Beyond Your Limits with Dr. Christine Jehu

130. COACH'S CORNER: What lights you up? Digging deep into this journal prompt

• Dr. Christine Jehu

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Coach's corner with Dr. CJ! A follow up from Episode 129 digging deep into the journal prompt: What lights you up?

Engage with the first of three compelling journal prompts that challenge the narratives you've been telling yourself. It's time for change, and Dr. CJ is ready to guide you through a transformation that promises not just potential, but tangible progress.

Grab your journal and let's get to work! It's time to live a life beyond your limits!

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Speaker 1:

What does it look like to live a life beyond your limits? Hi, I'm Dr CJ, a copy obsessed psychologist coach and your personal virtual mentor. Too many of us are holding ourselves back, placing limits on what's possible and believing the false stories in our head that say we can't accomplish a goal or a dream. Together, we will rewrite the stories holding us back, tackle barriers and limits and build an incredible foundation for going after our goals and dreams. I'm here to support you, to challenge you and to coach you through and beyond your limits. And a quick caveat while I am a psychologist, this show is not therapy or a substitute for mental health treatment. Please connect with a licensed mental health provider for those needs. Alright, are you ready to live a life beyond your limits? Let's get after it. Hey, everyone, welcome back to another episode of Beyond your Limits. I am your host, dr CJ, and, as always, I am so happy and thankful that you are here.

Speaker 1:

If you listened in last week, you know that we are getting back up and going with the podcast. I shared some of my reflections on 2023, a little bit more about what's been going on with me, why the podcast took a little bit of a pause. So if you haven't listened to that episode yet, I encourage you to pause this one and go back and listen to that one, because today's episode is really digging into the journal prompts that I well, the first of the three journal prompts that I keyed up for you in keyed up, that's not the right word, teed up offered you gave to you at the end of the episode and really felt like I wanted to dig in more. So I have this episode and two more coming up for you that shares a little bit more about those journal prompts and we dig in and I give you a little bit more to explore in your life. And I know that I said in that episode that we're going to start doing a recap of the series Special Forces. But what I also asked of you in that episode is to give me some grace as I'm coming back into the podcast and really finding my rhythm for the year. I'll be honest, the January, it is the 17th and it has already been bananas and pajamas. I'm just telling you I'm not complaining. It has just unexpectedly moved a little bit faster and fuller than life has been recently.

Speaker 1:

A lot's been going on at work Again, nothing bad, just a different, unexpected rhythm and coming off of the holiday. It's a bit of a shock to the system. So I didn't necessarily get a weekend the first week back at work, and then my family members experienced illness over the holidays and so we celebrated holidays this past weekend. So I was out of town for a couple of days visiting with my family. So the down times that I had hoped to start to watch a couple of those episodes and batch record just didn't happen. And they're not going to happen this weekend either, because it is my girlfriend's birthday and I've got a whole extravaganza planned for the weekend. So I did happen to batch record the thoughts on these journal prompts. So you're going to get those over these next few weeks and if I get to that place where I can start watching Special Forces, we may have some weeks with some dual release. Because I want to make sure that you're getting these prompts over the next three weeks so you can really dig in and do the work.

Speaker 1:

And I'm so excited y'all, we have got a surprise coming. I told you I teased it last week. I'm so freaking excited. I hope that you are like JU. What the heck is going on? What are you talking about? I'm on the edge of my seat.

Speaker 1:

I'm so excited to share with you what I've been working on with our favorite journaling, ninja Megan. We've got something good coming and I'm telling you. You'll know in the beginning of February what it is. I promise there's going to be a whole special podcast episode about it. So a lot of really cool things are happening. I feel the 2024 energy I don't know if other people are picking up on that or experiencing it as well. I've been seeing a lot of language on social media and posts about it being an eight year, like when you add all of the numbers together and that means something significant and like good and change and movement and prosperity and all that good stuff. So I am here for it and I am feeling it and I'm really, really excited. It's also the year of my 40th birthday, so maybe I'm picking up a little bit of that energy and just ready to move into that next decade of life. So, anyhow, this is a much longer introduction that I plan to give you, but make sure you've grabbed your journal for the year so that you can dig in and snag these journaling prompts and really spend some time getting into it. You know, I tell my students, as I work with them, and my clients, the shit works if you work it. I can put it out here all day long. But simply listening to this podcast, if you're not doing the work to put pen to paper and slow yourself down and really get into these questions, all it's going to do is live in your brain and probably fly out your ears if you don't take the time to dig in and get to work on it. So get to work. You know my DMs are always open. The real Dr J Hu. Let me know what's coming up for you and let me know how I can help. So glad you're here Today.

