Well, hello friend. This is your super sweaty, very heavy breathing, podcasting best friend Pahla B coming to you from my very sweltering hot podcast studio right now. I didn't realize how hot it was gonna be out in the garage this morning because it was so cool outside. Yes, I did just come in from a run.
I did turn off my watch. I am ready to talk to you, but first I wanna tell you about my run. 'cause I had the best run this morning. I, I have a self concept that I do some of my absolute best thinking on my run, and I'm gonna hang onto that one. It has nothing to do with the run. Circumstances don't create your thoughts or your feelings or your results, but I love to run.
I love to spend that time in my head. I actually, one of the things that I do while I'm running. It is some of the best future self journaling that I do. I spent a lot of the run, no, that's not true. I didn't spend a lot of the run thinking about this podcast. I actually spent a lot of yesterday thinking about this podcast, and then I told myself [00:01:00] when I went out for my run this morning, I was like, oh, okay, I'll, I'll maneuver some of the things that I wanna talk about while I'm running.
And then I spent the entire run, almost the entire run thinking about something else. I have this future self vision of myself that I will tell you about another time, and I don't mean that to be like a teasing thing, I just, I don't have this quite clear enough in my brain yet for what I wanna say about it or how I wanna talk about it.
But I do have a goal formulating in my brain right now that feels very exciting. Hey, speaking of goals, no, I'm gonna finish telling you about my run because there was, here's what I thought about when I was running. I have a fresh pair of shoes today. I love running in a brand new pair of shoes, and while I was like putting them on this morning, I was like, Hey, this is a really good segue into today's topic.
So that's why I'm gonna tell you about my run. I have this fresh pair of shoes. I absolutely love the first run and a new pair of shoes. Modern running shoes have been running [00:02:00] for 20 years now. Modern running shoes are different than they used to be. It used to be, well, it used to be that you could run 500 miles in a pair of shoes.
Nowadays, you, I mean, you can, but the materials that they're using, they're so much softer and squishier. I used to have this one pair of running shoes that I loved, loved, loved, loved. Loved. Loved. They've long since stopped making them. I had this pair of shoes in like, oh my gosh. Like the late aughts. It was probably, yeah, it was like the late aughts, early tens that I was running in this pair of shoes
that I only used for racing because they were really, really thin and light, and they had the exact right amount of squish and the right amount of stiffness. I really like a little bit of stiffness under foot to push off on. That's where I get a lot of my power. Which is a whole topic about physics and how you run faster and all kinds of things, which we can talk about another time.
But, so I used to love this pair of shoes, and it's [00:03:00] why I love a brand new pair of shoes is because they still have that stiffness. That stiffness goes away, gosh, within the first like week of using a pair of shoes. Now they're very, they're softer and they're squishier, which I like. I like some squish underfoot, but I like that little stiff return also.
And here was. Here was the thing that I thought about when I put on this pair of shoes this morning. I like a pair of shoes that is both firm and flexible. Exactly like my brain. Here we go. There's the segue into today's topic. You knew we were gonna come around a mindset eventually, right? Here's what I'm thinking about today.
So this week I launched the Daily 3 Masterclass. The Daily 3 is my, my thing, my concept. It is the journaling framework that I have spent literally my entire journaling career. Which was long before I became a life coach. Like, oh my gosh. I got my first diary when I was like seven years old, and I remember not [00:04:00] knowing what to write.
Like I knew I wanted to, I knew I wanted to keep some kind of a, like, wanted to keep my secrets, wanted to keep some kind of like journal about my day. So I came to my diary like, dear diary, here's what I had for homework today. It was definitely just an accounting of what I was doing. I was so sporadic. I kept a diary from, you know, elementary school through high school, and probably only had like two of them for all of those years.
And then in college, which I mean. College was many years for me, but then in college I would keep a diary sometimes or a journal or whatever. I, I think I was still calling it a diary and I still just didn't really know what to do with it. I spent a lot of time complaining in it and then I didn't journal or a diary for a good couple of years while I had very young kids.
But then I started keeping a journal or a record and because I wanted to, I wanted to like record my kids' lives when they were really young. Didn't do a great job at that. I have some, I have some things written down. Not a [00:05:00] lot. Um, but again, it always just felt like a lot of complaining. This was, this was my complaint about journaling is that it just always felt like a lot of complaining.
And then when I. When I first heard about, even though it wasn't presented to me as metacognitive journaling, it was, at the time I was following Brooke Castillo at the Life Coach School, and she talks about the model, and she doesn't actually pose it really necessarily as a journaling framework, but it is a way to see your thoughts as thoughts.
