Welcome. I gotta tell you about the weather today. And it’s funny because there is a great debate among podcasters. Should you chat at the beginning of the episode? Should you talk about your day? Should you make small talk or should you just dive into the meat of what your subject is?

But I promise you this talk about the weather is important, it has a purpose. Today I woke up and there was snow falling and there was these like big, big fat snowflakes and they are just so beautiful. I love the snow. I’m from Canada and I. I was noticing though that in this transition time we’ve had a beautiful, warm, warm, gorgeous fall in autumn.

It has been amazing, and then it turned cold, and this is a time when I am pulling out my sweaters, I’m pulling out my fuzzy socks, and I love to enjoy like a warm cup of herbal tea or hot chocolate. This is the lesson here is can you be present and notice that the cold is what makes the warm so beautiful, right?

If it wasn’t cold, we wouldn’t wanna put on bake fuzzy socks. If it wasn’t cold, we wouldn’t enjoy a pumpkin spice latte or whatever you like, right? And even if you don’t like cold, there is something beautiful about. Sitting by a fire or coming in after being out in the cold and just warming up and you know, tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, right?

So I just want you to notice as we’re in this time of transition, wherever you live in the world, whatever season you’re in, just take some time today to notice. The how the opposition in our lives, how things being different actually enhances our pleasure. And this is the same for things like grief and joy, and they just, we couldn’t understand the good without the bad, and we couldn’t understand the warmth without the cold.

This is how life is supposed to be, and this is, What’s beautiful about it, we don’t want a beige, boring, mundane, same everyday life. Seasons are what make things beautiful, and if you’re one of those people that hates being cold, that makes a summer even more beautiful for you. And if you’re like me and you hate being hot, This, uh, fall, autumn, and early winter is what makes you happy too.

So just think about it. Look outside. Look around your home. Think about the simple pleasures of like putting on a cozy sweater when it’s getting chilly. It’s a beautiful thing. Okay. Speaking of Canada and cold weather, I have a story for you today and we are gonna talk about compelling reasons. And to start that, I’m gonna tell you this story because I thought it was such a great illustration and you’re gonna wanna listen all the way to the end to see what happened and, and really learn.

Why our reasons for doing things are so, so important because this is a tool that will help you reach any goal you have in your life. Whether it’s a big goal or a small goal, knowing what your reasons are is so important and especially compelling reasons, cuz there’s lots of reasons that we do things and some of them are not compelling if they’re not compelling.

They’re not gonna work. They’re not gonna keep us going when things are hard and they’re not gonna feel good. Right. And some of those are like, when we do things out of fear or because we don’t wanna get in trouble or because we’re trying to meet other people’s expectations, or just because we’re doing it out of habit, like we’re supposed to do it, but we don’t really wanna do it.

Um, that, that isn’t as useful as having a compelling reason, maybe even. You have a reason of doing something because you hate yourself. Like a lot of people try to lose weight because they hate themselves, they hate their body. That isn’t a compelling reason. It doesn’t generally work to hate yourself into better health, um, or whatever self-improvement you want to do This last.

Well, yeah, last week I was getting ready for a trip to Canada to visit my family. We haven’t been there in years and years, just between having babies, having losses, we moved, we, you know, had a pandemic which shut down the border. We had a lot of reasons. We had not been all the way home to visit a lot of my family for many, many years, and we couldn’t even figure out how long it had been, but maybe like eight years.

And we’d visited. We’d visited in different ways and kept in touch, but we just hadn’t taken all our kids up to Canada for a really long time. So we’ve been planning this forever. We’re gonna go for fall break. I am getting ready and think I should just grab the passports and check that everybody’s passport’s good and it’s there and I look at my passport and find out it expired in 2020.

Now it expired kind of in that, I think May, 2020, somewhere in there where. There was no way to renew it. There was nothing happening. Everything was really locked down. We weren’t going anywhere. Nobody was traveling internationally, and I guess it just slipped my mind. And I didn’t think about it even in planning this trip, I just didn’t think about it cuz I assumed I always have a passport.

I’ve grown up always having a passport and you know, they last 10 years and so it’s not something I was thinking about. And I checked it on the Thursday when we were gonna leave the following Thursday and I thought, oh no, my mom has planned this big party. We’re gonna have all the family together. In for the first time in so long and see everybody and, and my passport is expired.

Of course. I had a lot of thoughts and feelings about that and really was using a lot of coaching tools to help me calm down and figure out what to do. Now, luckily, you can actually call a number for this kind of emergency passport. Um, Thing and people answer the phone and people actually help you. They were really helpful.

A human person talked to me and I got an appointment for the next Tuesday to go to a passport agency in Denver. Denver is about eight hours from where we live, and it is the nearest passport agency and it was the nearest one that had an appointment, and so I just got the earliest appointment I could and I.

