Ep 144. Obstacles into Opportunities

I am Kym Showers and this is Reinvented After 40, episode number 144, Obstacles into Opportunities.

Welcome to the Reinvented After 40 podcast. I am your host, Kym Showers, and I’m a certified life coach for women in the second half of life. Each week I’ll bring you direct advice and inspiring, practical wisdom to help you live your very best life and create a future you’re absolutely obsessed with. It’s going to be fun, let’s get started.

Hey my friends in podcast land, happy June. I know you’ve already gotten a June welcome, but I’m going to say happy June again because I love June so much. I love it so much already. I’m so into the vibe of summer, happiness, lightness, more play, more ease and actually less work. Even though I love working, I just lightened my whole schedule up. I’ve lightened my entire attitude up. And I’ve turned all of my obstacles into major opportunities for me just to go next level.

And I want to just offer you that thought today, because this is what I’ve been teaching and coaching my clients on this week. They get all the behind the scenes of course, all my most vulnerable information, everything going on with me. And I have shared with you guys, if you follow me on Instagram, please follow me on Instagram, it’s so good and helpful and encouraging. I’ve been sharing little snippets of my coaching sessions which I think is just gold.

I just want you to see, those of you that have never got coached before, have never hired a coach, had the experience of coaching. Wow, just follow my Instagram page and they’re usually on my stories. I’ve been regularly putting them on my stories, little snippets from my sessions, usually my latest sessions. You don’t see my clients or hear my clients because they probably don’t want to do that but you’ll hear me. And it’s just some really good coaching and good ideas, very helpful ways of thinking about things, especially about problems, obstacles.

So, problems we turn into opportunities, obstacles we turn into opportunities. And what I have been sharing is that the month of May overall was a challenging month for me. And I may have already told you this. I know last week I gave you my three best ways to pop out of feeling stuck. And so that helped me, gosh, you guys, those three practices helped me so much in the month of May because I just was down. I wasn’t down bad, crying at the gym but I was down bad and I may have cried. I was trying to think, did I cry in May? I don’t cry very often. I may have welled up and cried a little bit in May, just kept it between me and me.

But mostly I just felt a little crushed and disappointed, I would have to say overall, and I just let myself be there but I did the essential things. And everything that felt disappointing to me, it’s mostly about my goals for the year and mostly about my business. This is the first year where the first half of the year I haven’t met my goal and I thought I was going to do it in May and I didn’t. I thought I was going to do it at the very beginning of May, but I didn’t.

And other things happened too that I wasn’t expecting and it just felt like everything got heavier and heavier. And I think it was a good time for Taylor’s new album to come out because it kind of fed my soul. I felt so much less alone with her music, it kind of soothed me and I don’t know if you guys are all big Taylor Swift fans, but man, I do love her. I love all of her albums. And I do love this new album and mostly because I just appreciate and admire her so much and her tenacity and her work ethic and her creativity and just her bravery. And she’s just so beautiful. And I love her attitude.

And her songs on her newest album are so relatable to me and maybe to you too, but it was perfect timing. I’m also into Sabrina Carpenter too. Let me just tell you some of my favorite things right now. I won’t forget obstacles into opportunities. The month of May was an obstacle for me, and I’ve turned it into a launching pad, let me just tell you this, for a bunch of new ideas for my business and for me as a coach. Oh, my gosh, so just get ready.

The last six months of the year, I’m going to just be playing around with some new ways of doing things. And I’m just going to get braver. And already it’s so fun for me. It’s just an opportunity to lighten up and to say things that I have never really thought about saying before. And do things that I’ve never really thought about doing before, because everything that I was doing was working and I kept meeting my goals. And now that it’s not working anymore, I’ve got to change things up, and that’s what I mean about obstacles into opportunities.

Instead of giving up and quitting, we will never give up and quit on ourselves, ever. We turn those obstacles into opportunities as a launching pad to do something even bigger and braver and more beautiful than what was working before. That’s what I mean, you guys, when I say obstacle into opportunity. You have to be able to manage your mind in such a way that you can switch it. You can get curious and creative on purpose.

So back to Taylor Swift. She has a song on her album called Do it with a Broken Heart. And I was thinking, gosh, I kept showing up for myself every day in the month of May and I was crushed, so I could say I had a broken heart. I’m going to just say I did. And I just kept showing up for the things that I’m committed to. And even when I didn’t feel like it, you wouldn’t know. I just kept doing it. And you know how I feel about myself, I feel like I can 100% trust myself.

And that is the best feeling when I don’t give up on myself. And I know I can trust myself and show up no matter how I’m feeling to the things that I’m committed to, to the things that I value, to the ways that I choose to live on just this high vibe, even when I don’t feel like it and be so proud of myself. I feel so proud of myself for the way I handled kind of the disappointing little few weeks. And it was just kind of day after day I had to just battle to do the things that I was committed to even when I felt really down.

So, I want you to know, and I was telling my clients this because, gosh, we’re all the same. And what I know for sure is that when we don’t stay stuck, when we have the skills and the tools and the belief in ourselves to pull ourselves out of it and get creative and think new thoughts and maybe try different ways of doing things. We turn our obstacles into opportunities to grow. I’m calling that our growth edge because that edge of growth is so painful.

When things that were working stop working and you have to get creative and curious about what might work instead, what might be a better way. When there is a roadblock, let’s just say on your way to vacation, there’s a roadblock, and you didn’t expect it and you find the detour. You find another way to get there. You don’t turn around and go back home. But on that growth edge, our brain so wants us to quit. Our brain so offers us thoughts like, oh well, I guess this wasn’t for you. I guess you’re not very good at this. I guess this isn’t what your future holds, after all. Wouldn’t it be easier to just quit and to relax for a while?

