Decide Your Life

Episode Summary 

Whether we know it or not, we are all deciding our lives. Every decision we make, one at time, moment by moment, add up to create the reality of our lives.

This means that we are never stuck where we are. If we are always deciding our life, that means that we always also have the power to decide something else anytime we want to. When you realize that you are a creator even with your unintentional decisions, it can inspire you to see what’s possible to create when you start making intentional ones.

In today’s podcast episode, I’m sharing a powerful and simple new way to think about how to decide your life and use that decision to create the reality you want.

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the 100% awesome podcast with April Price. You might not know it, but every result in your life is 100% because of the thought you think. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome.

Hello Podcast Universe. Welcome to Episode 167 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. Thank you for being out there, thank you for listening to the podcast, for being a part of my life or for listening to the thoughts that I share here, I hope that is blessing your life. I just I got a note, from one of you this week just telling me, like, how much the podcast has helped you in your life and like, it meant so much. Like, getting feedback like that is really awesome because, mostly it's just like me in the closet here. Like, I have no idea if anybody is, like, getting anything from it or enjoying it. But occasionally a little bit of feedback is really amazing. But even better than that, I really want to ask you that if this is like benefiting you, helping you, like making your earth life experience just a little bit better, I want to invite you to share it with somebody. The person who reached out, somebody had shared it with him, and I want to invite you to share it with somebody else that if there's somebody in your life that you think like really might enjoy it and might help them, might make their life a little bit easier. Go ahead and pass that on to them. And I really appreciate it.

I also want to just let you know that my next coaching group is about to start. We're only a couple of weeks away it is going to start the first week in August. And I just want to offer you that if you want to be a part of that and your brain is telling you that you can't, for any reason I just want to ask you if that's, true? And just have you question your own brain. Is it true that I can't and, you know, maybe you're going to decide yet that I'm not going to that, right? But it's never true that we can't. And so, I really want to like have you if for whatever reason, your brain says you can't. I want you to question that and decide if that's true and if you want to continue to believe , and if you would like to try coaching and to see if it will help see the difference that it can make, I want to encourage you to get on a call these next couple of weeks, sign up for a call with me and see if coaching will help. You can do that at my website of course, Aprilpricecoaching.com. Or you can also get on that free call by texting 66866 and you text the word call again to 66866 and it will send you a link where you can sign up and find a slot and get on a call with me.

When I was first introduced to thought work through podcast and started considering like, Oh, maybe I should try coaching too. I had a lot of thoughts myself about why I couldn't, and most of them for me were about like, I'm so terrible. I can't. I'm so terrible. I don't deserve it. I never make anything work or like I don't have the money for it. I had a lot of those, but I also had some that were like, well, you know, it might be a scam anyway. Like, you know, maybe it's not going to work anyway. And I just want to remind you that we all do a lot of things to try to feel better that actually don't make us feel better, right? That are that are the actual scam, right? Like I was thinking that the other day, like I was scrolling on TikTok, which sometimes my brain is like, Oh, we feel terrible let's just scroll on TikTok go and that'll make us feel better and okay, I get done with that. Or in the middle of it, I was kind of like, Oh, I feel actually worse now, right? And there's just so many things like that in our life where we're all trying to feel better and we either don't feel better when we're done or we feel actually even worse. And, you know, those are the real scams.

And the truth is, I don't know if coaching is right for you. I don't know if I'm the right coach for you. But I think that you deserve to find out. And if you have benefited from the podcast, like being able to be coached on your own thoughts, on your own life, on your own problems, on your own relationships. It's just such a completely different experience than listening to a podcast. And I was thinking about how like, you know, when your kids are little, my parents used to have this banister where my kids, if they like you, could fit your head in at the top of the banister and then, if you like went down you the like the banister closed a little bit. And so then your head, would get stuck when you tried to pull your head back out of the banister. And my kids, like inadvertently would always like do this. They would like stick their head through the top of the banister and then somehow they would get stuck and they couldn't undo it, right?

