What if?

#136 - (Edited) What if

Tue, Apr 15, 2025 8:27AM • 12:39

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Freedom, adventure, business travel, self-care, journal prompts, pleasure coach, what if, action plan, negative thoughts, positive mindset, green lights, coaching, life goals, podcast, inspiration.

SPEAKERS

Speaker 1, Speaker 2, Emma Lovell

Emma Lovell 00:00

Emma, do you want to live a life of freedom and adventure? Are you wanting more than the daily grind? Me too. Welcome to the Emma Lovell, show a place where we talk about living a life you love. Now I'm your host, Emma Lovell, and my number one value is freedom. I've spent the last 14 years running a business and traveling the world, and now I take my husband and toddler along for the adventure too. It's possible, and I know you can create a life doing what you truly love as well. This podcast will inspire, motivate and encourage you to go after your dreams, to create a life you love and to live it now, not wait for a time and or someday in the future, I'll be sharing episodes weekly about how I harmonize business travel and self care. I'll also bring on incredible guests to share their journeys, the wins, the challenges, and how they're creating a life they love. Let's jump in and get dreaming. This is a space for you to manifest a life you love. I would like to acknowledge and recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first peoples of this place, now known as Australia. I am grateful for the continuing care of the land, waterways and skies where I work, live, listen, learn and play from here on, you can bear country and from wherever you are listening, I pay my respects to the elders past and present. Welcome to the episode today. It's

Speaker 1 01:27

called What If. What if, like, what if? What what if? What if

Emma Lovell 01:32

you don't know what this episode's about? Or, what if I just make this up on the spot, which is what I always do, full disclosure, however, we'll dive in in a second. My name is Emma Lovell. I'm your host, and I am a pleasure coach, so I'm helping people to combine business travel and self care. And what I'm giving you here is one of my journal prompts in my on my website, you can head to Emma lovell.au and download my journal prompts to start to plan a life that you love, to live your own pleasure life. And I wanted to share these few I've done another episode about I am, which is one of my journal prompts. I've also done an episode about, wouldn't it be cool if, and now we're doing what if? So these are kind of the three that I use at the start of a lot of my retreats. I use them in coaching sessions with clients, and it really just is a way to start to get things get out of our heads where you would do get stuck, and into, I don't know, our subconscious, or into our hearts, or to think about, yeah, from another place. So there's the answers are within you. Totally believe that as a coach, it's my job to pull that out and to help guide, but ultimately that you have to do the action. You have to take the action. But sometimes we don't know the answer. We were not answering asking the right questions. I'm going to ask you the question, what if? Now? What if can go one of two ways? Um, with all of my journal prompts, what I recommend is five minute timer. Put on a song, put on some music, generally something instrumental, just to kind of get into the flow. And it could be high energy instrumental or chill or piano music, whatever works for you. Silence is great too, but tends to, I tend to, I like the music, so five minutes music of your choice, prompt at the top of the page, handwritten is best. What if?

Speaker 2 03:42

Now, what if? What if it doesn't work? What if it all goes wrong?

