“We need to question everything. We need to question our beliefs. We need to question our feelings. We need to question our actions. We need to question who we blindly believe and follow.”

Happy New Year my friends! I’m so excited to be starting the year off with some more throwback episodes until next month when we are back with BRAND NEW episodes!

I can’t wait, but first, we’re going to play some of the fan favorite episodes from the early days of the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast. And we’re starting with the concept of questioning. Questioning yourself, questioning what’s around you–really questioning everything. 

This episode is really for the women out there who already feel pretty confident, strong, empowered and sure of themselves. Of course, we all have room to grow, myself included, but this episode is not for women who are in a stage of life where they’re doubting themselves heavily.

So if you’re having trouble making decisions or struggling with feeling shame and guilt often, you may want to skip this one and come back to it when you’re in a better mindset. Because I really want this idea of questioning yourself to come from a place of empowerment and confidence, not a place of doubt and overthinking. 

If you’re not ready for this one today, know that that’s okay. We’ve all been in those phases of life where our inner doubters creep in. If you know my story, you can imagine how high my inner doubter was back when I was questioning if my partner was cheating on me. It consumed me. I had trouble making choices, I felt confused often, I was very weak in my confidence levels. So I get it and I am here for you. 

If you are listening today, my hope is that this replay episode will make you stronger and wiser than ever. I’m so stoked to share it with you again.

Be sure to listen to the episode at the link above.

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Episode 144: QUESTION EVERYTHING

This is the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast with Lindsay Preston Episode 144, Question Everything.

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Welcome to the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast, the show for goal-getting, fear-facing 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.

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Well, hello there, beautiful. I am so grateful you’re here yet again, listening to another Become An Unstoppable Woman podcast episode. Hopefully, you’ve listened to the first three episodes of the show, or at least since episode one to ensure you’re in the right place. I promise things will all make more sense if you start listening there as there’s an intentional flow to these episodes.

I’m going to assume you’ve already listened to at least episode one and I’m going to pick up from there because today’s topic, friend, is specifically for that woman I spoke about on that episode. It’s those unstoppable women who this podcast is designed for. The women who already feel pretty confident, strong, empowered, and sure of themselves.

Of course, we all have room to grow, myself included in so many ways, but today’s episode specifically is not for women who are in a stage of life when they’re doubting themselves heavily. They’re not having trouble making decisions. They’re not overly struggling with feeling shame and guilt often. They’re not the ones who appear to be really busy, but at the end of the day, are not getting a lot done. If this is you, then this episode today is just not going to help you, friend. It’s going to be too much for your already strong inner doubters, and listen, that’s okay. We’ve all been through phases of life for our inner doubters creep in.

Goodness knows you’ve heard my story on episode two, where I talk about my own inner doubter world where I was questioning if my partner was cheating on me. I had trouble in that phase of life making choices. I felt confused often. I was very weak in my confidence level. I’ve been there and I know how hard it is to pull yourself out of that. I get it. I felt it and it stinks. Just know I help women in my coaching practice every day who are going through this, who have high inner doubters so I can help you, but today’s episode specifically is just going to be too much for you right now.

Now, you’re welcome to listen still, because my words may kick your inner doubters doubt to the curb, but two, it may make things worse. Just keep that in mind. I’m warning you. I’m warning you because today on the show is talking about questioning everything. This questioning is not from a place of overthinking or doubting yourself, hence why I told the high doubters to get out of here for right now, this questioning is from a place of empowerment and strength and wisdom. Today’s episode is designed to make you stronger and wiser than ever, and I’m stoked to share it with you.

Now, today is extra exciting because it’s our first episode to get our hands dirty with some concrete strategies to create massive change in your life. Yes. Can I get a “Amen”? Let’s jump right in and get to work. All right. Today, I want you to walk away from this episode with a massive mindset shift about what you’re taking in around you. I’m going to give you some strategies on how to do this, but first, let’s talk about why questioning everything is important and why I’m asking you to think about this now.

I’m sure you’ve heard the term “fake news” a million times over in the past few years. The act of fact-checking is in full force in our lives now and it should be. The amount of lies we’re being fed is ridiculous within the news and on social media alone. All these influencers out there they’re portraying this beautiful life. Even our friends on Facebook this beautiful life and then you dig a little deeper and you realize that perfect life is actually not so perfect at all. We started to see that, but we’re going even deeper with it. Anyone right now can post anything or say anything and it’s taken as fact.

