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Hey, welcome to Lessons from a Quitter where we believe that it is never too late to start over. No matter how much time or energy you spent getting to where you are. If ultimately you are unfulfilled, then it is time to get out. Join me each week for both inspiration and actionable tips so that we can get you on the road to your dreams. Hello my friends. Welcome to another episode. I'm so excited you are here. I hope you had a wonderful holiday season. If you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah, I hope you have had a wonderful celebration and if not, I hope you are just finding some time at the end of this year to slow down, maybe find some more peace, some calm, some joy, whatever it is that you need as we kind of round out 2022 and start a brand new year.
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I always find that I just naturally wanna slow down. Maybe it's the animal in US Winter Inc. Kind of hibernating getting slower in the winter. I definitely feel that around the New Year's time and I've been utilizing that time to kind of go inward and figure out what's working, what isn't, what do I wanna do different next year and I'll, I'm gonna do like a year end review later in January. I didn't have my things together in time to do it before January, but we will definitely do an episode like that talking about everything that went well and didn't go well in 2022 and what I'm looking forward to in the new year. But for now this week, I'm just slowing down a little bit and I love it. So I did wanna pop on though as we go into this new year and a lot of you start to maybe think about resolutions or think about what you want for this year when you use this time to be reflective.
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And I wanted to come on and tell you to be open to possibilities, to just the possibility that the thing that you want, that you keep telling yourself you can't have or it's not possible. Maybe you're not even consciously thinking it, but just in the background in your head, you've already told yourself what's available to you, what's possible for you, what's, what's realistic in your life. I want you as you go into this new year to just question what if there is so much more possible than you are allowing yourself to believe. I just did a class on how to dream bigger in the Quitter Club in December. I love teaching on this topic. It gets me super fired up. If you join the Quitter Quitter Club, you can check out that class and the workbook. I highly recommend it. And I was extremely on fire during that class because one of the things that I wanna do with this platform and with the people that I coach is to push you to dream bigger.
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Because most of us are dreaming way too small and there's so much more possible than any of us are allowing ourselves to believe. And so many of us are just resigned to the fact that this is just it. This is the way their life is. Life is hard. You have to work a lot, you have to be stressed all the time. This is what it means to be an adult, right? These are all the messages that we've gotten and so many of us have accepted them for so long, myself included, until I didn't, until I started questioning it. And here's why this is so important. I have repeated this, this quote a number of times. You've likely heard it if you listen to the podcast, but Henry Ford's quote of whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right, is one of the most profound statements I have ever heard.
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And I constantly come back to it. The reality is, is that we're not crazy. So if I don't think something is possible for me, I'm not going to pursue it. Shocking. I know. So whatever I tell myself is possible are the things that I'm gonna explore. Those are the things that I'm gonna go after every one of you, the reason you have whatever you've had in your life, whether it's certain relationships, whether it's experiences, whether it's the degrees, the jobs, the roles, the promotions, whatever it is, it started because you believed it was possible for you to get that if you had believed different thoughts, that it's not possible that people like you don't find spouses or people like you aren't smart enough to get degrees or people like you don't go to college, whatever it is, so many of us have these self-imposed limitations.
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And when we tell ourselves that it's not possible, a lot of us have a lot of thoughts, a lot of limitations around money. Like it's not possible for me to make more than X amount of money dollars. Guess what? You live into that reality because you've told yourself that nothing else is possible. So you don't think about what are ways that I could get it? You don't plan for ways to get it. You don't try different ways of getting it. So everything you end up getting in your life is based on what you've already told yourself is possible for you. And most of us don't ever take time to question, maybe I was wrong, maybe there's more possible. Maybe at this stage in my life there's more. Maybe I thought there was only more until this part. Now I got here and I realized there's probably more possible than I originally knew.
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Now what do I wanna go after? I want you to think about how you know what's possible for your life. How do you even determine what's possible? Most of us take, you know what society has told us is possible. So if we had parents that we saw only have a certain amount, let's say parents who only made a certain amount or did certain jobs or didn't have an education, we might believe that what is possible is less than somebody who had role models that showed them that tons of other things were possible. That college degrees and grad degrees and a certain income, right? A lot of us look to the world outside of us to show us what's possible. And we look to our past, we go to our past to determine what you can do in the future. Like I am, you know, look at, well, I did well in school and I'm good at tests and I can get good grades.
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So that opens up a world of possibility for me. That might mean like if I need to go back to get a degree, I don't have a lot of doubt that I can do that. I'm just like, yeah, that's possible. Of course I could go get a PhD if I wanted to. I could go, you know, whatever else I would need to accomplish in kind of a school setting. I don't have a lot of doubts around that because I look at my past for that. Or if, for instance, once I'm graduate and I make a certain living and I, you know, apply for a job and I get that job, then I have like a baseline of what I can make. And so maybe what I think is possible is in that baseline, maybe a little bit more, but I start believing people like me can make about this much money a year.
