"Someday When Things Calm Down" Is Not a Plan. It's a Practice.

 You've been telling yourself it's the circumstances.

The kids still need you. Your husband leans on you. Your parents are aging into needing you too. The money is real. The exhaustion is real. The calendar is genuinely full.

You are not wrong about any of that.

But here is the thing nobody has said to you clearly enough yet: the circumstances are the facts. The story you're telling about what those facts mean about you, that is something else entirely. And that story is the reason you haven't started. Not the circumstances.

In this episode we are separating those two things. And once you can see the difference, the wall you've been up against dissolves.

DISCOVER:

• The real reason you keep waiting for the right time, and why the right time is never coming
• Why the women who seem to be figuring it out don't have easier circumstances, they have a different frame
• The specific belief underneath "my life is too complicated" that nobody talks about, and why it's been running the show without you knowing it
• Why every attempt that didn't stick wasn't evidence of failure, it was evidence you were working at the wrong level
• The difference between the facts of your life and the story you've been attaching to them,  and why only one of those things is changeable right now
• What "I am not capable" actually sounds like when it's disguised as "my circumstances aren't right"
• The Identity Eraser Effect, and how quiet muscles get mistaken for lost ones
• A decision Misty made, twice, twenty years apart, that finally proved what was actually standing in her way
• Why identity does not follow circumstances and what to do before the circumstances cooperate
• The one decision available to you today, in this exact life, that changes everything

KEY TAKEAWAY

You are not waiting for the right circumstances. You have been waiting for permission to believe you are capable. The circumstances were never the obstacle. The frame was. And the frame — unlike the circumstances — is yours to change right now.

CLOSING IDENTITY ANCHOR

You are more than everyone's everything. You are someone.*

Take the journey back to you. You're worth it.

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🧭 When you're ready for the next step, everything you need is waiting at Your Utmost Self.

You are more than everyone's everything. You are someone.

Transcript

Facts Versus The Frame

0:00

Your circumstances are not the obstacle. Your story about your circumstances is. And today we're going to separate those two things, probably for the first time. Your story, the story you've been telling yourself about why you haven't started yet, and about why now isn't the right time, and about why the women who seem to be figuring this out must have something you don't. Easier circumstances, more support, more time, more money, a life that is somehow less complicated than yours. I know that story. I used to have a whole list of reasons why now wasn't the right time. Real reasons, legitimate ones, the kind that you can't argue with. And I want to tell you today, with love and with complete directness, it took me a long time to understand that the list was never the problem. This episode is for the woman who is ready to want something for herself, but keeps running into the same wall. Not a wall built by her circumstances, a wall built by what she believes her circumstances mean about her. The woman who is looking at her life, the demands, the people, the obligations, the real and legitimate complexity of it all, and concludes that now is not the right time, that it works for other women, that her situation is different. If that is you, stay with me, because what I'm about to say is going to land somewhere specific. Here is what I know after years of doing this work, and I want to say it clearly before we go any further. Your circumstances are real. I'm not going to tell you that they aren't. The kids are real, the exhaustion is real, the financial pressure is real, the demands on your time are real. But here is what is also true, and this is the part that changes everything. The circumstances are the facts. The story you're telling yourself about what those facts mean about you, that is the frame. And the frame is not a fact. The frame is a choice. When you finally see the frame you've been living inside, clearly, without judgment, something is going to shift. So stay with me. Before we go anywhere, I want you to think about something. Think about the last time you talked yourself out of something you wanted. Not because you made a rational decision it wasn't right, but because something in you said, that's not for someone like me right now. My life is too complicated. I'm not ready. I'm not capable enough. Feel that for a second. Not the circumstances, the feeling underneath them. That feeling, the one that says, not for someone like me, has been making decisions for you for a long time. It has a name and it's not the truth about you. If you have ever felt like you're living for everyone else and losing pieces of yourself along the way, you're in the right place. This podcast is where you learn the principles and strategic tools to rebuild a life that feels like yours again. In your health, your relationships, confidence, goals, and even the deeper parts of you like purpose, growth, love, and parenting. This is where you begin the process of becoming your utmost self. Not by accident, not by obligation, but by

Welcome And The Real Wall

2:50

design. Welcome to your utmost life podcast. Make sure you follow so you never miss an episode. I want to stay here with you for a few minutes before we move. There is a woman

