About Melanie Benson:

Melanie is an Authority Amplifier, Revenue Strategist and Money Mindset Coach for expert-preneurs (coaches, consultants, course creators and service professionals who are building a successful business around their expertise.)  With over 12 years experience in corporate America and 21 years as an entrepreneur and coach, Melanie specializes in transforming wisdom into wealth through powerful mindset shifts, influence boosting strategies and aligned visibility that generates an endless supply of clients and opportunity.

About JJ Flizanes:

JJ Flizanes is an Empowerment Strategist and the creator of the Empowering Minds Network. JJ Flizanes works with conscious, spiritual truth seekers who want to remove emotional blocks to success. She helps people identify sabotaging patterns and transmute struggle into joy. Through a series of clarifying exercises, she is able to curate a personalized roadmap to emotional healing. JJ is passionate about empowering people with the knowledge and awareness of how they can live the life of their dreams. https://jjflizanes.com

In this episode, JJ and Melanie discuss

• Setting a bold goal to induce self-growth
• Committing to what you desire
• Why do we experience resistance? 
• Learning to listen to your intuition

Key Takeaways of this Episode:

• When you set a bold goal, it activates untapped resourcefulness in your brain and it allows it to go outside of its current paradigm, creating new ways, new ideas, and new processes. Eventually, it will result in creating a new you, someone who is capable of manifesting that huge goal. 

• Being committed means being all-in. It means you’ll do whatever it takes to get there. Be pulled and empowered by passion and purpose rather than pain or fear. Focus on the energy of the joy you’ll feel when you attain that goal rather than the hardship or discomfort you might have to endure to get there. 

• The more committed you are to a bold goal, the more intense the resistance feelings that come up and that’s when you know you’re on the right track. The unconscious mind doesn’t want things to change, it’s job is to keep you safe and the more you’re stretching the more you’ll hear its objections. 

• Trust the vibrational alignment of what you are called to do rather than what you think you are supposed to do. Learn to listen to your intuition and recognize the signs that your body, soul, spirit, and the universe is giving you. 

Connect with JJ Flizanes:

Website: https://jjflizanes.com/ 

YouTube: https://jjflizanes.tv/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jflizanes/ 

Instagram: https://instagram.com/jjflizanes

Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/jjflizanes

You can Listen to this Episode Here:

Apple Podcasts – Ep. 264: Stretching Yourself into New Results 

Spotify – Ep. 264: Stretching Yourself into New Results

Pandora – Ep. 264: Stretching Yourself into New Results

Google Podcasts – Ep. 264: Stretching Yourself into New Results

Stretching Yourself to New Results Show Notes

JJ: Welcome, everyone, to the show today. I have a returning guest, one of our favorites, Melanie Benson, one of my dear friends, who is an amazing business coach. And one of the things that has come up for both of us in this last year is the concept of stretching yourself. And it’s not a new one, and she’s talked about it on her show, and she works with her people on it. And she’s in a stretchy mood, and I’m in a stretchy mood when it comes to our businesses, so I just thought this feels really timely under the circumstances. So, if you’re watching this on YouTube, know that we also have it on the podcast. If you’re listening to it on the podcast, know there’s a video on YouTube: jjflizanes.tv. You can come on over and see. We’re going to have a lot of fun today talking about all kinds of things that apply to all of you, whether you’re in business or not. Everybody loves money, everybody wants to make more, so everyone has the room to stretch a little bit more in order to receive more. So, without further ado, thank you, Melanie, for being here today. Welcome back to the show!

Melanie: Thank you. I’m so excited to be with you.

JJ: Well, one of the things that I know I’ve seen you talk about on social media (we’re in an Instagram tribe, and we follow each other) is the idea of stretching yourself. And this year, for me, I’ve interviewed Gay Hendricks on the Big Leap as well as Conscious Luck, and a whole bunch of other noted authors and people in the business space and in the field about upper limiting, and of course, I’m using law of attraction. And these are all terminology and ideas that can be applied in similar ways to get to the same goal, but not everybody hears it the same way. So, really what some of that is, and upper limiting, or you’re like, “How do you get past that?” well, you have to stretch yourself. And so, when I reached out to you to talk about stretching, you jumped on it to say, “I’m stretching myself right now.” You’ve been in the business coaching space a lot longer than I have. I’ve only been on the scene recently, in a more mind-body-soul kind of collective way. So, you have years and years and years of experience with business owners and people in general, and I know that there are some tried and true…this applies to everybody, and then how it can apply most importantly and effectively to those in the space wanting to make money, improve their career, wanting to change jobs, wanting to get to the next level, whatever that means for them. You have a brand around owning your bold. Own Your Bold challenge is something that you do. So, why don’t you give us a little back story on how that all came to be?

Melanie: Yeah. As a matter of fact, when you reached out to me about doing something on stretching, I’m like, “Oh my god. She could not have asked that at a more perfect time in the trajectory of our world and in my own life right now.” I think the idea that we’re stretching means that we’re allowing ourselves to become that next version of ourselves, and that means we’re stretching beyond anything that we thought we could do, or stretching outside of what we believed up to now is what we’re capable of. And I just want to set the context for a minute that we are all being stretched in some way, shape, or form, even if the stretch is in the capacity to allow the unknown and the uncertainty to be okay. And for many of us, that’s a lot of stretch, right?

