Diane Bell [00:00:01]:
Hello gorgeous soul. I'm Diane Bell and this is the aim from the Heart podcast. Your weekly dose of tips, techniques, strategies, and inspiration to help you live a life beyond your wildest dreams. If you're ready to use the art of intentional manifestation to create more freedom, more joy, more abundance, and more bliss in your life, you are in the right place. S grab a cup of tea, pull up a chair, and let's have some fun. I am so glad you're here today. Let's do this. Hey there, beautiful soul.
Diane Bell [00:00:34]:
Before we get started on this episode, I just want to let you know that I have something very exciting planned. A gathering to celebrate the end of the year, and you are invited. This is going to happen on December 20 eigth. So go to dianebell.com celebrate and RSVP and you will get your zoom link. We're going to be doing some gratitude. We're going to be doing some collective intention setting. It's going to be nourishing, empowering and so much fun. I hope you can join me on December 20 eigth.
Diane Bell [00:01:06]:
It's completely free. Please join the community. Let's have some fun. Dianebell.com celebrate now let's start the podcast. Hello gorgeous soul, and welcome to episode 16 of the aim from the Heart podcast. Oh my gosh, episode 16. I don't know why, but I just feel so excited about that. It feels like already a substantial number of these little podcasts since I launched this not that long ago.
Diane Bell [00:01:33]:
So first of all, I just want to say thank you so much for tuning in and listening to this. I am so excited to be sharing this podcast and growing this podcast and devoting my time to this podcast and the conversations that have come up through it. So many of you reach out to me personally and let me know how they landed with you. And it just means the world to me. So I'm so grateful for you. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you are well. We are coming obviously to the home stretch of this year.
Diane Bell [00:02:02]:
This podcast will go live on the 22 December and there will only be a week left of the year. There will only be a week left of the year. Now, one of my habits at the end of the year is always to take some time to look back and really reflect on the year that's gone by and see what lessons I can learn. Because I believe that we create beautiful lives, incredible lives, by learning the lessons. Otherwise, typically what we're doomed to do is to repeat them and repeat them and repeat them. And as you'll hear one of the lessons that I learned this year is about something that I have repeated more than once. So obviously, I didn't learn the lesson. I had to do it again in order to really learn it.
Diane Bell [00:02:50]:
But I'm going to share today six lessons that I learned this year, and I'm going to give you heads up now. I'm going to be very raw and honest and vulnerable with you. This is not me putting on my pretty face where I'm like, hey, everything's perfect. And ra, here's these great lessons. And this was an easy year because I'll be honest with you, this year, for me, 2023 was tough. It was challenging in so many ways, and you'll hear about it as we get into this. And it's okay. Challenging can be good.
Diane Bell [00:03:23]:
Challenging is fine. Challenging is part of the fabric of our lives. I have learned a lot of very big, deep lessons this year. Challenging years allow us that gift. They afford us the opportunity to really learn some big ones. So I have some big ones to share with you. If you have had a tough year as well, if you've had a challenging year, I just invite you to take the time to actually really reflect on it, to see what lessons you carry forward and to know that, hey, there's seasons in life, and we'll get to that, but your life can change now. Okay.
Diane Bell [00:04:00]:
When we move into 2024, we're bringing some whole new energy into this. So this was one of the exercises that I did actually assign people in your best year yet. This was a three day master class that I have taught at the time of recording this. I still actually have one day to record of it. And your best year yet guides people through a process to really set you up for a great new year. And it's a pretty simple process, but it works and it's powerful. And part of it is looking back, learning lessons, also celebrating, right. Celebrating and being grateful and then having a vision, creating a vision for the new year, understanding why usually our goals don't manifest and what to do about it.
