BR 14: Pole Creek Fire: Hidden Blessings...

Hi everyone! This is Connie Sokol, and you're listening to Balance Redefined Radio. I've spent over 20 years teaching people how to redefine what balance really is, meaning a more purposeful and joyful life.

They’ve paid off credit cards, lost weight, organize their homes, and created a meaningful life plan and they've managed their time, changed habits and experience greater success both at work and at home.

So now I decided to take the plunge and help about 100,000 new people who want to redefine balance in their lives. People ask me all the time, “How do I go from an overwhelming and chaotic life to more purpose and organization and joy?”

That's the reason why I'm doing this podcast, to give you trusted answers and create a space where you could find balance. My name is Connie Sokol and welcome to Balance Redefined Radio…

Welcome back to Balance Redefined and if you are listening and just tuning in, I am podcasting as I've been evacuated for a fire in my home state in Utah. It's the number one fire concern in the nation and it's the biggest one as far as I understand it in Utah history.

70,000 acres have been burned, and it is an active burning fire. It is right next to my home and we're waiting moments by moments to find out if it's burning the homes in my city, in this city right next to us.

And I am podcasting for my friend's basement apartment who has so generously, lovingly given us the space to be able to come and be like a refugee. And she has been fabulous. And I talk about the beauty of that experience on another podcast. So I'll just set that up. Excuse me a moment.

I'm not rerecording, editing... I'm not doing anything. I'm just sharing my thoughts and feelings and it may seem interesting as you're being evacuated and in this space to do a podcast, but I have felt so strongly to share the learning and the experiences that I am having in real time.

And the reason why is because I know so many are experiencing or will experience the experience crises in their lives, whether it's health or financial or physical or natural or whatever.

It might be personal...

And I'm hoping that what I'm experiencing and that I'm finding is working and that it is good that I can share with you so that you can use that to prepare for whatever is coming or for whatever is in your life right now.

And so the topic of this is finding my personal purpose in the fire. I am going to share some very, a very personal experience I just had this morning and I just want to lay the groundwork here.

So you are clear, I am not promoting anything that I'm doing. It's not a push for anything. I am just literally sharing this experience that I had because it has been a shifting life moving experience for me. So please just take that.

You know me if you know me at all, you know who I am and that is not, that's not my gig is to try to push something or whatever…

But  I want to share this with you in real time because it has been very tender to me and I'm hoping that it will inspire and will be a catalyst for others in their search for their personal purpose and the ups and downs that happen with that.

So as you know, I do Balance Redefined. I've been a speaker for 20 years and I do this program and I've had different programs I've had back to basics, I've had life change and they've kind of built on one another.

One has morphed, the next has morphed the next and so it's been balanced, redefined is the most funnest. And I launched that just recently and it was, it was such a path to do this.

I can't even express to you…

As many of you may know, the last year has just been a real, you know, life changing year.

I went through a divorce last fall. He got remarried two months later and still these different shifts for my kids, then got married, and all these shifts as we've moved along then school went out, and I felt to move forward on some of the things that I've sort of done with my left toe and move these things forward.

And there was all the learning curve on that of things that I've done for 20 years…

But now in such a focused and intense way...it was such an intense learning experience and going through all the rebranding and the website and program and all of these things and getting all these things ready…

I don't know about you, but as I talk to people, you know, we all go through this experience when we're putting something big, something from right from our soul out there, there's this growth and change timeline and you don't realize that you're in it until you are later out of it and you can look back.

So when you're in it, it's hard to see that, oh, you just need to ride this wave. Oh, it's okay. It's just another notch on that timeline. You're right on schedule.

It's hard to see that because the feelings are so intense of the ups and the downs and the disappointments and the why did I do that? Why didn't this happen? Why is this going wrong? And yet in your soul, there's this driver. There's this knowledge that you know that what you're doing is the right thing and you can't sort of hold those two thoughts in your brain.

This cognitive dissonance of, “I know I'm doing the right thing. Then why isn't it working the way I want it to work?” Right? Because you think one should follow the other.

So some of the doubts that have come into my mind and they have just increased in intensity.

So much over the last few weeks have felt like I'm like this fire that we're going through and I want to like in this because it's been very metaphorical and literal for me in my life right now and I feel like the learning that I'm having is.

