Episode #35:

Soul Healing Sundays: Priorities and Intentional Living: Increasing Capacity with Ceri Payne

Today’s episode is all about increasing capacity and living intentionally, which is one of my favorite things to talk about. I believe in personal growth, and that it’s why we’re all here on this planet. We should constantly be learning and increasing our capacity to grow and love ourselves and those around us. Who better to talk to us about this than today’s guest, Ceri Payne.

Ceri Payne is a Mom of three teenage girls, special education teacher and advocate, and certified Life Coach. She works with women to help them intentionally grow their capacities, and balance the demands of life and motherhood while working or creating a business. She’s here today to tell us how we can all live more intentionally and exceed in all areas of our lives.

Join us on the podcast this week where we’ll discuss three steps to increasing intentional living and how you can use them to become more effective and deal with challenges in your life. We’ll learn why you have to schedule time to create time, and how taking baby steps can help us achieve our results. You’re going to learn so much from this episode!

WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER



How to use organizational tools to increase your capacity.



Why decisions should never be made from a place of fear.



How to define your priorities.



The importance of a positive mindset.



How to view your challenges as empowering.

FEATURED ON THE SHOW



Check out more episodes of the podcast here!

TRANSCRIPT

Susan Crockett: Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa presents Soul Healing Sundays with Dr. Susan Crockett. You are listening to episode number 35: Priorities and Intentional Living: Increasing Capacity. This is an interview with fellow certified life coach, Ceri Payne. This episode is dedicated to Ceri’s husband, Dave ‘for believing in me when I don’t’.

Female Announcer: Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, where women learn to love their lives. Do you find yourself frustrated by society’s expectations? Looking for practical advice on how to discover your talents and level up your life? You’ve found the right place. Here’s your host, US News top doctor, robotic surgeon and certified life coach, Dr. Susan Crockett.

Susan Crockett: Hello, my virtuosas. How are you doing today? I’ve had a really interesting week. I’m your host, Dr. Susan Crockett and on the podcast here you can call me Sue because although I am a doctor in real life, I am not being your doctor right now, even if I am your doctor in real life. And I am so happy to be talking to you today about this concept of increasing capacity.

This is one of my favorite things to talk about. I believe in personal growth. I believe that is why we are here on this planet and what we are supposed to be doing is learning and growing and increasing our capacity, and our ability to love ourselves and those around us and understand the world. So today is a really fun interview for me with Ceri Payne. I know you’re going to enjoy it.

Today was another beautiful day in San Antonio, Texas where I work. I took care of a bunch of patients, did a bunch of procedures, figured some really fun stuff out. I’m teaching a resident now. I’ve got residents rotating from BMC, which is Brooke Army Medical Center, army residents and they’re just so full of excitement, and enthusiasm, and wanting to learn stuff. And it really makes me happy, it’s so much fun. So I had a really good day at work. And I’m just – I’m going to record this little intro and outro for you and this interview with Ceri, so I hope you enjoy.

So today’s show is an interview with Ceri Payne. She is a mom of three teenage girls and also a certified life coach with The Life Coach School. She has in the past been a special education teacher for nine years and she is a special ed advocate. As a life coach she works with women helping them balance the demands of life and motherhood while working or creating a business. How cool is that?

So she’s all about helping women intentionally grow their capacities in both motherhood and their career so that we as women can have both and do both exceptionally well. And she is an extraordinary coach. So here without further delay, here’s Ceri.
	
Susan Crockett: Ceri, hi. How are you?

Ceri Payne: I am great. How are you doing?

Susan Crockett: I’m great. I’m so glad to have you talking with us today. I hear you’re going to teach us about something that we haven’t had on the podcast before, which is increasing capacity, and prioritizing, and intentional living. So I am thrilled to have you here. How about if you start by telling us a little bit about how you ended up coaching and specifically in this area, how did you come to this?

Ceri Payne: So I was a special education teacher for several years while my kids were growing off and on as they got older. Then I went back to school and taught again. I always thought I would go get a – well I had my master’s degree in education.

