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Do you know the benefits of being curious?

There are many benefits of curiosity, according to Great Good Magazine. Some of these benefits are:

Curiosity helps us survive.

Curiosity expands our empathy.

Curiosity boosts achievement

Curiosity helps strengthen relationships

Curiosity improves healthcare

Curious people are happier

We are naturally curious as children but on the way to adulthood we can lose our natural curiosity. On this episode of IT podcast we have Debra Kasowski.

Meet Debra Kasowski

Debra Kasowski, the charismatic host of the thought-provoking
podcast, The Millionaire Woman Show, is committed to
enriching the leadership potential of her clients,
essentially guiding them to go within to capitalize on their true
personal power, so they can achieve the measurable success
they desire in business, and in life.
After graduating with distinction, having earned a Bachelor of
Science in Nursing, this award winning, 3X bestselling author, 2X TEDxspeaker,
Forbes Coaches Council Contributing Writer, and Certified Executive Coach
spent many years as a clinical manager exceling in leadership
development, before founding Debra Kasowski International, a
world-class training and consulting venture focused on helping individuals,
aspiring business owners and solopreneurs develop the winning
“success habits” that transform human potential into sustainable
profits. Visit Debra’s website here, subscribe to her YouTube channel, and give her a follow on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

In This Podcast

Summary

• Why we need curiosity
• How we lose curiosity
• Questions that can help us get curiosity back

Why we need curiosity

If we can come from a place of a learner and have curiosity, we can discover so much more. Questions make our brain switch to a place of problem solving. Debra describes our brain like going through files in a computer when we’re doing a search.

Your brain is a problem solving machine. If you’re not feeding it that natural curiosity, you’ll create anxiety in your own head because your brain is going to create problems for you to solve.

You start believing those thoughts. Getting curious about our thoughts and why they crop up can help uncover the origins of the negative self-talk. Doing that deeper dive allows us to rewire.

How we lose curiosity

When we were kids, we used to ask why about everything. We were in a place of discovery and exposed to new situations.

It’s just like, when you go back to your school, after you’ve graduated or many years later, you realize how small those desks were. But when you were there, the world was so big. So that’s why you asked questions.

However, it might’ve been a coach, parent, or anyone you looked up to. You asked a question and they might’ve said it was dumb, or why would you ask such a question. It leaves us feeling humiliated, embarrassed, and possibly shamed. So we stop asking questions and that curiosity gets stamped out.

Questions that can help us get curiosity back

If you find yourself questioning the validity of your question, ask yourself where that doubt is coming from. Ask yourself is it really a dumb question after all? Oftentimes we get stuck on our current circumstance. To get our curiosity back, ask yourself where am I right now? Get clear on it, but also don’t let it define you. Determine where you want to go based on your values. Where we have struggle in life is where we’re not making decisions aligned with our values. That is where we get frustrated. Similar to when you get frustrated with another person. It may be that they don’t have the same perspective or there’s miscommunication, but at the end of the day, you might want to ask yourself, is there a misalignment in our values?

Start thinking about where are you right now. Being able to recognize every circumstance that you move through is part of the journey and not just the destination. So many people fixate on the destination.

Books mentioned in this episode

Progress over perfection workshop

Do you hold your self to unreasonable or unattainable standards then criticize self when don’t reach that stand?
Do you compare yourself to others? focus on parts of you that you want to change? Do expect perfection from others? Often let down because of loft expectations?
Might be a perfectionist. Perfectionism can cause anxiety, depression, disordered eating, problems in relationships, and more
Join this 5 part Progress Over Perfection workshop for bite sized, interactive assessments.

Are you enjoying this podcast?

If yes, would you please review and rate it on iTunes here? Thank you!

Useful links:

• Mind, Body, and Spirit with Jack Stafford, the Self-Help Songwriter | IT 060
• Imperfect Thriving Facebook Group
• Imperfect Thriving on Instagram
• Imperfect Thriving Free Email Course (Your Blueprint To Thrive)

Podcast Transcription

Kathryn:

Debra, I’m so excited to finally have you here. Welcome to the show.

