2. What is Holding You Back from Success?

I am Deidrea Kiesling, and this is The Success Minded Woman episode two. In today’s episode, I'm going to share with you the number one way to get what you want in life. Stay tuned.

Hi, I’m Deidrea, wife, and mom to three teenagers, coffee snob, and certified life and business coach. If you’re a high-achieving, goal-oriented woman and you know you were meant for more, then you are a success minded woman and you’re in the right place. I’m here to help you make the money and the impact you’ve been dreaming of, to step into your confidence, create habits and systems to support you, ditch that imposter syndrome, and harness the power of your mind. If you’re ready to create a life and business you love, then let’s go. I’m so glad you’re here.

My intention with this podcast is to help you know yourself better. To become friends with your goals and dreams, to give you the tools to believe in yourself, to believe in your dreams and to love yourself, to understand yourself better. Because I know it's possible to create a life and business you love, to see beyond your current circumstances. Because as long as you can hold the vision and work on building your belief and learn the tools and the strategies of how to implement them in your life your dream is inevitable.

Look, here is the hard truth which results in most people not creating the highest version of themselves and their life. Life is hard. Life can be challenging. And the more that you can be honest with yourself about that cold hard fact of life the easier it will be to go on this journey of self-discovery, to create the life and business of your dreams.

When I started The Dream Academy near three years ago I had a vision to help women follow their dreams, to not give up on themselves, to teach them and coach them along the way to the best version of themselves, creating a life and business they love. I wanted to do this because of all the tools and the coaching that I have learned in my own journey of following my own dreams to become a life coach. And the biggest obstacle I've seen in my clients and in myself are the thoughts that we think and the feelings that creates in us.

There are four main thought feeling combinations that are the biggest dream stealers and obstacles in our journey to create our best life.

Obstacle number one, doubt. Doubt sounds like I don’t think I have what it takes. She can do it because she has more, fill in the blank, more time, more drive, more passion, more courage, more experiences, more success. She has it and I don’t and I’m doubting my abilities.

The second thought feeling obstacle that I found in myself, and my clients is fear which sounds like what will they think of me? Who am I to do this? What if I don't succeed? What if I'm not good enough? These are all versions of fear and really being afraid of what other people will think of us.

The third common thought feeling obstacle that I see a lot is overwhelm. And I’ve got this one a lot. It sounds like I have too much to do and not enough time. I will never get this done. I don't have enough time. I’m too tired at the end of the day to do anything else.

Or overwhelm can also just be a shutdown because you think you have too much to do. It can be an overwhelm of too many high priority items coming in your brain at the same time which basically shuts you down. It’s kind of like your brain goes offline. So managing overwhelm is really one of the big tasks, one of the big skills that we need in this journey of creating our dream come true life.

The fourth dream stealer obstacle is confusion. And this is a big one because it can have us spending a lot of time, energy and money and not really making any progress. Confusion sounds like I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to get started. I’m so confused. I try this and I try that, and nothing seems to work. This person says to do this, this person tells me to do the exact opposite. And because we’re having all of these feelings of doubt, overwhelm, confusion and fear it keeps us stuck.

It keeps us giving up or trying to buffer our feelings with things like overeating, overdrinking, overworking, over-social media, over-Facebooking, Instagramming, TikTok-ing, or even sometimes reading and studying. Any of these things are okay of course but if we find ourselves relying on these types of relief of entertainment to escape our thoughts and feelings, this could be a sign. Anything that goes up and that gives us short term relief but ultimately results in us not achieving our goals, that’s something that we want to take a look at.

Now, I want to be real with you all. I’m still in this process too. But if I waited until I had it all figured out, if I waited until I thought I was ready and if I waited until I didn't have any doubts I wouldn't be here. If I let the fear of what people think of me, of what you think of me, this podcast would never happen. And I’m sharing this with you what I've learned so far on my journey of self-discovery, personal growth and creating the life and business that I love on my own terms, in my own way.

Listen, I probably won't say anything new, maybe I will but I will say it in a way that I have interpreted it and I have implemented it in my life and how I've coached my clients to implement it in their life. It is my intention that this will help you too, to explain these concepts simply so that you can understand how to change, to give you specific actionable steps to implement these concepts.

Because I know a lot of times when I listen to podcasts or read books or take courses or workshops I hear what they're saying and I think, yes, I know that, I’ve heard that. I agree with that. But then I don't really know how to actually implement what they're saying, what they’re teaching and what I’m learning, the details of what to do in the real world. My intention with this podcast is to take these personal growth concepts and explain them in a way that is simple, that will help you and teach you how you can apply them in your life.

Because you see, I believe we are all continually evolving and growing and it is possible to become the next best version of ourself to create our best life whatever that means for us, to leave the world a better place because we lived. It could be a certain revenue in your business. It could be leaving your career to start a new business, to have a certain amount of money in your investments. Making an impact with a certain number of people. Leaving a legacy at your church in your community. Creating the art that you’ve been imagining. Traveling the world.

So many ways of what that looks like for you. It could also be to enjoy your life, the simple things in life, to live with peace and calm, to connect and be present with you, with yourself, with your children, with your grandchildren. to see the beauty in life and the simplicity of life. Success is an inside job, and you can only define it for you and your life and only you can create it.

I believe in a growth mindset that Carol Dweck talks about in her famous book, Mindset: The Psychology of Success. She says there are two types of mindset, a fixed mindset, or a growth mindset. These two types of mindset are on a continuum that represents the underlying belief that someone has about learning and intelligence. A fixed mindset is where you don't think you can grow and evolve. An example of this is saying, “That’s just the way I am,” about something you don't like about yourself or your life.

