[00:00:00.370] - Gabriela Brunner

Hey, everybody. Good morning. This is Gabriela Brunner. And it is Monday. And I know Mondays can sometimes feel really challenging for people because it's the beginning of a new week.

 

[00:00:11.300] - Gabriela Brunner

We got to get to work. We got to come down from the potential high of having some time off and being home with family or friends or going on an adventure or doing something fun over the weekend. And then Monday hits and it's just like, now what? I got to do this again. In fact, this morning when my husband got up and we had a really nice weekend and he got up this morning, he goes, so one day work and then five days off, right.

 

[00:00:36.410] - Gabriela Brunner

So it's fascinating, right, how we just can dread Mondays sometimes. And I feel like sometimes that, that happens even if you don't have a full time job or something like that. So the feeling of dreading Mondays can come at you regardless of what's going on. And so one of the things I shared about yesterday, I believe in a post was making the best of where you are. And sometimes I can feel really challenging because you're just like, well, I don't know how to do that.

 

[00:01:04.350] - Gabriela Brunner

Like, how do I make the best of where I am? I have to do this. I've got to go to work. I've got to take care of the kids. I've got to clean the house, do the laundry, do the thing, do the thing, do the thing.

 

[00:01:12.000] - Gabriela Brunner

And I really feel like those of us who struggle with making the best of where we are, if we knew what to do, if we knew how to do it, then we would already be doing it, right? So this is something that I constantly remind myself of because vulnerability alert here. I tend to be more on the negative side. And so you guys might not experience that, because when I'm coming at you, I'm talking about inspiration. I'm talking about motivation.

 

[00:01:36.840] - Gabriela Brunner

I'm trying to share things that will motivate you and uplift you. But it's actually something that I personally struggle with a lot is keeping that positive attitude, keeping that optimistic perspective on things, because I tend to struggle a little bit with anxiety. And maybe that's just a common theme these days, because maybe it's always been a common theme, but maybe it's more of a common theme these days because if you guys watching or anything like me, one of the things that I struggle with is not enoughness or feeling like they've got their shit together. And I don't. And I appreciate the fact that a lot of you have shared with me that when you look at me, you view me the same way that I'm viewing other people.

 

[00:02:21.250] - Gabriela Brunner

Like, oh, look at her. She's got her SHIT together. Look at that. She's accomplishing this. She's doing that.

 

[00:02:25.890] - Gabriela Brunner

She's taking care of this. How do you do it all? I get that question often, sometimes because the truth is, I chose to be a stay at home mom. I left the active practice of law in order to pursue my coaching business. I've been working on my business for the last three years.

 

[00:02:43.230] - Gabriela Brunner

I recently self published a book which is going to print very soon. So I've got my coaching business. I'm in Kundalini yoga teacher training. I stay home with the kids. They're at school right now for the morning.

 

[00:02:55.820] - Gabriela Brunner

I'm a wife, I'm a mom. All these different things. So you look at that and you're just like, wow, how does she get it all done? A lot of times I get it done fighting tooth and nail to actually do it. And so I wasn't really sure where this video was going to go this morning, but I really feel like something that's important to acknowledge is that sometimes that feeling of dread can still come up, even if on the outside or on paper, we have the ideal life of the perfect life.

 

[00:03:24.430] - Gabriela Brunner

So I've struggled a lot with that because I'm somebody who is very action oriented, very goal oriented. I get satisfaction from checking things off the list, but then I also don't always take the time to celebrate that thing which has been accomplished. It's almost like take care of this thing and then check it off the list and it's done and then move on to the next one. And so you can see how that can also cause some anxiety. So what I'm trying to get out this morning is that sometimes we have anxiety about the things that haven't happened.

 

[00:03:55.180] - Gabriela Brunner

Sometimes we have anxiety about the things that have happened. Sometimes we have anxiety when we feel like we shouldn't have anxiety, and that gives us more anxiety. And so there's a lot of different things that I have tested out and tried out. And one of the things that I'm a real firm believer in, it's actually something that you get when you work with me. You receive this one on one support when you work with me is we try and figure out what works best for you, because I've tried a lot of different things.

 

[00:04:24.090] - Gabriela Brunner

Listening to guided meditations, trying to sit in Lotus pose and empty my mind and clear my mind and do those kinds of things. And I've tried reading books, I've tried baths, going for walks, doing all different kinds of things. And on any given day, any one of those things might work. And so what I try to do is I try to give you guys information so we can start to understand what it is that feels really good to you, because if it doesn't feel good to you, it's not going to work. So I remember a time when I committed to going to the gym.

 

[00:04:56.180] - Gabriela Brunner

I hired a personal trainer. I would have to pull myself out of the house in order to do it. And the truth of the matter became clear to me that it's not something that I enjoy doing. I prefer getting my physical activity, my physical movement in different ways. And maybe that's playing with my kids, going for a walk, even kind of power walking through the grocery store and getting two things done at once.

