Ep #18: Lessons from Marie Forleo | Becoming You Again Podcast

Today is a special episode where you get to listen in on my book club discussion of everything is figureoutable by marie forleo.

This week's episode is a peak inside the Becoming You Again Book Club discussion, where we discuss Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo, which was last month's book club choice.

You'll come away from this discussion with some great tips on figuring out the challenges in your life especially as a woman who has gone through divorce.

What you'll learn from this episode:

1. The five things that inform our beliefs and how we can change them if we choose.

2. The importance of attitude.

3. Small and simple steps create progress.

4. How comparison is holding you back.

5. The uniqueness of you.

List to the full episode:

Featured on this episode:

1. Interested in the Divorce Betrayal Transformation? Learn more here.

2. Are you lost and confused about who you are after divorce? Don't worry. I've got 51 Ways to Get to Know Yourself Again. Click here to download.

3. Want to know first hand how Karin can help you with your specific problems and create an even better life than when you were married? Click here to schedule a free consult.

4. Haven't left a review yet? No problem. Click here to leave one.

Full Episode Transcript:

Welcome back to Becoming You Again. I’m your host Karin Nelson. I’m a certified divorce confidence coach and this is the podcast where I teach you how to reconnect with yourself, create emotional resiliency and live a truly independent life, so you can have an even better life than when you were married.

I have a special podcast for y’all today. I have a book club run exclusively through my divorce support private Facebook group and it’s called Becoming You Again Book Club. Of course I have to go along with the whole theme of Becoming You Again and this last month we read the book Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo. And I just had the discussion with the group the other day and previously I have run discussions where everyone can come and speak their mind and kind of tell their own things and this month I ran it little bit different where I just showed up and kind of shared the things that stood out to me and the things that I have learned from the book hoping that it will help anyone who maybe has not read the book or was not able to get through the book or whatever in the book club but they would still come away with some things that could help them as they move forward in their life after divorce and I wanted to share this month’s discussion with everyone who listens to my podcast so that you can kind of see how it works. You can learn something from Marie Forleo’s book Everything is Figureoutable because it is an amazing book and I want to kind of share with you this discussion and so if you’re interested and you want to join the book club for the next month coming up you can do that. There will be a link in the description below. You can go ahead and click that and that will register you to join the book club. You will get emails telling you about the book, when the discussion will be and all of the good stuff that will keep you informed. But it is just a fun place for you to come and learn and be a part of the discussion and a community full of other women who are also going through divorce just like you and so I am going to share this. I hope you enjoy this episode. I am hoping that the sound will be okay because when I did this discussion I was not in my closet where I normally record my podcast and so the sound is a little bit better. I was actually in my office just on a Zoom and so it might be a little echoey but hopefully you can forgive me for the sound and just learn some amazing things from this book club discussion. All right. Here you go. I hope you enjoy.

Welcome to book club discussion for this month’s book which was Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo and I’m probably going to mess up on saying that word since it is not really a real word but I really like the word. Daisy says that she has read very little of the book. It is totally fine. You can totally come to listen and learn. That is part of what this book club is for is that if you have not had a chance to read the book or listen to it or get into it as much as he wished or hoped that is totally fine. I am going to offer you some of the things that I really learned from this book and some of the things that stuck out to me and I am going to share them with you. If you are watching this live, like Daisy, or if you are watching this on the replay, either way I hope you will learn something from the amazing things that Marie has to teach in this book because I think this is an amazing book. It is the second time I’ve read it. And of course, which always happens to me when I’m reading books I seem to get something different out of it each time that I read it, right? This book is no exception. The first time I read it I was in a totally different place. Right when it came out it was just a year or two after my divorce and now I am like five years out from my divorce and I am in a totally different place in my life and I am seeing so many different things in a different way than I did the first time. So I think that is the great thing about books in general is if we read them again and we are in a different place in our lives we kind of learn different things that we might need in those moments. So I will share with you the things that stick out most to me and hopefully you can apply them and maybe if you have gone through the book later on or have gone through some of the exercises that Marie has at the end of each chapter you will be able to get some really great things to help you evolve and grow in your life where you are at as well.

