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Ever wish you had a mentor to help you become who you were meant to be? Crystal Ware is redefining what it means to become your best self, in business, life, and love and sharing everything she she knows to get YOU there faster.
Are you stuck? Feel like you are meant for more but not sure how to breakthrough? Every week, we will explore all of your questions on building a path to true happiness, achieving success and creating our dream life. Brick by brick, we will work through the issues and mindsets that keep us stuck, dive into finding our passion and how to take ACTION. Clarity (vision) + Confidence (Owning your worth) + Courage (to live life on your own terms and become your own CEO) propels you to your destiny. And the good news it: its all within you!
Each week, host, Crystal Ware, will bring you all of the practical wisdom to grow every aspect of your career and life including mindset, vision, goal planning, social media management, financial acumen and so much more. You'll also meet top business leaders, entrepreneurs, mompreneurers and innovative thinkers who invested in themselves and found their way success and happiness by leading on their own terms.
You were made for more, so start living like it today. Join us as we take action, grow together, and get inspired to reach for your dreams.
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Get Clear with Crystal Ware podcast. The place where we get clear on our goals, own our worth, and learn to be the CEOs of our own lives. I'm your host, Crystal Ware, lawyer and former Fortune 500 corporate leader. Who found the confidence to say goodbye to a lucrative career and start my own business.
Now I'm opening up the playbook and sharing everything I've learned to get you there faster. It may not be easy, but it will always be worth it because you are made for more. So put on your big girl pants, jump on board and let's reach for the stars. Are you ready to get clear?
Hello friends. We are back with a solo episode, and it's been a while since I've done a solo episode because we've had so many amazing guests on today. I want to talk about something that I know we all struggle with that has been exacerbated by social media, by technology at our fingertips, by Netflix, by all the things that we [00:01:00] have, and that is just stealing our joy.
And that is staying present, leaning into this moment, the now, the here, right in front of us, and how doing that can help us let go of stress. It is so easy for us to focus in on the negative things that have already occurred. But as I've been trying to teach my children lately, the past is in the past.
Like once it's done, once it's happened, let it go and move on. What can you do with that now? It is no longer serving you. Yes. Sometimes we need to make peace with it. We need to think about what we did and what we can do better. That is a growing point. But fretting over the past. It just isn't going to serve you.
there's nothing good that's going to come of that and worrying too much about the future. Which in some ways is like our [00:02:00] job as parents to worry about the future, to worry about where our children are going to go. What are we going to do? What are we going to do for retirement? Where are we going to have for money?
Where are we going to go on vacation? All these things in the future. And you know what? I'll be very honest. Many of the topics that I talk about regularly are things that I am thinking about because they are either impacting me or I'm focused on them and trying to improve on them or whatever. So this is something that I am focused on wholeheartedly right now.
I am a fretter. I am a worrier. I think 50 steps out and it does kill my joy. It steals the moment out for me. You know, think about When you're laying down with your kids and you're thinking about the dishes that you have to do, the emails you have to return, a call or a text you might have to do, scheduling an important doctor's appointment, finishing the load of laundry, all the things that you have to do once [00:03:00] the kids are asleep out of your hair.
that when you lay down with them and they don't immediately go to sleep or they want to tell you the 77th story or they want one more kiss and a hug and you are just getting so frustrated, you're pulling out your hair and you're starting to yell at them. This is it. Here comes the threats. You're going to bed.
I'm going to shut the door. I've got things to do. No more of this. Go to sleep. But what happens when they no longer want to? You to put them to sleep. What happens when they don't want to snuggle or a bedtime story or another kiss and a hug, there is going to come a time when that happens. My oldest son will be 11 this summer.
And I, you know, should probably be thankful that he still wants so much love and attention in the evening times. I am not above this. This still affects me. You have dinner [00:04:00] time, you have snuggle time, you have homework, you have all these things going on in the afternoons that at some threshold, at some point, we all are tired and we want a moment to sit.
We want a moment to relax. To think for ourselves. Maybe we want to read a book, maybe we want to tune out and watch some TV and we need to get this task off of our plate and this task of putting our kids to bed. It's a very familiar situation, a very familiar scenario that almost all of us can relate to because we've been there and we've done that.
