#63 Questions To Move You Forward

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 Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the, Your Favorite You podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains, create the life you've been dreaming of with intention.

My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend. If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Well, hi there. Welcome back to Your Favorite You. I'm so glad that so many of you keep coming back every week to listen to my episodes. It really is an honor that is definitely not lost on me. I am composing this episode for you on a flight home from the amazing Miraval resort in Tucson, Arizona.

We were there to celebrate my bestie from residency. Her name is Arpita. It was her 50th birthday. And in lieu of getting her gifts, she has several women who are special to her to come celebrate her 50th in this amazing place. I've been there before, I'm going back again in April, and it was a gift to all of us to be there together.

I have come to realize that I am so spoiled because my closest friends are very deep, without much fluff at all. We have very deep connections, deep conversations, we feel all of our feelings when we're together, and it is really just so healing each and every time we get together. So, I'm currently high on life.

People can sense it when you really love the life you're living. So, this leads to many people asking me about why my life is so amazing. And it always comes back to coaching in a surprise twist. You are likely also coming. Anyway, I tell everyone who is interested that I am a coach and how much coaching has changed my life for the better.

This trip, I told Roxanne, the lovely attorney from the West coast who sat with me on the shuttle on the way to the resort. Hi Roxanne. I hope you are enjoying the podcast. Hi, Michelle and Ami, Roxanne's friends that I told all about coaching by the fire pit at the spa. They are both financial advisors. So, I bragged on Jack with these two amazing ladies.

I also told my incredible massage therapist at Mirabal. Hi, Autumn, my neck and jaw and forearms are still in love with you. I hope you are enjoying the podcast too. I told Debbie, a flight attendant with 32 years of flying in the friendly skies. She's starting a business because she's interested in helping others heal after her beautiful daughter died at 28, several years ago, as a result of her mental illness.

Hi, Debbie. I do hope you take me up on that zoom call to discuss how easy it is to get started. I hope you get the idea people are constantly asking me why I am truly amazing, and I am constantly telling them. I was talking to a scientist who is my seatmate today on my first flight from Tucson to Phoenix.

She was leaving her eight-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son with her hubby to travel to a conference in Monterey, California. She also asked me about coaching. She has already started listening to Kara Loewentheil 's podcast, so she is familiar with some of the concepts. I was telling her how all of my clients already have the answers they are seeking on their way to their favorite versions of themselves.

They already have the answers in them. They are simply not asking themselves the right questions. They are not questioning their thoughts. They think that their thoughts are facts and have never been taught to question them. Prior to coaching, the women I work with also often have a lot of what we call limiting beliefs.

Thinking that the life they truly want is not available to them for one reason or another. They are often stuck in patterns of perfectionism, people pleasing, and control enthusiasm. Thinking that they have to control others and others’ emotions in order for them to feel peace themselves. A good coach will have you questioning everything in your life.

Re-deciding pretty much everything that might sound scary for most of you, because you know, that there are things in your life that you're doing and thinking that are keeping you stuck. Let me be clear. Re-deciding everything does not mean that everything in your life is going to change to the contrary.

I want you to redecide even the things about your life that you truly don't want to change, but, but, but instead of going through the motions, I want you to redecide the things that you do want to keep. It is a very powerful exercise to re-decide everything. Over the past five years, I have re decided to be married to Jon.

I have re-decided to live in Ohio. I have re-decided what car I want to drive. Who I want to cultivate friendships with. Who I am willing to release with love. I've re decided how often I want to travel, what type of mom I want to be, to leave a career I loved for another one that I love even more. I've re decided over and over and over again to keep having my own one on one coach, to continue in my business mastermind.

I've re decided what time I want to wake up in the morning and what time I want to go to bed at night. Hopefully you get the idea. None of these things would have been re decided if I was not willing to ask myself tough questions, or if I was not willing to have my coaches ask me tough questions and come up with the answers.

If you've been listening to the podcast for some time, hopefully you know by now that my favorite question to ask myself and to ask my clients is what do I want? So many of us. We have not asked ourselves that question in so many years and it makes perfect sense that we don't know the answer. It's okay to start asking yourself, what do I want?

What do I want? What do I want? And see what comes up and then maybe take a step toward that. Another question I like to ask both myself and my clients is, do you think that this is for your highest good? Will whatever this is, a decision, a choice, will this get you closer to your favorite you or will it take you further away?

Another great question to ask and to answer is what would I do if I knew I couldn't fail? So many of us are conditioned and socialized to never do anything that could possibly lead to failure, which keeps so many of us stuck doing the things that take us away from our favorite versions of ourselves.