Understand that your thoughts are creating your feelings, that your feelings drive your actions, which of course, ultimately gets you your results. Rather than, rather than trying to fix your actions. What she was saying is if you come back to the root of your actions by finding your thought and your feeling that you can then drive any action you want to create the result that you desire, and I loved that.
Oh my gosh. I remember the first time I heard that my brain lit up like this is the [00:06:00] answer I have been searching for my entire life. It was not posed though as like a journaling framework. In fact, I vividly remember Brooke talking one time about in a podcast one time about how she journals and she sits down and she says, what's wrong,
love? And then she just spills out everything on her brain like, like it was easy for her. And I remember thinking. That doesn't apply to me. I, at the time had absolutely no access to my inner workings. I had absolutely no idea what I was thinking at all, at all, at all. And I have a ton of access now. Like now I could probably sit down and say, what's wrong
love, and spew out everything that I'm thinking. I could. I still don't. I really, I like, this is a self-concept I will keep. I like having a little bit of a framework. I love, in fact, asking myself a [00:07:00] specific question because that really feels to me like guardrails, like a framework, like a direction that I can point.
So the Daily 3 is something I've actually been working on apparently since I was seven years old, but didn't really have a lot of access to it until the last couple of years. And I've understood on some level that there are different types of journaling that really, you know, access different parts of your brain, and that really is the crux of the Daily 3, is that it's the three most important types of journaling for getting
a goal. They're not the three most important types of journaling, like in general, they're not even the three most important types of journaling for like feeling better or even necessarily like untangling patterns in your life. The Daily 3 is very, very, very specifically for getting a goal. And you know what?
I'm gonna pause right here. Have [00:08:00] a little podcast within a podcast, and tell you that this is something that's really appropriate for the conversation that we had in the last episode where we were talking about really discerning what you want to do by asking yourself the two questions, does this apply to me and does this appeal to me?
So let's do that right now for you. For the Daily 3. The Daily 3 will apply to you if you have a goal, like a specific goal, not like, oh, I, I'm sure I wanna do things or I wanna feel better, but like, I want a business that makes a million dollars, or I want to run a marathon in three hours and 59 minutes and 59 seconds.
That's a Boston qualifying time for me at my age of 55 right now. Just FYI like when you, and let me also interrupt myself there. You don't necessarily have to have your goal so specifically defined, but you need to have at least a vague [00:09:00] goal, a thing that you are working towards for the Daily 3. It's not a feel good form of journaling.
There are so many other ways to feel good. Creative journaling, drawing journaling, bullet journaling. There's also like organizational journaling, which I'm thinking of bullet journaling. I, I think some people use bullet journaling as like organizational journaling. There's self-reflective journaling.
There's all kinds of wonderful journaling modalities that work for different things. The Daily 3 specifically applies to you if you have a goal, and then does it appeal to you? It's a... It's not a rigid framework by any stretch. I offer it. I like to offer things coming back to my firm and flexible. I like to offer things with a little bit of rigidity, just so you can see the scaffolding, so you can see the framework so that it's not this giant amorphous, [00:10:00] what's wrong, love sort of a thing.
I put it out there as it's one minute of future self journaling. It's three minutes of metacognitive journaling and it's one minute of success journaling so that you can see a couple of things, first of all, that it doesn't have to take very long. Second of all, that they can fit together in very, very short, small pieces in order to get you moving forward.
For me, the reason it appeals to me and applies to me, I have goals. I have very specific goals that I am moving towards well, that I am moving towards now that I actually use the Daily 3. That's the story I'm gonna tell you today about how I hadn't been moving towards my goals very much until I really started using this framework.
It appeals to me because it is truly the least you can do to get forward momentum. It is not something that you have to spend a lot of time on. If you want to, of course you can. Absolutely. You don't have to use it exactly [00:11:00] the way that I talk about it as like a five minute journaling framework. You can make it work for you, love, and.
If that appeals to you and applies to you. Then the Daily 3 is something I offer you freely, like literally freely right here on the podcast. But also there's a free masterclass. There's a link in the show notes that you can go watch the masterclass so that you can, we dive deeper in the masterclass.
It's 20 minutes long. That really, that is the point of the masterclass is to explain how to use the Daily 3. I mention it here today because of what we're talking about. Okay. That was my little podcast within a podcast. Can I follow the breadcrumbs back to what I was talking about right before that?
