Hanna:
Welcome to Episode 22!
Let’s Talk Dirty.
Before we get into the dirty today I wanna tell you the sparkly clean and exciting thought that I’ve been having. I’ve been growing the belief that I have more for you each week.
I am always like listen clients and future clients, you’ve got more. You have more to give yourself. And this year I have more too. I have lots more to give to you, those of you that haven't even committed to Coaching yet, but you have committed to learning from me or at least entertaining the thoughts I share here on this show. I have so much more for you for free because I love you and want you to have as much as you want up front. Your epic life is built on epic beliefs and not on all the dirt and garbage your brain feeds you and this work is for more than once per week or once in a while. This work is a daily celebration of your human capacity to think about what you think about and I am going to show up more to shaman you through the darkness as much as I can.
With that commitment to give you more, I have abandoned my schedule for posting these episodes. If you’ve been listening you may have noticed that last year when I started this podcast I committed to releasing an episode every Sunday. Which was great. I did that. Woop woop commitment.
And per my 2022 goal of releasing 80 new episodes this year, that means that some weeks you’re gonna be getting 2 or even 3 episodes. And in light of this new massive outpouring of value that I’m committed to giving you, I’ve given myself permission within that goal to decide each week, when I’m going to release the shows. So I guess this is a heads up of sorts. Heads up it’s about to get massively valuable for you to show up here. And heads up it’s gunna be a weekly surprise when you get that value here.
Now, if you’re like me, you might be like okay but is there even more than more?
And the answer is why yes there is more than more. I am also committed to writing love letters to my email list and posting daily on social media. So here’s what you can do to get more than more this year: pause this episode and go follow me @hannakokovai on instagram and sign up for my e-love letter list, which is laser coaching to your inbox from me with love and intention for your big big big moves. You can sign up for that via my website OR there should be a link in the show notes.
OK let’s get into this dirt today. You’re here if you’re like, “I don’t have anything to celebrate.”
Like sure I can think of something that was nice this past year. But besides the kids birthdays, like I dunno what there is to celebrate. And beyond that, why do I need to celebrate? Why are you even asking me to celebrate? What the heck does that even mean? Like I celebrated my friend graduating her masters program. I celebrated my parents anniversary. I celebrated not getting Covid. But what else is there?
So let’s start there, why would you be interested in finding things to celebrate?
I ask my clients every week what they are celebrating, or honoring. Alot of them dread it. Haha. My one client Anna is like Ughhh, I know it’s coming but I get anxiety about you asking me! And I’m always like holy shit girl wny is this such a problem? And the reality is, she's just the most vocal about her distaste for me asking her to find things to celebrate weekly. My other client Meg rolls her eyes and sighs. Almost every woman I work with feels uncomfortable in some way trying to figure out what the hell they have to celebrate each week.
And im just over here like Muhahahha, welcome to coaching, aka being uncomfortable alot.
So firstly, let me tell you why I think it’s important and necessary.
Women tend to do a lot. I am surrounded by lots of ambitious women, right? Goals, and hustle and kids and parties, and keeping things straight and managing their household and career and they still don’t think they are doing enough.
Not celebrating accomplishments and what you are doing week to week is growing that feeling of not enoughness.
And that is a travesty in my eyes. It is a tragedy if we have a tool to break the cycle and we don’t want ot use it. The cycle of doing more to prove ourselves and our worth and then not noticing what we’ve been doing and then trying to do more to prove that we are good…and on and on. A celebration throws a wrench in that cycle. In a good ass way! We need a wrench to get us off this wheel of doing more to prove we are good enough. You are good enough right now and I want you to prove that to yourself by celebrating. Acknowledging. Honoring.
I think celebrating is necessary if we want to evolve because it shows our brains that we can go forward, not back. We don’t need to try to change everything to look better, or make more money or lose more weight unless we want to, because we’ve created stuff to have an emotional orgasm over aready. And the fun thing that happens when we start intentionally celebrating ourselves, is that our brains go oh, I kinda like this emotional orgasm, more please. And when ask for more, we look for more. We find the places to create things to celebrate within our days and weeks and it get’s those of us that find stagnancy comforting, into a new type of comfort, where breathing life into our days by honoring what we create and looking for things to honor that we’ve created, on our own, is just the freakin best. But like I said, it takes getting through that awkward phase of ugh I dunno what there is to celebrate. And beyond that, the discomfort of celebrating accomplishments that society would never tell us are celebration-worthy. Like doing something uncomfortable on purpose in service of your goals. Like failing miserably at mom life and not beating yourself up. Like being a good friend. Or putting the toilet seat down for the 4000th time and not making a big deal out of it. Thats me.