So, the Own Your Bold Influence Challenge came about five years ago when I had been going through a lot of rebranding, and I’ve been known for so long about helping people make money in their business and how to tap into more leverage, and I had gone through a wave of really helping people up their thinking and their mindset so that their framework, their paradigm allowed them to take their business to where they ultimately want it to be. But I was kind of like hitting this low of what I was excited about. I wasn’t motivated by anything. I was feeling uninspired. And I thought to myself, “What would I tell a client who was feeling that kind of lack of inspiration?” I would challenge them to set a bold goal, something that felt scary big, something that felt out of reach, and go for it. And so I’m like, “Well, maybe I should be teaching people how to set bold goals that really raise their influence, that really raise their capacity for what they believe they can achieve.” And that’s how the Own Your Bold… At the time, it was called Own Your Bold Challenge. We now call it the Own Your Bold Influence Challenge. And that’s where it came from, because what I had found in my life, and JJ was mentioning, I’ve been in the business coaching world for 20 years this year, and many of those years have been extraordinary, and many of those years are really tough and really scary and really ones I didn’t want to repeat or loop to the first time. And everything that shifted, everything that ever became a powerful outcome for me was the result of setting a bold, scary goal that I didn’t feel I could do, but I knew I had to do if I wanted to take my life and my business where I ultimately want it to land. And that’s how it was born.

JJ: And is stretchiness right now for you… I know you’re a Taurus. So, would you say that you are a classic Taurus in the way of wanting stability and security and sort of the box…

Melanie: Definitely.

JJ: …and knowing exactly where everything is, nice and safe in a way? Would that be you?

Melanie: Yeah. So, yes, it is. And I also have a lot of Gemini in my astrology, which I know, JJ, you’re so good at sharing how all this stuff becomes relevant. And so, the Gemini in me gets bored. The Gemini in me gets restless and wants to have adventures. And so, for a long time, I always felt like these two parts of me were at war, until I realized there could be a continuum, a range of who I am, not like an either/or, which was very freeing. So, back in 2009, one of the big things that happened for me was that everything I had become known for, like the rug got pulled out from underneath me, and all of a sudden, I felt like I had to reinvent myself. And for a Taurus who likes stability and to do the things you know how to do, that was terrifying. And when I stumbled into the Own Your Bold Influence Challenge, one of the things I realized is that whether you love that sense of creativity and you’re always innovating, or you tend to be more like me, where you want to have a plan and follow a plan, and you just kind of want to dig in and live there, when we want to take our business someplace we haven’t achieved before, we cannot do what we’ve always done. We have to do something new. There’s something about the energetic shift in pattern that when we are setting a bold goal, it can’t be something that’s just a little bit bigger than what you’ve done before. It has to be a lot bigger. And the reason is that part of our mind locks into “Oh, I know how to do that. I’ve done it before.” And it’s too easy, and we get complacent. And so, the sheer nature of setting a bold goal of something you’ve never done before causes your brain to activate a resourcefulness. And it has to go outside of its current paradigm, which means you cannot rely on what you’ve done up to now to get there. And so it makes us become someone that we’re capable of being, but we’ve been allowing ourselves to stay too comfortable and not reaching into it.

JJ: So, people that are listening range from people that work for other people, to people that are part-time entrepreneurs, to people who are becoming full-time entrepreneurs, and of course, full-time entrepreneurs. So, I know that this can be applied in all ways. I’m thinking of some of my clients who are teachers and they are getting ready to date, and the idea of dating is super scary. And it’s like, “Okay, you have to put yourself out there.” And then they drag their feet on putting themselves out there, or trying something new, whether it be with your career or even just in a friendship circle, like moving to a new town and trying to make friends, and having to go out and meet people, or to find a way to have a social life. So we’re invited, especially also if you’re law of attraction, if we want to get what it is we want, we have to shift who we are to get that. It’s not the clarity you’re going to get first, and then you’re going to feel better. You have to feel better first, then you get the clarity. So, it’s not that you’re going to be comfortable to go to that next level. You have to go to that next level, and then you’re going to get comfortable because it’s outside of your comfort zone anyway. So, in terms of some of the tips that you’ve been giving people in your challenges and the people that you work with, how does someone get started who is more Taurus or Virgo like you, they’d like a plan, they have analysis paralysis, they want to make sure everything is in place, they have to feel safe, and feeling unsafe and unsecure is the scariest thing for them?

Melanie: Okay. So, my mind wants to go a lot of different directions with this answer. So, I’ve got two answers to this, and part of the answer is that I believe that as we are evolving as human beings, part of the mastery of being bold and being willing to continue to challenge ourselves to grow is you will never be comfortable with the process, and becoming aware that uncomfortableness is not a bad thing, and to recognize uncomfortableness is a good thing. So, I was telling a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago that I was really uncomfortable because I’m planning an event in the fall, a digital event because we’re not in the space right now. We can’t do in-person events, not the size I would want to do. So, I was massively stretchy and uncomfortable, and she’s like, “Good.” Because all good things are actually at the other end of stretching outside of our comfort zone. So, I think we actually have to shift our paradigm sometimes that uncomfortableness of not knowing how to do something or not knowing what to do next is not a thing to avoid, but maybe a thing to lean into. And sometimes I think we literally have to change our vocabulary, we have to change our language, we have to change our paradigm of that state, so that we can embrace it rather than retract from it. I have a lot of clients that when they’re that uncomfortable, they retract. It’s like they’re interpreting that as stuck rather than interpreting that as good. Now lean into it. I call it being on the invisible bridge. For those of you that are as old as I am and you remember Indiana Jones…

JJ: I remember Indiana Jones.

