GET IT IN GEAR

Karen Kenney: 00:00:01

Hey you guys, welcome to the Karen Kenney show. I'm super duper excited to be here with you today, and this suck is going to probably be a little bit on the

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shorter side, and that's okay, because we all have shit to do. We all have things to do. But I wanted to share with you a simple little tool that I have found wicked

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helpful, and that I applied already twice today in my life, and as I was using it, I was like, Have I ever talked about this on the show? Have I ever shared this with

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anybody? And then I was like, I don't know. So if I did, it was so long ago that I've forgotten about it. So I don't think I have, but I I'm always thinking when I do this

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podcast, right, the Karen Kenney show, I'm always thinking like, I want this, whatever episode I'm recording. I think to myself, I want it to educate, elevate, enlighten, or

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entertain. I wanted to do something that is not going to be a waste of my time or your time that you're going to at the end of it. You know how I always say, I want to leave

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you better than when you first got here. That is always my aim. So when I was using this tool twice today, I was like, oh, I want to share this with everybody, but I'm

Karen Kenney: 00:01:14

going to put it in context first with like, a little story. Okay, so I want to preface this by saying this might be a little annoying, but I've never been a person who

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hits my snooze button, right? So I don't think I've ever, ever. I say never, and whenever I use the word never, I always want to stop myself and say, was there ever a

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time? But I don't really recall a time when I was really a super snoozer, right? I'm the kind of person that if I have to set an alarm. When the alarm goes off, like, my ass

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gets out of bed. However, there are times when maybe you're like, a little extra sleepy and, like, you hear the alarm go off, or, you know, there's a thing that, like,

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you know, you gotta get up and do. And you may be just, like, just dragging a tiny bit, not necessarily going to hit snooze or whatever. And you're like, I need to get my

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ass in gear, and that's what I'm calling this episode, right? Get it in gear. Get it in gear, kid, let's go right? So there are times when we just get to get our ass in

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gear and get some stuff done, and we might feel a little bit of resistance, right? So this podcast, for example, I love recording this podcast, but it's not even but and I

Karen Kenney: 00:02:24

now have a lot of different new moving pots in my life. Right? Some of you who are local, you know that I'm starting to work for my friend Nate in his business, flexible

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assisted stretching and wellness studio. I'm wicked excited about that. So I've been training some people for him. I've been like, kind of running around, doing the

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podcast, still running, you know, my my spiritual mentoring group, the nest, with clients, and I have a challenge going on this month. So, like, there's a lot of

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moving pots, okay, plus my sweetie and my furry kids and, like, all the things. So I kept thinking in my head, though, I gotta do my podcast. Like, you know, it's on the

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list. It's on the to do list. I'm like, I gotta do my podcast. I gotta do my podcast. And I was like, feeling just a little tired and kind of like, you know, when you get a

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little tiny bit whiny, you're just kind of like, like, I know I need to do this thing, and I I'm gonna do it, but I'm feeling I'm sorry, so that part of me, I should name the

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whiny part of me. Okay, note to self, I'm gonna name the whiny part of myself. Okay, so that little whiny part of myself that Riaz I had every once in I was like, Look,

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we don't have time for you right now, right? It's kind of in a funny way, okay, okay, but here's the deal, I know, double Amen, hands, if you can relate, when there's a time when

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you just drag in a little bit, you know, there's shit you gotta do. It could be paying your estimated taxes. It could be mowing the lawn. It could be like, Oh, I

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gotta do the laundry. It could be like, Oh, I gotta make that phone call. Oh, I gotta call my mother. I gotta do the thing, get the thing done, go to the store, whatever it

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is, and you just feel like a little resistance coming up. And it's not like, maybe enough to, like, completely stop you in your tracks, but it's definitely dragging

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your feet a little bit. And you're just like, look, I don't have time for this. I don't have time for this nonsense. Gotta get it in there, right? Okay, so there's this

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little tool that I use, and I did not create the tool. I can tell you where I first heard the tool, but I will also say that I have heard other people say that they heard about

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it, this tool, this, this, I don't even know. Maybe people called it a system, a process before that, before this person became famous for it. I just like to be

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fair. I've heard that other people have talked about, oh, my my mentor, my coach, my dad, my whoever taught me this a long time ago, but this is the person who gets