But I think that celebrating ourselves, for the stupid sounding little things, that no one else would celebrate, is a practice of building self confidence. Self trust. And building the muscle of turning the negativity bias that all humans innately live with, on it’s head.
So when I am talking about celebrating yourself I just mean energetically, honoring the thing you did or accomplished. And an energetic honoring moment or moments is going to look different for everyone. But I will tell you what it’s not going to look like: balloons and cake and gifts wrapped in teddybear paper. Because none of my grown ass women badass friends or colleagues or clients give a flying fart about that shit now. Really, think about it. Is that what you like now? Or has no one ever asked you what you’d like so it just defaults to that and you think you like that. In my opinion, most people’s ideal celebration of self is going to look like exactly what feels like a celebration to you and only you. Ok maybe I was too quick to assume, because I do have a friend who likely would go to dairy queen for an ice cream cake in celebration because she truly loves ice cream cake. But think about this. We don’t usually ask people how they’d like to celebrate. We just have a surprise party and bring desserts. On the record: I hate surprises and I don’t usually care for dessert, at least not any of the desserts people bring to surprise parties. A celebration to me is a feeling and it can be acted out in a variety of ways. For me it’s sometimes quiet time by myself or with one or two other people. Thats what I enjoy most. Maybe something outside. Or getting pampered like getting a massage or my nails done or going to the sauna. But the point is that a celebration isn’t what you do, it’s a feeling and an intentionality, and it’s certainly not doing something that represents societal norms about what celebration looks like. There can be an act that you do, like buying yourself a gift, baking cookies, creating art, going shopping, singing, writing, dancing, having sex, whatever, taking a bath, making essential oil blends, gardening, participating in a sound bath, giving yourself a facial with all the products from world market in a moment of weakness the other day whatever no big deal…whatever you want…and that thing you do is done intentionally IN HONOR OF whatever you’re celebrating.
Like yesterday I celebrated flossing. I hate flossing. Seriously I can’t stand it and I am working on it and getting coaching on it. But regardless, I flossed yesterday and I immediately went to the fridge, got a bubble water, filled a glass with frozen pineapple, poured the bubble water over the pineapple chunks, sat on the coach, turned on an episode of survivor and said, CHEERS, To me, this deliciousness and relaxation session right now is in honor of my being an adult who flosses, go me. And I kept cheersing myself, and saying, to me, to flossing.
It sounds totally apeshit crazy, right?
But guess what I did twice today…flossed! Haha!
Now thats not the intention of celebrating, to like trick ourselves into doing more to be more worthy, but that’s kinda naturally what tends to happen. Your brain is like ok good, it’s good to find and create more reasons to celebrate me. Your brain goes looking and your brain goes creating.
And maybe you’re the naysayer who is like why would I celebrate something so asinine like that that I have to do, that I should do. Like being an adult isn’t something to celebrate, we are supposed to do that it doesn’t deserve recognition. Like we don’t need to just feed our ego with how amazing we are bc we flossed.
To you I say: that’s not true, is it? That we have to do adult things. It’s not true that we should, or even that we’re supposed to. That’s just what you decided to think. What I decide to think is that celebrating being a human and having a human experience of making a decision to do something even though it’s not fun or exciting for me because I think, I decide, it’s a good idea to do it anyways, well, that’s a great reason to celebrate. I am the keeper of my time and energy. I choose how to spend both. And that power, to decide, is something to celebrate. I’m stickin to that.
Now, if you never celebrate yourself and you feel like you don’t have time for that or it doesn’t really sound important, and now you’re like hearing me and you’re like beating yourself up about it, I want you to know it’s not your fault. If you have a 3,000 point to do list that’s never done, and it’s always about someone else and you get somewhere and then you’re immediately on to the next thing, and you think there’s nothing to celebrate because nothings ever done or good enough, that isn’t your fault so do not perpetuate the not enoughness by blaming yourself now.
