It is finally here, and to be honest, I am a bit emotional today. I have been planning what to do to celebrate my hundredth episode and to celebrate you for months. My goal was to bring some love and some brightness to you as well as inspiration and fun, and then the world got. Even heavier than it already was.

If that didn’t seem possible. And I realize that this is exactly what we all need right now to celebrate our lives no matter what we’re going through, because our circumstances do not control us. We get to choose how we feel. And today I wanna feel excited. I’m excited because today is a big deal. It’s kind of socialized into us, especially as women.

Not to be prideful or arrogant, we need to be humble and quiet and not toot our own horns. But I wanna be an example that even when it feels really awkward, you can celebrate you. It could be for the smallest thing or a big impossible goal that you made possible, but it’s important to keep showing your brain the good things in life and the good things that you do.

And then you can be an example for others. It is not bragging, it’s acknowledging your accomplishments. So as I celebrate a hundred episodes, I want you to be thinking of something you’ve done that you are proud of yourself for. It may even be giving yourself. A few minutes to listen to this podcast, or it might be that you survived another day dealing with everything on your plate.

It could be going to a scan for your pregnancy after loss and handling it, or just letting yourself cry and not making it mean anything. Maybe you told someone how many kids you had and included your angel and felt proud, or you left them out and didn’t feel guilty about it. All of these little things deserve acknowledgement, and I acknowledge you.

I am so proud of you because this is such a big day. I wanted to do something really fun, and if you’re on my email list, you already know what it is because everyone on my email list gets a scoop on everything early. But today I’m announcing a giveaway, and the grand prize is a Minky couture blanket. If you’ve never heard of Minky Couture, you are missing out.

They make the softest, prettiest, most luxurious blankets ever. The company was started by a mom who wanted to give her daughter comfort while she was ill in the hospital, and they are a whip and run business, and they give back in so many ways as. A bereavement volunteer. I have given some of their littlest blankets to families who have lost a baby, and these same blankets also are given to NICU as part of their heart of Minky program, which is such a beautiful thing, and I know it means a lot.

I picked out the most beautiful design. It is white with blue and green watercolor feathers. If you follow me on Instagram, you know that blue green watercolor is my jam. And so it seemed just meant to be. And the feathers are a symbol for so many people that our angels are near. This blanket is worth almost $200.

And you. Won it. It is adult size. I actually have it sitting in my lap right now. I’m touching it. I wish that I could like reach through your phone and let you touch it too. But it has the Silkies Navy Blue Edge satin edging. It has just, uh, Beautiful soft powder blue underneath, and then the top, which is the white with the feathers.

It is gorgeous and it is not too thick. I think it’s just perfect for air conditioning. Um, in the summer, I purposely picked one that would be great in the summer, but you are gonna be fighting your family for this blanket if you win. So you want to win. Now how do you win it? I’ll tell you, all you need to do is review this podcast and share it with your friends.

So to review the podcast, it’s really simple. In Apple, you just scroll down, you’ll see five purple stars. So click on five stars, then go a little bit farther down and you’ll see a little spot. It says Write a review. All you need to do is just share your favorite thing about the podcast or how it’s helped you.

And that’s it. It really takes like two minutes. You could even pause right now and go do it. I will wait for you. Reviews mean so much to me personally. I read every single one. They also help other people find the podcast and know that it’s full of goodness. So once you’ve reviewed, tell your friends on social media or in person, right?

This is not, I’m not making you tag a whole bunch of people on Instagram or whatever. I just, I know that a lot of my favorite podcasts have been recommended to me personally by friends. So tell your angel mom, friend who really needs this, right? If you love listening, just even text somebody or. Put it in your support group.

Just say, you know what? This is a great podcast and it’s really helped me, and here’s how, and I think everyone should listen to it. Then just go to smooth stones coaching.com/ 100, so the number’s 1 0 0, and tell me that you did those things. I’ve got a little form. You just click a box. I did them. It’s the honor system.

You guys am not gonna make you screenshot. I’m not gonna make you go through a bunch of hoops. I just. Really want you to review it and share it. So that’s it. Um, the contest will run June 2nd to June 9th, 2022, and the winner will be notified June 10th. So also come see me on Instagram. We’ll be doing some other fun things over there as we celebrate this week together.

So that is at Amy dot Smooth Stones Coaching. And, uh, I have to tell you because I bought two blankets, one for me. That’s the one that I’m snuggling with right now. It’s for me to enjoy and take lots of pictures with for this contest and then one for the winner. So if you win, you get a brand new one. Um, I just wanna be clear about that.