Speaker 1:

We're digging in deeper to the journaling prompt that was offered in episode 129. Some of the prompts that I offered you for some of the discovery as we are stepping into 2024. And if you've been here a while, you know I can just talk and talk and talk through some of these prompts. So the first prompt that I gave you was what lights you up and how can you bring those elements into your weekly rhythm? I was having a conversation with some women a couple weeks ago about this idea of recharging and taking care of ourselves through what lights us up. And there's this interesting thing that happens in adulthood where all of a sudden we're not allowed quote unquote to lean into childhood wonders and activities that we found really fulfilling and exciting as children. And I don't know if it's ever explicitly stated I think in some instances it is but it's almost like we get in our own way and move ourselves away from what makes us feel the most alive if it's not in alignment with this societal understanding of what it means to be an adult. And so I don't know why I left there. Probably because it makes me uncomfortable, because I don't wanna give up what lights me up. So one of the things I want you to think about as you're digging into this prompt of what lights you up is what did you do when you were a little kid, right that you never wanted to stop doing? Where your parents would have to call you in at the end of the night cause you're out doing whatever.

Speaker 1:

You get lost in time you maybe feel like you're in another world. What are those things? For me, it was being outside. It was playing soccer, it was riding my bike, it was looking at the stars. I had forgotten that I could lay in the front yard on a blanket and stare at the sky for hours, for hours on end, looking at the stars and just wondering, right, wondering and imagining what's up there, looking for shooting stars, and the longer that I would sit there and look up into the universe, the more dimension that I started to see, the richer it was, the calmer I became. And same thing with simply being outside. The longer that I was out there, the more I would discover the nuances in nature that I would see. And so those are some of the things. And then music. There are certain songs or artists that or types of music that take me back to a time where I just feel calm and excited and energized and that feeling of the whole world's out in front. And so what is it that I wanna do? What's gonna keep a smile on my face?

Speaker 1:

So, as you're thinking about what lights you up, take some time going back to wondering about what it was like when you were a kid and tap into some of those elements, and then you could maybe take that approach through different phases of your life. So what do you remember from when you're in elementary school and then middle school, high school, college and beyond college, right those different times of your life, and please try to not have any judgment around. What it is that lights you up. It's gonna be different for everyone. You don't have to have a reason why it lights you up. The reason is the feeling that you have inside, so let's work to honor that. I find so often when you talk to adults and you ask them what lit them up as a kid, they come to a place of starting to explain. We don't have to explain what lights us up. If it lights us up, it lights us up. It doesn't matter. And so try not to have judgment or feel the need for any further bit of explanation. Let's allow it to be what it is.

Speaker 1:

And then the second part is how can you bring those elements into your weekly rhythm? And it doesn't have to be in its totality. So take my pieces, for example, soccer being outside looking at the stars. One of the things that I could do is look into signing up for an adult soccer league and build that into my weekly rhythm. That would be a very concrete way and an organized way, right, and some accountability, and, yes, I have to put some money down for it, but it's something that I love and something that I look forward to. Soccer has been a part of my life since shoot, since, like middle school and I played soccer all through graduate school and it kept me grounded. Kept me grounded and connected to myself and not caught up in all of the. I just crossed my eyes, like all of the intense elements. That is graduate school, right.

Speaker 1:

And so now I think about the benefit to my life is that it would again give me that connection to self. It would give me that opportunity to step away from, honestly, the realities of life and, for 90 minutes, be immersed in this giant rectangle, chasing around and kicking a ball. It sounds quite fabulous to me, actually. But the other pieces right Looking at the stars and being out in nature. I'm not necessarily going to put a blanket down in my front yard and stare up at the sky, mostly because I live in the city and it's not always as dark and clear.

Speaker 1:

But what I can do is take more time to go on walks, right, whether it's walks in the middle of the day at work and finding my way back into some of the more nature filled spots around the campus where I'm at. I could go on walks in my neighborhood. I could get into the parks. There's a lot of parks around here where I could make that intention to go be in nature and kind of get away from the realities of modern life. And then I can simply take time to have a deep breath and look up at the sky, whether it's during the day and the clouds, or it's in the evening, and I pause before I get into my car at the end of the night, or I get safely into my car and take a moment before I start the engine and look out the window up at the stars.

Speaker 1:

Those simple moments, those micro moments of recharge and reconnection and re-grounding in the self, are so, so powerful and again it lights me up, and so I encourage you write down what are the things that light you up, what has lit you up throughout your life and how can we start bringing those back into our day to day life with intention. And maybe some of them are daily actions and others are weekly rhythms, while others might be monthly or quarterly rhythms. Be mindful of it and be intentional. Put it in your calendar. Sometimes we'll have to set reminders on our phone. Take a minute, breathe, look up into the sky, whatever it is. Maybe you're making a playlist on Spotify of the songs that you know bring you joy or make you want to move your body or just put a smile on your face, and we're playing those as we're getting ready for the day, or when something stressful happens at work or within your family, or on your commute. We're playing that playlist and intentionally bringing that energy into our life, being aware about what lights us up and bringing it in. So that's a further dig into what lights you up and how you can bring it into the daily rhythms, the weekly rhythms, the monthly quarterly rhythms.

Speaker 1:

I would love to hear what your insights are. So drop those on social media, tag me at the real Dr J Hugh and, beyond your limits pod, slide into those DMs. Let me know what's going on. If you have questions, if you're getting tripped up, talk to me. I'm there, I'm in the DMs. I love to connect with you and hear what you got going on. All right, friends, we'll be back soon with another, with the next prompt from the Welcome to 2024 episode. All right, I love you. We'll talk soon. Bye, bye.