Debra:

Thanks so much for having me, Kathryn. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Kathryn:

I know you as a podcaster, a bestselling author, a business leader, but I was wondering if you would take us back to who you were before all of these glamorous titles. And give us a little story about how you got to where you are today.

Debra:

Well, depending on how far back the one thing I’ll throw in there is I’m a farm girl from a small town in East central Alberta. Who always had big dreams. I liked the city lights, but my core is country at heart. When I left home and went into university, there were some challenges.

I was one of those people who was an overachiever, which still in my path and bit off more than I could chew. In my second a year in university, I went from sciences and contemplating, what am I going to do, to going into nursing. I wanted to be a physician. So I thought, okay, maybe it’s just a different path.

I got into nursing. A nurse for over 25 years and got into leadership while I was in the nursing capacity. It led me to coaching. It led me to doing two Ted talks and writing three books. Those are all things I never dreamed of doing and think this is what people need to remember is that…

Sometimes those opportunities didn’t exist. LikeTed talk wasn’t even born at the time, when you’re dreaming of your career or it was never brought to my attention that yeah, you could write a book too. I liked creative writing class and things like that, but never to think that you too could be an author. Growing up in a small town, it was doctor, nurse, lawyer, teacher, secretary. 

When I got to university and I’m like engineers, what’s an engineer. You get exposed to all these other opportunities. So I think we fumble along, but also when we know that the world is evolving as well, and new opportunities exist that didn’t exist before.

Careers that people are talking about, I’m going to be a gamer. 25 years ago, who would say they were going to be a gamer. That this is actually a professional career for people. So yeah, I think a lot of it has been by accident. A lot of it has also had some intention behind it.

I became a podcaster cause I was sitting in an audience at a business conference and this guy was talking about how you too could have a podcast. And I was like, how hard could it be? 30 days later, I committed that I was going to have a podcast and I did, and here we are over coming up to five years in June that I will have been podcasting and interviewing phenomenal guests, connecting with people all over the world.

It’s really about being open and seeing where the journey takes you.

Kathryn:

Yeah. I love how you said that about how they’re things that come up in our life that 10 years ago, or 20 years ago, we couldn’t even imagine as being possible. And I work with so many clients with anxiety who want to control everything about their future, right?

Every next step. Control everything. And when you do that, you don’t leave yourself open to the possibilities that you haven’t even thought about yet. So I love how of what has happened, right. Your life, or sort of happy accidents. And some things were very intentional, but all of them led you to exactly where you are today.

I love that. 

Debra:

And I think we hang on to that need for certainty. Right? We want to have certainty in our lives because we feel that okay. If I’m certain about it, I can demonstrate I can do well at it. Versus being okay with making mistakes and wrongs. I think that shame or when maybe we were scolded as kids that doesn’t allow us to give ourselves that grace to say, I’m learning. I can get up. I can do this again. I’m going to do better the next time. But the thing is that people forget that they faced uncertainty before and they’re still here. Right? So it just demonstrates that you can definitely have uncertainty, but still be able to handle it with the tools, but also grabbing new tools as you face different circumstances.

Kathryn:

Yes, absolutely. Let ourselves be beginners at different things, right? Perfectionists want to jump to being an expert. So they never allow themselves to make mistakes and to try new things. I’m totally in touch with that. Your latest book is called “Let’s Be Curious: Ask the Right Questions, Get Better Answers, Create What You Want.”

I absolutely love that. Tell me what led you to write that book.

Debra:

Well, I was sitting in a coaching session with a coach and she was asking me something and I was a bit frustrated. And I said, I just want people to be curious. Let’s be curious. Let’s be curious, and to a number of responses. And she said, Deb, do you hear yourself? I said, what are you talking about?

And she goes, do you hear yourself? You keep saying, let’s be curious. And I looked at her and I’m like, that’s it, that’s the title for the next book. It came partially from frustration from people asking me questions. And I love when people ask me questions, don’t get me wrong because I ask a ton of questions myself. Are they asking the right people?

