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Welcome to Tried and True with a Dash of Woo, where we blend rock-solid tips with a little bit of magic. I'm Renee Bowen, your host, life and business coach and professional photographer at your service. We are all about getting creative, diving into your business and playing with manifestation over here. So are you ready to get inspired and have some fun? Let's dive in. Hey friends, welcome back to Tried and True with a dash of woo. I am your host, renee Bowen. Thanks for joining me here.

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This week's episode is audio only. It's still going to be on YouTube, but it's just audio. It's not a video. So it's all good.

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But today's episode is a little bit of a love letter and a little bit of a kick in the pants for y'all, because I think we need to talk about something we've been getting very wrong in the self-help, the coaching, the creative entrepreneur space in general. I think that we've confused alignment with inaction, we've confused flow with laziness and we've decided that ease means effortless and, as a result, we're burning out in new ways by not doing anything at all. So let's talk about the version of discipline that no one's telling you about, the one that actually is the magic, in my opinion. So there's this lie that we tell ourselves that goes a little bit like well, I'll move, I'll take action, I'll do something when it feels right, okay. Well, there's this trend all over TikTok, instagram social, just in general, people talking about quitting hustle culture, reclaiming their rest, living in alignment. And listen, I get it. I love that, actually, and I also teach about unconscious reprogramming.

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I live by energy cycles and strategy. I really, really believe in flow. I do. But let's not forget, discipline and alignment are not opposites. In fact, discipline is what creates alignment. Flow without direction is just floating. So think of your goals like a river. Yes, the water wants to move forward, but without a riverbed, without structure, it floods. Structure, it floods. There's chaos, distraction, self-doubt, no direction. But you don't need hustle, you need rhythm. So you need the kind of daily devotion to your vision that doesn't rely on a good mood, that doesn't need 100% certainty, that just needs you to show up.

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Simon Sinek says it best we don't get confidence and then take action. We take action and then confidence shows up. Okay, so the brain is wired for story, and if the story you're repeating to yourself is I'll start when I'm ready, you're programming yourself to stay stuck. But let me tell you a story about one of my coaching students. She's a brilliant photographer, amazing eye, huge heart, but totally frozen in perfectionism. She told herself I'll post when I know what to say, I'll launch something when I have it all mapped out. And guess what? She stayed stuck for a really long time. We're talking years. And guess what? She stayed stuck for a really long time. We're talking years. And then she got into coaching and I asked her what if your future doesn't come with a sign? What if the clarity that you're waiting for only shows up after you move, so that one mindset shift from needing evidence to creating evidence? That changed everything for her. She started showing up, imperfectly but consistently, and that consistency built momentum, it built trust and, yeah, it built income. Because now she's doing all the things that she started talking about when she entered coaching with me three years ago. She's definitely made money that whole time, but now this vision, this thing that she has been conjuring up, this whole other side of her business is starting to take off, and that's so cool. But it's because she put in the work, she started taking action. She started before. It was perfect, she didn't just wait for things to feel right.

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So I want to talk to you a little bit about the discipline that looks like freedom, because here's where we flip the script. Discipline is not punishment, and I think a lot of us maybe you know as Gen Xers especially sort of associate discipline with punishment. Okay, but it's not. It's really not rigid. It's not about pushing yourself into burnout. It's the structure that allows your creativity to thrive. Think about an elite athlete. They don't just train hard, they recover with intention. They know when to go hard and when to pull back and when to rest. Discipline is rhythmic. It's self-respect in action. So when you make promises to yourself and you keep them, even when and especially when no one's watching, you become someone you can trust, and when you can trust yourself, the fear of failure loses its grip. Discipline is devotion to your future self. It's choosing the action today that benefits the version of you you haven't even met yet.

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Too many people feel like discipline is punishment, and I know that a lot of us have a very loud inner saboteur. That isn't very nice, and so if you have a belief that discipline is wrong or bad or anti-freedom, then it's going to feed into that self-saboteur, that really loud voice that tells you you're not good enough, it's going to make it really easy for you to beat yourself up, and that's the opposite of what we're going for here, because I want you to remember that feelings are signals. They're not steering wheels. Okay, your emotions are sacred. They're not your GPS necessarily.

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Feeling tired doesn't always mean you need to quit. Feeling unmotivated doesn't mean you're misaligned. It means you're human. Okay, it means you have emotions. Emotions are like a dashboard warning light. They're asking you to pay attention, but not to panic. You can feel resistance and still move. You can feel self-doubt and still make a post. You can feel stuck and still take the next right step. That's what emotional maturity looks like. That's what conscious leadership looks like and that's what builds actual momentum.