With the internet boom, everyone has a voice, a message. Consequently, information some people are saying is fact is really fiction. The person I feel who has brought this whole need to fact-check up so prominently is, you probably already know, Mr. Donald Trump. Love him or hate him, you have to admit the man is dramatic. He expands the truth and he straight up even lies sometimes. If you can’t even agree with me on that, and you did vote for him and maybe you even do like him, but you still can’t admit that he lies sometimes then girl, come on. Come on. He lies sometimes, he does.

I get it if you’re a Republican and you want those Republican values, I get it if you like his policies and I get it if you don’t even mind him as a person. If you want to sit here and say the man never lies, then again, I just don’t know if I’m your girl because he does. You have to admit that. Now, while Donald’s obvious acts of storytelling and lies are annoying and to me they’re disgusting, he has actually been so beneficial in many ways.

By Donald Trump bringing to the surface lies not only about himself, but where he’s saying fake news all the time, we started questioning things, myself included, not only with Trump’s actions and words, but the actions of words of people who I’ve liked and even voted for, or blindly followed. With that, there’s been a lot of deceit with them as well. It’s been eye-opening. It’s been more covert of course, and maybe Mr. Trump is, but it’s been there and it’s been a very big mindset shift for me to take in that and maybe you too.

It’s just become apparent just how much complete shit sometimes we are fed in this world on a daily basis that’s hidden behind people who we think we can trust. Let’s face it, power, money, status, and certain positions sure make us feel like sometimes we can automatically trust certain people and things. If you listen to episode two, you heard of my story to becoming an unstoppable woman, that I trusted the thoughts of my counselor over my own intuition when I thought my then partner was cheating on me.

I thought her doctorate degree in accolades made her a stronger and better fit at knowing what was true in my life, and she was so wrong, so wrong. That experience with her woke me up to realize that I was the powerful one. I knew things I should honor and respect that didn’t necessarily have concrete evidence yet, but I needed to follow those instincts always. The more I followed those instincts, that intuition and questioning things, the better my life has become and I want that for you too.

Now, I must admit being a coaching client helped me a lot with this. If you listen to episode three of the show where I talk about the process of life coaching, you heard me say many times that the act of coaching is to help the client realize that he, she has the answers within themselves and just trust that voice. I know I say this often, but I want to say it again in that you are so powerful and wise beyond your wildest dreams. You know what’s right for you and your life. You know what to do to make things happen in your life. You just need sometimes a teacher or a coach or a motivator, whatever you want to call it, to help you tap into those things.

Our society likes to make us thinks that they are the ones with the answers. We turn to our parents, school teachers, law enforcement, religious figures, to give us the answers as kids and even adults, and while yes, we need those teachers and guides for sure, I’m here, I’m a teacher guide, I’m saying sometimes you may need me, not everyone though is happily working in our best interests. That is what’s bubbling up in our society with politicians and law enforcement and teachers.

We even see these preachers who molests kids, these police officers who are racist. The way teachers unknowingly treat little girls versus the way they treat little boys in a classroom that makes little feel less confident and less smart. All of the stuff again is coming to the surface now. Although it hurts to bring this stuff up, it is so good for us to be able to bring the stuff out into the public eye and to say, “Hey, we need to question what we’re doing here.”

We’ve just been so conditioned to do things certain ways that we haven’t been questioning things as much as we should for a while, and that’s got to stop. We need to question everything. We need to question our beliefs. We need to question our feelings. We need to question our actions. We need to question who we blindly believe and follow. I could go on and on here.

Let me address here that if you’re like me, you hear these statement of “Question everything,” and may think, “Lindsay, that’s exhausting. That’s so much work. Won’t that create so much doubt and paranoia in my life to question everything around me?” You may think also, “I like my life already, Lindsay. I don’t want these big, huge changes of questioning things. I like where I’m am. I’m comfortable. It feels good.” To which I say, “Listen, I get it. It is exhausting to question everything all at once.” I don’t have to time or energy for that crap either. I can’t sit around pondering, researching, or figuring things out all day long, I have things to do, I have my babies to raise, but I’m taking things on one at a time. I’m questioning and I’m looking things up one little baby step after step.