Didn’t know how I was gonna make it work. I thought, you know, hopefully that my husband would be around and, and I could, I guess, drive myself to Denver and go get this passport so we could go on this trip. I walk out from making the appointment and look at the calendar, and my husband is going to be out of town and I am going to be solo parenting.

So this complicates things even further and it is very stressful, but, What I want you to notice is I had a compelling reason to get my passport. I had a compelling reason to drop everything and go to Denver. I didn’t know how I was gonna make that happen. In fact, All through the weekend, we were trying to figure out how to make this happen, how to make this work.

If we wanted to make it work, should we just cancel the trip? What should we do or should everyone go? And I don’t go, which is kind of funny, but that was kind of where I was at, was, if this doesn’t work, you’re gonna have to go because this is a big deal and we want our kids to see my side of the family and, and do this, this trip that we’ve planned.

So I, I just really wanted to go, I really wanted to make this happen and I actually didn’t wanna tell anyone I wanted it to. I didn’t want anyone else to worry about it, so I just, Kept hoping, kept praying, kept thinking, how can we do this? How can we make this happen? So we called in my amazing in-laws.

They were available to come in, babysit, and be here with the kids. We booked a hotel and I made a plan to drive myself to Denver. I got there the night before my appointment, which was at eight o’clock. I got the earliest one I could got there the night before slept, took my laptop cuz I had a whole bunch of work that I needed to do and was just hanging out, praying that everything went smoothly.

Cuz even though this passport agency says they can get you a quick passport, they don’t guarantee a same day passport. And I still wasn’t sure. Is all my paperwork gonna work? Is everything gonna go through? Am I gonna have any hiccups? Because there was a big list of things that you needed to have, right, in order to make this happen.

And we thought we had it all in order, but you just never know, right? You never know when you walk into a government agency how things are gonna go and you’re kind of at the mercy of what they decide. But I got up early and. I got over there. I was a third person in line, and I got in and I got everything set and threw and paid my money, my extra fee for like this rushed passport, and they told me I could come back in the afternoon.

And so I spent the rest of the day, um, you know, doing a little bit more work. I met up with a friend that I know in Denver and eventually was able to grab my passport and get home and got home really, really late. Um, this was Tuesday night, so I drove out there Monday afternoon, slept over, got my passport, picked it up and was home.

So this was just a round trip. Rushed. Situation, and I looked at it and I thought, this is kind of incredible because I would never, and I think most people would never do this for just for fun. I mean, maybe if there was a concert you wanted to see or you won a prize or something, incredible is happening, right?

That would be a compelling enough reason. But for me to leave my family to drop what I was doing, to ask people to help, right? To ask for, um, people to come watch my kids, to reorganize everything, to just run to Denver overnight. That’s not something I would ever do unless I had a compelling reason. And my compelling reason was I need to go on this trip.

I need to make this happen. And I had to believe, I had to really coach myself to believe this is going to work out. And one of my thoughts was, You know, because I am a woman of faith, I thought Heavenly father really wants me to visit my family. It’s, it’s gonna work out. He’s gonna help me work this out and make it happen.

I don’t need to be afraid because I was very, very nervous that this wouldn’t work, but it did. And that’s what I wanna talk about today is when don’t we talk about compelling reasons. Sometimes it’s. You know, you look at some of these YouTube channels and people will put their hand on a car or do some sort of silly, um, challenge to win a million dollars that they would never do.

I was thinking about movies, right? In movies. The protagonist almost always has a very compelling reason. They need to save their family. They need to rescue the princess, they need to, um, save the world from the aliens or whatever it is. Tho those reasons cause people to step up. So a compelling reason is not an idea that’s foreign to us.

If we look at. Stories, movies, anything we we see around us really. We know that people can do incredible things when they have a compelling reason, like bystanders flipping over a burning car to save, you know, the passengers or whatever it is. We know that when we have a compelling reason, we can do anything, and that is so important to know because.

What I want you to understand is sometimes these compelling reasons come from outside of us, right? This one came from a circumstance in my life. My passport was expired, but my compelling reason was I really want to visit my family. I want to be able to cross the border. I want to take my kids to Canada.

Those were actually my compelling reasons if I really didn’t care. That my passport was expired and I didn’t care about this trip, I wouldn’t have done that. I would’ve gone the old fashioned way down to the post office and simply mailed in my passport and waited six weeks or whatever it is. I would not have done all the things I did, but.

I had that compelling reason inside of me, and you have compelling reasons inside of you for the things that you want. It may not be as obvious as getting a passport, um, within one week, but you do have compelling reasons for what you want. So I want you to think about what you want, what your goals are, and what is going to get you there.