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It's not just hype. We have like 60,000 plus thoughts a day. You can't control every single thought that comes in, especially those of us with very active brains, but you can control which ones stick around, because the ones that are not so great they attract friends always Okay. So if you are not very disciplined in what you're allowing in your field and I'm talking about your energetic field right now then if you allow some sort of like self-doubt to seep in, it can start really small, but that is a very, very slippery slope, because the minute you let any of that doubt or, you know, disdain or judgment or any of those low vibrational things in, you're just inviting more of their friends because you're going to find proof of whatever you're looking for. And if you're surrounding yourself with all of that stuff, then you're just going to keep finding more of that.

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So it's really important to stay very, very hardcore with your thoughts like that and realize that you're going to have emotions. You are a human being. Okay, you're going to have emotions. You are a human being. You're going to have bad days.

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This is not about just glossing over everything and thinking that everything is going to be fine and dandy because you're ignoring all the crap that's actually happening in the world or in your personal life. It's about noticing that sitting with it Okay, nobody really wants to sit with it these days Like if you look around, you're going to find a million different ways to numb out, the biggest one being social media. You know, our phones are like the easiest numbing out machine that's ever been created, because it's an easy distraction and it's an endless wheel of distraction. So the more you allow yourself to get sucked into all of that stuff, the easier it's going to be, you know, to get sucked in and the harder it's going to be for you to be disciplined and realize that this is not for my highest good. Being on my phone all day is just keeping me from moving the needle on what else I need to do in my business and in my life. And this is where that self-awareness really comes into play. There's so many tools that we can use to develop our self-awareness, and the more self-aware that we are, the more we know ourselves and not judge ourselves, the faster we can get what we want and the faster we're going to have clarity.

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Just in general, because if you're stuck, you're probably waiting too long. Right, if you're feeling stuck in your business or in your life right now, there's a good chance it's because you're waiting, waiting to feel ready, waiting for the perfect moment, waiting for the fear to go away, waiting for certainty Okay, but let me be real with you for a second. Readiness is a by-product of movement, it's not a prerequisite. The best thing you can do for yourself right now is decide that the next version of you doesn't arrive with fanfare. She arrives with small steps, taken over and over and over again, even on days when it's hard. So make the call, send the email, post the damn thing. You're not lazy and you're not broken. You're just a little scared, and that's okay.

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Don't confuse alignment with avoidance. True freedom doesn't come from floating. It comes from following through, because you will get more confident the more you do it, and you will find proof of whatever you're looking for. It's not just mumbo jumbo. It is literally the way our brains are wired. Your brain is a detective, so just give it better clues. I know you've heard people say things like what you focus on grows, expands, right. Well, let's break that down into why that's actually true. It's not just a cute quote for your journal, so let's talk about why that's actually true.

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Your brain is wired to make meaning. It's always scanning, always trying to answer the question is this safe, is this familiar and what does this mean about me? So if the story that you're repeating is I'm always behind, nothing ever works out for me, no one wants to pay my prices, your brain is going to keep saying okay, got it, let me go find proof of that. It starts filtering your world to match that story, because it's the reticular activating system in your brain. It's a filter. So you scroll social and you only notice the photographers who are booked out. You get one inquiry that ghosted you and you take it as a sign. You ignore the person who did say I've been watching you and I'm ready to work with you because you've already decided you're invisible.

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But the truth is that your brain doesn't care if the story is helpful, it just believes whatever you feed it most consistently. So that's why, when my clients start saying things like clients always come to me at just the right time, I'm building something that's working, even if I can't see all the results yet. Their results are starting to change because their actions change. They post more, they show up differently on calls, they talk about their offers like they believe in them because they actually do. It lights them up. Literally, our only job in life is to follow the joy. Is this going to be fun? And is this going to be? You know something that lights me up? Okay, yes, do that. Follow the path of joy. And a metaphor that I really love is imagining your mind like a search engine, right? So if you type in why does my business suck? Well, guess what kind of answers you're going to get okay. And if you ask, how is this actually working out for me right now, you're going to get a whole different set of data for that.

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It's the same thing with ChatGPT. By the way, too many of you guys are using chat GPT as just like a hype person. You haven't trained it to really challenge you and to give you or to ask you the right questions, and it's just literally giving you like oh my God, this is so fire, this is going to be amazing, you're going to kill this because that's how you've programmed it. So it's the same thing with your reticular activating system in your brain. Your job is not to wait for proof. Your job is to train your brain to collect better evidence, and the only way to do that is to be really disciplined. You've already survived hard things. You've already had a yes in your life. You've had moments of bravery. Use those things as your baseline, not the fear, because when you do that consistently, you start becoming the proof that you were waiting for and you stop waiting altogether.

