Working Towards Our Purpose

Welcome to episode 78 of Working towards our

purpose. In today's episode, we are going to talk about how to

stop getting in your own Way in 2026.

But before we get into that, we are going to do a little check in

with ourselves and take a moment to see how we're feeling.

All right? Yeah, so I'm in a little bit of a different setup

today, partly because I'm trying to

move my backdrop for my YouTube going into next year

and trying to think about what looks a little bit more aesthetic and.

Yeah, also partly because my room here is a mess.

So, you know, trying something new. Feeling a little uncomfortable, a little different

holding the microphone today. So that's different. But,

yeah, got probably a little bit shorter of an episode today

for you, it's going to be the last episode of 2025.

And, yeah, excited to

talk about new things, new

beginnings. You know, it's the time of year where we're

maybe setting resolutions or thinking about what we want to do in

2026, maybe thinking about what we've done in 2025.

I always kind of get excited around this time of year because

I. I'm a dreamer, naturally, I guess, and I like to think

of, you know, things that I want to accomplish. And,

you know, it seems. Even though it's just another day, it

seems like a new chance at a new beginning and a new.

Yeah, just like a starting line or so. Yeah. I

always just think about, you know, what am I going to do next year? There's

a whole year ahead of us. And, you know, what. What do I want to

do with my time? Where do I want to invest my energies? So, for me,

it's always a time when I'm always trying to finish the things up in

2025, like, wrap the things up from the old year, but. But also

kind of planning and thinking about where I want my year to go.

So, yeah, if you're also doing that, this episode's kind of for you.

But, yeah, I want to talk about how it's very

common for people to think about New Year's

resolutions. And then the classic joke

is, at the end of January, we forgot what our resolution

was. And, yeah, kind of just wanted to maybe talk a little

bit about that. Talk a little bit about changing and,

like, how. How to actually, like, make the change, how to. How to

invest yourself into something that you've wanted to do

and how to get out of your own way. I think, you

know, for me, at least, it seems that the person

that's sort of stopping Me from doing the things that I want to do

is a lot of the times myself, you know, and,

you know, you think about, like,

you know, if you're making a change and you want to,

like, strive for something and accomplish something, it's

hard. It's new. You don't really have any experience in

it. And I think a lot of times, at least for me, the biggest thing

that comes up is your inner critic and somebody just telling you, like,

you know, that voice in your head that's saying, like, oh, you're not good enough

to do that. You'll never be able to accomplish that. You

know, maybe a little bit of imposter syndrome. Who are you to

think that you can do this? So, you know, it's hard when you

want to go and accomplish things and go try something new.

And I think I've noticed that

one of the biggest inhibitors of accomplishing

things and reaching your goals and getting out of your own way

is your inner critic and yourself. And

I think that there's things that we can do

to help soften our inner critic.

And. Yeah, so

that's an idea that I've been working with for a

while. I've been secretly

building this guide, and

it's called Softening your inner critic in seven A guide

to stop getting in your own way. And I have a link for

you to download this guide and to use it at the end of this episode.

But basically, the idea of this guide is that if we

can be kinder to ourselves and learn how to stop

being so critical of ourselves, then we can

actually start getting out of our own way and to start accomplishing more things.

And, you know, I've thought about

this concept a lot. I. My initial idea was to

have this done before, like, at the beginning of December. Um, but I've been

just working on it and refining it and honing

it down and making it more digestible and more simple and cutting all the

fat and. Yeah, so it's something that

I'm. That I'm really proud of. And I think that

just really has got me thinking about how

we're the ones that limit ourselves. And so I kind of just wanted to touch

on that in this episode today. And then if it's something that interests you, you

can go and download that guide and take the seven

day. It's not really a challenge, but more of

a commitment to yourself to try to help your inner critic and to try to

be a little bit kinder to yourself. So.

So, yeah, thinking about

how everything

starts in our minds, and if Our mind is

not a nice place. And if our mind is, like, constantly critical,

then it makes a lot of things harder to accomplish, and it makes

new things harder to try. And I think it can keep us in our comfort

zone. A lot of. And a little bit of a

critical voice is great. Wanting the best

and trying to do the best at the things that you want to

accomplish, that's a great thing. But

especially for myself, I've noticed that it's

just way overboard. The volume on the

inner critic is just at 11 sometimes. And

if we could turn that down to three, then, you know, maybe

that'd be a good spot to be. And it's something that, for me,

I didn't even really notice about myself, and only through

therapy and, like, conversations with other honest

people. I think I told the story one time about how

I was getting coffee with somebody and telling him about a project

that I was working on and sort of ran through the project, and

then I was done talking about it, and I looked at him and I was

like, you know, what are your thoughts? What do you think? And he

just looked at me for a second and was like, man, you're really hard on

yourself, aren't you? And I was, like, kind of taken aback for a second

because I was looking for feedback, and that was his first comment,

and I was like, oh, wow, is it that

obvious? You know, so it was kind of a

shock. But it's always, like, a reminder to me. I always have to remind myself,

like, this inner critic volume is too high, and I

got to try to turn it down a little bit. If I want to allow

myself to get out of my own way and to start

doing some of the things that I want to do, and

for music, that's certainly rang true. I

think I told myself for a really long time that I wasn't good

enough at music. I wasn't good enough to be in

a band. I wasn't good enough to put music out there, to write my own

music. And looking back,

if I were to just have started it earlier and gotten out of my

own way, yeah, I would have sucked at the beginning, but I would have gotten

better a lot quicker. And I think

that that's like, a common thing for me is to

stop myself for a really long time until it's just like,

okay, I really like this thing a lot. I really can't stop

doing music, so I'm just going to keep doing it and I'm just going to

do it anyways. But, yeah, so to think about

that idea of our own inner critic and how we can sort of get a

better hold of it and how we can think about

maybe showing up as, for lack of a better term,

cheerleader instead of a critic or, you know, a coach.

