I just don't like (fill in the blank)

Lately the term “I don’t like…” has come up a lot. I have been thinking it, my clients have been thinking it, and even my kids have been saying it.

 You may not like your job, your roommate, or your family. You may not like the weight on the scale or even the pillow you sleep on. You may not like this shelter in place order or what is happening somewhere out there in the world. Whatever it is you don’t like, has everything to do with the way you are thinking about it. And the way you think about it is absolutely optional.

 Your job is completely likable, your roommate, she is too.  The weight on the scale, a pillow and even your family or family members, yep, they are likeable.

 The reason we like something is because we think super high quality thoughts about it. Let’s take a person for instance, let’s say your best friend, the reason you like her is because you choose really great thoughts about her and when you think those thoughts you feel amazing. You may not even be aware of the high quality thoughts you choose for her because they come automatically. She talks or says something and you have thoughts like she gets me, she cares about me, she loves me, so unconscious to you, you think it is what she is saying that is making you feel that way or how she is saying it.

 On the other hand take a person that you don’t like. They say anything and your thoughts are: you are totally misunderstanding me, you don’t really even care about me, and you will never get it. When you think those thoughts you feel awful and you think it is coming from their words or the way they are saying it. The reality you are subconsciously thinking those unknown thoughts and creating those awful feelings.

I want you to take something right now in your life that you don’t like and decide right now there are people in the world that not only like that person or thing but rave about it.

What do you think those people who like it are thinking?

Let’s take someone’s job as an example.

Maybe you don’t like your job at all right now. When you think about it you are filled with negative emotion. It is hard for you to find anything you really like about it.

 Now think about someone who likes their job and raves about it. They think it is a privilege to get to do the work that they are doing. They feel like the Lord created this job just for them. They get to love people and use their talents to benefit everyone they come into contact with. They feel like their job allows them to help others. They can’t think of anything else they would rather do than invest themselves into their work. They look for ways that their job challenges them. They look for ways to work with others to get better and grow and evolve in their job. When they think those thoughts about their job they feel amazing. They feel empowered and they do their work with excellence and joy.

You might argue that their job must be amazing, but what if I told you this is the way a janitor who cleaned the school that I worked at in the Philippines felt. It was her thoughts that created her liking and raving about her job. She created all of this because she chose to think high quality thoughts about it.

It is not your jobs job to make you like it, it is your job to like it.

That works for everything in life. It is not your friends job, your families job, or any circumstances job to make you like them, that is your responsibility.

It just doesn’t come naturally. It will take work to weed out your current thoughts and start adopting some new thoughts. And listen, the world will tell you just get a new job, which will solve your problem. You will like another job so much better. That is probably true. But, if you don’t clean up your thinking and learn how to like things just as they are you will get into the habit of just changing up the circumstances to feel differently.

You don’t like a friend, so get a different one. You don’t like your apartment; you can find a new one. Your roommate is a mess; there has to be someone better out there. We do this for everything from job to church to friends and everything in between. If we don’t like something, just get a different version and it will be easier to like.

The key here is to clean up your thinking first, learn how to like it right where it is and then decide if you want something different. You decide after you have learned to like it.

Some of you don’t like me right now. Your thoughts might be well that sounds hard.

But learning the skill of changing the way you think about something is a huge asset to have in life.

I have learned to like so many things in my life in the past couple of years since learning all of this work. The first thing I learned to like was me. I learned to like my weight, and then decided to change that. I have cleaned up thoughts that made me not like my kids, husband and other relationships. I am working on liking certain parts of my life right now. This is a skill that I use regularly and has been so helpful to me.

My kids love that I am a life coach, and the other day my daughter said, “Mom, I don’t like waffles, to which I proceeded to say well waffles are what you are having, so pick some really great thoughts about waffles and eat up.”

Imagine me saying that to you… pick some really great thoughts and start liking whatever is going on with you.