When you have a growth mindset you can develop your abilities and focus on becoming and learning through your experience. That same situation with a growth mindset is, I know it's possible to change, to become the person I want to be. But you need to be careful with a growth mindset because if we’re focused on growth in order to achieve things we’re missing out. Because if you’re focused on achievement in the hopes that success will make you feel better about yourself, about your life, it won’t. It might give you short-term relief and success.

But if you are continually chasing happiness to feel better about yourself it’s a broken strategy, believe me. As a recovering workaholic chasing career success so that I could feel better about myself, seeking external success, six-figure career promotions, traveling the world, nice house, three kids, investments in a 401(k), all the things to prove my self-worth to myself and to others. It led me to burn out, stress out and total dissatisfaction with myself and my life.

By chasing happiness and success I was creating the exact opposite. And what I learned through this process is that it's in the slowing down. It’s in the introspection and the willingness to get up close and personal with yourself, with your flaws, with your doubts, with your failures and your successes, with your dreams that you may have already given up on. That is the real growth. It’s in taking the time to really know yourself, to know what your values are and then design a life in alignment with those values, to live life on your own terms in your own way regardless of what others say or think about it.

To me that is a definition of a well-lived life, that is my definition of success. Dweck has a quote that says, ‘True self-confidence is the courage to be open to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source. Real self-confidence is not reflected in a title, an expense account, or a series of acquisitions. It is reflected in your mindset, your readiness to grow. A fixed mindset complains about things, a growth mindset notices they are complaining, has compassion and curiosity with themselves and asks, what can I think and do differently to make this better?’

The famous quote by Henry Ford sums it up perfectly, ‘Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you’re right.’ If you think you can't, that’s a fixed mindset. If you think you can, that's a growth mindset. With a fixed mindset you take as fact your current thoughts, belief and circumstances that cannot be changed. With the growth mindset, you’re open and willing to learn and grow. In the fixed mindset everything is about the outcome, if you fail if you're not the best it's all been wasted.

Dweck says that the growth mindset allows people to value what they're doing regardless of the outcome. They’re tackling problems, charting new courses, working on important issues. Maybe they haven't found the cure for cancer but the search was deeply meaningful.

When I was younger, in my 20s, my best friend Paige and I used to do these long bike races. I was always complaining about all the riders that were passing us because I was comparing myself to them, thinking I should be better, faster. And I will never forget this as long as I live. She said, “Didi,” that’s my nickname, “You’re focusing on all the people that are passing us but what about all the people that are behind us?” You know how sometimes you hear something, and you don't realize the impact it's going to have on you? Well, this was it for me.

It was one of those things that gave me a whole new perspective on how I was thinking about things and how it was making me feel bad about myself. So what is success for me? Back then success was winning the race, finishing at the top, being the best. But now I know success, it’s an inside job. And success is defined individually. When you know yourself, when you trust yourself, when you love yourself, you can define what success means to you and not what it means to others or what you think other people think is success. Because success is created with a growth mindset.

Success is about being your best self, not being better than others. Failure is an opportunity, not a condemnation, effort is the key to success. I am still on this journey too. And what I know for sure is that it's possible to create a life and business you love because when you’re on the right path, when you love the journey, and you love yourself that is the dream come true. The biggest tool available to all of us is to harness the power of our mind, our thoughts, our beliefs, and the stories we tell ourselves, create our reality.

Everything we have in our life was first a thought. Look around your house, the money in your bank account, your kids, your spouse, your friends, your community, your car, everything. All of it was first a thought. Airplanes didn't exist. The Wright brothers had a thought, an idea of airplanes. There was no evidence that it was possible, but they believed in themselves, and their dream and they created it.

When you master your thoughts, you create your life on purpose, living your life by design instead of by default, you become the best possible version of yourself. You follow your passion, your life, you live it on purpose, you follow your mission. You can achieve your goals. If you dream it you can achieve it. And this is not some fluff pie-in-the-sky verbiage. This is the truth. This is how the world works.

There are circumstances in the world, and we have thought about them. Those thoughts create our feelings which drives our actions or our inaction. And that creates the results in our life. So notice what you're thinking, notice what you're saying to yourself because those thoughts, that self-talk are creating your experience of your life.

I love this quote by Thoreau, and I believe this with my whole heart, Thoreau says, ‘I have learned this, at least by my own experience that if one advances confidently in the direction of their dream, endeavoring to live the life they are imagining, one passes an invisible boundary, all sorts of things begin to occur that never otherwise would have occurred. One begins to meet with the success unexpected in common hours.’ This quote makes me cry because it is so true. And for me, common hours means the status quo. The normal way of thinking and being in the world. The opposite of common hours is taking the road less traveled. As Scott Peck said, ‘accepting that life is hard, opening up to that truth, and taking bold, courageous steps towards your dreams, that is the way.’

What I know for sure is what you want, what you are dreaming of, what inspires you, it’s yours. It was meant for you. That is your purpose and that is your possibility. The way to create the life you want is to embrace a growth mindset with courage, with confidence, with determination. Anything is possible.

To celebrate the launch of the show, I’m going to give away five $100 Amazon gift cards. That’s right, five lucky listeners who follow, rate, and review the show. It doesn’t have to be a five star review, but I do hope you love the show. I want your honest feedback so I can create the best show possible, that provides tons of value. Visit thedreamacademy.com/podcastlaunch to learn more about the contest and how to enter. I’ll be announcing the winners on the show in episode 10.

Thanks for joining me this week on The Success Minded Woman podcast. If you like what you heard on the podcast and you want to know more, then head on over to thedreamacademy.com where you can sign up for my weekly success and mindset tips to help you create your dream come true life. Talk to you all next week, bye.