Welcome to episode #206 of the Own Your Best Life Podcast. One of the sneaky beliefs of professionals that keep them where they are is thinking that they can’t make any changes because they should be grateful.

“I should be grateful….but”. Every time you think about change, a sense of guilt comes over you. 

Life is pretty good so why rock the boat? 

Today’s podcast on how you can be grateful and still make changes will help you understand why you feel that guilt and also you can keep gratitude from getting in the way of allowing your life to unfold.

When you’re raised to be humble and hardworking, you often find that you’ve been told time and time again to be grateful. Especially if you want to be well-liked and have had some people-pleasing tendencies. To be “good” you should be grateful. 

You know that there’s a balance between asking for more from life and rocking the boat.

Especially, if you’ve grown up with parents that taught you to value stability and responsibility, change can often seem like the opposite of being grateful.

If you’re grateful, you feel like you’re not supposed to make any changes. It seems risky to make changes and if you end up failing or things don’t work out the way that you planned, you’ll seem as if you were ungrateful for the life or opportunities you have today.

Yet, I want to offer you an idea. What if all the privilege you’ve been given from your parents, community and family have been for you to be able to pay it forward?

You’ve been given so much for a reason. You have firm footing so you can evolve. You can innovate and not just seek stability, but also to cultivate even more impact and soulfulness in your life. To be fully engaged, learn who you are and to truly be in service to those around you because you can.

You often see this in companies. These companies get so big that they stop innovating because they feel they have so much at risk. Yet the thing that got them there was the ability to innovate and try new things – and they know that this innovation is their lifeblood. They have to change and challenge the feeling of staying in the status quo to keep everything exactly the same. They have to figure out smart and intelligent ways to do this while also keeping a sense of stability in their organizations and lives as well. 

This is the same thing for us as humans. This idea that we have something to keep us going and to keep us afloat. We have energy, resources, time and support. 

What if you could stand out and lead even more, not because you’re taking huge risks that don’t make any sense, but because you have something to take this next leap thing from. You have gratitude that allows you to witness what is available in your life and allow you to make changes from it.

Change occurs without fail for us all and gratitude is a stepping stone that recognizes and appreciates what is working in your life. It creates a firm foundation for your next big or small leap.

What if you could be both grateful for the family, friends, career, income and health – while also continuing to move with life, creating even more depth, meaning and fulfillment? 

So how can one be grateful while still making changes?

You use a Success Map process.

This is a process I teach where you are able to see both your goals with clarity as well as the process of achieving the goal.

Often, when people get started on life or career changes, they may have a goal, but not the process – or they have the process but are unclear about the goals.

We ensure that you have a complete system that maps out not just where you want to go but how you want to get there along the way. The reason we are able to account for all the good things in your life today is because we’re using a process that takes into account your current life and what you want to take with you.

We make sure you don’t leave the parts of your life that matter behind when you pursue your big career moves. We also make sure that you don’t leave behind all the rich experience and connections that you’ve already built. Instead, we build upon everything you’ve had in your life up to now, even when it feels a bit disconnected from the future career or lifestyle you’re looking to create.

This method allows you to stay grounded and connected to the people, places and organizations that matter, while still making moves in your career and life that create more energy, engagement and aliveness.

We often forget that life is asking us to evolve and instead of moving with it, we resist it. It is a skill to use the Success Map to use both your own intelligence and design while also having humility and surrender to the idea that not everything is in our control.

When you are able to stay grounded and connected to the current reality and the thing that is evolving and moving, you do have more energy, engagement and aliveness.

I want you to imagine having the ability to feel like you’re making changes on solid ground, instead of just shifting here and there. You’re building upon things that make sense. You’re grateful for what’s already in your life today and moving from pretty good to something even more amazing. It’s not about just asking what we can change and unearthing everything because it’s terrible. Instead we’re asking, “everything is amazing, how can we solidify this even more?”

So I’ll ask you this, do you want to continue to stay in status quo because you think that gratefulness means not allowing your life to evolve and change with you?

Or do you want to allow all the parts of you and the skills that you want to develop to come forward so you use gratitude as a stepping stone to make the changes you know are already coming to your life? You do it with so much more inner peace, contentment and stability that allow you to make moves that feel a bit more challenging.

If you’d like to choose the latter and become a spiritual achiever, I invite you to watch the free training on how to Stand Out and Lead, using spiritual, high-performance strategies: STAND OUT AND LEAD.

You can apply to join my Spiritual Achiever® program, where you’re going to create your next chapter with spiritual and high-performance strategies to achieve time and financial freedom using my proven method. It’s risk-free. You either start seeing results within your first month or I give you your money back. Schedule your call here at www.mayempson.com/contact.  We’ll see you inside.

Want to know more about what happens when you join?

1. When you join Spiritual Achiever® Coaching you’ll be supported for a full year: Career Revelation Academy: A 5-step career change process (if you have a job you want to stay in, I’ll show you how to love it even more) that can launch you into your next career chapter in 30 days.
2. 2x/month group training and coaching on Spirituality, Achievement, Earth Energy and Harmony. You’ll know how to design your days for breakthroughs, create a personal brand and community, lead yourself and others through change, become more physically and mentally fit, reduce stress and reinvent what’s possible in this next chapter of your life.
3. Discover your Leadership Strengths and Branding Workshop: Increase your awareness of what makes YOU different from others and how to become even better at your genius zone.
4. Your Best Year workshop: Create your one year plan and design this next year, no matter what time of the year it is.
5. Your Next 5 Years one-day virtual retreat: Vision what’s possible 5 years from now and break out of your old routines so you can step into new habits, behaviors and routines.
6. Tickets to all in-person Spiritual Achiever retreats (discounted rates): Highly immersive and intimate gatherings where we spend time in nature, experience energy work, eat and move well – all while making big decisions and committing to what’s next for us.
7. Monthly 1:1 Coaching Sessions: To help you break through obstacles, define your individual path, and to work on both strategy and mindset.

The next step?

Schedule a consultation to get clarity on how coaching can help you on your journey.

Once you’re accepted into the program, you’ll receive a calendar invite for a 2-hour deep dive 1:1 session to map out your personal goals and your own year-long journey.

You’ll have immediate access to the Spiritual Achiever process and philosophy – how to achieve your biggest goals and reinvent your life.

You’ll have immediate access to 5 modules of Career Revelation Academy – to love your career even more and launch that next chapter of your career in 30 days.

You’ll have the calendar invites for the upcoming group calls and retreats.

If this speaks to you, I can’t wait to talk to you live: Schedule a consultation.

Reach out at www.mayempson.com/contact for more information on my Spiritual Achiever coaching program. You’ll figure out what’s next and actually go and do it. 

That’s it for this week. Have an amazing one and I’ll talk to you next time.