If you have those fears like I mentioned of being in this doubt and paranoia, that again is why I told the inner doubters to step back today because most inner doubters, they’ve got to deal with their own past traumas that have created these inner doubt. Today, again, I’m really speaking to those women who have dealt with that or just don’t have that strong within themselves, they know how to trust their intuition, they know how to question things without it getting to a point of paranoia or even just the cycle of doubt.

The third thing I want to address there is if you’re saying, “Lindsay, I like my life already. It’s great,” let me say, I get it. My life now is pretty darn good. I could easily just put my feet up, sit back and say, “I’m done.” I am way better at life than I ever imagined right now, and I could just quit growing, but we are human beings. We’re meant to evolve and continuously grow. Just because life is really good for you right now, it maybe even be better than you ever thought it could be, you can still make it better, believe it or not. You can still make decisions that are going to feel and create and be even more amazing than you can ever imagine.

In order to keep growing and evolving and changing, we have to keep questioning. Questioning is a way that we learn. Let me give you an example of what I mean by this. I’m sure you’ve heard about mega life coach, inspirational speaker, best-selling author, and overall powerhouse entrepreneur, Tony Robbins, and so have I. Before I entered the personal development industry, I even knew who Tony Robbins was, I knew he was a big deal. He was the “it” in the personal development world.

I hadn’t come in contact directly with a lot of his work, but as I started my coaching business and entering this industry, I was certainly in this world with him. Again, I hadn’t directly been in contact with him in any way, but the people who I were in direct contact with and the people I was actively following, people like Marie Forleo, or Oprah Winfrey, they all thought Tony was great, and so again, my belief was, “Tony Robbins is awesome, I love him.”

I had a friend who met Tony Robbins, and I can’t get into the details of how this all went down with this friend, and the relationship that caused this to happen and continuously still happens with Tony because of confidentiality reasons, but suddenly, Tony Robbins was in my world directly. Now, I had the opportunity to go to his event for free, possibly meet him and become connected with him directly myself.

I couldn’t believe it. I knew this could be a game-changer for my business to have this connection with Tony Robbins. I’ve seen how Tony has impacted other coaches’ profiles and has blown up their business. Of course, I wanted that too, but when my friend told me of their connection and explained my possibility of me connecting with him, it was mentioned that they weren’t actually a fan of his.

Then this friend said to me that they were actually shocked I would be interested in him too. I blew off my friend’s initial comments as their own crap. What do they know? They weren’t that into personal development anyway. It had to be something with that. They just felt icky because Tony stirred something up in them. I started looking into Tony’s stuff and watching his stuff, and immediately I was turned off. I hated his style, I hated his demeanor, I hated the way he, so called, coached people, and I knew I wanted nothing to do with him. It’s nothing personal. It’s just not my style.

I really wanted to like Tony but it just wasn’t an all authentic match for me. I knew I would be saying no to a huge possibility for growth in my business, but my authenticity matters more to me than any amount of money. I’m so glad I came to that conclusion that we weren’t a good fit. For years, I had gone along with the crowd and didn’t question anyone about their love for Tony and took his tweetable type quotes, shared them around on the internet without looking deeper into the person that he was. I was disappointed of course, mad and disgusted with myself. I didn’t question what I was following and it made me realize just how much the power of blindly following others can do to us.

This type of group-think mentality is studied and analyzed all the time, especially in a cult. People just start zombieing out and becoming fanatics of something that makes no sense. I doubt you’re in this place in life where you’re in a cult, but I can tell you that we are all doing this in some way, and I can especially relate to this in my former marriage. I was very zombie-like just following the crowd in many ways in that relationship. It became exhausting to question everything my then partner was doing, and I was fed so many half-truths and lies that it got confusing to keep up with what was fact from fiction.

Again, I was disgusted with how much I put up with in that partnership, and how much I didn’t question at the time, but it happens. It happens to even the strongest of people, friend, and it’s okay. If and when you do find yourself falling along with something that you now discover wasn’t true, or just not a good fit for you anymore, be kind to yourself. Pinky-promise me you will. Promise me that when you do find something that you’ll put your hand over your heart and forgive yourself. I know you’ll probably tell yourself that you should have known better, or been smarter, wiser, stronger, but again it happens, and it’s okay. It’s part of the learning journey.

The key here is not to fear what you find, as you question that you have an essence to face the music and make change. A lot of people do this. They, for example, don’t want to question their religion because it’s been passed on from generation to generation. If they leave their religion, oh my gosh, they may lose their friends or they may lose their family and all of this other stuff, but like I said earlier, isn’t your authenticity worth more than that?