The Comparison Trap And Waiting

3:00

you keep seeing, and every time you see her, something in you does two things at once. Maybe on Instagram, maybe at the grocery store, maybe it's someone in your own circle. She's building something, working towards something, moving with a kind of intentional energy that makes you feel inspired and defeated in the same breath. Because she looks like she has what you don't: space, support, a life that is somehow cooperating with her goals in a way that yours isn't. You're looking at her and feeling something you couldn't quite name. Not envy exactly, more like evidence, proof that it works, just not for someone like you. Her circumstances must be different. And then there's the feeling you carry when you think about wanting something for yourself. It's not excitement exactly. It's heavier than excitement. It's the weight of everything that would have to move for that want to have any room. The schedule that is already maxed, the budget that's already allocated, the energy that is already spent by Tuesday afternoon. Wanting something for yourself inside that reality feels almost reckless. Like wanting is something you haven't earned yet. Like wanting has to wait until the circumstances cooperate. So you put it down again. You tell yourself when things settle, when the kids are older, when the money is less tight, when life gives you a little more room and there is a voice underneath all of it. Quiet, persistent, the one you've gotten very good at not hearing that keeps whispering the same thing, not loudly, just steadily. You are wasting time. You are letting it slip. You are going to look up one day and realize you have been waiting your whole life for circumstances that were never going to arrive. You've heard it, you've pushed it down, you've told it, not now. The circumstances aren't right. Here is what I want you to understand before we go any further. That voice is not your anxiety. It is not self-sabotage. It is the most accurate thing inside you right now. And the circumstances you've been waiting to cooperate, they are never going to be ready. Not because your life is unusually hard, because life is always hard, because there will always be circumstances. And the woman we are moving, the one you've been watching, comparing yourself to, and collecting evidence from, they're not moving because their circumstances are different from yours. They're moving because they made a different decision about what their circumstances mean. That decision is available to you right now in this exact life. That is what we're talking about today. Every woman I talk to has been waiting for the right time, has a version of the same story. The details are different, the feeling is identical. You are not alone in this, but I also need to tell you, you're not stuck. And today we're going to prove it. Now, I know what you're thinking, not approximately, specifically. It sounds like this. I want to, I genuinely do, but my life right now is a lot. Even though the kids are getting older, they still need me. The finances are tight. My husband is supportive, but he has his own demands. I'm already running at capacity, and I look at women who are doing this kind of work on themselves and I think, how? How do they have the time? How do they have the energy? Their circumstances must just be more manageable than mine. And then there is the other thought. The one underneath, the one you don't say out loud, not even to yourself on most days. It sounds like, or maybe I'm just not the kind of woman who figures it out. Maybe other women have something I don't. Maybe I'm not as capable as I thought I was. Maybe I missed my window. That second thought, that is the real one. The circumstances are just the cover story that makes it feel more acceptable, more logical, more like a reasonable conclusion rather than a belief about your worth. And here is what that belief has been costing you. Not just the time you've lost, but the version of yourself you've been postponing. The woman you have always been capable of being, ambitious, alive, intentional. She has been sitting in a waiting room you built out of a story that was never true. The circumstances are real, but they are not the reason. They never were. The reason has always been the story. And the story for the first time is about to change.

The Two Beliefs Underneath

7:10

There are two beliefs running underneath everything I just described. And I want to name both of them because most people only ever name the first one. The first one is safe to say out loud. My circumstances are too complicated. That works for other women, but not for me. The second one is harder. It's the one underneath. I'm not capable. Other women can overcome their circumstances because they are that kind of woman. I am not. You have been living the surface version because it's easier to hold. Circumstances are external. Capability is personal. And personal is harder to look at. And I want to honor this before I dismantle it because it makes complete sense that you arrived here. You have tried things before. You have set intentions on Sunday nights and lost them by Tuesday. You have started routines that dissolved. You have made promises to yourself that you didn't keep. And when something doesn't work repeatedly, the conclusion that you are not capable is not irrational. It feels like evidence. It feels like you have been watching your own track record and drawing a reasonable conclusion. But here is what that evidence actually proves, and it's not what you think it proves.