Melanie: Well, you’re almost my age. But there’s that metaphor, there’s that moment in one of the movies where he’s standing on the edge of a cliff, and he knows he wants to be on the other side, and he knows he needs to get there quickly because there’s people chasing him, and he doesn’t see how to get across, and this invisible bridge reveals itself to him. And there’s something about that moment for us, whether we are taking a personal stretch and we’re starting to date again, or we’re maybe dating somebody that we’re not used to dating that kind of person, or we’re thinking of walking away from something that’s feeling no longer serving us in our life, or we’re setting our sights on something in our career that we want to grow into. It doesn’t matter what it is. There becomes a moment that you have to let go of where you are: all the known, all the things that are providing you security in this moment. Even if it’s not good security, but it’s secure because it’s the devil you know. And allow yourself to move towards this thing that you know you want.

And so, when I coached clients, what we do (and I know this is exactly what you do too, JJ) is you literally have to get clear: What does it feel like? What is the energetic reward for stretching into this unknown space and getting to the other side? So, when it comes to business, oftentimes I’ll ask myself, ask my clients, “What is the outcome that is so important, that is so critical to achieve, that you’re willing to get uncomfortable to get there?” I have a funny story. My niece, she’s been really into tattoos and wanting to become a tattoo artist. And she’s super artistic, she’s in her early 20s, and she’s been to figure out what she’s going to do. And I asked her one day about getting a tattoo, because I don’t have tattoos, and it’s not my thing, and it sounds really overwhelming to me because I hate needles. I don’t like pain like that. And she said, “Auntie…” I said, “So, how do you allow yourself to go through all that pain?” She was like, “I don’t focus on the pain of the tattoo. I focus on what it’s going to be like to enjoy the tattoo when it’s done.” And that’s who we have to be to create the kind of outcomes, to create the kind of shift that we want in our life. If we focus on the pain of getting there, we will never do it. We focus on what it’s going to be like when we arrive, and we’re really enmeshed in that feeling and that excitement and that joy or that outcome and what it will be like when we get there. It’s so much easier to walk the path, whatever that path looks like.

JJ: You’re so right. And I just had a consult with a client who is going through something similar. And it’s funny because in terms of the alignment of, again, the timing of this conversation, that he came up with a lot of different goals, one of them being health-related. And he originally started a health journey because he was watching his father-in-law go through a hard time on the way to crossing over and moving on to the next side. And so, he was motivated, at first, from pain. He was motivated about what he didn’t want to have happen to his sons. And so, one of the first things we looked at was… But he’s like stalled out in his effort in what’s supercharging, where the energy that’s coming from for the self-care is no longer that. So, he felt like deflated. And I know a lot of people, especially women, who want to exercise, they want to lose weight, but they’re doing it from a place of self-hatred. I mean, that’s what my whole first podcast, Fit 2 Love, and my whole first book is about: that energy behind what you’re doing. So, like what you’re talking about, we may want something different than what we have right now, but if we’re waiting to be pushed by pain instead of pulled by passion or purpose, then we’re always going to be anchoring that negative feeling which never feels good. And intuitively, our higher self says, “No, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to feel badly. I don’t want to step on this treadmill and hate myself. I need to focus on what’s on the other side of this, which is how energetic I’ll feel, how well I’ll rest, how easy I’ll move, how good I’ll feel like I look in my clothes, how able I am to move my body in space.” So, for the health side, the why, and stretching yourself into a habit, like you said, for business, what would make you want to be uncomfortable because on the other side of that feels like freedom, feels like success, feels like excitement and exhilaration and contribution and whatever else it is? So, what are some of the things, can you share with us, that you’ve worked with for yourself as well as your clients and in your challenges? What are some of those whys that people focus on to get them through those uncomfortable moments?

Melanie: I definitely think one of the greater whys is I have this burning desire to share something that I learned on my journey to where I got right now. And I believe you have that. I know I have that. It’s almost like there’s something that is so intrinsic inside that the idea of not getting it out in a bigger way just feels so…it’s like devastating. So, I think part of it is there’s this intrinsic desire. It’s almost like a fire that can’t be put out. So, the great why is “I can’t die with this inside of me. It has to get out in a bigger way.” For some people, it’s financial. The idea that they would be financially independent, they would start to master their relationship with money, gives them that courage and that incentive to get out there in a bigger way. And I know sometimes when I’m coaching my clients who have been struggling financially and they’ve kind of tapped out, they haven’t been able to get to that next level of financial prosperity, one of the things that incentivizes them is the idea that “If I stretch and I take on this bold goal of launching a more leveraged income-producing offer, that my life would be radically different.”

