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MAKE YOUR DREAMS HAPPEN

Discover 5 ways you’re stopping yourself from achieving your dreams and 5 ways you can make your dreams happen starting TODAY.

MAKE YOUR DREAMS HAPPEN

Jun 1, 2019 | GOALS | 0 comments

“You have time for what you want in life, if you allow yourself to believe that’s true.”

Make Your Dreams Happen

My friend, this episode is the BEST episode I’ve done to date.

It’s all about how to make your dreams happen. 

I made this episode because I’ve soaked in lately how much I’ve made my dreams happen in the past few years. These dreams aren’t just the ones I set out to accomplish recently either; instead, they’re the ones I had glimmers of when I was a little girl.

It’s been humbling, and it leaves me speechless to realize that I’m DOING what I want with my life and feeling the way I want to feel in the process.

For so long, I had NO idea how I would get here. 

There’s NO WAY in the world I would be where I am today had I followed society’s typical plan and messaging on how to make your dreams happen.

I had to go against the grain which felt SO scary. 

I felt like I was going to mess up my life by not following the crowd.

Thankfully, those fears didn’t come true because when I took my own path, I found there are FAR BETTER AND EASIER ways to make your dreams happen AND those ways help you feel better in the process!!!

AND get this….those ways are even backed by science to work for our brains!

We were BUILT for this!!! 

I still don’t understand why they don’t teach these ways in our school system, but my friend, starting on Saturday, you can go to “school” with me and learn these top ways.

On the episode, I’m specifically sharing 5 behaviors that will stop you from achieving your dreams & 5 ways that WILL help you create them. 

I think it can be a game changer for anyone who’s ready to quit messing around with doing and feeling things that are just so-so and instead ready to make their best life happen now.

I can’t wait to hear how this episode impacts you. Nothing would bring me more joy than seeing yet another woman create the life of her flipping dreams.

Let’s make that woman YOU, shall we?

I’ll “see” you in the MAKE YOUR DREAMS HAPPEN episode! Be sure to listen via the link above.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Apply to coach with me