How can we be somebody who's supportive of our own self

instead of being someone to tear us down? Because there's always

going to people, there's always going to be people to tear you down and to

tell you your ideas suck and, you know, to

be mean to you. But

if you're doing that to yourself, then like, you know, it's like

it's even worse. So, you know, I think it's very important to

be your own supporter and to believe in your own ideas and to believe in

your own self. Because when you have, you know, big ideas and

dreams and things that you want to chase after,

you can't look outwardly for inspiration. Maybe

sometimes you can look outwardly for people to tell you to do it, but

a lot of times you're the one going to bed at night thinking

about, can I do this thing or can I not do this thing? So you

need to be somebody who believes in

yourself. And I hear it a lot of times with

famous musicians or athletes, just the. The self

belief that's necessary to get to where

they've gotten. And. Yeah, so anyways, I feel like I'm rambling a

bit about this, but I really think it's important that we're

kind to ourselves and we're supportive of ourselves

and we can hear that critic in our head, but we don't necessarily

have to listen to it all the time. And so that's why I've

built this guide, Soften youn Inner Critic in Seven Days. A

guide to stop getting in your own Way. And

I really wanted it to be done before, before the end of the year. Because

if you are out there and you have New Year's resolutions

or goals that you want to make, I think that this is a perfect complement

to that. And it's not going to tell you how to reach your goals, but

it's going to tell you how to be more supportive of yourself and more kind

to yourself and more loving to yourself so that you have the support

to reach those goals. And

yeah, I hope it's helpful. I spent a lot of time making

it and, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be helpful, but

I do believe in it and I do think that it's something that. It

is something that I'm proud of. So if you want to Download that. I have

a link in the description you can click over and

go download that. It'll bring you to, like, a little download page you put in

your email and it'll send it to you completely free.

It doesn't cost you anything. It just puts you on my email list and.

Yeah, let me know if it's helpful for you if you download it. Um, and

then, you know, before. Before I get out of here, before we. We end the

year in 2025, I do want to do a little recap of the podcast

and, and just take a moment to appreciate

you all, the listener. I want to appreciate

my progress through the last six months. You know, I brought this

podcast back in 2025 in

July, and I took about a year off

and reformatted the podcast. So if you haven't listened to the older

episodes, they're all interview styles. And I interviewed some great

people. I had some great conversations with some

inspiring people. But when I brought the podcast back in July,

it was a solo podcast and it was just me kind of talking about

ideas and things that are inspiring to me and things that

I believe in. And since July, we're now in

December, I've released this will be the 40th episode in.

And that's. That's a good number for me. I feel like that's, you know, something

to be proud of. Uh, I was doing two episodes a week for a while,

and, yeah, just, you know, started my

YouTube channel, which was something new. I think I started that in, like, September,

growing my subscribers. And yeah, just really

proud of what I've done over the past six months, and

very thankful and grateful for everybody who's listened and, and.

And everybody who's reached out and said something nice. Like there's. There's been

people that have just kind of, you know, people I didn't know, people, people

that I did know, people that I didn't expect to. To reach out

and say something and to, you know, tell me how an episode affected

them. And that's been amazing and awesome, and I really appreciate that.

And, and yeah, just thank you so much for,

for being here. And I think

next year, you know, 2026, gonna come at this

podcast even stronger and won't be. Won't be

as often. I think I'm gonna stick to a weekly podcast for next year.

But, you know, still we're improving. I'm looking at different

ways to make it better and to incorporate the

feedback and everything like that. So, yeah, just thank you for being

here. And then I just wanted to say, sort of. My

podcast wrapped the two most

listened to episodes over the past six months. The first one was

Overcoming the expectations of others, so that's been

really cool. I didn't expect that to be the most listened to episode. And then

the episode on Imposter Syndrome was the second one.

So if you haven't listened to those, you can go

search them in the podcast website. That's in the

link and I don't have the episode numbers, although that would have been helpful

I think. I think overcoming expectations was 45,

but have to check me on that.

But yeah. Anyways, I hope that all of you have

a great holiday season. I hope it's restful. Hope you

could take some time to yourself with your families, friends

and yeah, thank you so much for listening. I will be back

in January, so look out for that. And

if you're interested in the guide that I've been making for the past

few months, softening your inner critic in seven days,

A guide to stop getting in your own way, you can find the

link in the show notes and go ahead and download that and have that

guide sent straight to your inbox. It's just a PDF guide with a

bunch of links and resource books and things like that.

So go check it out if you're interested. Thank you so much for listening. Thank

you for being here and I will see you in 2026.

Thank.

You.