Three Thoughts to Help You Fight for Your Dreams

There’s a good reason that many of our dreams go unfulfilled: our brains always get in the way.

In the first three weeks of the year, I have already been reminded how just as soon as we start working towards our dreams, our brains step up to stop us—which is why all of us have to learn to fight for our dreams.

Today on the podcast, I’m sharing three recent experiences and three lessons to help you fight that good fight and help you if you’re scared or discouraged or unsure where to start.

Your dreams have the power to change the world—even if it’s just your world. Don’t let your brain keep you from creating them!

Transcripts

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 thoughts you think. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome.

Hello podcast universe! Welcome to episode 246 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. I'm April Price and I want to welcome you to the podcast. How are you? I feel like I should still say Happy New Year, even though we're like nearly three weeks in, but you're still feels really new to me. I'm still, you know, setting up my life and my house and my systems and my calendar and my goals and like, figuring out what I really want to do and accomplish this year.

And it all just really still feels pretty new. So anyway, I'm not sure where you are in that process. I feel like I've talked to people all along the spectrum, people who did this kind of sifting, sorting, deciding part of the year. They did all this in December so that they're ready to go January 1st, and all the people on the other end who are just tucking in and hibernating and not thinking about goals and plans or anything of the sort until spring. And so, I just want you to know that wherever you are on that spectrum, it's a good place to be, right? It's your life you get to choose, and there's nothing that you should be doing.

It's all just what do you want to be doing? And the new year is really just an arbitrary, you know, division of time anyway. Like, you know, how do we know it's a new year just because we said it was? It's just a thought, right? But what's really important is tuning into yourself, tuning into the real you, tuning in to what you really want, not what your brain wants. Right? Find that eternal true self inside of you and find out what he or she wants. And then thinking the thoughts and taking the actions that you need to do in order to create what you really want.

And you know that is not easy. The other day I had this realization. I was standing at the kitchen sink and I was doing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen, and I realized that I was standing there cleaning everything up as a way of really avoiding the work that I really want to be doing this year. And I had this thought as I was standing there rinsing dishes like, I am gonna have to fight for my dreams, right? Like it is gonna be a fight and not against the world or anybody else, but just my own brain who just wants to put it off, who wants to avoid failure, who wants to procrastinate, and who wants to avoid all the discomfort and all the misgivings and all the doubts and all of that? And who wants to just put it off forever? Right? And so I just had this thought, like, April, we gotta fight for our dreams, we gotta fight for what we want.

And that's what I want to help you do today. I'm hoping to give you some tools and some thoughts and some ways of thinking about things that will help you fight for your dreams, fight for what you really want, and also listen. If you don't know what those dreams are, you don't know what you even want to fight for. I also have a thought today that might help you, a lesson that I think will help with that as well. So we are going to do that today before we get to that episode. As long as we're talking about fighting for the things we want, one of the best weapons that you can have as you go to do that fight is to understand your own brain, and having a coach will help you see yourself differently, will help you be able to change the stories that you have about yourself.

Remove so much of that resistance and the excuses that your brain gives you every chance it can, and someone who will meet you with love and compassion and no doubt about your ability to accomplish the things that you want. And I love having a coach for all those reasons. And I think if you can, you should have one too. So, I have a couple of coaching spots open. If you're interested in that, you can reach out to me at Aprilpricecoaching.com or you can go to my website Aprilpricecoaching.com. And you can learn about what it's like to coach with me.

All right okay, today I decided that I wanted to share three recent experiences that I've had and the three lessons that they have taught me already here in the first three weeks in January. All right. So, I know that not all of you are in the goal setting mood. And I know that, like, this might not be your priority right now, but, you know, like it's my podcast and so all I can do is share my life and share my experience and share the things that I'm learning. And so that's what we're going to do today. And like I said, I've got three lessons that I have learned just in the first three weeks of this year that I think will help you as you go to fight for your dreams.

All right. So, the first lesson I think will help if you've started working towards your dreams, but you found that it's much harder than you thought it would be and you're considering quitting. You're that your brain is thinking like, you know what would be easier than this? You know what would be easier than fighting for our dreams and quitting, right? So, I wanted to talk about this lesson that I've learned recently. So, this year I signed up for a couple of physical challenges, my family and I. A few of us are going to run a marathon at the beginning of June, and then Caleb and I are going to climb another mountain for 2929 in the fall.