Continue the conversation in my free online community

Get The 4-Day Accomplish Your Dreams Free Training 

Full Transcript

How to Accomplish Your Dreams

Episode 10: MAKE YOUR DREAMS HAPPEN

This is the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast with Lindsay Preston Episode 10, Make
Your Dreams Happen.
[music]
Welcome to the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast, the show for goal-getting, fearfacing women for kicking ass by creating change. I’m your host, Lindsay Preston. I’m a wife,
mom of two, and a multi-certified life coach to women all over the world. I’ve lived
through enough in life to know that easier doesn’t always equate to better. We can’t fear
the fire, we must learn to become it. On this show, I’ll teach you how to do just that. Join
me as I challenge you to become even more of the strong, resilient, and powerful woman
you were meant to be. Let’s do this.
[music]
Hey there, friends. Welcome back, or welcome if you’re new here to the show. I am so
grateful you’re here today. Today I’m talking about something very near and dear to my
heart. I feel like it’s talked about a lot now in society about making your dreams happen. I
really feel the content I’m going to share with you today is my best work to date. I’ve just
been taking in recently how I’ve created this life for myself.
I’m turning 35 here in a few months, and it’s just been hitting me lately that where I was
10 years ago. at about 24, 25, I was just in this place where I was trying to put life together
and nothing really seemed to fit quite right. I was starting to panic of “oh my gosh, I think I
might be messing this whole thing up”.
I ended up getting pregnant of my daughter when I was 25, having her at 26, and then the
whole divorce thing happened. If you’ve heard that episode, episode three, you know that
whole story. I felt by the end of my 20s my life was in shambles and there was no way I
was going to put it back together. Now looking here, I’m almost in my mid-30s, at 35,
right? It’s just crazy that I have this life where I have this job that I get to use my strengths
and my passions and I have this work-life balance or blend whatever you want to call it
where I’m basically in essence a stay-at-home mom in a lot of ways. I do all the stay-athome mom things. My son is about a year old and he has no outside childcare.
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Then in nights and weekends and at naptime like what I’m doing right now, I get to go on
and I guess do things like a podcast or I get to have a client call, or I get to support my
clients via email or on our Facebook community in certain ways. I really just feel like I’m
living the dream, just from a career standpoint. Then now I have this marriage that is not
perfect but is pretty darn close. That’s pretty awesome.
The man that I’m married to, Jason. He is just what I envisioned all along. I thought I was
being too high maintenance and asking for too much by wanting a man like that and same
with my profession. “That doesn’t exist, Lindsay. You can’t just be a stay-at-home mom and
then have a job where you make good money and you get to use all your strengths and it
fills you up. It makes you feel passionate about life. That does not exist”. I hadn’t seen that.
I didn’t think I could actually do it.
Then to be the mom that I am I truly feel in my heart of hearts that I am a great mother.
Am I perfect? No. Am I getting messed up? Have I messed up? Absolutely. But I just feel
like I’m showing up in the way I always want it to, but I just didn’t know how. Now I have
that. That’s so weird to say but it’s true. I’ve just been thinking back of the past 10 years,
especially of what I did that worked, what I did that didn’t work because I was very, very
hell-bent that I was going to create this life that I love for myself and I wasn’t going to
give up because to me the alternative of having a mediocre life was not okay to me. It
made me in essence– Don’t even really want to live to be honest with you, and not in a
suicidal way. I thought if this is life, I don’t know if I really want this whole thing. What’s
the point? I don’t get it. I want my life to be amazing. I want to wake up and be excited
about life because this mediocre BS just doesn’t feel good. I just felt I was just waiting to
die in a sense. Can you relate to that? I hated that feeling. I hated too that I had these
parts of me that I did things that I didn’t want to do. I had these emotional outbursts and I
get really mad at times and I would say things to people that I later regretted and I was
gossipy and I really even hated how I hated myself. I didn’t know how to change it.
Now looking back on that, I’m just so glad I didn’t give up. I’m so glad I kept going. I’m so
glad that I didn’t let society or other people talk me out of going after my dreams, because
everyone made me feel like I was crazy. Like, “hey, Lindsay, this is life, this is it. You wake
up, you have a so-so job, you make soaso money, you’re away from your kids probably. If
you’re at home”, then everything I saw around me were all these miserable housewives,
the suburbian housewife of misery kind of thing. I was like, “I just cannot do this. There’s
got to be a better way to live.” What I had to do is I had to go against the grain of what
everybody else was doing. I’m just checking off life’s boxes of going to college, getting
married, having a baby. Not only that, but I went and I signed up for coaching, which to me
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at the time felt so wacky and weird, and like I was the stupidest person on the planet to
invest my money in that way because at the time, I was a single mom, with no job. All I
had was a little bit of savings left from my divorce. That was it. It and I invested in
coaching, I thought, Oh my gosh, I am going to ruin my life by doing this.
For some reason, there was just something in me that said, “Do it. Go after it.” I’m so glad I
did because that was a game-changer for me. I learned all of these principles, all these
things that are backed by neuroscience to work for our brains, to allow me to create this
life that I have today where I feel the way I want to feel, I create what I want to create, I do
the things I want to do and in the process I get to make a way bigger impact than I ever
imagined. I’m only getting started.
Can you even think about that for your own life of where you are today, and you’re
changing to where you want to be? Then when you get there, knowing that that’s even just
the beginning. I’m not 35 ane granted, I never know when my last day will be, but to think
I’m just getting started doing this work and impacting people. You can have that in your
own life too. I want that for you. This is what I help give my clients.
Today, I want to teach you five things that will help you create your dream life and five
things that won’t. We’re going to go against the grain of some of these societal patterns
here. I’m a little nervous about it because I think it might challenge you in ways and it may
trigger some things in you, too. Hopefully, you’re going to listen to these things today,