But think about the times where you've laid down peacefully and calmly and scratch your child's back until they went to sleep and just stared at them peacefully. And thought about how much you love them, how much you enjoy hearing their stories, how much it makes your heart burst to hear their little laughter, being silly, doing a little tickling, whatever it is, [00:05:00] and the joy that radiates through moving through your heart, through your limbs, through your head, all the way down to your toes with what pride and happiness.
Satisfaction you get and just looking at this beautiful creature that you made peacefully asleep with their whole future in front of them. And when we rush through, we're robbing ourselves of that time. We're robbing ourselves of that present moment and we're also robbing our children of that time. And so this is where it really hit me on how we have to stay present.
That being present, that learning to live in the moment, learning to take everything we can from it. Then here in the now will significantly improve our lives because when we're living in the here and now we're not worried about the past. We're not focused on the future. We're just here present. [00:06:00] And this moment.
is the moment to take in, to take a mental snapshot that you are worthy to celebrate, to connect, to love, to cherish. These are the times where things are most meaningful. Presence is both the easiest, and the hardest thing to obtain. It's easy because it costs nothing. It's truly requires no planning. It requires no money.
It requires no talent, but it's hard because it means we have to strip away everything else that is going on in our brains to be focused on that time. And that With all the things going on with trying to be efficient and trying to multitask and trying to think about all the other tasks that we have to do and all the scheduling that we need to do, the housework, it is very, very hard.
But when we can [00:07:00] get successful at that, when we can focus in on that, our lives will improve significantly. There's intimacy. In the present moment with your spouse, with your friends, with your children is the path to which you can bring true presence and understanding, not the present, but presence of mind, the understanding of where you really feel when you're still and calm in the moment.
Developing some solitude where you have that kind of time for yourself is also important. They say that in today's world, in the modern time, that we are literally not doing something with technology or somebody else or focused on work or whatever it is that we're like, we're Always doing something that there's less than like 5 percent of our daily time, our waking time, where we are just being one with our thoughts, with our [00:08:00] emotions, with ourselves, you know, because we always have something to entertain us, something to take our minds off something to do.
And if you can just get outside and swing on the swing or sit in the grass, practice that habit, being with yourself, just being with yourself, and then take that to your children and practice being with them, help them practice just being, we will have extended focus. We will have the ability. To live within the quote unquote boredom, which are all good skills to have when we are quiet, when we are alone with ourself and our thoughts, that is where it all comes together, where it all comes open into what we really want to getting clear on who we are, what we want, what matters the most.
You know, I was speaking recently with my friend, Andrea Olson, and we'll have two episodes together, and that's. You [00:09:00] know, what her focus on her podcast show is more of what matters most, more of what matters most, what matters most to you. Is it the time? Is it the energy? Is it the relaxation? Is it connecting with your spouse?
Having more time with your friends? Focusing on your children, being fully available and present for your children when they get home from school. Is it needing more money? What matters most to you? And that is how you should prioritize where your life is going to go, how things are going to be, where you want to spend your energy with yourself, with your kids, with those who you love all around you near and far.
Okay. That requires the presence of presence. Okay, that is where we go to do the hard work and it doesn't take a lot of time, but it does take practice and energy and focus and intention. And once we can do that, we can let go of the stress. [00:10:00] Or the guilt, the stress of what is going on in the future, the stress of what is going to on in the future and what has occurred in the past.
Okay? Because those are things that burden us, that seal our joy, that take away from us, that take away from us being in the present.
So how do you stop overthinking and stay in the present? It is very hard. Again, as I said from the outset, it's very, very hard to focus on that when we have all these tools in front of us, right? So first you have to clear off your calendar. Something else we've talked about numerous times is saying yes and saying no.
Those are both important. What you stay no to may be just as important. We need to clear away our calendar and we have to stop overthinking all the things that we're doing. We need to stop being perfectionist. We need to lean into everything. action over perfection. We need to say no more and say yes to what matters most and not worry about what has happened or what [00:11:00] is going to come.
Those are things that are overthinking. We need to acknowledge that we're overthinking. We need to be clear when we see our mind drifting to something in the future or focused on something in the past. We need to take deep breaths. and focus on that and come back to this moment. Future happens right now.
The culmination of your life when you're on the deathbed is all of these memories of what you actually did. And you don't want them to be full of all the thinking of regret or all the worry about for the future. Take that in. If you're spending half of your time worried for the future, Are focused on the past and all the things you did wrong, all the things went wrong, all the people that wronged you, how you could have done something better, how you could have done something different.
