Rebooting Your Life: When, Why & How to Hit the Restart Button

If you are a new passenger , welcome , welcome , welcome ! If you're a previous passenger , for over the last three years , also welcome , welcome , welcome ! You might have noticed that all of the episodes suddenly disappeared and you're probably wondering: Frances , what is going on ? Well , my dear passengers , let me tell you .

I realized that when I first wanted to make this podcast , I wanted to be 100% honest , 100% blunt and 100% raw , but then , somewhere along the way , I forgot about what I wanted and I started to focus more on being more professional quote , unquote , and , yeah , the podcast just didn't feel like myself anymore .

And when the opportunity arose primarily because I was really broke and I wasn't able to pay for Buzzsprout , so that way the podcast could continue to have all the previous episodes I realized that I had a great opportunity in my hands . I had the ability and the opportunity to restart or relaunch the podcast and start all over again .

And you know , a lot of my friends and family were very confused and they were also very worried . I mean , it would mean that I would lose all of my stats , it would mean that I would lose all of the 46 episodes that I had already recorded over the last three years . But I knew that I had to do it .

I just felt it in me that it was time for me to let go of all of those episodes and of all of that lessons that I learned in the past and start something completely from scratch .

The great news is that with relaunching the podcast , I'm able to re-visualize and reimagine how I want everything to go , which is why I finally get the chance to release blog posts with the podcast episodes , and it's something that I have been wanting to do for a while .

So if you're curious , just know that with every release from now on , you're going to be getting a blog post . All you got to do is follow my website at TheSelfGrowthTrain . com - again , the website is TheSelfGrowthTrainPodcast . com .

Well , my dear passengers , the time has come to put on your seat belts as we dive into our first stop, that That is the topic of the day , and today's topic is restarting . Restarting is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as resuming after interruption .

I think that's a great definition to have , just because whenever I spoke about restarting the podcast , everybody was telling me "Oh oh my ! , you're starting from zero . You're starting from scratch and in a way , I kind of am . But what is very empowering is that I am starting from a simple interruption .

It means that I get to keep all of the lessons and all of the knowledge that I have acquired over the last three years and just simply make it into something completely new and upgraded . hat today's episode , my main resource is an article that I found on Psychology Today by one of their psychologists , Samantha Stein .

Now , the title of the article can be a little misleading , because they're talking about "starting over in midlife , and today I'm talking about restarting in whatever point of your life you're at . But don't worry , because the lessons that she talks about can also be applied to you and wherever you are in your life .

But how do we determine when it's time to hit that restart button ? Well , it's quite simple -when we're facing failure . I know you sometimes want to keep trying and trying and trying and trying , but then when you do , it just keeps getting worse .

If that's the case for you , as it has been for me in the past , then maybe it's time to hit that restart button and it's not going to be something bad . In fact , I'm able to use this podcast as a perfect example . Over the last three years , I have faced numerous successes .

Part of it has been due to the fact that people want to grow and they are looking for podcasts or resources that will allow them to do that . But if I sit down and I really think about it as a podcaster , I have failed tremendously in the basics .

I'm talking about self-discipline , consistency and also overall content , especially because , according to what I want to do , I want to make sure that my podcast episodes have personal stories , opinions and research , and the reality is that most of my episodes did not follow through with this and that was driving me nuts .

So now that I'm able to sit down and see how I was failing , with self-compassion and with self-awareness , I'm able to say "you know what ? I kept trying to do things over and over again .

But really what I needed to do was just stop and restart , not add new ways to try to do the thing , because by adding new ways to something that was already failing , I was just continuing the pattern and sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn't work right . So that's why it's important to know the difference between adding and restarting .

There's some instances when you just have to add new ways to try things , which I guess for the first year that was the way that I should have done things for the podcast .

But then there's times , like now , three years after , where I realize no , I can't keep adding because I'm not having success , so why am I going to keep trying to add it when I can just restart and reset myself for success ?

Because I'm motivated , I know now the things that didn't work , so I can focus on things that I haven't tried before , but I can also create something completely new along the process and I'm not being held back by previous episodes .