I know that when I was creating a life back in my 20s that everybody wanted me to create with these certain jobs, and have a family that looked a certain way. It didn’t feel good because I wasn’t living the life that I wanted for myself, and I suffered through that every single day. I wish I would have questioned more of, “Why is it important that I get this kind of job?” or, “What makes this partnership better than this partnership?” Instead I was just going along with what people told me to do.

Again, I wanted to challenge you here, where in life do you need to question? Where in life do you need to step up and look at things in a different way? If something scares you about doing that, you need to explore what is making you feel fearful about doing that. I get it. It is scary. It is scary to wake up sometimes and make change. It was so scary for me at the time to leave my marriage. It was scary for me to start this business that I now have.

I had been conditioned by my parents that you go out and you get a corporate job and that is what you do. You don’t talk about your feelings, you don’t do this or that. It was a huge change for me to start to even question those beliefs and that pattern and way of thinking. It was huge. It was very scary for me to go against the grain of my parents. I feared I would lose them, I feared that I was going to mess up my entire life, but I’m so glad that I did that. Yes, it was rocky along the way, and it was scary at times, but I wouldn’t give up what I have right now for anything because you living an authentic life, or you get to be the person you want to be, it requires you to question things.

I will tell you, my journey is not done. As I mentioned earlier in this episode, I’m questioning things in the political arena a lot, thanks to Donald Trump, and I’m starting to go against my political party. This party has been drilled into me by my parents. I know by me stepping out just a little bit and potentially voting for the other party in some ways, my parents are going to flip their crap. Oh my gosh, I can not even imagine. I even think they may disown me, no joke because they’re just that hardcore in this one political party. Again, that’s scary but I have to do it. I have to. I have to question. I have to look around me and I have to learn for myself what is true and what is authentic for me.

Now, I know I’ve talked a lot about questioning the external things of systems and people, but let’s talk about questioning yourself for a second. I mean questioning yourself in a healthy, non-doubty way because this type of questioning can change you the most. Let’s just get right into it, and let me show you with an example of how you can start to question yourself in this powerful way. Let me ask you, what’s something in your life right now that you dislike? I’m going to give you a second to think. Whatever comes to your mind, just let it come.

All right. Hopefully, you have something. Maybe you have something like the way you view your body, maybe it’s that you feel like you never have enough money, maybe it’s that your partner drives you crazy when he or she does a certain thing, maybe it’s nothing big, per se, that you don’t like about life right now, but you found something. I’ll give you an example of how this happened in my own life recently, too. At the time of this recording, I have a 10-month-old baby and the past two years have been hard on our family, despite being so happy and joyful about our baby boy. It’s been physically, emotionally, mentally, and financially, a lot to handle for any family, even our family, who is in a pretty good place in all those areas of life.

I found myself a few weeks ago, complaining to my husband that I feel like we never have fun anymore, and that we didn’t have any money to have fun. All of our money, it seems lie it was going to responsibilities and our needs. Despite us bringing in a decent amount of money, it just seemed like there was never enough. As I was saying this to him, I was cringing inside.

I know we have more than enough money. I lived on far, far less money as a single mom back in the day. I felt abundant all the time. I also know life is what you make of it. If I want fun, then it’s my job to create it. Nobody else’s. “I’m no victim of life,” I said to myself, “I am a co-creator of it. This thought pattern needs to be questioned and changed.” That’s what I started to do.

Now, if you’ve never done an exercise like this before we explore your beliefs, it’s something I do do with my clients in my Become An Unstoppable Woman course. We go very deep dive. We look at all of your beliefs in all the different areas of life, and it can be life-changing to do that exercise. I’m just going to throw it out here. If you want to do a deep dive into your beliefs, go take my free assessment to see if coaching with me is right for you. Just go to Lindsey- L-I-N-D-S-A-Y-E- preston.com/assessment, or you can just go to my general website, lindsayepreston.com and the assessment links are all over the website. You’ll find it there.

In the course, as I said, we do a deep clean of your mind to see exactly what you’re subconsciously telling yourself to hinder yourself from your next level of success. To get you started today, though, on this, let’s go back to that area of life you want to change. Just like me with my money, a feeling like I wasn’t abundant and we weren’t having fun, I had to start to think, “Okay, what are some of the memories I have here around money in this stage of life as well?” Because there was some correlation with having a young child and not feeling I could have fun, feeling like it was hard work and all of those things.