Those are not the memories that [00:12:00] you want. That isn't the record of your life that you want to keep. So be present. Some of the ways that you can do that is putting away your phone, put your phone away where you don't hear it. You don't feel it. It's out of sight. It's out of mind, out of sight and out of mind is the most important thing.
That you can do for yourself, put your phone away. And that includes the iPad. The TV is a social thing, I think sometimes. So just like relaxing and watching an easy 30 minute show with your kids, not a big deal, but the phone is a distraction. It's not necessarily entertainment to make time for something you love every single day.
It doesn't have to be time consuming. It can be five or 10 minutes. What do you love doing and do that? Especially if you can do that with your kids every single day. Stop watching the news. Don't be glued to what I call the negative news. That creates more overthinking, more negativity, more [00:13:00] worry. If you have to use the news for your work or for your personal life, or for some other reason, like do a quick check and move on.
And I really, really, really think that. Be careful about watching the news in front of your kids because that also infiltrates their brain and we want to keep them young. We want to keep them innocent and we want to keep them in their little bubble. Right? It doesn't mean that they don't have to know about the world at some point, but why do we want to voice that negativity on them?
Remember saying no is important to your kids as well. What their activities are, what they have going on. All of that is important because what you say yes for them takes away from you guys together and it takes away from your time. Be strategic. Think about your family as a whole unit and how you guys are going to mold your life to being together and staying present.
And like I said, letting go of everything that you've done, [00:14:00] whether it's at work with your spouse or with your kids. Moving on from that, once it's over, you can apologize, you can rectify, you can make a commit to yourself to do better on anything that you might be holding in and having baggage and having guilt over.
But once a situation has occurred, it is in the past. All we can do is promise ourselves that we're not going to do that in the future, but overthinking it is hurting you. It's hurting your ability to live your life today. And we have to move on for that. Okay, but There is incredible joy and happiness in being present, in being present in the moment with whoever you are in Buddhism.
The present moment is a time that is always present and does not exist along the time continuum. And this is why Buddhist monks. do a lot of meditation or have time away where they're just staring at blades of [00:15:00] grass or something very simplistic in that way, because it teaches you to just focus on what is right in front of you.
The moment that you have right there is always a moment that is perfect. You're alive, you are here. There was always something to celebrate in that. And when we can really refresh around that. Find the mindfulness, have the concentration to be fully invested in where you are. And believe me, if you have an overactive brain, which I certainly do, where if you see that in your children, helping them learn this at an early age, again, technology is not going anywhere.
Technology will continue to drain us. And. Own us and keep us from being present. It is a constant thing that you're going to have to work at and remember, but I promise you, if you look back and audit yourself over the last week, month, six [00:16:00] months, you will see that the happiest you felt, the most joy you've had is when you are totally present andthe more time that you can commit to being like that, the more.
Your life will improve. The more happiness you will feel, the more joy you will have in your heart. And at the end of the day, that is what we're all after. Satisfaction, happiness, and joy in our lives. And I was just talking to this after a sermon from our, um, church on Sunday. I brought this message home to my kids.
The device in your hand will try to convince you that you need these new shoes, you need this hat, you need this new purse, whatever it is, these things will bring you happiness. That is momentary pleasure. Happiness comes from inside your heart and inside your soul. You carry it with you. You create it within yourself.
And by being present, You will create more of [00:17:00] it. You create more space for the joy and happiness for truly living. And that is what I want for everybody. And that's what I want for myself. And that's what I want for my kids. So what can you take away from this? Commit to yourself to being truly focused.
When you find your mind steering out of the present moment in the conversation that you're having with your spouse, with your coworker at work. With playing a game with your kids where you feel yourself lapse and move into your to do list or something that you have to focus on tomorrow, bring yourself back to the here and now.
Write yourself a note if you have to or say, you know what? It's not that important. I can focus on that later. I can remember it at another time. Because every time you take away, it's taken away from this present moment and you can't have that back. Once it's gone, it's gone. All we have in life is time and the time that we have [00:18:00] cannot be bought.
So we need to expend it. We need to cherish it. We need to value it and we need to focus on each and every moment that we are given. All right. I hope that helps you guys. I hope that's a good reminder to root into for the summer and get us going. So that we can build out that joy and build out those memories, keep getting clear on what your goals are, what you want your life to look like, what you want your family to look like and what matters most to you and we can build the rest around there.
Have any questions? Reach out to me and check out the well defined woman. com.
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