#184: The Best Thing About Anticipation

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Welcome back to Your Favorite You. 

I'm Melissa Parsons, and once again, I'm so glad that you're here with me today. Every time I consider whether I should continue doing the podcast, I will get a little nod from the universe to tell me that I should definitely continue. 

And this morning, as I was waking up, today is actually a Tuesday that I'm recording this episode and episode 178 dropped this morning. And I got a message before 8 a.m. from one of my former clients that said, "Pausing the podcast to remind you how much of an impact you and your work in all of its forms, your existence has made in my life. Episode 178 is exactly what I needed and I think so many of us need right now. All my parts are feeling all of it too. Thank you." And I just loved this message and I responded back to her by saying, thank you for letting me know. 

It really does mean so much to know it's helping you feel seen. It's an honor to have impact and know it goes both ways. So to this client who sent me that message and to all of you who have, you know, let me know in one way or another how much the podcast has helped you or those of you who've told me, you know, I've sent it to my friend or I sent it to a coworker or I thought my mom or my sister or, you know, my bestie needed to hear this. I just thank you so much. I really do appreciate it. And I just want y'all to know. All right. I want to ask you something right now, right at the top of this episode. 

And I want you to really feel into it rather than just thinking about it. So when was the last time you booked a hair appointment or maybe it was a nail appointment or you scheduled a massage, if that's your thing? 

Do you remember that moment right after you hit confirm or right after you hung up the phone when something in you just exhaled a little bit when you thought, okay, that's happening and felt genuinely better. 

You hadn't gotten the haircut yet. You hadn't laid back and let the stylist, you know, massage your scalp and wash your hair. You hadn't seen the final result. Nothing had actually changed. And yet something had shifted because you had decided and the decision itself felt good. 

That's anticipation. And today I want to talk about why it's one of the most underrated and underused tools available to us and what that has to do with the work of becoming your favorite you. Here's something that I know from coaching the women that I work with. 

The good feeling doesn't have to wait until the thing happens. It starts the moment you decide. And if you've been on the fence about doing something for yourself, something big, something that could genuinely change the way you move through your life, I want you to hear this episode before you spend one more day waiting. 

Let's start small because I think small is actually where we learn best. Think about the moment your favorite musical artist announces they're coming to your city. The tickets aren't even on sale yet. 

The concert is six months and maybe even a year away. You haven't decided who you want to go with. And yet something happens the moment you see the announcement. You start imagining it. You think about what songs you're hoping that they play live. 

You start telling other people. You feel a little buzz of something that is genuinely and measurably good in your body. Or think about planning a vacation. The actual trip is months away. You haven't packed. 

You haven't even confirmed any of your reservations, but you've been on the website. You've looked at the pictures. You've had conversations about what you want to do when you get there. And I would argue, and research backs me up on this, that sometimes the anticipation of a vacation rivals the vacation itself. 

And looking forward to it is its own form of joy. And then, of course, there's Heated Rivalry. I'm going to be completely transparent with you. I am heavily, enthusiastically, not at all apologetically, anticipating the next season of heated rivalry. 

I think about it. I talk about it with my friends. It makes me happy in advance. And of course, they haven't even filmed it yet. It hasn't aired yet. This is not a trivial thing, by the way. Researchers who study happiness and well-being have found that anticipation, the act of looking forward to something, activates genuine positive emotion. 

Your brain responds to a future good thing almost as if it's happening right now. The pleasure is real. It's just pointed forward. And if that's true for a concert, a vacation, a TV show, imagine what it means when the thing you're anticipating is a version of yourself that you actually love. 

I want to share something that I hear in my coaching practice often. Women will come to me. They are brilliant, high functioning, self-aware, and somewhere in our early conversations, they say something like, I've been thinking about getting a coach for years, or I've been following you for a long time, and I just knew eventually I was going to work with you. 

And when I hear that, my heart does a couple of things at once. It fills up because I know what it took to finally make the call and I know that this woman is ready and it aches just a little for all the time that's passed in between. 

Now, I want to be really clear about something before I go any further, because this matters to me. There is no shame in the waiting. None. Timing is personal. Life is complicated. The right moment is different for every single person. 

And sometimes what looks like delay is actually necessary preparation. So your parts might be getting ready. Your circumstances might be shifting. Your resources may be lining up. And I honor all of that. 

