“Our most authentic self is the part of us that we really want to be without society’s programming. ”
How to Live Life to the Fullest
Get ready…today’s podcast episode is my favorite to date. (Out of 88 episodes that’s a pretty big deal!)
It’s my favorite because the exercise I teach you is powerful. It’s transformed my life this year and when I did the exercise again to prep for this episode, it gave me incredible insight on where to go next in my life.
I can’t wait to see what unfolds from it.
This exercise is simple yet profound and it will leave you with clarity and a motivation like never before.
If this is the only episode you ever listen to on the show, this is it.
Listen via the link at the top of this page.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
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Full Transcript
This is the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast with Lindsay Preston Episode 88, Living
Life to the Fullest.
[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]
Hi there, Miss Unstoppable. Okay. I am going to call it right now. This episode right here is
going to be my favorite episode ever. I know I say that from time to time here on the show,
like, “I love this episode, it’s the best.” I mean it this time. I haven’t even recorded it yet. It’s
just, I love it so much because the strategy I’m going to teach you today has been lifechanging for me. It’s so simple. It’s so easy. I can’t wait for you to use it in your life and to
have extremely life-changing results from it.
Gosh, where do we go from there? I mean, this is going to be something that’s going to
potentially change your life. Let’s just digest that for a minute and take that in because the
strategy is one that I’ve used with my clients and I’ve used as a client myself from my very
first coach. It’s one that I fine tuned over this past year and I used it a few months ago and
then I used it again last night to prep for today’s episode. What I got from it has just lit me
up in a whole new way.
Please, take the time to slow down and listen to this episode. I know I listen to a lot of
podcasts on the go. I’m either walking or I’m driving and I stop from here and there
because maybe I get to my destination, the podcast isn’t over, I’m walking and I’m paying
attention to other things. You’re welcome to do that. This exercise, again, is so big that I
don’t want you to miss a single second of what I’m going to tell you today. It’s really going
to help if you slow down and really absorb what I tell you today because it’s one of those
things where you need to disconnect, you need to go within in essence like listening to
your own inner wisdom and your inner guidance.
You may not even know what that is, wherever you are in your journey. For my clients, I
teach them all about this. Even if you’re a client of mine, I want you to listen to this
episode because it’s going to take something we do in the coaching process and take it
deeper and I’m going to give you more stories to how this has changed my life. The other
thing I want to say too before we get into it, is this is episode 88. Eight is my favorite
number. It has been since I was a child and I didn’t even know what it represented and it’s
the infinity symbol if you turn it sideways. I just find it so funny that this episode that I’m
deeming my favorite is on episode 88.
It’s just one of those synchronicities of the universe because it wasn’t until I sat down and
said, okay, I’m about to hit record. What episode number is this? I was like, “Oh my gosh,
it’s 88.” How crazy cool is that? The other thing is we are only 12 episodes away from
hitting 100 episodes on this show and get this another synchronicity of the universe. When
I decided, I guess it was August, that I was going to do two episodes a month for
September, October, November, December and then we’d go back to one episode a month,
not month, one episode a week versus two episodes a week in January onward for 2021, I
didn’t know when we would hit 100 episodes.
It was about a few weeks ago I sat down and I was really looking at the episode numbers
and I thought, okay, when are we going to hit 100 and get this, it’s going to fall on my two
year anniversary of the podcast. Crazy, right? How cool is that? I teach my clients this
concept called wins. If you listen to the podcast, you hear me talk about all the time. It’s
just talking about seeing little bitty things in your world as ways to track your growth and
your progress because our brain is always focusing on the problems and what’s next that
we need to solve in our world.
It’s so great to just slow down, look at the wins and see how we’re growing and changing
every single day even when we don’t notice it because most times it’s little subtle
changes. One of those wins is synchronicities like this one because I’m a big believer in the
universe and it’s supporting you. When I see synchronicities like this, it’s just like, “Oh my
gosh, this is so cool.” We live in a magical world.
Anyways, going back to we’re about to hit episode 100 and we, meaning really me and my
admin, Rachel, are working really hard behind the scenes to do something so fun for the
100th episode. We’re putting something together that’s costing thousands of dollars. I tell
you that because it’s going to be such an amazing tool and resource for you. If you’re a
client of mine, just get excited because you’re going to get this resource delivered to you
in the mail where it’s special Valentines-ish gift from me and if you’re not a client of mine,
you’re going to have an opportunity to get this special gift on our 100th episode by just
doing a simple activity.