With lots of love,

Angie

P.S. If you need any help, I got you. This is what I do all the time. So many of my clients came to me not liking different parts of their life (relationship status, weight, job, friendships, even relationship with self). It has been in the coaching that they have found thoughts that are keeping them stuck. They didn’t know they were creating all of this dislike for their own life. Watching them take full responsibility and start to choose thoughts that fuel the life they really want is why I love my job.

If you are ready to do this work than schedule your Before & After today! Click the link below:

Why a 30 Day Goal might be the best thing right now...

You might be thinking, what, are you serious. You want me to create a 30 day goal for the month of May? But we are in the middle of so much uncertainty and I am just trying to get by right now.

Yes… there are so many reasons our brain could use a goal right now. Let’s tackle a few of them

1. Your brain has a lot going on and a goal will give it the direction and focus you might be needing during this abnormal time.

When asked who do you want to be June 1st you might think I don’t know. To be honest it is hard for our brains to understand that date right now. You can only think of what is uncertain. But give yourself time to really think about what you most want. This would be a great time to teach your brain what is certain. That you can create something with your brain. It could be amazing to think about regardless of what is going on in the world, this is what I want to create, or do, or have. For some of you it might be you want some money in your bank account to go somewhere, or you might want to be 5 pounds lighter, or your house organized. Some of you might want to hit a certain dollar amount in your business or pass a test or learn a new skill. Whatever it is, this is something that you want. You have a reason why, but ultimately this is you deciding that you can create this in 30 days if you put your mind to it. In order to do this it would require you to focus all of your attention and direction on this goal. You would have to get laser focused and remove a lot of the extra drama your brain is offering you right now.

When you give your brain this goal, it is like you are telling the toddler in your brain what we are doing. You have taken away the knife, you have sat it down, you have given it a coloring book and you have said, “This coloring book right here is going to help us do some of our greatest work to grow and learn and become a better brain.”

We need that right now. Our brains really just want to go on autopilot. They don’t really want a challenge, they just want to make it and they are really good at coming up with lots of excuses. Now more than ever we need to supervise and direct our brains to grow and not stay stagnant during this time.

2. You are putting your effort towards something your really want and not just living off of the momentum of the past few weeks

It would be really easy for your brain to let you know what you have been doing for the last few weeks is right where you need to be. It would be super easy to convince you that it will be like this forever and you can’t really change, that it is hard enough already. But, if you go in and put your effort towards something you really want you are choosing how this affects your life. You are taking the time and brain effort together to create something you really want on purpose for you. This is who you want to be regardless of what is around you. If you learn how to accomplish a goal right now, you will have learned the skill at a very valuable time. It will be even easier for you to set and accomplish your 30 day goals when we are not in a crisis.

Right now when we don’t know what will happen in our future it is easy to put effort towards that problem, but we can use our effort towards a problem we really do want to solve in our life. All the time and effort it will take for you to write out the goal, come up with all the obstacles and things you don’t know yet or will have to learn to achieve your goal, come up with a written out plan, fill your calendar with each step from that plan to achieve the goal, will take time, effort, and energy.

3. This all sounds very uncomfortable to your brain.

Listen lots of things right now feel uncomfortable to your brain, that is why right now might be a great time to make you uncomfortable on purpose. Because the other discomfort right now may not be as purposeful for you as this setting goal discomfort might be. Setting goals is all about discomfort, self-doubt, and inadequacy. It is all of those feelings that you feel in order to achieve the goal and grow your brain and become different in areas on purpose.

When I decided I was going to start a business my brain’s job was to go in and find all of the reasons this was a bad idea. It gave me tons of reasons that I shouldn’t do it, and all of the things that I don’t know how to do, and why this was going to ultimately end in death. All of that has to come up so I can see what it would take to achieve the goal. I had to see all that my brain didn’t know how to do yet. See that is the key, YET. It was in achieving the goal that I learned how to do new things. If you want to know how to create a website, take money, write blogs, create Facebook Ads, make email funnels, do consults, give refunds, take subscription payments, keep books, get a business bank account, and run a 5-day challenge in a private FB group. These are all things that I didn’t know how to do and had to figure out to reach a 30 day goal I had. These were all the by-products of a goal that I set out to achieve. When I wrote the goal I had no clue I would learn all of those skills too.

