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Episode 500 – see how far have you have come

• Welcome my dearest listeners
• It is episode 500
• Wow
• I have written, recorded, edited, and published 500 podcast episodes
• All on my own
• No interviews
• No help from anyone
• Only me
• On my own
• Some of these episodes took days to prepare
• A lot of thought went into them
• Research
• Topics that began to interest me more and more the more I wrote about them
• Other episodes were quick – 1 hour and done
• I said what I needed to say
• Or I was short on time and ended them even though I had more to say
• I am proud of many of these episodes but there are also many others I wish I had done a better job with
•  
• 500 episodes worth of content has inspired me to me and I keep going on
• Ideas keep coming – sometimes slow, sometimes several at a time
• Ideas I never thought I would have
• When I first started with this podcast I was worried about running out of content
• But not anymore
• Sometimes I repeat topics, but not the exact same way
• I have learned more about it and may have a slightly different take on it
• Or I may present it in a different context
• I realize that not everything will resonate with you
  • It depends what stage in life you are in
  • Where your mind is at
  • What issues you are dealing with
• But I know some topics will be exactly what you need right this moment
•  
• 500 episodes
• Over 3 years of podcasting
• And yet – I am not where I want to be
• The content is there, but the listeners aren’t
• I have so much work to do
• Work I promised I would do last time when I reflected
  • At the 300 and the 400 year mark
  • When I said I need to do more advertising
  • More promoting
  • And still haven’t done it
• But its not holding me back from moving forward
• There are so many things I haven’t done
  • Or I have done then unsuccessfully
• Many reasons
• I may not have tried hard enough because its not my area of strength
• As is the case with promoting
• BUT
• I have done other things
• MANY other things
•  
• Every other Sunday – as you may know – I am meeting with my rehearsal group
• And important group of smart and ambitious people that have accomplished more in life than I have and yet we all are coaching each other along our journey
• Every time we meet, I learn so much, feel so motivated to move forward and yet, as soon as the next meeting approaches, I start getting anxious
  • I haven’t accomplished everything exactly what I set out to do
  • I am not where I want to be or said I would be
• And I stress out
• You should see me, the morning of
  • I run around with my head cut off
  • I cant focus on anything
  • It almost feels like as if I have a test coming up
• I am often very close to cancelling last minute, making up some excuse
• I don’t want to go because I don’t have anything to show,
• but then I always go
• And every time I show up, I realize 2 things
  • ONE – Everyone else is not always where they said they would be either
  • And
  • TWO – I may not be where I wanted to be, but I still made progress

• And this is my message for you today as I am reflecting on 500 episodes:
• 5 years ago I was the most miserable I had ever been in my entire life
  • I was going through a divorce and every day I woke up, unsure how I would make it through the day
  • I had to start back from Zero –
    • I was still working out, but emotionally and mentally I had to pick myself off the ground and start over
  • 4 years ago I was back on my feet, working, travelling, living my life
    • But on the inside I was still empty
    • This time, however, I felt that emptiness
    • I was alone although I was desperately searching for another relationship
    • Yet when it didn’t happen, I eventually began to turn towards myself
    • And this was the missing link the started everything
    • I realized my life is lacking purpose, and I began searching
  • This search led me to my Quest For You – my podcast which I launched 3 years ago
  • 5 years ago I was miserable
  • 4 years ago I was searching
  • 3 years ago I became a podcaster
  • 2 years ago slowly aligned my life with my message – I began living a more intentional and meaningful life
    • And if you have been listening to this podcast for some time , you know what this means as I have shared many of the stories of my journey with you
  • 1 year ago I became a climber and decided to train in public speaking
  • Today, I am a climber, a podcaster and a speaker
  • one small step led to the next, and then many more
  • every major accomplishment started with one small step
    • a feeling of emptiness led to a search
    • a wild idea about podcasting led me to record my voice on my phone and now I have 500 episodes
    • Curiosity took me to a small mountain and turned me into a climber
    • A spark of interest in speaking made me sign up for a speaking conference and that took me to a training program
  •  
  • A year ago I didn’t keep a daily planner
  • I had to-do lists, I had yearly goals, but I was all over the place
  • This year I kept a planner with yearly goals, broken out into monthly goals and I was much more disciplined with following through on my action items
  •  
  • We may not be as far as we wanted to be
  • But we have come a long way
  • Today, as I am reflecting on 500 episodes, I want to ask you as well to look back
  • Because sometimes, it helps looking back to see how far we have actually come
  • When we look back we see all the steps we took to arrive at where we are now
  • The endless hour we spent practicing, trying, working, learning, testing
  • They all takes us somewhere
  • But yet, when we only keep looking forward, the horizon constantly moves away from us because we keep setting higher goals
  • That is why we sometimes just need to stop ….
  • And look back
  • And celebrate how far we have come
  • I quite purposefully don’t look back when I climb mountains
  • I am focusing on my path ahead
  • But when I reach a pitch or the summit, then I admire the view
  • Often surprised at myself and how I did it
  • I am not a big fan of celebrating every little step
  • I like to look ahead and push forward
    • That is why I get so anxious prior to my rehearsal group meetings
  • Because I want to get things done
  • But just like a painting, it takes time until it all comes together
  • I have a friend who paints and have watched him
  • For 2/3s of the time he paints very little is clear and its not visible at all what the picture will look like
  • But in the end , when he applies the refining touches, that’s when the image becomes clear
  • That’s how it often goes with the big tasks in our life
  • They don’t come together completely until the very end
  • Yet every small and large step along the way was necessary to get us here
  •  
  • As I am reflecting today, I am finding a lot of food for thought in this passage from Rilke in his book Letters to a young poet
  • I want to end with it and as I read it – listen carefully
  • What he emphasizes here is that our progress in life doesn’t just happen on the outside
  • We also need to be ready for the journey internally
  • Sometimes I find myself doing a lot
  • I am a doer
  • But when we see that we don’t make much progess, it might be worth taking a break, resting, looking back, acknowledging how far we have come and then reconsidering next steps before just keep pushing on
  • Here is Rilke:

“With regard to any such disquisition, review or introduction, trust yourself and your instincts; even if you go wrong in your judgement, the natural growth of your inner life will gradually, over time, lead you to other insights. Allow your verdicts their own quiet untroubled development which like all progress must come from deep within and cannot be forced or accelerated. Everything must be carried to term before it is born. To let every impression and the germ of every feeling come to completion inside, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, in what is unattainable to one’s own intellect, and to wait with deep humility and patience for the hour when a “new clarity is delivered: that alone is to live as an artist, in the understanding and in one’s creative work.
These things cannot be measured by time, a year has no meaning, and ten years are nothing. To be an artist means: not to calculate and count; to grow and ripen like a tree which does not hurry the flow of its sap and stands at ease in the spring gales without fearing that no summer may follow. It will come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are simply there in their vast, quiet tranquillity, as if eternity lay before them. It is a lesson I learn every day amid hardships I am thankful for: patience is all!”
.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Much love my friends