Why Habits Fail Without Identity

8:18

Every failed attempt was aimed at behavior, at habits and at systems, not at identity. And behavior attempts cannot fix an identity wound. You were trying to act like the woman you wanted to be without first deciding you were her. That is not failure. That is attempting the wrong solution. There is a difference. But here's what this belief is costing you right now. Today, it is costing you the beginning. Every day you wait for circumstances to cooperate. Every day you postpone the start until the life gets easier. Is a day the gap between who you are and who you were made to be gets a little wider. The circumstances do not improve on their own. The calendar does not clear. The money does not get less allocated. The kids do not suddenly need you less. What changes is not the circumstances. What changes is the woman standing inside them. And she can only change if you decide before the circumstances cooperate, before the timing is perfect, before you feel ready that you are the woman who handles them. That decision is available to you today, right now, not when things calm down, in the exact life you are already living, with the exact husband and kids and calendar and bank account, not a different life. This one. But here is the cost I need you to see underneath that. Every time you tell yourself my circumstances are the reason, you hand your power to your circumstances. And what you hand your power to becomes the thing that runs your life. When circumstances are the reason, you need circumstances to change before you can move, which means you are waiting for something outside of yourself to give you permission to start. And circumstances, by definition, do not give permission. They just exist. They were never going to give you what you are waiting for. The hidden cost is this every year you spend waiting for circumstances to cooperate is a year you spent teaching yourself that your life is something that happens to you rather than something you design. And a woman who believes her life happens to her does not build the life she was made for. She manages the one she inherited. Twenty years from now, your circumstances will have changed. The kids will be grown, the financial pressure different, the schedule unrecognizable from today's. And you will look back at right now, at this exact season, with all of its real and legitimate complexity, and you will either think, that is when I decided I was capable, that is when everything changed, or you will think, keep waiting, and the waiting became my life. The woman who is waiting for the right circumstances to become herself, she does not suddenly wake up one day and find them. She wakes up one day and realizes she has been waiting herself in theory, in practice, for longer than she can account for. That is the trajectory of this belief left unchanged. And you are not that woman yet. You are here listening to this, which means something in you is already choosing differently. So here's the truth I want to replace this belief

Decide Who You Are First

11:19

with. Separate the facts from the frame. The facts are real, the kids are real, the exhaustion, the financial pressure. Those are facts, and I honor every single one of them. They are not small, they are not excuses, they are the real conditions of your real life. But the frame, and therefore I am not capable, and therefore this is not the right time, and therefore this works for other women, but not for me. That is not a fact. That is a meaning you are attaching to the facts, and you can attach a different meaning. The frame available to you right now today without a single circumstance changing is this. I am the kind of woman who figures things out. My circumstances are real. I am the woman who handles them, not because you have already proven it, but because you have decided it. Identity does not follow circumstances. Circumstances follow identity. Decide who you are first, then watch what becomes possible. I know this because I lived on the wrong side of that decision for longer than I want to admit. And I want to tell you what it looked like when

