Get Unstuck – How To Get Clarity, Courage, & Confidence With Jennifer Grace

by | Inspiring Interviews

We’ve entered the last quarter of the year and with that comes a lot of reflection – on the year past and the year to come.

Reflection is always a good thing – it helps us move forward, but it can also leave us reeling with a thousand questions…. Should I start that new business? Should I move to that new city? Should I take that job offer? Should I leave my current job? Should I move in with my partner?

Should I…Should I…Should I…How do we make decisions where there are so many questions?!

If you’re feeling stuck or confused and need a blueprint to move forward, then you’re gonna love today’s episode.

Jennifer Grace is a Hay House author and transformational coach and has helped thousands of people on this very topic. She’s a changemaker, an inspirational leader and has so much wisdom and actionable advice on how to find the answers.

In short, this episode is a MUST WATCH if you’re feeling stuck and looking for clarity to move forward with a big decision or gain the courage and confidence to make a shift in your life.

We cover:

  • The 3 things you need to cultivate your intuition
  • Why we need to take our mind to the brain gym – daily
  • 2 questions to ask yourself when looking for clarity
  • The 6 step process to understand when trying to bring an idea to life
  • The missing ingredient to success and how you can fix it

Clarity is the key to freedom and YOU deserve it.

Please share this episode far and wide! It may just help someone you know too :)

Quick links from the video:


Topic Timeline

1:03 – The Bottom Line

The very first thing that I want to touch on, because I’m talking about clarity and courage and confidence, is this word clarity. So many people want to know how do you get clarity.

1:34 – Jennifer’s Advice On Finding Clarity

I always tell my students ‘YAK’ (You Always Know).

4:28 – Using Prompts For Journaling

I love using prompts because some people say, “I don’t know what to write about”, so I give lots of prompt sentences that you write at the top of your page.

6:09 – How To Do Your Meditation

Meditation is more like that practice – going to the gym, going to the pool, taking your mind to the brain gym every morning.

9:23 – 6 Different Stages Of Reaching A Goal

A lot of people think it’s great idea to success. You see other people write a book and think I can write a book. Or this one started a business, I can start the business and we think that it’s great idea to success.

12:22 – The CIJ course

The online experience is that we’re there with cameras and people can see each other and it’s experiential exercises, group sharing, creative visualizations, all to really help people get clear, find direction, their life purpose, get unstuck.


Transcript

How To Get Clarity

Hey everyone, Lindsey Victoria here from A Life Well-balanced where we’re sharing tips and resources on how to live a more balanced and positive life. Thank you guys so much for joining me.

Now my guest today is somebody who I know personally and I admire very deeply. She’s a Hay House author, a transformational coach here in Miami and the leader of the CIJ course which is an 8-week course that’s designed for individuals who are seeking clarity and direction in their life and it’s based on the Stanford Master’s Degree program.

So if you ever wonder how to get clarity, courage, and confidence to move forward with your dreams, then this episode is for you.

Lindsey: So I want to welcome today my guest, Jennifer Grace.

Jennifer: Thank you.

Lindsey: Thank you so much for letting me interview you.

Jennifer: Of course, My pleasure.

Lindsey: If it wasn’t for taking your course, I wouldn’t be here having the courage to sit down and actually have an interview with you and be trying to share it with the world, so thank you. The very first thing that I want to touch on, because I’m talking about clarity and courage and confidence, is this word clarity. So many people want to know how to get clarity. I have a side-hustle going, or maybe I want to try to do something new. Where do we start? What do we do?

Jennifer: A lot of people are out there seeking and they’re asking different questions like ‘What do you think I should do?’ and just trying to go on that outward journey. And meanwhile, I always tell my students ‘YAK’ (You Always Know). You can see of all the wisdom inside of you, but there’s a catch. You have to get quiet and really access that wisdom.

And what we do is we distract. We go from the internet and watching Netflix and all the socializing that we do and we’re always doing this outward dance and meanwhile, all the answers are within. So getting quiet and cultivating a practice of mindfulness, meditation and journaling.

They did an experiment, a scientific study actually, studying intuition and they found that we’re all born with intuition, but in order to access your intuition, which is never wrong, mistake-free – can tell you your life’s purpose, where you need to go next, who you should be dating, it’s got all the answers. Your intuition requires cultivation, so if you don’t cultivate the intuitive muscle you can’t access it.