Alright so the first thing that I really wanted to talk about is in Chapter 3, it is called the Magic of Belief. Marie really focuses this whole entire chapter on how we create our own life experience. She talks about how our thoughts create our beliefs which then create our feelings which then fuel our actions and that is what creates our results or our life experience. Which is very, very similar to what I teach my clients when I am coaching them. I believe that thoughts and beliefs are basically the same thing. A belief is something you think over and over and over again and Marie just kind of lays it out a little different but really it comes down to the whole idea that we believe something and it makes us feel something and that is fueling our actions or inactions in our lives and that then creates our overall experience, our overall result in our life and so what I want to focus on specifically from this chapter is she talks a lot about first of all where our beliefs come from and she lays out five different areas where we form our beliefs as humans and I kind of want to go through those and then talk about how we can change our beliefs if we want to. Just because we have learned them and we think them does not mean we have to keep thinking them or keep believing them. And so the first way that Marie talks about we learn our beliefs is from our environment, right? It is from who we were raised by like our parents and our family and our society and our culture and our teachers and maybe our religions. If you were raised – I was raised Mormon. And so I do not happen to continue to be Mormon but my family is and I know all of the teachings and I understand them because I was raised in them and it definitely informed a lot of my beliefs as I was growing up. So just your environment in general will inform so many of your beliefs, whether you are aware of them or not because from the time that you are little tiny baby up until the time you move out on your own so many of the thought processes and things that we experience in our lives are coming from our environment and so those create beliefs whether we realize it is happening or not.

The next one, I just mentioned it, is our experience. Direct experiences over time. And so she talks about these experiences being positive and negative. And of course we all know this, right? Because of the things that we experience in our lives that is definitely going to inform how we perceive the world and the judgments and the expectations that we put out there and the way that we kind of view the world through a specific lens. So much of that comes from what we actually experience in our own lives whether those are good or bad experiences. That is how we inform our lives and it becomes some of the beliefs that we have.

The next one that she talks about is evidence. A lot of this would have to do with like the “truth” and I am going to put truth quotes because truth is sometimes subjective. Not always. Not all facts are subjective but truth often can be subjective depending on what is informing our beliefs and our truth in our life and so she is talking about in this specific example of evidence as coming from authority figures. So teachers would often be people who are informing us in our formative years. Again for me specifically religious, religious leaders. I do not know if you know anything about the Mormon church but we went to church every Sunday and during the week we had activities with leaders and so I had a lot of people who were authority figures in my life kind of informing the truth that I believed in my life as I was growing up and that has since created beliefs in my life that I have decided to either continue to hold onto or to change as I have grown. You probably do the same thing and have done the same thing as you have grown and had authority figures in your own life informing you on some of your beliefs.

The next one that she talks about is examples. And specifically like mentors. People that you witness out in the world who are doing things and you look at them and think, “wow if they can do that then maybe I can do that too.” And using these people as an example in your life that if it is possible for them it might be possible for me and you could take that on at the belief for yourself. She gives the example of Oprah who saw, I think it was Barbara Walters, Oprah saw Barbara Walters on television as a television host. You know she was on the news stations or whatever she was doing, and Oprah looked at her and thought, “There’s a woman who is hosting this news channel, this news station. I wonder if it would be possible for me to do that?” So she used that as a belief for her that it might be possible for her to create that as well. So examples are great things in our lives and sometimes not so great, right? Where do we get this information of some of the beliefs that we are having. Some are good, some are bad, some will serve us and some won’t and that is kind of why we have to take a look at them and decide whether we want to keep these beliefs or not.