If you take failure off the table, it allows your brain to really delve deep into possibility. Then after you've been coached for a while, I show you all the ways that failure actually helps you. If you're willing to allow yourself to see all the things that you learn from colossal failure.

Yet another great question to ask and to answer is what would I stop doing right now?

If I knew there would be no negative consequences. What would I stop doing right now if I knew there would be no negative consequences? This will tell you all the unnecessary things that you are doing right now that you either no longer need to be doing or that you can delegate to someone other than you.

I have become very good at teaching my clients all the things that they can delegate, and I absolutely have no problem leading by example in this arena. This question also points out all the areas in your life where you might still be people pleasing and we can clean that up as much or as little as you would like.

Another great way to see your brain is to ask yourself, what am I afraid of most right now? This usually points us to where we are hanging onto our control enthusiasm. Answering this one helps us figure out where we are not in our own lane. There are three types of problems. There are problems where the actual problem is in your control where you are actually part of the solution.

And this is actually a very small portion of what we worry about. So tiny as to almost be infinitesimal. There are other problems where things are not in your control. They are actually other people's problems. Many of you are down with OPP, other people's problems. Where you think you are part of the solution, but it actually has nothing to do with you and is likely none of your business.

Or NONYA, as we call it at the Parson's household, as in none of your business. This is the largest portion of things that we worry about other people's problems. The final type of problem is what we refer to as the universe's problems. No humans actually have control here. There are, there are acts of nature and the like, which no one has any control, but we sure do worry about these things.

Like I've said before, if worry could solve these issues for us, I would be all in, but it really is useless. Go back and listen to my Worrying is Pretending episode. If you want more of my thoughts on this, we will link that episode in the show notes. Another great question to ask and to answer is. If I die today, what would I regret not doing?

If I die today, what would I regret not doing? This one tells you what you should put at the top of your priority list and get it done as soon as possible. Then, if something happens to you, you won't have that regret. If nothing happens to you, which is much more likely, you can decide to do that thing over and over as many times as you want, or you can ask yourself the question again and make the answer.

The second time you ask it your new priority. One of my favorite questions to ask myself is what do I want the epilogue of the book of my life to be? You guys all know that I love to read almost everything. Practically, I love a good epilogue where they tell you how things turned out after all the ups and downs and twists and turns of a good book.

So, I want to know yours after all the ups and downs and twists and turns of your amazing life. I asked some of my clients to write an epilogue for themselves after we had been coaching together for some time. They wrote the most beautiful things. Since I don't ask my clients to do anything that I would not do for myself, I participated in the exercise too.

Here is what I wrote. She loved herself. She found all the time she abandoned herself and went back to bring all the versions of herself along. She taught so many amazing women to do the same. In revealing her own fucked up ness, she made it safe for others to be exactly themselves. She loved her people the best way she knew how.

She asked Jon, Jack, Owen, and everyone who she loved and everyone who also loved her for as many do overs as it took. She surrounded herself with people who only wanted the best for her. They were not afraid to allow her to shine. And she encouraged others to shine as brightly as they possibly could.

The world became a brighter place for everyone who encountered her because she was not afraid to shine. My hope for those of you listening to this podcast is that you ask yourself these questions and you answer them as honestly as you can. My highest hope is that if you get stuck or you need help, that you will reach out to me to see if coaching might help you ask these questions, answer them, and then do what it takes to implement the answers so that you can become Your Favorite You.

Thanks for listening, beautiful people. See you next week.

Hey, everybody, don't go quite yet. I want to let you know all the ways that you can work with me.

If you've been listening to this podcast, maybe especially the episodes where I interviewed my clients and you are thinking like the older woman in the diner in the classic Meg Ryan Billy Crystal film when Harry met Sally, where Sally, proving a point to Harry, is faking an orgasm while at the diner.

Sally finishes and takes a bite of her food and the older woman in the next booth says I'll have what she's having. This is your sign from the universe to schedule a consult with me.

I'm currently enrolling clients who want to work with me in a group setting. The group will start on January 10th, and we will meet every Wednesday at 1pm until July 3rd, 2024.

I'm very excited about the women who have already made the commitment to themselves and the investment in themselves to join the group and would love to have you be part of it. I also have a few spots available for one-on-one coaching with me, if that is a way that you want to work with me.

The way to contact me is to go to my website, melissaparsonscoaching.com, and either go to the group page and click Book Now or go to the work with me page and click Book Now.

That way, you can schedule a consult. I look forward to hearing from you. Let's make 2024 your favorite year ever as you become Your Favorite You.