You’re listening to episode four of the Unlock Your Life podcast. In this episode, we’re talking about the one thing you must do in order to move your dream forward. Start before you’re ready. Start before you’re ready in order to build a life that gives you life. Let’s get it going.

Welcome to the Unlock Your Life podcast, a podcast for highly successful visionary women who want more out of life. If you feel that ache of unfulfillment in your soul, you’re in the right place sis. Join life mastery consultant Lori A. Harris as she teaches you how to stop living for others and finally put yourself first. Let’s dive into today’s show.

So how’s it going? What’s going on new with you? For me, I’ve noticed that there are a lot of feral cats in my neighborhood. I think there might be a family of cats living in my yard, and perhaps even in the crawlspace underneath my house. So it’s been a bit of a challenge to figure out well, how will I respond to that? Because obviously I want to do the humane thing and treat these animals with care and respect, but I also don’t want a family of kittens moving in underneath my house. So first, we’re going to start working on sealing off all entry points, and then we’ll see what happens next. So if you have any ideas, let me know.

So what does it take in order to move a dream forward? To build a life that gives you life. We can have a dream. We can write down the dream. We can discover yeah, I really, really want this thing. In the discovery, we often will find that just knowing that there’s something out there that I would absolutely love to create for myself can be a little bit triggering. There’s a temptation to say, “Oh, I’m not ready yet.”

I encourage all of my clients and listeners to start before you’re ready. Start before you’re ready because if you’re waiting to feel like doing this new project, this new adventure. If you’re waiting to want it to feel good, that day’s never going to happen. It can be very tempting to get involved in a process of doing research. Procrasti-learning. Doing all the research possible so that you know everything there is to know about a given thing.

One, it’s impossible to know all of the things. Every single thing. Two, you’ll learn a lot more by actually doing. It’s one thing to talk about having a podcast. It’s a completely different thing to do the do and actually have a podcast and engage in the activities that require my growth and expansion. To put myself out there. So I ask you to start before you’re ready. If you’re waiting to feel like it feels good, it’s never going to feel good. There’s a lot of growth in getting started.

So in building a life that gives you life, it’s important to get started. To make a move, any move. Once you start making moves, you continue to build upon each move one step at a time. A baby step if you will. The next thing you can do is create a one-degree shift. A one-degree shift in your movement, a one-degree shift in your perspective and everything can change dramatically. It’s the movement. It’s the putting things in motion that changes everything. So, once you take a step, then a next step can be revealed to you.

Let’s say you decide I want to write a book. Then you start taking some action. Then almost as if by magic, you might run into or be introduced to someone in the publishing world that can give you another boost forward. The most important thing is to get in action.

So, you know when you’re driving on the freeway. If you were to point your car in a particular direction and go all the way out, if you shifted just one degree off your trajectory, you could end up in a completely different location. This is true for rocket ships. It’s true for planes. It’s also true for you. Making a one-degree shift in the direction of your dream, your hopes, your aspirations is the one thing that can move you from thinking about it to actually doing it. So you want to put some part of yourself in it.

So whether that’s making an investment. Perhaps an investment in money or perhaps it’s an investment in your own life force or your own pride. Perhaps it’s just telling someone, “Oh, did you know I started this new thing, and I’d love for you to hold me accountable. Let me share with you my progress as I make steps forward on this dream.” As I share these points of view or tips with you, I can almost hear people saying, “Oh, that’s too easy. I already know that.”

I encourage you rather than say, “I know that already.” Tap into yourself and ask yourself, “Well, what could I do to employ this information in a new way? What can I do to apply this information to my life?” Because it’s easy to say I know that already. The reality of it is we don’t know whether you know it or not unless your life pictures the results of a person that’s building a life that gives them life.

No doubt you’ve heard about many of the tools and tips that I share with you. It’s not about knowing about it. It’s about employing those things. You can have all kinds of books on your shelf that are self-help books designed to help people move from point A to point B. But sitting on the shelf will do nothing for these books. You actually have to implement them.

The personal development world is full of people who are able to give inspiring and motivating talks. What we all want for all of our clients is for everyone to take inspired action. To hear the thing and then do something with it. Get something in motion to change your life. It’s tempting to talk about everything you know or think you know, but until you actually implement the tools you’ve heard about you don’t know. You just know about it. I want you to know what it is to have a life that gives you life.