Diane Bell [00:04:47]:
So we actually set ourselves up for a year in which they do manifest, and then also going into strategy about how to actually bridge that gap from where you are now to where you want to be in 2024. So if you didn't sign up to that yet and you would like to do that, please do. I'll put the link into the show notes here, or you can reach out to me and I will send you a link. It's a really powerful set of classes. We actually still have one session that we're going to be doing in early January. So sign up, get in there, do the process. Honestly, it will be a game changer for you, and it's such a beautiful way just to clear the plate, clear the energy for you over the last year, and then set yourself up for truly your best year. So if that sounds good, make sure you click on the link in the show notes.
Diane Bell [00:05:34]:
Sign up and get in there. Now let's get into the lessons that I've identified as the big ones that I learned in 2023. And as I said, it was not an easy year for me. It was definitely a challenging year in many ways. So the first lesson that I learned was achieving your big dreams will often trigger you at a whole new level. Now, I always have this thing that I feel like people don't talk about this enough. We go after our big dreams. It's like, okay, I want to manifest this, I want to manifest that.
Diane Bell [00:06:07]:
And I always say, I don't think the hardest part is actually manifesting the thing. I don't think the hardest part is actually drawing that into your sphere of reality. I think the hardest part is actually owning it. I think the hardest part is walking through that door of opportunity, staying through that door of opportunity, normalizing that new level and sustaining it. And I really came up against this in this year. So at the end of 2022, we moved to Spain, and through a series of what I can only call miracles, we actually bought a house. That's like a dream. It's just crazy what an up level it was from where we were living in Denver to this.
Diane Bell [00:06:48]:
It's just insane. And so, on paper, it's all to celebrate. It's just like, oh, my God, you made your big dream come true. You're now living in Spain, and you bought this incredible house. It's your dream. You get to wake up every morning looking at the Mediterranean. You can watch the sunrise over the Mediterranean. You can watch the sunset over the Mediterranean.
Diane Bell [00:07:05]:
I know that sounds like it shouldn't be possible, but it's actually possible from our home to see both the sunrise and the sunset and somehow both ways is over the sea. It's incredible. And it's so beautiful, and it's just like all the things I dreamed of. So you'd think I would have started 2023 just being completely happy and feeling amazing and just like, oh, my God. So grateful, celebrating. In fact, I entered 2023 feeling incredibly anxious, incredibly scared, incredibly full of fear. And now looking back, I can see it, I can assess it. I can see what was going on.
Diane Bell [00:07:42]:
So during our actual move, that fear started to kick in for me. And it's almost natural that some sort of fear in making such a big move, like moving your family not just across the country, but to a different continent, is going to trigger some fears. And I guess I didn't take care of them as well as I could have or should have. And so I came to the end of 2022, and the last few months of the year, I didn't really have my eye on my business very well. And my business was not doing great. It was just not doing great. And I was feeling frustrated and I was feeling stressed. I was feeling anxious about, it's like, my God, I've got to make this work.
Diane Bell [00:08:18]:
The actual move ended up costing us a lot more than we anticipated, a lot more than we had budgeted for. And I was like, I've got to make some money. And I felt this real stress and pressure around that. Then moving into a house that's like the dream house, it just brought up all my fears on a deeper level of I'm not worthy of this, of the other shoe is going to drop of, like, I can't sustain this. This is too much. I've gone too far. What was I thinking? Who am I to do this? All those kinds of thoughts. This is real stuff, friends.
Diane Bell [00:08:51]:
Like, as I say, I'm giving you the truth here. I'm not giving you the gloss version. I'm giving you the truth. And so there was a lot of fear. So I came into 2023 really with this feeling of pressure and fear. Now, what that resulted in was that I thought, okay, I've got to get serious. I've got to just be very business light with my business. I got to make money, right? And it was enormous pressure.