Do you know what she thinks about this? Why is she asking me this? And I’m like, No, I don’t because I’m not her. I need you to go ask that person, that question. And it was more so because they were afraid to approach that person. So they figured if I knew the answer, they didn’t need to go.

And it was like, no. Or they wanted the answer without doing some research behind it. And this one was triggered by my daughter when she was in grade nine, she was studying benchmarking and math. I read the textbook, didn’t completely understand it. And she’s like, well, how do you do it? And she was getting frustrated at me.

I said, did you go through your notes? Yes. Did you check YouTube? Why would I do that, mom? Why would I go on YouTube? And I’m like, well, when I was your age, I had an encyclopedia. I didn’t have the internet. So if I needed an answer, I needed to find a way to find the answer. And I just looked at her and I said it, and if you have a resource in front of you and you’re not willing to tap into it, I’m not going to help.

And I walked away. 20 minutes later. She’s like, ah, mom, mom, watch, I can teach you benchmarking. Lo and behold, she found a video of a teacher here, even in our city, just not in her school who had this beautiful demonstration of how to do it. So she went to school and she taught all of her friends. Then she went and showed it to her own teacher who posted it so people could understand it just because that teacher explained it so well.

Now before they come and ask me a question, my kids will be like, okay, mom, this is what I did. I researched this. I still need to ask you a few questions and I’m great with that. It’s when people don’t want to take the time to do a little bit of that research to show that initiative behind what’s possible.

It’s like that, you can give people fish, but if I teach them to fish, they’re always going to have abundance. So I want people to have the tools to ask the right questions to the right people at the right time. And knowing that you can always ask a follow-up question. Disregard you might have the voices from the past saying, well, that’s a dumb question.

That’s a stupid question. There is no dumb or stupid questions. There are questions that are not asked. Now that to me comes to  the stupid or the dumb is the questions that we don’t ask that we know we should be asking to really get to what we want. 

Kathryn:

Absolutely. see so many clients who have anxiety and suffer from perfectionism and this all or nothing thinking. This extreme thinking.

They’re so overwhelmed by life. And we live in such a busy, fast paced world that most of these clients become overwhelmed when they look at their to-do lists. Especially when they look at long-term goals, they immediately tell my tell themselves, I don’t have time. I can’t do that. So by this statement, they’re telling themselves, that they have all of these time limits and it stops curiosity in there in its tracks.

Because if you’re telling yourself you don’t have time to do all of the pressing important things in life, you’re certainly not going to take the time to be curious, learn something new for the sake of learning it. I have lots of theories about why we’ve stopped being curious, but I want to hear what you have to say about it.

Why you think people have stopped being curious?

Debra:

I think part of the reason why that I address in the book, I like to consider myself like the Cheshire cat. In Alice in Wonderland, just hovering with that smirking grin that there’s so many questions to be asked. And often when we were kids, we used to ask why about everything.

Cause we were in a place of discovery. Because we were exposed to new situations. It’s just like, when you go back to your school, after you’ve graduated or many years later, you realize how small those desks were. Right. And when you were there, the world was so big. So that’s why you asked questions. But it might have been a parent.

It might’ve been a coach. It could have been someone you looked up to and you had asked a question and they told you again that it was dumb or stupid. Or why would you ask such a question that you felt humiliated, embarrassed, possibly shamed. So you stopped asking and I’m a recovering perfectionist.

It takes me every day to remind myself. Progress is better than perfection. One of the perfections I think, or what I refer to as avoidance procrastination is that we avoid doing something because we think it’s not going to be perfect. And the people who learn the most learn from the failures that they’ve had versus the successes, because success just teaches you that it worked.

Whereas when people fail or make mistakes, they’re learning opportunities for us to reframe it and say, okay, I learned what doesn’t work, but it helps me become a better critical thinker. It helps me become better at troubleshooting when things aren’t going right. 

