Hello, friend. My watch is turned off. My sweat towel is in place, and I am not even remotely ready to talk to you. I just got in from my run and I spent the last like, oh, I don't know, at least the last mile. Well, no. Okay. I spent most of the run thinking about the podcast as I do. This is, this is definitely my thing.
I have absolutely come to the conclusion that this is a beautiful, creative process for me. It feels so good to head out from my run with the intention of, Hey, here's this idea I've had germinating for a podcast. Let me kind of organize it in my mind and have at least a. Well, only a mental outline. I really don't take notes anymore.
I've decided that I, I, it's not part of my creative process. It's unnecessary. Okay. You might be, you might think differently. You might think that I could benefit from a [00:01:00] written outline. I really prefer a mental outline, and I spent the last like mile or so thinking to myself, am I actually ready? Do I have enough
to go off of, and that's such a funny thing. Oh my gosh. I just heard what I was telling myself. I just heard what I was telling myself. I was asking myself, do I have enough? Which, here's a little pro tip from a life coach. When you are asking yourself a question, it's not really a question. It's actually rhetorical.
Your brain has an answer. What you are truly saying to yourself is some version of, I'm not enough. Okay. That was quite a little revelation. Right here in the first three minutes. Okay. In any event, I do have most of a mental outline and, and actually how I was gonna start this podcast without verbal journaling.
How I was planning on starting this podcast is 'cause I felt myself in that last mile. It was, it was a mile longer run than I've been doing [00:02:00] recently. And so I've felt myself, I felt myself expending that energy of a slightly longer run than normal. And I heard myself like thinking about how I wanted to start by saying that I feel a little, not like low energy by any stretch, but just a little bit more
maybe contemplative today. Like today's podcast really isn't a, here's the, you know, here's the five steps or here's, it's not strategic at all. Today's really more of a, not rumination, that's not the word I wanna say. A pondering, if you will. I was pondering while I was running, I was thinking about what it's like to be
an ambitious woman. Specifically to be an ambitious woman our age. I've been using that word for a while in the podcast. I've been, I've been calling out to my fellow ambitious, overthinking women for quite some time. I mean, I know I didn't podcast for like 10 [00:03:00] months, but even before that, like I knew that I wanted to use that word and I also know.
In my own life and presumably in yours, that sometimes that word feels a little funny, that it doesn't necessarily fit in a way that maybe you would like. And I was thinking about what the word ambitious has meant to me over the years. I think I took it on a little bit more easily maybe than some people do.
I have known from like a very young age that I am competitive. I love that word. I have always loved that word. I am on board with calling myself competitive, and I've learned over the course of 20 years, or almost 20 years now of running, I pedantically. I have to correct myself. I've been running for just shy of 19 years and, and apparently I think it's really important that I not overstate how long I've been running because you might have a [00:04:00] different opinion.
Oh, she's only been running 19 years. Well talk to me when it's been 20 or more. Oh my gosh. Okay. My brain is in some funny places today. Here we go, podcast friend. Anyways, oh my gosh. What I have learned in my nearly 19 years of running is I've really kind of turned the word competitive around in my mind.
I, I know that when most people talk about being competitive, it really sounds like competing against other people. And there is that aspect of it, like, you know, in order to compete there does need to be other people and I don't really think about the other people when I have a competitive feeling. It's really not about beating somebody else, and especially as I've grown older and my times have changed, not like.
Not like the times in the world, although that has changed too. But I mean, like, my running times, like really specifically when I'm talking about [00:05:00] running, my pace has changed. My PRs have changed. Like my, my running skill has changed as I've gotten older. And so it's definitely not about like being competitive with myself, you know, only person you're competing against is the one in the mirror, that kind of thing.
It's not, it's not really about that. I've turned around in my mind often enough that I might be able to articulate it to you, that being competitive for me is actually a feeling and not an action. Even though I just said being competitive as though it is a, a character trait, or b, an action a thing that you do, for me, competitiveness is a feeling and it is one of my favorite feelings in the world.
There is a beautiful moment in [00:06:00] time that sometimes lasts for hours depending on how long the race is that I'm running, and I notice it most in running. It's why we're talking about running today. But I notice it. I notice it in other places too, where. Where I can pull together all of the pieces of my training and my fueling and the skills of, you know, running that I've learned over the years and the core work and strength work that I do, and the beautiful combination of my brain and my body working together in that full harmony of trust that I can execute
my best performance that is a feeling. It's not really about running fast or running long, or even running well, although there is definitely something about it that that [00:07:00] particular effort tends to be one that I recover from better. Tends to be one where I don't end up feeling completely wrecked afterwards.