Diane Bell [00:09:14]:
Now, the truth of this is, as I say, the lesson that I've extracted from this, and there will be other lessons that are extracted from this, but the first one is that achieving dreams will often trigger you at a whole new level, and you've got to give yourself grace for that. And also, I recommend having a strategy to help you deal with that. Now, I realized that one thing I did not have in place, and I want to offer this to you so that if you're working towards a big dream in 2024, you do this so that you can avoid the kind of fear that I felt, the kind of level of triggering that I felt. And what I'm going to recommend is that have your big dream. Like, my big dream is to move into the house in Spain with the view of the Mediterranean. That's my big dream. But now choose a dream beyond the dream. Attune yourself before you even make that dream come true to something that's even bigger than that, to something even that's, like, ten times that.
Diane Bell [00:10:11]:
So it's like, it's that house, but it's also a house here. Or it's also this or it's also that. It's also, like creating a business that impacts a million people. Or it's also having the wherewithal to go on an amazing safari in Africa. Or it's also this. Right? So there's something beyond it. There's something even bigger than it. There's a next level to it.
Diane Bell [00:10:31]:
And the reason I say this is I realized that when I moved here. I think my soul thought we had died because it was like, okay, we've done what we have been focused on for three years. Like, you've achieved it now. And it was sort of like, and now what? And because I had nothing beyond that, I really hadn't thought beyond that. I felt, like, so massively triggered, it was like, okay, I've reached the ultimate. Which, of course, I haven't, by the way. There's like 10,000 more levels for me to go up. There's 10,000 more ways for me to grow and expand at all the things.
Diane Bell [00:11:03]:
So have a vision beyond your vision. Also recognize that achieving the dreams will trigger you in this way. So plan to really take care of your nervous system in those transitions. There's a great book that I've recommended many times to people called the big leap by gay Hendrix. And I returned to that book early this year because I was like, wait, I know what's going on here. I am having an upper limit problem. If you know, you know, the book is all about this idea that we all have our setting for how much we can have. And if you look around your life right now, that's pretty much your setting.
Diane Bell [00:11:40]:
How much money is in your bank, the kind of house you live in, the relationship you have, your health, your weight, all the different things. It's a setting. And so when we go beyond our setting, we go beyond our comfort zone, we trigger ourselves, and then usually we'll self sabotage to bring ourselves back into our setting for how happy we can be. I definitely hit my upper limit problem moving here. There's no doubt about it. And it took me a while to really get a hold on it. So the lesson here, achieving the big dreams will trigger you so take care of yourself. Do the prework so that you have a vision beyond that, so that it doesn't feel like the end of the road.
Diane Bell [00:12:19]:
That will help your nervous system somewhat, but also prioritize caring for your nervous system in those transitions as your big dreams come true. Otherwise, you will probably do a lot of things to self sabotage that dream, which I did, in a sense. So number two of the lessons that I learned is that there are seasons in life, and you got to just trust the season you're in. This is probably quite an unpopular one in many self development circles because what you're always hearing is like, grow, evolve, expand. And you see these examples of people who are just always growing, always expanding, always going to the next level. Now, I think that's absolutely wonderful, but I also trust that sometimes there are seasons and that a season of expansion will be followed by a season of contraction. And if we look to the natural world, we see this again and again and again in everything. Things don't just, like, grow all year round.
Diane Bell [00:13:17]:
Typically, they have a season, a growth season, and then a season where they stay still or even go back a little bit before they go into the next growth season. In our lives, we will often experience this, too. So for me, with my business and in my personal life, for the last few years, since I really started my business in 2019, it has been massive expansion. Massive growth. Like, just incredible. And this year was not massive growth. I'm going to be absolutely honest with you. This year, my business actually shrank.
Diane Bell [00:13:48]:
The numbers are not as high as the year before or the year before that. So I could get really upset about this and make it mean all kinds of things. But I honestly see this as a natural thing for myself, that there was a season of expansion and now there was a season of contraction, and it's okay and it's fine, and I'm going to breathe through it this season. This last year for me in my business was really reconsidering what I am here for, what my purpose is, what I am here to do, what I'm here to share, what I'm here to teach. And what that meant was making some very big, scary decisions that sometimes felt like, oh, my God, I feel like I'm starting from scratch. For instance, I stopped recording the shoot from the Heart podcast, and I launched this one. And that was scary. That's a Scary thing, to start a new podcast.