So they found that the three best ways of cultivating intuition we’re mindfulness, journaling and meditation, which are really the core foundational tools of everything I teach. And I always make the analogy of you want to become an Olympic gold medalist in life and have it all. What’s having it all? Purpose, freedom, peace, prosperity and love. You just want to have it all. An Olympian doesn’t dive in the pool and swim two laps and practice once, and they get to have it all. They’ve got to go to the gym. They’ve got to go the pool every day and every Olympian needs a coach and they need a team to practice.

Lindsey: That’s right.

Jennifer: So mindfulness, meditation, journaling are great, but only if you are consistent and you do a daily practice. And then you start to get clarity. Who am I? What is my purpose? And all the answers are there. You just have to create space for them to arise.

Lindsey: So you have this book, which is amazing by the way. It’s called ‘Directing Your Destiny‘. We were told to get this in our class and I followed this thing. Talk about consistency.

You have some really good tips in here about journaling and if you could give my viewers just one or two prompts because I think journaling is a big thing and everybody always tells me “Lindsey I can’t do it, I don’t have time” but it’s really about consistency. You have a lot in here, but if we could just give them maybe one or two prompts.

Jennifer: Yeah, but also, the time thing… Doing a daily practice is 5 or 10 minutes a day and everybody has that amount of time. I mean we’re all playing with 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Why are some people super successful and some not? Well nobody can find the time. You get to create the time. So I think first thing in the morning is to do your meditation, your journaling practice and then it’s done for the day.

For journaling, I love using prompts because some people say, “I don’t know what to write about”, so I give lots of prompt sentences that you write at the top of your page and then for 5 timed minutes, you just answer it. Just stream-of-consciousness, first thoughts, no direction, no expectations, just write from your heart.

I love the prompt:

“If I could stop time for one year and no one would know I was gone, I would be what?”

This gives your limited mind a vacation from the itty bitty shitty committee. It’s time to do what I love and my family and this and my education and that just cuts everything off. If you could pause time for one year, what would you be doing in that year? It gives you permission to dream.

Lindsey: I love that.

Jennifer: And I also love

‘What I’m clear about is…?’, ‘What I’m unclear about is…?’

So you get to see what needs attention, where you’re clear, where you’re not clear, and there’s a million more.

Lindsey: Yeah there’s so many more, but I’ll make sure I’ve put those two below this video. So we gave some journaling tips, how about some meditation tools because that’s the other thing I hear is that sitting down, cross-legged is just uncomfortable and my mind doesn’t stop. “What do I do? How do I do this?” There are many different ways to go about meditation and I think you have quite few good ones, so may we get a tip for meditation?

Jennifer: Sure. The first thing is your mind is not going to stop. The thoughts are not going to stop. Meditation is more like that practice – going to the gym, going to the pool, taking your mind to the brain gym every morning. You’re working out the mind. In the beginning, you’re not going to be peaceful, you’re not going to become one with the universe, you’re not going to become enlightened. It’s like you’re not going to get that gold medal the first try. You get to practice. You’re practicing with an inexperienced monkey mind. It’s all over the place. Any time you’ve ever tried something in the beginning, you sucked at it. So be okay with that. Be okay to go through to becoming more advanced.

Really it’s just about letting go of the thought and coming back to the mantra. Repeat ‘Here’ on the inhale, ‘Now’ on the exhale, or ‘Deep’ on the inhale, ‘Slow’ on the exhale. And every time the thought comes in, your work is to not let it go more than one sentence. Drop the thought and come back here now. Here comes another thought. Drop that and come back. It’s like your bicep curl. And what happens is in between those thoughts, the space gets longer and longer and longer.

And meditation really happens off the mat. When life comes at you and you get broken up with, you get fired, something catastrophic happens, usually we start going off into the future worrying, regretting the past. We start freaking out, monkey mind is going crazy. But because you’re in the brain gym that morning, you know how to drop those obsessive thoughts and drop that anxiety and worry and come back to the moment where peace lives, so that you can think creatively on how to get yourself a new job, or a new revenue stream, or how to move past the partner, or whatever is happening for you. You can think creatively here now because that’s where peace lives.

Lindsey: Yes, and this is what I love about you. You’re so real too. Your brain is just not going to be able to stop. You’re not expected to be this “zen master”.

Jennifer: If we all went on a mountain for 40 years, we’d be really good at it but the rest of us are regular people. We’re down here. We’re just practicing every day and it’s a mental workout. You’re taking your mind to the gym every morning.

