Episode 220 - What Do You Think About Your Life?

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In the latest podcast episode, I offered a simple but powerful coaching exercise:

If you had to describe your life in ONE WORD, what would it be?

Here’s why I shared it with you.

One of the greatest gifts of running a lower-cost coaching membership is that I’ve had the privilege of working with some of my clients for years. I’ve coached women through pregnancy, postpartum, and now I see them showing up to calls with a baby on their lap and a sparkle in their eyes.

Even more inspiring is watching these women go from self-doubt to self-awareness… from resentment to resilience… and eventually to compassion, confidence, and purpose.

Sometimes, I wonder if they see the transformation I see.

Do they realize how far they’ve come?

There’s no graduation ceremony in self-development—as long as we have brains, we’ll need some maintenance 😄—but these are not the same women I started coaching months (or even years) ago.

So how do we check in with ourselves?

We catch our brains on “default.”

That’s what this one-word exercise is all about.

Of course, we all have natural tendencies—some more positive, some more cautious. Hormones, sleep, and life circumstances definitely play a role. So hold the exercise gently.

But if you pause, check in, and find yourself surprised by the word that pops into your mind… that’s worth noticing. 💡

Resources:

📅 Ready for more support? I have a few private coaching spots available - book a consult here.

💬 Want to join our incredible group membership? Sign up here.

💍 Newlywed? Start here with the First Year Married course.

Transcript

0:00

The exercise is to ask yourself, if I had one word to describe my life as it is right now, what would it be?

0:12

Welcome to How to Glow, where we get real about building the marriage of your dreams.

I'm certified Coach Kayla Levin and I help married Jewish women go from surviving and overwhelmed to

0:22

thriving and connected through practical tips, real life inspiration, and more than a little

self-awareness along the way.

0:30

Hello my friends.

OK, I've got a quick Shalom bayis idea coaching pep talk tool hack for you this week, an exercise

0:40

I've been doing myself in finding very, very interesting and something I wanted to share with you.

And I also would really, really love to hear what comes up for you.

0:51

OK so a little background.

The thing that really drew me to coaching in the 1st place was learning about positive psychology.

1:03

I decided to enrolling a coaching program after having been accepted into an MSW program.

So I really really was planning to move down the therapy route originally.

1:13

And the more I learned about positive psychology, the more fascinated I became with how do we use

all this stuff for all those regular people that are still struggling?

1:24

They might be struggling because of life challenges.

They might be struggling because of a bit of a more habitual behavioral way of being or seeing the

1:34

world.

I also am finding that these days, it's also the tower that I'm the most drawn to, right?

1:43

How are we meant to look at the world?

How are we meant to look at the people around us?

1:47

How are we meant to understand what Hashem thinks of us?

And how are we meant to relate back to a sham?

1:54

And I think so much of this, there's so much to be done on the other side of healed, on the other

side of functional, right?

2:04

And none of us are on one spectrum.

It's not like we're like, you know, if -100 is highly dysfunctional and 100 is highly functional,

2:13

We're like on that spectrum.

No, we're a million different parts and parts of us need healing and parts of us are ready for

2:20

excelling or going beyond, above and beyond, right?

But it is kind of that that higher level that always interested me.

2:29

It's why this podcast is called How to Glow it.

It's the whole idea of like, what's the good life?

2:35

What is thriving?

And so the exercise I want to encourage you today to do, and this will work maybe better for those

2:45

of you who've been listening longer, right?

So we want to understand that this is going to open you up to some mindset work, some self

2:52

exploration.

It is not meant to I guess go into this well rested.

2:58

I think the one that side effects could be if someone spirals, but the exercise is to ask yourself,

if I had one word to describe my life as it is right now, what would it be?

3:15

You also might want to notice if you use that word in your internal monologue very often.

And if the word is anything says Part 2.

3:25

If the word is anything short of amazing, blessed, exceptional, wonderful, delightful, right, some

like really wonderful adjective, then you want to ask yourself why?

3:41

Now here's the really important part.

Don't coach yourself.

3:44

Don't try to have a good mindset, OK?

The first one is an immediate knee jerk reaction.

3:49

Do you think throughout the day, I love my life, I have a great life.

I'm so blessed, right?

3:54

If not, what would you would you use?

Overwhelmed, Stressful.

3:57

No judgement, right?

We want it.

3:59

We're trying to find out right now what's the default script that's running in your head before

you're working on it?

4:04

OK, so what's that word you would use?

Stressed, anxious, unfair, right?

4:10

Whatever it is, again, no trying to be mindful, no trying to choose intentional thinking.

Then I want you to just write out, just take a pen and paper or one tool I just learned from someone

4:22

I think is really great is if you can type by by touch, then go to a computer and close your eyes

and just type it all out, right?

4:29

Like on an empty Word document or something.

So you're just doing a brain dump of why that's true.

4:38

Why is it true that your life is overwhelming?

Why is it true that your life is stressful?

4:42

OK, then you take that brain dump and you're going to walk away.

Go live the rest of your day, Go do stuff, cut some carrots.