Diane Bell [00:14:40]:
I had another podcast that already had over 100 episodes and had a following and all the things, and suddenly I'm starting a new one. And I knew at a certain level that I just had to trust my soul, that I had to just make these leaps, that I had to be true to myself. But it was scary. And it has also felt then that I've been in a season of planting seeds, and this is that thing. There are these seasons. There are seasons where you're planting seeds, there are seasons where you're watering seeds. There are seasons when the seeds start to grow. There are seasons when you get to harvest those plants.
Diane Bell [00:15:14]:
They are not all the same, right? They are different seasons. And I definitely feel this last year, for me, 2023 was a season of planting these seeds, of really considering what seeds I wanted to plant and how I was going to plant them and starting to plant them. It was not a season of massive harvest. It's fine. It's okay. Like, I'm okay. That's that thing. I'm okay.
Diane Bell [00:15:39]:
You're okay. We're all okay. Sometimes you need to take a season to actually reconsider where you're going, what you're doing, how you're doing it, and plant the seeds. Have the patience and the understanding that it's not just about growth all the time, in all the ways it's okay to take a season and say, you know what? Actually, what I'm growing is not what I really want to grow. This is what I want to grow. And I'm going to take the time to clear the soil, put nourishment into the soil, and plant these new seeds so that I can grow the garden that I really desire to. So this was definitely, for me, 2023 feels like it was a year of. It feels like a year of contraction.
Diane Bell [00:16:19]:
It feels like the ebb rather than the flow. It feels like I needed to calibrate to my new life. I needed to just calibrate to my new surroundings and really take time to take stock of where I'm going in life. Because moving continents definitely brings up a lot in you, right? It's like, who am I? What am I doing? What is my life for? And I really took the time to consider where I want to go, what my gifts are, that I want to share, who I want to serve and how I want to serve them. And I'm coming into the end of this year feeling so rock solid, feeling so full of intent and purpose and clarity, and it's such a beautiful feeling. But it took me going through some pretty messy months where I didn't feel that great. So trust the season you're in. Trust the season and know that none of the seasons last forever.
Diane Bell [00:17:08]:
That was one of my lessons for sure. My third lesson that I learned was, did I really have to learn this one again? Apparently I did. So the third lesson was, you can't go back. Okay. This has been one of my hardest lessons in life. This one has really caused me a lot of pain at different points. Here's what it looks like, and here's how it plays out in my life. I take some action, I get some incredible results.
Diane Bell [00:17:40]:
I then decide to take another kind of action to replicate those results, and I don't get them. So then I think, you know what? Let me just do what I did the first time around so I can get those great results again. All right, does this sound familiar? And it's sort of like, because I was burnt, like I tried something new and it hasn't really worked. So I'm like, okay, let me just go back to what did work, and I'll do that because that worked. So if it worked, then it's going to work again. And what I find is, of course, you can't go back trying to do what you did a few years ago because it worked then and thinking it will just work now, it never works. Why? Why does it not work? Because your dominant energy in this equation is fear. Because you are coming to what you're doing, not because you're excited about it and it's amazing, but because you're thinking, it got me those results then, so it should be able to get me those results again.
Diane Bell [00:18:31]:
You're in your head, not in your heart. Now, what this actually looked like for me this year was, as I said, I entered 2023 feeling a lot of pressure around actually making money. And the few months leading up to the beginning of 2023 were not good in my business. Like that. Sort of like the last half of 2022 was not good in my business. As I said, I was moving, and I was so caught up with that, my business was not in forefront of my priorities, really. And so it had really taken a hit. And I entered 2023 feeling afraid, and I felt like, okay, Diane, what have you done before that has worked? And let's not try and reinvent the wheel.