Your compelling reason is gonna be unique to you. Like I said at the beginning, it if it comes from outside, if it comes from other people, if it comes from fear, if it comes from all these kind of places that don’t feel really good, it’s not gonna be enough to keep you going. But when that compelling reason comes from inside of you and you feel really aligned with it, that is where you’re gonna have the superpower to do the impossible things.

That’s seem impossible. Now you are gonna make it happen. So your compelling reason can be anything that you want, and it can be simply, I want this. That is enough. If that is enough, it’s something you want. You get to choose that and you get to keep it as your reason, and it’s going to keep you going. I want you to know that compelling reasons are literally for the times that your brain wants to give up or quit or hates everything.

Like hates what you’re doing, hates all the steps to get to your goal. A lot of times we feel like if I have a compelling reason, then I won’t want to quit. I won’t hate it. I won’t feel like giving up ever. And when we do start feeling those things, we think that something has gone wrong, but wanting to quit, wanting to give up and hating the process.

Right? That part where we feel like throwing up. Or we’re just really tired of how long it’s taking. That is normal. That is part of getting to your goal, and this is when your compelling reasons come in. I mean, that small shift is everything, because this is what I see all the time is people say, you know, I’m, I’m so passionate about this charity that I wanna do for my baby.

And then when things get hard, They kind of flounder because they don’t know why it’s hard, like they really wanna do it and they really wanna honor their baby and it’s so, so important. But they think something’s gone wrong when it’s hard. No. That’s when you gotta dig in. Go back to your compelling reason, go back to why you’re doing it and keep going.

Use that compelling reason as the way to keep going when it’s hard, when you’re unmotivated, when you want to quit, because you will want to quit. If you just expect it and you know that in your back pocket is your compelling reason. You’re gonna keep going, right? Like as I was driving back from Denver, I was really tired.

It was getting dark. It was like, like I’ve been in the car so, so long. This had been really, really stressful, but I wanted to get home to my kids. Right. And that is a compelling reason. So I did what I needed to do to get home to my kids safely, as fast as I safely could, and that kept me going. Now, the other thing that a compelling reason will help with is you might not be able to believe in your result yet, right?

You might have a goal and you want it, but you just don’t know how you’re gonna get there, and you don’t know if it’s possible for sure. But if you believe in you, right? If you have that self-confidence, which we’ve talked about a lot, if you believe in you and you hang onto your compelling reason, you’re much more likely to get there.

And a really great example of this is pregnancy after loss. A lot of my clients come to me and they say, I want to have another baby. I want to have a living baby. Right? If they haven’t been able to experience that yet, and. It seems very out of control given our varying circumstances and our losses and our challenges and whatever’s going on to say, I am going to have another baby.

I am going to hold a living child in my arms. I am going to be a mother here on Earth. I am going to raise living kids. Right? But. If that is your goal, if that is your compelling and your compelling reason is you want it so, so badly, you are going to keep going and you are gonna be much more likely to make that happen.

You are going to do the things you need to do. Because you believe in your compelling reason. You are gonna take the actions you need to take as long as you need to take them to make it happen. I just found out that one of my friends who has been through losses and infertility and so many things, she is pregnant with a miracle baby now and.

She couldn’t have seen that coming, and she has done a lot through adoption and all kinds of things to grow her family because she knew. That she was a mother and she was going to raise children on this earth, and it’s been an incredible journey to watch and incredibly heartbreaking. So many challenges, but her compelling reason, her why kept her going and it’s just such a beautiful thing to see.

That doesn’t mean that her life is perfect or that she’s hit the end. This is just another challenge in her life as well as a blessing. In a miracle, it’s gonna be 50 50, but I just want you to know if you are out there listening and there’s something you want. Take some time. Come up with a compelling reason to get yourself moving.

Like get out of the planning and the thinking and the worrying. Get out of your head. Get moving. Choose something that’s going to light a fire under you and go for it. I love helping my clients to find their compelling reason and to keep going. And the cool thing about having a coach is I’m gonna be there when you are starting to falter, and I am gonna remind you why you wanna do this and how you’re gonna get there, and how you’re gonna keep going by using your compelling reason as your superpower.

I won’t let you forget it when things get hard. So if you have a goal that you wanna reach, whether it’s having another baby, whether it’s something at work, something in your family, uh, something you wanna do in the baby lost space, I would love to help you. All you need to do is go on the show notes, sign up for a connection call.

I’ll tell you all about working with me. I have some spots for one-on-one right now. That is the most powerful thing, so you’re gonna go to the next level when you have a coach that is gonna help you identify your compelling reason and stick with it as long as you need to to get what you want. It’s a beautiful process.

It’s a powerful tool, and I would love to help you with it. I’ll see you next time. Are you tired of feeling like your baby’s death was somehow your fault? Go tostones coaching.com and get my free mini course. How to Stop Blaming Yourself After Loss.