I am still usually sore after, you know, a best race or a best run, but it's about the feeling of execution and hear that properly. It's about the feeling of bringing together all of the skills, all of the circumstances, all of the training, all of the fueling, all of the things into one beautiful performance.
It is a feeling of competitiveness, of aliveness, of best ness that I'm really starting to seek everywhere in my life. I've had the conduit to it through running for a long time. I felt it. I felt it sometimes when I was writing my book. I have felt it at various times in my business. I'm actually starting [00:08:00] to be able to, to bring it up more and more often.
I'm definitely feeling it even right now. Even, even if you're not entirely following along on what I'm saying during this podcast. It's one of my favorite things about coming back to the podcast. I. I sit down with that best feeling because I really wanna share with you something that's going on in my brain and my business so that
it can help. So that it can help you see yourself. It can help you see yourself fully as an ambitious woman who is capable of creating what you want. No matter what your goal is, you can create it. And the thing about the thing about taking on the mantle of ambition, whether or not you like that word or not.
Yes, that was a double not. Whether or not you like that word, you certainly don't have to use the word ambitious to describe [00:09:00] yourself. The reason I use it to describe you is because it is a little bit edgy, a little bit challenging. I mean, that's who I am as a life coach. I like to challenge the way you're currently thinking, and I would love for you to challenge this idea
of whether or not you are ambitious. Maybe you've taken it on easily, if so, awesome. I love that you're still welcome to listen to the rest of this podcast, but I'm really speaking to somebody who is kind of sitting on the edge of that word, ambitious. We have all been socialized to not talk about competitiveness or ambition as women.
Those of us born in the late fifties, the sixties, the early seventies, we grew up in a time where ambition was, I'm gonna say frowned upon, and maybe it wasn't [00:10:00] necessarily like in your in your family of origin. In my family of origin, we actually were encouraged to be competitive. I was encouraged to play sports, which I was very bad at, and that really was like the conduit for competitiveness.
We also played a lot of games as a family and like my brother and my sister and I were very competitive at games. I actually still am, I taught my kids to be very competitive with games too. We have, we have family game night almost every night, like when all four of us are at home. We play games a lot.
It's one of our favorite things. It's just a fun time to listen to music and talk and, and beat each other at a game.
And it's funny because I have often said that when, when I am being competitive with my family, and this is, this is part of what I have turned around in my own brain about being competitive, it's really not about beating somebody else. There, there is that element to it. But what I often say to my [00:11:00] kids especially is that I don't, I don't, I don't play a game to like set out to beat them so much as I set out to let them lose so that I can win.
It's a little bit of like passive competitiveness because I know how they're gonna play and that really is part of what's fun for me is that that skill of like strategy, of knowing other people's strengths and understanding like how, how it might all play out. I enjoy, I, I enjoy that in my brain.
Anyways, as a kid I was, I was encouraged to be competitive at sports and games, but not necessarily, that's not true either. I was encouraged to be ambitious with education for sure, like for sure, for sure. But not necessarily like in my career or with my hobbies or with things that I would do for myself.
In fact, I was. [00:12:00] I definitely received a, a fair bit of messaging, more so from my mom, and this isn't a dig at her, like I understand how she was raised also that doing something for yourself my mother has always described as being selfish. That if you're making decisions to, you know, take time away from your family or, or not be of service to other people, that that was selfish.
And it's something that I've really struggled with. I mean, as a long distance runner, as an entrepreneur, I do spend a lot of time, like in my own brain or literally by myself while I'm running. I, I take time and energy away from my family, my husband, my, uh, extended family. And I have, I have worked on that in my own brain over the years, especially with running, [00:13:00] and I mean, I feel very solid that I know that I come to my family
and my, I was gonna say, my obligations, I have no obligations, but the other things that I want to do in my life, I come to all of them with a clear heart, a clear mind, and so much more loving and giving energy when I have taken care of myself first. It's part of why I come in here and record the podcast right after I've gone for a run.
I come in from doing something from, for myself so much more open to giving to other people, to you here on the podcast. So I have, I have come around on that word, competitive for years and years and years. The ambitious thing, the ambitious thing was a little bit harder for me. I don't remember exactly when I first started calling myself [00:14:00] ambitious.
I'm gonna say it really wasn't that long ago. I've been skirting around it for a long time. I've liked the word for a while, but I wasn't sure if I actually wanted to call myself ambitious or if I wanted to publicly call myself ambitious. And I think one of the reasons why, for me, I mean the deep socialization certainly, but also for me, there's been a feeling of loneliness associated with that word, ambitious.