It will be nicely packaged and untouched now. I hope you’re as excited as I am about that, and I’m also really, really excited about the rest of the episode. I am gonna share five lessons I’ve learned over the past 100 episodes and almost three years of podcasting. I can’t believe it went so fast. I think it was about this time three years ago that I joined a podcasting, um, course to help me launch my podcast.

So these lessons are, Absolutely gonna help you with any goal you are trying to accomplish. And there are lessons that you’ll learn when you work with me in my three month coaching program where I teach you how to find yourself again after loss. Losing a child breaks you apart, and I can help you put yourself back together.

Not the same as you were, but an even better, deeper. And more ready to take on life after loss version of you. You have so much good to do in this world, lady. I’ll show you how to get there, and it’s a lot easier and faster when you have the support you need. Lesson one, and I’ve said this before and I’ll keep saying it, start before you are ready.

I wasn’t ready. I, there’s a lot of schools of thought of when you should start a podcast, especially as a coach, should you wait till you’ve got a, a big business going on? Should you, when should you start a podcast? When is it the best idea? What do you need to know? Do you need to be a great interviewer?

Do you need to be an eloquent speaker? Do you need to have all the confidence in the world and a huge launch and have. Millions and millions of downloads on the first day. And I say, no, you don’t. You can start before you are ready. Whatever you wanna do. You wanna run a marathon and you haven’t even gone for a walk in five years.

You can start, you go for it. Um, anything you want to do, you wanna have another baby, you feel terrified, you can start, start before you’re ready. You just need to want to do it. That’s all you need. You just need to decide. Decide to do it. Go for it. You feeling ready? Really comes from your thoughts, right?

And you, you might have all these thoughts about what it means to be ready, but you in the end get to decide that. So don’t let yourself stop yourself. We are our worst critic. We hold ourselves back the most. We procrastinate. I know there is someone listening right now who needs this kick in the pants.

Start before you’re ready. Now is the best day. Today is the best day. Just go for it and see what happens. Your future self is going to Thank you. The second lesson is action builds confidence and quiets the mind. I took a lot about mindset, but you can’t just sit with your journal and your pen and paper and coach yourself until you feel confident and feel better.

You have to just do it. And do it scared and do it messy and make tons of mistakes and wish you could go back and rerecord a bunch of episodes or whatever it is, just go ahead and do it. And the more you do it, the better you’re going to feel. This quiets the mind, right? Our brain will go on overdrive giving us all the reasons we shouldn’t do something, and all the reasons we’re not worthy.

We can’t do it. We’re not good enough. We’re not. We’re not there. But when you do it, you just keep showing your mind that you can do it. You start building evidence that you can do it, and that’s gonna make it easier and easier. And those things are going to, those thoughts are gonna go away. This is a lot, like when I first got on Instagram, I actually was never on Instagram until I started a business and.

I was like, I don’t know how to do this, how to show up. I don’t wanna go live. I don’t wanna do stories like being on video seems terrible. And you know what? I just did it though. And I did it. And I did it. And I did it. And now it’s just like talking to my friends. It feels really, really comfortable. And I don’t have all that chatter in my brain that I used to.

So keep. Taking action. Yes, we want to have a good mindset. We wanna have our emotions ready to go, but sometimes you just have to do the thing. Number three. Just ask. The worst someone can do is say no. And the worst thing that can happen is an uncomfortable emotion. This is from the guests I’ve had, so I have had some incredible guests and.

In my world, they’re like celebrities. And I was like so scared to ask, so scared to ask them to be on the podcast and to come and talk to me, and so scared to show up on Zoom with them and, and have a discussion. Right? Of course you’re nervous, but you know what? Everyone that I have asked has said yes. So you’re never gonna get the yes if you don’t ask.

You have to be willing to get the no, and you might get lots of nos. But you might get the yes. So go out there and do the thing that scares you. Ask the question. It’s so important, right? If you’re just willing to feel uncomfortable, you can get amazing, amazing things. Number four, do it your own way. There are so many experts out there, you know, including myself.

I have a way that I feel like. Makes life easier and better, but you don’t have to agree with everything I say. You need to do it your own way. You need to trust your gut. You need to understand your family, your time, the constraints that you have and the desires that you have. Because experts and books and Instagram influencers, they don’t know you.

