4 Habits That'll Revolutionize Your Wallet & Well-being!
Listen to 4 Habits That'll Revolutionize Your Wallet & Well-being!
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Hey there and welcome. Are you a woman who is unapologetically ambitious, but you're also deeply focused on honoring God, loving your family well and pursuing meaningful work? Well, you've come to the right place. My name is Dana Byers and you and I are going to be fast friends. Let's get started. Are you a Christian working woman who is looking to boost your confidence and transform your life? Well, I have got just the thing for you. My online course. The 10 hour confidence transformation is available now. This course is designed to fit into your busy schedule and provide you with actionable strategies to increase your confidence. Plus, with your purchase, you will get access to a private monthly group coaching call where we can connect and grow together. Get all the details right now@danabyerscoaching.com.
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Hello, hello. Welcome back to another episode of Been There, learned that This is Dana Byers. I am a certified life coach. I work with Christian working women, and you may not have heard me say this before, but my Life Coach certification is specifically in leadership. I am a leader. I think most of you are probably natural leaders and a lot of you have great leadership capacity. So it's very fun to get together with women to coach them and to think about how they're leading in their personal lives and their work lives. So today specifically, I'm gonna talk about four habits that changed my growth, my personal growth, and my client's growth in the areas of money and health. So lovely listeners. I'm gonna share these four transformative habits because they've not only changed my experience of setting goals and achieving things in my personal financial and in my health life, they've also helped my clients.
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But also these are just some habits that are practical, they are impactful, and they are designed to bring about real lasting change. You see, I've noticed that Christian working women like myself and maybe like you, we sometimes buy into the lie that we can only improve one area of our life at a time. I can only work on my finances right now, or I can only work on my health, independent of my finances, but not at the same time because we tend to think, oh, this is gonna take so much energy and so much focus and I have to do it perfectly that I'm not gonna get the outcome I want unless I focus solely on this one thing. It would be bad for me to split my focus. We tell ourselves this, and that might be true in some areas of our lives. There are certainly seasons where we wanna be laser focused on certain areas for a short period of time.
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But my aim today is to show you in the next few minutes that this belief that you can't work on your personal finances and on your health at the same time, that could be limiting you somehow. See, the problem is I think we will all make the progress that we need to achieve the goal, but then what happens is if we shift gears, if we decide I'm just gonna focus on one thing, I achieve the goal, and then we shift gears to focus on the other area. Say we were focusing on finances and, and we've made great progress there, now we're ready to take a look at our health lives. The problem is we have to maintain the progress in the first area in that financial area while starting a whole new lifestyle, a whole new process all over again in the second area of our health.
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So I wanna challenge you with the question, why not develop both areas simultaneously, not in a stressful way, not in a way that you would burn out, but in such a way that is light and easy, that you could learn the learning that you were creating in one area to support the other area simultaneously as you move forward in both of those areas of your life. Now, note it is possible, and I wanna admit that taking this approach might mean that you would not necessarily get as fast of a result if you were focusing on just one area, but you will feel progress in both areas. It's going to be more supportive and this can create fantastic momentum. So that's why I wanna teach you these four habits that you can use to help yourself do towards trying to move towards improvement in your financial life and in your health today.
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So in the next few minutes, here's what you can expect from me. I'll be sharing some actual examples and the four habits with you, and then at the end of this episode, I'm gonna ask you a powerful coaching question that's gonna help you pinpoint exactly where you might want to start to make these changes or one change in your own life. Okay, let's get started. Habit one, tracking expenses and tracking your food intake. So one of the most powerful habits I've adopted is tracking my expenses as well as the food that I eat. This habit gives clear information about where you are. It helps you make more informed decisions. It allows you day-to-day to make little shifts that you might need to, instead of looking back and realizing a couple weeks later, oh gosh, maybe this thing I eat is actually contributing to headaches. Or oh gosh, maybe this financial habit I have is not serving me well.