And I was just thinking about like, I could maybe stand next to them and tell them, okay, it's time to calm down, you're not stuck, you're fine. Just move your head in this way, just do this certain thing, and I could maybe try to give them instructions verbally, right? And maybe that would help them get unstuck. But actually what usually would happen is that would go over there and take their head and move it and show them, oh, look, you aren't actually stuck. If we make this adjustment, if we change this thing, you can get out of here. And like, maybe that's not a great analogy, but I really want you to consider that, like coaching is so different because I'm going to be right there with you working on your thoughts and showing you the way out. And so for me, when I started coaching those shifts and the unstuckness happened really fast and it came from hearing other people be coached. When I joined coaching, I was part of a huge membership and just seeing other people's coaching still changed my life and like I just want you to imagine, like getting that change for yourself, getting unstuck for yourself both by hearing other people's coaching.

Because I do coaching in a small group, but also getting tons of help on your own thoughts. The groups I run are small and so you get a lot of coaching, as much coaching as you want. And I have recently added to the program as well. In addition to the weekly group coaching calls that you get, you also get every month a personal one on one. Call with me 45 minutes where you just coach on your stuff. It's just you and me and we can coach on anything you want. And so, if there are things that you feel vulnerable about bringing up in the group, you can just get on a call one on one and you get that every single month. And listen, none of that matters if coaching is not useful to you, but I think you should find out if it is. If you have an interest, I want to encourage you to sign up for a call like signing up for that first call is the hardest part.

My husband that recently like set some new health goals and so he was like, you know, I really want to get a coach, can you find me a coach? And I was like, I think you need to do that. I think you need to make that decision. I think you need to do the hard part right there at the beginning of like overcoming your brain and finding a coach. And it is so scary. It feels so vulnerable, it feels so confusing, it feels so hard, right? But all of that resistance is created by your brain. It isn't actually hard, it's just that your brain makes it feel so hard, right? And that first step is the hardest one. Our resistance is always bigger at the beginning, no matter what we're doing. The resistance is greater at the beginning, and our brain is really like trying to talk us out of the things we want. Like even when I'm on the treadmill, like I've been doing these really long hikes recently to prepare for my event and like, like last Saturday, for example, I went for 3 hours and I promise you, the first 10 minutes were the hardest.

What I represent every day that is true, the first 10 minutes, my brain is just like screaming at me to like, stop and do something else. And if you can overcome that first part, it just gets immeasurably better after that. And, and you get to, like, have incredible experiences and create the things you want in your life. And so, just know that, like, if you're scared, if you're feeling vulnerable, if you're just like, you know, your brain is constantly talking you out of it, like that is totally normal. Okay, but I am there when you're ready and you can sign up for a call at any time, okay? All right onto the podcast.

Today, I want to talk about deciding your life. And I want you to know that you have the power to decide your life. And how I know this is because the truth is we are all deciding our lives even now, all the time, right? We are deciding our lives, and for the most part, we are just unaware of it. We are unaware that any decisions at all are being made, like we are always deciding our money and our the quality of our relationships. And we're deciding our fitness levels were deciding our spirituality, we're deciding our happiness. We're deciding how we spend our time. We're deciding all of it. But most of it is happening on default and we don't really recognize that choices and decisions are being made. And so, when I say that you have the power to decide your life, that's not just like some radical, mystical thought. That is the reality, each one of us are deciding moment by moment, and those decisions are creating our life.

And if that wasn't true, like the plan of God would be frustrated, right? Because he says that we are beings that act and not beings that are acted upon, right? That's what it means to have agency that we are the actors, that we are the ones that are acting. And that means with every action and every decision, we are creating our lives. Now, as I say that I never want you to use that idea against yourself, right? Like so many of us are, like, great, I decided this that sucks. I suck, right? Like, we're just like, oh, like, we use it against ourselves. And we're just like look at what I've decided, right? And we create all this shame and frustration with ourself, and that is not going to be useful. I want you to use this thought to give you hope, not to like shame yourself. I want it to give you like an opportunity, I want you to be able to see, like, wait a minute. If that's true, if I have decided this and I've only decided it because like I've been unaware and I've just been, you know making the decision like that my brain has suggested, then that means if I am the decider and I created it, that means that I could decide something else any time I wanted. And I really want you to imagine what that means, like, what if? What if? I have made decisions and unintentionally created this. And what would happen if I then intentionally made some decisions? Now, if it's true that I am making the decisions of my life and I don't judge myself for that and I don't make myself wrong for it, what could I then create in my life?