Not helpful.
Ok, this is about how we are socialized to put achievement on a pedestal and see value in people by what they’ve got that’s bigger and better and more sparkly. We are also socialized as people-pleasers, which means that we are constantly looking for validation from others, and what we think about ourselves isn’t what matters. And of course if any of you are practiced in the art of people-pleasing, it is a never ending challenge right because in truth you can’t please other people. So it’s just a forever battle with yourself.
You ever notice when you sit with a bunch of women who are chatting it’s all like, in ugly I’m too fat I didn’t do this I can’t do that because this I need to change this that and the other thing I hate this about myself.
And there’s little to no discussion about the things we’re joyful about and proud of…UNLESS you’re pregnant, engaged or it’s your birthday. And even when it’s you’re birthday you’re kinda like only half ass celebrating because you’re still like, I’m uglier, fatter, can’t do this that and the other thing anymore and I’m mad about getting older.
Let me tangent here for one second about aging. This is not me coaching you this is just me going full personal opinion mode here: Sifting through bullshit is kinda my job but I also personally love to understand more about why I think how I think and when I turned 34 I realized that I had been telling people that I was 34 already for a whole year, and so I decided to do 33 again that year instead. I was like I’m going to be 33 this year, I missed 33 so that’s what I wanna do. And I thought this was innocent and fun, and it was those things, but then I noticed that I was dreading the jump from fake 33 to 35. Like I didn’t want to be 35. I was actually surprised at myself a bit.
And started to really explore what the fuck the problem was with aging and what I found was that it wasn’t just me. Which I totally knew, right, but i guess it was more like, oh my god, it’s all of us. None of us are immune to this fear of aging and anti-celebration of birthdays after like 21. Because our culture fetishizes youth and demonizes old age. I’m not oblivious so I already knew this but I had never personally had the experience of wanting to stop aging. So I looked around and saw that this celebration of youngess and poo pooing of oldness is everywhere, not just the obvious places like fashion and magazines and tv. The older you become, the more society punishes and disenfranchises us, especially as women. So the little song and dance I do sometimes about honoring your wrinkles and letting the droopy arm skin and achy joints be a reminder of a life well lived and gratitude for being alive is only helpful if we can also notice how absolutely difficult it is to believe positive things about aging. It is hard work for all of us to believe that aging is worth celebrating. And because that was the only thing we traditionally celebrated as children, it becomes equally difficult to celebrate anything as we age, period.
Inspirational quotes about aging with grace and loving getting older and celebrating things into our 40s, 50s, 60s, usually don’t land. Celebrate your kids. Right? And if you don’t have kids well you’re shit out of luck. So my marketing coach Simone Soel says that aging gracefully is a scam. The whole idea of aging with grace is a scam.
So I decided on celebrating aging with grit.
So in the vein of celebration, if you’re with me, we can add aging with grit to our list of things to celebrate. Aging in a time where aging is constructed by our culture to be difficult and not a ton of fun. I am aging with grit and I’m gonna drink my bubble water with pineapple chunks and celebrate the hell out of me. And I hope you join me.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk tangent.
Now, let me talk a little more about what do I actually mean when I say “something” to celebrate.
I don’t mean something that randomly occurs that you have no part in or control over. What I am looking for is not like an event that happened to you. Like I'm celebrating that there was a rainbow. Thats different, because you didn’t have any part in making the rainbow. Sorry, you didn’t. Seeing a rainbow is something you could be gratuitous towards.
What I want you to notice are the things, big or small, that you had a hand in creating. And truly that is often more things than you think. It’s every feeling you ever have, and every action you take. It’s every thought you think and every time you are willing to learn, lean in, and grow. It’s the money you have in your account, the roof over your head, the way you organize your time and how you teach your children. And the celebration of those things is in the intentional noticing the part you played in having the life you have right now. With thought work you’ll start to understand that everything you have in your life right now was created by some collection of thoughts you had to have. And challenging yourself to find something to celebrate strengthens our ability to see our power.