So I always thought I’d go get a PhD in some kind of psychology or testing and assessment because I really enjoy that aspect of special education. But then my kids started to get older. And so I just thought I already have a degree. I already have a job I love. I’m just going to save my dollars, I guess. And I don’t know if that’s the right thinking but that’s what I thought about. And just allow them to be able to have college experiences. But then I came across life coaching.

And so when I found life coaching I thought this is exactly what I was hoping to do, be able to help people in this capacity, just so that they can be able to have an amazing life and the life that they dream of. And then for me, coaching on organization, and schedules, and time, that’s just something I’m very passionate about, something that I need. I’ve always used it a lot in order to make us successful. We moved 18 times in 16 years, I had three kids.

Susan Crockett: Oh my gosh, wow.

Ceri Payne: Yeah, we had three kids in three years. So just really maximizing my time has just been something I’ve always been really passionate about. And it’s allowed me to be able to grow my coaching business while I taught school full-time.

Susan Crockett: That is amazing. So this is interesting to me because I am a little different than you on that. I can be organized but this shelf that I’m looking at, on my bookshelf above where we’re doing this interview right now is filled with unfilled planners. I like to buy planners and plan that I’m going to plan and then I never take them actually down and use them until recently.

So I’ve been working with my own coach on changing things in my life, increasing capacity, stepping up into the next thing. And she has really been on me about the importance of journaling and writing, and planning, and then following through and evaluating it. And to me it’s always seemed like just too much time. It takes too much effort to do that. Who has time for that? I’m busy. But I’ve been doing it for 19 days straight.

Ceri Payne: Awesome.

Susan Crockett: I’ve got to tell you, I’m journaling five pages a day in my little journal now. It’s filled with all this stuff and it’s really helping me and I’m making big progress. And so I am super excited to hear your ideas for our listeners about increasing the capacity and how you use organizational tools to help that.

Ceri Payne: Yeah, awesome. So I know it’s your podcast but I have a question for you. After 19 days, right before you started you’re like who has time for that? And now you’re writing five pages. Do you feel behind? Do you feel like you don’t have time? Or how is it going for you?

Susan Crockett: No, I don’t. So I’ve added it to my morning routine. And that’s the other thing I’ve been working on is just really looking at what my routines are in the morning and at night particularly, because my days are scheduled for me pretty much. But my morning routine, I was really kind of sloppy about it, I’d give up and have some coffee and watch TV. And if I felt like doing something I would. But now I am getting up and I’m like, no, I’ve got to journal. So that’s prioritized. And I’m doing it on all kinds of levels.

There’s just the physical movement exercise kind of thing that I’m doing to hold myself accountable. But also just things like what I’m thinking about, and where my brain is going, and where I want to go with the podcast or with my life. And all of that stuff is starting to come out. At first it was two little lines about I ate this and I’m planning on not eating that. And I didn’t do it right yesterday.

And now it’s all this stuff about why I didn’t follow what I thought I was going to do and what was the result anyway. And was that okay, and where I am with my integrity, with myself in keeping that accountability, so just, yeah.

Ceri Payne: I love it.

Susan Crockett: It’s fascinating.

Ceri Payne: Yeah. Our brains are fascinating, if you give them time to slow down and to just think and to be still it gives us so much information. I think we ignore it all the time, because I’m too busy to listen to what you have to say. And it’s giving us direction, listen to it.

Susan Crockett: Yeah, it is, right?

Ceri Payne: Yeah.

Susan Crockett: So prioritizing the time to do it has been one thing. But then just it’s been helping me sort out, well, what do I want to do with my time other than just sit and binge on Netflix? Or what do I want my body to look like, or how do I want to be?

And where does all of that work life balance, work life mom, physical, emotional, spiritual, where does it all fall? And what is my capacity now to deal with it versus what do I want to be able to take on in six months? Because I’ve got all this cool stuff coming down the pike and I’m learning how to step into that and I am not there yet. So maybe you can give me some tips.

Ceri Payne: I was like you, talking about all my favorite things, like you just said. I can be here for hours.

Susan Crockett: So tell me how to do it, Ceri.

Ceri Payne: Yeah, let’s go for it. Now, so I hear you asking or talking a lot about intentional living. That’s kind of where you’re focusing on is that?

Susan Crockett: Right, right.