Then I can realize that what do I need to do differently that’s going to get me closer to helping it work. So when we give ourselves that permission to fail, permission to make mistakes. We are more apt to, and when you put pressure on yourself and you have that self-talk and beating yourself up saying that was a dumb question. You are going to prevent yourself from asking, because you’ve had this belief that someone’s going to think it’s dumb.

And when you have a belief that you’re hanging onto and feel the shame that comes with it, even though it’s not with that person, you’re carrying it from other experiences. You’re not going to ask the question and you’re not going to get the results that you want. So you really need to go back and say, okay, where is this coming from?

Am I really asking a dumb question? When we have a question, the question often lies in the answer. We know what answer we’re looking for. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be disappointed if someone gave us an answer that didn’t match up. 

Kathryn:

Yeah, absolutely. I can say amen to every single word you just uttered.

Along with that necessary permission to fail. Permission to be a beginner, the mindset shift from this is failure to this is just data that I can put back into the equation to do it better next time. Right. Along with that, I think, especially with perfectionists is we become afraid to ask questions because we’re so critical of ourselves.

We imagine that everyone else is going to be that critical of us too. When it’s just us projecting our own self-criticism onto the world. 

Debra:

Very harsh in our judgment. If we can stop and come from a place of a learner and have that curiosity, we can discover so much more because questions make our brain switch to a place of, okay, let’s look for the answer.

It’s like going through the files in a computer, when you do a search, that’s what your brain does when a question is asked. It’s like, okay, let’s find the answer. 

Kathryn:

And if you don’t allow yourself that curiosity and those questions, your brain is a problem solving machine. If you’re not feeding it that natural curiosity, you’re just going to be creating anxiety in your own head because your brain is going to create problems for you to solve.

Debra:

You start believing those thoughts. We have 50 to 70,000 thoughts in a day and they’re like popcorn. Like we don’t think linearly. We have ideas popping all the time and it’s a matter of what we choose to internalize. Now, if I don’t choose to hang on to a thought or ruminate on a thought, I’m not allowing.

In my Ted talk, I talk about how I love neuroscience and I use the analogy of a wheelbarrow. So if I have a thought and I think about it over and over. And for those of you who use a wheelbarrow in a garden or on a farm or wherever you might use one. Or even think of tires, if we go on the same path all the time, we’re creating a groove, we’re creating a path.

That might not have been there before, but now if I want to change a habit and not ruminate on a thought, I need to get that wheelbarrow out of the rut. So I need to keep, starting to think different thoughts and allowing those thoughts to be more in my mind sight. So I can focus on that end create a new pathway in the brain.

So it’s really fascinating when we think about when we want to change our habits and we want to change that self-talk. We need repetition. Repetition is mastery. So if we’re going to repeat anything, we should make sure that we’re focused on empowering ourselves with supportive language. The words we use so powerful and being curious as to where is that language first coming from?

Because we got to interrupt the influence of where that thought came from. In order to make sure that we’re taking the actions that we want to feel confident. We want to feel motivated and ready to take on the world. 

Kathryn:

I absolutely love that. I work with clients all the time about first of all, uncovering their limiting beliefs.

What are they saying to themselves that is keeping them stuck in a life that they don’t want. Or keeping them anxious or keeping them depressed. And if they stick with me and do the work long enough to where their head is now above water, they’re no longer suffering from crippling anxiety, panic attacks, or depression.

If I can get them to stick with me long enough, what happens next is where the real magic occurs. That’s when they can start thinking, dreaming, and being curious. When you can’t breathe, all you want is air, but once you get that air, you can really start expanding your comfort zone, thinking outside of the box, dreaming and being curious about a life that you weren’t ever able to imagine before.

Debra:

One of the things I find, Kathryn, is people get to a place of labeling themselves. Instead of saying, I’m living with anxiety, they think I am anxiety. You can fill in whatever blank you want to put in. But living with is very different than labeling yourself as this. And when you label yourself, you limit your capacity to see yourself anything differently.