Lindsey: I like that – taking your mind to the gym, that’s so good. I was listening to another interview that you did and you were saying that 82% of people stopped their New Year’s resolutions. We’re like “I want to write that book”, ” I want to do this” but we stop – things get in the way.

Jennifer: Yeah so we’re like in April now and 80% of you probably declared what you were committed to having happen in 2018 and 80% of you didn’t do it.

Lindsey: That’s a huge number.

Jennifer: That’s a big percentage. There are many reasons for that. I think a big one is people don’t really realize the creative process of what it really takes to make a goal, a dream, an idea and take it from concept to launch.

A lot of people think it’s a great idea to success. You see other people write a book and think I can write a book. Or this one started a business, I can start the business and we think that it’s great idea to success. But in reality, the creative process of taking a goal and making it a reality is 6 different stages.

  • Stage 1 is the great idea. You think it’s doable. “Yes, I’m going to become a published author”. I’m going to start this business, I’ve got this. What people don’t know is that 99.999% of the time, after you have your great idea, you will go to…
  • Stage 2 which is frustration. You’ll hit the brick wall of frustration. Things don’t go as planned. You sit down in front of the computer, you don’t know what to write or you start procrastinating and stalling or whatever. Or you go to start the business and the partner that is going to bring the money falls through and sh*t happens. And so you take that as a sign of failure because you don’t realize the creative process. Now when my students do my Stanford course with me, they get that this is part of the process. Stage 2 is frustration and in that frustration, you just do two things.:
    • You let go of the expectation of how you thought it was all going to work out You keep your idea.
    • You keep your faith in your creativity, but know that you need help to get over the brick wall of frustration.
  • Stage 3 is incubation. Instead of throwing your great idea in the garbage, you put it on the back burner or let it percolate and incubate and then you bring in…
  • Stage 4 which is to strategize with allies. Get friends. Get co-workers, people that have done what you’ve done. Talk to other authors, other business owners. Brainstorm on where you can get the money. Then you’re going to have your breakthrough. “I know how to get over the brick wall of frustration!”
  • You’ve got Stage 5 – illumination.
  • Stage 6, the book is on the Shelf. The business is open. It’s in the can.

But you have to be willing to trust the process and know that there are many stages and not to really do it alone. Get allies. Allies and accountability are the missing ingredients of success. Having people hold you accountable is the missing ingredient to success.

Lindsey: It’s so true and that actually is a perfect point about why this class was so important. I took this class. It was October and November, last year 2017 and I think I had always had it in my mind that I wanted to do videos or try to exercise my creative muscle and here I am. I’ve hit many walls of frustration, but the class is so important because that’s what it does, it holds you accountable. I think this might be a perfect point to give a brief overview of what the CIJ course is because I know you teach in many areas around the U.S. as well.

Jennifer: Well I teach it online. I also train and develop other people to teach the course and then I teach it live here at the Standard Hotel.

The online experience is that we’re there with cameras and people can see each other and it’s experiential exercises, group sharing, creative visualizations, all to really help people get clear, find direction, their life purpose, get unstuck. We also have a peer coaching call every week. I pair you up with somebody different from the course and that gives connection and gets you into your tribe to meet some amazing people.

Then here at The Standard, when you take the course, you get the free spa day which is always nice. And I have classes coming up at the end of April, both online and live.

Lindsey: Do you normally launch it in April and then also in December?

Jennifer: I do them again in October, so I take the summer off.

That was so good. There were so many good bits of information packed in a little bit of time, but if you guys are interested, I highly encourage you to pick up her book, ‘Directing Your Destiny: How to become the writer, producer, and director of your dreams’.

You’re basically a coach right in here. You tell people to do the exercises – meditation, journaling, and tips on how to quiet those thoughts in your mind. Of course, if you’re interested in the CIJ course, you can check it out jennifergrace.com. And also her Instagram @thejennifergrace. So thank you so much for letting me interview you.

Now Jennifer and I want to hear from you.

If you took any insight away from this video, what’s the one thing that you could do right now that would start to help you get a little bit more clear so you can become the writer, producer, and director of your own dreams?

Thank you so much for tuning in. See you next time!

 

Lindsey Victoria

Lindsey is the author of A Life Well-Balanced, a lifestyle blog dedicated to helping people live a more balanced life - physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

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