Ceri Payne: And you’ve mentioned the same that I would, the key is to just really prioritize what you’re focusing on, what’s important to you. And so I’ve just kind of come up with three ways, if you’re okay, and I’ll share them with you to allow us to be able to increase our intentional living.

Susan Crockett: Okay, go for it, tell me.

Ceri Payne: Alright. So you mentioned it, the first thing we do is we define our priorities. And our priorities are what is important to us and then the why. Why is it important? So it’s not what’s important to everyone else, or what you should be doing, or what you think, you should be doing that. And then you even mentioned priorities are often in some of those areas like health and relationships. It might be financial, spirituality, motherhood, career, some of those main areas.

So once you define your priorities and what’s important to you and why then you can create the action steps to support your priorities.

Susan Crockett: So how do you write this out? Do you use just a blank page journal to do this? Or do you have kind of a worksheet or a formula that you use where you take priorities and then do the actions?

Ceri Payne: Yeah. I do have a worksheet that I walk my clients through. But basically in a nutshell, it’s like you kind of define your priorities and you just say what do you think they’re important on. And the fun thing that I like to do with them is then ask them how they spend their time each day. And then they write down those. And what we find out is they’re very different. And usually what’s missing is the thing they want to be coached on. Like their business isn’t growing or they want to be a better mom. And when they write down what they do, that’s not missing.

And so the cool thing is though you don’t have to beat yourself up, because you’re like of course it’s not my business isn’t growing, or of course I’m not losing weight. Because you’re not spending time getting that thing done and the priority each day. So it’s kind of a cool realization.

Susan Crockett: That’s really crazy cool. So I’ve been reading a book and I’m working on a podcast kind of mini course thing on sufficiency. That’s the theme for this week. And I’ve been reading this book called The Soul of Money, it’s by Lynne Twist. And she talks about sufficiency and money. And one of the things she says at the very beginning of the book is, “If you want to see where your priorities are, pull out your checkbook.” And I’d never thought about that. She’s like, “If you want to see where your thoughts and your intentions are, pull it out and see.”

And she goes through this whole story about how when they did that, when her kids were younger she thought she wanted to be a great mom and do all this stuff with her kids. And she pulled out her checkbook and it was all about wine, and dinners, and business stuff, and cars, and hardly anything for kids. And she realized that that was this huge aha moment, this huge reflector about where are my priorities and where do I want them to be. So I thought that was kind of cool.

Ceri Payne: That is awesome. And to play on her words, it’s the soul of money. But your priorities are what your soul really is desiring, what’s important for you. And then once you are able to discover them, and part of the work she is asking why. They say health’s important. Why? And then they’ll give you an answer. And it kind of walks you through, ask why again, and ask why again. And it might ask you five times before you really get the reason why it’s important.

And notice if your reason is fear based then it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not a priority, but it means it’s maybe not the right why. So if I have a client that’s trying to lose weight because they’re afraid that they’re going to maybe get high cholesterol, or type 2 diabetes, or heart disease because it runs in their family, that’s fear based.

Susan Crockett: It’s not strong enough.

Ceri Payne: Right. And so it won’t allow them to be successful long term. So the why is really I’m afraid I’ll get type 2 diabetes. Well, why? Because I’m seeing this. But why? And so the why is the main thing, because you want it to be very motivational and not fear based, or it doesn’t last long term, because it doesn’t create the feelings you want to feel when you’re embarking in that as your results.

Susan Crockett: So I can totally see that. So I have been working on weight loss myself. And I have failed so many times on trying to get myself to eat right, trying to do this and trying. And it’s almost always, now that you mention it, it’s been fear based. It’s like because I don’t want to be unattractive, or I don’t want my high blood pressure to be bad, or whatever it is. And there’s a joke on the podcast here. I always talk about how I love Cheetos. That’s my go to thing. I haven’t had Cheetos in three weeks and I don’t miss them, and I don’t crave it.

And the mind shift that happened three weeks ago has to do exactly what you’re talking about it, and I hadn’t thought about it. But I’ve gotten to this point in my life where I’m like I want to take care of my body. And I want to encourage my body to do what it can do because in 10 years I want to be able to do x, y and z. And that suddenly has become a big priority to me, to be able to go skiing with my kids, and to be able to swim and be healthy, and enjoy life as I go forward. That’s been such a big mind shift for me, and it’s working.