And it’s interesting, I’m coaching someone right now on this process. She’s been trapped in the service business for a really long time. She works 12-, 14-hour days sometimes. She’s working seven days a week. She’s really, really sought after and successful at what she does, because she’s got a very unique niche. And there’s not enough of her to grow the income anymore. She can’t sell any more of her time. And she can’t even sustain what she has. But the idea of trying to carve out five hours a week to launch this program, where she can flip the whole time-money equation, has been daunting. So, we had to get her focused on not what is it going to take to get there, but what is the freedom and the joy and the prosperity going to feel like when you arrive? And that is what unlocks that part of you (we’ve talked about this before on this show) that is committed to an outcome versus merely being interested in something, where you’re interested enough to try it, and then when it starts to get uncomfortable, you go, “No, I don’t want to do that. That’s messy. That doesn’t feel good. I’m going to have to work too hard,” or “That’s a lot of effort. I don’t know if it’s really going to work.” When you’re committed, you’re all in. You’re 100% in, and you will stretch as hard as you need to stretch to get there.

JJ: How do you handle some of the objections? I’m thinking about contrast. So, in law of attraction, people would say, “Why did that have to happen to me?” I had a client who…she was a new client. She was working her law of attraction, she was feeling better than she had in a while, and she had a car accident. Then she got mad at herself for having the car accident, and I said, “Well, ask yourself. What was your conversation with yourself before it happened?” And she said, “Well, I actually wanted a new car. I wanted a new car, and I wanted to pay less than I’m paying now for the car that I have.” And so, it ended up working out that she attracted a car accident. She got a better car for less money. The insurance company took care of it. Nobody got hurt. And yes, it’s completely inconvenient, but sometimes a lot of us don’t change, or like you talked about, committed versus interested. A lot of people don’t commit until they’re literally pushed down upon, given a rocking hard place, you have to make a decision. And unfortunately, for those of you listening, you’re conscious enough to recognize you don’t have to get there. Now, if you get there, there’s nothing to beat yourself up about. It is what it is. And maybe that’s what you needed to move forward. But some of you are teetering on this place of “I’m not super committed because I’m afraid.” And yet you don’t want to manifest some big thing. So, how do we come up with objections, especially the ones of like “I can’t afford it” or “I’m too afraid. I don’t have enough coming in right now.”

Melanie: I almost feel like there’s two questions in there. What you’re referring to, I call them the spiritual 2 by 4. And my clients, they giggle when I say it because they know they’re resisting taking action on something they’ve committed to the universe that they will create. And so, I have a few clients who have been talking about a goal for a really long time, and then they come to me, and they’re like, “Oh my god. This awful thing happened where half of my income froze up.” I’m like, “Well, congratulations. You just got your first spiritual 2 by 4 that’s pushing you towards the goal you said you wanted. So, in case there are any doubts, the universe is conspiring for your greatness.” And they’re like, “Oh, god. You’re right.” And that’s what happens. I think sometimes we go unconscious to the goal because we get numb in the patterns and habits that are keeping us stuck where we are right now.

JJ: Yeah.

Melanie: And when your intention is in alignment with the greatest and most profoundly evolved part of your goal, like that thing that you’re meant to be doing, that thing that has put you on this earth, heaven and earth will move to align you with it. I truly think right now we’re going to see a lot of this unfolding as we move through this time in our country and in our world, where we’re operating in pandemic recovery mode soon, and the thing they were overly attached to, in a form that was toxic and unsupportive of the greatest version of them, is falling away. It cannot exist anymore. And not that we can say that a pandemic was here to support just one person, but I think there is some energetic shifting that’s happening that’s allowing people to fall away, even if they were massively attached to it, that thing that no longer serves them to be the person they’re meant to be.

So, the second part of your question is how do I handle those things that come up where people are saying that “Well, I can’t afford it” and “This is in the way”? I always come back to what is it that you’re committed to? And I can tell by the way somebody asks the question what they’re actually committed to. So, when somebody says, “I can’t afford it,” I instantly know they are more committed to their illusion of financial security, or they’re committed to having a certain experience with money more so than the goal they said they’ve set. And this is not a bad thing. This is not a good thing. This is not a judgment statement. This is not a reflection of anybody’s worthiness or capability. It’s simply a reflection of your consciousness and what you allow yourself to be committed to. And I will fully own, I tend to be committed to my comfort. And every time I want to shake things up and I set a big goal, I realize very quickly how I manifest massive uncomfortableness, because I have to let go of a lot of ways I do things to get to a new goal.

So, I have clients, when they come to me and they say, “I really want this new outcome,” and then we talk about what we’ll need to change to get there, and they’re like, “Oh, I can’t do that,” I’m like, “Really?” So, what are you going to experience more of if you stay where you are? And it’s a very quick way to really get clear of what you’re committed to, because what you have in your life right now is what you’ve been committed to up to this moment. And in a nanosecond, JJ, we can decide, “I want something new. I’m more committed to the new thing, this outcome, this experience that I say I want, or I’m not.” And then it’s the truth telling moment of “Well, I guess I’m going to have to reconnect to a goal I can commit to.” Because it’s not a bad thing to not go after that goal, but don’t keep saying you want to go after the goal and not be committed to doing what it takes to get there, because you’re actually not committed to that goal.