Kathryn:

Yes, we create these very tightly held pictures of ourselves. This is who we are. This is what we’re not good at. This is what we suffer from. And we hold onto those pictures so tightly that we don’t allow for change or for growth. So I also help clients kind of loosen their grip around that picture of themselves.

So that you can allow the growth necessary to get to that life that you want. What are some of the questions that we need to ask ourselves to create a life or a career that we love? 

Debra:

One of the biggest things is really getting clear on what it is you truly want. I remember doing one exercise with a client and we were sitting in a coffee shop and she’s like, I don’t know what I want.

I said, okay, here’s a paper, here’s a pen for the next 10 minutes. We’re going to do this exercise. And I said, no, filter you right steady for the whole time. The whole 10 minutes. All I did was. What do you want? You can do this at home. You do this with a friend, but remember don’t backend them or anything like that.

Cause you will get frustrated. And every two minutes I would say, what do you want? What do you want? And what do you want? And when that 10 minutes came up, she dropped the pen and she said this is what I want. I just want to go to Jamaica. And it was fascinating. Like we looked at the rest of the list.

We could evaluate and find out what were some of the priorities, but the Jamaica thing was so important to her. And I looked at her and I said, when did you look up how much Jamaica costs? And she goes, well, I haven’t what do you know about this? Well, I don’t.

And it’s like, well, how do you know you can’t afford your dream? How do you know you can’t have this right now? Well, about a year later, she messaged me and I saw pictures online that she got married in Jamaica. 

Kathryn:

Oh, wow. 

Debra:

But it was fascinating to me that we get ourselves so stuck on, we look at our current circumstance.

So one of the questions is where am I right now, to really be clear on where it is you are right now. But not defining yourself by your current circumstance. Looking at where is it that I want to go. Getting really clear and knowing what your values are so important. 

Because when you know your values and ask yourself and do exercises and value identifiers. You can really dig deep. When it comes to making decisions of creating what you want, you’re going to make choices. This is where your decision-making gets really strong with being curious is that you’re going to make choices aligned with your values.

Because where we have struggle in life is because we’re not making decisions aligned with our values. And that’s where we get frustrated and can’t understand what is going on. Just like when you get frustrated with another person. It may be that they don’t have the same perspective or there’s some miscommunication, but at the end of the day, you might want to ask yourself, is there a misalignment in our values of why. Maybe there’s a personality conflict, because that’s often what the case is.

So really thinking about where are you right now? What do you want get really clear? And those values are important, but being able to recognize every circumstance that you move through is part of the journey and not just the destination. So many people get to the destination and they’re like, Oh, that’s it.

Versus seeing who they become in the process. In becoming an author of, “Let’s Be Curious,” so many different opportunities came to me that I didn’t even realize, Through the podcast being interviewed on different shows, going to book marketing seminars, meeting people from all around the world. The opportunities expanded.

But if I was to only look at my current circumstance, my own city, it can be very limited. So we need to start thinking globally. Even though we live locally to really expand our thinking. 

Kathryn:

Absolutely. You and I do very similar work. Especially my female clients, oftentimes they forget to ask themselves all day long.

What do I want? We get these shoulds in our head, these rules that we think we need to live by. We just get up and we live by them every day. And so I use the eight domains to help my clients find clarity and what they value in every single area of their lives. That is their compass to make their decisions.

Oftentimes for homework in between sessions, all I say is. I want you to notice how many decisions you make in a day by default. How many things do you just accept that are opportunities to make a choice that is in line with what you want? Just ask yourself as many times a day. What do I want?

Debra:

It’s very fascinating because as women, I could even say after my kids were all born and I wasn’t planning on having any more. There is that kind of loss of identity. You have all these different hats of wife, mother, sister, daughter. In the workplace and a career and all of a sudden it’s like, who am I?

You’ve given so much for everyone else. It’s so easy to lose touch with what you once loved. I love that they come to Kathryn and really focus on getting really clear on what it is that they want. And it, it really starts with getting curious,

Kathryn:

I bet that you’ve seen this with clients in business, speaking of aligning with your values. If you don’t set your goals in line with what you value, you’re not going to get much satisfaction when you actually reach those goals.