Ceri Payne: Yeah, because imagine how fun it is, the feelings you’re generating, imagining skiing with your kids and being out with grandkids or whatever. Versus being fearful that you’re going to look like the aunt or the uncle, or whoever had a bad health journey and you can remember watching that. That’s just fear based, and your brain wants to run away from fear. So focus on the positive, it’s awesome.

Susan Crockett: Totally turn it around.

Ceri Payne: Yeah, that’s what I think.

Susan Crockett: So, wow, that’s cool, okay. So wait a minute, where are we on the three things? Did we do three things?

Ceri Payne: No, we’re still on number one. We have our priorities. Then we create our action steps to support your priorities. So I call these in my practice the needle movers. They’re both in your business, and your goals, and your motherhood, whatever you’re focusing on. These action steps are the things that you’re going to do. And when you do them you’re going to see results. You’re going to see changes and you’re going to create feelings that you want to feel.

So for example, let’s say it’s health, since that’s what you were talking about. If you’ve decided health is a priority then the action items are going to be different for everyone which is what’s amazing. It doesn’t have to look like everybody else. But let’s say you decide for your action items, you’re going to drink 80 ounces of water, participate in intentional movement for 30 minutes every day. And maybe you’re going to meditate for 10 minutes a day.

So if health is truly a priority to you, and that’s what you determined health looks like for you, then those action items are what are going to get put on your schedule. Because what we schedule we get done.

So if we want to be successful you have to schedule time for that. Because we know that our priorities, if we know that they’re very clear, then we’re going to stop feeling busy, we’re going to stop feeling too overwhelmed. We’re going to stop feeling confused of what to do, how to do it, because we are going to know exactly what we want to be focusing on and why. And so if we schedule it then we know how and where it’s going to fit into our day.

Susan Crockett: Brilliant. That’s brilliant. Now all we have to do is follow through on the schedule.

Ceri Payne: And that’s a little bit of mindset and coaching can help. But it’s so much easier to follow through when you really know your why. Just for example you had mentioned, you’ve been trying to lose weight. You’ve been on this weight loss journey. Notice the only thing that changed was your shift in the why. And now it’s been very easy to un-schedule Cheetos in your day.

Susan Crockett: Easy, yeah.

Ceri Payne: And it’s just a matter of your beliefs and your thoughts. And so that’s kind of where the priorities then come into play. And then the next thing we’re going to talk about results. And when you know those then you do stay way more committed because the motivational level is so much more high.

Susan Crockett: So is it that you believe you can achieve the results or that you start to see results, or how do you use results in all of this?

Ceri Payne: Yeah. I think it’s a little bit of both. So I don’t necessarily work with weight loss clients a lot, but I do have a few. And we may just start out with removing one thing. So let’s say they ate two cheeseburgers every day for lunch from McDonald’s. Maybe we’ll just say, “How about you just eat one?” So that’s just a little change. It doesn’t take as much willpower and motivation. It’s just like, “You know what, I can just try it,” just be really curious.

But then as they start to do one cheeseburger and some fries, but they start to notice they may feel better, or maybe they actually are losing weight, or they’re noticing a shift in the clothes are fitting better. Then they’re going to be more motivated and they’re going to like, “Ha, I wonder what would happen if I chose to eat the chicken sandwich instead of the cheeseburger.” And then maybe it’s like, hey, what if I eat a salad.

So I think they kind of play on each other, if you have the right why, you have the right results, you know why you want to do it. Then as you start to see some of those results, it creates feelings of motivation, and desire, and excitement, and you’re going to want to keep doing it.

Susan Crockett: So the other thing I like about this is that it’s not the all or none approach. And we’ve talked about this on the podcast a little bit before, how so often we have this idea that we’ve got to follow all the rules or we’re going to trash it and just give up. And this approach really gives the benefit of the doubt to just try the little thing, be curious about it, and be okay with just the little tiny baby step. And then add the little baby steps together.

Ceri Payne: Right, because if that’s going to motivate you and you’re going to be curious and want to try it, that’s way better than being like, “This diet would be way too hard. If I have to give up Cheetos for the rest of my life I’m out.”