 

[00:05:16.830] - Gabriela Brunner

So what I'm encouraging and inspiring you to do is to try and look at things in a different way. That this whole concept of creating a definition of success that means something to you is that you get to create the definition that actually means something to you. We've been taught, rightly or wrongly, it just is what it is, that there are certain definitions of success that we should strive for. For some people, let's go to College, get a graduate degree, get a corporate office. For some people, it's live off of nothing and serve the world.

 

[00:05:50.980] - Gabriela Brunner

For some people, it's I don't know, whatever it is, the laptop lifestyle, hustling and grinding until you make billions of dollars, it doesn't matter what it is. Those are all perfectly wonderful and legitimate ways of defining success. The issue comes in when people adopt somebody else's definition of success for themselves. So if you're the type of person that desires to earn a lot of money, yet you grew up in a neighborhood or in a household that it's like, oh, it's selfish to have money. You can't do that.

 

[00:06:22.140] - Gabriela Brunner

And you've got that belief in your mind. You need to break through that belief in order to acknowledge and honor the things that you want to do. And it's not easy, right? It's like, what if, just to give an example, I went to law school. Nobody in my family is a lawyer.

 

[00:06:36.020] - Gabriela Brunner

But let's just put yourself in a scenario where everybody in your family is a lawyer. Everybody generations back on all sides and directions. They're all lawyers. And you decide that you want to open a boutique shop selling antiques and wandering the world. It's going to take a lot of courage and resilience and commitment and quite honestly, support in order to make that happen.

 

[00:07:01.480] - Gabriela Brunner

Because you're breaking a paradigm. You're breaking through a barrier of things that have been taught to you, things that people have told you that you need or should be doing. And so when that happens, there's a period of acknowledgement, okay, man, I do not want to be a lawyer. There's probably some denial, like, oh, maybe I should go to law school or medical school or whatever school, because that's the thing that's going to work best for me because it works for my entire family. Yet you feel dissatisfied inside of it.

 

[00:07:30.910] - Gabriela Brunner

Then there's going to be a little bit of, like, courage and boldness and like, I'm not doing that. I'm going to forge my own path. And then there's going to be some time where you're just like, oh, my gosh, what did I just do? Did I make a mistake? Especially if you're starting out.

 

[00:07:44.840] - Gabriela Brunner

If something doesn't feel like it's working quite 100%. So what I'm trying to get is there's this whole process that you're going to go through as you acknowledge and honor and experience those things that you truly want for yourself. That may not be what other people think they want for you. So there's a problem in that, right? Other people may want things for you and wish you well, and that's fine.

 

[00:08:04.820] - Gabriela Brunner

But once they start imposing the limitations on you, I use the word limitation because you're being put into a box and you don't fit in that box. And so you start to automatically feel like something's wrong with you. And the truth is there isn't anything wrong with you. There isn't anything wrong with you for wanting what you want. One of the first things that needs to happen is you need to start to think for yourself, and you need to start acknowledging that thing that you want.

 

[00:08:28.170] - Gabriela Brunner

So how that happens, it can happen in many different ways. It could happen for you by reading a book. It can happen for you by watching a video. It can happen for you by going for a beautiful walk in nature and then having this idea literally drop out of the sky into your head. It could happen through coaching, through counseling, through therapy, through swimming, through whatever it is.

 

[00:08:47.790] - Gabriela Brunner

So my encouragement for you is that if you have that nudge that there's something else that you need to do, that there's something else that you want to do. More importantly, not even need to do, but want to do. And that need can arise from a desire so strong that you feel like you need to do it, not that other energy of you should do it so that you don't let other people down if that starts to come up started exploring different ways in which you can just experience that, try and bring it to fruition in one way or another. Because the only way to truly know if something is for you is to actually experience it. So by that, I mean, for example, if you've always known you wanted to be a yoga teacher, well, maybe you need to enroll in a yoga teacher class and see how it feels.

 

[00:09:29.180] - Gabriela Brunner

Is that something that you want to do? Maybe you need to go out and talk to some yoga instructors and see what it's like to have gone through teacher training or to see what it's like to actually own a yoga studio. This example came up for me because for a long time I thought that I wanted to own a coffee shop because I love coffee and I love what it represents and all of the different things that it does for me. Like, I love just sitting with a cup of coffee and talking with friends and doing all that kind of stuff. And then I was at a coffee shop that was not a Starbucks.

 

[00:09:56.810] - Gabriela Brunner

And so it's like a locally owned thing. And I remember thinking to myself like, wow, this is not something that I want. Like, I don't want to spend my days ordering coffee, pricing it out, making sure we have enough cups, making coffee all day in, day out. I don't want to be here at 530 in the morning to do those kinds of things. So it's really interesting to have that experience because sometimes we don't allow ourselves to just be in that thing that we think we want to have that experience and we just keep thinking about it and then kind of self sabotaging ourselves in a way.

 

[00:10:31.640] - Gabriela Brunner

So that's a lot of stuff coming at you. And one of the main reasons why I wanted to hop on today was because I just wanted to share that if you are feeling anxious, if you are feeling like there's something a little bit different, really one of the best ways to hear that that's the word that's coming up. But I'm not sure that it's the right word, but one of the best ways to play with that is to just try doing something different. And I know that sometimes that's easier said than done. And I don't necessarily mean that you have to go ahead and quit your job or sign up for an expense of anything or even achieve anything.