JJ: Yeah, your actions speak louder than your words. And I’m not talking about uninspired action. Just talking about action in general. It’s like the 80/20 rule. What are you doing 80% of the time? Because you can’t say, “Well, I’m committed to a self-care weight loss journey, and I work out one day a month,” or one day a week. Or maybe “I eat cleanly one day out of seven.” Okay? That doesn’t cut it. That does not equal that what I’m doing most of the time… Because I also believe in balance and that we have to be able to work through all the upper limits we come up against. In fact, Doug and I worked on one this morning that came up for him. And it’s just a funny evolution to have this conversation and to be able to be the mirror to reflect back, “Oh my gosh, you’re scared” and “Oh, that’s what this is about.” And not even realizing it, because I’m thinking, “Well, of course we do this,” and “Of course we do that,” and “Of course we’re going to do this,” and to have them push back for…not like a lot, just a little, then to realize, “Oh. This for you is the next big bold, stepping into who you really are. That kind of scares you because you’ve kind of been hiding a little bit.”

And I know it’s happened to me at my manifestation boot camp last October. It’s when I opened up to my first mastermind. And it was really scary because here I am with people that know me for law of attraction, and I don’t necessarily tend to attract just business people. Most of them work for other people. I didn’t know. And I literally had to give myself permission to say… It’s not called failure. I’m not going to have shame. If nobody is interested, then it’s okay. I’m just going to take the cue from the universe and say, “I’m going to step out.” But I was so nervous. Oh my gosh. I was like…because I thought, “I really want to do this, but I’m also not going to push. So, if it’s meant to be, I’m going to step out. I’m going to claim it. It’s going to be scary.” And it was. And then it worked. But again, there are times when I’ve stepped out and it hasn’t worked. There are times where I’ve stepped out and I’ve said, “This is what I want to talk about to an audience that doesn’t want to hear it.” Now I’ve learned that lesson. The discernment of that is a very good lesson to learn: when you know who your audience is.

But when it comes to your own life… And I love your challenge that you do every year, because I think the bold goal is directly also attached to (and I’m sure you’ll agree on this) your belief in yourself, and your belief in your abilities, and your belief that you’re going to be okay. It’s from an abundance mindset, not a scarcity mindset. It’s from a hopeful, positive, trusting, surrendering, flowing mindset. And when you stop yourself and say, “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t,” here’s the moment where you’re putting up some resistance and stopping that flow. And it’s not saying that it’s not right for everybody. Like you said, it’s a mirror to say, “Oh, you’re more committed to the comfort. You’re more committed to staying where you are.” And that’s fine. Just stop saying you want something more.

Melanie: I want to say something about the fears for a second, before you jump to the next thing. Because what I was remembering as you were talking is how the more committed you are to a bold goal, the more intense the resistance feelings are that come up. And that’s when you know you’re on the right track. In the challenge, one of the things I do is I take people through this process of recognizing the things that tend to come up when you’re stretching that you might misinterpret as signs it’s time to stop, but are actually those signs you’ve got to lean in. And one of them is your fear of not being capable. Another one is the fear that you’re not going to do it right, or that you’re going to fail. And I heard something many years ago from a former mastermind partner of mine that really stuck with me all this time, and that was “When you are setting your sights on something new, you will either focus on all the reasons why it won’t work and you will stop, or you can focus on even just the one reason it will work and give yourself that green light to keep going.”

And that’s what so many of us do. We set this big bold goal, or even like little shifts, sometimes we do this, like “I want to lose 10 pounds” or “I want to feel healthier” or “I’m going to eat cleaner,” all of those things. The resistance that comes up, you can get lost in it if you don’t recognize that it’s just simply the part of your mind that’s trying to protect you from change. See, our subconscious and unconscious mind are really designed to keep us safe, and the ego and the conscious mind don’t always talk well and explain that “Hey, we’re stretching for this new goal. It’s okay to do that.” No. Unconscious mind goes, “Um, hello? Everything is changing. This is not safe. We have to stop this.” Right? And so, it’s acting from this very primal place of security and safety. And so, we’ll let these fears… “I don’t have enough money.” “I don’t know if I can do this.” “What are people going to think?” All of this noise is simply the unconscious/subconscious mind trying to talk you out of your goal because it doesn’t want anything to change. It knows what to do what you do right now. And that’s a very, very important piece to remember, because the more you’re stretching, the more those noises are going to come up that are just simply the old version of you trying to stay safe.

JJ: Excellent points. Yes. And I love that you mentioned the degree of intensity. The more you want it, the faster the resistance comes up at the same level to match your momentum. And again, it’s that unknown place. I know that in the Big Leap, Gay Hendricks talks about worry as one of the first ways that we upper limit, and then how to move through worry. And rather than focusing on… Again, it’s really just simply the conversation of all the things that could go wrong and why it couldn’t work, or flipping it and pivoting to “What’s trying to emerge right now? What’s trying to be born and come through? Why can this work?” And it is really a choice. It’s a choice on what we’re looking at and then, again, being attached to that why of wanting something on the other side of that. For a lot of people, they take contrast and pain and resistance as the goal, like “Okay, this is an intuition.”

And what people have to understand (I’ve taught a whole course on intuition): your intuition isn’t operating when you’re in negative. When you’re out of alignment, that is not intuition. That’s resistance. Minus the fact that in an instinctual place where there is no brain in your adrenals, in your reptilian, in your caveman instinctual body, if you’re being attacked or being chased, that’s a different story. That’s coming from instinct. That’s not coming from consciousness. But when you’re in consciousness, when you’re in your mind, when you’re in alignment, is when you get messages about what to do moving forward. If you’re in fear, you are not in alignment. So, when you listen to yourself when you’re out of alignment, you will continue to stay out of alignment, never achieving the thing that you think that you want. You have to first get into alignment, and then take the impulse and move from there. But too many people get triggered because of the fear, lack of confidence, lack of knowingness, lack of security, being uncomfortable, all those things that you said. And I remember your story. You kind of had some really big momentum going, and then your body took you down, and basically, the message that you got was “Melanie, I need to slow down. I need to get more clear. I need to focus on the efficiency of my efforts and what I’m putting out there, and not lose myself.” Can you talk a little bit about your experience of that?