Susan Crockett: Forget it.

Ceri Payne: Alright. But then you’ll naturally get to a point to maybe Cheetos aren’t – maybe you give them up permanently, maybe not. But they’re going to be very insignificant in your life as compared to before when maybe they were a daily thing. They’ll be maybe a monthly thing, or maybe you eventually get rid of them altogether. And you get to make that decision when it feels totally doable.

If someone said, “Get rid of them forever right now, and you never have to have them again,” that doesn’t really motivate you and maybe that would scare you. So that’s not where you want to start your dieting from, is a scared…

Susan Crockett: Yeah, scarcity mindset.

Ceri Payne: Yeah. You want to be really confident. And so that’s the way to go is, start small.

Susan Crockett: Okay. So knowing our priorities, so if we know our priorities then that gets us on the first step to living and intentional life. So that’s step number one. What’s step number two?

Ceri Payne: Yeah. So step number two to have this intentional life, and they kind of go hand in hand, but it’s to know your results. So it’s hard to be intentional with your life if you don’t know where you’re headed, or if you don’t know what you want to accomplish. So for example, let’s say you’re headed to the mall for a very specific reason, let’s say you wanted to buy a new pair of jeans. And then your shopping experience, it’s going to be very intentional, it’s going to be purposeful. It’s going to be very efficient, because you know exactly what you’re doing.

And I’m not saying that all shopping trips have to be for that specific purpose. Sometimes you might want to go to the mall for some entertainment, maybe to window shop or to browse or to look at the new styles, or to spend time with friends. And that’s of course okay too, but just knowing that you’re going to get a very different result than for that purpose of I need to find a new pair of jeans.

Susan Crockett: Okay. I see where you’re going with this. I like it.

Ceri Payne: Yeah. So if you know the result, you have that in mind, then you know why you are doing something. And then at the end of the day you have some data, or in this shopping trip experience you have the data to know whether you accomplished what you set out to do.

Susan Crockett: I love data. I’m a data nut. I will analyze data. Yeah, that’s a lot of fun. So the journaling I’m learning but data’s my thing. So anything that I can do when I’m doing results to give me objective data. That works for me.

Ceri Payne: Yes. And I love to work on data just because there’s drama and there’s data. And so if we can work with data then we actually become more clear on what we’re doing. So you can apply that same scenario into your work, to your life, to your mother, to career, whatever. But when you know what you’re doing then you know the action steps. They’re going to look very different. If you’re going to the mall to have lunch with your friends it’s going to look very different than the action steps to go to the mall and find a new pair of jeans.

Susan Crockett: Yeah, okay, got it.

Ceri Payne: So when we know what we desire, when we know our goals then we can intentionally map out those steps needed to accomplish the goal, just kind of like I said, but apply that to you and your motherhood or your career, whatever you’ve got going on. Because if we hit the goal then again we have data, and we can ask ourselves, what went well? What would you do again? What would you do differently? What keeps me motivated or what kept me motivated to keep going? And you might even ask yourself, what was more difficult than I expected?

Susan Crockett: Wow, yeah, that’s a good one.

Ceri Payne: So it’s always nice to know I hit my goal. What’s going well? How did I do that to really analyze that data? So you know what to keep doing. But if you don’t hit your goal, when you have the result you don’t have to go into feeling bad, feeling shame, feeling regret because it’s still data.

Susan Crockett: Right, it’s just objective data, just give me the facts and let me adjust.

Ceri Payne: Yeah. So you ask yourself those same set of questions but you reflect. You change up your actions for next time. So it’s like, hey, what was more difficult than I expected? And then if it’s, you know, I don’t even know. Well, let’s say it’s the Cheetos came out with a new holiday brand. Then you’re like maybe I won’t go down the Cheetos aisle anymore. Or maybe I will just decide, hey, I will try every one holiday Cheetos brand one time just for curiosity and then I can move on.

But notice how if you just can reflect without beating yourself up, being angry that maybe you didn’t hit your goal and ask those same objective questions. You’ll have some data to go on and hit it next time.

Susan Crockett: So much better. Okay, so number one is define your priorities. Number two is know your results. What’s number three?