And then the last example that she gives of where we get our beliefs is envisioning. And that basically means, we don’t necessarily have examples. Maybe we haven’t seen anyone in our life that has accomplished something that we want to accomplish. Maybe it’s truly just a dream in our heart or a desire. Like I want you to think about literally anything that we have in this life. Think about Steve Jobs. This is a very broad example but think about Steve Jobs before the iPhone was created and he’s envisioning this idea of; like we had cell phones, right? We had cell phones at the time but we did not have a phone that was literally like a little minicomputer in your hand and a camera in your hand and a video recorder in your hand that you could take with you everywhere you went and you could look things up and get directions and send emails and take pictures and video and do all of these things with this small little handheld thing. It was not created yet and yet he had this idea, this belief that something like that could actually happen. Maybe he did not know exactly how and maybe even didn’t know exactly the way but he had an idea and that is truly how so much of our beliefs start. They start with an idea. Like I wonder if it is possible for this thing to happen? And that is what she is talking about when she is talking about envisioning. We may not have an example anywhere out there but we have a desire in our hearts to believe that something is possible.

And so those are the five ways that we specifically have beliefs in our lives and because we all have these as humans we have this thing called confirmation bias and confirmation bias is really important to just understand that we all have it. Because basically it means that we look for evidence to support what we already believe. So she says, “simply put confirmation bias means we look for and find evidence to support our beliefs.” And so we cherry pick – this is continuing on with her quote, “We cherry pick information that confirms what we already know while ignoring consciously or subconsciously information that challenges our existing beliefs.”

We all do this. We all know - we believe in something, we know something and so we will just continue to look for evidence of that and if somebody brings in a different view or a different viewpoint or a different belief and told it to us we are like no, no, no, no. Confirmation bias will either reject that as truth, we will not open our mind to it or we just will completely ignore or not even see that it is there. Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It really is just our brain doing its job because one of our brains main jobs is to conserve energy. If you literally have to think about every single thing that was put in your way you would get nothing done because you would be focusing on so many other things. Right? So confirmation bias is there to help us but also there are times when it can hinder us from becoming our best self because often when we have these beliefs often we do not even know that we have beliefs about things and if we don’t take a look at them we will continue on and believe these same things the matter with happening outside of us because we have this confirmation bias. And so Marie says on page 42, “All beliefs are a choice.” And that is amazing news because choices can be changed. So I want to say that one time, “All beliefs are a choice and choices can be changed.”

Now I am not saying you have to change all of your beliefs about stuff. Some things you may want to keep and that is totally fine. Beliefs can be great. They will serve you if it is getting you to the point in your life that you want to have but if you have got things going on in your life that are not creating happiness, that are not creating joy and you feel like they are holding you back, take a look at what may be some of those beliefs might be and decide. Do I want to continue believing this thing, thinking this thing and if not what do I want to change it to instead? What do I want to choose to believe instead?

“So any limiting belief can be erased and replaced.” Marie talks about this on page 42 and 43 and really throughout the rest of this chapter of the Magic of Belief. We start by becoming aware of what we are thinking of, what we are believing. And then we decide to focus on what we want to believe that is different and then we repeatedly remind ourselves over and over and over the new thing that we want to believe with so much dedication that eventually it becomes a new belief. It becomes a new habit and it replaces the old belief. And this is truly what our brains do.

We have a very fascinating, beautiful, amazing brain. And basically what happens is when we have a belief it has created a neural pathway that makes it - again so easy for us to go back to that belief over and over and over again. It is one of the ways the brain conserves energy is to create a neural pathway. But you can change, just like Marie is saying, you can change your beliefs by creating a new neural pathway. And the way to do that is exactly what she says. You become aware of it first of all that it is something that you want to change. Then you focus on what you want to change it to you and you repeat it to yourself over and over and over and you practice it with yourself again and again and again, over and over and over with so much dedication that eventually that old neural pathway - your brain does not go to it anymore and instead it has formed a new one with your new thought and your new belief. It is such an amazing thing.