you’re going to accept them with grace and take in maybe a different way of doing things.
Again, as I said, this stuff is backed by science. I don’t understand why we’re not teaching
the stuff in schools. Science has shown that this is what works for our brain. Why aren’t we
teaching this more mainstream? That’s something I’m starting to think about in my legacy.
What I want to create next is getting this stuff out into schools and teaching more and
more people about the stuff because it really is so easy once we know how to make our
brains work for you. I call it be bigger than your brain. That’s what you’re going to start to
learn today.
All right. Now you may think that you’re crazy too for wanting more in your life. You may
already have a good life. You may have a pretty good job, pretty good relationships. A lot
of my clients were like that. I was the same way. My divorce threw everything for a loop to
make my life not so great. Otherwise, I have pretty much what they call the American
dream in a lot of ways. Even if on the surface it looks like these people are thriving, and
they’re doing well in life, the stats prove otherwise. I’m going to read a couple of stats to
you. The first is that one in 10 college alums are thriving. Only one in 10. One in 10. Let
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me say that again. One in 10 college alumnus are thriving. That’s it. That’s a stat from
Gallup.
Another one is 1/3 of Americans feel dissatisfied with life. That’s 100 million people. 1/3.
100 million people in just America alone, who feel dissatisfied with life. That’s a poll from
Harris. Then one more stat for you. Only 20 to 30% of 20 somethings and 30 somethings
are happy with their life. That’s a Harris Poll. You thinking that everybody else is out there
and they’re happy or that you should be happy, or you should go for more is really in
essence breaking the norm in a lot of ways because so few people are doing this. Yet here
you are. You’ve got this little inkling inside of you that says, “I want to listen to this
podcast from Lindsay today”, for whatever reason, and you’re wanting more. I know that
alone can feel really scary so I just want to honor that for you for a second and just say
thank you. Thank you for following that because the more people especially women, we
have better waking up and being their best selves, it’s a trickle effect.
I think about my clients and I’m working with some groups live right now and we start our
calls with wins and I say what are the things that have happened this past week that have
gone really well in your life? For so many of them, they come to the calls and they say, “By
me changing myself and changing my life, my relationships are better, my kids are better.
They’re having less anxiety. My husband is doing better” or “my wife” or whatever it is.
That’s where I sit back and I take in the power of what I’m doing and their lives and what
they’re doing in their lives and how this is making a bigger change.
The more we can have people who are waking up and saying “Listen, I’m not going to be
one of these one in three Americans. I’m not going to just be one of these nine out of 10
college alums who are not thriving. I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m going to go
against the grain and be that one out of 10 who is thriving.” That’s huge so thank you.
All right. Let’s get into it. I’ve got a lot I want to talk about today. We’re going to go back
and forth a bit. I’m going to say something that’s not going to work and then the flip of
what will work instead. All right. Number one, on the five ways you’re stopping yourself
from achieving your dreams is, this one’s going to seem obvious but you will not even
believe how many people are doing this without even knowing it, and that’s being who
others have told you to be.
When I started going to therapy in my mid-’20s when my marriage was falling apart, one of
the things that we were working on was my self-image. I didn’t have a lot of confidence at
the time. One time she gave me an exercise that said, “Come back to me next week and
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tell me five things you love about yourself.” I could not do it. I sat there, we were trying to
build some self-awareness and myself. Well, about what may be great and all that stuff.
She said, “You know what, Lindsey, as kids our parents, they are the mirror that reflects
back to us who we are. The mirror that you have seen of yourself is not true.” I had to sit
there and I had to take it in for a minute. Part of what I was starting to process my world
too was what I had been told my life should be up until that point again, I’m in my mid to
late ’20s. It was not satisfying to me. I felt like I had been duped. I felt like somebody had
guided me on a path that wasn’t right for me but I didn’t know what was right for me.
That’s when I began this self-awareness journey of who am I? What is it that I like? What is
it that makes me special and unique and whole? Unfortunately, therapy just started to give
me that little seedling of that, she didn’t quite go into– in the depth that coaching did
where I learned what my strengths are. I learned what my passions are. I learned my
values. I even learned what my overall life purpose was, which was such an incredible
experience to be able to know what I’m sent here to do.
I started to learn all these things, my way of thinking too. I started to sit back and say,
“Wow, this is who I am. Now, what am I going to do with this based off all these things
that I can put together?” I call them all these puzzle pieces. “How does this make this big
puzzle of me?” One of the puzzle pieces that I discovered during that time was my MyersBriggs assessment results. I am an INFJ and I know a lot of INFJs may be out there, shout
out, because I love personal development.
Just recently it reminded me of how just that information alone could have been so huge
for me back in the day. Because somebody put in one of the INFJ boards that are on
Facebook, here are the top careers for INFJ. It was things like counseling, human resources,
librarian, graphic designer, writer were some of them and I responded with, oh, my gosh in
some form or fashion I’ve had every single one of those professions at some point.
That’s when I was just dabbing my toe in all these little things and now I feel like I do all
of those things in my profession. There’s a counseling aspect I guess in some ways of
coaching, there’s a graphic design because I’m creating images and creating these courses
with all this graphic creation. The whole librarian thing, of course, is the books and all that
stuff and writing and so on and so forth.
I thought, man, again, if somebody would have just sat me down and said, “Okay, now
you’re on your own, Lindsay, and let’s figure out who you are and what you want to create
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with this one and crazy amazing life of yours where you’re going to feel extremely
satisfied.”
That’s why in my courses I teach that to my clients but also I’ve started to do something
that’s outside of my courses because I’m getting a lot of women who come to me and they