Hmm. Let me see. I know I was getting to the main point of today's podcast. Oh, which is how. I don't think I had gotten there yet. Here's the thing about the Daily 3. While I've been launching it [00:12:00] and talking about it and posting about it on social media and kind of turning around in my mind like, who, who am I talking to and what, what are they gonna notice in themselves that
I can show them, Hey, this works for you. I mean, it's essentially what I'm telling you right now. This applies to you if. The thing that I've really been talking a lot about in my marketing and thinking about a lot in my own brain is how this specific framework helped me solve my overthinking problem. I don't use that word lightly.
I know that, gosh, I have such an old, old, old podcast that I, I think it's, I think it's literally titled The Real Problem, and I absolutely believe the real problem is thinking you have a problem. There is no such thing as a problem. There is simply a way you are thinking about something that feels problematic because you're having a [00:13:00] thought that creates an uncomfortable feeling. Anyways.
Here's how overthinking was showing up in my life and why the Daily 3 really helped me organize my brain, focus my brain, get me out of overthinking and into the actions that I wanted to be taking. The thing about overthinking and the thing that I think you will probably like, resonate with or recognize in yourself... I,
for a very, very, very long time, considered myself a procrastinator. I took all the judgment out of that word, I'm gonna say at least five years ago, where I wasn't constantly berating myself for being a procrastinator. I have, I have been working for so many years on really understanding my own creative rhythm, really letting myself be who I am,
without making myself [00:14:00] follow really rigid structured rules. I like a framework. I don't love rules that I have to follow. So way back when I first started my business, you know, there's, there's things to do. Like, there's just, there's things to do when you are an entrepreneur and you are a solopreneur specifically, you are the one creating the product.
You are the one marketing the product. You are the one selling the product. You are the one delivering the product. You are the one writing the emails, posting on social media, talking to the clients, working with the clients, like it's all you. So. Every day there was what felt like a really endless to-do list, and every day I would get to the end of my day and I still had things on the to-do list that didn't get to done.
So I, I had this self-concept for a very long time that I was a procrastinator. I put things off, I had a hard time getting everything done, and I didn't disabuse myself of that notion. I kept making to-do lists and knowing full well [00:15:00] that I would not get to all of them, and that really. I didn't love the way that felt.
It felt very much to me like I was just eroding my self trust, which I did not call it that at the time. I basically just kept beating myself up for it. Now, from this perspective, I can see, because I'm such a proponent of self-trust and self-awareness, I can really see how having something on my to-do list that didn't get done gave me a lot of access to thoughts
like, I never get everything done. I'm no good. I'm never gonna get where I wanna go. I always have too much to do. Like it, it allowed me to think of myself as having too much to do, always busy and not the kind of person who follows through. I took the word procrastination or procrastinator out of my vocabulary quite a few years ago with the desire to just understand myself, to actually [00:16:00] hear the thoughts that led to the action of procrastinating.
I had done a lot of work on that. Like honestly, I had felt really, really, really good about that. I felt like I wasn't really beating myself up ahead of time or afterwards for how long it took me to do things, but I also noticed that I still wasn't doing everything that I had a desire to do, I was getting everything done that I needed to do.
I mean, in order for my business to function, and I don't love the word need. I know some of you listening are like, did Pahla just say need to do? You don't need to do anything. And it's true. I don't need to do anything. I had the kind of desire to run my business and therefore there are functional things that I wanted to do that.
There you go. I'm gonna leave it at that. The need conversation is for a different day [00:17:00] here. No, it's not really for a different day. I'm gonna tell you a little side tour here. The word need almost always just feels like pressure. You get to decide for yourself what it feels like for you. I highly encourage you to hear it in your own brain and to listen into how your body feels when you tell yourself you need to do something versus how you feel when you want to do something.
Anyway, anyway. There is, there are things that I want to do for my business to move my business forward. I have business goals, I have revenue goals, I have client goals, I have visibility goals, I have goals. And I noticed that yes, I was getting the tasks done, that moved my business forward, but I wasn't really doing some of the bigger picture things.
I was doing administrative stuff. I was doing like daily marketing kind of things, but I wasn't really moving forward on, for [00:18:00] example, this pivot that I have just completed, opening up my world to talking about all kinds of goals, opening up my world to, I mean, sounds funny to say. I am opening up my world to focus on journaling, but to be really clear about
my focus on journaling and mindset. For so long, I made promises about exercise or weight loss that it wasn't, I wasn't leading with the mindset part of it. I wasn't leading with the, the self transformation and the self-awareness, and I think that that made my message really unclear for a very long time.