So, this is kind of a follow up to last week's podcast. And if you haven't listened to that, I recommend you go and listen to it, right? In that podcast, I wanted to get across the idea that you are good no matter what decision you have made, you are good. And I don't want you to like look at your life and see like, okay, apparently I have decided this and so therefore I am bad. Like, it doesn't matter what decision you've made, that does not make you bad. It does not make you wrong. Okay, you are good and that's never going to change. But also, if you know that your decisions have created where you are now, different decisions will allow you to get somewhere else and to get exactly where you want to be and I just want you to have some compassion for yourself, because if you don't really love where you are, if you don't love the decisions you have made in the results that is created, just know that that has been created because we take the path of least resistance. Our brain just offers us things and we don't know any different, right? We don't we haven't been taught to think anything different or to recognize that like there is a decision and a choice and some agency being used there. And so, we've just taken the path of least resistance, and that doesn't make us wrong. But once we're aware of what's happening, we can change it.

So I really like to think about like a river, right? Like when the snow melts or when the rain comes, that water takes the path of least resistance. It just like flows in the direction that that is easiest, that that meets the least resistance. And it, you know, it flows in and there's nothing wrong with that. But also, if we change that path, we can do amazing things with that water, right? So, we can use that water in useful ways, in intentional ways if we don't just take the path of least resistance, but we direct it, right? And so, if we direct that water, we can use it to water a field or we can use it to power a city, right? We can attach a, you know, a wheel to it and we can create power from it. And like we don't just have to accept the path of least resistance. And when we take charge of where the water is going and we direct it on purpose, we can create a lot of amazing things in the world. And the same applies to your life, you have this life and you have made a lot of decisions about it without knowing it. But you have the power to be intentional and decide something else any time you want, and that will create amazing results for you.

Okay, the next thing that I want you to know is that your desires, the things that you want for your life, are good and that they are God given. A lot of times we have these desires for something different, right? And we talk ourselves out of it. We tell ourselves that they're not important. We tell ourselves that we're just going to be disappointed. We tell ourselves that we need to be practical and that those dreams don't really matter and we need to be reasonable, right? But I believe that those desires are there because we have the seeds of divinity within us. Those like deep desires to grow and to expand and to create are inside each one of us, right? The other day, I was looking at my dog and I was thinking about like, he doesn't have any desires beyond the nap, he doesn't have any desires beyond dinner. He doesn't have any desires beyond just like, laying on the floor, but like, you aren't a dog, right? And sometimes I look at my dog and I'm like, why can't I just, like, be like him and just, like, take the easy road and just lay there and be content with that, right?

But you are not a dog. You are an infinite, eternal, unlimited being, right? And so, you have desires that are profound and reach way beyond this. Life started way beyond this life and will go way past this life. And it's much more expansive than just eat, sleep, reproduce, right? That animals have like as a human being, as a child of God, you have those desires for a reason. And I think that we can either spend our lives in two ways. I think we either exhaust ourselves trying to tamp down those desires and just like hold ourselves back from them. And they keep nudging us and they keep bothering us. And we just, like, are always constantly resisting them. Or we can wear ourselves out in the fulfillment of them, in the creation of them, in like bringing those things into reality.

And like the other day when my husband and I were on vacation, we went to this cocoa plantation where we learned how they turn like cocoa plants into chocolate. And, like, it's like a seriously long process, you guys like how cocoa starts. It's just like nothing compared to the final product of a, like, chocolate bar. And it just, like, blew my mind that I was just like, why did humans think they could do this? Like, someone somewhere was like, hey, you know what we should do? We should create a 12 step process, right? To creating this, like, delicious little tree. And, like, there was so much effort and so much energy and so much labor that goes into creating a bar of chocolate. And I just, like, was kind of in this like, stunned, like, humans do this, that we innovate, that we like, we just are always creating like we cannot help it.

And even when it like, I look at those Cocoa Puffs, I was like this doesn't even make sense. I can't even believe somebody was, like, had a vision for what this could be someday. Because honestly, it just like the start looks nothing, nothing like the end. And we actually even got to make our own cocoa bar and like you have to, like, crush the beat. Like, this is after the cocoa has been, like, harvested and dried and roasted, then you have to crush them. And this is the part where we came in and we were crushing it and adding the cocoa butter and like all the steps and it was like so much work. And then, it was like we poured into these mold and it was like not tasty, like a couple bites and it was like it was super grainy. It was like it had some issues, right? And I was just really amazed that some humans had thought that this was worth it. You know, it's just like as a human, you have desires for a determined, intentional life for a reason. And I think they matter. I think those desires matter. And I think, you know, you should pay attention to those and not discount them and not diminish them and not make light of them and stop rejecting them and pushing them down. And I also just want to add that if you aren't sure right now exactly what it is you want to decide for your life, you don't know exactly what intentions you want to have and create that's okay, too.