say, “Listen, I just want to figure out who I am because I’m not satisfied in my job and I
want to know what I can do to make this amount of money and spend more time with my
family and do something that lights me up.”
They’re seeing my example I think in a lot of ways and they’re saying, “Hey, I’m not sure if
it’s exactly what you have but I want something similar with my strength.” I started doing
this thing called an all about you call, where I have them take all these assessments the
ones I mention of your values, your passions, way of thinking, your strengths, all that stuff.
Then I gather all the information, we give them a call for an hour and I teach them all of
these puzzle pieces. I say, “Okay, now looking at this as a whole, these are some things
that are really going to light you up. These are the things that are really going to make you
feel good.” Of course, I ask them questions about things from their past and all that stuff
and they walk away from that experience knowing who they are.
Can you imagine if you would have had that at some point in life? It would have been a
game-changer for me and I’m so grateful I get to do that for these women. I hope that you
at some point figure out who you really are. I know it may seem weird that you will be
looking to, again, something outside of yourself to figure out who you are with these
assessments and maybe hiring me or somebody else to teach you these things but it’s
really from a non-biased opinion. It’s somebody who doesn’t necessarily have so much
attachment to where you’re going and what you’re doing.
For example, as you probably know I am divorced and my ex is a diagnosed narcissist, is
something I don’t really talk about that much and he is what’s considered a covert
narcissist. On the surface, he’s a really great guy. He’s the one that you walk in a room, he’s
very handsome, everyone’s attracted to him, he’s got a strength called woo and so he
knows how to work a room very, very well. He’s also very polite and charming.
Then he does certain things behind closed doors that really show his narcissistic way
sometimes and one of which is with my daughter. He starts to say to her, “You’ve got to
perform a certain way with your grades.” You have to be these certain things when you
grow up like a doctor. All these prestigious things that would make him look good.
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It’s something I’m constantly coaching her on of, “You go in, you do your best on your
academics” but she’s already way, way better than the norm. She’s in the 99th percentile
for everything. I’m like, “You just go on and you have fun.” Then I talk to her about her
profession one day, and how it needs to light her up, and the amount of hours she’s going
to be spending doing this profession.
Just one year in that profession, she’s going to spend likely 2080 hours doing that. Then
times that by many, many decades and it’s really important for her to figure out what it is
that lights her up and makes her feel good. I’m trying to wean off some of that stuff in her
worlds. I was taught that way. You may have been two of you have to be in the certain box
and do these certain things are or you may have not had any support or coaching at all.
You may have had parents that were just lost in their own world. I have a lot of clients
who are like that.
Again, they’re trying to figure out who they are on their own in a way that they’re not
ready for. They need that mentoring. They need that coaching. They need that support and
they didn’t get it. Again, they were looking at outside sources of maybe men who treated
them like crap, or other people who hurt them , again, having somebody who says, “Hey,
this is what makes you so great. Now, you go and do what you want with that.”
All right. Makes sense. Just to recap, the first thing that will keep you from stopping your
dreams is being who others have told you to be versus discovering who you really are.
That’s going to lead you to your dreams and feeling fulfilled. All right. If you just took that
from today’s episode, that would be a great starting point. I’m going to keep going. I’ve got
four more for you here. I’m on number two now. The number two thing that will keep you
from stopping or keep you from achieving your dreams is living in fear, choosing the safe
route.
Now, somebody in this room here which is just me, you can’t say me really likes to choose
safe. I don’t like taking risks at all. That’s the one thing that kind of holds me back
sometimes, especially from being an entrepreneur is because a lot of entrepreneurs, they
don’t have fear about that stuff. I do.
There’s a lot of times I do end up choosing safe but I think about my life and I think about
had I chosen the ultimate safe option and just stuck with those mediocre jobs and just
accepted this messaging I was getting that I either had to be a stay-at-home mom. I looked
around and it was misery or go to work all day and that seems miserable to me too versus
creating what I wanted. I’m so glad I didn’t just choose that safe option. There’s so many
people I speak to who do this, when in essence, then they find out, okay, I have this job
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safety, whatever. Then in an instant it’s gone, they end up getting laid off, or they get fired
for some weird random reason. All of a sudden everything’s in jeopardy. Then they think,
what have I been doing this for? I thought I was doing this for safety and for security when
the reality is they really never have that in a lot of ways. Why not? Why not go after what
we want? Of course, be smart about it. That’s a whole another topic for another day, but
why not start to understand what our vision for more is? Why not believe in that vision?
Why not start to go after that vision in some way, why not show up as that vision?
Obviously there are lots of tools you can do to do this. One of which is doing things like a
vision board, there’s also a Start Today journal that’s by Rachel Hollis. If you know that
author and speaker, she has a really great journal, whatever day you’re writing what you’re
wanting to create in your life. You’re writing it in a way that you have it today. This is
something in essence I was doing to myself mentally in the past 10 years as I was saying I
have this career that lights me up. I have the family I’ve always envisioned. I have the
work-life balance I’ve always wanted. I was saying all of those things to myself an indirect
way. That’s what allowed me to start to show up as that person and make decisions as that
person and in the process, there were times I had to take jobs just to take jobs, but I was
still going after that. I was doing it in a smart way.
Now, of course I’ve made mistakes along the way. Hello. I’m so glad I didn’t give up on
that. That’s my number two for you is the way not to create your dreams as choosing safe
and living in fear. The flip of that is creating the vision, believing the vision, going after the
vision and showing up as the vision. This is really hard if you don’t know who you are.
Sometimes I hear, I don’t even know what I want, Lindsay, I don’t know what my vision is.
That to me says, okay, you don’t know who you are yet, because once you start to