So, my brain always offers me nonsense like that. I’m like, “No. No, No, none of that.” I’m just going to take a nap, eat a sandwich, take a break, and then I’m going to get right back at it with even more resolve and even a new kind of vigor and enthusiasm for a different way. And I like a different way. I’m going a different way. I’m going to do things differently. And you know what, I’m not alone.

And that’s really helpful to know that, for me to remember that. I’m never alone in this struggle with life and with business. Because even my coaches who are multi million dollar coaches, they’re struggling too right now. I guess I could say I’m sorry a little bit because I have empathy because it’s difficult, but also I’m not sorry because this is the way forward. The struggle is the way forward. It’s how we get gritty. It’s how we build better businesses. It’s how we become better coaches. We have to go through it too, and it’s all part of it.

The disappointment, the crushing feeling, the heartbreak, the frustration, even the insecurity. I want to think of the word insecurity, that pops up too, because we have a human brain and it’s the human condition. So, we are good enough. We are on the right path. We just have to do things a different way. That’s how we turn obstacles into opportunities without quitting and giving up on ourselves. This is how we grow and become the next best version. This is how we build better businesses and serve our clients in a much more powerful way.

And it’s so helpful for me from my coach to tell me her struggles because then I know she’s human and the things that I’m going through are normal and expected, of course. And even though I felt surprised by it, because of course, I just was zipping along in the river of momentum, and I wasn’t expecting an obstacle on the way. I wasn’t expecting a little dam to just stop me, so that took me by surprise.

And my brain and your brain always wants to try and shame us, to try and make us wrong, to try and make us stop doing what we’re doing and go back into the safe place of just keeping everything the way it is and giving up on it and not really creating our dream. Our dream is when we’re actually doing the work. This is the dream. The end game is not the dream. Though we make the goal the dream, the dream is actually in the day-to-day.

The dream is actually in having months, weeks, days, days, weeks, months where we’re feeling crushed and we’re feeling down and out and we feel disappointed. And things didn’t work out the way that we thought and we didn’t reach our goal. The dream is knowing how to get ourselves back up and back to work and get creative and focus our brain and get moving again.

That’s the dream and I’m living the dream right now, you guys. And I want you to know, if you are in it right now, listen to last week’s episode, that will help you, and practice that as often as possible, do that work.

Dump out your brain, circle the things you have control of, and then focus your brain back on the things you have control of and think only on those things. I’m telling you, that is the fuel to getting back in the river of momentum and getting curious and feeding that brain. And I’m also telling you. get up and work out hard every single morning. That will be life changing for you. Drink green juice. That will be life changing for you. Under-drink alcohol, under-eat carbs.

Don’t numb it out. Just know you can feel all of the feelings and they’re just vibrations in our body. And we can feel heavy and crushed and disappointed and it’s all going to be okay. It’s part of the process. We don’t ever have to give up because of those feelings. We just need to turn all of it into this opportunity to become the woman of our dreams. So, I just want to be the example of that for you. I wanted to let you know that I am just like you, as optimistic as I am all of the time.

I really was optimistic the entire month of May. I know this might not make sense to you but there’s a difference between my brain and me. So, I am the watcher of my brain a lot of the times and I will just watch myself optimistically when I’m suffering. This is a thought for another podcast. But I have learned the skill to be the watcher of me and not be in it all of the time with me. I can pull myself out of it and just watch me and have so much compassion and love for me while I’m in it. And this has been very, very, very helpful for me.

So, I don’t beat myself up and make myself wrong, even though my brain wants to do that and I just don’t ever do that. So that’s possible for you too. And I just want you to know, this is the process, this is the road. There will be obstacles on our path to our dreams, and this is part of the dream. This is how we get stronger and more tenacious and more empathetic towards others. And we’re just really good problem solvers when we can get curious instead of judgmental about the process and about ourselves.

And to hire a coach, I’m telling you, coaching helps so much. Instead of complaining about it, which I didn’t do, I got coached on it and I kept changing my mind. I’m really, really good at self-coaching as well. I can pull myself out of things super quick and easy. So, there’s a difference between staying in it for a long time and being able to get yourself out of it pretty quick.

So, it’s a daily practice and I just wanted to offer you this very helpful, useful, powerful thought of turning your obstacles into opportunities, to think about problems like that. This is for me to solve. It’s not for me to talk about and complain about and whine about. It’s an obstacle that I can turn into an opportunity. And I can honestly say that this probably will end up being a beautiful part of my story. I will probably say 2024 was the best year of my life.

I have not changed my goals. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even adjust my goals for the end of the year because it’s more about just being able to reposition myself and be more creative and do things, try a bunch of different ways. And that’s what I’m going to do and that’s going to be really fun and really playful. And I don’t think I can do it wrong. I don’t think I can make any mistakes. I just think this is an opportunity for me to do things differently and maybe even in a way more creative, fun, magical way than what I’ve been doing because the brain loves to rinse and repeat. And I’m not going to rinse and repeat.

I’m going to change things up because I think the universe has given me this opportunity to do so. So that’s what I’m going to do. So, borrow any of these thoughts that sound useful for you. If you, my friend, would love to learn the skill of turning your obstacles into opportunities and so many other useful practices, I would love you to come work with me starting July 9th, every Tuesday morning, from nine to ten California time.

And I will coach your brain and you will change everything about how you think and feel about yourself, your problems, your relationships and your future.

Come work with me. Go to my website, sign up for the group. You will hear from me immediately. And you will get my plan tomorrow today planner. And you will get a really cute ball cap and you will get a workbook that’s going to be so useful for you in the mail right away.

Alright, I love you. Have the best week and I will talk to you next Thursday.

If you love this podcast, I invite you to come work with me. Go to kymshowerslifecoach.com, sign up for my next group and retreat, and let’s create your dream life together.