Melanie: Yeah. So, my body is having a very interesting experience navigating the assertive nature of my brain. Let’s just put it that way. So, my first 10 years as an entrepreneur, I was just on fire, and I grew and grew and grew. But what happened was that at a certain point, I allowed myself to do what I thought I was supposed to do versus trusting the vibrational alignment of what I felt called to do. And I think there becomes a very important moment for many people who are being mentored by others or maybe have a team that, if you use brainstorming to get to where you want to go, if you’re in a mastermind, all these things, you have to really learn to understand what your aligned truth is versus all the bright, shiny ideas of what could be. And what happened for me was I had some unhealed fear, and I had some needs for approval, and I was building a business that I thought was going to keep me in approval from my community. I was really enjoying the accolades of my growth. I had a very successful team. And what I believe happened was, at a certain point, because I was not in alignment with my own truth anymore, I was not in alignment with what I really wanted to do, and I was building a business that I thought was what people wanted for me (very unconscious, by the way, this was not like my conscious thoughts), my body just went, like… “We’re out.” And my upper limit hit. We had all kinds of environmental things, like the credit freezes. And all of a sudden, my business was completely upside-down.

And what I learned from that, which took me a while (I will own, I was really in victim energy on this for a while, and I was very traumatized by it, it was a very painful time, because I was like, “It’s such an amazing place,” and then I wasn’t, almost overnight), was that I did not know how to listen to my own voice wanting to express what alignment was. And the beautiful gift that emerged from that super painful time was that I now have learned how to hear that voice that says, “No, not this.” And I don’t always access it as fast as I’d like to, but I now started to recognize the signs, like “Something is off. This is not feeling right.” And I’m in the middle of one of these right now, where I’ve hired a consultant to help me with this big project, and I am getting all the…like “This is off. This is not working.” And I’ve learned now to bring into the present moment the conversation and say, “This is not really working” instead of trying to smash it down and go, “Don’t rock the boat. Just keep going.” Because that’s the vibration that our body, when we smash it down and go, “Don’t rock the boat. Keep the gravy train going,” whatever that is, that stress starts to erode the body. And so, I ended up with a lot of autoimmune issues and a lot of stress-related issues. And today, even still, I still have a lot of the aftereffects of that. But now, what I’ve recognized is my body requires me to eat really, really clean. You were talking about food and what are we committed to. Well, I don’t necessarily like eating as clean as I eat, but I am committed to eating as clean as I eat because it produces fuel. When I don’t eat clean, it produces a drained Melanie that can’t think straight and can’t produce results.

So, one of the things I think has to shift for each of us, as we step into this goal and what we really want to create for ourselves, is “Who do I have to be willing to be to pull it off?” This is a question I always challenge every client. Whenever we do Amplify mastermind retreats, whenever we do any kind of big goal setting, the question always comes back to “What do I have to be willing to be and do differently to make that easy and effortless?” And for me, I have to have the right team. I have to have the right energy, which means I have to be willing to eat well. I have to stay committed to my exercise, because if I’m not exercising, I’m not oxygenating my body properly. And I have to be around really supportive, high vibration people who both challenge me and inspire me. And that’s my secret plus now, and I know that. And that’s the commitment I make: to keep that moving forward so that I’m in the right state to pull off big things.

JJ: Beautiful. I think everyone can take several things from that story and apply it to their own life, because it basically beautifully outlines the integration of these thoughts and principles into your life. Because again, there are a lot of people very committed to security and to feeling safe at the expense of their health, their relationships, and their joy. People that are just doing things because maybe they’re just chasing money, or people that don’t want to rock the boat because they’re afraid, people that won’t leave marriages because they’re afraid of being rejected on the other side, they don’t feel confident to seek out a new relationship, or they don’t feel confident in who they are to offer something to somebody else.

I once had a client who… I should have known this earlier, but again, as we continue to learn and grow, you talk about “Oh, that’s what that was about.” She was someone who was sedentary, very, very, very obese, didn’t work, on disability. Her husband took care of her. Her son paid for me. I was there in person, training her. And there were a lot of, like, “I can’t do that” or “I can’t do this.” And so, of course, I was always working to try to motivate her, like, “Well, what can we do? What will you do?” And I would come out with a million different angles until I’ve run out of them. And it really dawned on me. I don’t know what happened. One day I realized that the victim pattern that she was in was that if she got better, her son and her husband would no longer serve her the way that she did. So, her payoff of staying sick, of staying debilitated, if you will, was the love and attention she got from her husband and her son. So, was she ever going to really get better? No. This is an unconscious thought. But when we pull back and look at our patterns and we say, “Well, what am I getting from this?” Because those of you that have been stuck wherever you are, thinking, “I keep trying to change, but I can’t,” what is the payoff? There is something that you are getting for staying stuck wherever you are, whatever that is. And then you have to decide if that’s worth. Are you prostituting yourself for something else? Or is your life happening before your eyes, and you’re going to get to the end of your life, look back and say, “Wow. What was I so afraid of? I wish I would have taken that next step.” And I think the bottom line for both this show and what Melanie does and what I do is that we can’t always see it.

