Hi! Welcome to Live Your Dream podcast. My name is Celina Lee, and I’m a career and executive coach. I’m sharing inspirational stories from people who overcame rejections, and failures to achieve their dreams. I hope these stories will inspire you to have the courage to pursue your own dreams and live a life doing what you love. You’ll also hear about how I’ve transformed my own career from an investment banker and a corporate lawyer to becoming a coach which I believe is my calling. You’ll also learn the strategies I use to coach many professionals out of unfulfilling jobs and into careers they love.
Since it’s January, I want to help you set new intentions for the new year.
I know last year has been an unusual year, so our priorities and values may have changed. And I hope that you have given yourself some time to reflect and reassess what’s really important to you, so you can be sure that the goals you have for yourself and how you spend your time really reflects your values and priorities
Before we start the show, I want to read you a review from one of my listeners. Na-Nin-Rapper wrote
Positive Words
Every word that comes out of her is so positive and thoughtful. It’s amazing that in this world, someone like Celina is here to save many people’s struggles and inspire them to chase their dream! I would give her 10 – Stars if I could!
Wow, thank you so much! I was so happy reading your reviews and you totally made my day!
Doing this podcast is a labor of love. And I do it in the hope that it will inspire and help a lot of people. But I need your help. If you enjoy listening to my podcast, I’d be so grateful if you can please tell your friends about it or share on social media.
As you know, I’m a one woman show, and I don’t have a huge advertising budget, so I’m relying on you to help me grow my podcast so I can help more people.
And if you want to make my day, I’d appreciate it if you can please write me a review. I love reading your reviews and it means so much to me. And it keeps me motivated to keep creating new episodes even on days when it’s really hard.
And I may give you a shout out in my future episode.
And also, there’s something that I’m really excited about, and I wanted to tell you about it.
I’m in the process of developing my first Online Course & Group Coaching program which I will launch this year!
I had a very successful small group coaching program last year, and I decided to further develop it into a course.
In this new course, I’ll have weekly live sessions where you will learn everything I teach about how to do what you love, and how to create a fulfilling and meaningful career and life.
You will be part of an inspiring community of people who are going through a journey of transforming their careers and lives. There will be a lot of support and accountability to help you take action on your goals and dreams.
I’m now inviting a small group of people to join as a founding member. As a founding member, you will get many benefits which will include the lowest price that will ever be offered, and also 1:1 private coaching with me, and many other bonuses and benefits.
And you’ll also be able to help me shape the course and take part in helping many people to change their careers and lives.
So If you are interested in learning more, just message on my website, celinalee.co/contact, that is celinalee.co/contact or just click the link for today’s show notes on your podcast app.
I’m only inviting a small group of people to be a founding member, so be sure to reach out soon, if you are interested in learning more about it.
I think the pandemic has brought to our attention how fragile our lives are and how everything can change and end in an instant.
And none of us know how much time is left for each of us and for our loved ones.
There’s a Korean artist who I’ve been following for awhile, and she had a terminal cancer. And I really admired her because she continued to create art even while she was battling cancer because this is what she loved to do. And she also honestly shared her thoughts and feelings about her impending death, which helped me re-evaluate my priorities in life.
She passed away recently and her mom posted a picture of her tombstone. It had the date when she was born and when she died, and she was only 41 years old. So young. And there was that little line, the dash between those two dates which represented her life.
And I thought about how when I die, that little line, the dash will represent my life too.
Every single of us will die at some point. It’s a fact. I’m not trying to be morbid, but I think that knowing that we are all going to die will make us truly live.
So what do you want do with this precious time that is given to you? How will you make the most out of it?
Normally in the new year, I’m all about goal setting and coming up with new years resolutions, but somehow it just didn’t feel right this year.
So instead, I have been pondering on some questions that will help me to re-evaluate my priorities and set new intention for the new year, and I wanted to share them with you. Here are the 3 questions.
- If I were to die tomorrow, what would I regret not doing?
I think you may remember Steve jobs’ famous Stanford graduation speech. I wanted to share with you the part that really resonated with me. He said,
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
So I thought about, if my time on earth is about to end, what are the things that I wish I had done? What would I regret not doing? And this helps me to get clear about what I really want out of my life and to know the difference between what I truly want vs. what I think I should want.
And I also asked myself, are there things that I really want to do, but I’m not doing, because I’m afraid of not doing a good job, and worried about what other people will think about me?
If that’s what you are thinking about, I talked about how we can start and keep going even when we feel the fear in my last episode, Episode 41, “How to Start When You Feel Afraid”. And I’ll include the link in today’s show notes.
- What are the things that no longer serve me and how can I let them go?
I think it’s helpful to think about what’s really not serving us anymore. And this can be physical things that are no longer useful to us, but also jobs where we are not learning or growing anymore, or relationships that are not working, and also thoughts and beliefs that no longer serve us.
What I’ve been trying to let go is a tough one because this is what has been driving me to work hard all these years, which is equating my sense of self-worth with how much I achieve and how productive I am.
This is a really hard one for me, because I was able to get a lot done, because of this belief. But I came to the realization that it wasn’t serving me anymore because I want to work and live from a place of love and not fear.
I want to do the work I do to truly serve and help people, and not to serve my own ego, or to hide my insecurities.
Letting go of the things that no longer serve us whether that is beliefs, thoughts, relationships, or jobs, will create more room in our lives for the things that do serve us.
Because the time that we spend beating ourselves up for our past mistakes is the time that we could be spending encouraging ourselves to do better in the future.
And the time we spend doing work that we hate is the time we could be doing work that we love. And same thing goes for the relationships. The time we spend in relationships that make us feel miserable is the time we could be spending in relationships that make us feel loved and supported.