And this is where it's not really about other people. I mean, it's not about competing with other people, it's not about comparing myself to other people, even though that is kind of how I'm gonna frame what I'm saying right now. I remember the first time I ran a marathon and you know, posted it on Facebook as, as one does, and I remember [00:15:00] how many comments there were about, wow, I don't even like to drive that far, or Oh my gosh, that's really extreme.
Or, and I said that in a, a much more judgy voice than I think people actually meant it. My point is that there were comments from my friends, from my family, from people I know and love that had to me because I made this, this is how I heard it. It wasn't necessarily how they said it, it was how I heard it, but had the, the vibe of you are different.
You are not like me. And I've spent a fair bit of time turning that around in my mind and asking myself that question of, you know, how did I hear that? What did I make that mean about me? And I'm actually gonna interrupt myself right here in the middle of my [00:16:00] point to tell you something that, that's a really good question to ask yourself.
There are, there are four types of journaling. Here. I'm gonna give you a little lesson, a little podcast within a podcast. And yes, apparently I do have a lesson for you with four, four major points. There are four kinds of journaling that I really love to use. There's three of them that I talk to you about in the Daily 3, which is my, uh.
my journaling framework. I've got a masterclass about it that you can definitely find a link in the show notes. The three types of journaling that are especially good for getting your goal, like they're really focused, it's all about priming your brain and rewiring your brain to help you get a goal.
There's future self journaling where you see yourself at your goal as clearly as possible, and let me. Let me be clear about that, that maybe you don't see yourself very clearly right now. It's why you practice it. It gets a little bit clearer the more you practice it. That future self journaling can help you see yourself with your goal.
There's then there's metacognitive journaling. That's [00:17:00] the one where you actually untangle the specific mindset blocks that are stopping you from getting your goal. We all have them. There's nothing wrong with having them. Metacognitive journaling is precision work. It's meant to get in, hear the sentence, recognize it as a thought, feel the feeling, unstick the emotional resonance, so that you can get that mindset block out of your brain.
It's. I mean, it's relatively quick work and it's not intended to be reflective, which is, I, I'm gonna skip over the success journaling, but I'm gonna come back to it. Self-reflective journaling is also deeply important. But it's not precision work. It's not necessarily goal getting work. Self-reflective journaling,
that's the beautiful pondering that I often do while I'm running. That is the, the turning around in your brain of like the patterns that you see in your life. It's the asking of the question, what did I make that [00:18:00] mean about me? I love self-reflective journaling for all kinds of reasons, and I think it's the kind of journaling that most of us are most familiar with.
You know that one where you just vomit out whatever's in your brain, that vent journaling or even gratitude journaling. Gratitude journaling is very self-reflective. Like what is good in my life right now? A beautiful question to ask yourself. Self-reflective journaling absolutely has its place in your journaling repertoire.
It's, it's the one that I like to do when I am more contemplative, more pondering. It's not however, part of the Daily 3, which by the way, let me get back to that. The success journaling is the third part of it. Success journaling. I am still turning around in my mind in full transparency. I've made it part of the Daily three journaling framework.
I know it works, but I haven't entirely figured out the mechanism of how it's rewiring my brain. I know it is like I've been using the Daily 3 [00:19:00] for months now, and the results that I personally have gotten have been insane. The success journaling has increased my capacity to do what I ask myself to do and to see myself as a person who does what I ask myself to do.
I know it works and I can mostly articulate the the why underneath it. I explain at least one facet of it. Again, in the masterclass, you can go watch that, but I'm still really unraveling how it's working on my brain and I'm so fascinated by it. So those are the four types of journaling. The one that we tend to do here on the podcast is this self-reflective.
What do I make it mean about me? What patterns do I see in my life? What. Not even what, who am I? Who am I and where am I going? Who I am is an [00:20:00] ambitious overthinking woman, and where I'm going is to my goal, to the things that I want to create for myself. I don't remember if I actually said this at the top of the podcast, but one of the things that I really deeply believe in my bones is that the reason we have goals is to learn more about ourselves.
I was thinking that. I was thinking that when I wanted to justify that, that today's long, long run was not very long, and that today's long run was longer than I've been running recently, but my brain really had something to say about how it's not a long run, and that is one of the things that I want to untangle by running longer is hearing what I am saying to myself.
In any event. In any event, calling yourself ambitious might not feel [00:21:00] like a mantle that you wanna take on. You might have this fear of being different from other people, and it's not an unjustified fear, like we get normalized for us at every turn that wanting too much, pushing yourself too far or too hard, or having more than other people.