understand who you are, it almost slaps you in the face of, “Oh my gosh, this is what I
meant to do.’
That’s one of the big things, that slaps me in the face. When I started to learn who I was, of
course, I meant to do coaching, of course, like it makes so much sense how I’ve been
attracted to some of these other similar professions, but coaching is really my it. That’s my
thing. Of course, then it was like, I have to go after this and I have to create this vision and
do this thing. That’s my number two.
Let’s move on to number three, which is something you’re probably already thinking about
in your head. As I say, “go after the vision, create this life”, and that is avoiding your
feelings and doing something called spiritual bypassing as well. Before we get into what
avoiding your feelings means, let’s talk about spiritual bypassing for a minute. I have a lot
of clients that come to me who have had harder paths and where they are in life now, to
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me, is a miracle they’re outwardly successful, they’re doing great things, but they’ve come
to a point where they’ve hit a wall in essence, because what they’ve done is they have
programmed their mind to be positive.
Anytime something negative happens it’s, “I’m positive, I’ll get through this. I’m strong, I’m
this, I’m that”. Which in essence is something I do teach with my own courses is, okay, let’s
build some mantras in there. Let’s start to program that mind to be happy. Here’s the thing.
If we’re just doing that constantly, there’s going to be a point when we need more healing,
and we need more to face the deeper things that are in essence haunting us. What spiritual
bypassing really means is it’s as a tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep
or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished
developmental tasks. Again, it can take you so far in life.
You hear this, or at least I hear this a lot in my world and the Christian world of just pray
about it. Just trust God, stay positive. Those things as proven by neuroscience does help, it
lower stress levels. It gives you a hit of dopamine to practice those kinds of things. Again,
there’s going to be a point where you have to face the feelings you’ve been avoiding. This
means for anybody, even if you don’t have a “traumatic past”, it’s something that all of our
brains develop as kids. I won’t go into that sign tangent of what that means, but really
every brain comes out and needs some personal development work just based off our
emotions as kids. That’s why I think a lot of these clients come to me, they say, I’ve done
all the things, Lindsey, and I’ve just stayed positive, and I’ve gotten this far, but I just am
staying stuck, and I don’t know how to take it to the next level.
Then as we start working together, we go into some hard things, and they have to feel
some of these hard feelings, and they just want to pull out of it so fast. I say, listen, that’s
gotten you this far, but it’s actually time to approach your feelings. It’s time to feel these
feelings and then heal them. That’s the other thing that so few people know how to do is
to actually heal their feelings.
This is one skill, again, I wish was taught in schools because so many of us are working so
hard to avoid pain that we’re doing all of these things to numb ourselves out of that, we’re
over-eating, we’re shopping, we’re gossiping, we’re using sex and love and work and
caretaking and all of these things to avoid these deep level feelings that we feel. If we just
knew how to feel them and process them, it is way easier and actually feels way better to
actually process those things than to constantly numb them for decades and decades.
I know from experience, but our brains, it does not like to go into that pain. Even when I do
stuff today, when I know there’s things I need to heal that have come up from my past, my
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brain hates it. It sabotages me even. I’ll get sick so I can’t do it, and I’ll just want to avoid
it. I’ll even feel confused that I can’t do it. Then I do it. I think, gosh, that was not that bad.
I wish I would have done this so much long time ago. It was so much easier to do that.
That’s a really– one of the biggest keys to success is to feel those feels and whereas, as I
said, the spiritual bypassing of just going positive, praying about it, trusting God, all those
things can be a band-aid for you.
As time goes on, it’s going to be that you actually need to open that indeed up and heal
what I call thesee things called bullet holes. These things that are you’re walking around
with that just need some healing. The way to do that is to approach your feelings versus
avoid it. If you’re like, Lindsay, I have no idea how to do that. Just know this is something I
do on my Become An Unstoppable Woman coaching process. If you’re ever just feeling
called off, okay, it’s time for me to really deal with this stuff and to uplevel my mental
game.
I don’t have to constantly feel like I’m weighted down or feeling stuck anymore. The first
step is to go to lindsayepreston.com. For assessment and see if we’re a good fit to work
together On the flip of that whole thing of avoiding your feelings, the spiritual bypassing is
actually finding and approaching those feelings, approaching those blocks.
How do you know if you have a block? You may think I’m fine. I’ve healed things from my
childhood. I’ll be great. This is something I hear from my husband all the time who has had
a very traumatic childhood, by the way. He’s always like I’ve processed those things, he’ll
say I’m good. What the research has shown is if you have a negative reaction to something
that lasts more than five seconds, five seconds, let me say that again for those in the back,
that means you have something deeper that needs to be healed. The example I always
give, if you’re driving, somebody cuts you off. It’s okay to feel mad for a couple seconds. If
it lingers for more than five seconds, then there’s something deeper there. Something
happens in your everyday world. Your kid gets upset about something.
It’s okay to feel upset for those few seconds if your kid actually punches you in the face,
happens to me all the time, but then it should go away pretty quickly. Calm yourself but if
you’re not able to calm yourself after those first few seconds, there’s some healing work
you need to be doing there. Crazy, huh? Crazy, right?
I just want to remind you something I say often and I want to say again here is something I
call the model. This is a principle from the Life Coach School. I did not go to the Life Coach
School to get my training but I do like the work that Brooke Castillo and her team are
doing over there. Their process, as I said, is called the model where it talks about how your
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thoughts create your feelings, your feelings create your actions and obviously your actions
start to create your results.
That’s really what we’re trying to go in and understand is what are some of the thoughts
you have about yourself, your others and the world. Again, this is an activity I do with my
