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Courtney Townley 0:00
Welcome to the Grace and Grit Podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them. Not behind them. Join your host Courtney Townley right now. As she breaks down the fairy tale health story, you have been chasing all of your life, indispensable action steps and lasting change.
Courtney Townley 1:18
Hello, my friends, and welcome to the Grace & Grit Podcast. This is your host, Courtney Townley. And as always, I know there’s a lot of spaces in places you could be. So the fact that you’re here means a lot. And I hope you get a lot out of today’s episode, we are wrapping up our summer remix series. So for the past few months, we have been running or replaying some of our most popular episodes. And we are now in production of new episodes.
Courtney Townley 1:18
So, just a couple of weeks ago, we dropped a great conversation around nervous system health with Irene Lyon. And today, we are going to be talking about ways to quickly pivot back to a place of confidence. And this is such a conversation that is near and dear to my heart, because I really work with confidence every single day with my clients.
Courtney Townley 1:19
If you’re someone listening to this Podcast today, who is feeling like your confidence muscle is just non existent. Or you’re feeling like it’s a little flat, I just want you to know that this show is for you. And I really think that if you apply the tools that we are going to explore in today’s episode, you are going to be in a very radically different place pretty quickly. Now, when I am talking with a client, I will often hear language that sounds something like I’m all over the place, Courtney, I’m feeling really misaligned, Courtney, Courtney, I’m really struggling.
Courtney Townley 1:56
Or Courtney, I don’t know what to do. And so when I hear that kind of language starting to pollinate a conversation, I take it as my cue to teach or reteach four key skill sets to reignite that woman’s personal power. In other words, her confidence. So I like to use the phrase personal power when we’re talking about confidence, because I really believe that’s what confidence is. So I’m going to share those four key practices with you today.
Courtney Townley 2:32
Even better, my team and I have created an amazing companion guide to go along with this episode. And even if you don’t even listen to this episode, you’re gonna find a lot of value in this companion guide. This companion guide actually went out to all of my subscribers last week. So if you’re already on my email list, you probably have a copy in your inbox somewhere. But if you can’t find it, or you’re not a subscriber to my newsletter, head on over to graceandgrit.com/womanreignited and you will be able to register for what we’re calling the Woman Reignited Power Pack and the power pak are, it’s basically a guide that will walk you through these four skill sets I’m going to share with you today. So again, graceandgrit.com/womanreignited.
Courtney Townley 3:31
Now specifically, what I’m going to teach you today, just to kind of give you a little bit of insight is I’m going to teach you how to refocus on the version of yourself, you want most expressed in the world. Because let’s face it, ladies, the world is often drowning us out with what it expects from us. And we are often looking to others to inform how we should be showing up. And there’s a lot of danger in that, mainly that it drifts us away from what feels true to us. And so when was the last time you asked yourself, how you’re currently showing up and how you want to be showing up. That’s where we’re going to start, then we’re going to start making some decisions.
Courtney Townley 4:12
And more importantly, I’m going to talk you through how to make some decisions very quickly, that are in line with your priorities in this season of your life. So you can stop wasting time being ruled in overwhelm, because that’s no fun, and that gets you nowhere. We’re also going to spend a little time designing a plan for your day that you will actually be excited to show up and execute, not one that you’re dreading and just want to retreat from.
Courtney Townley 4:42
And then I’m going to share with you the single most important practice for reigniting and maintaining your personal power to go after the things that you really want to be pursuing. So these are the four skills that I use almost daily to help my clients when they’re in a space of spinning out when they are feeling riddled with self doubt, and overwhelm, and they’re feeling a little bit lost in the wilderness. So these four skill sets really quickly help them to get clear, surefooted and definitely power filled. And I’m pretty sure that if you do the work of implementing these tools, it’s going to help you to do the same. So here’s the deal. misalignment is a fact of life.
Courtney Townley 1:18
Once again, misalignment is a fact of life, I just finished reading Oliver Burkeman’s book, 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. And one of the things that he emphasized in that book that I actually weirdly found a whole lot of relief in. And it feels a little silly to admit this, because it seems so obvious. But it is this life is a series of solving problems. That’s what it is, life is a problem solving experience. And he says specifically, the state of not having problems is never going to arrive, and more to the point you wouldn’t want it to. And then he goes on to talk about how all of our growth and resilience and learning and opportunity and expansion comes from the space of solving problems.