I have done my own life, especially with things like loving myself. With my money beliefs. With deciding that I am capable of so much more than I ever thought possible. With creating so much more happiness in my life. I have a podcast episode coming out about this in a couple of weeks about being more happy. But when I was creating this podcast episode I was thinking back about my life, five, six, 10 years ago - even growing up - and I was not a happy person. I just was not. I was always moody. That is how my mom described me. I was always moody. In my marriage I was not happy because I was completely relying on my husband to create happiness for me and after I got divorced and started going into work on myself and really understanding that my own happiness is up to me. It is not up to anything or anyone outside of me. I created new neural pathways of creating more happiness in my life. Of loving myself more. Of understanding me as a human and a unique person that has things to give that nobody else in this world has to give. And I started celebrating those things more and creating new beliefs about myself and it has created a completely different me. I am for sure a much happier person now than I ever was before finding this work and this is exactly what Marie is talking about. All beliefs are choices and choices can be changed and this is how you do it.

So like I talked about before I wanted to give a quick, another example. One example that I talked about was I changed my thoughts about money. So when I was married we both had good jobs. I was working part-time for a lot of it but toward the end I worked more full time and he had a good job and we made good money but we never seemed to have money. It was just always gone for some reason. I don’t know why, we were spending it. We were paying a lot of bills. We were not saving. All of the things, right? So when I got divorced I had this belief that I wasn’t going to be able to handle my life financially by myself because I believed that I needed a partner to be able to pay all of the bills, put money away in savings, take my kids on vacation, all of the things that we worry about financially. I just did not believe that it was possible for me as one individual to be able to provide for myself without my partner. And get to a place where money wasn’t a big deal and I wasn’t always worried about it at the end of the month. And it was a belief that I realized wasn’t serving me. I don’t want to believe that - that I have to have a partner to be able to create an amazing life financially or otherwise. And so it was a belief that I really had to work on to change and let go of and create a new belief that yes I am totally capable of taking care of myself and my children in whatever way I want. Whether it means that I pay off my bills. Whether it means I have savings. Whether it means I take my kids on vacation and I don’t put anything on credit cards. Like whatever that looked like for me, all of those things are true by the way, but whatever that looks like for you if you have a belief that you feel is holding you back write down what you want to believe instead and start working toward that. This is the way and it’s totally possible for you. Marie shows you exactly what to do. I can show you what to do. I am telling you as I am walking you through this, this is the way and it is a beautiful, amazing thing.

Okay so the next thing that I really liked about this book was she talks about our attitude and this is in chapter, um let’s see. I think it’s 4. Yep, 4, it’s the Eliminate Excuses chapter. There is so much good in this chapter. I talk a little bit about it in one of my previous podcasts a couple of weeks ago. I can’t remember exactly which one it is. But it’s one of them. Go listen to them all if you’re not sure because I’m definitely not sure and they are all really good. So if you haven’t listened to my podcast yet, Becoming You Again, you definitely should listen, but the one thing that I really want to focus on from this chapter specifically is attitude.

I believe spot on 100%, this is on page 60 and 61, that our attitude totally influences our life and our attitude influences our life so much more than we actually think. This part of the book it just like spoke to my heart so much because I believe it so much. Our attitude is way more important than we give it credit for. Attitude – she says on page 60 right in the middle. She say, “Attitude is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, money, circumstances, than failures and successes, then what other people think, say or do. It is more important than appearance, ability or skill. It will make or break a business, a home, a friendship, an organization and the remarkable thing is that I have a choice every day of what my attitude will be. I cannot change my past. I cannot change the actions of others. I cannot change the inevitable. The only thing that I can change is attitude. Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.” Now I do not know specifically if that is Marie’s quote or not because there’s a number by it and I didn’t actually look it up in the footnotes, but either way that little blurb right there in the middle of page 60 spoke to my heart because I see this all the time. In my own life with the whole happiness thing and changing my attitude to create more happiness, more joy in my life and with my coaching clients. I see it all the time.