Diane Bell [00:19:11]:
Let's just look at what you've done that's worked and let's repeat that. So I looked back to 2000 and 22,021 when I was running ads for a webinar on writing a screenplay and selling my write your screenplay course through that. And that is actually what took me from earning pretty sporadic five to ten k each month to 20k. Every single month or more. So I thought, right, Dan, that worked before. I don't know why you stopped doing that. Let's do it again. I hired a Facebook ads manager.
Diane Bell [00:19:49]:
I redid the webinar and we started doing it. And guess what? You won't be shocked to hear this. Basically, crickets. I mean, some people were buying it, some people did buy it, but really not that many. It was not really working. Basically, it was breaking even for what I was paying for the ads and what I was paying for the Facebook ad manager. We were breaking even and we weren't making massive profits and we certainly weren't going over twenty k a month. And so lessons learned.
Diane Bell [00:20:19]:
Your energy is everything. Your energy is everything. Your intention really matters if you're just trying to repeat something you did before because it worked well then and now you're feeling fear because things aren't working. So you're like, let me just do what I did before, and then it will work. It's not the path. It's never going to come to good results. And that was the problem for me. I was in that energy.
Diane Bell [00:20:43]:
I was in an energy of fear. I was in an energy of working from my head rather than my heart. I was in this energy of desperation, to be honest. And it didn't work out. Surprise, surprise. Now, as I said, I've had this lesson really hard before. And the time that I had it before was in my filmmaking career. So the first film that I made, obsolidia, I made it for $140,000.
Diane Bell [00:21:06]:
It did fantastically well in the festival circuit. It was an incredible experience in every way. There was so much joy, so much happiness. It was just amazing. Then I made my second film, and it was a really hard experience, and it did not create joy in my life. I mean, it really nearly broke me. And it went on for a long time. It was just terrible.
Diane Bell [00:21:27]:
And the film wasn't great as a result, and it didn't really make an impact. And I just felt totally depressed by it because it felt like a massive step back. And suddenly I was like, okay, how do I get back to making a film that does do well and that feels great and all the things. And I thought, okay, I'll make one like my first one. And I literally said, okay, what could I do with those same two actors with my friends in the desert? And I wrote a film and we went out and shot it. Well, headline, you can't go back. Like, the idea that I could just repeat what we did first time and it would somehow create amazing results. Was insanity.
Diane Bell [00:22:04]:
And it didn't create amazing results at all. I mean, the film is what it is, and there's definitely many wonderful things about that film. It's not poo pooing the film, but it didn't create the results that I desired at all. So I had learned this lesson very big, right. That you can't go back. You've got to go forward. That even if you've done something and it hasn't worked and now you're feeling burnt and you're feeling hurt and you're feeling sad, the answer is not to try to retreat back to where you felt safe before. And it's funny that I did that this year and got the lesson so hard.
Diane Bell [00:22:38]:
And so by close to the middle of the year, that was like, oh, my God, I felt so burnt by this. But I also then got the next lesson. So I really realized, Diane, you can't go back. You knew that, right? Like, why were you thinking you could just replicate what you did two years ago to get the same result? That's not the way this works. The way this works is lesson number four. And this became my mantra for the second half of 2023. Follow soul. Trust soul.
Diane Bell [00:23:10]:
Trust your heart. I know without any shred of doubt that the magic in my life, that the magic in your life, that the magic in everyone's life is created when we drop into our hearts and trust the callings that we find in there. And when we listen to that guidance in our hearts, good things happen. And when we don't listen to that guidance in our hearts and instead, we overrule it with our heads, you are on the path to the struggle bus. And that's really, as I say, where I feel like I spent the first half of 2023 was in that struggle bus, just doing things from my head, feeling frustrated, feeling tired, feeling like it's not working, feeling pressure, and knowing that this wasn't helpful, but also really not being able to shake myself out of it. And so about halfway through the year, though, when I really was like this, trying to sell this course through ads, not working, I really had that moment. I was like, diane, you know what this takes. You've learned that lesson before.