The Dream Put On Hold

12:24

it changed. I want to tell you a story about a decision I almost didn't make and a dream I almost let die because I had convinced myself I was no longer the kind of woman who could have it. The identity eraser effect does something specific to a woman's sense of capability. It doesn't just make her feel invisible, it makes her feel incapable. Because when you have been pouring yourself out for everyone else for long enough, when your own needs, goals, and desires have sat at the bottom of every list for years, you stop being someone who executes on their own behalf. You stay in motion for everyone else, but for yourself. The muscle has gone quiet, and the quiet muscles feel like lost muscles. The woman who hasn't tried something for herself in years look at the women who are trying and thinks, they must be built differently. They must have what I don't. She doesn't recognize that the difference isn't capability, it's practice. She stopped practicing, choosing herself, and she mistook the restiness for permanent incapacity. That is the mechanism, and I know it because I lived it. Twenty plus years ago, I wanted to get my real estate license and I didn't. It wasn't a passing interest, it was a real goal, something I had thought about, researched, felt genuinely excited about. I remember sitting with the course materials, actually sitting with them, holding them, feeling something I hadn't felt in a while, excited about something that was just mine, a future I was going to build that had nothing to do with anyone else's needs or wants. And I didn't do it. Decades later, I let that dream resurface, and again, I almost didn't do it. Not because the circumstances made it impossible, because something in me had already started to shift, already started to question whether I was that kind of woman who did things like that anymore, whether I was still capable of pulling off something that was just mine, whether that version of me who had that kind of ambition and follow-through was still available. So I set it down and I settled to help other agents with their business. And I told myself someday when the circumstances are better, what I wanted underneath all of it, underneath the reasons and the waiting, was something I couldn't have named clearly then but can name now. I wanted proof that I was still her. The woman I had been before everything else got loud, the one who set goals and moved toward them, the one who believed she was capable of building something that was hers. I didn't need the real estate license specifically. I needed the evidence that I was still that woman. But every moment that passed without it, the belief got a little more entrenched. Every time I thought about it and didn't move, the story got a little louder. You had your window, you let it pass. You were not that woman anymore. Maybe you never were. Other women have something you don't. You have circumstances and excuses and a long history of setting things down, and I believed it. The circumstances were real, the belief was not, but I couldn't see the difference yet. What shifted, and it didn't shift overnight, was understanding that I had been waiting for circumstances to give me permission to see myself as capable. And circumstances were never going to do that. They don't work that way. No circumstances ever looked at a woman and said, now, now you're ready. Now it's safe to try. I had to decide that I was capable before the circumstances cooperated. I had to choose the identity first and let the evidence follow, not the other way around. I got my real estate license, not when the circumstances were perfect, they weren't, not when I felt completely ready, I didn't. I got it because I decided I was the woman who was going to get it. Before I had proof, before the timing was ideal, before every condition I had been waiting for was met. And a few months in, I was driving to a real estate appointment, living a dream I had set down 20 years before in the middle of a life that still had all of its complications, and the tears just came. Not grief, something entirely different. The specific feeling of a woman who chose herself before her circumstances were ready and discovered she was actually who she had always thought she was and capable of being. I thought about sitting in that car years earlier. The woman still at the red light, the one who was still waiting, who had convinced herself that the complexity of her life was the reason she hadn't started, who hadn't yet understood that she was always the answer to her own circumstances. I went home that night and talked to my husband for over three hours. That conversation became your utmost

Capability Built Through Small Wins

16:40

self. What I discovered, not from reading it somewhere, but from living it, is that capability is not a fixed quantity. It is not something you either have or don't have. It's something you built with every kept promise to yourself, every small visible win, every moment you choose to act before you feel ready. I didn't find my capability by waiting until I felt it. I found it by acting before I felt it and watching the feeling follow. You do not wait to feel capable and then act. You act even imperfectly, even incompletely, even in the middle of complicated circumstances, and the feeling of capability follows. Identity follows behavior. The story updates when the evidence does. What I found, what I'm still finding, is this. Before the circumstances cooperated, before I felt ready, before I had proof that I was her. She was always in there. She just needed to be chosen. I know what just happened to you while I was telling that story.

Answering The Common Pushbacks

17:51

Something opened and then something else came right behind it. A voice that had something to say. Let me name them. But my circumstances are real. I genuinely don't have time or money right now. Yes, they are real. I said that at the beginning and I mean it. The facts of your life are real and I honor them completely. But here is the distinction that changes everything. Honoring the facts does not require adopting the frame that you are therefore not capable. You can hold both. The circumstances are real and you are the woman who figures them out. That is not a contradiction. That is the frame of a capable woman. High performers don't have fewer constraints. They have a different relationship to them. The voice says, other women who do this don't have what I'm dealing with. I need to say this directly. You don't know what they're dealing with. The woman who looks like she has it figured out from the outside from your vantage point, she's juggling something too. Everybody is. The difference is not that her path is clean and yours is uniquely messy. The difference is standard, structure, and the decision to show up as capable before the circumstances cooperate. You can make that decision right now, not when things settle, not when you've earned it, but right now. Not to her, but to you. The voice says, I've tried before and it didn't stick. That evidence is I'm not capable. It's not evidence you are not capable. It is evidence that you were trying to change behavior without changing identity. Every attempt that didn't stick was aimed at the wrong level. This is different because we start with you, who you are, with your identity, your worth, your standards, and the behavior grows from that root. When the root is healthy, the behavior doesn't require force, it becomes natural. That is not something you ever have to try at. Life will always have circumstances. That is not a season, that is the condition of being alive. The woman who is waiting for circumstances to cooperate is not waiting for the right time. She is practicing waiting. And the longer she practices, the better she gets at it. The time is not later. The time is the decision you make today in the middle of the complicated, real, legitimate life you actually have. That you are the woman who handles it. Before I paint this picture, I need to say something you may not have heard in a long time. You, my friend, are capable, not as a thing I'm saying to make you feel better, as a specific, true, already demonstrated fact. The evidence is this. You kept showing up through everything your life has thrown at you. You are still reaching, still looking, still refusing to accept that this is all there is. That is not the behavior of an incapable woman. That is the behavior of an extraordinary one who hasn't yet turned her capability towards herself. You are allowed to be that woman. You don't have to earn it first. Right now, today, you wake up and the circumstances are already running before you open your eyes. The list, the demands, the weight of everything that needs to happen today for everyone who needs it. And underneath all of it, the quiet story. I'll start when this calms down, when I am more ready, when the circumstances give me a little more room, and they don't, and you don't. And the day happens to you instead