Courtney Townley 1:18
So if we didn’t have problems, life would feel very bland. But so often, we are interpreting problems to mean that there’s something wrong with us, or there’s something wrong with our life, or that things should be different. And once we give up that fight, we can actually spend our very valuable and precious resources on problem solving, rather than making the problem worse than it is. So in my own work, I often refer to problems as curveballs. And life throws a lot of them. Life throws a lot of curveballs. And when we argue with the reality of life, which is misalignment is a fact of life, we are really going to create a lot of unnecessary struggling for ourselves. And that is just no fun. And it all it does is it robs us of our personal power, it does not generate personal power. And I’m all about helping you to generate personal power. And when you lose your personal power or your confidence, you fall flat, your mojo disappears, and you get lost in the wilderness of overwhelm self doubt, imposter syndrome, all those lovely things.
Courtney Townley 1:18
It’s really easy to convince yourself that restoring personal power is a ton of hard work. So much so that you find yourself consistently talking yourself out of even trying to get out of that place. So I want to give you a reminder, before we go into these tools, competence, aka personal power is not something that you are born with, or without. It is something that you practice, or you don’t. So today, we are going to talk about how to practice how do we practice personal power, asserting our personal power? How do we practice flexing our confidence muscle. More importantly, I’m going to show you how to practice of course with ease and grace, because that’s what we do here. We infuse everything with grace. So you can really ditch the storyline that realignment is so hard or that it takes so long, it doesn’t have to. So our first step in this journey of realignment of pivoting back into a place of power, a place of confidence, is to re focus your vision.
Courtney Townley 1:18
What the heck does that mean? Well, I’m gonna share a story with you because I think it’ll help you understand this. I recently spent three weeks in Portugal. And Google Maps became my new best friend, because I had no idea where I was 99% of the time. So I leaned on Google Maps constantly. And I’m thrilled to report that over the course of 21 days, because I had a map to show me where I was and how to get to where I wanted to go. I never got lost. I got a little turned around. I got a little discombobulated at times, but never really lost. And this, dear listener is step one of restoring your own confidence. You need to know where you are. You need to reference your own map you need to be calm Your own compass. Well, how the heck do I do that coordinate? Well, here’s how you do that. So what if I’m using Google Maps, I basically have two steps, I have to acknowledge number one where I’m starting. And number two, where I’m trying to get to.
Courtney Townley 6:15
And once I have that information entered into the database of Google Maps, it shows me all the roads that I could travel to get me from point A to point B. So you’re going to do the same inside of the woman reignited companion guide, again, which you can register for by going to Grace & grit.com. Forward slash woman reignited, you’re going to find a worksheet that has two boxes on the worksheet, one on the left one on the right side of the page. And in the first box, on the left, you are going to describe how you are currently showing up in your life. Box One is where you really get radically honest with yourself. What are you doing? What are you not doing? What are you avoiding doing? How are you currently showing up? The second box on the right hand side of the page is where you are going to describe how you want to be showing up. And the space in the middle is where you put the things standing in your way.
Courtney Townley 11:34
And here’s the truth of it. Things standing in your way sometimes are external, there are logistics to life, that kind of get in the way of how we want to be showing up. But they don’t completely dictate how you show up, we give them way more power than they deserve. The one thing you always have control over is how you show up. So there might be challenges outside of you that are making that a little tricky. But you still can take ownership of how you’re showing up, given any external situation. So largely, what you’re going to see in the space between the two versions of yourself is a lot of internal obstacles. There’s a lot going on inside of you, that is actually preventing you from showing up the way you truly want to be showing up. So we need to start getting clear on that. What are the thoughts that are driving you to show up in this way that is making you powerless? What are the emotions that you’re rumbling with or actually completely avoiding or numbing, that are causing you to feel like you’re not really showing up in the way that you want to be. And once you get clear on the problems that actually need to be solved, which is what that exercise is going to show you.
Courtney Townley 13:03
I also call those the gaps that need to be filled, then we can start getting to work, getting more specific about the roadmap we are going to take to get to that version of ourselves that we really want most expressed in the world. So again, step one, just to be clear, is getting clarity on where you are headed. Getting clarity on the version of yourself, you want to be showing up in the world as then step two is remembering who you are committed to being not just doing the exercise once, but having a way of reminding yourself every single day that this is the person you are committed to being this is the woman you are committed to showing up as it is an exercise in reminding yourself that you can solve these problems. And I call this your power statement. It is a tool that I use to help my clients remind themselves how power filled they actually are when they choose to be. So once you have the clarity on the version of yourself what you want most expressed, which is what you did in part one.
Courtney Townley 14:28
Part two, is we create what we call a power statement. Your power statement is a statement that reminds you of who you really are, and your commitment to that version of yourself you want most expressed and the best part is it acts as a filter for all of your future decision making. To ensure that you act in accordance to that version of you. Your behavior aligns with with who you’re committed to being in the world. So if you’re not sure how to deal with a conflict, you reference your power statement. You’re not sure what the next step is, you reference your power statement, you’re not sure to handle self doubt or solve a problem, you’re not sure how to rumble with failure or, or work through resistance, you reference your power statement.