 

[00:11:06.000] - Gabriela Brunner

What I'm saying is that it's just trying to do a little something different that breaks up the routine of what you have been doing. So perhaps that's going a different way to work this morning or tomorrow morning, because most of you, if you're at work, you're probably there already. Perhaps that means taking a nap this afternoon. If your kids still nap, if you're a stay-at-home mom or stay at home parent and your kids nap, take a little rest this afternoon, do something different. Do something different than you think you should do to just kind of shake up some of that energy and start to dislodge some of that.

 

[00:11:36.800] - Gabriela Brunner

Because there's so much wisdom and so much truth held within you and your heart and your soul. I know that sounds kind of woo woo, but the truth is that you're the one who knows what you like to do. And there was a time when we weren't so beholden to the shoulds of the world. So I think about this because I have children who are three and four, almost five. And I see her personality, I see his personality.

 

[00:12:01.460] - Gabriela Brunner

I see all of the things that they enjoy doing, their natural tendencies, their natural abilities. And they haven't gotten to a point yet where they're so jaded by what we should do that they still express those things very clearly. So I'm a firm believer that each one of us knows inside of ourselves the things that we personally love doing, the things that have always picked our interests, the things that we've enjoyed doing in the past and then perhaps we've stopped doing it because we're not supposed to, or it's not the prudent thing to do or it's not the money making thing to do. And so one of the ways in order to start remembering what that is is to do something different with your day, movement. So movement is really important.

 

[00:12:43.760] - Gabriela Brunner

That could be just like shaking it out a little bit, throwing your hands up in the air, doing something like that. I shared a Kundalini yoga meditation practice yesterday called Strengthening the Aura. So if it's something that's interesting to you, you can let me know, or you can Google Strengthening the Aura Korea. You can check out my friend Caitlin Edgar's website. She's got Strengthening the Aura 40 day program that you can buy from her website.

 

[00:13:09.370] - Gabriela Brunner

That's another way to shake up the energy. It takes 15 minutes a day to do it and to do it. That leads me to my last point that we've heard this all before. And I'm saying this just as much to you guys as I'm saying it to myself. If you want something to change, you have to be the catalyst for change.

 

[00:13:24.660] - Gabriela Brunner

You can get inspiration from me, from a book, from a cup of coffee, from a song, all of those things. But then once that song is over, once that video is over, once that coaching session is over, you need to physically take the information that you've received, the wisdom, the intuitive hits the body tingles, all of that, and then actually put it to action. So that's where accountability comes in. You can hire a coach for accountability. You can have a good buddy for accountability.

 

[00:13:53.540] - Gabriela Brunner

You can have your alarm clock for accountability. There's got to be different ways that you get motivated in order to be held accountable, to bring forth the things that you want to do. So I share all of these things because it's important that we understand that, yes, we need to do the inner work. We need to do the healing. We need to do the dreaming, we need to do all of that.

 

[00:14:13.950] - Gabriela Brunner

But then once we've done some of that, at least for the stage of life that you're in right now, then it's actually time to take action and do something with it and not just sit there and keep thinking about all of these things. So I wanted to just come to you with all of that information, give you a little bit inspiration for you on this Monday. It is my hope and desire that I will continue to do this on a regular basis on Mondays and check in with you guys and to see what it is that's going on with all of you and share a little bit of my story, my wisdom, my inspiration. Get a feel so you can get a feel for what it's like to work with me. And yeah, just to connect with all of you.

 

[00:14:54.380] - Gabriela Brunner

So I'm deeply grateful for each one of you. I hope you guys have a beautiful Monday. Do something different today. Do one little thing that's different and just start to feel the effects of it because if you don't change something, chances are nothing's going to change for you or you're going to to have have the proverbial break on the head that's going to force you to change something and usually that's not as pleasant as you taking the road, doing and making the changes yourself. So have a beautiful Monday and I'm also feeling inspired to share this because there's an idea that's been bubbling up for me and I am feeling it out, seeing how it's going to work.

 

[00:15:34.830] - Gabriela Brunner

So it's around the Guided Career and creating a support group for people who are embracing career transitions right now. Facing career transitions so it would be a beautiful group program. We would come together in either a Facebook group or something like that. You would join for a monthly fee and we would build this beautiful community of people who are becoming empowered and empowering each other and supporting each other in order to embrace and face these career transitions that we go through more often than we actually probably want to acknowledge. And so you would have I'd be leading the group and guiding the group and we'd have monthly workshops.

 

[00:16:12.900] - Gabriela Brunner

We'd have some angel card readings. We'd have a bunch of fun stuff like that building up this community. I'd be actually curious to see what you think about that because the energy is feeling really good about it. Yeah, it's just feeling really awesome. So I'm going to be putting some stuff together, throwing it out there, see what people say, see what people think and feel free to drop any ideas that you may have about that.

 

[00:16:34.340] - Gabriela Brunner

So I hope you have an awesome day. Welcome to the new Monday. It's your choice how you choose to live this Monday and I hope that it's full of life and inspiration and doing one different thing today. I'll talk to you guys soon. Bye.