Breaking Down Big Goals into Small Steps for Personal Growth

 Breaking Down Big Goals into Small Steps for Personal Growth 

Hello, welcome again to the In The Rising Podcast. This is the platform from which I talked to you about living a life that you don't regret, that you have no guilt, a little guilt, and that you can use your self-worth to live an empowered, independent, and free. My name is Bettina, and I will start off by saying that I am not a licensed counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist, but I am a student of life and a healthcare professional who loves to research and learn a lot more about what makes us us.

What about us? So if this topic and similar topics are of interest to you, go ahead and hit the subscription button and leave me a review. I also enjoy getting feedback from you at betina@intherising.com, and this is also put down below. So welcome to episode 20. I hope all of you are doing well today and today's a little bit different.

I wanted to share something with you initial. But then life had a way of doing what life does, and I changed my plan. I switched up what I was going to talk about, and this is because of something called synchronicity. And similar to when you think about a person and then they call you up out of the blue, or you're thinking about an old photograph, from when you were in high school or when you were a young kid, and then you happen to come across that same photograph while you're cleaning out the garage.

That weekend, that synchronicity, well, mine happened where I wasn't thinking about something, but something apparently was thinking about. So my synchronicity story is about ants. Yes, that's correct. Ants, those small, pesky things that come in simple or fiery colors, and they can be either gentle or can bite you and leave you a good memory about them.

And then they're the ones with wings, which is an and completely different story. So why ants? Well, I'll start off this way. I started off my morning routine the way I normally do, which involves feeding my two dogs between six 30 and seven o'clock or else there's a riot. And when I went outside to pick up their bowls, I, I dropped them because I turned them over and saw that they were full of those small little house ants, you know, and they don't bite.

But it was definitely, Bowl. And so currently my dogs are attempting to boycott their food because they're not big fans of it, but I spruce it up with some of their snacks. I have 39 more pounds of this dog food, like they're going to eat it. Okay? And so maybe it was some of the spruce that the ants were after, but nonetheless, I went inside, I cleaned it.

Everything was taken care of, but I still had all these ants. By my door. And I saw them kind of trying to get into my, my house wall and I was going to reach for my diet tenacious earth. But then I just opted for ortho, I opted for a pesticide and I just didn't want them in my house. I cleaned everything, gave them their, you know, unappetizing breakfast again.

And then I felt a little tickle on my arm and it was another one of these ants trying to crawl its way up my hair follicles. And let's just put it this way, that was, its last. So I got ready for work. I'm getting in the car, I'm driving, and next thing I know, I'm putting on my audiobook for my trip to work and I'm listening to Dr.

Henry's, Dr. Henry Cloud's book. Nine Things You Simply Must Do to Succeed in Love in Life. Because I'm nerdy. I love those kind of books. And in this book he talks about what he calls deja vu people deja vu are these people that every time you run into someone who's successful in love and life, that they have these similar qualities.

And he calls it deja vu. And success is not deemed by what they drive or by just the length of a relationship, but by the depth of their relationships. And. Their joy and their happiness. So I'm exiting my neighborhood and then I hear him mention Proverb 66, and I don't, I don't know what proverb 66, but he goes on and says to quote, take a lesson from the ants.

You lazy bones, learn from their ways and become wise now. Do you know there are moments when you're just taught a lesson that you didn't ask for and probably didn't want? Well, I had one of those, and I have to admit this, you know, I did not recall a time that I ever heard about ants in, in our Bible, and outside of them going at least two of them in the arc, I had never heard about this.

And so to hear. Quote from the Bible on the same day that I had a good 25 minute escapade in the morning with the ants was just kind of show-stopping for me. But Mr. Cloud, he expanded upon this story, like, why? Why? What about it? And he described, His own journey with struggling to finish his dissertation so that he could be called Dr.

Henry Cloud in the first place. And the due date for his dissertation was two to three years down the road, and he just felt overwhelmed. And that's where I, I totally understood, feeling overwhelmed by something that you have to do. And so what he talks about, Is that he was afraid the same way many of us afraid.

And the way I know that I have been afraid because the task was so big. How will I ever succeed with that? Am I really a person that can succeed at that? How will I ever get this done? How will I get this done successfully? How will I finish it? Will people laugh? Will I laugh at. And so what we're supposed to glean from these ants answers this by observation, I guess This man actually bought an little ant farm.

I'm not doing that, but I'll take his word for it. But I could see this. I could see this. They do a couple things, and I'm getting to the point here. They work tirelessly on their goals. They focus, they cooper. They don't let a fellow aunt drive them off their path to go have a beer somewhere and or go home and play.