Ceri Payne: So number three is scheduling time to plan out your week. Now, take a deep breath. But I really promise I can actually save so much time and mental energy if you take an hour or even less each week.

Susan Crockett: An hour.

Ceri Payne: Or less, it doesn’t…

Susan Crockett: Okay.

Ceri Payne: But to plan out the coming week, right?

Susan Crockett: Yeah, it’s funny. That came out kind of unscheduled, but that’s funny, okay. Alright, keep going.

Ceri Payne: Alright. So we often feel like, and I can probably tell from your action or your reaction, that you’re too busy and we don’t have enough time to sit and make a plan. But I promise that planning actually saves time and it creates pockets of useful time in our day or our week that otherwise that we would use with less efficiency. So we can plan ahead of time or we can figure out or solve the problem at the time. But figuring it out in the middle at that time, it takes way more time. It takes way more mental energy than it would have if you just preplanned.

Susan Crockett: Really, Ceri, really, if I’m on the way home from work and I haven’t figured out what I’m doing for the evening, it takes more time for me to fiddle through, am I going to write a podcast or watch TV, or cook dinner, a really nice dinner, or call my friends. It takes more time than if I sat down and figured it out to begin with?

Ceri Payne: Yeah. And here’s why, because you just wasted so much mental energy trying to decide. And at the end of work your brain probably doesn’t want to do very many of those things anyway.

Susan Crockett: It doesn’t.

Ceri Payne: And so here’s where you waste the time, you come home and then you get on Netflix, or you get on…

Susan Crockett: I do.

Ceri Payne: Because your body doesn’t want to get going. But if you planned ahead of time like hey, after work today I’m going to record a podcast, or whatever it may be. Then your body’s almost gearing up for it, it’s ready for it. It doesn’t signal like, hey, the end of my work day at your nine to five job is the end of my work day. Because you’re like, hey, I’m going to do this other thing and then you can get excited about it. You can work on it.

And it doesn’t always make it super exciting. But what it does is it takes out all the mental energy you just wasted. And when you get home it’s like you know the plan. And when you know the plan, we’re always more motivated to get started.

Susan Crockett: This is totally off topic, but I’m going to interject it here because it’s funny and it’s true. So I use the same thing when I’m counseling patients about libido and sexual energy. So I have a lot of patients who when they get to be a certain age they start losing libido. And they always want testosterone, or a medication, or something like that. Certainly there are all kinds of dysfunction that have medical reasons and are not what I’m talking about here.

But the vast majority of them when I ask them, when they get engaged or in their activity, do they function well? And they’re like, “Yes, I just can’t get into it.” And so we give them this exercise to plan it, not to take it like to sterility, but to get their mind thinking about it so their body is prepped for it as they get through their day. And then all of a sudden they find that when the time comes in the evening their brain, especially for women this seems to work really well. The guys are a lot more easier to get there. But women, this is a really important thing for getting them in the mood for sex.

So this reminds me of that, it’s kind of the same thing, if you’ve got it scheduled your brain’s already anticipating it and your body’s going to follow.

Ceri Payne: Yeah. And then it just, because you’re not shutting down early. And I think when I had three kids in three years that would have been the last thing. But if my husband would have sent a text like, “Hey, do you want to spend some time and go on a date tonight?” Then your whole – it’s almost like saving energy a little bit, you know where it’s going throughout the day. And so you don’t sprint and use it all by noon, you spread it out and you know that it’s there.

And then of course, anticipation is really awesome just in anything, not just in sex, and so anticipation of it and the planning for it, you’re right. So it’s exactly like that and you’re way more willing to follow through on stuff when it’s planned.

Susan Crockett: Awesome.

Ceri Payne: Alright. So a key to a schedule, and this is what I always tell everyone is that it really shouldn’t power us. And it should create clarity and it should create guidance. You don’t want your schedule to overwhelm you, or make you feel defeated or too busy before you even get started. And so that’s what many of us do. We have too many shoulds on our schedule, too many things we think we need to be doing. And so of course when we look at our schedule we feel very overwhelmed.

So if you’re not planning, if you’re one of those people that are not planning, I want you to ask yourself why.

Susan Crockett: Because I beat myself up when I don’t get it right, that’s exactly it, right?