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credited for it. They wrote a book about it, and it's called the Five second rule. Okay? Mel Robbins. Some of you might know who Mel Robbins is. She's a coach. I mean, she's

Karen Kenney: 00:05:04

much, she's a she's a podcast personality. She's written a bunch of books. She's an author. She's kind of like in the self help or personal development world, right? Mel

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Robbins, I know, I know several people who listen to my show also listen to her podcast. And Mel's helped, like a lot of people. Okay, so she wrote a book called The

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Five second rule. And I'm going to kind of tell you the premise of what the tool is, that is the tool. The tool is the is the is the five second rule. And, and I'm not going

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to go into all the science and all the stuff behind it. You can go read the book if you want all of that language, if you're the kind of person, like me that likes to

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understand why it works and why it helps, some people are like, I don't need all that. Just tell me what to do, and I'll do it, and that's helpful enough. But if you want a ton

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of science like you can you can go check out our stuff. But here's what I do, know our brains right will stop us from doing things. The brain loves to keep you safe. It loves

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to save you time. It likes to be wicked efficient, and the way that it often does as is, it goes into what's familiar. Now let's say you're trying to do something new, or

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let's say you're trying to start a new habit, like, I want to get up at 5am and go for a walk, or I want to get up at 5am go to the gym, take a run, whatever it is. I want

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to get up at 5am and work on my book before I go to work. Right? My friend Rob demedio, busy bee, bariatrics. Busy Bariatrics, he has these T shirts, and he always does these

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posts. I think the T shirts also say this, but he definitely does his these posts where he'll he'll film himself at the gym early in the morning. He's a teacher and a coach.

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He's a bariatrics coach. I just spoke in his I was a guest teacher, a guest speaker in his group, fantastic group of people. And he does these posts, and he says work before

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work. So he goes to the gym before he has to go and teach at school as well, because he's also a school teacher as well as being a bariatric coach, right?

Karen Kenney: 00:07:01

So the thing is, is that when we're trying to get new habits created, right, when we want it, when we need to get our ass in gear and do the work before work, or, like, you

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know, maybe, you know, like, like me, like you have a lot of moving pots to your business, and you're like, Oh, I gotta review that contract. I gotta pay my taxes.

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There's always things that we kind of will, and it's different for everybody, but we will find these things where our brain kind of stops us from doing them, whether it's

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over because of resistance, whether it's because we're overthinking, it because we're feeling some hesitancy. And hesitancy can be the killer of so many dreams. It's

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ridiculous, but we kind of have a way of doing things. We have a pattern in our head, a way we think about things, a way that we do things. And sometimes I think of it like

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a mental doorstop. You know how like you can use a doorstop to swing a door open and keep the door open, which is nice, right, to be nice flow of air. But sometimes, if there's

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a doorstop right, and it gets jammed underneath there, that door isn't going anywhere, and we become stuck in our patterns and our habits and our ways of

Karen Kenney: 00:08:05

thinking. And so how I think of the five second rule is I think of it as a pattern interrupt. And we talk about this a lot in the work that I do as a spiritual mentor,

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right? Because I'm also a hypnotist, and we bring in different tools to create better habits and patterns, to interrupt patterns that we've been stuck in for a long time

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that are no longer helpful. And we want to create new habits. We want to create new programming in our subconscious mind, like update the system, as I like to say, right?

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But we have these patterns that get in the way, and so this is a fantastic tool. It's a simple tool that will take you from, like, kind of spinning your own, you know,

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spinning your wheel, chasing your own tail, dragging your feet. And it's a tool that is not only going to help you to take action, but it will be the beginning of activating

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change. And it's wicked simple. So I'm going to tell you how, like, what the tool is, how to use it, and it is so simple, it's like ridiculous. Now I will say this just up

Karen Kenney: 00:09:06

front. Okay, not all tools will be felt to the same degree. Or will people will say, Oh, that doesn't really work for me. That's okay. If this doesn't appeal to you, if it

Karen Kenney: 00:09:19

doesn't resonate with you, if you feel like it doesn't work for you, what? But please try it. Try it a few times before you decide and form an opinion about it, like, get

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evidence, get first world experience. Try it enough times to see if you start to get a little momentum using it. But some people right away, you'll go, Oh my God. This just

Karen Kenney: 00:09:38

for my particular brain and the way that I operate. This is, like, super duper helpful, okay, pattern and truck. It's five second rule, and this is what you do. Let's say,

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like, for me, like I was sitting downstairs and I was like, oh, I want to go for a walk, but I gotta do my podcast. And then, you know, my brain started to, like, overthink.