They do their tasks, they stay the course. They continue to do what they are meant to do until the job is done. They also see that there is so much greater good in what they are building and molding. They know what they're doing is important. They're not only focused on their right to live, but they are also protecting generations to come, whether they're their generations or someone else's.

They are in it for the long haul, and they're also addressing their responsibility to their entire unit, their family. So there are three things that I feel we can learn. These ants and our own self-awareness, self journey focusing on ourselves. I think there, there's some good correlations there. So the three things I'm gonna talk about today are one proactive initiative.

It's on you. It's on me. We have to find and trust our inner motivation to do something in our life that we're not satisfied with, or we are satisfied but will improve upon. There has to be this yearning to improve. Improve our car, improve our house, improve our financial situation, improve our relationships, and what about just improving what we call.

As an example, Dr. Cloud talked about a lady with, three years. Her goal was to, to get her law degree, but three years seems so long, and he put it to me and put it in in this perspective. He said, you know, unless something happens that you don't know about, you're gonna be alive in three years. So you can either use those three years to do what you want to do and pursue a life that you're passionate.

Or those three years are gonna come and you're gonna be as miserable as you are now. There are no guarantees. But right now you can be proactive with changing your life. And that one really hit me when I was looking for my second master's degree. I was just, I felt strongly about getting this health administration degree.

I wanted to get one but one class at a time. And I don't know how many classes there are, but there were many. It took four and a half. Every 10 weeks was a new class, four and a half years. And I went through that and I already have this degree for two years. So in hindsight, I can't even believe two years has gone by since I was done.

But there was a time that it was still ahead of me. And so whatever we are looking for, yes, it may be a long time from now, but a long time from now is gonna be today. Play that movie forward as what he says. What is that gonna look? Good and bad. So proactive initiative number two is that life comes from within.

There is no general of the master, of these master ants that are doing these beautiful master buildings, master structures. They're just doing what they're supposed to do because there's some internal need to do it. There's an internal. They're not waiting on external circumstances, as in they're not waiting for Wellman.

My boss gives me that pay raise, or when they finally realize how special I am. That's a huge thing, right? We all wanna feel special, but waiting for someone to tell you that you're special, that's a long wait sometimes. What about if the person that should say. Hasn't said it. What about if the person that you want to say that to you will never say that to you?

They communicate your specialness through acts. They don't ever tell you. What about if we're waiting for money to be better, for our partner, to be better, for our house to be better? This one was big for me, for my student loans to be paid. I will not wait till I'm 71. To live my life because that's when my student loans are paid.

So somewhere life has to come from within. Your joy has to spark from that. And number three is that your actions affect your future, and the future is coming. So if you take your proactive initiative, you, you do something about it and you take these small steps and one small thing leads to another small thing, the way ants take one little grain of sand and then add it to another grain of sand.

And next thing you know, they've got their, you know, super tunnels that this comes from the inside. And the only one who can be in charge of that is, And so when you are taking a moment to listen to a podcast, when you are taking a moment to go for a walk with your child, when you're taking a moment to journal or taking a moment to fulfill a dream that has meant something to you, that you've wanted to complete for a long, long time, then you are taking a small step.

And under no circumstances is that a small. So every small step that we take has huge meaning because you can't take the next small step until you've done that one. It's a very, very interesting book. I am almost all the way done with it. After the Ants story, it took me a little bit, I was like, what? I had to research about ants.

But I wanted to tell you guys about chirp.com. Maybe some of you are. Book worms like I am, and you cannot always sit down to read. I am not an affiliate. I am just letting you know because I love to save money and I love to save other people money as well. And so chirp.com is kind of like audible except significantly cheaper.

You can get an audiobook for 2 99, I think. Auto Auto Bowl is 1499 a month and you can get so many, you get 'em, return 'em all that with trip.com. You can get the book and you just have the book. But it's 2 99, maybe 3 99, significantly cheaper. I think I just got four books for 10. And it's kind of nice.

And what they do is they look for books that you are really interested in. So chirp.com, they're trying to go on the up and up and I can absolutely see that they will do well. I was just putting that out there. Look it up if you, if you like it. So here we are at the end. Again, thank you for your time. I appreciate it because you know what time is something we don't.

And I hope you found this episode valuable, and if you did send it to someone that you think would enjoy hearing about today's topic. I will see you guys next Tuesday and remember, Let's Build One Another Up!