4:54

I don't care what you do, right?

Go do something else.

4:56

Leave the room, go engage in life again.

And at another point in time, I want you to come back to that, this time with your mindset.

5:07

Cap on with your coaching, cap on with the part of you that understands that the way you think

effects how you feel and show up in the world.

5:16

And you're going to look at this one and you're going to just kind of ask like, how is this script

working for me or not working for me?

5:24

How is this script right?

The script being this sort of inner dialogue that we've identified.

5:29

How is this affecting my life, my experience of my life, how I relate to people, the things that come out of my mouth when I'm just catching up with a friend and she says, oh, hey, what's going on,

5:40

right?

Is it all fetch?

5:41

Is it all victim mentality, right.

And I can't, it can't be from judgement because this is just what we do.

5:48

We fall into patterns.

And I think this is the magic of coaching is that we get the space and we need to carve out the

5:56

space.

I don't think anybody, we don't do this automatically, but we get the space to look at our thinking

6:04

because our thinking drives so much of our life and say, is that what I want to be thinking?

Now, for those of you who are very new to this work, I want to give you a really, really important

6:18

warning and maybe as a review for those of you who have been here for a while.

You can't fake thinking.

6:24

You can't convince yourself of something that's not true.

You can't believe a thought that you don't resonate with.

6:30

You cannot fake positive thinking.

So that's not going to be the solution here, OK?

6:36

A lot of times when I do these exercises with people, they're like, OK, but you just want me to think my life is great when I think it's terrible.

6:40

No, no, no, you're too smart for that.

You're not going to fall for that.

6:46

So that's not going to be our solution.

I think I'm going to leave you with it here.

6:56

There could be more to go to.

This will be 90% of it is just the awareness.

7:02

This is what, Oh my gosh, this is what I've been thinking.

It's almost like this exercise will allow you to like eavesdrop on your brain, right?

7:11

I don't know if you've ever had this, but I think some similar came up for me recently.

I went for a walk with a friend that I hadn't gone for a walk with for a long time.

7:17

We hadn't had a chance to catch up.

And afterwards I was like, that's what came out of my mouth for the last hour.

7:22

Like really, that's what I chose to talk about.

That's, that's a reflection of what I've been noticing, what I've been thinking, right.

7:30

So it's, it's a similar exercise.

Don't need to go for a walk for this one.

7:33

Maybe that's not so good.

But the great part is you're going to have it done on paper in front of you.

7:37

And all I want you to do again is to just look at it and think, how is this affecting me?

Don't fight with yourself.

7:44

If you're feeling that your life is super unfair right now, it might be that might be true.

If you're thinking your life is super anxiety provoking or overwhelming, that might be true.

7:52

Meaning I'm, if you and I were sitting down to coffee, I might agree with you.

Oh my gosh, that sounds super overwhelming.

7:58

OK, so it's not about true, not true, right, wrong, anything like that.

All it is is this is the channel I'm tuned into.

8:10

There are other channels and I just want to just notice what's coming up for me.

I do think that for some of you, this might extend a little bit further.

8:20

It might open up some thinking for you of wait a second, maybe.

Actually, I already believe my life is wonderful.

8:27

I just forgot to tune into that station.

Maybe I already feel super blessed.

8:33

Maybe there's some things I've just not been noticing and it's actually just a noticing thing.

It's not even like AI need to make any practical changes.

8:43

So that would be a tremendous gift if you discover that.

And I want to encourage you that even though it might require a little bit of consistent reminding,

8:53

it's not a terribly large amount of effort to change it.

Tune into the new station, right?

8:59

I don't know anyone who's like I lost 20 lbs because I coached myself everyday.

So it's work you could definitely do and the easiest way by the way, I'll just give you a quick

9:10

pointer is whiteboard marker on your bathroom mirror.

Just find a word or a phrase that speaks to you that reminds you of the station you want to be tuned

9:19

into.

OK, I really, really would love to hear from you.

9:22

I always love this those of you inside of the globe community, we're going to talk about it in our

community.

9:28

I like this is basically just your assignment from this week.

And those of you who aren't, you can shoot me an e-mail, you can reach out basically e-mail.

9:37

That's the best place.

I also have a business WhatsApp number.

9:40

So if you have that, you can send me a message that I really would love to hear from you how this

landed, if you opened up, realized there's some kind of work that you want to do.

9:48

And by the way, I think I still have, I do, I have a couple more slots available for private

coaching.

9:54

So if anyone is like, this is my work right now, this is exactly what I want to be doing.

You can book a consult, just go to my website, kaylalevin.com.

10:03

If private coaching is either out of your budget right now or just feels like maybe you don't have

the, the, the capacity to commit to something because it really, it's an hour a week and you know,

10:13

it's a deep dive.

The glow community is an amazing place to do this work.

10:19

And you newlyweds, if you're listening, you need to be in the first year, right?

Course, that's where you start.

10:23

OK, You can join the globe community after.

OK, my friends, I love you all.

10:28

I can't wait to hear from you and we will continue on the next podcast.

Bye.