Embracing Change: Unlocking Personal Growth and Resilience

Ever wondered if embracing change could be the key to unlocking your personal growth? This season of "Have a Cup of Johanny," titled "I'm Growing," kicks off with an empowering discussion on resilience and the transformative power of change. I share some of my most personal experiences, including my ambitious challenge of expanding my book into a trilogy. Through these stories, we explore how change, while often intimidating, can be a catalyst for personal development. Our reactions to different types of change shape our resilience, and by adapting and learning from new experiences, we can positively transform our lives.

Restarting the podcast after a previous failed attempt was no easy feat, but it offered invaluable lessons. From wrestling with my chaotic and unpredictable schedules which became impossible to align, to managing unsustainable length of episodes, I've adapted by producing shorter, more manageable episodes and using strategic planning to maintain a sustainable workflow. This journey has not only enhanced my communication skills but also benefited my writing career and my role in my day job. In this episode, we also delve into the importance of overcoming fear as a crucial step in our resilience journey, sharing strategies for facing fears head-on to achieve empowerment and growth. Join me with your favorite cup of coffee (or whatever drink you fancy) as we embark on this journey together, one episode at a time.

Enter a world of fear, resilience, and generational trauma in "The Devil That Haunts Me". Follow Isabella and Julitza as they confront their demons in a tale of suspense, mystery, and the supernatural.

Explore the first seven chapters here

Chapters

• 0:00 Embracing Change
• 17:20 Embracing Change for Growth and Thriving
• 27:29 Overcoming Fear for Growth & Empowerment

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Oh we could, we could fly. Welcome to this new season of the have a Cup of Johani podcast. So I want to title this new season that I'm embarking on with I'm Growing, so this is going to be the season of growth and that's what I'm going to share with you throughout the season. So I thank you for coming over here and sitting with me and I hope you enjoy. Hello everyone, I am so excited, so excited. So excited Because this is the first episode of June. We are in the summer If you live on this side of the world, right, we have begun summer.

Speaker 1: 0:49

Something about New Beginnings that recharged me, energizes me and, as a podcast that talks about whoopsies and how they turn into aha, I am excited for this theme this month because it's one of my favorite things to talk about, you know, in my personal life and as well as at work. Now we are diving into the theme of resilience and how we adapt and overcome and grow stronger in the face of change. That, if you have been listening to this podcast since last season, you will know that that's kind of like the gist of this entire podcast. All these recording is encountering something that may have been new or may have been challenging, pausing there, learning something from it, and then doing that about face Pivot into something new, and today we're going to focus and give much more detail into that. As we kick off this very first episode, we will be discussing embracing change, the first step of resilience. I'm so excited, I have so much to say, people, but it's going to be a short episode because you know, time and my life is not set up that way, so it's going to be short, okay. So hang in there, listen to this. Are you ready, though? Are you ready to explore how change can be a catalyst to something really big on the other side? Of course you are, or else I mean, why would you be here if you weren't ready? All right, let's go. So I hope you grab your favorite cup. I know I have my cup of coffee right next to me, which I made it a tad bit too sweet today. I'm going to have to make sure that I note that in my memory bank, so that way, I don't make it that way. While I have a sweet tooth, something about me, I don't enjoy really sweet coffee, just like I don't like really sweet wine either. I don't know, like my beverages, I don't want them to be sweet. If that makes sense, I just yeah. But enough about me, let's talk about something else about me. Let's explore how change, while daunting, is that fertile ground for growth. It's like ugly growth, but it's growth nonetheless.

Speaker 1: 3:30

Embarking on this episode, I was like, well, I'm not a bit of change. Uh, denial is more than just a river. Because I had that thought and I was like joannie. I thought we were better than this. I thought we had overcome a lot of things and have become more self-aware than that. I guess I was wrong. I was wrong, but change is inevitable.

Speaker 1: 3:55

Change will happen and that's such a crux change for everyone, to include me, even though I lie to myself and try to say like change didn't bother me. But it does. Change happens to everyone. It happens differently depending on what kind of change somebody is going through or depending on their lives, their mission set, whatever, but it's going to happen nonetheless to every single one of us. The key here is how we react to it. That's the key. How do we react to that change? Because that is what is really going to pay dividends for us. That's what's really going to transform our lives. But let's start by defining first what embracing change really means and why it's so crucial to resilience.

