200. Evolving It’s Your Time

Today we are celebrating episode 200!  Thank you being here, for listening and for taking the time to invest in yourself over the last 200 weeks.  I am taking today as an opportunity to look back at where we started, discuss some of the top downloaded episodes and share my ideas for the future.  It has been a privilege to speak to you and I believe we are just getting started.

In This Episode:

• Drinkless Podcast to It’s Your Time
• Top downloaded concepts: Weight Loss, Atomic Habits, Focus, Decisions, Habits, Future Self, Goals
• Thank you to all previous guests: Caryn Gillen, Rhonda Farr, Patrick Sweeney, Natasha Tekeste, Patricia Cimino, Lindsay Poelman, Rebecca Tervo, Patrick Sweeney, Samuel Adeyinka, Carrie Stringer, Tracy Bianco, Dr. Sonia Wright.
• Process to work from your goal
• The Life Coach School
• Being intentional with your life
• Please tag and share @michellebourquecoaching 

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Episode Transcript:

(Transcribed by OtterAi with minimal edits)

Michelle Bourque 0:00 You are listening to the it’s your time podcast and I’m your host certified life coach Michelle Arnold Bourque. In today’s episode I’m discussing, evolving, it’s your time. Welcome to the it’s your time Podcast, the podcast where busy professionals like you get the practical solutions and support you need to gain control of your schedule. So you can strive to be the best in your career, but without the stress and overwhelm. If you’re looking to increase your energy and decrease your stress, you are in the right place. Michelle Bourque 0:39 Hello, hello, hello, welcome back to the podcast. Friends, can you believe that we are here at episode 200 200 weeks of doing this together? Pretty impressive. And I’m kind of chuckling in the background, because this is probably the fifth or sixth time that I restarted it. And I just had to have a conversation with myself to say Get it together. This is not your first rodeo. So I really want to first start by saying thank you for being here and for listening and for showing up. And hopefully for doing the work on you. That is what this is all about. And in today’s episode, I want to just take a couple of minutes to look back at where we started and to talk about some of the topics that I see seem to resonate with many of you. And then also touch upon what I envision for the future because I do believe that this is just the beginning. Now, for some of you who have been around for a while, you may recall that when I first started the podcast, it was called the drink less podcast. And I was really focused on helping women who wanted to cut back on drinking. And at the time, I wanted to do that because it was some of the work that I had done. And I’ve shared this before on the podcast here. But the story begins when I was listening to The Life Coach School podcast. And I remember sitting in a parking lot after weeks of listening and listening and talking to Mark about it. And it was a crazy day at work. And it just seemed like every day had been crazy leading up and I just needed some wine to relax. But I also had the thought there has to be more to life than this. Michelle Bourque 2:31 So I went in, and I sat down. And I said to Marc, do you know what I want to do? And apparently, he had been listening over these past couple of weeks because he said, Let me guess I want to be a life coach. And so it started. And after my certification, the podcast was a way to try to reach out to women who, like I said, wanted to cut back on wine, and not necessarily stop and not because anyone thinks that they are alcoholics. But just because she knew they knew that it was really in their best interest to cut back. She didn’t feel as productive the next day, or clients wished that they just didn’t have that last glass of wine the night before. But what I found in working with these clients was that it’s really not about the wine. It’s always about what we are doing in our lives, what we are doing with our time. And many of the women that I worked with our high achievers worked with and still work with, right, high achievers who really just needed some tools on how to deal with life circumstances in order to not have to turn to the wine or for some folks. It’s food. It’s social media. It’s whatever allows you to escape. And it was around that time that I changed the podcast. After really seeing client after client come back with some of the same issues as far as work stress, overwhelm anxiety. And now you have what is called the it’s your time podcast. Oh, and sidenote, when I first started, I also recorded this podcast and Marc’s closet. Which by the way, yes, his closet is larger and nicer than mine. But I should go back I do remember taking a picture and thinking one day I am going to do a that was then this is now comparison. And I am no longer in the closet for recording this podcast. I do have a nice setup in the office. And one other thing that has changed is back then I was paying someone who would do the production and editing of the podcast and now Marc is the director of podcast editing with Then the business. And I must say, He gives a little bit more feedback whether I asked for it or not than the previous folks. But it’s, of course, all in good fun. After all, he has been the coach for multiple decades in the family way before me. So I am coachable. And I can take his suggestions. Now, it’s your time, it’s really a way to share more tools and concepts to help you really organize your life, your time in a way that works for you so that you can increase your energy, decrease your stress. And of course, I still work with women who might want to cut back on wine. And also, those who want to excel in your career because honestly, oftentimes, it’s the same person, right, but do all of it without the stress and the overwhelm. It’s interesting, when I take a look back at some of the top downloaded podcasts, weight loss is up there at the top. And I will tell you, I think this is such a relatable topic for many people. I mean, look around the diet, industry commercials, socialization around what women should look like, it makes sense that this is a topic high on the list. And quite honestly, it was also part of the work that I did when I started coach certification, the work on the wine, the work on the weight, it’s all very similar. You’ve heard me say before, how we do one thing is how we do everything, there is a consistent thread and our lives friends, and it is our job, it is the job of coach, if you have a coach to show you the blind spots that you have, in order to make the changes that probably subconsciously, you are just not even aware of. And once you are able to see what’s going on, that’s when everything changes. Instead of using the wine, the food, the social media, as means to escape your life, we want to become more conscious, and to live on purpose, to decrease the stress and decrease the overwhelm and decrease the anxiety. But knowing it’s okay to also feel every single emotion. And what we want to do in life is to find a balance, not a 5050 balance of work in life, stick with me here, a balance of knowing you can feel positive and negative emotions, we need both that my friends is 5050. And knowing that we can feel every emotion is what begins to change your life. What we want to take a look at is are there