And so, the other day, I was kind of like mapping out the training plan for both of these events and kind of figuring out, okay, you know, the marathon is 21 weeks away, 2929 is 34 weeks away. What am I going to have to do between now and then to make sure that that happened? And I started writing out this training plan and started noticing, wow, that does not look fun, right? There are 34 weeks of really challenging workouts ahead of me, and my brain just started to really freak out and started to create a lot of dread and a lot of fear and a lot of overwhelm. And instead of feeling better, seeing that training plan all laid out and that like, oh, there's a sure way to my goal. Instead, I felt like really overwhelmed and I felt like it was way more than I was capable of. And I was like, I don't even know if I want to do that thing anymore, right? And then on Saturday, I kind of started in on that and was just like getting warmed up, doing sort of like a warm up run just to kind of like see where my baseline was. And I'm like two minutes into that run and my brain is like, oh my gosh, this hurts so much.

We can't do, we can't do anymore, right? My brain was already begging me to stop and I was like, oh my gosh, if it's this hard, two minutes in, if it's this hard, and I haven't even really started the actual training plan, how am I going to do more? How am I going to do 34 weeks of this? And my brain was just like, I do not think we even want to write like, none of this sounds like something we want to do. And maybe you're feeling the same way, right? Like you've checked in with yourself and your real self has said, yeah, I want to have this experience this year, but then you go to do it and it's so much harder than you think it's going to be, and so much harder for you than you think it should be.

And your brain starts doubting you and saying, listen, if it's this hard now, how are we ever going to do more of this? How can we possibly keep going and do all of this? And so I want to tell you that to fight for your dream, you are going to have to shorten your lens and you have to think about today and not 34 weeks out. Okay. So, like it's really great that I have a plan, but my brain cannot comprehend the pain of 34 weeks. It can only comprehend what I need to do today.

And so, you have to shorten your lens. You have to do today's work and nothing else. And if you need to shorten that even further, then do that. Maybe you have to do this hours work or this minutes work, or this half mile, or this paragraph or this meal or whatever it is. Shorten your lens. To what you need to do next. Like when I looked at that calendar, I wanted to quit before I started. Like, I like, texted it to my son and my son, like, texted me back the very same thing. He's like, are you sure we can do this right? And I reminded him as well as myself, listen, we just have to do one day at a time. We just have to cross off one box at a time. And so, whatever you're working on, like, our brain can get really overwhelmed when we think about, we have to do this for a long time. We have to do this for an extended period of time. Just shorten your lens to today. And then once you've shortened your lens and you're just facing the discomfort of that day or that hour or that one choice, right? This next thought, I think we'll help you fight for your dream as well. And that is that it is supposed to hurt. It's supposed to be hard.

And I know this is not a new thought. I've shared it with you many times over the over the course of this podcast, but it is so helpful to me when I'm actually in pain because my brain's like, we're in pain and we shouldn't be, and it's just not true. Like, it's okay if it's harder than I think it's supposed to be, or harder than my brain thinks it's supposed to be. And in fact, sometimes I even tell myself that I want it to hurt, that it's supposed to hurt, and I want it to hurt because that's when I adapt. And that's when my body changes. That's when my muscles grow.

That's when my lung capacity grows. And that is what is going to change me enough to complete the events that I've signed up for. So, I want it to hurt. And just making that little shift to shorten the lens, just accomplish what I need to today and then tell myself it's supposed to be hard when it is. We'll help you keep going when your brain says you should give up. Okay, the second lesson that I wanted to share, I think will help you if you haven't started yet. Like you want to do something in your life, but you keep putting off. Even starting like it just feels so daunting and so overwhelming to even start that you just keep putting off starting. And so back in about 2017, it's like six and a half years ago, we moved into the house that we're living in now, and at the time we had all this stuff that I didn't know what to do with, and we had an extra closet in our bedroom. And so we put everything in that closet and just packed it, like, nearly floor to ceiling with all this stuff that I didn't know what to do with.

And over the years, we've talked many times about cleaning that closet out and getting rid of the stuff that we can, and like putting the other stuff in different places so that we could have this other closet in our room. And we kept talking about how it'd be so nice to clean it out and have the space. But like I said, it was like this huge mess. And as I went to find places for all that stuff, it was like, if you give a mouse a cookie kind of situation, right where I was like, okay, well, if I move that to that closet, then I'm going to move that thing from that closet into the garage, and then I can move that thing from the garage into the other.