The things that came up for me were beyond money. Just a fun fact for you here, when you ask yourself this of, “What are the beliefs that are tied to this?” or, “What are my memories tied to this?” your brain is so good at pulling those memories. Trust that. Whatever memories come up for you, that is the brain telling you, “Hey, this is the correlation I’ve made. Listen to me.” Got it? Okay.

For me, the beliefs that came up of having a young child is hard work and draining. I might sacrifice my fun for my children. Kids cost a lot of money and we don’t have enough, meaning we don’t have enough money. While, yes, those beliefs can be true, having a young child can be hard, having a young child can be expensive, it doesn’t have to be true. The thing is, with beliefs is we create what we believe. If we believe that having young kids is hard work, then that’s what we’ll see and surround ourselves with.

Just as I pulled that, I realized that I had unfollowed on social media in the past year or so, anyone who had a baby around when I did, and was making it look easier than my experience felt. I was saying, “No, you are not part of my belief. See you. Piece out.” I found them annoying. I found that I just didn’t want to be a part of their Instagram or Facebook world or whatever it was because again, that was my belief, having a young child is hard work and draining.

That’s how I was creating that my world. I was just surrounding myself with other moms, with young kids who were saying, “Oh, this is so hard. Oh, this is so hard. This is so hard.” Again, is it hard? Yes, part of it is hard, but it doesn’t have to be as hard as what my mind is making it feel. Makes sense? I hope I am. If not, and you’d like my input and you want some direct feedback on some of the leads you want to question either internally in your mind or externally in the world around you, then I would love to have you in my Become An Unstoppable Woman podcast community.

Within this community, you get direct access to me to ask your questions about the episodes along with connecting with other unstoppable women around the world. I do special things like offer Q&A sessions and coaching sessions to my members often. I don’t charge extra for this either, friend. It’s just a special thing I do. I also give these members the ability to help me choose episode topics. That means I could be doing episodes around the ones that you want to hear the most. Imagine the free training possibilities, friend, that you could apply directly in your life. It’s a very powerful place to be in this community.

Go to becomeanunstoppablewoman.com to learn more and sign up into this community. I’ll have info about the group by April 1st, 2019. If you’re listening, then great, go there. All the information is up, but if it’s before April 1st, 2019, you can actually join the community now for free. As a way to celebrate the start of this show, if you go and leave a review for the show wherever you listen and then submit a pick of that review to me via email, you get to be in this community for life, for free. Yes, friend, for life, for free.

This is huge because starting in April 2019, I’ll be charging a monthly fee to get into this group. It’s pretty cool that you could be a part of this forever and ever and never have to pay a dime. Again, this is just something I’m doing for just a few weeks. Go leave a review of the show, take a picture and then email it to me at Lindsey- L-I-N-D-S-A-Y [email protected]. Lindsey- L-I-N-D-S-A-Y [email protected].

Now, if you listen to the show in a place where you can’t leave a review, just head on over to my Facebook page and leave a review of the show there. Of course, if you’ve worked for me or not for me, have you’ve worked with me, please leave a review about what it’s been like to work with me as well. I would so love to see your feedback.

All right, friends, we covered a lot today, the idea of questioning everything. I hope today helps you start to see how important it can be to open your mind, to going beyond the norm of things. Remember, your here to question just the things that are important to you now. You don’t need to question everything all at once. Trust yourself on where you need to go next. Remember, part of the show is you trusting yourself. Wherever you need to go, trust that instinct.

Remember too, that you’re here to question me too. Absolutely. I want you to do that. There is no offense to you questioning me at all. Fact, I find if you’re questioning me in an educated and kind way, then I’m making an impact in your life. You are doing your homework. You’re listening to the show and taking in what I’m telling you because I want you to be questioning those things. My job is to help you discover what’s right for you. I want you to learn just how wise you are. My hope is that each week I teach you more and more just how to do that.

Join me for our next episode, which will be coming out on March 15th. It’s the first interview I’ll have for the show. I’m so excited to share with you, the amazing woman, I have booked to teach you about how to own your power in a whole new way. I’ll see you then. Until next time, all my love and blessings. Remember, you’re only as unstoppable as you believe you can be. Believe in yourself, you got this.

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