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And maybe I look at other people and think, okay, well if they save and invest then I can have this type of a portfolio or I can have this much when I retire. But that's all I believe is possible. And the question just becomes why? Why would it have to be limited to either the people around you or what you've done in the past? Like what if instead of going in the past, one of the questions that I love, love, love asking myself, I just think it's such a profound question, is if you woke up with amnesia, you woke up tomorrow and you had no idea what you had done in the past, you have no recollection of your history, you don't know what you've done at work, you don't know you don't know anything, how would you know what you're able to do in the future? How would you know? Like you couldn't go to your past to know what you're capable of. So what would you do?
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You would just try, you would just have to experiment, try and fail. Let's see if I can do this. Let's see if I'm good at this thing. Who knows? Could I run a business? I don't know. I have no idea. Could I? Can I go for this degree? Can I get this job? Can I sell things? Can I speak on stages? I have no idea if I can. I've never done it before. And so I just want you to like consider what if we could just go to our future and decide, right? What if I can decide, I don't know if I can do these things now, but I feel like the future me past me is gone. It lives in my head and it's gone. I have amnesia. What does future me do? Both the pa past and the future only live inside of my head.
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They're not actual realities, right? If I meet someone and they don't know anything about my past, it's not some concrete thing that like someone's like, oh yeah, you have this baggage, you have to like carry this with you. It's over. So what if you just got to decide instead of going to my past constantly to say like, oh, this is what I can do, this is what I'm capable of, this is the way I've always done it. What if we got to decide like, okay, what is future goalie? Think it's possible. What would goalie in 10 years when she's 50, what does she think she can do? What does the future goalie want to do? What do I wanna do for my future self? How do I wanna set myself up? It's just a question. And I know for a lot of us, we have a really hard time cuz it's like, well the past did happen and yes, the past did happen.
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But I think a lot of what we've talked about is that the way the past happened isn't, you didn't see the past with like clear glasses, right? Where you're looking at the world objectively and the past happened the way that it did and you could, you took all the good and the bad and you, you are a competent judge of your own abilities. That's just not the way it works. And look no further than imposter syndrome. We have all the past, we have all of the evidence, we have the degrees, we have the jobs, we have the fact that we've worked at these jobs for years and they haven't fired us. We have all of this evidence and then we just choose to believe, I don't know what I'm doing, I'm not good at this, I'm not organized, they're gonna figure it out. I've always been terrible.
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I'm not a good speaker. I get, you know, we just tell ourselves these stories and we bring that baggage, we bring that past with us and we act as though we're telling the just the truth. Then we decide from that what's possible for our future. And so if you realize that you're a terrible judge of your own competence and you're a terrible judge of what's actually happening, what if we just decided that really anything is possible? I'm not trying to say this in like a just motivational rah rah. Anything is possible. Even though that is true, I want you to think like every person that has ever done something that was deemed impossible and then did it, made it possible, right? Like I think Nestle Mendela has a quote like everything is impossible until it's done. Something like that. And most of you, what's funny is that the people I talk to and like the dreams that they have or the dreams that you have for your, it's not like you're trying to go to outer space or like land on Mars.
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You're trying to see can I make multiple six figures or can I double my salary or can I work less hours? Like can I do a job that I actually like and I don't have to work on weekends? I mean it's so doable. Like it's so in the realm of possibility. And then we're just like, no, that's not possible. Not for me, not as a lawyer. Like I'm just gonna create these limitations and tell myself that it can't happen. And listen, I used to do the same exact thing and I realize now there were so many things that I thought were not possible just I just had accepted, like I had accepted that you have to hustle and work really hard in order to make money. You have to work a ton of hours. You can't have balance. If you're gonna be a working per woman or a working person and you're gonna, you know do well, you're gonna have to kill yourself.
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And I look back now and I think like it's so crazy what I told myself was possible and what I'm doing now, like I make more and I work way less. I work like 20 or 30 hours a week. I will make over 200 k this year. I make, that was way more than I made as a lawyer. I never thought that was possible. When I was working as a lawyer, I really thought like okay you have to hustle. You have to work 70, 80 hours a week in order to make a good living. If you wanna make more than that, you have to work more. And I'm not willing to sacrifice. And I had all these limiting beliefs and I just wonder like what if it is possible? Like just question, what if I could work less and make more money? What if I could find a job that isn't something that's gonna stress me out all day every day?