And it was like there were so many like, well, as soon as I do that, then I'm going to have to do this, and then I'm gonna have to do this, and then I have to do this. And then I was just like, overwhelmed. And I just never, never got to it. So, then when Ethan left on his mission, we were like, okay, we're empty nesters. The house is empty. This is a really good time to reorganize that closet, put that stuff in other places, move some of the kids stuff out and reclaim that space. Well, time came and went and we still didn't attack that closet. And then last January, I was like, all right, we just need to take the next like eight Saturdays. I thought it would take like 2 to 3 months of consistent Saturday work to clean out this closet. And I was like, so last January, I was like, that's it. We should really do it. And we never did. I never like, had the guts, had the courage to like, go in there and start it. But finally this Saturday, for whatever reason, we opened up those doors and pulled everything out and decided, enough's enough. We're gonna clean out this closet. And we pulled everything out. And for a moment, for many hours, in fact, it looked a lot worse than when it was all stuffed away.

But what I learned from this experience is that it might not be as hard as my brain thinks it is, like maybe your brain is just telling you it's hard. This thing that you want to do, this thing that you keep putting off, maybe your brain is just telling you it's hard. And in fact, what I found is that for six and a half years, it was harder not doing it than it was this last Saturday and Sunday that it took to put it all away. It only took us one Saturday, a little bit of our Sunday evening to be able to sort out that stuff and make that space.

And what I figured out was like it was so much harder not doing it. It was so much harder not living with that closet. It was so much harder. Like having the stuff stuffed in there with not being able to access it, not being able to use this space. It was way harder than actually doing the work now was cleaning out that closet like our favorite thing? No, we're retired. Yes, right. But it was less hard than I thought it was going to be. And it was way harder not having the closet to use. And what I found was that putting this hard thing off for six and a half years was actually so much harder than the two days it took to change things. And now I know that whatever you're working on might not take you two days, right? It might not be accomplishable in two days, but that isn't the point. The point is that not doing it is actually harder than doing it. And no matter how much time it actually takes, that time is going to go either way. And it's going to be hard one way or the other. Either way, we aren't avoiding the hard.

But when you decide to do it, you're putting a finish line on the heart. Like, that's what I figured out. It was just hard in a different way for six and a half years. And this weekend was hard, but there was a finish line to it. And so many of our goals are like that. It's these things that we've been putting off for so long. It's like they've been hard for a long time, whereas like actually doing them is also going to be hard, but there's going to be a finish line. There's going to be a place where we get to the end of it, as opposed to like continuing to drag it out.

So, I just want to give you the thought that if there's something that you've been putting off for a long time because it's going to be hard, I just want you to know you're not avoiding the hard. You're just avoiding the finish line of the heart. It's time to get started. Okay, the third lesson I have for you is about what to do if you're unsure about what you want. And what I have really learned in these last three weeks is that if you don't know what you want, or if you aren't sure that it's going to create the experience you want in your life like that well-lived life, I just want to remind you that you get to experiment. We all have permission to experiment and try some things and see if we like those results in our life.

So, a few months ago, I heard an interview with Tom Holland and he was talking about giving up drinking, and he said that he had decided for January to do dry January and to give up drinking. And he talked about how all he could think about all day long was having a drink, and he was waking up thinking about it, and he said he was checking the clock. And he's like, it just like really scared him how much his brain was like thinking about drinking. And he started thinking like, well, maybe I have a little bit of a like alcohol problem, right? And so, he decided to like test himself and say, okay, I'm going to do February as well, right? Like I'll do two months instead of just sort of just January, I'm going to do two months off, and then I can prove to myself that I don't have a problem. So, two months goes by, I guess, the end of February. And he says, I was still really struggling, right? He said, I didn't feel like I couldn't be social, and I felt like I couldn't like go to the pub and have a lime soda, or I couldn't go out to dinner because I was just like, could only think about having a drink while I was there.

And he said that he started to really worry that maybe like he had a serious problem because that was like all his brain knew to think about, right? And so, then he decided that he was going to wait until his birthday to have a drink, which was in June. And so, he says, like, if I can do six months without alcohol and I can get to my birthday, then I can prove to myself that I don't have a problem. By the time he got to his birthday, he said he was the happiest that he'd ever been in his life. He said he was sleeping better. He could handle his problems better. He said things that normally like triggered him or set him off, that he could take him in his stride. And he had so much better mental clarity and he felt healthier and better. And he's just like, was just having a better experience, a more well-lived life, right? So, when I was listening to this interview, I realized that, like, I could relate to what he was saying, right? And I realized that the artificial dopamine source that was like that for me was my phone. And that, like, that was like the first thing I reached for when I woke up, the last thing I put down when I went to bed, and that all day long my brain was always just like, obsessed with, like checking my phone.
And I would find myself, like, mindlessly scrolling on social media. And I noticed, like, I couldn't even make lunch or put on my makeup without, like, some sort of entertainment in the background, without having a video or a podcast or something going on in the background. And I started to notice how I didn't even, like, intentionally mean to be on there. I just found myself there. It was like my thumb just was like moving to like, the apps of its own accord. Like I wasn't even intentionally thinking about it. And I also noticed that for me, it was just getting harder and harder to concentrate.