I’m working with somebody right now, and as we’re doing things, she’s like, “Yeah, I do this for others.” I’m like, “Right, but we always can’t see what our own blind spots are.” That’s why you work with somebody else: so they can see what you can’t see. Right? And it’s almost like she was so surprised that “Why couldn’t I see that?” See, when I have someone coach me, and I go, “Oh my god. Right,” I get so excited, like, “Thank you so much for showing me what I couldn’t see,” versus some people go, “Oh my god. Why didn’t I know that? Well, I do that for other people.” And it’s like, “But if you’re a good coach, you know that you need a coach. You know that you need someone to see what you can’t see.” Because we all have upper limits. We all get stuck. And sometimes it’s like, “Oh, well, that was easy.” Right. Someone just showed you and put you in a different frequency or a different point of view.

Melanie: Well, I was just going to say, when we’re in our shit, it’s like we’re at the bottom of a well, and you have no perception there. You have no perspective of what’s possible, because all you can see is your hand right in front of you. And the only way to get out of that well is to have somebody reach out their hand and pull you up. And that’s usually the mentor or somebody that you’re turning to to help you regain that perspective. It’s very difficult to do on your own, even if you’re a master at what you do.

JJ: Yeah. Everybody, everyone gets stuck, and everyone needs an outside perspective. And that’s why a lot of you listen to this show, except that it’s not necessarily that I am coaching you directly. You’re just trying to assess from what you hear and what resonates with you. But everyone that I bring on to this show, obviously, if there’s people that you resonate with, like Melanie, I hope that you’ll reach out. I hope that you’ll look into them further. I want to talk about this idea of today’s show, the magic of the bold goal, and the idea of stretching yourself. Melanie wrote a chapter in a book about the magic of the bold goal. Melanie, why don’t you tell us about the book?

Melanie: Yeah. So, this whole idea of the magic of a bold goal got very catchy, and the amazing women over at Voices of the 21st Century actually wrote the foreword as well, which, actually, I almost like the foreword better than the chapter. But the idea of the chapter is what does setting a bold goal do that a regular goal can’t? And why, if we want to become a whole new level of success, we have to set a bold goal? And not just set a bold goal, but pursue that bold goal. And I call it the magic of a bold goal because there’s something that unleashes that’s totally different than regular goals. Regular goals are way too easy to step over and go, “Oh, yeah, I can do that in my sleep.” But when you set a bold goal, it catalyzes us. It activates something in us that causes us to pull things off that we partly think don’t believe we can do. So, I love teaching people this process because this is how champions are born. This is how people transform and become a version of themselves that have always felt out of reach. This is how we achieve things that have felt unachievable. It’s stretching into a bold goal.

JJ: So, if you’re feeling restricted, you’re feeling constricted, you’re feeling bored, you’re feeling restless, you’re feeling withdrawn, tired, fatigued, frustrated, apathetic, it’s time for a bold goal.

Melanie: Paralyzed.

JJ: Yeah, paralyzed. Right. So, you can get the book at melaniebenson.com/book. And again, her chapter is called “Magic of a Bold Goal.” And again, more time with the title of the book. It’s “Women of the 21st Century”?

Melanie: Voices of the 21st Century. And there’s beautiful, inspiring stories there of women who had to stretch and do things that were terrifying and scary to get out of a situation that no longer served them, and become the version of them they are today. There are some amazing stories in there.

JJ: And in the benefit of reading these stories and finding them and hearing them is to say to yourself, “If you can do it, I can do it. If you did it, then I could do it.” Because ultimately, it’s a decision. It’s a commitment. And yes, there’s shifts that may need to happen, of course, to get you to the place of receiving that new bold goal that you want to achieve, and doing things that are new, outside your comfort level. But if someone else can do it, so can you.

Melanie: Yeah.

JJ: And I think reading stories like that gives us that power, gives us that inspiration, and makes us go, “Well, I can do that too.” And then you get in that frequency of the success and the freedom and the accomplishment on the other side of that, and you out of the mindset of all the reasons you can’t do it. I want to speak quickly, though, to Melanie also. She’s mostly a business coach, and I wanted today to be a little bit for everybody on, and I think we’ve done a great job of, because it really applies to, all areas in terms of relationships and health especially, as well as money and business. But let’s talk to those of you that are entrepreneurs or wanting to be entrepreneurs, part-time entrepreneurs, and let’s talk about the three hidden profit drains in terms of how it applies, like people looking at, willing to look at, money differently, willing to look at their business differently. I know it’s a quiz, and it’s at melaniesquiz.com, but can we talk a little bit about…weave this into the bold goal about approaching and changing how we do things to get more results.

Melanie: I don’t remember who originally put this out, but this awareness that you don’t know what you don’t know until you know it. And I think sometimes the reason we don’t achieve what’s possible is because we literally don’t know the thoughts that are holding us hostage in our current reality. I learned, something like 19 years ago, that the fastest way to know what our limiting beliefs and our fears are is to take a look at what you have right now and what decision you made that’s keeping you there. And as you were talking about earlier, we all have a payoff. I have found, after mentoring and coaching 5000, 6000, 7000 people by now, that we all have a mindset that is delivering the exact results we have in our life right now. And the quiz helps you… I ask you a series of questions, and it helps you access what the real limiting belief, the real fear, the real conflict is that’s keeping you where are right now, and what the shift needs to be that will help unlock where you’re going next.