I was just sharing with a friend this morning. I said, “I feel like it's these popcorn seeds in my soul of learning and knowledge and understanding and growth and maturity and wisdom and all of this confidence and all of these things…”

They're like little popcorn kernels inside my soul and it's taken a fire literal and metaphorical for me to be able to pop those kernels…

Now they're popping into this knowledge and understanding and moving forward and all of that, but that heat, that heat, emotional and physical and then literal...

This heat has been such a hard, painful thing that's been the shocker is, “Wow, do we really need this in order to have this kind of learning?”

I'm always looking for how can we avoid that? Right? Is there another way?

Right, and so what was happening for me these last few weeks is I've been teaching women in particular but the principles also applying to med, but mostly I speak to women.

These principles I've been teaching for 20 years to thousands of people. I know that they work. I get emails, I get texts, I see it in their lives. I know these principles work, but have you ever had that experience where you know that something you're doing is right?

You know that something you're doing is working and you still have doubts like where does that come from?

But I started right as we're getting to this launch...I started to have these doubts and then all of these things happen that like I went on this trip to go and get my daughter.

She was nannying in France and we were having that time together, her senior trip in Europe and all of this good stuff is happening, but it's right when we're doing this launch ready for this launch. I come back and the main person, the marketing person that's helping me with this whole program and launch is going to be out of town, and it's not gonna be able to help with that and, and all of these last things that we're thinking are going to be simple end up not being simple and the tech doesn't work and files disappear.

And then when they do appear they're not working. And I literally. I was up at four in the morning and one in the morning every day. I mean it was just crazy. After weeks and weeks of it being like this and getting down to the wire of this launch and I just then the doubt started coming so strong.

Who do you think you are? What is it that you're sharing that's actually that really great?

I mean really lots of people can do this and then they can actually do it better than you and you know, there really isn't the biggest market for this. Really. Women don't really need this in their lives. They really don't. They've got a lot of helps. They've got a lot of things they can do.

They really don't need this. These are the thoughts that are coming into my mind and this is happening when all of these things are going wrong and as all of these things are going wrong.

I remember literally it's a Thursday night and the program is launching on Monday and I am literally cry laughing.

Have you been there where it's like one step from delirium? I just, I'm just going, I can't do this, and then we've got reboot that were, are you got this reboot that we're preparing for and that's happening in a matter of three, four days will at that Thursday it would have been a week...

So and that's all happening and it's all in the last stages of doing that and I just thought, I can't I, this is not, I can't do this.

And I said, “Okay, I can move forward. I'll move forward in faith, but I am on the precipice. Okay. I'm on the precipice.”

So then you imagined we launched on Monday and it was great. We took the wire, got it working and everything doing and the way that it needed to be.

Then Thursday is when we get the evacuation call and we've got all these other things now with the follow-up of it, all of the things to do for the participants and things like that and we're still getting people calling me, wanting to do it and we're doing discovery calls and getting them into the program and things like this…

And I'm like, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Right? And so again, those doubts start crowding in an event last night and then this morning, this is the experience that I had and it's not Super Sammy to you, but I'm sharing it because it may be someone out there is experiencing what I did.

So I finally am getting a shower.

Thank goodness for baby wipes, but I'm finally getting a shower and I finally got a piece, a moment of peace and everybody settled and I'm getting things ready to take a shower and I'm getting things set up in the bathroom and I'm just…

My thoughts are just kind of just wafting a little bit and they're thinking about the last few days.

I'm finally getting a moment to sort of process and stepped down from survival mode and being in mother mode to Connie mode and my thoughts are just kind of all popcorning of things...

I'm learning and gratitude for the blessings that he's given us and sustaining us and all the good that's coming. All the service that we've experienced in all the good things that are happening and how all these different things have been working.

These routines that I've had and it's like it's like little movie vignettes are flashing in my mind of my emergency binder and the quick tub of things that we would need and the packing that we knew we needed to do and the hotel and securing that and knowing where we needed to go and knowing what needed to be happening and knowing who to text and all of these and and family prayer and scripture and all of these things that we were doing and enacting in just a matter of 48 hours that were all happening.

Enrolling in, moving forward and staying calm and making decisions and then like, I don't know how to describe it, but this fierce thought...

I don't know what the other word to use, but it was like a lioness. This fierce thought just roared up inside me of, “This works, this works and this is your personal purpose and you are to help people with their personal purpose and not just their purpose, but they're calling their leadership to tell them and teach them these principles and practices because this is what works…”

And I can't even describe this to you. It wasn't that other principles and practices don't work. It wasn't that at all. It wasn't that everybody else is doing like something that doesn't work.