Our time is limited so we need to spend it wisely.
So I want you to you think about this. What are the things that no longer serve you, and how can you let them go?
- How can I give myself the permission to do the things that brings me joy?
In my episode 38, I talked about how the pandemic has made me realize the importance of being aware of what makes me happy and making decisions that’s aligned with it. I shared the 3 lessons I learned during the pandemic, and this was one of them. In case you haven’t listen to it, I’ll include the link in today’s shownotes.
A lot of times, I think we spend our days on an auto-pilot continuing to do the things that we think we are supposed to do, and we lose sight of what is really important to us.
Why do you do what you do? I recently asked this question to one of my clients and she couldn’t answer for awhile.
I think we continue to keep ourselves busy with the things that we tell ourselves that we have to do, and that we should do, and oftentimes everything on our list is all the things related to our our job and the things we need to do for our families, and other people.
Of course being responsible and taking care of our loved one is important, but YOU are important too. Because if you are to die tomorrow, none of your to do list matters.
So think about that. What brings you joy? And how can you give yourself the permission to do the things that brings you joy, and makes you happy, even if it has nothing to do with your job or career right now?
I recently had a conversation with Michael Kim about this in Episode 39, “How to Thrive in the Pandemic” and I wanted to share with you the clip.
I asked him how he’s been dealing with the unhappiness of the pandemic and this is what he said.
“I’ve tried to do more things for myself. So like, either the one hour of doing nothing, or just finding things I enjoy and just taking time to do it. And I think most people who have a lot of responsibilities, like if you’re a parent of young kids, or you have other dependents, elderly parents, or your income is really important to the economics of the family, etc. You probably feel guilty about doing anything for yourself.
But I actually think the long term harm, so if your mind is geared toward thinking you should only do things that advance the cause, the family cause or whatever, you can justify it this way, which is the long term harmful effects of you, not taking care of yourself and not being nice to yourself, is going to be a lot more costly than whatever money or time you’re going to spend on it today.
So I’m not saying like, you know, leave your spouse and go and run off into like, go crazy gambling trip or whatever, but I think if you have something you really enjoy, or you want to try new things you enjoy, and you want to just spend like a little bit of time and money in it. I think you ought to just do it.
Because I think if somebody like me, who can discipline myself, so well, ends up having these subconscious, like neck pains, because I’m stressing myself out. I think most people are going to suffer from not taking care of themselves in the long term, and only focusing on what they have to do. So I think I’ve tried to do more things for myself that I enjoy. Like one of the things I’ve really started studying is Chinese liquor. So that’s actually something I really enjoy. Not drink huge amounts of it, but really study it and like, understand the taste of differences, etc. So I’ve actually enjoyed that.”
So I hope you will think about what are the things you enjoy and give yourself the permission to just do them.
If you haven’t yet listen to my recent interview with Michael, titled “How to Thrive in the Pandemic” it was a really fun conversation, and I learned a lot, so I’ll include the link in today’s show notes, as well as Michael’s previous episodes including How to Make Yourself Happy, which is the most popular episode on my podcast. You definitely want to listen to that one if you haven’t yet. Trust me, it will be worth your time.
All of Michael’s interviews as well as other episodes I’ve mentioned will be in today’s shownotes, celinalee.co/episode42 that is celinalee.co/episode42.
Ok, so I hope what I’ve shared with you today is helpful. As a recap, here are the 3 questions that I’ve been pondering to help me set new intentions for the new year.
- If I were to die tomorrow, what would I regret not doing?
- What are the things that no longer serve me and how can I let them go?
- How can I give myself the permission to do the things that brings me joy?
I hope these questions will help you to re-evaluate your priorities and set new intentions for this year.
If you’re looking for guidance on how to find happiness and fulfillment in your career, I put together a guide to the three steps to finding true career fulfillment.
In this guide, I share the three common themes of the people who have achieved incredible amount of success and if you find what those three things are for you, I can guarantee you that you’ll not only have a successful career, but also a very fulfilling life. So if you want to check it out, you can download it by clicking on today’s show notes on your podcast app or on my website, celinalee.co that is is celinalee.co
If you liked this episode, I would be so grateful if you can tell your friends about it and also please write me a review. This is the best way you can help me to grow my podcast so more people can find out about it.
I actually check several times a day to see if there’s a new review, I know it’s kind of funny, and this is how I know you are listening and what I’m creating is helpful for you. So if you want to make my day, please write me a review on your podcast app, and I’d be so grateful.
And as I’ve shared with you at the beginning of the episode, if you are interested learning about becoming a founding member of my new online course and group coaching program, please send me a message on my website, celinalee.co/contact that is celinalee.co/contact or just click the link on today’s shownotes.
The course will launch this year, and you will get a lot of cool benefits as a founding member.
You can also reach out to me on the same link, if you have questions about my one-on-one coaching, or have any thoughts or questions about my podcast.
And please subscribe on iTunes, Google podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast, and I’ll be back next week with another episode. Thank you so much for listening and I hope you have a great week!
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Download the 3 Steps to True Career Fulfillment Here
There comes a time in your career when you question your professional happiness and fulfillment. This can be a defining moment if you take the time to ask yourself important questions and take action towards career that brings you joy.
If you are feeling stuck and don’t know what to do next, you are not alone. With the right guidance and a little momentum, you can be happy and fulfilled personally and professionally. If you’re looking for clarity and next steps, check out this guide, the 3 Steps to Finding True Career Fulfillment.
I use a 3-part framework to help you take the next step towards doing work you love and believe in. Get your copy here.
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