We get socialized that that's not fair, that it's selfish, that we shouldn't want more, that we shouldn't be more, that we shouldn't have more. And part of the work of getting your goal of creating what you want is going to be this untangling of what that means for you personally. What a lot of us do, what I did for a long time was live in [00:22:00] this space where I just kept myself small, where I just,
I met reasonable expectations. I didn't stand out. I didn't. I was gonna say I didn't want more, and that's not true at all. And that's part of the problem. The problem was that I wanted more and I was trying to behave like less. I wanted to write a book, even though not very many people write books. I wanted to run a marathon and then an
ultra marathon, even though not many people run marathons and ultra marathons. I wanted to start my own business and be successful at it. I wanted specific revenue goals. I wanted to be who I am, fully me, and I've always wanted that. And every [00:23:00] time I've tried to behave un ambitiously like other people I was miserable.
Going further, pushing myself for more could be, and let me be very clear, my mother did not call me selfish in so many words ever. I even though, even though that is her go-to word for a lot of things, my mother has never actually called me selfish for running long distances or for running a business at all.
What I heard in my head was some version of, not even necessarily her voice, but just some version of it must be selfish to want this for myself.
This is the work of being an ambitious woman is untangling the messages [00:24:00] that you've had from other people and really recognizing that it doesn't, it doesn't make you different from them. This was something that I actually just had come home to me very recently. Well, a couple of things. One is that even if there are different circumstances with say, your family of origin, when you step outside the norms of how you were raised or your circle of friends, when you step outside and create something different for yourself, all of us fear that we are going to lose something by doing that.
But what I really wanna offer you is that you also gain something by doing that, not the least of which is simply the satisfaction, the leaving behind of that pain of mediocrity and the stepping into of who you [00:25:00] truly are. When you want something for yourself, it really is yours to create. And when you create it, it is stepping fully into your self.
It's such a beautiful, beautiful gift to give yourself is you, being you.
What I actually gained really came home to me recently. My mom. My mom had committed to doing this thing that when she told me about it and asked me to take her there I was. I thought to myself in my head, you don't really wanna do that. My mom does this as we all do. My mom commits to things from that place of I have to serve other people because I can't be selfish.
Like that is her line of thinking for most things. And I saw that and I saw that she felt [00:26:00] obligated. And there was probably some desire to do the thing too. Don't get me wrong. My, like, all of us, like all of us. I think she felt conflicted. She wanted to do it. She didn't wanna do it. She had, she had thoughts and feelings.
What a surprise. She's a human being. Anyways, so she asked me to put it on my calendar. I said yes. I had some of the same thoughts and feelings about I am obligated, but also I do wanna do this. I like taking my mom places I like, I like helping her. I like helping her be as independent as she can, while also helping her not drive herself places because her reaction times are very slow and she should not be driving, so therefore I take that on.
I absolutely take that on. In any event, she asked me to do this thing, to take her to this place, and the weeks leading up to it, I could watch her anxiety. She was worried about it. She didn't really wanna go, and I kept waiting for her to decide if she was really gonna go or if she wasn't gonna go. And the day before I was [00:27:00] talking to her, I went over to her house and I was talking to her and she was like, I just don't think I can go.
And I was like, okay, that's totally all right. And she was really upset. She was like, but I should go. I'm supposed to go. I said I was gonna go. I'm like, I totally understand and also tell me what's going on with you. And she's like, it just feels like a lot. It feels like it would be difficult for me to do this thing.
And she was really upset by this, and I was talking her through it and I was like, it's really okay to make a decision for yourself about what feels good for you, like what you can handle and what your energy feels like and what you want for yourself. And she looked at me and she said, Pahla, I've never made a decision for myself.
It still makes me really emotional thinking about that moment [00:28:00] 'cause it was really hard for her. And she said, I don't know how. And I put a little pin in that one because let me tell you something I don't know how is a sentence I hear in my brain constantly. And until that words came out of her mouth, I was like, when it, when she said that, I was like, is that why I say that to myself all the time?
Come to find out so many of the things I say to myself are in my mother's voice, even though I didn't realize it. But I don't know how is what she was thinking. She was like, I don't know how to make this decision like this. And I was like, mom, yes you do. You've watched me make decisions for myself for years now.
You've seen me take care of myself and you, you can do this too. And it was this beautiful moment where I watched her shift, I saw her mindset [00:29:00] change. She can do something for herself and it's not selfish, and the relief was just palpable that she could make this decision and that she didn't have to beat herself up for it.
She didn't have to judge herself. She didn't have to call herself selfish. She could just do what she needed for herself. It was a really, really beautiful moment where I watched my mom be an ambitious, overthinking woman who wanted something for herself and then created it. It's what I want for you too.
It's what I want for all of us.
That was my contemplation today, loves. Thank you so much for being here, for listening, for being part of the podcast. That was a hard word to come outta my mouth apparently. Where am I? What am [00:30:00] I doing?
Oh, love. Thank you for listening. I'll talk to you again soon.