I'm not being held back by the previous ways that I did things and I'm also not being held back by the previous expectations that I had of myself that I was not being successful at , and you know all of this is covered on her article . But the thing that really struck me was when she talked about the importance of defining what success is to you today .

Not what it was three years ago , not what it's going to mean to you five years from now , but what it means to you today . And I think that's so empowering because I know from my personal experience with the podcast again , I'm going to keep using the podcast as the example for this episode .

I know the goals that I had with the podcast back in the day and I know that goals that I have with the podcast now and they are a thousand times different . Why ? Because I'm no longer focused on the outside validation , I'm no longer focused on the statistics . I'm no longer focused on how many views , and how many downloads .

Don't get me wrong , those are important , especially as a podcaster , because it gives you visibility . But for me , what I want to make sure of, and this is my simple goal - I want to make sure that you don't feel alone . I want to make sure that whoever listens to the podcast can say "wow , today I felt heard . Today I felt validated .

Today I felt seen , and that has nothing to do with statistics and that has nothing to do with data .

That has all to do with what I'm able to provide to you , and part of that also has to do with my personality , because I want to make sure that I have a welcoming demeanor where people are able to talk to me and say , "ey , Frances , like that episode really helped me . So that is what success looks like for me .

It looks like people finding comfort in my podcast . It looks like people sharing my podcast because they want somebody else to feel that comfort , and it took me three years to realize that that's what I wanted . So if you're at a place in your life when you're like I don't know what success looks like for me today , figure it out .

Take the time to sit down , write it down whatever works for you and figure it out , because if not , you're just going to keep striving over whatever society or whatever perceptions you think you need to be achieving , and this might not necessarily be true .

The last thing that I want to talk about is a point that she makes of determining what you want to spend your time on . Again , with the example of the podcast , I used to be like . I'm so passionate about the podcast , I'm so motivated by the podcast . I love the podcast . Well , did I spend time on it ? Absolutely not .

I use to put it back in the back burner . Why ? I don't know . Like sometimes it was because of YOLO , sometimes it was because of FOMO , and sometimes it was because of another four letter word .

I don't know what else to say Like I just I wanted to do things that were not the podcast , not because I didn't care about the podcast , but because I had this fear that I was missing out , that I was not living life and all of this stuff . But now I'm able to centralize myself and say what do I want to spend time on ?

And if my goal is that I want to provide comfort for people , I need to spend time on research .

I need to spend time reading , I need to spend time reaching out to people , hearing their stories , validating what they have to say , and I also need to spend time with myself and take care of myself , because that's something that I haven't been doing over the last three years and it has really affected everything , especially with the podcast being about self growth

. So I don't know . I think that this particular topic of restarting is something that I'm quite passionate about .

You know we go again with that word , but I am passionate about it and I think that , wherever you are in your life whether it be a relationship that is not working , whether it be a job that you're just like man , like I cannot wait to get out of here - think about it .

It might be time to hit that restart button and remember yes , you're failing , but no , you're not going to restart from scratch per se . You're going to have all the knowledge and all the experiences and all the opportunities that you got to live and make something completely new if you choose to do it . And the reality is we only have one life .

So why do we keep waiting until the moment passes ? Let's not , let's do better for ourselves . Let's take the moment to say you know what ? I want better now . Not tomorrow - I want it now . Well , my dear passengers , the time has come for the last stop of the day - recap time .

Today's episode discusses restarting , which is just to resume after interruption . Now we know that the way to restart is when we're facing failure . We do need to know the difference between adding and restarting . We add when there is some success happening . We don't add when you keep failing .

Instead , we hit that restart button so that way we can motivate ourselves to do better and to create something completely new . But part of that is determining what success is to us right now .

Not what it looked like yesterday or what it might look like in the future , but what it looks like right this second , because by doing so , you're able to choose what to spend your time on . Remember , self-growth is an endless journey towards self-improvement . However , you don't ever have to do it alone .

My goal as your tour guide is to guide you with the best intentions and the best research available . Make sure to follow me on Facebook , Instagram and TikTok at the Self-Growth Train Podcast , and to also follow the new website , TheSelfGrowthTrainPodcast . com . As always , all the resources used today have been added to the episode's description .

Well , until the next stop , dear passengers , safe travels . Bye !