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The Positive Voice
The Positive Voice, is a podcast dedicated to helping you live your best life. Our show is all about spreading positivity and inspiration, and we cover a variety of topics that are designed to help you cultivate a more positive mindset. From the neuroscience of positivity to the power of affirmations, we explore the many ways in which you can bring more positivity into your life. Our episodes are full of practical tips and strategies that you can apply to your own life, as well as inspiring stories from people who have overcome adversity to achieve their dreams. So if you're looking for a dose of positivity and inspiration, join us on The Positive Voice and start living life to the fullest!
The Positive Voice
E69:Journey to Balance Personal Ambitions and Life’s Demands
Embarking on a journey of self-discovery isn't always paved with clear signs, yet as your Coach Chef Kim, I've found the breadcrumbs that have led me to profound realizations. Join me as we unwrap the layers of our entrepreneurial spirits, examining the lessons we're learning about ourselves along the way. This episode is a heart-to-heart, where I divulge my own methods for evaluating my actions and the digital nourishment I partake in. Discover the power of constructing a social media sanctuary that echoes the positivity we aspire to, the vitality of affirming one's own value, and the transformative effect of trading screen time for the timeless wisdom found within the pages of books.
Turning the page, we tackle the oppressive societal molds cast upon women, and how romance novels can act as a chisel, freeing us to explore our desires and individuality. I share my transition from consuming self-help to savoring stories and how this has been instrumental in my journey towards self-love and setting loftier standards in my relationships. This episode is about striking that delicate balance where your entrepreneurial endeavors bloom without eclipsing your personal life. It’s a rally cry for all women who juggle the world on their shoulders, a reminder that 'can' doesn't mean 'must.' Let's redefine success together, crafting a strong personal foundation that doesn't crumble under the weight of patriarchal expectations.
Welcome to The Positive Voice, a feel-good podcast designed to inspire and uplift through heartfelt conversations and the power of positivity! Hosted by transformational life coach and hope dealer, Kimberly Houston, where we delve into personal growth, wellness, and the beauty of overcoming life's challenges.
Join our creative and supportive community as we laugh, learn, and grow together on this life-changing journey. Subscribe to The Positive Voice and let's spread the joy, one conversation at a time!
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Hey friends, welcome to another episode of the Positive Voice Podcast. I'm your host. I'm Coach Chef Kim. For those of you who are new to the podcast, welcome. I want you to know that I am an entrepreneurial wellness creative coach. What does that mean? It simply means that I like to help entrepreneurs get their personal as well as their professional lives together, and that's what this podcast is dedicated to. On this podcast, I am the positive voice inside of your head.
Speaker 1:If you have limiting beliefs, if you can't figure out how to get yourself unstuck, that's what I'm here for, and so today, on this particular episode, I have one question for you. What are you learning about yourself in this season? See, one of the things that we do is that we like to look at our lives at the end of the year, or maybe it's around your birthday, where you start to wonder what have I accomplished? What am I doing? Have I done the things that I wanted to do? I ask this question of myself frequently. What are you learning right now? What are you learning about yourself in this season? Are you learning that you need to show up better for yourself? Are you learning that you are sacrificing yourself for the well-being of other people, that you are sacrificing yourself for the well-being of other people. Are you learning that not only are you a people pleaser, but it's to the detriment of your own life? What are you learning about yourself in this season? I'll use myself as an example.
Speaker 1:This morning, when I was working out, the thought crossed my mind who do you need to be to have this life that you are trying to manifest? I love the life that I have right now. We manifested a beautiful luxury apartment. It's what I wanted in this season of my life. We downsized and I moved into what, literally, is a dream. Ok, but as I think forward, as I think about next steps, as I think about the version of myself that I want to become, I have to focus on who do I need to be in order to have it? So for me, that means taking inventory of the things that I am doing. It means taking inventory of my output. It also means taking inventory of my input. So one of the things that I don't think enough coaches are talking about is what you consume matters. So not just food, but also food for thought.
Speaker 1:So what do you see when you scroll on social media? What are you seeing on TikTok? What are you seeing on Instagram? What are you seeing on Snapchat? What are you seeing on Facebook? If you are not seeing things that put you in a better mood, things that can give you the dopamine hit that you're looking for things that are positive and uplifting. If all you see is trash, garbage club stuff, baby mama, baby daddy, drama you are attracting that the algorithm only gives you what you interact with. So if your social media is trash, it is garbage. That's your fault. You are interacting with content that is not helping you move forward, and so the way that you can adjust that is by intentionally seeking out better content.