The final thing that I would love for you to implement in your life is to value growth and expansion over perfection or certainty. There’s a lot of certainty in holding back or watching from the sidelines. You know exactly what the results will be when you wait and hold back. But when you dive in, when you put yourself out there, then you put yourself on the line, you learn something new. You learn what you’re capable of. You learn what you’re willing to do. You learn how far you’ve come and how far you’re willing to go. Put yourself on the line and value the growth that comes from putting in the effort.

When we’re thinking about doing something new, it’s easy to freak ourselves right out. What if oh if this happens and this happens and this happens and this happens and then I end up homeless. It always ends up we’re homeless living under the freeway. The truth is you’re unlikely to end up homeless. If you want to play the what if game, at least consider what if it all worked out?

One way that you can train yourself and your mind to not jump off the cliff prematurely is to play the 10 by 10 rule. The 10 by 10 rule is, “Will this matter to me in 10 minutes?” 10 days? 10 weeks? 10 months? Or in 10 years? When you do the 10 by 10 rule, it can help you stay out of other people’s business. It can help you make decisions about what’s worthy of your care and concern. It will help you to remember to live this life right now.

So if you want to change your relationship to the things you hope and dream for, you must get in action. You must actually make a move. You cannot stay put. Your relationship to the potentiality of life requires that you put something of yourself on the line. Put some skin in the game. Keep doing that over and over and over again, and you will see a change in your results.

Your life out picture something remarkably beautiful and different when you continue to do the things that light you up. To do the things that you feel like in the moment initially you weren’t ready for. Doors will open, and opportunities will be revealed to you, but only when you make a move. So remember to remember in order to get something different, you’re going to have to do something different. You’re going to have to show up in a different kind of way in order to have a different kind of life.

So if you were to make a one-degree shift in your life in all four quadrants of your life, what might that look like? You don’t have to do all four quadrants at once, but let’s say you decided to make a one-degree shift in your home. Then perhaps you could make sleep a priority. With making sleep a priority, you could see a dramatic difference in your life in just a short period of time. You can’t solve all of your health problems all at once, but if you made a one degree shift you could start to have an impact and do something right away.

What might shifting your relationships look like? Perhaps you could decide to become one degree kinder, one degree more tolerant, one degree more patient. What might that look like? Well, maybe you could work on being a better listener or being more open and giving more of yourself just by one degree. How might that change your relationships in a short period of time? How about how you show up at work? Being one degree more outspoken or one degree kinder. You could change your relationship at work by one degree, and how might that change the trajectory of your own career?

Your relationship to time and money freedom by one degree. If you were to change your relationship to time and money freedom and give more time to something that lights you up, one degree more time doing something that’s really fun is going to have a tremendous impact on your life. Or one degree more fun with your money. What are you going to do to invite more life into your life just by one degree?

So I invite you to pick a theme word, and see how you can use that theme word in different aspects of your life to change your life by one degree? Remember. We’re training ourselves to tolerate discomfort. To redefine our relationship to comfort in order to expand, in order to experience more growth.

Now because it might produce some level of discomfort, I want to offer a breathing tool to you right now. This is something that you can use at any moment when you feel a bit of discomfort, and it will calm your nervous system down. It’s a way of you telling the body, “It’s okay. We’re okay. I got you.” It’s really simple, but it feels really good. Your breath is always available to you. Remember that.

You simply close your mouth and take a deep breath in through your nose. Then blow out through your mouth as if blowing through a straw. Purse your lips together and blow out slowly as if blowing through a straw. I find that it’s very comforting, and it calms your entire nervous system down. We’ll talk about this more in a future episode.

Okay. That’s it for now. We’ve reached the end of episode four of the Unlock Your Life podcast. We’ve learned that if we want to build a life that gives us life, we need to start before we’re ready. We’re going to just take a one-degree shift; a one degree move to move our vision forward. We’re going to train ourselves not to say, “I know that already,” but to look for places in our life where we are implementing this tool. As a way to create a one-degree shift, we’re going to choose a theme word. Finally, we learned a breathing technique to calm our nervous system.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Unlock Your Life podcast. To celebrate the launch of my show, I’m giving away a soft cushy Unlock Your Life hoodie. I’m going to be giving away five to five lucky listeners who follow, rate, and review this show. It doesn’t have to be a five-star review, although I really hope you love this show. I want your honest feedback so I can create an awesome show that gives you tons of value. Visit loriaharris.com/podcastlaunch to learn more about the contest and how you can enter. I’ll be announcing the winners in future episodes. So keep listening.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Unlock Your Life podcast. If you want more information on how you can transform your life and do it quickly, visit loriaharris.com. See it on the next episode of the Unlock Your Life podcast.