Celebrating on purpose helps us to build the muscle of thought awareness because it forces us to see, “how’d I do that”? And then, wow, Look at me go.
So this is great because if you’re really stuck in the thought “no I truly don’t have anything to celebrate, my life is not great right now”. I promise you I still have a way for you to celebrate.
You guys we can see where thinking I don't have anything to celebrate is a dirty little thought right? Haha I don’t think I even mentioned this awareness yet but you guys see it right?
You think, “i dont have anything to celebrate”
You feel defeated or uninspired or bummed out and then you don’t look for or create anything and that just puts you right back into the cycle of having nothing to celebrate forever and ever and ever and that’s sad. Yeah? I don’t want to spend my life reinforcing the belief that my life’s just a bunch of uninspired mediocrity that I don’t have the power to make orgasmic. Boo.
Ok, so here you are like but seriously I dunno what to celebrate though.
You’re going to flex your brain muscle and tell it how to think, and you’re going to celebrate the act of thinking on purpose.
It’s literal magic, you ready?
How to make something to celebrate even when there’s nothing:
Take the thing that you are most upset by, right now.
And figure out what you’re thinking that’s making you upset about it.
Then work on coming up with a new thought about it.
Celebrate the ability you have change your perspective.
Ok let’s do those steps together. Get a pen if you’re able.
Write down the thing you’re most upset by right now.
Now what is it that you’re thinking about the thing that’s causing you to feel upset?
Like let’s say you wrote, I’m upset by my coworker.
And what you’re thinking about your coworker that’s making you upset is “She’s so bossy and such a know it all”
Ok so the next step is to work on coming up with something new to think about your coworker that makes you feel better than you do now.
So maybe it’s “It’s possible my co-worker isn’t self aware enough to realize she’s acting bossy.” or “I wonder why she acts that way” or “She’s not my boss so it kinda doesn’t matter how she acts.” or “I get to interpret how she acts however I want.” or “I’d like to work on not interpreting how she speaks as bossy.” or “ She’s not bossy, she’s just different in her delivery of info.” or “I totally get what it’s like to be a woman in a corporate world just trying to feel heard.”
Ok come up with lot’s of options and decide which one feels like it’s true for you and also better than the first thought.
Look at you go, using thought awareness and your fully functioning human brain to work on changing how you feel. Celebrate that. Go you.
If you guys like the idea of working on how you think and feel and being in control of that yourself, all the time, I’ll give you something to celebrate: come work with me in my private coaching program and we can do this allll day. And the first thing we’ll celebrate is your bravery and commitment to yourself. Woop woop. Pineapple bubble water cheers.
So listen I am going to give you one more example of something non-traditional that I'm celebrating.
I learned something new and big this year. And now I get to celebrate putting it into practice every single week if I want to. Learning something new, even if it’s something you didn’t intend to learn, was created by you, right? You had to think thoughts that created the exact scenario where someone was able to come into your brain space and teach you something. Or some event was able to be analyzed by you and you were able to teach you something. And you had to think a curious thought, a thought of wonder, a thought of I can see something new here to be had.
So there’s just the act of learning to celebrate right?
This year I learned the difference between hustling for my goals and giving 100% to my goals.
There is a difference. And it’s in how I feel. I learned to notice that when I feel desperate or needy or not good enough unless I succeed at something, that’s hustling. For me that always shows up in not taking care of myself, making sacrifices that I don’t want to make and being on overdrive all the time. Like can’t put my phone down for four seconds to say hello to my lover kinda overdrive. That is the hustle. It usually sounds like “I have to do this.” or “I need to do this, leave me alone.”
And then I have the other feelings, also created by me like determination, resourcefulness, self love, confidence, all of those….and those come from giving 100% to my goals. Thinking the thought that I am enough right now, and working really smart and diligently on my goals is something I want to do, not something I have to do to prove my worth or feel good about myself. It shows up in trying things I’ve never tried before, failing and then learning and concocting new ways to try again. And it looks like getting the support I need from my coaches and believing bigger things with more focus and deciding that I don’t want to stop until it’s done because I can enjoy the process for as long as it takes and I celebrate the process. That also definitely shows up like turning my phone OFF to say hello, resting and taking time with people not thinking about my business and all and not freaking out.