Diane Bell [00:24:19]:
You can't go back and you know the truth. And let's just relearn it. Let's put this as the lesson of all lessons. Follow soul. So I decided at that moment, and this was, like, halfway through the year, that from that point in the year on, I was just going to trust the nudges of my soul, even if it seemed illogical, even if it didn't seem to make sense, I was just going to do what felt aligned, what felt exciting. I was not going to take any action from pressure anymore. Even if I felt pressure, I was going to breathe through the pressure and release it. And I was not going to take any action from that energy.
Diane Bell [00:24:53]:
The actions were all going to come from following my soul. And what that led me to was in the summertime, I was watching this free workshop called the rise of the digital CEO. And I was really called to this because I felt with my online business that I built this business. And it's amazing. But I'm not running it like a proper business. I'm running it like an employee who's in the business, who's always creating things, selling things, doing things. But I'm not building, strategically, a business that could function without me. And so I went to this free workshop, and I ended up signing up for the program, business by design.
Diane Bell [00:25:36]:
This is James Wedmore's program. And part of the package that I signed up for included a ticket to his live event, which was happening in the end of November. And when I bought the package, I was like, okay, it includes a ticket to a live event in California. Well, I'm not doing that. I'm just excited to get the program. I'm excited to think about my business in these new ways and to really learn about business. It's that thing, like, I'm an artist, I am a visionary, I'm a creative, and I can create things, I can sell things. I can have so much fun doing that.
Diane Bell [00:26:06]:
But I really wanted to learn more about business and get myself more skilled in that area. So I was just delighted to have joined the thing. It felt like follow Soul. It just felt like the right move, and I signed up for it. Well, I had no plan to go to the live. But then late in the summer, I woke up one day, and I hadn't even been thinking about it. I hadn't been debating it. There was no sort of like, should I go? Shouldn't I go? Should I go, shouldn't I go? I just woke up very clearly with the message in my head, go to the live event.
Diane Bell [00:26:37]:
You're meant to go to the live event. And I went, okay. Follow soul. And honestly, making this my mantra for the last half of 2023, follow soul has created such beautiful shifts. I feel more ease, more just aligned, more clear all the things than I have felt in a long time. So follow soul is probably the lesson for every year, forevermore. It's the mantra forevermore in my life. Follow soul.
Diane Bell [00:27:04]:
When you follow your soul, you cannot go wrong. And honestly, I was so glad that I went to that live event. It has been just a game changer for me. So grateful. Now, the next lesson that I learned, even as things were challenging in this last year, I really, really attuned myself to this lesson that life is in the little moments. I have two small children and I am so really aware that they are growing up fast. I can't believe my little Tennyson is eleven years old and he'll be twelve next year. And I think, oh my gosh, he's twelve.
Diane Bell [00:27:44]:
He's closer to being an adult than he is to being a baby. That's so weird that in like six years he'll be 18. And six years ago he was six. Oh my gosh. It just boggles my mind. Our lives are fleeting. Our lives go by so fast. I mean, in some ways they're slow.
Diane Bell [00:28:04]:
The illusion of time. Let's not go there. But the truth is, our lives are so precious. If we waste our days being stressed about things that haven't even happened, anxious about things that might happen in the future, but probably won't, worried about outcomes, we are missing our appointment with life. It's here and now. It's in the present and it's in these little moments, the days at the beach with my kids, the times at the pool, that we're just having such a fun time together. The hikes. This is what really, really matters.
Diane Bell [00:28:42]:
And somehow this lesson really came to me this year because I started the year, as I said, really feeling a lot of stress and anxiety. And I realized that I was blocking myself off from those little moments because of it, that I wasn't really present, that the anxiety was sort of clouding my vision. And honestly, what's the point? What's the point of building a business? What's the point of moving? What's the point of having big dreams if it results in that? All I really want in my life is to be present to it. That's the ultimate goal for me, is to be really present in every moment so that I'm alive, I'm awake, I'm aware, so that I'm connected, so that I'm living intentionally in alignment with my values and I'm of service to the people around me. And if it's not that, then what is the point? And so that really came to me big this year. And I'm so grateful for this lesson because it really helped me just relax myself even as things felt like they weren't working because I thought, wait a second, it's okay. I get to still be present to my kids, my husband, my wife, and just, like, enjoy myself. Your joy matters.