Karen Kenney: 00:09:58

It started to kind of. Do. It's sad again. I heard that little whiny part of myself, but I want to go for a walk murmur, and this is what I do in my head, literally like this.

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It's like a countdown. So think of like a rocket ship that's about to take off, right? You know, when they do the countdown, Cape Canaveral, they're like 10, nine, eight,

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okay, but you start at number five, and it's simply this, 54321, and then you move. You take action. You do that countdown in your head, 54321, and then you physically move.

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You get up, you get your ass out of bed, you stand up from your chair, you pick up the phone, you pick up your pen, whatever. The thing is that you've been hesitating,

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overthinking, not doing. You take action. And the way that I think about this in my head is this is a way to beat the system that exists in your head. And for me, that's

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that whiny voice. It's like, I don't want to I don't feel right. That's the system that is like in my head. What are my pots of me, that little whiny pot? And look, sometimes I

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will cut that part of me some slack. I am not mean to myself. I try to really listen. I try not to. I try to be better, allowing myself to rest more, to kind of break out of

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those patterns of like always must be working like blue collar kid hard work. You got to do it. I love some hard work, right? That I am naturally built that way. I like

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hard work. Doesn't bother me, but I'm not. I just want to be fair for those of you out there who is thinking like, but when that part of you speaks up and just maybe it just

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needs a little rest, that's great when it's appropriate when, but this is I'm talking about like when this is not being helpful. Like there is shit, there's a deadline,

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there's things you commitment, you gave your word, and your word to yourself, to me is like the most important thing, because what I will find is we're not so willing to break

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our word to our Sweeties, to our partners, to our business you know, colleagues, to our friends, to our family members. We're like if I said I was going to be there, I'll show

Karen Kenney: 00:12:09

up. I'll do it. But where we get on a little slippery slope, sometimes with ourselves and breaking our word to ourselves. So I think this tool can be wicked helpful when we find

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ourselves starting to kind of get a little little squirrely. Okay, so this is what you do, right? You feel that hesitancy come up. You know, it's warm in bed. The Winter's

Karen Kenney: 00:12:29

coming. Winter is coming, right? A little g o t reference, winter is coming. We know it's going to start getting DACA earlier. It's going to be DACA when we wake up in the

Karen Kenney: 00:12:41

morning, it's going to be so snuggly and warm under the blankets. And even if you set your shoes out the night before to get up and your gym clothes, whatever you look at

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those suckers, and you're like, oh, just five more minutes, or whatever, that bullshit that your brain is going to try, that racket, that racket that your brain is

Karen Kenney: 00:12:56

going to try to run on you. And this is when you do 54321, 4321, now, in my head, I'll hear one of two things, you know, in Hollywood or on a movie set, if you've now,

Karen Kenney: 00:13:09

you've lived in LA, and I've been on TV shows and movie sets and all those things. And, you know, those, they're called the slate, and it's like that Clapper, right?

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The two things where they go CLAP, and the director yells, action. Okay, so that's what I hear in my head, one of two things. I hear 54321, right, the clap of sound. And then in

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my head, I hear action. The reason why I hear action is because I've been doing this long enough now that I that's what that's what I created as part of my pattern.

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Interrupt. Sometimes I also, depending on how I do the counting, sometimes I'll be like, 54321, lift off. But either way, action or lift off, because I'm thinking of

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that spaceship like, like just taking off, like a rocket. And I think this is like, how I've started to train my brain. I have trained my mind that when I hear 54321, it's

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like, Let's go ass in gear, right? Action, lift off, take off, whatever the thing is, and then you get in motion. And what this creates, one of the scientific things that

Karen Kenney: 00:14:19

I'll tell you, is that it creates a bias toward action. You do this enough times. You do this with enough repetition, you start to create in your brain a bias towards action.