When you go off your path to chase, whatever that new shiny thing is, you get there, you achieve it. And you’re like, I thought it would be better than this. Have you worked with clients on that particular type of issue?

Debra:

Yes. The clients that I’ve worked with were very much focused on business things. It’s funny how, when people come to coaching, they think that a lot of it is business focused, but it ends up being a lot about just interpersonal relationships.

How they’re taking care of themselves, their perspectives and being able to challenge those perspectives and offer them a different viewpoint. Because often what we think is truth is the only viewpoint that we know is our own, but when someone can offer us a different viewpoint, we can suddenly start seeing the world differently and maybe put a little bit less pressure on ourselves and saying, Oh, well, that’s not how they see it.

Oh, that’s how they approach things if they’ve made a mistake and to give themselves that grace. One of the things that I wanted to just touch on that you said Kathryn was about the shoulds. I’m in my second round of doing 75 hard that Andy Frisella put out there and it’s about mental toughness, more than a physical transformation program, but it’s a mental toughness.

One of the things that I love that I’m aligned with, what he shares is are you living your life by your shoulds? Or are you living your life by your musts. Things that you want to keep promises to yourself. I think this is where we go down a rabbit hole as women is that we are not paying attention to keeping our own promises to ourselves.

We need to set boundaries to ensure that we take care of what we love. And want to give out our dreams and goals and not sacrifice those. Because when we are living in a life of fulfillment of our own dreams and goals that only ripples to the people around us. So we want to ensure that good boundaries are put in place.

The musts that I’m talking about, those are the commitments that you make to yourself because often  people might put, Oh, gym, on the calendar, I’m going to gym. I’m going to work out. Then someone phones up and says, Hey, can you do this? Can you run this errand? It’s like, Oh sure.

They canceled themselves. I want people to think that you need to keep yourself on the calendar is just as important as anything else. Years ago, I was working with a business coach and I said, the kids are with me all the time. I can’t understand that. They’re like, mom, I want you, I want you.

I’m like, we have conversations in the car. We’re going to all the sporting activities. And I was like, I don’t get it. And I said, how much more do you want? And she said, Deb, you need to put each member of your family on the calendar. I’m like, what are you talking about? She goes, they each want your own quality time with you.

So I did it. One day my daughter wanted to go shopping. We went shopping. One son wanted to go mini golfing. Then the next one said, Hey, I want to go mini golfing too. And with the last trip to the mall to go mini golfing, he and I both got us whole in one on the same hole. He was so excited and we took selfies with the phone and everything.

And when we got home at supper time, I was asking everybody what their win was. I said, so what was your wind of the day? And she said, Oh, I did this and my other son. Oh, we went golfing. And the young, the one that I last golfed with, he goes, you put me on the calendar. 

I turn around, cause my eyes filled up with tears. Not realizing how much this quality one-on-one time was. Now they’re young adults and I’m like, Hey guys, we’re on a date. I’m like, I need to make sure you notice that we are spending that quality time together. That is the same thing that we need to do for ourselves.

Because inside, you’re crying out saying, you need to put me on the calendar. I need to be as important as everything else you put on the calendar. And when you start doing that and keeping promises to yourself and putting boundaries for those who attempt to cross it saying, you know what, I’d love to help you, but I need to do this first.

I have a promise to keep, and that’s when transformation will truly happen. Keep that appointment on the calendar. You’re just as important.

Kathryn:

Oh yes. Amen. Absolutely. When I notice a client always canceling themselves, they’re always last on their own lists.

That to me is a cry for help to increase self value, right. To learn that you’re worthy of putting yourself first. Cause otherwise they’re going to keep canceling it. Another thing that I see is even if I get a client in line with what they value and they start taking action toward what they value, if they are living by their shoulds then they are living someone else’s agenda.

Someone else’s rules someone else’s life, and they’re not going to be happy until they’re completely aligned with who they are. 

Debra:

100% totally agree. 