And I’ll give you an example. I was speaking at an event about five or six years ago, and there was a woman in the room, and I was talking about money and mindset, and she asked me, and she said, “Well, what if I’m a parent, I’m a mom?” And she was actually pregnant at the time. And it’s like “I can’t grow my business any bigger because it will take time away from my kids.” And I said, “Well, what if that’s not true and that’s just your conflict?” It’s like the way I tell myself I have to work doesn’t coexist with the way in which I want to be a parent. So, if you could have the perfect parenting experience and the perfect growth, what would you be doing differently? All of a sudden, she was like… You could almost see like the little emoji brain, and she realized it was her own limitation that was holding her hostage, not growing her business. And so, we did a little coaching on it, and she realized she needed different team members, and she needed to redesign how her business went.

And that’s what happens when we hold onto a certain belief of how something is supposed to look, and usually it’s unconscious, we limit our growth. We limit our business capacity, our life capacity. So, that’s what the quiz will help you understand. And once you go through the questions, if you want to opt in, I’ll send you a little mini training on how to unpack the results from the quiz, and it will guide you through some other programs that are available to you if you want to go deeper into it and you want a little support actually healing and recoding the mindset so that you are the person that that level of success is easy and effortless.

JJ: So, it’s melaniesquiz.com. And for those of you on the video, you can see the banners I’ve created. And for those of you on the podcast, it will be in the show notes. So, we’ve got melaniesquiz.com for the 3 Hidden Profit Drains, which is really important for all of us to understand our psychology around money, for sure. And then we’ve got…if you want to know more about the magic of a bold goal and get the book, you can go to melaniebenson.com/book. And for all other things, of course, you go to melaniebenson.com. And so, if you want to reach out to Melanie, she’s got a podcast, Amplify Your Success Podcast, on all places you get podcasts. And of course, her bio is also on the show notes and was at the beginning of the podcast. She’s a great friend. I appreciate that we’ve been able to work together, work with each other, support each other over the last couple of years, and I really thank you for it. On the fly, I’m like, “I have an idea. Melanie, let’s talk about stretching.” Because, as you said at the beginning of today’s show, if you haven’t been stretched yet, if you’re not aware that you’ve been stretched by the world you’re living in, it’s time to ask, rather than being a victim to circumstance, “What is this time and space asking me to do in order to step into a new version of myself to succeed in every area?” And that question and those answers will serve all of you, no matter what the subject matter is, but first and foremost, to recognize that you are being stretched, you’re being asked to stretch. Now it’s time to answer the call, figure out how, get the support, get the help, make the plan, make that bold goal, and do something. Yes?

Melanie: I love it. Yeah. Thank you, JJ. And I’ve so loved our lives coming back together after knowing each other for so many years and now witnessing this beautiful collaborative, co-creative space that we created. Thank you.

JJ: I appreciate you. Everyone, go check out Melanie at melaniebenson.com, Amplify Your Success Podcast, melaniesquiz.com, Magic of a Bold Goal. Get the book: melaniebenson.com/book. And thank you so much, Melanie. One more, just last little thing. Let’s put out something to the universe for you. I know you said you’re stretchy, so let’s set an intention. This is going to come out in October. What is your stretch? Where are you headed?

Melanie: So, as of right now, in November, I am holding an event called Create Your Own Economy. And the stretch is I haven’t put on an event in a really long time. We’re doing it digitally for the first time. I am working with a lot of new team members to pull it off. And I felt this vibrational pull about three months ago, two months ago, that it is my responsibility as a thought leader and as an influencer, if you will, in my space, to remind our community that we have the power to create our economy. We do not have to be victim to what’s happening around us. We do not have to suffer and struggle. As entrepreneurs, we are uniquely qualified to keep the economy afloat. So, it’s a big theme to step into. It’s stretchy, you know? I’ve got a lot going on here, as always, so adding one more thing, I was like, “Really, God? Really? I’m going to do this right now? Okay, okay, okay. I got it.”

JJ: Oh, yeah. I remember the time. It was Michael’s event last October when I had people say to me, “We should be doing this” and “Why don’t you do this?” And I was thinking, “How is that going to look?” And then I got clarity, and it was that same thing. It was “Oh my god, I know.” Then I went, “Ugh.” It’s like, “Okay. Really? I have to do this? Okay, I’m going to do this.” So, it doesn’t end, guys. There’s never an end point. It’s always evolving to the next, evolving to the next. And the skill sets that you get along the way help you be more resilient, help you be less resistant, help you be more successful, ask for help, and have fun and joy along the way, no matter where you are. So, I hope today’s show has inspired you to make a bold goal. I hope you will come and tell and share it with me, share it with Melanie. Get in her Amplify Your Success Facebook group, if it’s still open. And definitely be in the community. Let us support you. We want to support you getting to your bold goal because we’re all on the same track and we’re all going to make a big difference. So, Melanie, thank you again for being on the show.

Melanie: Thanks, JJ. I look forward to meeting you all.