Just get ready. It’s going to be such an amazing few episodes ahead. This one as I said, I
am deeming my favorite. It is about living life to your fullest potential, right? Isn’t that
what it’s called? Let me double check. I’m questioning it now. Living life to the fullest,
right? First off, why is it so hard for us to live life to the fullest? Well, you’ve heard me
probably talk about this on other podcasts but society, the way it’s teaching us is to live a
pretty mediocre life.
It’s saying go to school, get good grades then go to college or university or get a good job.
Then you climb the ladder and then you get married and you have kids and blah, blah,
blah, right? What happens is that we think, okay, if we just follow these “rules” then we’re
going to have a great life. We start, in essence, checking off the boxes. We make good
grades. We go to school or maybe we don’t go to school but you start going to work. Then
maybe we get married and we have kids and we realize, this isn’t as fulfilling as I thought
it would be. What am I doing wrong?
I remember for me, I figured it out pretty quick. I was in my early 20s. I had deemed or I
had gotten this job right out of college that everyone deemed as “Great and awesome.” I
had a handsome on paper or in pictures partner and I just kept thinking this isn’t it. There’s
got to be more to life than this. It just kept, I don’t know, calling inside of me of
something’s got to change here, something’s got to be different. I really thought I was
crazy. I thought I was high maintenance.
I thought there was something wrong with me to feel that way then, because I had that
yearning inside of me for more, I felt very restless and very stuck and so then, a lot of
problems started to create in my life because of that. Then, I found coaching and the rest is
history, right? I learned how to live life to the fullest and how we were taught that these
boxes just aren’t the way to deeply fulfilling life.
Again, that’s why we don’t know how to live life to the fullest. The way that we live life to
the fullest is really going through and figuring out the things that are holding us back from
living our most authentic self. Our most authentic self is the part of us that is who we
really want to be without society’s programming.
It just happens to be that our brain when we’re children are highly emotional and so we
build all these wires and these beliefs and we come out of childhood, which is things we
have to clean up. Unless we go in and clean it up in our mid 20s onward then we were just
perpetuating these patterns and we have these beliefs that we just keep an essence
manifesting in our life time and time and time again.
I know most of you know that whole just because I talk about it all the time. I just want to
make it clear, in case you’re new here, that that’s why we don’t live life to the fullest until
we have to go and clear those blocks. We have to figure out who we are in a deep level
and then we have to have the courage and have the skill in essence to make fast decisions
and to get into something called massive action where it’s an aligned action and it’s very
peaceful and calming and yet we’re going after our goals and dreams in a very big way.
In essence, what I just described there is my nine-month simple success coaching process.
That’s what we do. I am teaching my clients how to live life at the fullest, but again, what
are we going to talk about today? How am I going to teach you right now how to do this?
It’s this exercise that is based off of another one that I’ve taught often, as I said with
clients and I also teach it in my Accomplish Your Dreams training, which you recently heard
here on the podcast and it goes up the legacy exercise. In that exercise, you were thinking
about when you’ve passed. Let me just say this, if you are somebody who has a lot of
anxiety around death or it’s just too much of a touchy subject for you, maybe you’re
mourning somebody, I would steer clear of this episode and come back to it later because
we’re going to talk a lot about death today.
Anyways, the legacy exercise. What you’re doing is you are in essence thinking about the
end when you have passed and you want to think about what kind of legacy did I create in
this world? How did I make people feel? What did I do? What did I not do? You want to get
very, very clear on what that is, what your finish line is and start to make sure you’re living
that now. It’s just really important that you see that because otherwise, we are presented
with so many decisions every single day that we can easily get off track and especially just
being the person that we want to be.
We can think, oh, let’s put it off till later or certain things happen in our world and again,
we just come from this emotionally reactive place in our brain because unless we train it
otherwise, that’s how our brain is. In essence, we’re coming from life in a childhood
perspective until we train it otherwise.
Remember what I just said is our childhood brain is so emotional and until we go in and
clear out the crap from our childhood, even if it was a little stuff, then we are in essence
showing up as like this child version of us with all these wounds.
Okay, so anyways, we’re presented with these opportunities and these moments and we
are reactive. I know I used to be like this all the time, especially after I became a mother
and I had a toddler. Having a toddler sometimes was really hard. I remember being
triggered a lot. I remember losing my temper at times and thinking, oh my gosh, I can’t
believe I just did this. I wish I didn’t do this, but I didn’t know how to stop it in the moment
and then this wave of guilt and shame would come over me and I would just think, oh my
gosh and then I would spin into criticism and just beating myself up time and time again
because of it and I would feel horrible.