Kathryn:

Is there any particular mindset shift that you’ve made over the years that made  the most positive impact on the life that you have today.

Do you remember any kind of an aha moment or a shift that took place?

Debra:

There’s been a number of shifts. They all happen at different times., I think the 75 heart program for sure was part of it. One of the biggest shifts for me was I have done triathlons, Olympic sprint.

I have run 5k 10k, half marathon. I’m not a fast runner by any means, but I had run a 10k and I signed up for a half marathon. It was in a city, a few hours away. I didn’t know the route. I parked my car. I went to the start line and all I told myself was, well, you’re going out. And there’s only one way back to your car because there was no nobody’s going to pick me up and drive me.

Right. I’m not even putting that as an option. So I knew whether I walked crawled or whatever it was, I was going to get to the end. I finished that feeling so empowered because wow. I had done a few others and then one day I signed up for a marathon, you know, 42 kilometers, 26.2 miles and people are like, what made you do that?

It was the next thing to do. Like, I don’t know if it was a checkoff list, but what I knew from that half marathon is when I signed up, you consider it done. So in my mindset, I had to come from a place of considering it done. And actually, as I’m sharing this with you, one of my biggest shifts.

I was training one day and I was listening to the podcast where Tony Robbins was interviewing Siri Lindley. World champion triathlete. She was talking about her story and how she had been in all these competitions, but felt that there was something missing that emptiness. 

What she had realized was that need for approval from others. That need for outside validation, she no longer needed it. It was approval from self. It was self validation. And I was like, that’s it. As I was running, I remember stopping. And I’m like, that’s it. That’s exactly what I need. So I signed up for the marathon. I did not tell my family members.

Part of the reason for that is my family members, they’re also competitive as well, but when I came to the end of some races, I would look for them. I’d wonder where they are. And they were usually ahead of me at the food tent, getting food, or they’re visiting with someone.

And they weren’t always there when I was finishing. I just was so disappointed because I wanted to say, Hey, can you see me? I did it. This time, I didn’t tell anybody actually until like nine o’clock the night before. I had even texted my husband at the time. I said to him, I have a confession to make, but little did I know that his phone was dead and when he charged it in the morning, I got this message back was ‘confessed what’ I’m like, I’m 7k into my marathon.

And he was like, Whoa, why didn’t you tell me? Well, my son and he, they were in an endurance bike race. I wasn’t going to tell them because I knew that they would cancel. I thought, no, I’m doing this for me. Like I said, I’m not fast. One of my girlfriends signed up, so I wouldn’t hurt myself.

She coached me through the whole thing. Another girlfriend, she had finished her half, had her food and charged her phone and came back so she could take pictures of me crossing the finish line. When I came to the finish line, there was practically nobody around except for the volunteer, holding my metal.

He looked at me and he asked me if he could give me a hug. And I’m like, absolutely. He hugs me and he says, that was a long way, wasn’t it? I’m like, it sure was, but for me it ends up being a metaphor for life. There is times when, we want that outside validation. We want somebody to see us. To value us, but the most important person that needs to acknowledge that is you.

It was me. It was like, yeah, it is a long way. How many times have I felt like, I don’t know if I can go anymore. A friend will phone or someone will come alongside me and say, Hey, are you okay? And you regroup, you dig deeper. You keep going. Is it easy? No. But is it worth it? 100%.

Because that, even though I don’t can’t guarantee you, I’m going to run another marathon. The fact that I finished the distance. Cause to me it wasn’t about the time it, I had no expectation other than having that metal around my neck, because it had our beautiful branch on the metal. When my girlfriend said you could have ran 5k and got the same metal, but it doesn’t have the same significance as what I pushed through to finish it.

Kathryn:

Yeah, absolutely. That’s a beautiful story. I think there’s a lot that we can take away from that. I bet after you did the marathon, the half marathon didn’t seem that difficult. 

Debra:

It doesn’t.

Kathryn:

By doing the next hardest thing. By stepping out of our comfort zone and doing something hard, several wonderful things happen to us.

