Ep 81. What You Focus On Grows

I am Kym Showers, and this is Reinvented After 40, episode number 81: What You Focus on, Grows.

Hey, friends. Welcome to Reinvented After 40, a podcast for all you women in the second half of life who are ready to take responsibility for your own well-being and create a life you love living.

I’m your host, Kym Showers, and after spending the first 40 years of my life people-pleasing and following all the rules, I was exhausted and ready for a change. I reinvented myself. I stopped outsourcing my happiness. And I’ve been brave enough to live a different kind of life.

I’ll be here each week to help you do the same thing. It’s going to be fun. Let’s go.

Hey my friends, welcome back to the show. Hope you’re having an incredible day. I have had the best day. Actually it’s late afternoon on Thursday. I had my darling three year old granddaughter, Dolly, here all day with me and just what pure delight to be with this adorable, generous, spunky, so happy little girl. And there’s just nothing I would rather do than sit on the floor and just play with her for hours. She’s absolutely hilarious. Oh gosh, just such a sweet day, so full of energy.

And I have decided that whenever I get to be with my little girls, Goldie and Dolly, it’s just the happy spot of my life. They are everything. I’m so blessed, so lucky to be their Pippy. And they’re just more fun than life could ever be, than you could ever imagine. They’re just so full of life and love and I just love the way that they live. And I just know that they’re the best thing for me. And we actually get to babysit them all weekend. Our kids get to go out of town. And so we’re going to have them Friday through Sunday and I just can’t wait, going to be just magical.

So what I want to remind you of today, if you’ve never heard this before. Where we focus on growth, gets bigger. We just keep creating more of it. So we have to know what we’re thinking about. We have to know what we’re focused on. If we’re focused on problems and we’re so used to complaining on a daily basis, those problems are going to grow instead of get smaller and fade away.

So if we want things to be better, if we want to have more happiness and more joy and more enthusiasm in our daily lives, we have to focus on more joy and more happiness and more enthusiasm in our daily life. That’s how we do it, what we give our energy to. So the things that we’re thinking about, the things that we’re talking about, the way that we’re spending our time, those things matter and they just keep expanding. And so it’s so important, you guys, to know this, that what we focus on, grows.

So if you’re worried, if you’re worried constantly, if you’re worried on a daily basis you’re going to keep worrying, it will be on repeat in your brain. It will be a loop that you’ve created in your brain. Worried chronically, lots of women my age are chronically worried about their grown kids, chronically. It’s so ridiculous, really truly it is. I can’t say that there’s any good thing that would ever come from that. I just think it’s needless.

And if you’re in a group of friends or of women that just get together and talk about their kids all the time and maybe even complain about their kids or worry about their kids out loud. That whole energy becomes your life, becomes what you are actually creating in your life. If you’re chronically worried about your health or your money situation or you’re worried about your future instead of looking forward to your future and creating something amazing in your future. But you’re so in the loop and the habit of worrying about it instead, that’s exactly what you’re going to create for yourself.

What we focus on, what we talk about we keep creating more of that. That becomes our reality and we don’t even know we’re doing it. It’s almost like we’re doing it unconsciously. So I want to wake you up, my friends, today. And I want you to know for sure that building the skill of dreaming big is what you need to start doing, you have to. I’m so good at it now. I dream so big and I keep a lot of dreams to myself but I share a lot of dreams with my clients.

I don’t really tell my husband very many of them because he gets totally freaked out because he knows I am completely like a dog with a bone. I’m for sure going to make all my dreams come true. And I had this new thought this week that you know what, I have so much admiration and respect for Oprah. I’ve just watched her for, what has it been now, you guys, the last 40 years become a magical human being and create a fantastic, over the top brilliant life. And put out nothing but goodness in this world.

I just keep my eye on her and she’s always kind of in the back of my mind. And this week I had this thought that I’ve never had before. But as I was coaching my clients and really what they’re really working on is dreaming big and learning how to want what they want and be okay with that. And know that whatever their want, they’re supposed to get to work to create it, that’s why we’re here. That’s what I believe with all my heart.

And so when we’re in the second half of life, we have spent most of our life, let’s just say the first 50 years, not even kind of believing that we get to want big things or it’s selfish to want big things. But what I’m telling you for sure, it is so not selfish and we’re supposed to want big things. And that’s how we create more magic in our life. We get everything we want when we’re focused and when we believe that we can have it.

All it does is create more goodness and it just has a ripple effect to everybody who gets to be around us, whoever is drawn to this positive optimistic energy that we’re living with on a daily basis. And so this is what I believe about Oprah and this is what I thought this week. I thought, you know what, everything Oprah has, I absolutely can have that too. I mean why not, why couldn’t I? I have another 40 years here on this planet. I’m already planning out the next 40 years and everything that I’m focusing on, you guys, keeps growing.

So I mean why not, I can totally see myself having everything Oprah has. I don’t even really know everything she has. I just know that she has a lot and that she uses all of her goodness for good and for the goodness of the planet and for the goodness of all the people. And this is the way I love to think about her. She’s so inspiring to me. And she lives in Montecito and that’s the town I’ve always wanted to live in. Jeff told me the other day, he goes, “You know what, in your next life I think you’re going to be the famous realtor in Montecito.” Because I’m so obsessed with Montecito for some reason.

