Train Your Brain & Get Majorly Inspired to Love Life TODAY with Catherine Rains
The final episode of my Courage & Clarity Summer Series is here!
I’ve saved the all-time fan favorite episode for last, my interview with Catherine Rains.
If you hate your day job and spend your hours wishing for something different, Catherine’s inspiring story is the mindset check you need.
It’s common to long for something different, especially when you’re dreaming of building a new business.
But as you’ll see in Catherine’s story, when you switch your mindset and love your present moment (challenges and all) you’ll welcome your dream opportunities to flow to you!
Catherine’s Story
At age 37, Catherine Rains had all the outward makings of success. She trained and studied for a respectable career and worked at a well known University. But like so many of us in “dream jobs”, she secretly began to hate it.
Her deeper calling was to become an artist, but in her current job she felt trapped.
Acknowledging how unhappy she was at work; Catherine had the realization that what you resist persists.
So, counter to her initial reaction of being annoyed by her job and wishing for something different, she intentionally began accepting that she was exactly where she was supposed to be.
This meant in circumstances at work where she would have once complained and let her internal dialogue go off the rails in negativity, she now simply said to herself:
This moment is my destiny, everything in my life has led me exactly here.
After months of practicing this, an incredible thing happened; Catherine realized she actually loved her job!
With this new found contentment in her present moment, she was able to call in more good things in her life, without resisting or trying to force a different outcome.
Although she didn’t stay at that job forever, she learned the power of sinking into her present moment to accept where she was and to know that it was where she was meant to be. She eventually began making art full-time for years.
What makes Catherine’s story so inspiring is that it isn’t all positive.
She was able to cultivate this feeling of gratitude and connection to her present moment through a breast cancer diagnosis, divorce and her eventual return to corporate work from making art full-time.
Loving your life today doesn’t mean pretending nothing bad happens, it’s accepting exactly where you are as the path you’re meant to be on.
How can you learn from Catherine’s story and apply her transformative mindset shifts to your life? Here are 3 key practices she used that you can try today.
1. Repeat Affirmations
Affirmations are an incredibly powerful practice that you can incorporate into your life. And despite what you may have seen on Pinterest or self-help blogs, they aren’t just about pretending everything is perfect and ignoring the negative in life. Remember Catherine’s life-changing affirmation:
“This moment is my destiny”
Rather than fighting against the challenges she was presented with; these four simple words allowed a radical level of acceptance that removed her resistance.
The next time you feel annoyed with your present circumstance, try repeating this affirmation to yourself. You’re in this exact moment for a reason, and when you stop fighting against it, you’ll expand and grow.
2. Harness the Power of the Present Moment
Catherine shared an interesting phenomenon in her story – that once she stopped obsessing and longing over being “somewhere else”, more opportunities and the next right steps presented themselves to her.
If we don’t mindfully practice staying in the present moment, our whole lives can pass us by. Our brains constantly jumping from replaying past events to worrying about our futures. But the magic of life happens in the present moment. You can use affirmations to reconnect to the present moment as well. A traditional example is:
“I Am Here Now”
3. Stop Forcing, Go With the Flow
I’ve spoken about this on Courage & Clarity before. Don’t try andcontrol every detail in your life to force an outcome. The greatest moments in your life will happen when they’re allowed to unfold naturally.
Your job is to show up and take action each day, but at a certain point you need to accept that you don’t have control over every minute detail. You’ll know you’re in flow with your decisions when the choice is clear. Get quiet and listen for your intuition.
If you’re overthinking a decision or ignoring red flags that it’s not right, you’re forcing. Step back and look for signs that you’re on the right path, and be open to different circumstances coming true.