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So instead of not doing things, resisting it, dragging your feet, you tend to get it in gear and you take a little action. For me this, what this also does is a pattern

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interrupt is it moves me out of thinking, thinking, thinking, because that, for me is often now, sometimes resistance is subconscious, and that's where some

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different kinds of pattern interrupts around procrastination or resistance, whether it's visualization or different hypnosis. This tools, right? NLP, tools can be really

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helpful, but this is just such a simple one that everybody can at least try to see if it works. And what it does is it stops the overthinking in your head. And I always say,

Karen Kenney: 00:15:13

stop thinking, start doing. Stop thinking, start doing. And this is a powerful way to kind of get that in motion and to build some momentum. It's also a great way to because

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what happens a lot of time is you start doing a little hostage negotiation with yourself, right? You're like, Oh, just a few more minutes. Or, Oh, I'll do it tomorrow.

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Or, No, you won't. No, you won't. You're going to keep hitting that snooze button. You're going to keep putting the thing off, and you're getting a little reward every

Karen Kenney: 00:15:43

time you don't do it, and then you do something else instead, like eat the cookie, or stay in bed or watch TV, or you don't pick up the book, you do the other thing

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instead, like the thing that is more like, Oh, but I earned this. I deserve this. I

Karen Kenney: 00:15:57

should do this. That whiny part of you, right? It's like, Nope, we want to stop the negotiation. We're not. There's no non negotiable, right? When I talk with the

Karen Kenney: 00:16:07

people who I work with, one to one in spiritual mentoring and people in the nest, my spiritual group program, my mentoring program and community, I always say to them,

Karen Kenney: 00:16:14

your DSP, your daily spiritual practice, it has to get to a place where it becomes non negotiable. There's no, like, oh, I won't do it. I'll do it tomorrow. It's like, Nope,

Karen Kenney: 00:16:23

we're gonna find a way. You might have to do it a little bit later. You might have to push it off because an unsuspecting emergency popped up, or your kid needs

Karen Kenney: 00:16:31

something, or your dog puked on the floor, whatever happened. But it's non negotiable, that shit is getting done, and that's not me telling them they have to do it. I'm talking

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about how if they want to get serious and they want to get committed about making change in their life, that's kind of how they have to view it for themselves, that

Karen Kenney: 00:16:51

this is a non negotiable. And I know that for my friends in sobriety who are in recovery, right, doing sobriety work, there's certain things that are just non

Karen Kenney: 00:17:00

negotiable, and they're better off for it, you know what I'm saying. But in the beginning, when you're just trying to, like, move and take action and build some

Karen Kenney: 00:17:10

momentum, and start to build that bias towards action, this simple little tool, I mean, Mel Robbins talks about how it changed her whole life, you know what I mean. So

Karen Kenney: 00:17:20

it'd be interesting for you, for me, to hear once you try this, I hope you do try it, right? It's called the Five second rule. She wrote a whole book about it. If you want to

Karen Kenney: 00:17:29

go do the long version. I know she talks about it all over social media or whatever, and I'm really, actually surprised. You know, there's that I haven't mentioned it

Karen Kenney: 00:17:38

before. I'm like, have I? Have I but there's psychological and scientific reasons, of course, for why it works. Like I said, all the science is in the book. I read about it

Karen Kenney: 00:17:48

because I wanted to know like, because I was like. So it seems to me like it's a pattern interrupt, but I wanted to know more, and I wanted to know the story. And I think it can

Karen Kenney: 00:17:58

also be really good you guys. Now, let me say this before I say what it can also be good for. There are going to be times when you are going to want to hesitate. And what

Karen Kenney: 00:18:07

I mean is, don't use this to put yourself in dangerous situations, right? Like, if you're afraid of heights and you're climbing up a tall building and your friends are like,

Karen Kenney: 00:18:15

just jump. Like, look if you need a pause and you need to, like, negotiate a moment for yourself. That's one thing. I'm not saying it like, don't get in the strangest

Karen Kenney: 00:18:23

car. Don't go down the dock alley and just tell yourself, okay. Kay said, 54321, just do it. And you know, there are going to be times when fear is healthy. A little fear is

Karen Kenney: 00:18:32

like, actually, your internal built in warning system letting you know, danger Will Robinson. Danger Will Robinson. Right? You might want to pause, but I'm talking about

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like this, just the shit where you know you need to stop dragging your feet and get it done. Whether it's I gotta get up and do the laundry, I gotta make that phone call like I