It was harder to sit quietly, to sit down and do deep thinking work, to sit down and write emails, to sit down and do nothing. In fact, I noticed, like at church or at the temple, like I just couldn't concentrate. And I kept like feeling so anxious, like I just wanted it to be over and be on to the next thing. And on top of all that, I also noticed I never felt better afterwards. I was not living a well-lived life. I felt like I was living a half asleep life, right? My time and my energy and my focus was disappearing into my phone. And it was like this insatiable need that never got better, never got met, never felt good. It was just sort of happening to me. And so I just was like coming to this realization towards the end of the year. And I heard this interview, Tom Holland, and I was just like, yeah, I can relate to this so much. Like, my brain doesn't know what to do without the phone. And so I decided, like, my phone is keeping me from my goals. It's making it too easy to procrastinate and it's not making me feel good.

And it's keeping me from connecting to my husband to the people who are right in front of me. But maybe most importantly, it was like a constant distraction in my mind. A constant need to check something else in my mind. And it was like I had all these other voices and opinions and thoughts in my head, other opinions, other lives instead of my own. And it felt like I was getting farther and farther away from myself. And so I decided, it's time. It's time to clean out my interior space. It's time to, like, remove all these thoughts and opinions and and distraction and entertainment from other people and to make space for my own thoughts, my own desires, my own opinions, my own ideas, my own creativity. And I have just given myself permission to experiment with that. I decided to try Dry January with my phone right, and be off my phone and only use it for very specific purposes at very specific times that I decided ahead of time.

So, I use Instagram for work. So, I have very specific ways that I use it on my desktop for very specific times. And I've taken it off my phone and then I also limited some of the other apps that started to be distracting because like once Instagram was gone, then like, oh, suddenly my email becomes very fascinating or my exercise app becomes very fascinating. It's like my brain was just like, I need to look at something, right? And so I put some other restrictions on there as well. And I just decided that again, until my birthday, I just copied Tom Holland until my birthday. This is what I'm going to do, and I'm just experimenting with it. And then I'm going to see does my life feel better without it? Do I feel like my life is more well lived without it? And I just want to tell all of you that you get to do that, that you get to experiment, that you get to think about your life and, and decide, hey, I think this thing is something I want. I think this thing is something that I think my life will be better, and then to choose it for three months or six months and make it non-negotiable and then like, wait and see, let the results stack up, be uncomfortable for a bit, and let those results stack up.

And then evaluate, is this thing having a net positive effect on my life? Is it making my life feel more well lived? And even if it's hard to do, do I like the results it's creating in my life? Sometimes we have to let those results stack up before we can decide if it's something that we want to see in our life, right? Just like Tom Holland was saying, like six months in, he was like, oh my gosh, my life has never been better. And that's what I wanted to see. And I just want to give you permission to let you know, like, you're all allowed to experiment with your life and see.

And I'll report back to you what I learned about myself and doing this experiment. But already I've just noticed, like my thumb searching for that app, for searching for Instagram without me even thinking. It's like scrolling through my phone looking for something and I don't even know what. It's the most shocking thing to just like, watch my body almost do it automatically. It's so ingrained. I also think it's been really interesting so far that I don't actually miss it, as much as I thought I would like. My brain goes there automatically, but I'm not actually missing something in particular.

Like it's like I don't even know what I'm missing out on actually, because I haven't seen it. And so there isn't anything to miss, right? The other thing that's been really surprising to me so far is that even though I'm spending more time with myself, my brain is less critical. And this was actually like a really big surprise to me. Like, I thought it would be pretty unbearable to be without the noise, to be without podcasts, to be without videos, to be without Instagram Stories and reels and all of that. I thought that would be kind of unbearable, because I thought that I'm just going to be alone with my thoughts, and my brain is so critical and so mean that like, that's what I'm going to hear instead.