Protecting Time And Choosing Yourself

20:50

of by you. That is the Tuesday you've been living in. Now picture a different one. Same house, same husband, same real complicated, legitimate life. You wake up and something is different before the list starts running. Not because the circumstances have changed, but because you have. You can see it in how you move. You have a 90-minute block protected on your calendar, not found, protected. Before anyone else's needs have first claim on you, you have honored yourself. And inside that block, you are working on the thing that matters. The needle mover, the one output that proves to your brain one more time that you are the woman who executes. You can hear your own voice when someone asks, What are you working on? You have an answer. Specific yours. You talk about it without apology for it. Your daughter hears a woman who knows what she's building and something in her straightens slightly, watching. She is learning what a woman who chooses herself looks like. She is learning it from you. That is a gift no circumstance can give her. Only you can. You feel the difference in your body, not the bracing of a woman waiting for her circumstances to cooperate, the steadiness of a woman who decided she was capable before she had proof and is now collecting the proof. Every kept promise to yourself is a deposit. Your account is growing, and that growing is a physical feeling, a quiet confidence that is not bravado, not performance, but the simple felt sense of I said I was going to do this and I did. Your circumstances are still real. Those you love still need you, the calendar is still full, the money is still allocated, nothing external has changed. Everything internal has. That is not a fantasy. That is what becomes available the moment that you separate the facts from the frame and decide before the circumstances cooperate, before you feel ready, that you are the woman who handles them. She was always in there. You just chose her. Let me leave you with what is true. What was true before this episode and is more visible now. Your circumstances are real. They're not the reason. The reason, the belief underneath the surface story, is that you have concluded you are not capable. That it works for other women because they are the kind of woman and you are not. That belief is not evidence, it is a frame, and you can choose a different one. The facts stay the same. Your interpretation of what those facts mean about you, that is what changes. You are not waiting for circumstances to cooperate. You are deciding right now, in the middle of all of it, that you are the woman who handles them. Capability is not a fixed quantity. It is built with every kept promise, every protected block, every small visible win that gives your brain evidence that you are her. Identity follows behavior, and behavior starts with a decision made before the circumstances are ready. So here's what we do next. I want to give you something to carry with you, not a to-do, a truth. Say it out loud if you can. Mean it even if it feels like a reach right now. Say

The Mantra To Take With You

23:38

this. My circumstances are real. I am the woman who handles them. I do not need conditions to be perfect before I choose myself. I choose myself first. And the woman I have always been capable of being, she is not waiting for the right time. She is available right now, and I am choosing her today. And when you close this episode, the voice is going to say, That was inspiring, but your life is still complicated. Nothing actually changed. Answer it with this. One thing changed. I separated the facts from the frame. My circumstances are real. They are not the reason, and I am the woman who figures it out. Hold on to that. It is enough

Rate Share Follow And Go Deeper

24:16

to start. If this episode met you somewhere real, if something cracked open today, will you rate the show 15 seconds? There is a woman out there right now using her circumstances as the reason she hasn't started. Your rating is how she finds this episode. She needs these words. Help her find them. And if you know her, the woman in your life who keeps saying someday when things settle down, send her this. You don't have to explain it. She'll know. Make sure you follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you want to go deeper, the best place to stay connected with me is in my email list. That's where I share my best insights, resources, and updates you won't hear anywhere else. Remember, you are more than everyone's everything. You are someone. Take the journey back to you. You're worth it. I'll see you next week.