Diane Bell [00:29:59]:
My joy matters. And I just decided to prioritize it. So that was definitely one of my big lessons. And then the next one that I have is, you can't do it alone. So this one came about because, to be honest, since I started my online journey, which coincides very neatly also with my very focused self development journey. So this goes back to 2018 when I really decided, I'm changing my life, I'm changing my results, I'm going to go all in. And honestly, it's unbelievable what I've created in that time. My husband has said this to me.
Diane Bell [00:30:38]:
He's like, dan, I can't even believe what you have done in such a short period of time. I can't even believe the transformation, the expansion, the results that you've created in such a short time because most people would take them decades of their life to create this, and you've just done it in a matter of years. And I say, I think that's why this year I was sort of catching my breath because I've been so gung ho and all in and creating such massive change. And it was almost like I just needed to pause a little bit and calibrate to all the changes, but this message that you can't do it alone. So since the beginning of this journey, like 2018, I have invested very heavily in coaching and mentorship and in programs, and I've been pretty much consistently in that. I've always got some coach or some mentor that I can lean on since I started this. And I started out with, if you're wondering who or what, I won't go into all the details, but I started with Bruke Castillo's the Life coaching Scholars program, which was fantastic. And there was a lot of different live coaching events that you could go to and be coached and be supported in that.
Diane Bell [00:31:50]:
And then I signed up for a program that was a one year program with a coach that was fantastic. And then I did another one that was a one year program. So I always had this. I always had something like that in my life until late last year, until late 2022. And that was sort of when all my things that I'd had kind of came to an end. And because, and this is a really interesting thing because at the time, financially, I was just feeling stressed. I was feeling a little pressure. I was like, okay, that's fine.
Diane Bell [00:32:22]:
I don't need a coach or a program right now. I've spent so much money, so much energy, so much time and learning. Maybe now it's the season for doing it myself. Like, I know the things I need to do, maybe I just do them. I just apply the things that I've already learned and carry on. And that was my attitude coming into 2023. I didn't have coaching in place. I didn't have a program in place.
Diane Bell [00:32:45]:
I didn't have any container in place. I had nothing. So I entered 2023 as a solopreneur. And honestly, I think that was probably one of my biggest problems this year. It wasn't really until I went to the business by design live event that it really sunk into me that we need other people, we need support. We need to be part of containers that hold us up when we're on our own. It's easy for us to get into a tangle. It's easy for us to get out of shape.
Diane Bell [00:33:21]:
It's almost like that whole thing of, if you are on a fitness journey, going to the gym. Yes, we can work out on our own at home, and many of us have the discipline to do that well. But there's something so powerful about doing it in a collective. Like going to a place, having a trainer, being in classes, being in groups. I've seen this as a yogi. I've gone through seasons where I just practice at home on my own. My practice never really expands in those times. At best, it's like a sustenance practice.
Diane Bell [00:33:52]:
Like it just stays the same, which is not a bad thing, but it doesn't really grow. What always makes my yoga practice grow is actually having a teacher, being in a group, being in a situation where I'm committed to showing up and being led, being guided, being supported. That's when my practice grows. When I go to self practice, home practice, I just maintain my practice, but I tend not to really grow my practice. You might be different, so I'm not saying that everybody's the same on this, but I realize for myself that in order to continue to grow, in order to continue to evolve, I can't do that on my own. I can sustain or maintain things on my own, but I will not grow on my own. And I really recognize this when I went to the business by design live event, being in the room, like the actual physical room with so many other entrepreneurs, it was just so nourishing. Hearing the stories of people who have struggled the way that I've struggled, who have had the same things.