It wasn't at all. It was this reassurance for me that I really had found my personal purpose and that while I was trying to help everybody else find theirs and move forward in, there's that. I knew my driver and I knew what I was to do, but in a deep and layered way that I can't explain.

It was like this click like this asurety I knew the people that I need to work with. I knew what I needed to help them do. I could see in my mind's eye that confidence, that leadership, that clarity, that they were going to contribute and make a difference in significant ways.

I mean I could feel this in my salt and then it's hard to describe, but I knew like all of these principles that I've been teaching these organizational principles, these routines, these healthy connection principles, the joy principles, the create a life plan and having that blueprint, the rhythms and routines, the time management, the financial peace and prosperity.

All of those principles work and even though I've seen it, I've known it, it just was solid in my soul and my mind flashed back in the last 24 hours, 48 hours, how I would go for the financial peace and those things were in place and I knew that I could do this and I took care of anything that came up that needed to be taken care of it.

I knew how to do that easily. Simply because I had those processes in place and the spiritual aspect, they'll sacred spaces.

We created them in our home. We created them in this apartment, in our news, quote unquote home this apartment and in the other person's house and keeping the scripture reading going and the prayer and the how we need you to the family counsel, all of that.

That all came into play and the joy keeping everything with the joy and the gratitude in those principles and those techniques that I went right to to know how to keep a stable and confident and happy and that I was able to do the fitness piece.

All of those fitness pieces that I'd put into play, I had energy. I was sustained. I could go long hours and I still was good. I knew what things I needed to eat and not eat...

I knew what I needed to do in order to feel healthy, to get the rest that I needed and to have it count. I had all of those processes in place and it was so core, so clear and I knew. I knew that what I was doing was significant.

I knew that what I'm putting out there matters and I knew that what I am teaching is just not a nice little thing and it's a wonderful little thing to put together and wow. I found some good life hacks and some great things.

No more than that. I knew that what I was doing was soul filling, purposeful and that I was doing exactly what I needed to do and for me over the last few years, in several years I would say, and especially the last year, that particular knowledge that would start to sort of emerge and start to sort of bloom had been intentionally thwarted and stopped down and cut down by others.

And so for me, if you've ever been in this situation where you've doubted your abilities or your driver and your purpose or other people have made you second guess or whatever. Even though you keep coming back to it and you feel like, “I know this is true,” but then it makes you doubt.

I know for me that this morning I needed that experience, that moment, that sacred space to be able to know surely with the surety...

I've never had before in my soul that what I am doing is the right thing and matters and will make a difference and so the difference truly, if you are struggling with that knowledge for yourself, I plead with you to pray for that experience and then watch for it when it comes because mine came in the thick of a fire.

Mine came when I least expected it, least expected it...

Finally, we're settled in this apartment and I'm getting ready to just get cleaned up.

I mean really that is not the moment... It's out in a beautiful nature place, or for me, it's the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints. We have temples, and it's a temple for me.

It's beautiful and serene and it's gorgeous and it's quiet and it's clean and this is not what was in my frame of mind of where I would have this moment and this is a sacred space for me.

I even doubted whether or not I should share this, but I feel strongly to share it. Hoping that it will help and inspire someone else who is going along that timeline and feeling those doubts within their soul.

Those...That hymn that says sorrows in in the heart that, that no one can see.

Oh, I can't think of it right now, but sorrow, sorrow, hidden that the I can't see and I didn't know that this rumbling in my soul was still there of these doubts and wondering.

And now I'm sure I'll have other moments to doubt. I'm sure there'll be other things that will come and hit me in waves, but I know that I have hit a level of sureness that cannot be doubted and that I cannot turn back on and that I know for assurity that makes me turn and face forward, head high and sureness in my step.

The competence in my soul to speak the way he wants me to speak, to do what he would have me do and to touch and contribute and to help the lives of those that I am to touch and help and contribute and work with.

And I know that as you move forward in your personal purpose, you will have that same experience in your own rights of knowing who you are, what you're to do, and who you are specifically to help and hopefully that helps you in some way today.

Remember, I love you so and we are good.

Do not worry about us, but please keep prayers coming for the danger and the communities and know that as you do, that you are making a difference because we have seen it.

I love you so my dear friends and I hope and pray that you have gotten something that will help you move forward in your life today. Remember, you've got this with Balance Redefined.

You got it. Thanks for listening and remember to rate and subscribe. And if you are feeling the need for real balance in your life, get your free five step life plan, and get started today! Just go to conniesokol.com/download.