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So the list of food I eat, for example, is just information. It's not something I have to beat myself up about. I don't actually have to make any changes, I just have to track the food and then I let the list serve me. So if I wake up one morning and I'm not feeling as well as usual, I'm a little tired, maybe I have a headache, I can look back at the previous days eating and say, oh, you know what? I did not hydrate as well yesterday as I could have. Or, oh, maybe that pasta dinner I had last night didn't digest well and then I just make a little mental note of it or write it down and I can look for trends. I don't actually have to make a big shift yet. I'm just looking for trends because I'm curious about my behavior and how things impact my bank account or how things impact my physical body.
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So an important note I wanna make here is that if you have a history of an unhealthy relationship with food or dieting, please approach this habit with caution or don't really do it at all when it comes to food. This method is really intended for people who feel comfortable with monitoring their food intake and not letting it become something that is obsessive or unhealthy for them. Okay, so when it comes to tracking my money, I use the monthly report of my expenses and my income. We have that both in our personal life and also in my business and Dana Buyer's coaching. Just to give me Dana, just, excuse me, just to give me data, not Dana. So I can see that, you know, perhaps as I look at the data of my spending over the previous month, maybe I overspent a little bit of money on software.
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And that is, to be honest, a real life example. I love testing and trying out new software. So when I look back over my expenses last month, I noticed, okay, there's a little bit of a yellow flag there. I don't have to beat myself up for it and I don't necessarily have to change much, but I want to kind of put a pin in that notice next time it comes up, if I'm tempted to either, you know, buy more software or try something out, okay, you know, I have a habit of doing this, maybe I need to cancel a free trial I have before starting another one. Or maybe I want to set a reminder not to purchase a new tool until the the, the current subscription I have runs out. So you see, it's nothing more, but nothing less than creating guardrails in my life of where my money is going and how I'm eating.
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So, you know, really I just started by simply writing down all the pennies I spend and all the bites I'm taking for a month. And it was really eye-opening to let myself be curious about my consumption, how I was using money, how I was eating food, and it just helped me make small, consistent changes that added up significantly over time. Okay, habit two is focusing on your future self. In the coaching world, we love talking about future self and she is the person that you will be down the road. She's the person you are becoming. So imagine where your health and your financial circumstances will be in one year from now, or five years from now, or even 10 years from now as you continue on your current path. If nothing changed and everything stayed the same, what would your financial life or your health life look like in those different seasons of time?
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1, 5, 10 years? You can even look, you know, just a month down the road if you want to. What kind of changes would you anticipate if nothing changed? And then you can think about one thing you might want to try or to shift those results to be better. You become a scientist, you create a hypothesis and you run experiments. And you know, like any good experience you, you might remember this from high school science, a good experiment just has one factor that you change. So you give yourself a week or a month maybe to try this one factor that you're changing. Keep everything else the same. This is how you'll be able to know if these experiments you're running are making progress and serving you well. So as you think about that, here's some example questions you could ask yourself specifically, where do I want to be in my health and in my financial life in the next year, in the next five years, 10 years?
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So create a picture in your mind of where you would like to be. You have to ask that question first before you ask the next one. And the next one is, okay, imagine that you are already yourself living in those results that you just said you want. So imagine you're living a year from now living in those results that you would like in your financial life, in your health life. And ask yourself, what advice would the future me give myself today if she were in my shoes and I already had learned all the things that she's gonna learn over the next year, what advice would I give to myself? You see, this is something that we don't tap into a lot, but think about it. God gave us the unique ability to think about our thoughts. That is very meta. I mean, think about that.
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You and I can use the gift that he's given us to our advantage, to be able to forecast our life as best as we can to glean insights from letting our mind intentionally wonder a little bit into the future as we're moving towards the health and financial life that we believe is God's best for us. And so we can think about our thoughts, imagine ourselves in the future, and then take a look back at where we are today and recognize, okay, I might have some thinking that's a little bit off, or I might have a habit that I am ready to tackle so that I can move in the direction that I believe God is leading me. So by visualizing your future self, you can overcome the limiting beliefs and the assumptions that are holding you back. This exercise habit too is going to help you get curious to challenge those lives and to take meaningful action.
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We don't just want you taking action in your health life and your financial life. We want you taking meaningful, intentional action that is informed by every one of these habits. Okay, habit three, getting help and accountability. Taking action is crucial, is really crucial, but the intentional action, the intentional action that targets the lies that you believe about yourself or your situation is very important. And the best way to make significant progress is through accountability. Now, that's just my opinion, but for example, in last week's episode, I discussed radical accountability significantly. If you miss that, I highly recommend going back and listening to that episode for more insights. I'm just gonna highlight a little bit about accountability here, but I wanna talk about why accountability matters. You see, if you're trying to achieve and maintain the results that you want on your own, there will be a point where it becomes challenging.
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Now, let's be honest, it will be challenging even if you have great accountability with multiple people supporting you. But this is not the time for you to be frugal with yourself or let your pride or your ego get in the way you are going to be able to navigate those challenges so much better. You'll take fewer hits if you've got the right support team around you, whether you're paying for that or not. And the last episode you might have heard me say, I think the best accountability comes from people whose job it is to hold us accountable. But regardless of how you invest in getting the accountability you need, your brain is gonna try to talk you out of getting support, okay? But remember the shortest distance between where you are today and where you would like to be when you answered that question in the previous habit, where you would like to be a year from now, five years, 10 years from now, the shortest distance between you today and the future you is a straight line.
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Accountability is that as close to being as possible straight line that you can get, it's gonna take you directly through the discovery and application you need for where you're at today and the people helping you stay. Accountability are gonna help you stay the course when things get tough. Okay, that's habit three. Let's look at habit four. Habit four is embrace the journey. Now, I'll admit this is less of a habit and more of a mindset, but that's okay. I think a mindset is something that is so helpful to us on our journey because we realize if we can really authentically adopt it, if we can take it to God in prayer, if we can look for things to show us truth about this new mindset, we will be able to go further faster without burning out because we realize, oh, I've just been seeing it from a perspective that has not been helpful to me.
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So embracing the journey is less of a habit and more of a mindset. When I discovered that the journey is the solution to the frustrations that I had in my personal finances and the frustrations I had in my health goals, it changed pretty much everything for me, you guys, because I realize there is no definitive end point. I'm gonna say that again. There is no definitive end point when we are talking about future you and where you wanna be a year from now, you'll get there, but future you is going to have ideas in mind that she wants to move towards. Once you get to that point, you see, once you achieve a goal, whether it's your ideal weight or a savings goal or earning a degree, you know, whatever it is, the journey is going to continue. Once you get to that point, it just doesn't suddenly stop.
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Your life doesn't just end there. When you achieve this thing, the journey continues and then you're maintaining all that you've got arrived to at this point, but you're also building on top of those achievements. So embracing the truth that there's really no end point, and I will just more look at life as being milestones that kept me from taking actions that burned me out. It helped me be more open to playing the long game, and it really got me to the mindset of letting the simple daily actions I'd committed to taking, to letting those being enough. You know, the simple actions I took 10 years ago of my finances are very different than the ones I take today. I was able to enjoy that season as well as the one I'm in knowing that I would eventually get here. But I'm telling you, the ability to develop that habit of embracing the journey, I believe helped me get to the point I'm at now much faster with less draining energy because I was able to enjoy it.
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I knew I was doing the things that would help me move in the direction that God was leading me to. So I'll give you an example. Let's say you saved up 20% of your earnings over the past 10 years, and now you have enough money for the down payment on a home. Well, that's fantastic, but your journey doesn't end there, right? You see, if you're expecting to achieve that goal and that be all the things, everything you need, life's gonna be perfect after that, well, you're gonna wind up disappointed and you're gonna drop your progress. We actually see people take a step back after they achieve a goal sometimes because they don't know who they are or how to function once they've gotten to that point of arrival of where they wanted to be. So instead, here's what you do. You celebrate the milestone and you maintain it.
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You let yourself take a little bit of a breath, like, okay, gosh, I put together the savings to put a down payment on a home. That's incredible. I'm gonna celebrate myself. I'm gonna praise God for it. I'm gonna maintain all these habits that I've built to get to this point. And then you'll see yourself naturally get to a point where you're comfortable in that new identity. You're comfortable in the identity of being a person who can save money consistently over time, and then now you can continue to save that 20% after you buy your home. But start using that 20% to learn about how to invest money and how to diversify your investments. So it's a whole new level, and we don't feel guilty for not being at that level yet. We just let the daily actions, we are committed to now be enough knowing that we're playing the long game, knowing that we are embracing the mindset that this is a journey.
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We never arrive until our life here on earth ends and it's you, me, and Jesus together in heaven. Okay? So recognizing this approach means that there will always be new levels for you to pursue, but I wanna let this truth instead of it seeming draining or like you'll never arrive, I wanna want you to let this truth give you the freedom to appreciate where you are today, to be present, to enjoy this part of your journey, and to trust yourself and to trust God that when you do get to the next level, when you do achieve kind of the status or the goal that you're working on right now, at that point in time, you'll be able to adjust your identity and the way you see yourself and the way God sees you to be that person that you move towards, that you have become your future you.
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You let yourself sit in that for a little bit, get comfortable in that new role. See yourself in a new, healthy way in your health life, in your finances. And then in my experience, God kind of starts stirring up a little bit in me to say, okay, Dana, now I think you're ready to shift gears and take some new ground. Take some new territory in your financial life or in your health, based upon my understanding of who I've become, my appreciation for the journey I've been on and my readiness to take the next step in my ongoing journey. Okay, well those are the four habits, and I told you I'm gonna kind of culminate this episode with a powerful coaching question. And this is a question I learned from James Clear, and here's what he asks. If someone took control of your life tomorrow, what is the first thing they would change?
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If someone took control of your life tomorrow, what is the first thing they would change? I want you to apply this question directly to your health and to your finances. So for example, when I've talked to this with clients before, I've had them tell me the first thing that comes to mind is one woman said, you know what? I would just stop eating at 8:00 PM every night. I have no real need to snack after that time. I'm usually full. It makes sleep not go so well for me if I have a late night snack. So I think the first thing I would do is just stop eating at 8:00 PM What a great answer, right? She can easily do that, track that, make note of it, and become the person who you know a few months from now, a year from now, is going to see the benefits of the outcome of that habit that she would change.
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Another woman told me that really, you know, if someone else were in my shoes, probably the first thing they would do is just make sure they were maxing out their 401k contributions. She was struggling with kind of a sense of inadequacy and understanding her finances and some fear about was she's saving enough. So when I asked her this question to frame her scenario, she said, you know what? I think I will feel great at this point. It's gonna be enough for me to just make the change to max out my 401k contributions annually, and that's going to help me move in a direction I want to move in. I think that answer gave her a perfect starting point. So if you work with me, if you're one of my clients, I like to use a patented goal setting system that keeps us in reasonable action without burning out, but while also holding us accountable to the things we said we would do.
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So I'm just putting that out here because if you're one of my clients and we haven't tried that together yet, ask me and I will teach you how to use this strategy. Okay, friends, thank you so much for joining me today. Remember, small changes like these four habits can lead to significant results over time. God is with you. You are not alone. You can take new ground in your health and in your financial life simultaneously, change in your health and your financial life is entirely possible. Hey there, podcast fam, can I share with you something that is close to my heart? It is my email list community here. I pour out my thoughts on leadership, on parenting, entrepreneurship and Jesus. It's where we engage and grow together. If that resonates with you, join us. Just head on over to dana byers coaching.com and sign up to receive my insights a couple of times each week. Let's journey together.