I share all of this because there are skills that your brain wants to learn. There are skills that your brain can learn when you set out to reach a 30 day goal. When you write out the goal you won’t know the how, but as you go through the process you will learn so much more than the how.

I know a 30 day goal might be totally out of sight right now. I know you might think this is crazy, but for just one minute give yourself the chance to decide if this is the best idea ever for you.

If so, please email me angiewoodscoaching@gmail.com your 30 day goal. I would LOVE to encourage you and challenge you along the way.

Here is to training those brains in the midst of crisis,

Angie

Grateful to my past self

Recently I was on a phone call with one of my fellow coaches who is just now starting her own coaching business. I spent an hour talking through all of the things I have learned in this past year and what worked, what didn’t, and what I would do if I were in her shoes now. It was such an incredible gift to process that all with her and I left the conversation full of gratitude to the Angie of April 2019.

That Angie tried a bunch of different stuff. That Angie went out on a limb and contacted a bunch of people she knew and asked them to do a group-coaching program for single women and pay her. That Angie researched products that she would need to make her online business work and made decisions about them. That Angie learned how to run Facebook Ads (might have been a few tears during that process). That Angie got her pictures taken by a professional photographer and created a website (with a lot of help from my husband). That Angie wrote blogs, created social media posts, and listened to podcasts with a pen and paper taking tons of notes and implementing them. That Angie launched a group program and it didn’t go as well as she wanted and she cried. That Angie got a lot of coaching on her mindset and on her thoughts about herself and her business and her clients. That Angie just kept doing the next thing.

Oh I love her a ton, that Angie of April 2019 to April 2020.

It is so fun to look back and see where you have come from. But for some reason I am more proud because in April 2019 I wrote this letter to myself from my future self, the April 2020 self, and I know that I created this.

Letter from future self:

Girl, stop worrying. Stop trying to “figure it out”. You will do this. You will figure it out. You will fail and make mistakes and everything won’t work and it is going to be okay. Stay focused on your why! You want to help single women find the freedom that you so wish you had, and guess what, you will do just that. All the hard work, learning, and chasing after it, is worth it. There is so much to learn in this process. So much to learn about you, about your clients, about business, and about God, so much. Be a beginner. You will love this, and your clients will love you! You were created to do this. “This” requires much faith and connection to God. You can do this, and oh by the way, it is NOT ABOUT YOU! You will grow so much closer to God as you go through all of this and you will lean on Him. He will use you if you let Him. You are going to have SO much fun!

Seeing these two different places is kind of strange. I remember a year ago when I was looking forward and dreaming of this place. I remember never having accepted money or asking for it. I remember my first clients and first consults and first emails of rejection. I remember how painful it felt at times. I remember the doubt and the fear. I remember wanting it to happen and not knowing if it would. I am SO grateful to my past self that she created this. I knew what I wanted and I went for it. I was committed and focused. I was decisive and just kept doing the next thing on the list. I can’t wait to see what April 2021 Angie has to say to me. I am going to sit down and  write a letter from her and find out.

You should do the same,

Angie

LIVE Video: Managing Your Mind During this Crisis

I went Live inside of my Private Facebook Group and wanted to share it with you.

I teach what is going on with your lower brain right now, how to decipher the facts from the drama and how to lead the change in your life right now.

How to manage your mind during this time

The coronavirus pandemic is revealing a lot about what work our brain still needs to do.

As I have been working with clients it is amazing how these underlying issues have always been there but this is like the perfect hotbed of circumstances to bring it all up and be in your face. And that is great, because maybe this is just the work we need to be doing right now to become the next version of ourselves.

We are either growing, being stagnant, or declining.

We are born into the human experience and I don’t know if you have noticed, but the human experience is filled with setbacks and trials.

Job 7:1-2 Does not man have hard service on earth? Are his days like those of a hired man?

Psalm 34:19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.

Life is great 1/2 of the time, and awful 1/2 of the time. That is our experience here on Earth. That is why these circumstances of COVID#19 are a part of what goes on here. But the question remains of what will you do with it?