You know you. So whatever your goal is, do it your way. One example of this is, My coach is very, um, consistent and that’s something she is really proud of, that once she started her podcast, she never missed a week, never once, and for like 300 plus episodes. Now, she’s never missed a week. Well, I did not do that, and at first I was like, I had a lot of stuff come up.

I had a lot going on and I, I didn’t always get a podcast out. That’s why I’m hitting a hundred episodes, um, at almost three years. But you know what? That’s okay. I worked through that to realize, you know what, sometimes I’m gonna prioritize my family over getting a podcast out. Sometimes I’m gonna prioritize getting a better podcast out than putting something out.

That I really didn’t have the time to do the kind of work that I wanted to do. And so even though experts will say, you need to be consistent or you know, same with a lot of goals will be like you have to do it every day or you have to. Make a goal and stick to it. You know what? It’s okay if life ebbs and flows.

Um, we have cycles. We are women. We have times that we have more energy and we have times that we have less. We are grieving, we have grief waves. So do it your own way that works for you. This is such good advice for literally anything you are doing. Pay attention to your energy. Pay attention to your gut and what really feels aligned with you.

And then keep going that way and just cut out all that chatter that says you need to be different. You don’t need to be different. You need to be you. And when you do it your way, you are gonna succeed. All right, and number five, as we wrap it up, make it fun. Now fun is relative here we are talking about grief, we are talking about death.

I am interviewing my own children on this podcast about the death of their siblings and how they feel about that. And you might not describe it as fun, but kind of going along with number four, making it fun means. You, you do things that light you up that you’re excited about. And I tend to be down in my office really late at night, uh, when it’s quiet, when my younger kids have gone to bed and everything’s kind of settled down and I get to come down to my office and talk to you.

And I seriously love it so much. I, I’ve had people ask me recently, you know, what excites you about your business? What do you love about your business? And I say, I love my podcast. I love talking to people. I, I love sharing the things I’ve learned in my life and hopefully helping you. And so that’s really fun for me, and that’s why I have done a hundred episodes and that’s why I have like a million ideas for more because I love it.

I love doing it. It’s fun and exciting for me and for some people. Doing a podcast would be terrifying. It is just not what they wanna do, right? It seems like right now everyone has a podcast, but you know what? If it’s not your thing, don’t do it. Do the things that are fun, make it fun. Sometimes I will, there’s some self-help gurus that talk about those superman pose or superhero pose and like getting pumped up.

And sometimes I do those things and it feels really silly right before I get on the microphone. I’m like pumping myself up and trying to get in the best energy so that that energy will translate straight to your ears and to your heart and to you. And so just things like that. I love thinking of examples and yeah, just learning how to do it.

Another thing is a lot of times we’re afraid. We’re afraid to try something new that we don’t know how to do, but learning how to do new things, that’s fun. It’s fun figuring out how to edit a podcast. It’s fun. Now that I know how, and I’m way faster than I used to be, it’s, it’s just so good. So any goal you have, make it fun.

How can you make it a little bit more silly? A little bit lighter? Grief is heavy. Life can be heavy. It’s okay to make it fun because you’re gonna be much more likely to continue doing the thing when you are having fun with it. So those are my tips for today. I hope that you take all of them or just one of them that really struck you and put it towards any goal you have in your life.

Even if it’s like, I wanna keep the house clean this summer with all my kids home. How can you make that fun? How can you. Just ask, how can you do it your own way instead of, you know, some expert that told you how to do a chore chart. If that doesn’t work for you, don’t do it. All these lessons will work in any situation.

All you gotta do is get out there and do it. Start now. Even if you’re not ready and then keep taking action and have fun with it, it’s gonna be amazing. And I really want you to take the action of going and reviewing the podcast. My goal is to get a hundred reviews this week for the hundredth episode of the podcast.

It’s a big goal for me. Um, but I know that if everyone who listens to this and everyone who follows me on Instagram and who’s on my email list, if, if everyone does it, it will easily pass a hundred reviews. I truly appreciate it, and I want you to have an amazing week. Like I said, come over to Instagram.

Go to smooths coaching.com/a hundred. Make sure you enter the contest. I can’t tell you you won if I don’t know that you entered. So we will see you next week for episode 101. I’m so excited to get into the hundreds and we’re gonna talk about why I like being wrong. You don’t wanna miss it. I’ll see you next time.

Are you tired of feeling like your baby was somehow your fault? Go tostones coaching.com and get my free mini course. How to Stop Blaming Yourself After Loss.