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said. I gotta pay my bills. I gotta, I gotta have that awkward conversation, right? I gotta, whatever the thing is, okay, we got a system in our head that is not always

Karen Kenney: 00:18:58

designed to be helpful towards us. It thinks it is. It thinks it's keeping us safe by keeping us in the familiar so to some part of your brain, where, if you've been a night

Karen Kenney: 00:19:09

owl and now you're trying to transition into being more of an early bird, because you want to start to incorporate some new habits, maybe some new routines in the

Karen Kenney: 00:19:16

morning, they're going to be beneficial to your mental well being, to your physical well being, to your emotional and spiritual well being. This is all new to your brain

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and your nervous system and your body, right? For some people, or if you're getting back into it, right? Maybe you took a hiatus, and you stopped going to fill in the

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blank whatever it is you used to do. You stopped going to your martial arts class or your yoga class or your dance class or going to the gym, and you're like, I want to get

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back into it. Or maybe you took a pause from doing your podcast, and you're like, oh God, turning the mic on again, or putting myself so forward facing again. But there's a part

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of you that really wants to do it, and then there's this other part of you that's trying to haggle, right? And so this is a really powerful way to beat the system in your

Karen Kenney: 00:19:59

head. And. Teach you it's a tool to not only to take action, but to also activate change and to get some momentum so you start kind of like bum buck. So couple of things. It

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can also, I found, be helpful if I'm feeling a little anxious and I'm like, You can do this, right? So there's a lot of tools that I use, EFT and tapping and breath work,

Karen Kenney: 00:20:19

right? Just 1000 things, but 54321, boom. Because there's no negotiating what comes after one, I've trained my brain. It's not zero negative zero, negative one. No, it's

Karen Kenney: 00:20:32

like 54321, action, lift off. Let's go. Right. And I hear it in my head sometimes I'll go, let's go. Kenny, right? Right. So, you know, I think it's a powerful tool.

Karen Kenney: 00:20:44

Maybe it will speak to you hot, maybe it will call to you hot, and maybe you'll practice it and find out for yourself. But two things I would love to hear, what if

Karen Kenney: 00:20:53

anything you hear in your head when you go, 54321, do you hear anything? Or do you just hear 54321, move. Or 52321, and you hear a sound. I would I'm fascinated to know how

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everybody's brains work. And then I would love to know, if you try it, what your experience is like. I would love to hear especially if you found it helpful and it's

Karen Kenney: 00:21:18

made a difference for you. Okay, this is what I got for you today. We're getting it in gear, people, we are getting it in gear. I keep seeing, I keep seeing Bob Ross back

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there, like looking at me. He's so cute with his little curly hand, his little palette and his paintbrush. Every time I look back there, I picture him on the show. If you

Karen Kenney: 00:21:39

don't watch, if you don't watch Bob Ross, he does the thing where he cleans the paintbrush, and he goes and he whacks it back and forth, and then he he giggles to

Karen Kenney: 00:21:48

himself, and he's like, beat the devil out of that brush. Okay? And we are back all right. I'm signing off you guys. This has been wonderful to spend a little time

Karen Kenney: 00:22:00

together. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, or if you're going to bed, I hope you have sweet dreams and just thank you so much for tuning in. If you want to

Karen Kenney: 00:22:09

get on my email list, just come on over and sign up. We've been having such a blast, and the challenge that we've been doing here, the good, the beautiful and the holy

Karen Kenney: 00:22:18

challenge. And if you don't know what I'm talking about. It's because you're not on my email list. The people on my email list, they find out everything first. Well, the

Karen Kenney: 00:22:26

people in the nest, technically, usually find out everything first. But shortly after that, everybody on my email list finds out my shenanigans, what I'm up to, what I'm

Karen Kenney: 00:22:36

offering, what's going on, and there's always fun stuff going on. So it's Karen kenney.com/sign up one word, but if you want to jump right into the nest, it's just Karen

Karen Kenney: 00:22:48

kenney.com/nest N, E, S, T, okay. Thanks so much for joining me. And you know what, how I always end. And you can even say it along with me wherever you go, may you leave

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yourself, the animals, the people, the place, the environment, better than how you first found it, wherever you go, may you and your energy and your presence and your love

Karen Kenney: 00:23:15

be a blessing. Bye, you.