First of all, we’re proud of ourselves and we need that. We need to appreciate and be proud of who we are as individuals. The next thing is that everything else you’ve done before that becomes so much easier. Walk in the park. The third thing is it fuels us forward to do the next hard thing.

Debra:

The iron cowboy taught me, when he was running his 50 triathlons, 50 States, 50 days. He taught me one big thing and it reminded me why while I was doing this. We all can do hard things. We do hard things. He was doing that. His mom was just starting to run a 5k and she says, this is hard.

He said, mom, I get it. But she’s disqualifying. She’s, my hard is not as hard as yours. And he said, no, mom, my hard is my hard. Your hard is your hard. I carry that with me all the time that we. We can’t look out and compare ourselves to other people. Because their hard is different than ours.

Our resiliency is different. Our goals are different. So you can’t go into comparison because the hard that we choose is our hard. I did phase one of the 75 hard. Or live hard program, and it involved taking a five minute cold shower for 30 days. At first I’m like, Oh, how am I going to do this?

At first I put the timer on for five minutes and that five minutes was the longest thing ever. Then someone sent me an Instagram post and it was all about cold showers and how she made a little playlist.  I’m like, Oh, I can do that. So I found two songs that would be equivalent to five minutes and I had a little bit of extra, just enough to pop myself back into the shower.

I basically danced in the shower while I washed up for five minutes and I didn’t pay attention to the time. So much so that I can have regular showers now that I crave and I’ll turn down the shower just even for 30 seconds to have that feeling again. What we think is once hard by day nine, I was like, Oh, I can do this.

This is not a problem. Right. It’s that initial thought of cold shower? Oh my goodness. And the temperature’s cold. But cold or hard becomes irrelevant.

Kathryn:

Yes.

Debra:

It’s amazing. When you get into it, you don’t pay attention to how hard it is when you’re moving into action.

Kathryn:

 Yeah, absolutely. I could not agree more.

I have absolutely loved talking to you today. Really enjoyed this conversation, and I want everybody to know where to find you online, where to find your book. 

Debra:

Absolutely. So you can go over to my website at www.DebraKasowski.com. Right now you can get a three-part video course called making habits stick, completely free.

It’s three parts, and it’s going to help you pay attention to the derailers. And really put focus and consistency into some of those goals and dreams. Also join me on social media and I would love to connect with you and hear about how you enjoyed our interview with Kathryn. I love that. So social media is a great I’m on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

So feel free to touch base with me as well there. My book is on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever you get it your books in, you can find me there. “Let’s Be Curious: How to Ask the Right Questions. Get Better Answers So You Can Create What You Want.”

Kathryn:

I will make sure that I have a link directly to the book in the show notes, along with all of this information.

So everybody knows exactly where to find it. I like to finish up the episode with the same question, which is what is one imperfect action you suggest that we all take today that would bring us closer to our best lives.

Debra:

That imperfect action is trust yourself. To really know what the next best thing is.

The greatest return on your investment, whether it be time, whether it be money, whether it be one of your resources that you have and move it into action. We can minimize risks. We can do our due diligence. But then if you’re holding out waiting for the perfect condition, it’s not going to happen.

So you need to move imperfect action to see what’s going to happen. And you realize you can ask more questions. You can adjust the course along the way. Nothing is really crucial unless someone’s dying or going to jail. So really putting it in perspective that it’s not catastrophic to move into action to see if something will work or not work. As long as you do some homework and have that preparation behind it, you’re not going completely blind. As you put in the effort and gain more competence, as you’re preparing, you’re going to be more confident and you will surprise yourself.

Kathryn:

Absolutely. I second that motion. We all need to just get out there today and take that action that we’ve been holding off on that we’ve been thinking about for so long. Today is the day. Do not let your brain tell you you are not ready because it will try. Just go take that action. Debra, thank you so much for spending time with us today.

Debra:

Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure. 

Kathryn:

Okay, so everybody y’all go out and take that one imperfect action. Get moving on that thing that your brain has been telling you that you are not ready for. And I will see you right back here next week.