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What if I could stop working weekends? What if I could do something creative? What if I could make money from my art? What if I could learn a completely new skill that I have no idea how to do? What if I can learn how to run a business? What if all of those possibilities are actually very probable if I just believe that I can and start working towards it? When I taught this class to the Quitter club and it was very fascinating cause I would ask people like it was kind of a workshop style and I feel like people were very slow in the beginning to kind of respond to things. But then I asked one question and everybody j it was fascinating to see like the immediate yeses in the comments, like everybody posting it in. And it was, do other people have more possibility than you?
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And everybody wanted to say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It was just really interesting to me and I was like, wow, why would you wanna believe that? And people started putting in certain things that they like facts of well, like people have more resources or people have more privilege and people have different life circumstances and they have, you know, all this stuff. And that's true. And so notice when I say, and this is what I was telling them, is I'm not saying that we all have the same hand dealt to us or that it's going to be the same journey or that it's as easy for everybody as it is for everybody else. That's a hundred percent not true. But is it possible is the question right? We're not dealt the same hand, none of us are absolutely. Some people have an easier time and an easier ride.
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But that doesn't mean that it's not possible for you too. Maybe you have to work harder for it. Okay, do you want to or not? The reason I think that this thought is something you have to be very careful of is while it is true that we're dealt different hands and we only get to choose how we react to the hand that we were dealt, I think we often use that as a reason not to go for our dreams or not to believe that it's possible or not to let ourselves kind of believe because we've seen that it's harder for us than other people or that we have a certain situation that other people don't. I think in a society where we're constantly taught that something has to be to blame or we sort of have shame around a lot of this stuff, like whether we achieve things or not, a lot of us go through this thing of wanting to point at something to see like see this is why I can't have it because there's misogyny or patriarchy or racism or white supremacy or economic inequality and all of those things are true.
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All of those things are absolutely true. But the question is, does it serve me to think it all the time, right? If my thought is things are really unequal or there's a lot of inequality or I don't have the same chances and then I use that to make it mean it's not possible for me, then I've done the work of white supremacy, misogyny of all these other isms that we have, sexism, racism, homophobia, that was anm. But you get my point, we continue perpetuating the same cycle. In fact, like truly anybody that's ever done anything for the first time and broken through those glass ceilings like women that made it into law, law school or became partners for the first time, or black people that basically had to fight for every seat that they've ever gotten at any table, it would never happen if that person believed it wasn't possible for them.
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It's just a prerequisite to ever going for the thing that you wanna go for forever, making the change that you want to make in this world. Even things that haven't happened yet. For instance, like women becoming president, we haven't had a president in the us that's a woman, but it's still possible for a woman to become president, right? Like it's still, we've gotten close. It's a shame that we haven't. But if women all sat down and said like, oh, it's just not possible for us. There'll never be a woman, us president. Well we would make that a reality cuz we would just believe that it's not possible. So nobody would ever go for it. Part of breaking these molds is believing that it's possible, right? That's the prerequisite to doing the work, to actually making it possible. And when I talk about, I talk about this concept a lot and I think it's hard to understand when I say, like the question I constantly ask of myself is, does this thought serve me?
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Not is this thought true? And I think people think, well you're sort of like gaslighting yourself or you're ignoring a reality, but that's not the case. What I'm saying is that like for instance, the thought the world is a terrible place or the thought that I'm going to die someday or that my loved ones are gonna die someday. Those are all true thoughts, quote unquote true. There's nothing more truthful than the fact that I'm gonna die someday. It does not serve me to go around thinking it every day. Yeah. All it does is cause panic and anxiety and worry and likely overprotectiveness and acting neurotic, acting like a crazy person, not enjoying my life or thinking the world is a terrible place. It's a very true statement. The world has always been a terrible place. It's also been a beautiful place. It's also magical and gorgeous and extremely kind and helpful and all these other things that are true about the world as well.
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Which one does it serve me to think about? Now I'm not saying like I'm gonna close my eyes and plug my ears and be like la la la. I don't wanna see any bad things that are happening in this world. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying like what is the core belief that helps me get through all of the hard things, seeing all the terrible things that happen in the world. If I just give into the fact of like, yeah, the world is just a terrible dumpster fire and I hate it here. What does that create for my life? So many of us become just mired with sadness and overwhelm and anxiety and we retreat and we doom scroll and we're constantly looking at all the terrible things. How does that help anyone? It doesn't change anything, it just makes your life terrible. And we think we're doing that to like protect ourselves somehow.
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But how is that protecting you? It doesn't change what's happening in the world. I choose to think the world's a beautiful place because that helps me actually like make the world a better place. That helps me look for people that are helping, that helps me decide what do I wanna do to try to contribute a little bit. It's the same thing with this. I can choose to think that the world is sexist and that it's harder for women and I could choose to think like with my name, it was harder for me to start a podcast and people wouldn't listen or people wouldn't trust me. Maybe as a coach those could all be true, very true. Somebody might look at my name and say like goalie cran pass. But how would it serve me to think that all it would do is get me to not start my podcast, not do the thing I wanna do, tell myself it's not possible for me.