Ceri Payne: Right. So that answer to your why, that’s going to uncover your beliefs about scheduling your planning. So too much time, you never follow through anyways, that’s probably yours. I’m not in control of my time, many of us with younger kids or older kids we feel like we’re not in control of our time. Or we say, “My kids, career, business, it’s just too much time, it can’t be scheduled.” Or we say something like, “Something always comes up and it ruins my schedule, so we feel defeated.”

So if you have any of those kind of thoughts, if that sounds like you and you’re struggling to create or stick to a schedule, that’s your reason why. You have not created a belief that you are in control of your schedule or that creating a schedule will empower you or guide you to success.

So that’s the key is realizing what you really think about a schedule. Because if you believed it you would do it, everything you believe in life that’s going to give you a good result, whether it’s the glass of wine, the working out or a great job, if you believe it’s going to give you the result you want then you’re going to make time for it.

Susan Crockett: Well, that’s what I’ve seen with my journaling now is that it is getting me the results and so it’s reinforcing itself, yeah, that’s exactly right.

Ceri Payne: Right. So the more things you do in this way, and so if you have been a person that either used to plan but felt unsuccessful, what I urge you to do is try again, but this time plan with priorities and with your results in mind. And if you schedule those things that will support your priorities, that will support your results, get rid of all those shoulds and those comparisons. And then you’re going to notice your schedule’s going to be much more successful because you’re actually planning what you want to do.

Susan Crockett: And I’m in control of my own thing. Why have I not done this so well before?

Ceri Payne: Yeah. We create our schedules and then we hate them and we’re mad at them, it’s like we did it.

Susan Crockett: Fighting with ourselves, it’s ridiculous. Okay, so this last part, such good stuff, so good. This last part about increasing capacity is super interesting to me. This is like the whole theme of Becoming Virtuosa is becoming the best version of yourself, increasing your capacity, growing. And I’m personally always working towards the next capacity, what am I supposed to be stepping into? So I’m really excited to hear what you have to say about how we use these tools to increase our capacity to be able to handle more difficult or challenging things in life. So tell me about that.

Ceri Payne: Alright. So this is really fun because this is where our thinking and our mindset makes all the difference, just how we talked about in schedules. It’s also very important for us when we’re handling situations in our life. So when you say, “My life is being given more and more difficult challenges,” how does that make you feel to say that?

Susan Crockett: You know what; I’m a little bit weird. It makes me feel proud because I like the challenge, I think that’s cool. I think it’s motivational. But it also sounds like life – it’s like looking up a very steep staircase. That it can be a little overwhelming or feel painful, or tiring too when you start looking at things that, like I can’t handle or don’t handle in my capacity now that I’m going to face in stepping up into the next level.

Ceri Payne: Exactly. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about are those two different mindsets and the shifts of it. So a lot of times when we say, “You know what, my life just keeps getting, like 2020, one more difficult challenge after another.” We’re saying that, that will make us feel defeated or tired, possibly, exhausted. Because it’s what we are viewing a challenge as, but as you said and this is how I feel is that a challenge can grow us. They can allow us to tap into our creativity.

Challenges can help us focus on what I mentioned, the needle movers, the things that are very essential and very important. A lot of my clients right now are growing a business, have children at home. And now they’re home schooling them. And so that was a challenge. But when we really focused on what are the essential and the important in both their business and their motherhood, they’re actually getting more done and they’re being more successful in their business because they are very intentional in doing what’s important. And so challenges have been a good thing for them.

So while I don’t of course wish a challenge in my life, I do try and look at, like you said, the bright side. What’s possible? What can I learn through this? How can I grow through these hard times? So a challenge becomes worse when we start to think about the what ifs. When we start to worry about the problems, when we start to think what if this might happen or what if that might happen, and what if it’s the wrong choice or I make a bad choice.

So again, my favorite word, data, you take the data, you take the facts of the challenge and you write them out. And so those facts, those data, they’re just neutral. I was diagnosed with, or my son got in a car accident. Those are just facts and they’re data. And those are things we can solve for or plan for. But it’s our thoughts about the facts, it’s our thoughts about that data, that that’s where we create the drama, not the challenge.

Susan Crockett: Always. Always, right?