So this business pivot, showing to the world who I am and what I do and what I stand for. I stand for self-trust and self-awareness and really moving into that with a piece of intellectual property, AKA, the Daily 3. I'd been sitting on that for literal years, not the [00:19:00] Daily 3 part. The Daily 3 is actually a, a relatively new
thing that I created after coming through this for so many years, like I've been putting the pieces together for so many years and to finally have it click into place and feel so simple and so organized and so doable was a huge thing. That was not really that long ago, but the talking about other goals thing, I've been thinking about that, like overthinking about that for probably two years at this point.
This is how overthinking showed up for me. I looked busy. I was accomplishing things, but I wasn't really doing what I wanted to do. I was spending a lot of time overthinking all of the tasks that frankly didn't require a lot of creativity or a lot of [00:20:00] attention, or a lot of focus, and that was almost like in avoidance of using my brain on the bigger
picture the bigger goal, the bigger, moving myself forward, this business pivot. I spent a lot of time and creative energy on things like choosing the right word in a sentence, or choosing a font on, you know, onscreen graphics on Instagram, like I spent a lot of time overthinking tiny details in avoidance of using my brain creatively for something I truly wanted to do.
The other way overthinking showed up for me was judging myself after the fact, after I put that reel on Instagram. It's so funny. I have a really specific reel in my brain right now that I am thinking of that this, this is what I did. I spent almost an entire [00:21:00] day, creating this one reel where I overthought the font, I overthought whether or not I was gonna color correct the, the video image that I was using.
I overthought what I was wearing. I overthought the caption. After I posted it, I was like, oh, it would've been so much better if... I had just this list of this wasn't my best because... Overthinking for me showed up in ways that you might not think looked like overthinking, and it's what I wanted to bring to you today.
Whether or not you love the word overthinking, whether or not you think the word overthinking applies to you, you might hear yourself in some of these examples, and I really wanna offer you that overthinking is [00:22:00] an action. It is a thing that you are doing currently because of thoughts and feelings that you have. For me, for me, using the Daily 3 helped me with my overthinking in very, very specific ways.
The one minute of future self journaling. The one minute of future self journaling I use in a couple of different ways. In the masterclass, you're gonna hear me talk about how you, you know, tap into the big picture, like the goal that you want for yourself and really see yourself having it. And I do use it that way, but I also use it in a very like, micro way.
I ask myself what I want to do today, like, what do I actually see myself, what can I truly envision myself doing today? Using future self journaling like that [00:23:00] completely and utterly changed the way I make my to-do list, which by the way, I don't even make a to-do list anymore. Lemme tell you that one really quickly just in case.
Just in case this part resonates with you. I used to love to-do lists. Loved them right up until I realized that I was using them against myself instead of for myself. I was using it to have like a visual reminder that I wasn't getting everything done. That was not something that felt very good, so I stopped making to-do lists and started just having it in my brain, but then I still, without the visual reminder, I still had it rattling around in my brain.
You didn't do everything you wanted to do. So, with future self journaling with the Daily 3, I do legitimately write down. Today I will. Today I am. Today such and such is happening. And it asks me in this framework, I was about to say, it forces me and that is so funny. Oh [00:24:00] my gosh. I talk about deep socialization, believing that a circumstance forces you to think differently or feel differently or behave differently.
Okay, I'm gonna put a pin in that one, and here's what I'm gonna tell you. Asking myself to use this framework has helped me behave differently. That is so hard to say in a way that isn't just the Daily 3 forced me to think about what I'm asking myself to do. My friend, I'm gonna let that lie, oh, that's for untangling at a later date.
Using the Daily 3 has given me access to an entirely different way of thinking about what I ask myself to do. I only only ask myself to do something that I can literally picture my, [00:25:00] not literally, figuratively, picture myself doing. If I can't make room for it in my brain, in my imagination, then it doesn't get written
down. And let me be really clear that one of the things that I do is I offer myself gently. I could, if I so choose, do such and such, I could choose from these three things, and any one of them that I do is what I'm promising myself. I have really started using such gentle, open language with myself, with what I want to accomplish
that it feels so good. It feels so good. Then the metacognitive journaling, I ask myself, what's stopping me from actually doing that today? It gives me lots and lots of access. I've been doing metacognitive journaling for so long that this, to me feels like the easiest part. I, I am so on board with untangling my mindset [00:26:00] blocks, like so on board. This, this part for me really didn't change once I started using the Daily 3.
I used to kind of only do metacognitive journaling. It's why the Daily 3 really has helped me move forward is because I added the future self and the success journaling in a way that really helped me see, this is what I'm accomplishing. This is what I'm asking myself to do, and this is what I'm doing.
