didn’t do this episode and next week’s episode at all because I thought it might be too much for some of my audience, or that it won’t translate well over a podcast. But then decided if only one of you were ready for this, it is worth doing. So again, if this is your first time listening, you may want to pop back to an earlier episode. Paper and favorite writing utensil will be helpful today to prep you for next week.
00:01:43
A quick reminder, that if you find yourself talking back to me at any part of this episode, or if something resonates with you, please take the opportunity to leave me audio feedback either through SpeakPipe or my Google Voice number. You’ll find the information to do this in the description of this episode: on Apple Podcasts, click “Details”; on Spotify, click “See More”; on Overcast press the I for information button. Get the idea? Of course I always have full show notes with links to anything I discuss in the episode, and a full episode transcription on my website. Those reside at YourEmptyNestCoach.com/P (for podcast) and 92 (for this episode’s number). (YourEmptyNestCoach.com/P92)
I can’t wait to hear from you!
00:02:26
Thanks! Thank you! It’s time to thank our sponsor. This episode is sponsored by my membership community, The GPS Support Flock; Your Flight to Success in the Empty Nest. If you are ready to find the GPS of your life, sign up to receive an immediate and free download of my PDF, “How to Find Yourself in the Empty Nest,” our GPS Life Principles document. You will also have the opportunity to learn about our community. See the link in this episode’s show notes or fly on over to my website, YourEmptyNestCoach.com. Click the GPS Support Flock button. See you soon!
00:03:14
So far in this series, we’ve discussed having a toolbox for your life. We’ve considered our top-tray items in the toolbox, those items that help us in a pinch to get to the deeper work needed to illuminate our life, and I suggested you add presence to your foundational level of your toolbox. In this episode, and the next episode, I will introduce you to the Conscious Effective Olympian, or CEO, Analysis tool. I would like you to consider also placing it in the foundational level of your life’s toolbox.
00:03:46
Today I would like you to imagine that you are able to travel to a theme park. There is an envelope of excitement that wraps you as you think about your favorite ride, not a wild ride but a peaceful ride. You navigate getting to the theme park, finding the ride, waiting in the queue, and embarking on the ride. The ride begins and your excitement transitions into a calmness as you know what to expect because you have ridden this ride before. Before long, the ride comes to a halt, and over the loudspeaker you hear, “Please remain seated. Your ride vehicle will begin moving momentarily.”
00:04:24
At this point, let’s be honest, you have choices. You could:
Freak out, scream and jump out of the vehicle, ignoring the message. Yeah, a message that is there for your safety.
Or you could stay seated and take this opportunity to complain, focus on what you believe is the fact that nothing ever goes your way, and that this is no surprise.
You could stay seated, take out your phone and ignore everything that is going on including your family members who are looking to you for comfort.
Or you could stay seated, and spend the time noticing things about the ride that you never noticed before.
I bet you can think of some other options. This is not an exhaustive list.
If you are still listening to this, then you probably know me well enough by now to know that yes, this applies to our teaching for today.
00:05:09
Life. Your life, you have moments when you get on rides in your life, be it a new job, a new hobby, a well practiced hobby, a new career option, a new way of looking at the world. Beginning the journey or navigating to the place that you believe has a huge impact on your life, wrapped in that envelope of excitement and then as you get started, or when you are knee deep in it, everything halts, you’re thinking about it, or a pandemic, something doesn’t make sense, and you “give up,” or just stop making progress. You know the drill.
00:05:43
When you notice the momentum in your life stop like this, I want to encourage you to choose the last option I presented for you on the ride: stay seated, and spend the time noticing things about the ride that you never noticed before. But for you, you are going to notice things about yourself. If you have presence in your toolbox, it is going to help you here. Imagine that the ride you are on in your life (whatever it is that has stopped moving forward) that it won’t move forward until you do some work. Imagine that the message on the loud speaker says to you,
“STOP! Momentum is needed. Please do your work to level-up your life, and then your travels will resume.”