times when we’re escaping, again through wine, work, food, social media, that gives us net negative effects meaning, we engage in the insert whatever it is for you over eating over drinking over social Facebooking whatever you’re doing right, and then beat yourself up about it. It’s not the way we want to roll friends. We want to live the life that we want to live not feel like we have to escape and truly be intentional with the habits that we create every single day. Which brings me to the next topic. So many downloads around either focus, decision making, creating habits and the podcast where I was discussing, James clears book atomic habits. I believe it was episode 30. It is still the top downloaded podcast. And it was such a great book, so many amazing tips on how to implement new habits. And these are the habits that you begin to create your new identity with making it easy to start is key. And setting minimal baselines is what sets you up for success. Small changes over time, lead to the compound effect which will change your life drastically. More than you even realize from today, until next year, two years and five years and also being sure to stack those habits on habits that you already have will keep you going and give you momentum. These are the keys that help you become your future self which is another topic that is highly downloaded the idea of thinking about your future self. Michelle Bourque 9:56 Who is she? What does she wake up and ask herself, what is the energy that she brings to each day. That is where you work from work from your goal. So many people look to their past for evidence of what they believe is possible. That is never going to work friends, because if you haven’t done it yet, if it is something new that you are trying, it’s a new goal that you have set, and you have never done it, you will obviously not find evidence for it in your past. Imagine, if I thought I could only start this podcast, if I knew how to do it. And you have been here, sometimes they’re not pretty episodes, but we just keep going, keep learning, keep trying. And so you work from your goal, not looking to your past, and not toward your goal, there’s a difference to work from your goal, not towards it, it changes everything. And let me just give you a little process by which you can do this. Number one, decide the goal. And it can be anything, but just pick one so that you can be very specific about how to go about this. So maybe you’re looking to hit a specific sales number, maybe you are looking to cut back on wine or losing those pesky pounds. Maybe it’s hitting an income goal, choose one, maybe it’s a relationship. Now go to the place in your mind where you have accomplished him. consider things like how do you feel thinking it’s accomplished? What habits have you stopped doing? What habits have you started doing? What problems maybe came up along the way? And what solutions do you think are possible for each of those problems? Because here’s the thing, friends, the obstacle is always the way, the obstacle, once we overcome that and have the solution allows us to move one step forward, and one step closer to our goals. And then ask yourself, Who do I have to be today? In that thought, of already accomplishing the goal. It’s actually quite simple friends, you work again, from the goal instead of towards it, and you act as if it’s done and consider everything that has led you there. And then you get to work on the list. It’s doing the work from your future and not looking to your past. As evidence of what is possible for you. There is so much more that’s possible when you look towards your future. And Michelle Bourque 12:51 looking back over the 200 episodes, I have felt so lucky to be able to have some amazing time, enjoy some interviews with some pretty amazing folks. We had Patrick Sweeney, the author of fear is fuel many strong, powerful women and coaches who run super successful businesses, and do the work in this world that makes a ripple effect in the lives of so many, including looking at positive attitudes at leadership at feeling feelings, and money mindset. So many great pieces of information. And I so appreciate the women and the men who have showed up here. And what I see for the future is so much more. I feel like we are just getting started here. I continue to learn. And if you listen back on some of my earlier ones, you may have noticed some of my evolution because initially, I would be pretty rigid, I guess I would say and things like planning and calendaring. And now I’ve done so much more work and research in the areas of trauma and nervous systems. And really stepping into learning more about how I can help teach you to do what works for you. We had an interview on human design that is so key, knowing what makes you unique, and how to really take advantage of your amazingness. If that’s a word, right, that is the work. And I combine that and all of the experience that I have throughout the corporate world over yes many decades. And I just see that there are so many new things that I can bring to you. It’s a pretty amazing combination for me to share if I may say so myself, right. And from an entrepreneurial standpoint, I’m learning every day I’m working With coaches myself in order to bring you more tools and ideas, and to help you see how really your life, it is your time, it’s your time to step into your goal. It’s your time to do what you want. It’s your time to organize and spend in the way that you want to. It’s a non renewable resource friend, we have the choice to do with it what we want. And I will tell you, the quote I had on my desk when I attended the Life Coach School was from Brooke Castillo, and it said, everything in your life is a choice. Even if it doesn’t feel like it. This is one of the most empowering things that you can know. It’s not your partner, it’s not your mother. It’s not your boss, it’s not your job. None of that creates the stress and overwhelm in your life. It’s not too much money. It’s not too little money. It’s not too much food, too much wine, too much social media that makes you feel drained. It’s always, always, always, always what you are thinking about each circumstance, which is great news. Because you get to decide and each moment what that means. You can totally get to the next level and your job and have the personal life you want. This is not a trip with or involved it gets to be and you get to decide what success looks like in your professional life and your personal life. And today, I choose to decide that we have had 200 successful episodes together. And I cannot thank you enough. Thank you so much for being here. And I want to ask that you share this I would love if you take a screenshot maybe of how it is that you listen and tag me I would love it at Michelle Bourque coaching Instagram, and let’s see if we can continue to keep this growing and growing and growing, as it has been over the last few years, helping more women every single day. It’s so much fun. It’s why we’re here. Okay, friends, that’s what I have for you today. Thanks again for being here. Let’s circle back next week but for now, make it a great day take care Michelle Bourque 17:38 Did you know you can take this work to a deeper level with me one on one, go to Michelle Bourquecoaching.com, and click on get started to begin

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