Speaker 1:The more you type into the search on these platforms, whatever it is you're looking for. You're looking for positivity, you're looking for body positivity. You're looking for business tips. You're looking for entrepreneurial tips, looking for entrepreneurial hacks, entrepreneurial organization. If you're a mom and you want to learn about Montessori things, start typing those things in like. Whatever the things are that you're interested in, start looking for them on these social media platforms, and then the algorithms will begin to feed it to you and they will give you more and more.
Speaker 1:If you are someone who needs some positive reinforcement and you have a tendency to want to seek that outside of yourself, meaning you would prefer that someone else give you compliments as opposed to you understanding that you are worthy, understanding that you don't need somebody else to tell you that you're worthy because you already are. If that's something that you struggle with, then I would encourage you to begin looking for positive affirmations learning how to affirm myself, helpful ways to begin to love myself. Look for hashtags that deal with the worthy worthiness. We can't put a monetary value, nor can we place a verbal value, on other people telling us that we are worthy. That's something that comes from inside you. Giving me a compliment reinforces the things I already know about myself. It doesn't make me believe that I'm worthy. I already know I am, and so if you are someone who did not grow up in a situation where people complimented you, where people affirmed you, where people were always asking how are you? How can we make things better If you didn't grow up in that situation, that's okay. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of people that I've coached. It's a lot of people that I've taught over the years.
Speaker 1:But what I want you to realize is that you can self-soothe the same way little kids like to suck their thumb in order to calm them down, soothe. The same way little kids like to suck their thumb in order to calm them down. You can turn your social media feed into that same sort of self-soothing action. Ok, you can turn your social media into things that will comfort you, into things that do feel like a warm hug, into things that will allow you to tap into a part of your creative imagination you never knew were possible.
Speaker 1:Another thing I would highly suggest is that, instead of Netflix and chill or binging things or scrolling on social media for many, many hours, pick up a book. Pick up a book. We had a book club. We still have a book club, and last year I did one book a month for the book club, and I realized it was really, really difficult for me to show up for the book club because and it was my book club it was difficult for me to show up for it simply because I read more than one book a month, and so by the time I got to having to talk about it, I had moved on at least two or three other stories at that point, and so this year, we did something a little different At the top of the year, we did two books a month and I'm not sure why, but then no one showed up for book club. Two was too many.
Speaker 1:However, I still doubled the number of books that I was reading In March. I did a lot of traveling, and not only did everything that I did in my life as far as exercise, walking, working out drinking water, reading books it all escalated in the month of March. For me, everything doubled or tripled the amount of time I normally give into it, and what ended up happening in that was in March. I read eight books, easily, easily. I was knocking out two a week.
Speaker 1:I incorporated storybooks, so now I am reading romance novels in addition to reading things about positive psychology or business. Why? Because we need work-life balance, and what you have to understand about the balancing act is balance doesn't always mean 50-50. It doesn't mean that at all. Balance could be 60-40, 70-30, 80-20. It's still balanced.
Speaker 1:And so I am in a phase of my life as I'm coaching other entrepreneurs and I need to tap into some creative energy. I need to tap into something new. I take an inventory of my life, my thoughts, my feelings, into something new. I take an inventory of my life, my thoughts, my feelings, what is no longer serving me and what was not serving me was not having a healthy relationship with personal relationships, with romantic relationships, and so I decided that, instead of me just jumping on an app or I'm just going to throw myself back back out there dating. What does the landscape of that look like? What does that look like? Haven't been on a date in a decade right, for those of you who are new, I got divorced. That that's why I'm saying that, um, and so I'm like, well, what does that look like now? And so I'm reading new romance novels. What are these authors bringing to life? And so I got on BookTok and I got on Bookstagram and the girlies will recommend all the things you want to know, and I read their books and some of them are wonderful. Some of them open up things I never, ever imagined opening up. I have new book authors. Now I have a new favorite book author that I get to meet later on this week.
Speaker 1:Like it has completely changed the way I show up in life, and it was simply because I read books while I was traveling. And what you have to understand is we need to know that while we were taught to work hard, right. Go to school, get good grades. Go to college, work hard. That is what we were taught to believe, is the American way and that is how you will show up your best self. Right, and we've learned that's not true. That's not true at all. There are people with a whole lot of money who don't work hard, so we know that's a limiting belief that was passed down to us. Here's how I look at it. In order for me to show up as my best self, as an entrepreneur, I need to know who I am and I need to know what I want in place in my business that make me an effective entrepreneur. I have the right people in my corner, the right people on my team. My board of directors is brought together, and not for my business, for my life right, I have a board of directors of people I can bounce things off of.