00:06:25
The first two words are the most important ones in the tool that I’m about to share with you, STOP and Momentum. Again the message is, “STOP! Momentum is needed. Please do your work to level-up your life, and then your travels will resume.” I’m going to give you a tool that will help you assess what is stopping your momentum. It builds off the three series in this podcast: Empty Nest Prep, The CEO of Your Life, and the CEO Toolbox (the one that we are in now). I call it the CEO Analysis Tool. Remember that CEO stands for Conscious Effective Olympian. That is where I want you to be, the Conscious Effective Olympian, or super hero of your life. Should this tool resonate with you, I encourage you to make it another foundational-level item in your toolbox.
00:07:17
Today, I want to focus on the message that you hear, “STOP! Momentum is needed. Please do your work to level-up your life, and then your travels will resume.” I’d like you to get a piece of paper and your favorite writing utensil, if you can find it. You may go ahead and hit pause, or come back to this later, I’ll have the time stamp in our show notes.
00:07:38
So what I want you to take out of this, this today, is all of the letters from STOP: S-T-O-P, and the first Letter in Momentum. So M. S-T-O-P and M. Now on that paper, I’m going to get you started this week on how to set up the tool, and to get the most out of the next episode, practice hearing that message over the loudspeaker, pulling out those five letters and then writing them down in the way I’m about to describe to you. While trying to explain this with audio only is quite an experience.
00:08:17
We’ll start with 7 lines, put bullets, or stars, or lines, to mark the 7 lines, in a list, going down the page vertically, one designator per line. Now, you are going to start filling in the lines with the letters you have extracted from the announcement, but in a particular way. Are you ready? You are going to put S in the fifth line, and then move up one to put the T in the fourth line. O, you’re going to use two of these, and you’re going to put them in the outside places, so in line 1 and in line 7. So you have O for Outside, and you’re going to put them in 1 and 7. P, goes above the T, and that is in line three. I did not purposely rhyme all of those. But there we go. You are left with M, which will fill in the two open spots 2 and 6. That creates bookends of “OM” for our tool.
00:09:14
When I was working on this, the M’s fell into place where they are, I did not seek out the bookend OMs but they arrived there. Going to my favorite place for reference, Merriam-Webster, the definition says: “A mantra consisting of the sound \ˈōm\ and used in contemplation of ultimate reality.” In this tool, use it as a memory tool, or use it as something deeper. You know me; your thoughts are your thoughts to choose. Here we are, with the tool setup. It is worth reviewing this a few times before moving on to the next episode, where I will go into how you can use this to help you identify the cause of your stopped momentum in life.
00:09:55
We’ll lighten things up a bit in a couple of weeks, but for now, I want those of you who are ready for this concept to be able to dive in. Should you want some assistance with this, we’ll be doing a workshop on it in our GPS Support Flock this month, and those are always in the archives, too, should you be listening to this episode well after its release.
00:10:17
You are amazing to be on this journey, my empty nest friend. You have so much potential in your life, and it begins with you gaining peace and control over your emotions. Which is what we are doing now. Did I not tell you that? [Giggle] Imagine being an emotional adult. Imagine being able to be around another highly emotional human and not having to take on their energy. It is possible! I can’t wait to see what you do with this. I invite you to keep me posted on your progress, and I’ll chat with you in the next episode, amazing lady!
[Music]
00:10:55
The questions I have for you in this episode are, has momentum stopped in your life in any areas? What ride did you imagine when I invited you to take today’s journey? Fly on over to either the GPS Support Flock Group or Facebook Group to share your answers to these questions with our amazing flocks. Our Facebook Group name is Green Popsicle Sticks. Want to know why? Listen to episode number 17. Or head to my website: YourEmptyNestCoach.com/community for links to join our flock. We look forward to seeing you there!
00:11:30
Christine? Christine? Christine, where are you? This was a fun week: CinDiLo from the blog “When the Clock Strikes Midlife” included this podcast on her curated “Top Ten List of Valuable Podcasts for Midlife Women.” What a lovely and sweet surprise! Link is in this episode’s show notes, so be sure to check out her list and all of the amazing women included on it. Thanks, CinDiLo!
00:12:03
Well my empty nest CEO of Your Life friend, if you enjoyed this episode, I invite you to take a moment to subscribe to this podcast. It is free after all! As always, I provide content to make you think. My hope is that I am able to provide you with thoughts that positively impact your life. May you stay healthy and safe, and always remember that you are amazing! See ya!
[Bloopers!]
[End]