Like many of us have spent decades listening to the limitations of our brain, and so we have shut ourselves down over and over and over and like not listen to those desires. And we're going to need to, like, gently start listening, like gently stop shutting ourselves down and paying attention to what it is we really want, what we is we really want to decide for ourselves before we leave this earth life experience. So, just even for me, I have to remember that my brain almost immediately wants to shut up, shut things down. This week as the probably when this podcast airs, my son will have already left for Argentina. You know, we will be officially empty nesters and this has just been like such a difficult transition for me. I did not expect it to be. To be honest with you, but like I've really struggled with like now what, right? Like what? What am I supposed to be doing with my life? What? Do I even matter, right? And I have these old thought habits that have just, like, come up again for me that, like, none of what I want matters.

Like I could not exist and it wouldn't matter. Like, my role is over, my purpose is over. And I don't know what I'm supposed to do with myself, right? And all of this comes up for me. Even still, like my brain has an old habit of saying, like, you know, it doesn't matter. Or even if, like, you have desires, like, you really can't expect anything to come from that. At this point, right? And so like, this happens to every single one of us. And, you know, I went to the Elvis movie with my son the other day and it's like broke my heart, right? Like, at the end, he was just like, I don't have any more dreams, right? Like, his brain was just like, there are just too many limitations. I can't have what I want. And even for the most talented of us, we think we can't have what we want. That there are these limitations that it's different for us that you know, it's stupid to dream, it's stupid to have desires because you just can't make them happen. And that is not true. It is not true for any of us, right? From the most famous to the least, it that is not true for any of us. And, you know, when I was talking to my husband about it and just like so despondent, like. Oh, what? Right. You know, my husband just reminded me, like, you just get to decide. You just get to decide. What do you want to do? You can just decide. And that's kind of why I started thinking about this podcast, like, decide your life. Just decide, allow yourself to dream and don't let your brain shut you down, okay? Like you can just decide if there were no limitations and you weren't limited by your age or your money or your talent.

Or your time, right? Or your capacity or your energy. Like, what would you want for yourself? And let yourself dream just like a child. Let yourself make it up. We're so scared as adult humans that we're going to be disappointed we're scared of looking stupid. We're scared of failing. We're too scared of not knowing how, right? But it is as simple as deciding what you want and listening to those desires and then taking just the next step towards it and being willing to fail and look dumb along the way, of course. And that's where managing your brain is going to be so important, right? Managing those disappointments and deciding how you're going to think about yourself as you as you learn and explore and try some things. But today, what I really want you to think about is like that decision and deciding what it is you want for your life and then what you do after you made that decision.

So, I want to give you a couple of stories to think about and as you go to do this. So, the first one that I wanted to share it was just like about my son, Ethan, right? So, he just got set apart a couple of days ago. At the time of this recording, he got set apart to be a missionary. And I was thinking about how in the moment before he got set apart and in the moment after he got set apart. Like he became a missionary, but he wasn't a different person. He was this exact same kid right in that moment before and the moment after he the exact same capacity. He had the exact same strength. He had the exact same knowledge of Spanish. He had the exact same faith. He had the exact same weaknesses. He had the exact same like habits and tendencies and thoughts like he was the same. And yet his purpose was suddenly totally different. He got a new title. He got a new role. He got a new thought. I am a missionary. And then that thought, that role, that title is now going to inform all of his choices, right? It informs what he listens to. It informs how he spends his time. It informs it informs what he does every day. It informs all the decisions going forward. And as he makes those decisions, he will become more and more different. He will change. He will become he will grow he will expand. He will increase his skills in so many areas. And so, sometimes it can be really like overwhelming when we think like, oh my gosh, the distance between me and where I want to be is so huge, right?