It would take me days if not weeks to pick myself back up and just feel better again but it
wasn’t until I went through coaching and did something like this legacy exercise, did I
know in that moment, how do I want to react to this? Because I’ve already planned out
how I want to react to this by doing my legacy. I know how I want to show up as a mother.
I know who I want to be. I know what I want to do and not do and so in that moment I can
show up in a different way.
Too, because I have, in essence, let go of or released all this childhood crap, I’m not as
triggered so it makes it easier. It’s a two-fold right. You’ve still follow me, you’re doing the
legacy exercise, but here’s another way to do this and it’s even more basic.
I’m going to tell you a story first. When this whole coronavirus thing came out in March
2020, it just seems like to me, all I heard from the news was death, death, death, death,
death. It shook me a little bit. At first, I blew it off. I think many of us did because we had
heard from the news for at least a month about this whole coronavirus thing and how it
was in China and then it had gone to Italy and they had shut down. I remember my
husband who is a more anxious person than I am being like, “Hey, Lindsay, this is a big
deal.” I would listen and I would take in the feedback and then I’d be like, “You know
what? The news is always highly anxious. I’m not going to go down this rabbit hole.”
Again, it got bigger and bigger and when the US started shutting down, I was like, holy
shit, this is a thing. This is a big deal. Never, ever in 100 years has the US had something
that’s happened and then it’s global, everywhere in the world they’re just shutting down.
The impact hit me and again, all I kept hearing was death, death, death, death.
It suddenly became every decision I was making when I left the house was, this could be
my death. Meaning I could get coronavirus and die because remember when it first came
out, we didn’t know that much about it and so it was like this foreign thing and we didn’t
know and I mean how could this impact us? Again, I was like, “Okay, should I go to the
grocery store, should I not? And should I do this or should I not? Because is it worth it? Is it
worth me potentially dying by going to do this thing?”
I spun in this for gosh, two-weeks-ish, I think. I remember going to my husband and saying
something along the lines of it just puts everything into perspective of what’s worth it and
what’s not worth it anymore. We started talking and I forget where the conversation went,
but we got to this place where he initially told me ”Lindsay, the risk has always been
there. Any time you leave the house, something could happen to you or even at your home.
You don’t know when your last breath is going to be. You don’t know when it’s going to be
your last day. You don’t know what awaits you in essence”.
I took this in in a whole new level. Of course, we all know this logically, right? We don’t
know when our last day will be, but it just seems like death was knocking on my front
door, literally in so many ways because anytime he left the house, it was these big sirens
of death everywhere.
I sat there and I remember laying in my bed and looking up at the ceiling and I remember
thinking, ”Okay, if I die tomorrow, what am I going to regret on my death bed?” It’s like, I
just started going through my life in pictures, almost like some people who have a near
death experience, they talk about this, how their life just does a quick flashback. I started
thinking, ”Okay, how am I showing up as a mother?” Great, love that area. ”How am I
showing up in this area of life?” I’m happy there and I started going through and then all
of a sudden, I got to my career.
Again, I’m imagining I’m on my death bed and I have died and I’m looking down at my
body. The one regret I had was ”Damn, I wish I would’ve done more with my business”. I
am an amazing coach. I’m so good and yet here I am diminishing that. I have been
undercharging for years now. I sit here– at the time was taking most of my calls in my
master bedroom closet on the floor just because that was the quietest place in our house.
I have been diminishing myself and my power and that’s ridiculous. I give amazing
transformation to people. It is something that’s worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in
somebody’s life. I am one of the best healers in the world and not coming from a cocky
place, but from a very grateful place of, I know the system for somebody to have a deeply
fulfilling life. Why am I not putting it out there? Why am I not owning that? Not just from a
coach perspective and a healing perspective, but a business woman perspective.
I remember turning to my husband and starting to just word vomit on him about all this. I
was like, “I’m done taking calls in the closet. I am done making sacrifices in my career. It is
my time and I’m not going to do it anymore.” He’s just like, “Okay?” I think he thought he
was the one holding me back and I made that very clear, this isn’t about you. It’s me in
essence talking to myself and what we call my inner mean girl or your inner mean girl and
saying like no more. Quit it. It’s time.
I don’t want to have that regret on my death bed and that shook me. It woke me up in a
really big way. From that place, I started to make different decisions in my business and
from that I have now generated over $100,000 since that happened, which I believe was
the last week in March and so, gosh, what is that like nine months, I’ve generated
$100,000. Before that, I had generated like 70k in my business in six years so I was not
making money.
I was giving a lot of great results. I was having a ton of fun. I was making a little money
here and there, but it was just like, okay whatever, I’ll get to that later. I’m going to be a
mom now and do my thing and yet here I am, I’ve done that just from sitting down and
thinking, ”Okay, I am dying tomorrow, what do I regret the most?” Then acting on that. It’s
just so amazing how that one little thing can create huge waves for you. Now here I am
nine months later at a completely different place in my business. I have this beautiful
office outside of my home that I just sit in and think, “Wow, I’m a business owner. I have
contractors who I adore working with. Next year, I am going to be making more than my
husband. Not just gross, but net.”
This is going to be huge and just to give you a side-note, my husband makes good money.
He makes multiple six figures. This is a big deal and this all goes back to that one moment
where again, I was thinking, “I’m dying tomorrow, boom. What is it that I regret the most?”
This is what I want you to do. I want you to slow down. I want you to take some deep
breaths and I really want you to picture it in your mind of you have died and you were
looking down at your body and you’re thinking, “What did I miss?” Letting that be
something that ignites you and spark something in you. If that means hiring a coach, be it
me or somebody else, to do it.
I was just reading a post from my business coach, Stacey Boehman and she was talking
about how she’s always thinking about what we do in the coaching industry and how to
describe it in essence. She was talking about how her mother-in-law is always saying, “Oh,
I want to get these VHS tapes to DVDs.” Stacey for Christmas is giving her a service where
she’s going to be able to do that.
It’s so funny because she tells herself she doesn’t have time for this, but I just easily
figured out the solution for her. She’s like, it’s just like coaching. We tell our clients all
these things that you think are going to take too long and you’re going to put on the back
burner, I’m going to make that happen for you. I’m going to be the one that allows you to
finally get this done.
That’s freaking genius, Stacey. It’s so true! It kills me when I hear people say, Oh, I’ll do
that tomorrow. Oh, that’s not the year for this. I’ll do it later. Now, granted, we can only
focus on so much at one time. That’s why I love this exercise again because the number
one thing you regret on the death bed, what is it? Boom, that’s your focus. Get to work and
I think this is a great one to use right now if you are listening to this episode live or
somewhat live.
Because 2021 is approaching us and for a lot of people, that’s when they really think about
what are my goals this next year? What’s going to be my overall focus? I love doing
exercises like word of the year or phrase of the year and we’ll talk more about that on the
podcast if that’s totally new to you. That will really allow you to hone in on, what do I
want to get done this next year? I encourage you to go all on one big thing.
For me this year, it was my business. I didn’t really figure that out until about March-ish.
Too, realize it doesn’t have to be on January 1st, you have it all figured out, but you need
to just continually be opening yourself up in a way where you’re listening to, I call it, the
world around you, in essence, what are the messages I’m meant to hear. Then tuning into
yourself of how am I going to interpret those messages?
Again, if we go back to my story with the coronavirus stuff, all I was hearing was death,
death, death, death, death, death. That was the message I kept hearing and I was like,
“Whoa, wait a second, how am I going to interpret this for myself?” That was, “Hey, Lindsey,
you never know when you’re going to die, let’s imagine it right now and let’s be very clear
on what it is that you want to accomplish next so that you hone in there.”
I told you early on this podcast, I did this exercise again last night preparing for this
episode. I was again in my bed. It was dark and I look up at the ceiling and I’m closing my
eyes and I’m thinking,”Okay. Tomorrow is my last day. I’m done. What do I regret?” I
started having all these visions about my marriage and about my life. Suddenly, so many
things became very clear on where I want to go next in my marriage.
I will tell you that sometimes when you have these visions, it may scare you a little bit
because remember what we’re taught in society and by others as living a really deep
fulfilling life is not necessarily what’s going to create that for us. For me, with my
marriage, there are some things that it’s a little non-conventional. It’s going against the
norm and you may be like, “Whoa, Lindsay, where are you going with this?”
I need to obviously work things out on my end and get to a place personally before I can
tell you everything because I’m still just digesting it myself. It scared me a little bit then it
also felt so amazing to finally just put it all in perspective of, okay, if this is the end, if only
have– I do it where I have this vision where I think about tomorrow and I’m dying
tomorrow.
Then I think, “What if I have a year left?” This isn’t like you have a year left where you have
some disease. It’s like you have a year left, you’re living your normal life and then an
accident or something takes you. I said, “I have a year left. What do I want to do this next
year?” Again, it became very, very clear where I want to go. The parts that scared me, I then
just went back to, okay, but if I’m potentially going to die in a year, that part doesn’t seem
so scary.
Now, this is where it does get a little tricky. For some people, if they have this vision of
like, I’m going to go blow all my money if I’m thinking I’m only going to live to the next
year, that may not be the wisest choice, but it may show you, hey, maybe I need to relax a
little bit on how I’m spending. Maybe I need to have more fun in my life. It just allows you
again, to see more clearly about where to go.
This exercise is very simple, but it is going to require you slowing down, listening to
yourself and for a lot of people who haven’t done any personal development or at least
any personal development one-on-one with somebody, be it a coach or a therapist, instead
you just maybe read books or gone to workshops and things of that sort, this may be
something that may be hard for you. You don’t know how to tap into yourself.
I meet women all the time that don’t know it. They’re just so conditioned by society to
perform in a certain way in essence. Especially be a people pleaser and here’s what life has
rolled out for me. I’m here to serve everybody else, which is great and fine, but then
they’re very, very unfulfilled. It’s so important that you know how to go within yourself and
say, “What is right for me?”
This has been a journey for me, my friend. I did coaching in 2013 and I feel like I’m just at
a place where I deeply know myself. I deeply trust myself. I make decisions that feel so
good to me and I make them quickly and with ease and granted that I mess up from time
to time. I’m not perfect, but when I do mess up, I own it. I’m like, “Oh yes.” I learn from it
and then I get better and better and better.
I wish that for you, that you are able to tap into yourself. It is a fun, amazing place to be
the most authentic version of you. It is incredible. That’s what we’re really all seeking here
is to be that version of ourselves. That really is the key to living life at the fullest. Because
again, you can pull this whole death stuff in essence, but then you’ve got to have the
courage to go out there and do it and you’ve got to have the trust in yourself to know, “Is
that truly what I want?”
Like I said, what I pulled last night with my marriage, I’m not questioning that. I would
have many years ago. I would have been like, “Huh.” Because those things that I pulled
yesterday in my marriage were things that were always inside of me that I would hear from
time to time and then I would diminish it and be like, “Oh no, no, no, that’s too weird,
that’s too different. I just need to go get married and follow the steps.
Now I’m learning it’s like, “Man, those were things that I wish I would’ve listened to earlier,
but I’m not going to beat myself up for it. I’m just going to move forward in the way that I
know in the deepest core of my being is where I need to go next.
I hope you love this episode. I know I do. It’s powerful, my friends. Go use it and then see
how it works in your life and know too, I’m here to help you. I get tongue-tied sometimes.
I’m here to help you however you need it be it if it’s coaching or if you just want more help
doing this exercise, we can do it on a free consult call. Just go to
lindsayepreston.com/apply. The link is always in the show notes too. If you want to get on
a call with me and we can do this call or this exercise together. I’m just going to warn you
consult calls are hard to come by these days.
I am currently full in my client practice, which is crazy. I’m now booking up for 2021, but I
would still love to do this with you. I would be honored to do this with you and even if you
think, Oh, I’m not going to sign up for coaching, Lindsay, for whatever reason.’ That’s okay.
I’m here to serve you. I would love to serve you in that way.
Do know I have a free community? You’ll get always in the show notes but it’s
lindsayepreston.com/community. You can always go ask me questions there. Please don’t
just leave this exercise on the table. It’s a good one. It’s really really good and so go use it
and two, when you do use it, tell me how it changes you. Oh, I’d love to hear it. All right.
That’s it for today, my friends. Go out there live life to your fullest and I will see you on the
next episode. Bye.
[music]
Hey there, Miss Unstoppable. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. If you enjoyed
it, share it with a friend. Send them a picture of this episode via text, via email, share it on
social media, I’m sure they would be so appreciative to know these strategies and tips on
how to accomplish your dreams. If you are ready to guarantee you’re going to accomplish
your goals and dreams, then it’s time to start coaching with me.
In my nine-month simple success coaching system, I am going to walk you every single
step of the way to ensure that you get the goals and dreams that you want. The first step is
to apply for a free 60-minute consult call. Just go to LindsayEpreston.com/apply to get
started. As always, my friend, remember, you’re only as unstoppable as you believe you can
be, so believe in yourself. You got this.
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