Courtney Townley 15:25
So a lot of you are probably thinking, Well, how do I do it, Courtney, how do I create a power statement? It is so simple. It is a statement you finish this statement. When I am standing fully in my power, I am a woman who want now for some of you your power statements gonna be really lengthy for some of you your power statements going to be really short, I would encourage you the first time you ever write your power statement to be as inclusive, and as expansive in your description as possible. And then I would challenge you to consolidate it into as minimal of a number of words as possible, because I want you to remember it, I want it to be really easy for you to recall, I want it to be really easy for you to pull up in a moment of struggle. And if you have to access a 10 page document to do that, you can see the problems with that. Right. So we want to make this really simple.
Courtney Townley 16:31
I have created a template for you for that power statement with a few instructions inside the Woman Reignited companion guide. So you can find that in there. And you know, your power statement might include things like I’m a, I’m a woman who solves problems with grace and ease. I am a woman who is organized and clear headed. I’m a woman who searches for the best in people. And some of you might be hearing that and saying, yeah, all that sounds lovely. But none of that feels true. But again, I want to remind you that your power statement is a statement about how you show up when you are standing fully in your power.
Courtney Townley 17:18
So if you were standing fully in your power in this moment with whatever challenge you’re facing today, what would that look like? Well, I’m a woman who tackle things head on, who doesn’t spend time marinating and self doubt. I’m a woman who asks for what she needs, who isn’t afraid to go after what she wants. So be bold, be honest, go after what you want in this power statement. I cannot tell you how often I asked my students and clients to tell me their own power statement when they’re rumbling with a problem. And the reason I do it is because the second they recite their power statement, they’ve already answered their own question. I don’t know how to solve this, Courtney, really tell me your power statement. They tell me their power statement. You know exactly how to solve this. It is so immensely helpful. So we have clarity on where we’re headed, we have a little bit of a roadmap, we know the gaps that need filling, we have created a power statement to easily remind ourselves of who we are when we are fully standing in our power. And now we are going to plan in a way that allows us to reclaim our power.
Courtney Townley 18:44
When you’re feeling a little disoriented in your life, you’re feeling a little powerless. One of the best things you can do and I say this all the time on this show is to make decisions. Decisions create movement, they will either move you in the direction you want to go or they will move you further from that direction. But either way, you’re going to create movement of progress or of learning both are valuable to you. So now that you have this power statement as a filter as a guide as a compass, we want to start us utilizing the time that we have in our day to make we want to make some decisions on living in alignment with that version of ourselves. And I want to be clear inside of the woman reignited companion guide I provide you with my day planner. It’s a Grace & Grit day planner. I have given it to people for years people seem to love it. And it has a lot to consider about your day. And I just want to remind you that you don’t need to fill out everything on that day planner. But making a few to decisions about what that day planner is prompting you to consider will go a long way in helping you to ditch overwhelm, and co-signing on the story that you don’t know what to do.
Courtney Townley 20:15
Your day planner, the Grace & Grit day planner is actually prompting you to make decisions. How are you going to spend your time tomorrow? What are you going to spend your time on? What are you not going to spend your time on? How are you going to feed yourself tomorrow? How are you going to rest? How are you going to administer self care? There’s a lot of good stuff on there. So check that out. Again, graceandgrit.com/womanreignited I know, it’s annoying, I keep repeating that. But I want you to have access to this, especially if you’re listening to this Podcast, and you are wanting to have these exercises in front of you.
Courtney Townley 20:54
Okay, so we’ve taken a little time to get clear on how we want to be showing up, we’ve made a power statement to remind ourselves of how we want to be showing up, we have started to make decisions about how we are going to utilize our precious life resources, time, energy and mental bandwidth to live in alignment with that version of ourselves. And then here’s where everything can go to hell. Okay, for lack of a better way of saying it, you can do all that work, step one through three, and then really fail with follow through, right follow through is where I do all my coaching. Follow through is we make a promise to ourselves that this is how I’m going to show up. And then we don’t. And one of the biggest, most profound skill sets that I can teach you, to help you follow through with more consistency is to use the right fuel for the journey.