And I also want to name something honestly because I think it deserves to be named. Waiting has a cost too. It's just an invisible one. Nothing really dramatic happens. Nobody can point to the thing you lost, but the version of yourself that you've been imagining, the one who has done the work, the one who relates to herself differently, the one who shows up in her relationships and her life from a bit more grounded and loving place, she's been waiting too. And every month that passes is a month that she didn't get to be fully alive in your life. I'm not saying that to create urgency through fear. I'm saying it because I think a lot of us don't account for that cost. 

We only see the risk of doing something. We rarely see the risk of not doing the thing. And here's what I want you to hear. You don't have to wait until you start to start feeling better. That shift can happen the moment you decide. 

I know this because I've watched it happen. I'm going to tell you about a client of mine. She signed up to be in a your favorite you coaching group. And then, as happens sometimes with the timing of my cohorts, she had a few months to wait before the group actually started. 

And something happened in those months that she didn't expect. She started feeling better before we had a single call together, before she learned a single tool or framework, before the work had officially begun in any way. 

She started feeling genuinely and noticeably better about herself and her life. When we talked about it, she told me what she'd been working on. Like so many of the women I coach, she wanted to work on her relationships, primarily the one she had with herself, the voice in her own head, the way that she talked to herself, treated herself, measured herself. 

And she wanted to work on the relationships closest to her, the ones where she found herself obsessing over conversations, replaying them, bracing for outcomes that often never came. And in those months of waiting, something quietly began to shift. 

She started noticing the time she was actually being kind and compassionate with herself, not just catching herself being critical, which had been the default, but actively seeing the moments of grace that she was extending to herself. 

They had always been there. She just hadn't been looking for them. She started noticing when conversations with the people she loved went well, when the exchange she'd been dreading turned out absolutely fine, when she handled something with more ease than she'd anticipated. 

Instead of only cataloging the hard moments, she started collecting the great ones. One of the things I tell every group before we begin is that we start every single call with celebrations and glimmers. 

So in a world that trains us to look for triggers for what's wrong, what's threatening, what's about to go sideways, the other shoe to drop, a glimmer is the opposite. It's a small moment of goodness, a flash of connection, of beauty, of ease, of joy, something that reminds you that life also contains these glimmers. 

So she started looking for her glimmers before our first call, before the group had even officially started. And of course, she found them. They'd always been there. She now just had a reason to look. 

The decision to join was the first act of becoming her favorite version of herself. Not the first call, not the first breakthrough, that decision. Something happens when we commit to ourselves. Something internal reorganizes. 

A part of us that had been waiting maybe for a very long time gets to exhale. And in that exhale, there's space to notice things differently, to look for different evidence, to start practicing quietly and privately a new way of being that we've signed up to learn. 

She didn't wait until the group started to begin becoming her favorite version of herself. She started the moment she decided, and so can you. Let me offer you a way of understanding why this happens, because I don't think it's magic, even though it can feel that way. 

In IFS, the understanding is that our internal system is always organizing around something. Our parts are always working, either protecting, managing, trying to keep us safe and functional. And for a lot of us, especially those of us who are high achieving and high functioning, our parts have been organized around a story that goes something like, I'm managing. 

I'm fine. I don't need help. I can figure this out on my own. When you make a decision to invest in yourself, to join a group, to work with a coach, to say out loud that you want something different, that story shifts. 

Your parts start to reorganize around a new narrative, one where you think you're worth the investment, one where change is not only possible, but is underway. One where you start moving towards something actively rather than just enduring where you're at. 

And the reorganization starts immediately, not during the first call, not when we do our first exercise together, the moment you decide. Anticipation, in this sense, is not passive waiting. It's actively becoming. 

Your system starts practicing a new version of you before she's officially arrived. You start looking at yourself through new eyes because you've told yourself in the most concrete way possible that new lenses are coming. 

So you might as well start using them now. The hair appointment analogy holds here too. The moment you book it, you start thinking about what you want. You start imagining the outcome. You might even start carrying yourself a little differently because you know something good is coming. 

The appointment hasn't happened yet, but you are already in some way a person who has made herself a priority. And that's what my client experienced. And it's what I've seen in different forms with woman after woman who finally makes the decision to invest in herself. 