And like, it can't just be one decision, but I want to offer you that. What if it is? What if it is just deciding I am this thing? What if it is just deciding and believing that thought I am whatever it is you want to be? I am a missionary and now I make every decision from that thought. I make every decision from that one decision. Everything else is flowing from there, right? If I decide I'm an endurance athlete, then I make all my decisions from that thought. What time do they go to bed? How do they accomplish their training, right? Or whatever role it is that you want? I want you to think about if I just decided I am this thing and then I made my decisions from that, I would in fact become that thing. So, many of us are doing it the opposite way, we're trying to earn our right to call ourselves that before we let ourselves believe we are that thing, right? And so, we're trying like Ethan doesn't have to wait to be a missionary.

What he has to do is decide he is one and then let that decision inform all the other ones instead of trying to like earn the title, right? You can just say he is and then let all his decisions flow from there. And this is really powerful to think about, right? When I first came to coaching, my thought was my title was like, I'm hard to live with. I felt like it was hard to live with with for my husband. It was hard to live with as a mother. Like I was just a difficult person to live with. And when I talked to my coach about it, she's like, Well, what do you want to be? And I said, like, I am just trying so hard to change myself. I'm trying so hard to be different. I'm so trying so hard to be better so that I can be a soft place to land. I'm trying to change my behavior so I can be a soft place to land. What she said is you have to decide you are that and then make your decisions from there. Like I could have earned being a soft place to land. I was just like constantly trying to change my behavior to do that instead of believing, no, I am a soft place to land and therefore this is what I do, this is what I choose. And when I see myself not living in alignment with that, I make some adjustments.

So, I really want to offer you that you get to decide you are ahead of time and then let that inform all your other decisions. I just have one other quick example that I shared at the midyear reset, and that example is there's a guy that's really famous on YouTube and his name is Jimmy Donaldson. And in 2016, he had about 8000 subscribers on YouTube. And he decided, like he wanted to, you know, create an income and a lifestyle, being a YouTuber. And so he set these goals for himself and he recorded four videos. So, he recorded one that was in six months. He recorded one a year from then. He recorded one five years from then, and he recorded one for ten years from there and set them on YouTube that they were going to air at those times. Like he just like you can set a time at which that they will they will go live, right? So one was set for six months. One was set for a year. One was set for five. One was set for ten. And like he taught what he did on those videos was say, like, okay, this is where I want to be on this day. I want to have this many subscribers. This is what it looks like and this is what I hope to have created by this date. And then he set those that they were. It was like they were going to automatically air.

And because he knew that was coming, because he knew that was in his future. He then started taking action in his life to make sure they happened right. He knew that video was going to go live in six months, and so he started acting in his life. Okay, what do I need to do to make sure that, like the things I say in six months will be true? What do I need to do to make sure the things I say in a year will be true when that video airs? And he just, like, blew it out of the water, like on his five year video was released. He was on there talking about like I hope by now I have a million subscribers. At that time, he had 40 million subscribers. He was like a household name, right? He was just hoping to have a million. He had 40 million. And it's not just because he's like made a little video about it. That wasn't the magic. It was that he knew that that version of him existed out there. And he started taking action. Now to create it, he started making his decisions. In a way that would create that in the future. And that's why it's so powerful that you start to think of yourself already as that thing and make decisions from there, decide what it is you want to be, the role, the title, the experience that that identity that you want to take on and give yourself access to. That permission to think of yourself as that without having to earn it and then make all your decisions from that thought, from that title, but that inform all of your other choices.

And you will become exactly who you want to be. Decide what identity it is and then ask yourself, what steps can I take today, big or small, that will allow me to own that role, that will allow me to be more of that chosen identity. And then those decisions will decide your life. All creation happens first, spiritually, everything is created first, spiritually, before it comes to life physically. And it is no different with the things that you want to create in your life. I want you to know that you are a big deal, that your life matters, that your desires matter, and that you have the power to create the things you want. By the way, you decide your life. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome. I love you for listening, and I'll see you next week.

Our brains spend a lot of time convincing us that we can't change and we can't have the things we want, but it's always alive. You have the unlimited capacity to change and grow and the unrestricted agency to choose something else any time you want. If you are ready to change any aspect of your life, then it's time to change the way you think. And my coaching program is the best way to do that. My next session starts August 1st. Go to Aprilpricecoaching.com to sign up for a free coaching call and see how coaching can help you.