Will you grow? Be stagnant? Or decline?

The choice happens in your mind. The control center of everything you do in a day comes from the way you think and feel. Some of you may be just trying to feel okay right now. You may be filled with worry, doubt, fear, uncertainty, confusion, and all around sadness. And believe it or not that is okay. There are some emotions that I want to have right now because they are normal feelings during something like this. But if you stay there it may keep you stagnant and if you give into all of those emotions you may decline. You can just welcome them into your life and then choose on purpose some feelings that will get you moving to where you do want to be. Feelings like; focused, purposeful, impactful, determined, resilient.

You have been working on things either in your job, finances, personal life, relationships, etc. You might have had goals for 2020 or a vision board of your year. It would be so easy for you to throw in the towel now and decide to just get complacent with where you are and forget all about where you wanted to go. I know so often I have doubt creep into my life about my goals and with the coronavirus it is just bringing up the thought there is no way this will happen so I might as well just not try. I probably couldn’t have done it anyway. But this is where it gets good. This is where we have the opportunity to double down. In order to go all in and really focus on your goals now you would really have to get good at managing your mind and feeling your negative emotions. Two things I teach all of my clients to do.

So how do you manage your mind and use it to grow?

We don’t get stronger by doing easy things, we get stronger by doing hard things. So here is an opportunity to utilize this situation in our life right now. This is giving us an opportunity to practice skills that will make our lives more free of unnecessary suffering.

This is the skill to practice. Get really good at separating the circumstances (facts) from the thoughts.

So for some of you it would look like this.

Circumstances:

Coronavirus.

I lost my job.

I am single right now.

I am unable to see my friends right now.

I am having to cook all of my meals.

I am going to receive 1/2 of my paycheck.

I live far away from family.

I don’t have anything to do.

Thoughts:

Is ruining so many lives, it shouldn’t be happening.

I don’t know what I should do, how am I going to make it?

I wish I was married, it would make this so much easier.

It is hard to not have community and feel isolated.

I just really want it to be not so hard to eat healthy.

If I get sick, who will take care of me?

How will I make ends meet? Do I need a part time job?

I am so bored and wasting away, which I shouldn’t be doing.

Notice the circumstances are factual and you get to think about them however you want. How you think about those facts is going to be how you feel about life. So take the time to understand that these circumstances are just more opportunities for us to do our work. Write out the facts for you right now and then right out the thoughts. See if you like the thoughts or not.

Managing your mind comes in being able to decide if the thought is helpful to you. If you choose to think that coronavirus is ruining your life you feel defeated. Your brain looks to confirm that everywhere. You will find defeat all around you. You will then begin taking action from feeling defeated will look like a lot of inaction. When I feel defeated I pretty much throw in the towel and give up before there is even a fight. But maybe that thought isn’t going to get me to where I want. I want this to grow me and push me and help me to be who I am supposed to be.

My friend shared this thought with me, “It was always supposed to be this way.” That thought makes me feel like it is for me and a great opportunity to manage my mind around the circumstances that are coming from this.

Don’t use all of this as an excuse to decline and gain weight, get in debt, live in sin, and make poor choices that when we come out of all of this makes you have more of a hill to climb. Use this time as a great opportunity to decide who you want to be.

Ask yourself, where do I want to be in a few months when this is all over.

What would it look like to decline? What would it look like to be stagnant? What would it look like to grow?

Learning to manage your mind right now is an incredible lesson to learn. If you want any help with that, that is what I do. To work with me schedule a 30 minute Before & After Session, or get coached to see what it is like. I help you see areas of your mind that you can’t see and that are causing you some unnecessary suffering.

I dare you to stay in the ring right now and take the fight that is right in front of you. I know it will make you stronger if you let it and not back down from it. Believe that you can take all that this opportunity is bringing you and make something greater of it.

Listen, if I come out of this with an organized mind, organized home, great memories with my family, more gratitude for the way life was, and am picky about where I spend my time in the future. Then these months will have been so worth it!