In fact I had one coaching client a couple of weeks ago who was open to the idea - she was struggling with her parenting and with the overwhelm and with feeling like the world was on her shoulders and she was open to the idea that if you start thinking that parenting is easy and joyful and fun and not debilitating and heavy and hard that it would change her outlook. But then she comes back and says but if parenting falls solely on my shoulders then it is not going to be easy and it is heavy and it is hard and it is daunting no matter how lovely I want to think about it. But here is what is really fascinating about that and what Marie is trying to point out. It doesn’t matter what the circumstances. It doesn’t matter if all of the parenting choices and decisions and having to deal with kids, it doesn’t matter if that all falls on your shoulders because if she decided that parenting was going to be easy and joyful and fun or however she wants to think about it, right? That is different than daunting and hard and what was the other words use, heavy; she will show up in a completely different way depending on her attitude about it. It’s just how it works. It’s proven in the actions that come because of your attitude about it.

So if she’s thinking about parenting and she is thinking parenting is easy and fun and joyful, even when difficult, challenging situations come up as a parent. If you’re thinking about it in the way where your attitude is like this is easy and this is fun and I can totally figure this out you will show up completely different; more confident, more capable making it more fun, making it less hard than you would if one situation comes up and the first thing you think is this is hard, this is challenging, I can’t do this. I do not want to do this alone. You see how your actions would be completely different and it has everything to do with your attitude and how you’re thinking about it rather than pinning all of the blame on the actual circumstance. It really has to do with what you are thinking about and how your thinking about and how it that makes you feel and the actions they take coming from. And so attitude is everything. So if you don’t get anything else out of this book, read page 60 and 61 and implement that- just that because it will change your life. If you pay attention to how you are thinking about things, your attitude about the things that are happening in your life that are happening around you. This doesn’t mean that things won’t be hard. It doesn’t mean that things that aren’t fair aren’t going to happen to you. It doesn’t mean any of that. It just means that you get to choose how you want to think about it and that will inform how you show up in your life.

Okay so there are two more important things that I wanted to talk about before we end, that I really think are important. That Marie talks about in the book. The first one is in the Progress Not Perfection chapter but specifically on 179. The whole chapter obviously is amazing because so many of us are perfectionists and is holding us back from really stepping into who we are as amazing human beings. But she talks a lot about making small steps to create progress. And I think this is especially important when we are applying it specifically to divorce or if we are going through the divorce process. Because so often we think that we have to have it all figured out. Let’s say we’re going through the divorce process right? So often we think I have to have the plan. I have to know exactly what I am going to be doing, what is going to happen, what is going to get divided and how much time I am going to have with my kids and I need to know it all, otherwise how am I going to move forward. But the key here is small steps. Because if we think that we have to know it all or have it all planned out or know every step to whatever goal we are working toward, whether it is the actual divorce or setting up our home or how the custody agreement is going to work out or any of that, if we think we have to know it all that - just that thought right there can become very overwhelming and we won’t do any of it. Because we’ll just sit and stew in the overwhelm of I need to know how to do all of these things and I don’t know how to do any of them.

Especially with divorce. So many of us have never been through a divorce or even if we have it’s different in some way. So when we look at it like I have to know how to do this and I’ve never done it before that can seem very daunting and scary. But really when we break it down in this way that Marie is talking about in just small steps, you don’t have to know it all. You just have to know what the next best step is. And whether it’s best or not, maybe we don’t even need the word best, just the next step and you do that thing. That is how you are going to create progress in your life. And so Marie talks about with perfection we often stop ourselves from even taking any steps because she says in this quote down here on page 179, “ I’m never going to be as good as…” Whoever or whatever – put that in the blank, right? “So why bother trying.” My life is never going to look like this person’s life now that I am divorced. Or my life is never going to be this way now that I am divorced so why bother trying? Or I don’t know what the next step is so why bother trying? We stop ourselves even before we get started. But if we can just take one step instead of staying stuck what it will actually do is move us through the process and create things that seem impossible, create possibility in those moments.