Speaker 1: 4:49

So I'm going to use myself as an example, even though I try to lie to myself and say that change doesn't bother me, and I think I said that to myself because being in the army for this long change is just a cup of tea no pun intended that I drink every day. Every day, something changes. Every day. We are tasked and asked to be flexible because we do a lot of shifting and pivoting. I'm asked to move, I'm asked to pack up household and go move to another place, get to know that place and then, once I get comfortable with that place, move again and go move to another place, get to know that place and then, once I get comfortable with that place, move again.

Speaker 1: 5:28

And since I've been doing that for quite a long time, when I responded to my inner monologue, I said I'm not afraid of change because I have done it so many times. But I think I was just focusing on that one kind of change and that's why I was coming up short. Because, just like I said at the beginning, right, there's so many different types of change and that's why I was coming up short. Because, just like I said at the beginning, right, there's so many different types of changes. So for me, I think I have gotten a bit desensitized when it comes to changing communities and moving. So I'm not so much afraid of that because I have become accustomed to it. It's become second nature to me. But that doesn't mean that I'm impervious to change and the fear and anxiety that comes with it. Just not that type of change of moving households any longer, right?

Speaker 1: 6:15

But if you were here for the last month, you would have heard how I embarked on this very scary thing, which was to expand one book into a trilogy. And, even more scarier, to put my name on that task, knowing that one of those books falls center into the historical fiction genre, one genre that I respect every author in it, because, golly, so much work has to go into it, right? But that's one genre that I have been very voiceful about, never stepping in, and here I am stepping into it. Even me talking about it gives me a little bit of anxiety and fear that is just flushing through my veins right now. Coffee doesn't help, right, because that makes me even more jittery, like I just had to take a deep breath just saying that, because I am embarking on that and that makes me really scared. It makes me feel fear because it is something that I've never done before.

Speaker 1: 7:38

I've never written a series and I for sure have never written any historical piece, and I've been adamant about how I haven't been willing to put in the work that that genre requires before. But in order to tell the overarching story of these ladies Isabella Julitza and La Doña that's what I will need to do, that's what I get to do now. You see that I learned that from my coach. So what I'm getting at is that it was daunting and it is still daunting to me, because I'm fixing to step into unknown territory, unknown, like I don't even know right.

Speaker 1: 8:25

When I take that next step, I don't know what's on the other end of that starting line, how it will require to do all these things that I've never done before, and I think that is the gist of it when it comes to change, it is the unknown that comes with it, because I think you've heard me say this before, and this is something that I say quite often at work is that we get so comfortable with the known that as soon as we have to step out of that circle. It just brings, like this soul crushing anxiety. But I think that's because as human beings we are tailored to feel safe within comfort. We have evolved, but not really that much. Right, we are community beings, right. We feel safe in communities. We feel safe in non-territory, we feel safe when we are around people that we know. And whenever we have to change that and embark on something new and go away from what we feel comfortable with, it brings that anxiety, it brings that hesitation and sometimes that has happened to me you just don't go through the change at all because you allow that fear to overtake your reasoning.

Speaker 1: 9:52

And I keep pulling on my writing career because that, to me, is something where I don't have as much sets and reps as I do on other things like moving every two to three years, right, establishing a household, opening up new bills, you know all of that other stuff traveling, learning new languages and all of that. That is not daunting to me because I have done that before, remember. So I immigrated from the Dominican Republic at a very young age, so that was my first introduction to changing my environment, and I did it as a young kid, so it has become second nature by now that I'm in my 40s to really just go through these seasons where I change my environment. But the one thing that I haven't gotten many sets and reps in is I go back to my writing career is doing these small pivots in there, just like this podcast. If you heard me say it two seasons ago, right, I had been having this podcast for a while but I stopped it and then I went on to do a co-hosting of another podcast. But because I didn't have the aim nor the flexibility to be able to co-host by adapting my schedule to somebody else's schedule because of the job and then my lifestyle really of always changing and moving it, just it wasn't congruent with that partner. So we had to. You know, she let me go. I used to say she let me go. She was like no, I can't do this anymore. And putting on this podcast once again was a daunting thing to do Because in the back of my mind I was like, well, if I couldn't do that, what makes me think I can do this one?