I am celebrating the understanding I have of the difference between what it feels like to hustle and what it feels like to give it my all. I am celebrating moving through feelings, and seeing them as signs of where I need to change how I’m thinking about my goals, and about myself.
So a lot of my celebrations look like congratulating myself on my ability to create feelings, process feelings and identify the difference between thoughts that make me feel good and thoughts that make me feel bad.
I know that doesn’t sound like the type of thing we’re conditioned to celebrate. Right? We wanna celebrate things like getting a raise, having a birthday, losing weight, getting engaged, having a baby.
Do celebrate those things. Like be so happy and excited for those, you did create them. AND if we’re waiting around for those big things we might only feel like there’s something to celebrate once a year, or once a lifetime!
And let’s celebrate giving 100% and asking for help. As women, let’s notice when we aren’t asking for what we want and need from other capable and free willed people. I saw this quote on instagram the other day it said “Nobody hustles harder than a woman who doesn’t like asking people for anything.” And in the comments it was like cheering and Yessing and woohoooing. And I was like wait I’m confused. Are we celebrating the hustle? And are we celebrating women who think it’s weak or annoying or unbecoming to receive support or ask for what they need or delegate? Because I’m not going to woohoo that. I want to be a woman and see women who can give 100% because we know the importance of outsourcing everything we can when we can. And not make it mean that I’m weak or needy or not enough. I want to have the time and the energy to celebrate my accomplishments because I’ve learned how to untether myself from the hustle narrative, the grind, and make strategic decisions around my goals with a clear and brilliant mind to seek the help I need and make that mean that I am perfect.
Who wants to do that with me?
Make asking for help part of the program of you giving 100% to your life. And ditch theburnout of the hustle.
And I have one more thing to suggest celebrating: Who wants to celebrate failure with me?
Not doing the thing, getting to your goal yet, trying and flopping. Failure can’t really happen if you aren’t doing anything, right?
When I go to the gym, my trainer always says this thing when we’re doing weight training, “Failure is Success today.” Failure is success, and what she means by that is like you go hard until you literally can’t physically go anymore. Like add that extra 2 lbs today, do the extra reps today and if you literally cannot do it, you’ve reached failure, you know you gave 100%. And I like to think about that with the things I want to celebrate. That failures are successes. We were raised to believe that an A+ is success. Finishing first and getting gold is success. But what if we have it all wrong. What if not being there yet, or ever, is the real success ? It’s having somewhere to go, to build on, to learn resilience and courage from. It’s going for failure on purpose and looking at life completely differently. I am here giving my best and not getting an A and I’m thriving through this. I have something to takeaway, and to add to, if I want. Doing things perfect or “right” is boring, it’s just regurgitating what someone else told you to do or showed you to do. But giving 100% authentic effort and failing, that is something to celebrate. The opposite of an A is not an F, it’s an N. Nothing. N for nothing. Doing nothing is not really something to celebrate, haha. Anyone can do nothing. But giving it a shot, trying something you’ve never done or done well before, pulling yourself when it’s rough or you feel confused or overwhelmed and you push through that, to give your version of 100% right now, that’s your work, that’s phenomenal work.
I want to suggest that failure is success not just in the gym when you’re lifting weights, but when you're in your life, lifting yourself up.
Think about that.
So let’s get out of these old stories and unuseful conditioning and decide there’s always something to celebrate so that we can build self trust, more confidence, see ourselves for who we are and what we’ve created and open the floodgates of all the celebrations yet to come!
I’m celebrating you guys today and every day. Thank you for being here to celebrate our brains with me.
Hey, it’s 2022 and it’s time to celebrate something big that you create for yourself. I know that’s just like, my opinion man, but also I am standing by that as a truth I’m holding for you.
Life Coaching gives you someone to see what you can’t see…including when you’re missing the celebrations. You’re ready to have someone in your corner to ask for help and to look at things differently for you. So come sign up for coaching. Be one of the 50 women I get to witness transform their lives in 2022. I get to coach 50 new people this year! If one of them is you, sign up for a consultation right now and we can celebrate together.