clients. It’s extremely transformative. I just took about 18 women through this exact
exercise and, oh my gosh, the amount of things we were able to pool about their thoughts
about the world was mind-blowing, mind-blowing. Again, I’m not going to keep going on
this one rabbit hole of this one thing, but I do have to say approaching your feelings I
know feels uncomfortable, but man, does it feel good? There’s a quote out there that says
something like you don’t know the weight of everything you’ve been carrying until you feel
the release and that’s so true. I hope in some point in life, you’re able to really see some of
the things that you’ve been carrying around and what it feels like to release those things,
it’s incredible. All right, moving on, let’s go into the number four way to make your dreams
happen and the one way that you’re going to stop yourself.
The one way you’re going to stop yourself is by making excuses and self-sacrificing. I
wouldn’t think this is you if you’re listening to a personal development podcast but for a
lot of people out there, they like to play the victim card in their life of woe is me, all these
things happen to me. It may even be little things like, “Oh, this person did this to me.” Or, “I
just can never catch a break.” Or this or that or that. That’s not going to serve anybody.
Yes, of course, crappy things happen, I felt this way last summer. Our kitchen exploded, we
had no kitchen, I had a newborn, I was nursing, I couldn’t even wash any bottles or cook
any meals and so I was having to eat all these calories too. It was just like one thing after
another, then it was our roof and then our fence and this and this and this. We’re bleeding
money and I just thought, “Gosh, what is up with the world? I feel like the world is against
me.” I thought, “Whoa, back it up, Lindsay. You are not a victim to your life, this is
happening for you, not against you.”
Anytime I get in those mindsets, I always change that to if this is happening for you, what
are you learning here? That changed my perspective so very, very much. The other thing I
want to say here is you have time for what you want in life. Yes, you may be super busy,
yes, you may have a full-time job with kids, you may even have a side job on top of your
full-time job with your kids and your husband, I don’t know but I hear women all the time
say, “Yes, Lindsay, I’d really want to coach with you but I just think I’m too busy.” I say,
“Let’s just start with my first program[, The 21 Day Life Luver challenge. It’s just 30
minutes a day, let’s just see if that works for you.”
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They say, “Okay.” Because it’s really not that much to get started on Life Luvers, it’s only
$97 which may be a lot to you but it’s really not at the end of the day. They start with me
and it’s magical how they start making time in their world because they see the benefits of
doing this work. It’s just really crazy sometimes how time just appears out of nowhere.
It makes me think of recently, I reached out to somebody on Instagram who I admire a lot.
She’s an influencer, she’s talking about her strengths and how she discovered her
strengths so I reached out and I said, “Hey, I offer this call called a one-on-one strength
stash and in lieu of payment, if you want to take this with me and then share with your
followers, I would do that for you.” I’m trying this whole influencer marketing thing, by the
way. She said, “You know, Lindsay, I would love to do it but I just don’t have the time.” I
thought, “Never mind, you’re not really something I want to work with. You’re making
excuses.”
I really think she was doing that to people-please, in essence, I don’t think she really
wanted to do it but I just thought, I cannot even tell you how many times I hear that from
people, “Oh, I’d love to do that but I don’t have the time.” When I was going after my
dreams, especially in the core of it, I was a single mom and I had a full-time job and then I
had my coaching business on the side and I was dating my now-husband but thenboyfriend and he lived 45 minutes away and I was doing my own personal development.
I was really, really busy but you know what, I made time for the things that mattered. I
didn’t sit around and watch TV, I did not sit around and even read magazines, I was putting
pedals to the metal a lot. Now, I still took time for self-care in there because I knew the
value of that at that time but I went after what I wanted because it made so much sense to
me and I couldn’t stop. I knew that it was going to lead me to something greater. If you’re
really called to doing more in your life, you will make the time, you will, you absolutely
will. You will make the time, I know it.
The other thing is I hear a lot from women is this whole, “Oh but my family comes first.”
Let me tell you, I get it. One of the biggest things that’s important for me is being there for
my family in the season of life. As you may know, I have a one-year-old as I said and I also
have an eight-year-old who I am very intentionally present for, especially based off that I
am divorced from her father and her father sometimes doesn’t give her the needs of
attention that I know can be hard for her. I really try and make sure that I’m there for her,
I’m present for her, all of those things but that doesn’t mean that I give up my hopes and
my dreams in the process.
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Here’s what I’ve noticed, the more I go after my dreams, the more I do things that fill me
up, the better a mother I am, the better my relationships improve, the more energy I have
to put towards those relationships and even really, to be honest, the more time I have
because I know what I’m going after, I’m more intentional, I have these boundaries with
some of the things I’m doing which I’ll get to in a minute. Just magical in a way that when
I fill myself up and do things that feel good for me, my family thrives off of that.
I hear so many women that just feel like they’re this martyr for their life and they’re just
creating the suffering when it doesn’t need to happen. It’s like, “Oh no, but I have to do all
these things for my family. ” No, you really don’t, you don’t have to do all these things. You
may want to do all those things and that’s fine but don’t act like, again, you’re a victim
here. You can make changes, you can make it happen. This is when I know I’m going to get
push back on but it’s like, what’s the alternative? Is just living your life for everybody else
and then what?
I have to stop myself out of this many times. Last summer, I remember my daughter made
her first vision board and it was something structurally done on her own, it wasn’t even
directed by me. She came to show me and she’s like, “Mommy, look at this and look at
this.” I thought, “What would have been on my vision board when I was eight?” At the time,
I had taken off almost two years to have my son and I was honestly at a place where I
thought about quitting my business. I thought, “You know what, I’m just going to
completely, solely focus on my family. That’s what we need right now.” I just did not want