Ceri Payne: Right. So then that challenge becomes a negative challenge. So again, when we face what you will say like a challenge, which again the word challenge is just a thought in of itself. But let’s say we face an unexpected situation, it’s often very typical to maybe complain, to feel defeated, upset, annoyed, sad, all of those. That’s human nature. But what I like to say, if that is your tendency then I like to challenge you to do the equal airtime approach.

And the equal airtime is, set a timer, and if you’re going to worry, and complain, and fret, and ask all the what ifs, and all of that, let your brain do it for five, ten minutes, however long you want. Then switch over to the opposite of what could also be true. So you could ask yourself, what’s good about this time? What new skills am I learning during this challenge? How can I make the best of this situation? What’s something good or positive that’s coming out of this that I didn’t expect?

Susan Crockett: And actually sit there in the same amount of time doing that?

Ceri Payne: Yeah.

Susan Crockett: Oh gosh, it’s like giving equal airtime to the half empty and the half full. Who does that?

Ceri Payne: Well, people that want to then not have to look at maybe that half full for as long, because naturally our brain’s going to do that. And then you’re like, hey, but let’s focus on the blessings or the bright side. And then eventually your brain will naturally see some of those things before you give it the negative equal airtime. And you’ll eventually make a shift, kind of like we talked about the two cheeseburgers versus the one. You’ll see the results. You’ll see how good it feels to look at your challenges as empowering and you’ll make that natural shift.

Susan Crockett: Cool. It’s so cool. Alright, Ceri, this has been an information packed great session. I learned so much today. Thank you so much for bringing this. If you’re going to leave our listeners with one take home, what’s the bottom line here?

Ceri Payne: Okay. So what I think may be the most impactful, and maybe for you more than anyone, but you have to schedule time to create time. And once you do that you’ll have more time.

Susan Crockett: You got me, you got me, Ceri. Awesome, okay, cool. So how about if you tell our listeners where they can find you if they want to work more with you, yeah.

Ceri Payne: Yeah. I’m most active over on Instagram, An Organized Life with an ed, so organizedlife.coach. My website is the same and I am on Facebook at Ceri Payne Coaching.

Susan Crockett: And your name, Ceri is spelled C.e.r.i. pronounced Ceri.

Ceri Payne: Yes, like the iPhone but spelled differently.

Susan Crockett: So we’re going to put all those links in our show notes. Ceri, thank you so much for taking your time out and being with us today, thank you for providing all this information for our listeners and yeah, thank you.

Ceri Payne: Yeah, it was truly my pleasure, thanks for having me.

Susan Crockett: You’re welcome. Bye.

Ceri Payne: See you.
	
Okay, what we’ve shown you today, a really fun show; I think it could have gone on for two or three shows actually. Maybe we’ll have to have her back again. We’ve shown you how to set priorities for intentional living and work on increasing your capacity. I hope you’ve gotten some practical actionable items from today’s show.

And now we’re going to come to my favorite part of the show which is what we’re listening to and reading. I let Ceri do this all on her own this week. I have nothing to add here. So she’s listening to some podcasts, Brené Brown is her favorite. She’s also one of my favorites. And she just recently finished up listening to her audiobook The Power of Vulnerability. So love that, go and check out some Brené Brown.

She’s reading a book by Mark Brackett called Permission to Feel. It’s all about understanding our emotions and what to do with them to strengthen our mental health and relationships.

And then she’s watching one of my favorites on Netflix, Designated Survivor, starring Kiefer Sutherland. So if you haven’t checked it out, there is a binge watch for you for this week.

Alright, so next week I’m going start a four week session where I will be teaching a new series on restoration. I think this is really timely as we’re coming through what’s happening with our country, elections are coming up. We have Covid winding down. We’ve been through a lot us people just through the quarantine. And I think this is a really good time to talk about restoration and what that looks like when we get to the end of a struggle. So I hope you’ll join me next week, actually for the next month, the next four weeks will be on restoration.

So, okay, my virtuosas, that’s all I’ve got for you this week. Have a wonderful week. Love always, Sue. And I will see you next week in episode 36.

Female Announcer: Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. If you want to find out more, come check out virtuosacoaching.com. That’s virtuosa - with an A - coaching.com. See you next week.

DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPT