100 | Making the World Work for You
100 | Making the World Work for You
Join me for a celebratory finale as we reach our 100th episode, marking the end of a transformative first season. 🎉Thank you. I appreciate you listening to the podcast, sharing, and taking the time to leave a comment and a review.
I attribute much of the podcast's success to my amazing clients and listeners. To celebrate, I'm sharing a revised version of a speech delivered at a conference focused on the significance of feelings in personal and professional success. This speech encapsulates three core principles: always follow the adventure, always ask yourself what you want, and always trust that it will work out. These principles have guided me through various life transitions, from living in Cape Town to navigating long-distance parenting and caregiving for a mother with dementia, inspiring me to customize my life with intention and courage.
I hope it inspires you to embark on your journey of self-discovery and transformation. Tune in now and discover how to make the world work for you!
As I pause the podcast, I invite you to embrace the possibilities and trust in your ability to make the world work for you. Thank you for being part of this journey, and I look forward to reconnecting with you soon.
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Intro: Welcome to A Pleasant Solution, Embracing An Organized Life. I'm your host, certified life coach, professional organizer, and home life expert, Amelia Pleasant Kennedy and I help folks permanently eliminate clutter in their homes and lives. On this podcast will go beyond the basics of home organization to talk about why a clutter-free mindset is essential to an aligned and sustainable lifestyle. If you're someone with a to-do list, if you're managing a household and if you're caring for others, this podcast is for you. Let's dive in.
Amelia: Welcome to Episode 100, “Making the World Work for You.” Hey y’all! It is time to celebrate! 100 Episodes! Thanks so much for listening – for your support, for your time. It’s been a tremendous journey. The podcast will go on pause after today… 100 episodes seems like a pretty decent first season, right? Incredible.
And, I thought, since today is a holiday, and since we’re one week from the new year, I thought I’d share with you a presentation (a speech, really) that summarizes my lifestyle philosophy. I delivered it live on stage last year to a group of 800 folks and an additional thousand who were streaming the event. The topic of the conference was “feelings,” and speakers were asked to teach and share why they find feelings essential to their work, life, success, etc. I’ve revised the talk a bit for y’all. You’ll want to listen for my three main takeaways. It’s all about how when you’re willing to feel, the world has no choice but to work for you. It’s the perfect way to celebrate 100 episodes and the perfect way to say farewell for now and talk to y’all soon.
Last year, a Master Coach stood on this stage and charged each of us with defining our own bold and audacious statement. Mine came easily: “I make the world work FOR me. I make the WORLD work for me.”
You see, I am an out-of-the-box thinker. I grew up in a tiny town in West Virginia. I’ve always known that there’s more out there – in life, in the world, in me. I’ve never been one to see “boundaries,” in the traditional sense. Instead, I see connections. I see secret passageways. I see solutions.
When I was nominated to speak this year, I thought about teaching my strategies for a clutter-free life and mindset. But I reconsidered. I think it’s best to show what it looks like to embrace an organized life and how when you feel harder every step of the way, you truly can customize your life and business any way you want. It’s about inner alignment. It’s about centering yourself. This is making the world work for you.
For a long while, my inner knowing has been nudging me to own my incredible story. To vocalize it. To share it with others. I’ve been making the world work for me for two decades. Yet, I discovered during my own coaching sessions how much I’ve been protecting myself by downplaying my journey.
I’m here to invite you to stop downplaying your journey. We are life coaches. We teach people how to feel. We go first. Our lives, our experiences, our lessons learned - this is what our people crave hearing about. The more you’re willing to feel, the more the world will work for you.
How to Make the World Work for You:
· Always follow the adventure.
· Always ask, “What Do I Want?”
· Always trust that “it” will work out.
The first component is “always follow the adventure.”
Following the adventure is about feeling for what lights you up, then getting curious about how the adventure is absolutely possible.
To me, an adventure is like an experiment. It’s a risk that you’re intrigued by. For example, my husband proposed the idea of living in Barcelona for the summer last year. My brain wanted to be weighed down by the logistics, yet my heart was like “definitely.”
My son played soccer, my eldest daughter took a fashion class, and my youngest daughter took art classes. We lived. We worked. We had an adventure… and this wasn’t the first.
Some of you make decisions with your head. Others of you may make decisions with your gut or intuition or your heart. Or you may do a combination of both. I am an intuition guided person. Over the years, I’ve learned that my feelings are an extremely reliable guide.
Twenty years ago, and two weeks after my Wellesley College graduation, I moved to Cape Town, South Africa. My husband and I decided that there was life to be lived before the reality of adulthood set in. We set a two-year timeline, bought a house, and shipped our belongings via container ship overseas. I attended graduate school and worked at the National Gallery of Art. I was 21.
Life in Cape Town was beautiful and complicated. The legacy of Apartheid was everywhere. Navigating life as a Black American required me to open myself more fully to equity issues in real time. I had to feel the discomfort of not belonging on multiple levels. Being away from my family and friends taught me that relationships with others really do exist in our minds, and that our bonds remain no matter the miles apart.
While there, we flew to and explored Kenya. We drove up into the desert Skeleton Coast of Namibia. Each day I learned something new about myself and this deepened my confidence around what I was capable of. I had no idea what moving to South Africa would entail before I left.
Look for opportunities where your desire, your curiosity, your willingness outweighs your doubts. Following the adventure isn’t about predicting and controlling all the possible outcomes. Instead, it’s actively shaping then stepping into your intentional models.
It’s seeking out a new or unlikely circumstance then choosing to get curious about your thoughts. It’s being willing to see what limitations come up in your T line. It’s about following the feeling, the nudge in your gut that says, “it’s possible I can get my brain on board with this.” It’s allowing feelings like hesitation or trepidation, alongside the feelings of courage and excitement.
The adventure doesn’t have to be logical or even realistic. It has to be interesting. There’s always a solution and feeling harder will help you discover it.
The second component is to always ask yourself, “What do I want?” This in and of itself is revolutionary. We’ve been raised – especially women - to seek validation outside of ourselves. Yet, this question interrupts our natural tendency to consider others’ wants before your own.
Now, for some of you, leaning into what you want may be uncomfortable. That’s how you know it’s a necessary practice to develop. It requires you to see yourself. It requires you to validate yourself. It requires you to feel desire in a way that you may not have tapped into previously. This pause gives you an opportunity to better understand your present point of view and to check in with how you’re feeling.
Every time you ask the question, “what do I want?” you’re making the world work for you. You’re not adapting to the whims of your environment. You’re actively centering yourself. You’re opening your mind up to all the possibilities and perspectives available. You’re giving yourself choices.
In 2018, my mother’s best friend spoke up and shared that she was worried about my mother. I’d been noticing changes in my mother’s memory for a few years, and this outside validation confirmed my inner knowing. My mother was exhibiting signs of dementia. I felt powerless. I felt deep sorrow. I ached for her and for me. I was 37 years old and didn’t know anyone who was raising kids and on the dementia journey. For a few months, I was stuck.
The question, “What do I want?” saved me. It took me out of inaction, allowed me to process the variety of emotions I was experiencing, and it put me back in control.
I wanted my mother to have a say in her own care and how her estate was handled. I wanted her physically close to me. I didn’t want her to have to move multiple times, so we decided she’d live nearby in a progressive care assisted living community. I wanted to retain her dignity and independence as much as possible. I wanted to walk alongside her.
This was her journey, and I chose to make it mine.
What you want matters. It matters because it leads to an aligned thought / feeling combination. It matters because you matter. There’s no explanation needed.
I show up for my mother because it serves me to do so. She’s teaching me how to feel harder. She’s teaching me that time truly is a construct. She’s teaching me how to live in the present. She’s teaching me that every second counts. There are adventures to be had, and she and I are on one together.
After our time in Cape Town was up, I was accepted to a Ph.D. program at Northwestern in Chicago while 6 months pregnant. My husband was accepted to an MBA program at Harvard in Boston. Once again, I used the guiding question of “What do I want?” to help me feel through the discomfort of possibly living in two cities. When you’re willing to feel, there’s always a solution.
From the start, I trusted that it would all work out. Boundaries are make-believe. They only exist if you allow yourself to see them. I prefer to look for the hidden door.
I decided to follow the adventure and I decided that what I wanted mattered. We moved to Boston for a year, and then I packed up our toddler and moved to Chicago. I turned 27. This was our first year of intentional long-distance parenting and marriage.
I’ll be honest. That year was rough. Making the world work for you is about honoring what you want, deep down, despite the circumstances that seem to be limitations. It’s about deciding, in advance, not to make yourself wrong for trying something out-of-the-ordinary.
After that first year, my husband took a job in Detroit. I was in the position to choose between four more years of long-distance parenting and marriage or to accept and process the bittersweet emotions that came with choosing family over my Ph.D. Over and over, I’d ask myself, “What do I want?”
You see, the mental chatter, the mental clutter, it falls away when you’re intentionally deciding how to think, allowing yourself to feel, and taking the next steps. Remind yourself that what you want matters. The world will work for you when you ask it to do so.
The third component is to always trust that “it” will all work out.
Self-trust looks different for all of us. It’s a form of resilience. It’s a knowing that is created and nurtured within. Accessing it requires you to quiet the thinking and planning part of your brain.
For some of you, self-trust may be a whisper. If it is, take a moment to ask that part of you what it needs to feel safe. Practice comforting the parts that feel unsure. Provide them with compassion and with evidence. Show yourself the risks you’ve taken in other areas of your life and the learnings you’ve gained.
For me that looked like trusting that I had the skills to downsize my mother in the span of two intense weeks and moved her to Michigan. I trusted that I could virtually homeschool our kids during the pandemic and grow my Clutter Coaching practice. Then, in 2021, I trusted that we could let go of 60% of our belongings, that I could stage and sell our house in 6 weeks for a profit, and we could successfully split our household in two.
My son is an elite soccer player and has been training for this adventure his entire life. His desire to go pro is part of who he is, and our job has been to encourage his inner knowing.
For two years, my son lived and trained in Florida. My husband and I swapped parenting between two households. Our family spent the holiday breaks and summers together. I flew over 150K miles while running my business. A few months ago, my son was recruited and signed with a Major League Soccer Academy. He’s one step closer to what he wants, and so am I.
When you tap into self-trust, you’ll work to make what you want to happen. You see… you’re more organized than you think. You’ll choose supportive actions towards your goal. You’ll troubleshoot. You’ll stay in step with the journey. You’ll have a broader vision and purpose. Trust becomes your anchor when then sea above is rough.
It’s our newest adventure, and it’s one that I want for him. I’ve now moved more than a dozen times. I’m back to being a long-distance caregiver for my mom and am navigating the emotions that go along with that. I’m making conscious, intentional choices aligned with what I want, and I’m trusting that my business and my family will adapt.
My journey has not been hard or heavy. It’s been emotional. It’s been 50/50.
So, I invite you to consider: What’s one adventure that’s ahead for you? Take a moment to step into the land of no rules. Look beyond the garden hedge. Peek around the corner. Gaze up into the sky. Be willing to take the concept of Dare of the Day to an even grander scale. Investigate the next curious thing that comes your way.
I also encourage you to identify one thing that you want… and then another. You each have an inner knowing. Let it inform and guide you. Trust your feelings and the messages from your heart. Own your story and inspire your community with it.
Because… I believe, when you center yourself in your own life, the world has absolutely no choice but to work for you.
Outro: Hey y'all, share the love. Remember, if you've had at least one valuable takeaway from this episode, someone else will too. I'd encourage you to share it with like-minded folks and suggest they follow the podcast too. I truly appreciate your time and I don't take it for granted.