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But let's talk real quick before we wrap up about joy for a second, because I know I just mentioned that and because somewhere along the way you know that whole follow your joy thing I think got twisted into only do what feels good right now. And I love joy. I believe in joy. I believe that, like I said before, we should be following it. But it is not the same thing as complacency, okay, because real joy often requires discomfort. First. You know what's joyful Building a business that supports your family, waking up knowing that you're proud of how you lead, feeling deeply in alignment with what you're creating in the world. But you know what's not joyful in the moment Sending the email when you feel cringy inside, re-recording your offer video because you know it didn't land the first time and you want it to saying no to things that are fine so you can hold space for something really great. That's not bypassing your joy. That's protecting it.

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Discipline is not restriction. That's the thing that I really want you guys to get from this episode today. Discipline is what creates freedom, because if you're only doing things that feel good in the moment, you're not actually following joy, you're following dopamine. There's a difference. You're chasing comfort. You're reacting, not responding. You're avoiding the edge. And guess what lives at the edge? Your next level.

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So joy is not like just a fluffy emotion. It's not a bubble bath. It's not a free pass from challenge. It's what emerges when you keep promises to yourself. It's the byproduct of alignment and action together. And, yes, it requires sacrifice. Sometimes it means saying things like I don't like it today, but I do like being proud of myself tomorrow. That's the kind of joy that sticks, that builds resilience, that makes people magnetized to your energy, because you're not waiting for the perfect conditions. You're becoming the person who creates them, that version of you who's out there living the life that you want, that you're dreaming of. She's not lounging, she's leading, she's showing up while the fear is loud, she's choosing flow over frenzy, but she's still in motion because she knows that comfort isn't the goal. Clarity is, integrity is, freedom is, and all of that is found through discipline disguised as devotion. So, yes, follow your joy, but don't confuse that with avoiding growth, don't confuse that with waiting for it to feel easy, because it's never going to.

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And if you're ready to stop dancing around your potential and actually live into it, I've got something for you. As you probably know, I coach high achieving creatives photographers, artists, coaches who are tired of starting and stopping, who are done with the guessing and who are ready to actually become the version of themselves they keep seeing in their mind. But you don't have to do it alone. Okay, coaching with me is the next right step If you're craving clarity, confidence and momentum with soul.

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I only have one spot open right now for one-on-one coaching, but I am also re-enrolling my amazing and super transformational group coaching program called Elevate this month. It is a six-month coaching program, so you'll be signing up now and starting with us in July and it goes through December. You get two calls with me a month, but you get ongoing Voxer support with me, which is like having me a coach in your pocket, and there's so many good things in this membership For the price point. It's kind of ridiculous actually. So I will post the link below in the show notes and you guys can go check it out. There is an application because it's not for everybody and there's not that many spots open.

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I don't actually talk about Elevate that much because I am super protective of our space. Most of these female photographers who are in the group with me have been working with me for three, four years or longer, and I'm really protective of the energy of the group. It's also only for female photographers and those who have been in business for a little bit. So it's not for you. If you are brand new, if you're brand new, one-on-one would be amazing for you, because I can walk you through, I can give you the roadmap, and then what happens more often than not is that my one-on-one clients end up heading into Elevate after they coach with me, because it's great for ongoing accountability and coaching and, like I said before, the group is pretty amazing. There's a lot of vulnerable shares in there. We get very close. It's a special group. So if you are interested in that, just head below. There's a lot of vulnerable shares in there. We get very close. It's a special group. So if you are interested in that, just head below. There's a link and you can find out more. You can fill out the application and we may even have to have a little quick chat about it, but if you feel interested in it, there's a really good chance that it is the right spot for you. So don't be afraid, just reach out.

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I hope what you take from this episode is that you're not broken for needing discipline. You're just being called to a higher level of leadership, the version of you who has what you want. Okay, she didn't wait till she felt ready. She decided everything's a decision and that's your invitation. Now too, you just have to catch up to her invitation. Now too, you just have to catch up to her. The universe is not asking you to be perfect, just present. Okay, your joy deserves structure, your purpose deserves consistency, and your next level is just waiting on your yes. And I also hope this challenged you a little bit, okay, cause the life you want isn't waiting on motivation. It's waiting on your devotion and your decision, and you're ready for that. Whether it feels like you are or not, this episode might be your sign. Okay, and if you're ready to stop circling the edge and finally go all in, I'd love to walk you through that. I hope you guys have a fantastic week. Be good to yourself. Love you Bye.