Diane Bell [00:34:57]:
It's like, oh, my gosh, it just lifted me up in a whole other way. So I now have, oh, my gosh, I have an army of coaches at this point. I have just set myself up for 2024. I realized if I'm going to really achieve my dreams in 2024, impact the way that I want to with my work in 2024, build a business that I'm so proud of, that really helps so many people, serve so many people, inspire so many people, empower so many people. I need support. I can't do it alone. And I would offer to you that whatever it is that you're trying to do, you can't do it on your own, either. This is your call right now to if you have not set yourself up with some sort of support system for 2024, do it.
Diane Bell [00:35:46]:
Find the coach, find the program, find the container that will hold you in the frequency that you want to be held, that will hold you when you're having those struggles, when you're really, like, up against it, when you want to quit, when you want to give up, but also actually when things go well. Because what I realized is what I really needed coaching, what I really needed help, was when my dreams came true. And what's funny is that's the moment we think, oh, I don't need a coach anymore. Like, I got this. I know exactly what I'm doing now. Look, I just made all these magical things happen. I don't need anybody now. But actually, this is when we need people the most.
Diane Bell [00:36:22]:
So you can't do it alone is definitely one of my big lessons. I am never, ever going to go without a coach again in the future. Like, I really realize now that's a non negotiable for me moving forward, that if I am having a business like this where I support a lot of people, I need support, right? I need to be supported, too. And that will make all the difference. So those were my six main lessons from this year. As I said, it's not been the easiest year of my life. When I look back at the first half of the year in particular, when I was really struggling with quite a lot of anxiety and feeling kind of displaced and feeling stress, I'm just proud of myself for getting through it. And I want to offer to you whatever this year was for you.
Diane Bell [00:37:14]:
You might be looking back at 2023 and it might have been one of the best years of your life. And if it is, that's fantastic. And I'm so happy and I'm celebrating so hard with you. I love those years. But I also realize I love the years that are harder, too, because these harder years really give us an opportunity to learn. They really give us an opportunity to go deep. I've heard Tony Robbins say, and I'm not sure if it's from him originally or if he's quoting somebody or where this comes from, but he has said, hard times make strong people, strong people make good times, good times make weak people, and weak people make hard times. And I think there's often a cycle like this in our own lives.
Diane Bell [00:38:01]:
There's certainly cycles like this in our societies and in our civilizations, but I think even in our own lives, we might experience this. And I feel like this last year for me has been a harder time. But I feel stronger because of it. I feel clearer because of it. I feel more impassioned, more empowered, more compassionate because of it. So I am so grateful for 2023. I am so grateful for the hard things that came up for me this year because they have been an opportunity for me to grow. And now, my friend, I am so excited about 2024.
Diane Bell [00:38:43]:
I hope you are, too. I would love to hear from you, if you've listened this far in this episode, if any of these lessons really landed with you or resonated with you, if you wanted to take a little screenshot of this session and share on instagram, that would be amazing. I am at aim from the heart one. Or if you wanted to send me a DM or send me a message and let me know which of these resonated with you, if indeed any of them did. And I would also love to hear from you about your year. Like what were your biggest lessons this year? What was hard for you, what were your biggest challenges? And can you see now that they are actually gifts? That if you can take the lessons from those, you are in a wonderful position to really create an incredible year in 2024. So thank you so much for being here with me. Here's to the future.
Diane Bell [00:39:35]:
Here's gratitude for the past and for what has been and for the lessons we learned. And here is a welcoming and excitement for 2024 that hopefully is going to feel a little bit better. I love you so much. Thanks for being here, and I'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast today. If you enjoyed it, could you do me a favor? Please leave it a overview wherever you're listening to it, or screenshot it and share it on your social media and tag me so I can see it. I would be so appreciative. Thanks so much.
Diane Bell [00:40:09]:
I love you and I'll see you soon. Bye.