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Now I don't have to like delude myself or lie to myself and believe that like it's equally as possible for me as everybody else. Or I'm not saying that I don't get to get upset or disappointed or sad if maybe somebody else has an easier time cuz it's not fair. Okay? I get to have whatever self pity I wanna have for that moment and then I bring myself back into, yeah, okay, I may have to work double as hard. Now what? Now what do I wanna do? Do I still wanna believe that it's possible for me? Of course I do. And what's really fascinating though for me, when I have this conversation about privilege and possibility, and I, a lot of the people that you know very quickly will say, well, it's not as possible for everybody. A lot of those people have a lot of privilege, , they're typically the people who were dealt hands that were pretty good.
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I'm not saying all good, like we all have a lot of things that we have to deal with. We have traumas, we have different like life experiences. But I look at myself, I used to think the same thing. I used to think, well, not everybody could quit their job and not everyone can do X, Y, and Z. And it really like took me slowing down to be like, but can I? But like I have that privilege. I have the privilege of education. I have a privilege of being able bodied. I have the privilege of being heterosexual. I have the privilege of having a certain intelligence level and having my brain working in certain ways. I have white passing for the most part. I have parents that loved me and that didn't have, I mean they had trauma, but , they didn't have drug addiction or alcohol addiction or you know, a lot of the other traumas that come in in a lot of people's lives.
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I had a ton of privilege in my life. And so I kept thinking like, why am I, why am I not going for it? Then like yes, obviously there's people who don't have the privilege to do things in certain parts of the country, even more so, I mean in the world, even more so. But doesn't that even make it more of a duty for me to be like, I have the possibility I can change my life, I can do more things. I can demand what I'm worth. I can advocate for myself as a woman, I can make more money and show women that it's possible. So why would I keep telling myself it's harder for women, it's harder for Middle Easterners, it's harder for whatever the the thought is that I was gonna have. It's harder for mothers. It's not possible to have this balance.
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When I start, started changing the way I thought about possibility and realizing like anything I wanted was possible. Truly anything I want. Like there's a lot of things that maybe aren't possible that I don't really want. I'm not trying to go to Mars. I'm not trying to do things like those aren't desires I have in my heart. So when I started questioning like what do I want? I wanna work less. I wanna have more contribution. I want more connection with people. I want to make more money. I want to live a life of more ease. I wanna have less stress. All of those things are possible for me on a grand scale. So why am I not going after them? Why am I not deciding even if I haven't had them in the past, even if that's not what my life was up until this point.
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What is the life I want to lead? What is the possibility I want to go after? When you think the thought, it's not possible for me, it ends there. You don't do anything. You don't look into it. You don't look for evidence of other people, you don't see how it is possible. You don't come up with solutions. You don't look at what obstacles are in the way and how you might work like around it. It's over. That's it. End of story. It's not possible. All right, move on onto the next thing. And so many of us stay with this like little slice that we have and we're not happy with and we just tell ourselves we should be happy, should just be happy with that and we're not. So we keep suppressing it and it keeps bubbling up and you're like, no, but you should just be happy.
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And you're like, but I'm not happy. And so admitting that is like one of the most powerful things you can do. And then questioning what I, what do I think is possible? How big of a life could I live? How fabulous of a life can I have? How joyful, how peaceful, how calm, whatever you want for your life. How is that possible? How can I find evidence that is possible? How can I go to my future and figure out what the future version of myself would do to get that? To be able to create that? And it starts with that belief. So my friends, as you're thinking about what you wanna do in the new year, as you're thinking about resolutions, I want you to just be open to the possibilities. What if there was more possible than you could ever dream of? What if you just had to push yourself a little bit, even though it's scary, even though you think you're might be being reckless even though you wanna protect yourself?
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What if you just allowed for a little bit of wonder and a little bit of question of maybe it is possible. If it was, what would I dream about? What would I want? Tap into that. Admit it to yourself, say it out loud and then spend your life going after it. I hope you guys have a wonderful new year, and I will be back in 2023 with so much more. I love you all and I will see you soon. Hey, if you are looking for more in-depth help with your career, whether that's dealing with all of the stress, worry, and anxiety that's leading to burnout in your current career or figuring out what your dream career is and actually going after it, I want you to join me in the Quitter Club. It is where we quit what is no longer working like perfectionism, people pleasing, imposter syndrome, and we start working on what does and we start taking action towards the career and the life that you actually want. We will take the concepts that we talk about on the podcast and apply them to your life and you will get the coaching tools and support that you need to actually make some real change. So go to lessons from a quitter.com/quitter club and get on the wait list. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.