Speaker 1: 14:02

That was that little nagging voice of fear inside my head when I was thinking about it. Because that's with everything right. It's very rare that I just impulsively do something unless it's shopping. I have this philosophy that if I see something that I really really like, that really tugs at me, I'm going to get it, because I don't want to like go home, think about it and then not finding there Mind you, there's like price limit to that. When I do that, I'm not going to do that with a really expensive purchase and then put myself in debt because of that. No, I'm not. Yeah, I'm not doing any of that, but I think the most impulse that I get is, yeah, shopping, but everything else. I have these thinking sessions. I want to say there are thinking sessions where I really think about it and sometimes, when it's something that is really scary to me, I actually write my pros and cons.

Speaker 1: 15:00

On this one, it didn't get to that level. Still, I went back and forth with that small voice in my head, my fear. Like I went back and forth with that small voice in my head, my fear trying to save me from failure, and it's okay. So I read Habits of a Happy Brain and I understand that fear a little bit more, and it's that fear that is there once again, like from what we came from, as when we started as human beings and, like I said, we are community beings. We are meant to thrive in the known, not the unknown, because the unknown can bring us a lot of hardship and sometimes death back then. So you want it to be within the circle of known people and a known environment to survive. Now that's not so much needed, depending everybody has their different situations, but generally that is not needed. You can thrive, you can still be safe when you move from place to place, but that fear, that voice is still there.

Speaker 1: 16:04

So I had to prove to that voice by not arguing per se but having this back and forth conversation about how I can achieve this with having like a better chance at succeeding than failure, like a better chance at succeeding than failure, because the chance of failure for everything, I think my personal opinion, my humble personal opinion, will always be there. Whenever you embark on something, there will always be a chance of success as well as a failure, and I just don't want to ever unrealistically lie to myself and think that everything that I embark on will be super successful. Now I have a positive mindset where I do good things to happen from my endeavors, but I also understand that I can also go into the other route and really flop. But if you heard me talk about failure in another episode, you will know that I really see failure as like this sucks. I will never do it again, but more as an experiment, you know to okay, that didn't work. Let me take a note of that and let me try again now tweaking it to incorporate the lesson learned from the previous one, so that helps me as well to embark on new endeavors.

Speaker 1: 17:21

And when it comes to restarting this podcast, having failed at the other one, having completely fall forward on that one, I did take note. I was like, okay, so now I know that my schedule is not conducive to aligning myself with another person's schedule because my schedule is very unpredictable. So there's no way, even if I align myself with another person's schedule, because my schedule is very unpredictable, so there's no way, even if I align myself with somebody who is in the same line of work as me, it will not work just because it's so unpredictable, my job is so unpredictable so that that will not work, and I learned that. I learned that from that instance. I also learned that I could not sustain long episodes. I could not. I could not sustain one hour episodes. Hence why, if you look at this podcast, my episodes, you will see that most of them are in the range of 20 minutes to 30 something minutes, and that's with the intro and the outro included. My longest may be in the 40 minutes. Why? Because I learned that I could not sustain that. I could not sustain the recording and the editing of that long-term.

Speaker 1: 18:32

For me to feel comfortable embarking on this renewed endeavor of reopening to have a couple of Johnny podcasts, I needed to make sure that there were things in place that could increase my odds of this, understanding that I also may not succeed, but if I don't, I will learn from that as well. So I was able to shift and once I had like this internal back and forth conversation with fear, then I felt a little bit confident going into the booth and starting this podcast, and then I also or restarting it, I should say and then I also went as far as to make myself comfortable, right, because we're human beings, we want to feel comfortable people. Okay, so this is how I set myself to feel comfortable. I was like I looked at the year for that first season three. We're in season four now.

Speaker 1: 19:35

For that first season three, I looked at the year and then I looked at every federal holiday that was in there and then I make a point that during those federal holidays you know, telling my husband this, of course, so that way he understands what I'm doing that I would take one of those days to record and edit episodes. I was banking episodes. So that way, that will set me up until the next federal holiday, you see. And obviously I will still have the weekends, but I gave myself the weekends as if something crazy happens at work and I cannot use that long weekend. Then I have the weekend to catch up. You see what I'm saying. But I cannot use that long weekend. Then I have the weekend to catch up. You see what I'm saying. But I will exploit the longer weekend first. And if that didn't work, for whatever reason, then I knew that I had the backup of the regular two-day weekend, you see. So I made these agreements with myself to ensure that, as I embark on this new change in my life of reopening the have a Couple Johnny podcast, that I will feel comfortable in it and because I would have assessed that I could sustain it and the impact of change right.