The untangling things, man, I've always loved that, like literally ever since I heard Brooke Castillo talking about it, like, this is how you can truly see what's in your brain and you can just observe it. You don't have to judge yourself for your thoughts. You don't have to overthink your thoughts. You can just observe.
You can see that what you are thinking is creating the reality in your life. That has always felt like such a relief for me. For you, the metacognitive journaling might be the thing that feels new. It might be the thing that [00:27:00] feels like, oh my gosh, I have no idea how to do this. I really, I gently offer you.
Keep at it. Keep at it because it will feel amazing. Yes. I just heard myself telling you that your circumstances will create your feelings. I'm having a lot of that today. That's hilarious. I make no such promise. You'll either like it or you won't. It's yours. Do with it what you will. Heres the That last part though.
Here's the thing about the success journaling. Success journaling really specifically helped me with my overthinking because left to its own devices, my brain absolutely wants to tell me all the things that I didn't do, all the things that I'm doing wrong, all the ways that I'm not really accomplishing what I want.
Asking myself to see that every single day I do exactly what I said I was gonna do, and watching those wins pile [00:28:00] up over time. There was not one single thing over the course of the last several months while I was putting the pieces together for this business pivot. There was not one single thing that didn't get done when I asked myself to do it.
And I have to be honest with you, I don't have to. I'm gonna be honest with you. I don't need to be honest with you. I'm just going to be. I cannot think of a time in my life where I have actually done everything I asked myself to do. The way that I have for the last several months, since I started using the Daily 3. The Daily 3
did nothing to change my life. I changed my life by asking myself I was about to give the power away again. This is so hilarious, y'all. Whew. That's a podcast within a podcast. Within a podcast. Within a podcast. What an onion we have today. Huh? Using the Daily 3 has given me access to parts of [00:29:00] my brain that have helped me move forward in ways
that I didn't see coming. I knew that I really liked it. I knew that it appealed to me because I have a goal, because I like a framework because different kinds of journaling do work different kinds of different parts of your brain. Like I knew the Daily 3 applied to me. I knew the Daily 3 appealed to me, and what I'm seeing now from actually using it daily is insane results.
Interestingly, over time using the Daily 3 has actually helped me feel better. It is not a feel better journaling modality in the moment, in the, the day to day use. I don't generally walk away like, wow. I feel really great. I've really uncovered my patterns. I've really like, I've really seen something here.
What it does for me, [00:30:00] what I do for myself by untangling by, well actually, lemme say this in order, by thinking about what I'd like to do for the day, the week, the month, and the year. And yes, I'm singing the Friends song now... your day, your week, your month, or even your year using the future self journaling
then untangling something and then thinking about what is it exactly that I have accomplished recently? Let me see that. Let me applaud myself. Let me celebrate that I'm doing exactly what I wanna do. It has helped me do everything that I wanna do faster. I. I was gonna say, I can't remember the last time I overthought a font on, uh, Instagram, and that is absolutely a lie.
I spent a little more time than was strictly necessary on Instagram just yesterday [00:31:00] and, and. While I was doing it, I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna untangle this tomorrow when I do my Daily 3. And then I did that this morning. I heard exactly what I was thinking. I, I thought that there was a way that I could get it wrong.
It was so funny. It was so funny. So the Daily 3 has not changed who I am as a human being. The Daily 3 has not made every single thing easier, better, faster, more. It is over time helping me move more quickly through the things that I wanna do. It's helping me see that I can ask myself to do something,
I can untangle why it's difficult to do that thing, and then I can do it. I spend less time overthinking before and overthinking after. And as a result of spending less time on each individual task, I'm picturing this like a bubble, like there's a task and it's this [00:32:00] little kernel in the middle of this giant bubble of time spent overthinking.
That giant bubble is getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller so that I have more time and more space and more creative energy to do more. I've been able to accomplish more in a good way. Not in a busy way, not in a hustle way, not in a make myself do things way, but in a way that truly feels good.
I think that's where I'm gonna leave it today. There has been at least four podcasts in this episode today, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna let you, I'm gonna let you have all of that. My friend, my friend. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm almost done sweating. I'm really, really, I don't know if you heard my stomach growling while we were talking today.
I hope that was not part of my podcast today, but I am ready for a shower. I am ready for breakfast. I am ready to get on with [00:33:00] the day. I really hope that this was helpful for you today. Thank you so much for being here. I'll talk to you again soon.
