Hello out there. I am feeling a little bit like Phoebe Buffay with my, uh, deep gravelly voice today, but I’m excited to talk to you and I really wanted to talk to you about taking a leap. How awesome that it is leap day. Uh, this day only comes around once every four years and I thought that was kind of cool and I was thinking about how A really commonly quoted statistic is that one in four pregnancies ends in loss.

And I was thinking about leap day and how it comes one in four years. We kind of think Leap Day is special, you know, but we think being one in four is terrible and yes, I Understand that it’s a lot more heartbreaking to lose a baby than it is to celebrate Leap Day But I just always want to challenge you and how you’re thinking.

In many cases, being rare is special. You are one in four. I think that’s special. I think you deserve to be celebrated, but most importantly, you should celebrate yourself. You’re here. You’re doing the work. That is pretty cool. And I want to thank you for being here and listening to the Smooth Stones podcast and taking the lessons I teach you here and the tips and the questions and using them in your life.

It’s so amazing. If you love the podcast, will you take just a minute and write a review? I love seeing the reviews. I love seeing how the podcast is affecting your life. It really is easy. And. Yeah, your feedback is super appreciated and helps other people to find the podcast and know that it is awesome.

Now speaking of Leap Day, I was asked to plan a Leap Day party over at my church.

And there wasn’t a whole lot to go on. I looked it up on the internet and there were no blog posts to guide me, so I just made it up. We just made up a leap day party. I got a team together and this is kind of like life after loss. We’re all just winging it in some ways, but that also means we have infinite options to create what we want.

So let’s talk about this in that. That spirit of all possibilities are open to each one of us, no matter what, no matter how many babies we’ve lost, no matter what our backstory is. Everything is in front of us. We have a blank slate. So let’s talk about taking leaps in your life. Why is it so scary? I want you to ask yourself this, and then. Why do you think you can’t take leaps in your life? Some really common reasons are we can’t see where we’re going to land, right? We kind of feel like it’s shaky out there, it’s unknown. We don’t know if we’re capable. We’ve never done it before. Or we don’t trust ourselves. We don’t trust ourselves to take those leaps.

Other people, they can do it. Us, maybe not. Self trust. is a really big component of this that I want to talk about. And it may be something that you had before, but then during your loss and whatever’s come next, you’ve kind of lost that, like it’s a secondary loss to losing your baby. Or you may have always struggled with trusting yourself, or you don’t even know, like, what does self trust feel like.

Wherever you are, you’re fine, and I’m going to show you how you can find Take these leaps forward anyways, so I want you to just check in with yourself. How is your current level of self trust? Where do you feel good and where is it a bit shaky for most people they have areas they are more confident about and ones that we’re not as confident about so we can use The areas where we are confident to help us grow our self confidence where we feel weaker.

How we do that is, you have to ask yourself, what story do you tell about yourself in the confident areas? What sentences run through your brain? And what do you not think? This is something that is a really powerful thing because we talk a lot about our thoughts here.

But also there’s the absence of thoughts. So what are you not thinking in the areas where you are self confident or you have self trust? Now, can you apply these in places you are less confident? I want you to notice your inner dialogue too. Did you know that the way we talk to ourselves, the things we think about ourselves, are completely optional?

You may have good reasons and long held patterns that you’ve been thinking for a while, but you’re an adult. You can shift your self trust any time by shifting how you think about you. So if you’re wanting to leap into something new, borrow from something you know well.

But what if you are already on a path and you want to leap ahead farther or faster and that’s scary? It’s okay to be scared. It’s not a problem. We can bring scared along for the ride, but they can’t drive. I want you to ask scared, that part of you, what it’s really afraid of. And then just listen. Then I want you to check in with your self trust.

You’ve gotten this far, and you have probably learned a lot as you’ve tried, failed, adapted, and kept going. You have a desire to do even bigger things. So do them. Take the leap, my friend.

The thing about taking a leap is it doesn’t have to be like jumping off a cliff. Our brains think everything is jumping off a cliff, but it is wrong. What if it’s more like leaping from rock to rock across a beautiful stream or river? My happiest place is up in the mountains with my feet in a stream.

It’s kind of funny how so often we don’t want to get wet, but it’s kind of my favorite. But let’s say you have a goal and it’s on the other side of this river. There are always stepping stones to get there. All you need to do is take them one at a time. Or maybe it’s more like long jumping. You run or you stand and then leap to see how far you can go. How do you go farther? You take care of you.

You learn new techniques. You get better by repetition and believing in yourself. And you’re also going to get better by being kind to yourself if you trip or take longer to hit your goal than you wanted. Maybe your leap could be like a beautiful, strong ballerina. You get to make the visual that helps you.

Right, notice how there’s a completely different energy with each one of these. And so you gotta find what energy motivates and excites you. Because the thing about leaping is it has a really fun, exciting, and exhilarating energy. It’s that wind in your hair. There’s gotta be like some risk. We want to be a little bit scared when we’re taking a leap.

There’s letting go and full commitment. Like, I’m visualizing when I talk about this and when I close my eyes and think about what does it feel like to leap? Um, I, what comes to my mind is dancers or pairs figure skaters or even cheerleaders doing stunts where the woman has to go full out. Trusting that she’ll be caught.

as she flies through the air. Um, we love going to BYU basketball games and they have some crazy, crazy stunts and they have like a dunk team that goes off these trampolines and and does really cool things. And you know, I have friends that are dancers and I grew up watching figure skating and that’s the thing, like the, the woman or whoever’s being thrown, They have to take that leap because if they’re hesitant, if they’re tight, if they’re afraid, um, it makes everything harder.

And so it takes a lot of strength to go there. And I understand that can be scary, but how amazing is it? When you can do that. And when you can trust the people around you. I hope that you have people around you that you know, are going to catch you. Or I want you to think about sweet kiddos. If you ask a child to leap, their face is going to light up.

They’re going to be all in with a grin. That’s the energy that I want for you.

So, I want to challenge you to take leaps in your life. And I think what’s really important is we take these lessons, so today we’re talking about leaps and it’s leap day and we’re talking about that energy and maybe you’re not listening to this on actual leap day, but this always is a great just reminder to take some leaps.

Like I said, you can be leaping into something. New and unknown or different, or you can just be leaping forward in the path that you’re already going. Um, but I want you to take the lessons here on the podcast and actually apply them. So try writing down one place where you want to take a leap with a specific end date.

And all the steps you need to do to get there. I want you to write down the feeling that you need to have in order to do this. That is so important. What feeling do you want to come from? Is it self trust? Self confidence? From, you know, that joy? Whatever it is. That emotion is going to drive everything. So it’s really important.

And then what do you want to think about yourself? What do you want to think about this goal? It’s going to help you create that emotion. I bet you know exactly where you need to let go and take a leap. Stop letting your stories hold you back. Trust yourself. And have fun with it. Happy Leap Day. Please come on over to Instagram and tell me what you’re doing.

We’re going to be talking about this all week. So come on over, tell me what you’re up to. And if you’re really struggling to apply this personally in your life, you can also come talk to me, email me, there’ll be links and everything in the show notes, but this is what I do as your life coach. I’m going to help you take leaps no matter where you are in your grief.

This is available to you. I want you to have an exhilarating full life. And that means we got to be willing to jump. Alright, I’ll see you next time.