She also talks at the end of this paragraph on page 179 about comparison and how comparison is like kryptonite. 100% I agree. Kryptonite to Superman is like death. It is the killer. It takes away all of his power. Comparison does the exact same thing. When we compare ourselves to others, which I think we naturally do. Okay I am not saying that you should never compare yourself or you’re a terrible person if you do. No I just think naturally it’s something that we do as humans. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to continue to do that. Especially when we realize that it’s not really serving us. But when we compare ourselves to others it keeps us stock because we aren’t able to focus on our journey. What we’re doing is taking the focus on putting it outside of us on we’ll look at what they are doing. They are amazing. I could never do that so I guess I’ll just not do anything. And this kind of goes along with what I was just talking about, taking the next best step. Because when we can drop the comparison and really just focus on our journey, where we’re at and what can we do that is one step forward. Drop what’s going on outside of you. Drop comparing yourself to your ex or his girlfriend or your parents or your friend who is still married or anyone else’s life, where they are at, and just focus on you and what you need right now and what would be the next best step that will help you move forward. That is what I want you to focus on and Marie talks so much about this in this Progress Not Perfection chapter. Go read it if you haven’t read it yet because it will be so helpful to so many of you.

And then the last thing that I just absolutely love from this book that I got so much on was in chapter 10, The World Needs Your Special Gift. She talks about – this is on page 239. She talks about the uniqueness of each and every one of us and this is something that I didn’t ever really believe I had. Especially when I was married. I was married for 20 years. And I just kind of thought that I was like all of the other people out there. And there’s nothing with being a part of the group. I’m not saying you should not be – feel included and be a part of the group. There’s beauty in that too, but also recognizing that you truly are a unique human being and what Marie says that I just love so much is she says, “No other person has or ever will have the unique blend of talents, strengths, perspectives and gifts that you have. You are a one time mega event in the universe.” I really want you to think about that. There is no one other person on this earth who has had your experience. Who has your talents, your unique personality and capabilities and has seen the world through the lens that you have seen it through with the beliefs and the challenges and the things you’ve overcome and the things that you’ve celebrated and all of that. There is no one other person who is like you and you have something to offer. Whether it’s something on a global scale or on a scale where it’s just between you and your family and your close loved ones. It doesn’t matter. There is something about you that is unique and beautiful and amazing and you have the opportunity and the ability to share that with the world in your own way. And I don’t mean like you need to go out and run for office now or you need to start a business that makes 50 billion dollars by the time you die. No. Like whatever that means for you personally, but share your gifts and your talents because there is no one else that can do it in the same way you can do it. And whether that means you share your gifts and talents with just yourself and your family – that’s totally fine. Or you go more broad and do it with your community or whatever is close to you – whatever that looks like to you – you get to decide. I’m not here to tell you how to live your life. But I am here to encourage you to recognize your beauty and your uniqueness that is unlike any other human who has been born, who is born now or who will be born. There is something so special and amazing about you and I hope that you know that and will take part in that. She says, “You were born with an innate power to create change both in your life and in the lives of others. This power doesn’t exist outside of yourself and it’s not something that you can buy or borrow. You already have it within you right now.” So go do something with it, whatever is important to you, do that. Use your unique gift and unique power to create the kind of life that you want.

Alright, that is it. Again I loved this book. I will probably read it again in a few years but if you have not read it yet. Please do. And if you have, make sure and send me an email or comment in the group your thoughts. What you learned. What you got out of it. Thank you for being a part of the group. You all are amazing and I love you so much. I truly want you to know that you – I know you’re going through hard things with divorce. I know. I’ve been there. I work with my clients and help them through it, but I also truly know that you can have an amazing incredible life after divorce. It does not have to define you. You are capable of creating anything you want in life. I believe it and I know that it’s possible for you too. Thank you for being here. Thank you for watching this. I love you all and I will talk to you soon.

If you like what you heard on today’s podcast and you want to know more about working 1:1 with me, you can go to www.karinnelsoncoaching.com and schedule your free consult to find out more. That’s www dot Karin nelson coaching dot com.

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