to get uncomfortable and go back out into my business again.
I thought about my vision board, what it would have been at age eight and I thought, “You
know what, my eight-year-old vision board would have wanted the things that I have now
that I’m about to give up and I’m not going to give that up. My eight-year-old self deserves
it.” So does my eight-year-old daughter, she deserves to see a mother who’s going after
her dreams and doing the things that light her up because if she doesn’t see it, she’s not
going to know how to create it.
I saw a mom who was miserable a lot and all I wanted was my mom to be happy, all I
wanted was my mom to feel fulfilled and even to this day, I still want that for her. I think,
“Gosh, if you were only fulfilled, the amount of fun we can have together, the amount of
things we could be doing together but because you felt some need to sacrifice.” Which
she’s guilt-tripped me into many times, which again does not feel good, it’s just a different
relationship than what I wish I could have had. I don’t want that for my family and I bet
you don’t want that either. You can go after your dreams in a smart way, in a way that
doesn’t harm your family, that helps your family.
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Again, this is where some of these blocks and these feelings happen. I coach some clients
through this. I have some clients that say, “I want to do these bigger things and I’m just so
scared.” We coach through that. A lot of times, they saw a mom who was really selfish, who
left them, who did things that wasn’t necessarily going after their dreams.
They were doing harmful things like maybe drugs or alcohol or had mental issues they
weren’t taking care of so they were locking themselves or sleeping all day or whatever and
so they thought, when people go after something else outside of the family, it’s selfish and
it’s wrong and this is how it made me feel and I don’t want to create that in my children
and I hate– No, that’s a totally different thing, that’s somebody doing something
unhealthy versus you doing something healthy.
That’s again where the power of coaching comes in of being able to find those blocks and
have somebody on the outside show you some things about yourself that maybe you’re not
seeing because when you start to see those things, you’re able to change them and you’re
able to go after things that once were weighing you down of, “Oh my gosh, I’m such a bad
person if I do this.” No, let’s change that script. It doesn’t have to be that way.
All right. The flip of that is what I’m already starting to get into and how you can go after
your dreams is creating self-awareness and of course, hiring a coach is going to help you
do that. I would love to help you create some self-awareness.
Also, I teach my clients how to journal and how to create that self-awareness for
themselves because I don’t want anyone coming to me to be feeling like they have to
continually coach with me for years on end. Most clients coach with me in about a sevenmonth process from start to finish and then every once in a while they might have a
maintenance session or they might go through a program again, free of charge to go back
in and just up-level again.
The reason that they leave the nest after those few months is because I’ve taught them
how to be their own coach in a lot of ways through journaling and I’ve taught them to spot
their own thoughts and spot their own feelings and how to change that. The Harvard
Business Journal said, the number one key to a successful manager is self-awareness. How
many managers can you think of in your past? I can think of many in mind that I wish
would have been self-aware, they put all their damaged goods on me and they brought it
to the workplace and I thought, “I’m just here to work, I don’t want this emotional drama.”
Now, I think that’s one of the biggest keys I have for success, not only obviously as a coach
but as a parent, in my relationships that I’m able to step back sometimes and say, “Well,
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this is the way I feel, this is why I feel this way. It’s not really about me or about that
person, I need to figure this out myself.” I’m able to come to those relationships and those
situations from a leadership position, from a strong position, from a non-emotional
position, and that has allowed me to just kind of snowball into having more and more
success. It just kind of, in essence, does get easier and easier believe it or not, in some
ways. Of course, you hit walls every once in a while, but that self-awareness, you really
truly feel unstoppable because you know that you can start to solve all of your problems,
even when life is not easy, when shit hits the fan.
You’ve got to then step back and say,” Okay, how can I problem-solve my way through this
with my thoughts and figure out my feelings so that, my friend, is my number four. The
way not to create a dream life is making excuses and self-sacrificing, and the flip of that is
creating self-awareness. Now we’re on number five of the way to make your dreams
happen. Then the flip of that away not to make your dreams happen. A way not to make
your dreams happen is to not be intentional. What are intentions? Intentions are things
you’re doing in the present moment.
A lot of times we’re always talking about goals, but very rarely are we talking about
intentions about showing up in a certain way to your life. This again goes back to knowing
yourself, knowing what you want out of life, knowing what you want to create out of your
life. It becomes very easy to become intentional of knowing, “hey , these are my strengths.
Hey, these are the things that light me up. Hey, these are the things I’m here to do with my
life.” You’re very intentional about your day, about what works and what doesn’t work.
It makes it a lot easier to start to say no to things and say yes to things that feel good and
go with your purpose and your passions and all of that stuff. I see so many women that are
walking around and the time is just flying by. Again, in my season of life, I’m with a lot of
moms. It makes me sad even to see that they’re just spending yet another year, not doing
what lights them up, not doing the things that they could be doing and they are miserable.
I just think, “Gosh, if you only knew how to show up and be intentional in life, you’ll start
to see just how easy life can be.” I know that me saying that may trigger you of saying life
is really easy because you may be in a season of life that’s really hard. Just know I get you,
I hear you, I see you. I’ve been in so many seasons of life that were hard too. Even just
recently with my son’s pregnancy. It was not a walk in the park. I felt like crap almost
every single day. It was hard. Of course, I got a beautiful blessing out of that, but it was
still hard. The reason I was able to get through that is I knew where I was going.
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I knew it was for something bigger. I knew I was being intentional in that and so it made it
easier. Again, all these other tips helped. I knew myself. I knew how– the self-awareness
to uncover my blocks and all stuff, but it’s really important that you’re intentional with