Speaker 1:What do you think about this idea? Do you think this is a good thing? People would like it. Those people exist for me, right, and so, because I had all those things in place, the only thing that I felt like was not in place for me was a romantic relationship. Now there's something that I think we need to pay attention to when it comes to romantic relationships.
Speaker 1:If you are a woman, you have been fed at the patriarchy states. It is your job to be barefoot, pregnant and have kids. It's your job to make sure you raise good humans. It's your job to make sure the family doesn't fall apart. It's your job to make sure that you work a nine to five or you run your own business and you take care of all the household responsibilities and you take care of the kids and you have to feed everybody in the house. You have to do all the things. And I'm here to tell you that that is such a lie. It's such a lie. Why, why do we have to do all of those things? And if you read romance novels, what you will discover is women. Romance authors have written characters who do not make women do all of those things. They have written characters where the men understand that it's important to put this woman first. There are books where it will affirm you as a woman that, yes, you did all these things.
Speaker 1:You know I can do hard things and, as one of my coaching clients said, but I can do easy things too. You can have a soft life. It doesn't have to be an era of your life, it doesn't have to be a moment. It can just be a part of your life, right? And so, when I go back to my original question, what are you learning about yourself in this season? What I'm learning about myself in this season is I deserve pleasure, I deserve peace, and this doesn't necessarily mean sexually. Pleasure for me is I can just go out and enjoy time by myself. I don't have to feel socially awkward. If I want to go do a bookstore, if I want to go do an event that I saw somewhere, if I want to just go take a casual stroll through a garden or something you know like, I can enjoy time with myself and that's okay. I can go take an hour-long car ride just to listen to an audio book or just to look at beautiful houses. I can imagine myself in them.
Speaker 1:That level of creativity and thought and time and attention and care came from me reading storybooks not necessarily self-help books, because for many, many years all I read was self-help books. Because I thought there was something wrong with me, I thought I was broken, I thought it was my fault that my husband wasn't fulfilled, that my kids didn't have as many friends, as other people's kids Like I took ownership of things that had absolutely nothing to do with me, and as I was going through this, I found myself going through self-help. How do you accomplish more in a day? How do you put systems in place in your life that will help you become more effective? Right, like, I really went hard in the paint on learning these things, and I did. Those are the things I needed to learn at that season of my life in order to be able to carry them into a new season of my life.
Speaker 1:Where I am now, and because I've been doing these things for many years, I have systems in place. If you are watching the visual version of this podcast, you can see behind me. I have systems in place that help me accomplish things in my business. I have systems in place that help me keep my house running in order, but I also schedule in time for me. I schedule in time for me to be by myself. Here's the question I ask people If you don't want to be with you, why would somebody else want to be with you? And so I spend time with myself. I date myself. I will take myself to go, get me a cup of coffee or a donut or a muffin, whatever it is I want to do. I go to Barnes and Noble every three weeks, sometimes more Local shops. I am going to do those things for myself, because I don't have to wait for somebody else to invite me to do something. I can just go do it. And here's what I can tell you I love me, I love spending time with me, and because I have reached this phase of my life, it is much easier for me to be able to imagine what my next relationship can look like. Are my standards higher now than they were before? Absolutely, absolutely, because I know what it feels like to be confident and content with myself without needing outward validation. And so, as you're on your journey and you are trying to figure out what is next, how do I grow this business? Here's what I can tell you as an entrepreneur If your personal life is in shambles, so is your business.
Speaker 1:What's the point in ignoring all the people in your life to build a business? And then, by the time you make the money, ignoring all the people in your life to build a business, and then, by the time you make the money, everybody else in your life has left you. They've gone. No contact because you made a decision that making money was more important than building relationships. I homeschooled my children for a decade. I have incredible relationships with my children. My business never took over ever, and that's not something that I regret. Now that my kids are older and they don't need as much of my time and my attention, I can now give my business more attention.
Speaker 1:But if you don't understand that, as you're building your foundation, that means you're building a business on something that will crumble, of business on something that will crumble. Why have the mansion, the cars, the house, the vacations, whatever? Why have all this money and no one to enjoy it with? Nothing about that makes any sense to me, and if you are a person who feels like you don't need other people in your life, I would ask you to examine that. I would ask you to really look at you know it's the whole. I can do bad all by myself. I'm a strong, independent woman. I get it. I live that life Right. Single mom wearing the cape. I can do it all you can, but you shouldn't have to. Just because I can doesn't mean I want to, and if your mind has resistance around understanding that, just because you can doesn't mean you have to. I will ask you to examine that. That means there's something happening that that's a heart centered problem.