And I don't want to hear that. Right. But what I find is that, like, actually my brain has less ammunition to criticize me with. It's like the weirdest thing, right? Like, yes, I'm spending more time with myself, but my brain isn't nearly as. Critical and mean. So that has been a really positive thing already, and I'm just trying to be really patient with myself as I navigate this kind of like new empty space in my life and figure out what I want to put in place of it and give myself the room to try it, to see what works, to see what doesn't, to see what adjustments I need to make, but to really, like, be non-negotiable about the amount of time I'm spending on there for the next three months.

So, I just would encourage all of you to kind of listen to the voice inside of you, listen to what you really want, and give yourself enough room to try it out before you evaluate. So whatever it is you want to start doing or stop doing, like just make it non-negotiable for three months or six months and then decide, is my life better with it or without it and then make those decisions? I think so many times we're like three days in or weekend and we're like, ah, it's too hard. And we just, you know, we don't wait for those results to stack up to see if they're worth it, to see if they're worth the price.

Okay, so I know I said I was going to give you three lessons from the first three weeks, but I actually thought of one more as I've been talking here that I think will help you as you fight the good fight for your dreams. So I find that brains are really good at telling us that we should be farther along, or that we should, like, be at the finish line already, right? Like whenever I decide that I'm going to accomplish something in my life or work towards a goal, my brain is always just like, oh, this shouldn't even be a goal.

You should already have accomplished it, right? Like you're too far behind. You should just quit already. And my brain is always telling me it's too late. I should have already done this. I should have already figured this out, and that this should be something that I've already done in my life. And if that is something that your brain says, I just want to share a couple of thoughts with you. I have two pictures in my house that helped me with this. When my brain is kind of criticizing me for wanting to change and not having changed already. And the first picture is in my office and it is just a picture depicting day one of creation.

And every time I look at it, it just reminds me that I'm in the creative process, that it's not supposed to be finished. And even though it's not finished, it is still good. I am still good. Even though I'm not finished, I am still good. I'm not supposed to be finished, right? It's day one. Like I get to be very far from being finished. I get to be a mess and I am still good, right? God looked at it and he said it is good. So whatever your day one looks like, don't let it stop you just because it doesn't yet look like the finished product.

Remind yourself that you're just in the middle of creation and it's exactly where you're supposed to be. The second piece of art that I have hangs in our family room, and it's this really big picture of the rings. It's like a print of the rings of a giant sequoia tree. And it reminds me that even when it feels like I just keep starting over, I'm actually growing. I'm actually progressing like there's no such thing as back to square one.

There's so many of us where we go to set a goal and our brain is like, here we are back at square one, but there is no such thing. There's no such thing as lost progress. We are always building on our past. And many times, yeah, your goal is going to look similar. It's going to look just like that tree trunks growth last year. That sort of looks the same. But it's not all the growth from the last time you did this work is still there, waiting to be built upon, and is constantly thinking that we're just going back to square one, back to the start line, and instead to think of it like tree rings.

This is just the next level of growth, and I get to take everything I learned last time with me into this next iteration of my life. Like when you look closely at this picture in my family room, like some of those rings are just like microscopic, like you like need a zoom lens to be able to, like, differentiate between some of them. They're just so tiny, and your brain wants to be embarrassed by that. Your brain wants to be embarrassed with where you are and tell you like we're the same as we've always been, but it's never true.

We're always just in the next ring of growth. Your life is a creation. You are creating it one day at a time and it's okay if it's still a mess. That's what the creative process looks like, and it's okay if you feel like you just keep doing the same work we all do. It's just like the next ring of growth. It may look very similar, but it's always growing and building on what you've already learned and accomplished. On one of the Christmas cards that we got this year. They had printed a quote on the back of the card that said, the Lord needs you to change the world.

And I cut that out. I put it on my fridge. I just love that thought. The Lord needs you to change the world and I want to offer you that. That's true, even if it's just your world. The Lord needs you to change your world and that will change the world. Don't let your brain keep you from that. Don't let your brain hold you back. Don't let your brain let you quit. You gotta fight for your dreams. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome. I love you for listening and I'll see you next week.

Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. If you're serious about changing your life, you first have to change your mind. And the best way to do that is through coaching. I work with my clients one on one to help them change their thoughts and their feelings about themselves, their lives, and their challenges so that they can live a life they love. If you'd like to work with me one on one, you can learn more and schedule a free call to try coaching for yourself at Aprilpricecoaching.com.