your day, with your time. On the flip of, that this is the way to create those things is not
only to be intentional but to have boundaries of knowing, “Hey, these are things I do and
don’t do. These are things I put up with and don’t put up with”.Because so many people are
putting up with crap in their lives and they know they shouldn’t be doing it, but they’re
doing it anyway.
They’re just not getting the pay raise that they know they deserve, but not speaking up
about it, or they’re letting somebody treat them a certain way. It’s just kind of feeds into
their inner soul and essence of,” Hey, you know, nobody should talk to me that way, but
you’re not standing up for it.
I’m going to beat you up in the internal worlds in your mind because you’re not doing this
and Oh Lord have mercy, again, it’s just like, Oh man, if you just knew yourself, if you know
how to set boundaries if you know your self-awareness, you know, all these things on this
podcast, you would realize that actually creating your dream life is so much easier than
you ever thought possible.
I know again, you may think, well, Lindsay, you just want me to buy your program. You’re
just saying that and it’s probably authentic, but I just hope you at least explore that. I
really think a lot of times in society we make it seem like it’s so hard and I’m not going to
say it’s been a walk in the park to get to where I am right now. Obviously, I had heartbreak
in there. I’ve continued to have a life where my daughter has to go see her dad. Things
happen over there that I’m not crazy about, my life isn’t perfect by any means, but I know
how to get through it. Even in my business front, it’s not like I was just walking out the
door, making money. I’m almost five years into my business.
Now, granted I took about two years off and the first year was really like a learning year,
but still, I’m just now making money, just now. I’ve always made money, but it had to repay
kind of what I invested. I had to kind of reinvest in more things, but just now, am I pulling
money out of my business as a salary? Yes but now I’m at a point where it seems almost
crazy to me, the money that I’m making while I get to, in essence, be a stay-at-home mom
and do the things I do in my business. It’s crazy. It is so worth it, my friend, and it’s so
much easier than I ever thought it could be. I just didn’t know how I would get here. I
didn’t know at all, I didn’t have it modeled for me, and just seems so hard to create your
dreams.
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When really everything that I got in coaching was what allowed me to get here. I’m so
grateful. I get to get that to my clients. I hope that even if you don’t work with me, that
this podcast inspired you today to realize some things in your own life that you can
change. If you do you feel called to even just explore how I could help you in your life,
maybe it’s with something like an all about you call where I teach you about yourself.
Maybe it’s just doing my first program that’s 21 days and it’s only $97 to get started,
whatever that is. The best way to you started this journey with me is to take my free
coaching assessment, to see if we’re even a good fit to work together.
That is just a link of going to lindsay L-I-N-D-S-A-Y epreston.com/assessment or if you just
go to my website, lindseyepreston.com, you’ll see the assessment link everywhere. I
encourage you to take that assessment, if you’re approved you’ll get a spot on my calendar
to book a one-on-one call with me that’s completely free for us to talk about your life and
what you’re wanting. There are people I have assessment calls with. I must admit that I
realized, “Hey, you don’t really need me. You’re actually doing a lot better than what I can
help you with or the things that you’re wanting I really can’t help you with”. The
assessment again is that first step. Then after that is that discovery call. I’ll be very honest
with you if I can help you or not on that call. Again, lindsayepreston.com/assessment, but
my friend I hope this episode inspired you to see that really just with these steps truly,
these are the steps that worked for me. These are the things that didn’t work for me to
have the life that I do today.
I would love for you to be in a spot in life where you feel this way, where you feel so
content and you feel like you’re doing it. You feel like you’ve “made it”. Now I just think
what am I going to do next? Now it’s just giving back and giving back. Now it’s just giving
money to charity and trying to get these tools into schools so that people know about
these things so they don’t have as much pain and suffering in their life and the
opportunities are endless and you have those too. I’m not some magical unicorn here. You
may think, “Well, Lindsay, yes, but you know, I have all these things in my past” and I get
that you may be starting out in life at a different place than I started out.
That’s something I’ll talk about in a future episode of this whole thing called the home run
theory where we all start out on a certain base in life. Those that started out say on first
base versus second base or third base, they are going to have a longer journey. I really
view myself as someone who started out on second base. I’m going to make a dream life
happen a little bit easier than somebody on first.
My husband was somebody on first. He had to work a lot harder, but it’s still happened. My
husband and I now are sitting here really kind of pinching ourselves. We just went to
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lunch, to be honest. We’re like, “dang, let’s just take in today. We have a fricking great life.”
It’s not perfect. It’s not like we’re living in this huge mansion. It’s not like, you know, all of
these, maybe external things. Society tells us that we should have, dang Our life is flipping
good. I want that for you too. All right. My friends. Reach out to me. If you have any
questions, go take that assessment.
Otherwise, I will see you in the next episode where I’m going to be interviewing somebody
about side jobs and going after a side job and the benefit of a side job. Little spoiler here,
my coaching business obviously started out as a side job. I had a full-time job at the time.
We talk about how a lot of millennials are doing this whole thing called side jobs. You may
be older than the millennial generation. That’s fine.
The speaker that I have for that episode, she really focuses on how this whole side job
thing is coming up for this generation and the benefits of it. Tune in for that, but
otherwise, I’ll see you in the next episode until then my friend. Remember you’re only as
unstoppable as you believe you can be. Believe in yourself, you got this.

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Hi! I'm Lindsay

Hi! I’m Lindsay Elizabeth Preston. I’m a certified & trauma-informed life & leadership coach who has spent the last decade helping successful women create lives that feel as good on the inside as they look on the outside by using my neuroscience-backed coaching process called, Awakened Woman.


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