Emma Lovell 03:47

What if I'm not good at what I'm doing? What if I fail? What if the book doesn't come out? What if the business I don't know collapses? What if somebody gets hurt? What if I get hurt? What if see it could go down a negative path. It could also go. What if it works? What if I just took a chance? What if I followed my dreams? What if I wrote the book? What if I started the business? What if I went on that trip? What if I met that person? What if I spend time with my kid? What if I took the day off? That one's coming up quite a bit for me. So, but you see how it can go and so, but I tend to use it to first. I'm not very I'm not a negative person. I tend to be thought of as a positive person. But the reality is, these negative thoughts are still there, the worries are still there, the concerns are there. So bringing them out, voicing them actually helps us to address them. And so it's particularly when I do this with my retreat training days, I'm like, I actively want you to think about what could go wrong. What if I don't sell the spots? What if nobody comes? What if I have to pay the venue and then nobody comes? What if I What if somebody gets injured? What if there's a hurricane in a place we're going? What if there's what if somebody gets mad at me? What if somebody wants a refund and I get them to write down everything that is the what if, and then what we end up having is this list of worries, fears, questions that we can find an answer to. So it's like, what if it What if it doesn't sell out? Well, you actually don't need it to sell out to be profitable. What if I don't sell any spots? Well, then you cancel it, and depending on the venue, you book a venue and understand the cancelation policy. So for some of them, within a month, you could still get your full 100% deposit back. What if somebody gets injured? Well, that's why they need travel insurance. That's why you need insurance. That's why the venues need insurance. But first and foremost, I always recommend travel insurance. What if also tell them there's also an event way that's fine to say you take responsibility for your actions. So if the injury were caused by something at the thing, but if they were like, I don't know, going for a run like I did down a dirt path and hurt themselves, well, that's unfortunate, but not your fault. What if someone doesn't pay? Well, they sign terms and conditions, so they have to pay. And you could seek action anyway. There's an answer to everything. So what we end up getting is an action plan. So what if I fail? Well, it's like, I love this quote. It makes me want to cry. My friend got it for me in a bangle. But it's, what if I fall on my darling, but what if you fly? Oh, makes me want to cry. So it's like, yeah, this feels like, of course, I'm currently thinking that, what if I can't pay my bills this month? What if I don't make all the money? What if I don't get to go to South America or Central America, which we were planning to do, and now we've canceled that trip. Well, I'll go another time. What if I go and we get detained? Which 1am I more concerned about going and having a good time, or going and getting potentially not getting back? Will I choose to go another time when that is not so much a reality. It just helps to bring these fears that are already within you and possibly blocking you from doing what you want to do anyway, and just putting down on paper. And sometimes it's like, what, what's the worst thing can happen. And I did this at a retreat, and it was very triggering for a couple of people. But, you know, sometimes I take it to what if i What if someone died? What if I died? And then when I write that down, I think, how ridiculous. Me, I don't know, starting my business is not going to necessarily lead to that, but you can take it to that point, and you could find a terrible what if for anything that you want to do, you can find so many reasons why you can't or shouldn't or or don't do things. What I'm suggesting is you find the way that you can. What if you fly? What if you had the best time ever? What if you did this thing and then it led to this whole new door opening. What if you did meet the person who dreams? What if you did like, I don't know, love your life? What if you took the day off and you had a rest and then you felt far more productive because of it? All these thoughts and feelings are there. So I really encourage you to do this exercise to see what comes up. And what I tend to find is like, people try to be negative and for like five minutes, and they're trying to write down all the problems, but like, they quickly realize that they can find a solution, they can find the answer. They can they can make this isn't that you're not writing. What you're writing is not doesn't mean it will come true. If anything, because you wrote that bad thing or negative thing, you're going to find a way to make that to to not happen. And then the what if it does have, like, the good thing? What if? What if I do get to do, have all my dreams come true? Well, you can go, well, that lights me up, and I'm so excited by that I'm going to follow that thread. A book that I highly recommend is Matt mcconnaugh's Green light, green lights. And what he talks about is, you know, traffic lights, you've got the green light, the yellow light, the red light, red light is stop, so you know, if you see something bad or then stop. But actually, maybe it's just a warning light. Maybe it's just the yellow light, and it's like, this is the what if, like, what if, well, it hasn't stopped me yet. It's a warning but the green light and up again just to the crucial point. Of course, I Internet does that anyway. We're looking for the green lights. When something is working, when you you find the yes, when you look at that page and you see the thing that excites you, that's a green light and it means go, go for it. Go towards the things that you love and the things that are yellow lights or warnings, find the way to mitigate it, to find a way around it, to find a solution. Then follow the green lights, and keep following the green lights. Keep following the yeses. Keep following what lights you up. Keep following what calls your heart. And if you're scared or worried or then do this exercise and bring it all out, and then make yourself an action plan so that you can keep finding those green lights. Again. I hope that you enjoy doing this exercise. Simple prompt, what if? Question mark and see what comes out. I do these exercises almost daily. I do them with my clients all the time, and always I'm getting different answers. But I think people think journaling is like writing a diary, or, I don't know, yeah, documenting what you've been up to, journaling is a way to

11:04

process your thoughts,

Emma Lovell 11:07

to find answers to it's a form of like coaching yourself. So I hope that these prompts help you to start writing and to start finding the answers for yourself so that you can live a life you love. Head to Emma, lovell.au you'll see the journal prompts on the page. We have a link in the show notes for that. Of course, you can always buy my book, The Art of pleasure and learn about how I've found the way to live a life I love, and then I continue to check in to make sure that I continue to live a life I love. So that's the book is all about, that. Emma, lovell.au, forward slash book. Thank you for listening, and I will see you. Hear you next time speak to you, then bye. Thank you for listening. Lovell one. I hope this has inspired you to dream big and start creating a life you love. Today, if you love what you're hearing, don't forget to follow and rate on Spotify and rate review and subscribe on iTunes. It helps other awesome people to find this podcast and get motivated and inspired as well. Want to stay connected, come and join the live a life you love, group on Facebook or connect with me on Instagram. Emma lovell.au the same as my website, but all the details are in the show notes. Lovely. I'll see you next episode for more inspiration, motivation and freedom seeking. Now go out there and live a life you love. You.