The good feeling doesn't wait for permission. It can start now. So I want to speak directly to you for a minute. And I mean you, the specific person listening to this episode right now. If you've been thinking about doing this kind of work, really thinking about it, not just a passive thought, but a recurring one, the kind that comes back, I want you to hear this clearly. 

The thinking about it is not the same as doing it. And every day you spend thinking about it is a day your nervous system doesn't get to practice the new story. It's a day your glimmers go uncollected. 

And again, I'm not saying this to create pressure. I mean it when I say there's no shame in the timing. Your timing is your timing, and I want you to trust that. I'm saying it because I genuinely believe that you deserve to feel better sooner rather than later. 

And because I know from watching it happen over and over again, that the moment you decide is the moment something shifts. You don't have to wait until we start to start looking for your glimmers. You can begin that right now. 

You don't have to wait until we're on a call together to start noticing when you're being kind to yourself. You can start noticing that today. You don't have to wait to start anticipating, really genuinely looking forward to the version of yourself that's on the other side of this work. 

You can start imagining her today. What does she feel like? How does she move through her days? How does she talk to herself? How does she show up in the relationships that matter most to her? She's not as far away as you think, and the path to her starts with a decision, which brings me to something very specific that I want to tell you about. 

If this episode has landed for you, if something in you is nodding or quietly saying yes, I have a very clear next step for you. On April 30th at 7 p.m. Eastern Time, I'm hosting a live workshop called Why Smart Women Stay Stuck. 

And if you've been circling this work, thinking about it, knowing somewhere in yourself that something needs to shift, this workshop is your next first step. We're going to talk about exactly what keeps brilliant, high-functioning women frozen, not because there's something wrong with them. 

There isn't. But because there are very specific, very understandable reasons that the women who are most capable of change are often the ones who find it hardest to start. And we are going to talk about what becomes possible on the other side of that. 

You don't have to be ready to commit to anything beyond showing up. Just come, bring your coffee or your sparkling water or your tea or whatever makes you feel good at 7 p.m. on a Wednesday. And let's start the conversation. 

The moment you register, the anticipation can begin. And as we talked about today, that feeling is real. That shift is real. It can start now, not later. So register at melissaparsonscoaching.com forward slash workshop. 

Again, that's melissaparsonscoaching.com forward slash workshop. April 30th, 7 p.m. Eastern, Why Smart Women Stay Stuck? I would love to see you there. Thanks so much for being here today. Share this episode with a woman in your life who's been thinking about doing this kind of work. 

She might need to hear it. I'll see you next week and I'll definitely see some of you on April 30th. Let's go.

Before you go, I want to tell you about something special that I'm doing that I know you're going to love. On Thursday, April 30th at 7 p.m. Eastern, I am going to be hosting a free workshop called Why Smart Women Stay Stuck and the One Shift That Sets You Free. 

If you've been listening to this podcast, you know that I work with amazing, accomplished women who have achieved everything that they thought they wanted, but are still feeling stuck in one way or another. 

This workshop is for you if you're tired of overthinking every decision, if you're exhausted from seeking everyone else's approval, or if you know you're capable of more, but you don't even know what the hell more even looks like. 

I'm going to share the one shift that changes everything, which is how to move from external authority to your own internal authority. And I'll tell you, of course, exactly what that looks like and how to make it happen in your own life. 

Here's what makes this even better. Just for signing up for the workshop, you'll be getting a 25 question assessment called, Am I Giving My Power Away? This assessment helps you identify exactly where you've been handing your authority over to others. 

And if you show up live and engage with me during the workshop, you'll be getting two additional bonuses. My permission slips for smart women, which is a collection of 10 beautifully written permission slips that you can save to your phone for daily reminders that you don't need anyone else's permission to want what you want. 

Plus, you'll be getting my five-minute internal authority check-in. It's an audio to help point you back to your own intuition. The women who come to these workshops tell me that they get massive clarity just from the hour we spend together. 

Some say it really helps them make sense of why they're doing what they've been doing. And it's completely free. Go to melissaparsonscoaching.com forward slash workshop to save your spot. Again, that's melissaparsonscoaching.com forward slash workshop. 

Thursday, April 30th at 7 p.m. Eastern. Stop trying to think your way out of being stuck and start trusting yourself instead. I'll see you there.