Speaker 1: 20:57

So it can be challenging. You just heard me say, like everything that I went through, and while it may sound super easy and you may think this happened in really swift kind of motion and right away it did not. It was a lot of back and forth. I sat down with the idea of it for several days, then I went back and forth with my fear for several days before I actually implemented it. But while it was challenging, it often brings unforeseen opportunities.

Speaker 1: 21:30

So for me, one of the motivating factors as to why I wanted to have this podcast is that I wanted to be able to grow in expressing my ideas clearly and succinctly, and I I thought that this podcast will help me do that At the very least. Right Like give me sets and reps on that. Hearing myself back how I articulate an argument also would help me to identify where I digress, where you know I go on a tangent, and things of that nature, so that way I can grow and get a little better at just speaking and exercising that communicating muscle. And that was a great opportunity for me, because now I'm turning this passion project into something that can help me in effect, not just my writing career but also my day job right In the army, able to articulate an argument and speak clearly really is like an essential skill to have in my day job as well. So, in a way, I have set myself up with this change, that I embraced for this new opportunities that came my way. So knowing that change can be good is one thing, because you can tell yourself, just like I told myself about the series the Devil that Haunts them and this podcast you know individuals as well as be able to enhance my communication skills but knowing that it's good and totally embracing it are two different things.

Speaker 1: 23:49

So how can we practically accept, or even which will be better, just welcome change into our lives and I hate to say this because it's something that I hear quite often in the army, and that is one of the strategies is just to be flexible. We say be flexibly gumpy, if y'all know, you know, be flexible. I think if you tell yourself, like I tell myself, look, not everything is going to go as planned, things will not be perfect, jot it down these are my inner monologues. Right, jot it down what didn't go right, see if you can mitigate it for future practice. And if not, you know then, hey, just keep going. Did we die? We didn't, so let's keep going. So staying flexible is key, because we don't want the minor ripples, or even the big waves and ripples, to deter us from embarking on change. Because change is going to be hard and you will feel as if you know it's something is not working or as if, like your life is getting worse as opposed to getting better. But if you stick to it and this goes really big into habit forming if you stick to it, you're going to see that positive change.

Speaker 1: 25:12

Another strategy will be to just set realistic expectations. You heard me saying that like, hey, I'm going to start this podcast, but I can't be in there talking for a whole hour because then I cannot sustain that. The editing will be too long. Just to do one episode will take me a whole day. I can't do that. So I set realistic expectations with myself, realistic expectations that I can sustain. So that way, this change, this new podcast that I re-embarked on, I can sustain.

Speaker 1: 25:42

It, lastly will be just to maintain a positive mindset. That is as cheesy as it sounds. That is very important, because once again you're going to fall, once again you're going to have naysayers, you're going to have people that do not like the new you or the new person you're trying to embrace and they're going to say something about it. But as long as you have what I said before realistic expectations, that back and forth argument with your fear, then you would know that this is something that you want to do and you got to want it. Because when you do, then that's when you can just maintain that positive mindset, because then you can keep reminding yourself why are you embarking on this change? Why are you doing that? And I will say start with that, figure out why you want to change, write it down somewhere so that way you can see it. Remind yourself, because that's what's going to allow you to stay positive.

Speaker 1: 26:42

To be honest, I encourage you to reflect on a change you're currently facing right now and think about how can you view it as an opportunity for growth, how Either write it down on your notes app right, or just think about it in your head. You may not want to write it down, just think about it. How can you view this change that you're currently facing as an opportunity for growth? Think about that. But hey, folks, as we wrap up today's episode, remember that embracing change isn't just about surviving, it's about thriving. Embracing change is about thriving. It's about seeing the possibilities, the opportunities and being resilient enough to take them, to embark on them.

Speaker 1: 27:30

So join me next week for another cup as we delve into overcoming fear. We talked a little bit about my fear, right, which is the second step in our resiliency journey, and we're going to explore how facing our fears head on oh boy can lead to empowerment and growth. I'd be ready for that one. I don't think I am, but okay, see you next Wednesday. Bye, thank you so much for listening. I want to hear from you. Leave me a comment, do a rating if you can on the podcast, share it with somebody you love, but, most importantly, come back. See you next time. Bye.