But I’m telling you everything I have ever been obsessed with in my life, I’ve created it for myself. So I don’t know, you guys, just watch me move to Montecito one day is what I’m thinking. I might even be Oprah’s neighbor, you never know because what we focus on, grows. So as you can see, I do not focus on what I lack because I truly don’t think I lack anything. I focus on everything that is beautiful and amazing and incredible in my life. This is an intentional practice that is very much a habit for me. So you know what happens in my life? My life keeps getting more incredible.

My life keeps getting bigger and more amazing. And this is the energy that I bring to my everyday life. I am not focused on any lack in my life. I do not think that I lack anything. This is how it works. So it is a mindset and mindset is a muscle that we have to keep working at to grow this ability. It’s an ability that you get to have in your life.

If you’re a woman in the second half of life who wants to learn how to dream big and to become more of your highest, more peaceful, more peace filled, more enthusiastic, love filled self, then you have to focus your brain on those qualities about yourself.

I’m going to tell you a practice that I have. So all of my clients get a really cool workbook that I created. They get this workbook in the mail right away. And in it is a feelings list and there’s three pages of feelings because we get really good at feeling when you’re working with me. Feelings become our super power, negative feelings and positive feelings, all the feelings. But on this feeling list I have them go through and highlight specific feelings that they feel every day on repeat, feelings that they’re familiar with.

And they highlight them with one color and then I have them go back with another color and have them highlight feelings that they’d like to get more of, create more of. So we start focusing on the thoughts that would create these feelings. And so a long time ago, when I created this book, I went through and highlighted the feelings that I wanted to create more of in my life that I absolutely have, I honestly, I’m going to read you these feelings, I absolutely can tell you very confidently that this is who I am when I read you these feelings.

This is actually who I am on a daily basis because this is what I have been practicing. This is what I spend my time focused on. And this is what I spend my energy on. And so this is what I’ve been growing in my life on a daily basis. So you’ll notice a little bit that these feeling words go in alphabetical order. I was very specific with these feelings. So this is who I’ve become. I am amazed, amused, appreciative and at ease. I am beaming, beautiful, blissful, brave and bright. I am calm, clear, compassionate, confident and connected.

I am curious, delighted, easygoing, energized and enthusiastic. I am exhilarated, excited, expansive and fascinated. I am festive, flexible, flowing, fluid and focused. I am genuine, glad, grateful and healthy. I am interested. I am motivated. I am open-minded and optimistic. I am radiant, relaxed, reliable, resourceful, respectful and responsible. I am secure, sincere, stable and steady. I am thoughtful and I am unhurried. This is who I am.

I want you guys to start practicing this. This is the most powerful practice that you can start growing in your life is to decide who you want to become very specifically and focus on that and start becoming more of that and her. So what we focus on, grows. So stop letting your brain on repeat talk badly about yourself. Stop focusing on your ‘problems’.

Stop talking badly about other people and complaining to other people about all of your problems and listening to other people’s problems. Because the more you do that the more those problems will grow and the worse you’re going to feel about yourself, the more negative energy you will create in your everyday life. And you guys, our everyday life is our life. This is it. I do not have one bad day. I will not allow it. I do not focus on that. I focus on everything that I have created.

That is so positive and so helpful and useful not only to me, not only to my family but to the world. I am so focused on my beautiful clients who are so invested in their own growth, in their own evolvement, and just working so intently on creating a life that they’re so proud of. I just am working side by side with them. I care so deeply about their work and who they are. And really my number one job is to show them how amazing they already are because they have believed their brain for so long.

So it’s such fun work to be a coach, to get to convince people of how magical they are because I know it 100%. I see it. And if you can just see yourself the way that I see you, everything would change in your life, I promise you 100%. All the goodness would keep growing and multiplying in the right direction. That’s how it works. So we have to intensely and intentionally and like a dog with a bone just focus on what we really want to grow and it’s very much a faith work.

They’re just thoughts and beliefs that we just keep putting into action in our life and keep expanding and taking ownership of in such an enthusiastic way. So I would love for you to do the practice of writing down like I did and you can even copy some of mine or all of my emotions, my feelings about myself, my thoughts about myself. You can copy any of those and just start writing them down every single day and put, I am in front of it. I am radiant. I am relaxed. I am reliable. I am optimistic. I am enthusiastic. I am in love with my life and so grateful for all of it. I am growing.

I am evolving into the next best version of myself. We wake up every day, you guys, with the opportunity to choose it. Every single morning we wake up with the new possibility to be our highest self just for today. That’s all it takes. I can do anything for today. And it all begins with a thought. A lot of it is just being disciplined in your mind and being focused on the right things and not on the negative things and not on what you lack, but on everything that you have. It’s very much a gratitude journey and really believing it.

So it’s a discipline of letting go of un-useful thoughts and picking up more useful thoughts. And those useful thoughts will keep expanding, will keep growing. What we focus on, you guys, my beautiful friends is what we create more of. And that is the truth and that is such a good thing.

Alright, I love you all, have the best week. Thanks for showing up today and I will see you next Thursday.

Thanks for listening to Reinvented After 40. If you want more information or resources from the podcast, please visit KymShowersLifeCoach.com.