Courtney Townley 21:55
What I mean by that, again, I’m gonna reference my Portugal travels recently. In Portugal, I rented a car, I was so proud of myself, I gotta tell you, because it’s the first time I’ve ever driven in Europe. So I rented a car and I drove to the very southern tip of Portugal to a little town called Lagash. On the beach, amazing. But I didn’t wasn’t sure about fuel, right, because a lot of cars in Europe are diesel. And I wasn’t really sure about the mechanics of all this. So of course, I had to ask and really get clear on the type of fuel that I needed to put in this car that I rented. So I wasn’t stuck on the side of the road. And of course, it was diesel.
Courtney Townley 22:36
So the same goes for you, my friend, you need the right kind of fuel to propel you through progression along your journey. So like diesel fueled my car, and in Portugal, your thoughts are providing fuel for whether or not you will follow through your thoughts drive your behavior. So if you have this grand vision of how you want to be showing up, and you have this strong power statement that reinforces that and you have organized your day in accordance to that power statement. But you are governed by thoughts that completely contradict that you are going to be stuck on the side of the road with a trunk full of unrealized dreams, right?
Courtney Townley 23:32
I mean, you just aren’t going to get real far. So the last thing that I provide you with inside of that woman reignited Power Pack, is I give you specific tools for managing your thoughts in a way that helps you to fuel your confidence. And just to kind of take that a little bit further. All A thought is, is a sentence in your brain. It is a series of words that is taking up real estate in your brain. And if you do not take ownership of what you are allowing to take up real estate in your brain. You can get really stuck for a really long time. You can spin out in a space of feeling powerless for a very long time. But when you decide to take radical responsibility for what is taking up real estate in your brain, what thoughts you allow in what thoughts you consciously decide to practice. That, my friends is how you reclaim your power. That is how you reclaim your confidence. That is how you move your life forward.
Courtney Townley 24:53
So in the power path, I give you some really specific examples to make this practice a little bit more of an easy entry, I give you some sentences that help you to sort of start thinking of new ways of like new thoughts you may want to practice. So definitely valuable. So there you have it. These are really the four steps, the four essential practices to reignite your confidence. So you can really get busy doing the work that your heart is calling you to do. Again, step one is getting clear on your vision. Step two is coming up with that power statement.
Courtney Townley 25:33
Step three is organizing your day in a way that is congruent with how you want to be showing up and that power statement. And step four, is managing your thoughts using the right fuel to ensure that you keep moving forward, that you protect and generate your personal power. So I do want to say this, you can listen to this Podcast, you can download the woman reignited power power pack, that PDF I keep referencing, you can do all that. And you can just consume it, and not actually practice the things that I’m suggesting here. That is not what changes your life. Knowledge without action is always meaningless. So listen to the Podcast, print out the power pack, and apply it go through the exercises, they will not take you more than 30 to 60 minutes to work through, I would say 60 minutes is giving you a lot of margin. I mean, it should take you probably 30 minutes or less. And notice how you feel on the other side of actually doing the work that that companion guide is inviting you to do.
Courtney Townley 26:50
Because I am fairly certain, if you put pen to page and you really consider these exercises, you are going to feel more motivated, you are going to feel like there’s more possibility, you’re going to feel excited about showing up in these ways. And ultimately, you’re going to feel a hell of a lot more confident. And you are going to feel way more powerful to start being a creator in your own life. Right? That you have the power to change things because you do. So remember, above all else, confidence is a practice. This is not a one and done exercise. These skill sets are skill sets that need to be practiced over and over again. And now you have this pathway and you have these tools. So every time you are feeling misaligned, you are feeling a little like the ground is moving underneath you you’re feeling disoriented, you’re feeling powerless spin back to this. Because as a coach, I’ve been using these specific tools on lots of clients for a long time. And it works incredibly well.
Courtney Townley 28:16
But ultimately, I don’t want people to have to talk to me as a coach to pivot back into their own power. I want to give them the tools to develop their own practice that brings them into their own power. And that’s what this is. So I hope it’s helpful. I hope it excites you a little bit I hope more than anything, you will actually run the experiment of doing the work to see what it affords you and hopefully help you move your life to higher ground.
Courtney Townley 28:47
Alright, that’s it my friends. I hope you have a magnificent rest of your day. And I will see you again in just a few weeks. Remember the Grace & Grit Podcast now is bi weekly. We’re dropping a new episode every other week, because we have some other irons in the fire some really cool projects we’re working on. And so we decided bi weekly was just a smarter cadence for us to maintain our own sanity and provide you with valuable content. So once again, I just want to leave the address if anyone didn’t quite catch the address to go to that power pack of companion guide you can go to graceandgrit.com/womanreignited
Courtney Townley 29:27
Alright, I’ll see you again soon. Take care. Bye. Bye.
Courtney Townley 29:35
Thank you for listening to the grace and grit Podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story. And it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self care. You are worth the effort and with a little grace and grit anything is possible.
