61: Approaching Challenges from a Perspective of Love, Positivity and Intuition (with Kate Northrup)

When challenges come, we often launch into a state of stress and feelings of inadequacy. In this episode guest Kate Northrup shares why it's critical that we address the HOW of dealing with a situation more than the WHAT. Specifically, Kate believes we need to approach a difficulty from a perspective of love, positivity, presence and intuition. When we do that, everything else is easy.

As an entrepreneur, bestselling author, mother, and activist, Kate Northrup supports ambitious, motivated and successful women to light up the world without burning themselves out in the process. Committed to empowering women entrepreneurs to create their most successful businesses while navigating motherhood, Kate is the founder and CEO of Origin Collective, a monthly membership site where women all over the world gather to achieve more while doing less. Her first book, Money: A Love Story, has been published in 5 languages. Kate’s work has been featured by The Today Show, Yahoo! Finance, Women’s Health, Glamour, and The Huffington Post and she’s spoken to audiences of thousands with Hay House, Wanderlust, YouSANA Health Sciences, and more. Kate lives with her husband and business partner, Mike, and their daughter Penelope in Maine. Join Kate's FREE Sustainable Success Workshop to learn more about the art of balancing mothering and entrepreneurship.

Nuggets of Wisdom from Kate:

“The art of life is not in controlling what happens to us, but in using what happens to us.” – Gloria Steinem

“What I love about this quote is it really articulates what I have been learning, not only in motherhood, but also in business, which is that we cannot actually control what happens in our lives to a large extent, but we can control our response to it, of course, and we can use what happens as fodder for learning information, to change our course of action, and as an opportunity for growth. And so, this just deeply resonates with me for that reason. ”

“It's not so much WHAT we do, it’s the HOW we do it. The HOW we do anything is really going to impact our results far more than WHAT that we actually do. We know that from sports psychology that the more awareness and the more consciousness we bring to our workouts for example, and the more presence we bring, the better our results will be.”

“Part of what’s been really amazing about scheduling things according to my cycle and also being super clear on when I have childcare and when I don’t and when I’m working and when I’m not, has been that predictability. I find myself so much more calm.”

“If we actually honor the gifts of the luteal phase, which is the slowing down, it’s a really great time to wrap up loose ends, to complete projects, to check things off your to-do list. It’s actually a super powerful time to address things, and get done.”

“We can’t control the weather, we can’t control our children, we can’t control other people, we can’t control the economy, we can’t control the government… there are so many things that we can’t control, and yet all of us crave predictability. So, for me, you know, I really crave that.”

Some of Kate‘s Favorite Things:

Personal habit: “Scheduling and calendaring. I think this is a theme of our conversation. I have kept a day timer. I started using a day timer when I was 14 years old. And just having things written down so I could look at the week and kind of know what it’s going to bring and design my life according to what brings me the most joy has been an ongoing habit my entire life.”

Easy meal: “We always kind of have like chicken, organic chicken sausage of some kind in the fridge, because it keeps really well and my daughter really loves to eat it. So, if I just don’t have much time, I take a big huge handful of spinach and sauté it up with some organic chicken sausage, cut up in little pieces, and I eat that, and it’s delicious. And it takes me like 5 minutes.”

Possession: “I really love my lemon squeezer.”

Morning Elixir Recipe: warm water, juice from half a lemon, dash of cayenne pepper, 1/4 t. raw honey, 1 T. apple cider vinegar, and some grated fresh ginger.

Kate's Favorite Books: “Carry on, Warrior by Glennon Doyle-Melton and Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott”

Best advice received: “Read your baby, not a book.”

Kate's Happiness Formula:

1. Decide that you want to be happy.
2. In the moment, whenever you notice that you are veering off , which is really easy to do, and you’ll do it all day long, look for things in your environment that are pleasing to you, or that you could feel gratitude for.
3. Breathing.
4. Community. Having a tribe. Investing in the people that you love and those relationships because those bring the greatest joy.

A Challenge from Kate:

“I would like you to try looking at your schedule, and asking yourself if there is anything that you see in the upcoming week that feels heavy or feels draining to you like is it something that you just look at and, ‘Uhhh, I don’t want to do that.' And if there is something, then I would ask you to look at it and ask could that thing be cancelled? Could it be rescheduled? Could it be shifted in some way? Could that task change? Or could it be delegated? Could somebody else do it?”

Resources

KateNorthrup.com

Money, A Love Story: Untangle Your Financial Woes and Create the Life You Really Want

The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine

WomanCode: Perfect Your Cycle, Amplify Your Fertility, Supercharge Your Sex Drive, and Become a Power Source

The Desire Map: A Guide to Creating Goals with Soul

The Healthy Godmother (Heidi Symonds)

Carry on, Warrior by Glennon Doyle-Melton

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

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