Speaker 1:If you can't trust other people, if you can't trust the world, if you can't trust yourself to make better decisions when it comes to relationship building with your life, it's not that you can't trust other people, is that you don't trust yourself to make the right judgment calls, and so I would invite you to take a look at that. I would invite you to do a little bit of shadow work around that. If, every time someone new comes into your life, you're apprehensive in your life hashtag no new friends, I want you to look at that. I want you to examine it. That's a trauma response. I want you to understand that you are worthy to be loved just as you are. You do not need to be presented perfectly to someone else in order for them to love you. People will meet you where you are if you give them the opportunity to do so, but that also requires you to be able to trust yourself. To be able to trust yourself, you have to know when people are meant for you and they are not, you can absolutely be attracting the same type of person. It's very much so. Copy-paste right If you realize that the last three people you've dated are all douchebags.
Speaker 1:You attracted that, so what in you is attracting that type of person? This is where we have to stop placing accountability on other people and placing blame on other people instead of looking internally. If there's a pattern, and the pattern is this doesn't work, this doesn't work, this doesn't work you have to ask yourself at some point am I the drama? Nine times out of 10, yes, you are. Everybody can't be out to get you, everybody can't hate you, everybody can't talk about you. That's just not realistic. That's you projecting how you actually feel about yourself onto other people. That's you not accepting the fact that you are attracting a particular type of person to you. The universe will continue to send you the same thing until you learn your lesson. I need you to stop. I need you to think about it. This doesn't just apply to romantic relationships. If you have friends who show up in your life and all they do is just hang around so they can kick it with you, but nobody is trying to like, move further in life and develop themselves, watch that.
Speaker 1:If this is in the people who want to do business with you customers. If you realize that you have a high-end product but all your customers like want you to give them a discount, why are you attracting people who don't believe that your product is good enough for them to pay for it? These are things we have to think about and need to look at the data. I don't want you to take it personally. This is not CCK being mean to you. This is CCK saying I need you to look at the data. Okay, the numbers don't lie. I need you to look at the data. Okay, the numbers don't lie. I need you to look at the data. If you are not making the money you wanna make in your business, are you not attracting the right type of people? If you're not attracting the right type of people, what is your messaging? If your messaging is on point, your visual presentation is on point and you're still not attracting the right people?
Speaker 1:My next question is what is your belief about your business? Do you believe you are worth people paying a premium price for your service? Do you believe that you should be paid a certain amount of money? You should be paid a certain amount of money. Do you believe you are worth the expense. If there is anything in you that is resistant to that, I promise you it goes back to trauma. I promise you it goes back to somewhere in your childhood.
Speaker 1:Somebody tells you you will never be good enough. You act just like your mama, you act just like your auntie, you act just like your daddy. Somebody put a seed in your head that makes you feel like you're not worthy and I need you to sit with that. Just because you ignore it doesn't mean it goes away. It stays. It stays. There are seeds that can still branch roots in the darkness If you do not pay attention to your own thoughts and realize how you speak to yourself, realize what are the voices in your head saying you, and then analyze whose voice is it.
Speaker 1:Did you say this to yourself or did somebody else say this to you? Who said it to you? Who gave you this limiting belief that you have internalized and decided is a part of your character? And now you place judgment on it simply because you do not have a belief system strong enough about yourself that you are worthy. As you sit and you reflect and you think about where you are in this season of your life versus where you want to be. You are the only person that can get you from point A to point B. You are the only person who can make a decision that now is the time and that you are worthy of having the things that you want.
Speaker 1:You have to be open and willing to hold yourself accountable for your growth, to hold yourself accountable for the way you show up and to hold yourself accountable for the people that you are giving access to you in this season of your life. If you know that you need mentorship, you need some on the job training, you need to be in the presence of people who have done what you're trying to do. If you know that that is something you should be doing right now, why are you not doing it? If you know that that's going to help you get from point A to point B, why are you not doing it? If you know that that's going to help you get from point A to point B, why are you not doing it If you're very aware that the only way you are going to be able to break the cycle of procrastination, of feeling like you are not worthy, of not showing up as your best self, of unintentionally throwing away opportunities, if you do not face the fact that that is something that you control? Nobody else. That's something you control. If you don't face that, who's going to fix it? Who is going to fix that for you?
Speaker 1:I really would like for you to sit and take some time reflecting on yourself right now, reflecting on how you show up in life, reflecting on how the people who you give access to you show up in life and how they show up for you in life. I want you to think about what are the steps you need to be taking to move to the next level in your business, in your personal life? I want you to think about are you showing up as your best self in this season? And, if not, what about yourself? Are you learning right now? Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode. I will see y'all next week.
