Hello, hello, my beautiful friends. I hope you're all doing so, so well today. 

Thank you for joining me on the podcast. 

This is gonna be a short but sweet one, and I'm gonna let you know right from the top, this one is not scripted, so we're just gonna, I just wanted to test it out, see what kind of chaos-goblinry I can do for a podcast episode. 

So have your thoughts and prayers for my podcast producer. He's going to need them for this particular episode, but I wanted to give it a whirl. 

We haven't done an unscripted one in well over a year. So here we go. 

So today we're gonna talk about a question that I get all of the time, which is what is one thing you could give someone going through IVF? 

Now, if you know me, you know my work, thoughts create feelings, feelings drive your actions, actions get your results, right? So I do the think, feel, do model. 

So if I was going to give someone something, the only thing I would want to give them, a piece of advice that I would want to impart on them, it would be regarding an emotion. Because an emotion, once you know what it is, once you know what you're feeling, right, you can create thoughts that will help you get to that emotion. That emotion's gonna drive a lot of what you're doing. So this is gonna be about an emotion and then how I would talk to myself. 

Okay, so that's this. The emotion that I would give you, the emotion that I would tell you to try and cultivate as often as possible is not hope, which is what most people would think, isn't even really courage, which I've talked about a little bit before. 

The emotion that I would want you to try to cultivate or the emotion I would want to give you or the emotion that I would want you to have and carry with you throughout your IVF journey, and even through parenthood or wherever life takes you, is the emotion of willing. Willingness. 

That is the emotion I would want you to have. That is the emotion that I would want you to experience because when you're willing to do something that means number one it's always a choice. It's always been your choice. IVF has always been your choice. 

Infertility was not your choice. That's not a choice. That's a medical diagnosis. That's something you've experienced. 

Willingness though when you're walking through your IVF journey and you're telling yourself This is the only thing I can do. I need to do this. Many of us get locked into this belief that we have to do things, right? Whatever it is outside of IVF. I have to do this for work. I have to do that, right? 

But willingness Right. It doesn't feel as like warm or fuzzy as hope. It doesn't maybe feel as powerful as excitement or as Elusive as motivation, right? But willingness is actually something that's gonna get your ass out of bed to do whatever it is. Right if you're willing to Go to the gym, right? You wanna feel better, you wanna get stronger, you want your body composition to change, then based on that desire, you would be willing to incorporate movement into your day, right? 

If you're willing to get a promotion, you desire a promotion, then you would be willing to do within a healthy amount of boundaries, so you have some balance in your life, but you would be willing to take on more responsibility at work. Right? 

If your desire is to have or expand your family, then you might be willing to go through IVF. You might be willing to go to the doctor's appointments to take the medication, right? 

It's not a feel good emotion. Like it's not a super, like I said, it's not fuzzy and warm and what we think of, but it is gonna be the thing that's gonna get you to do those things that you tell yourself you want to do. 

Now, the opposite of that is not willing, right? Unwilling. And the second part of what I was talking about earlier when I said I would give you two things, I would give you an emotion and I would tell you how to talk to yourself. When you decide you are unwilling to do something, we're not gonna make willing and unwilling a morality issue. It's not a good or bad, it's not a right or wrong. 

There are some things in life that you're willing to do. And there are some things that you're not willing to do. Right? I am willing to run. and go to kickboxing because those are two things that I absolutely love. I am not willing to subsist on protein shakes or keto diet or anything like that. Right. Those are things that I'm willing to do and things that I'm not willing to do. And both are fine. Both are perfect. Okay. 

So if you're unwilling, like let's say for instance, maybe you're toeing the line between maybe continuing to do another cycle or maybe walking away from treatment. There's no good or bad in there. Right. 

You are willing to do something until you're not. 

And I think when we choose to get to a place where we're not willing to do something or where we're no longer willing to do something, that's actually a beautiful testament to ourselves, to the love and dedication and the care that we're taking for ourselves. 

OK, so I want you to start working and thinking about and incorporating this emotion, this feeling. What does willingness feel like? For me, it feels open, maybe light. There's no obligation attached to it. There's not really even heaviness attached to it. 

It helps me cut through a lot of my BS. I'm gonna be honest. I use the word willing a lot with this business, right? My executive dysfunction is all over the place right now, but there are things that I'm willing to do, right? I'm willing to fight for my focus so that I can get you guys these podcast episodes. I'm willing to fight through my insecurity so that I can open a group coaching program so that I can be more accessible to more people, right? 

So willingness drives a lot of stuff for me, right? 

Willingness drove me to do my last IVF cycle, the cycle where we were basically throwing Hail Marys based on our diagnoses and all of this stuff. That's what I was willing to do. 

Was I super thrilled walking through those doors at like, six o'clock in the morning on, you know, three days a week or something while I was getting my labs and the scans and all of that done. Not really. No, it was cool to see the office staff. They're a great bunch of people, but I wasn't really excited. There was, there was nothing happening inside of me or I was like, yes, I get to get to drive through Austin traffic and go to this doctor first thing in the morning. No, but I was willing to based on my desire. 

So if you're willing to do something, it doesn't necessarily matter if you're super happy about it. The motivation doesn't need to be there. The excitement doesn't need to be there. You're still probably going to feel scared, right? If I'm willing to do something, that means I'm also choosing to do it scared. And that's okay too. 

Doesn't mean that I'm not going to experience anxiety or any of the other emotions, right? Willingness just means that I'm choosing what I'm doing, which means I'm also willing to experience the discomfort of whatever emotion might also accompany me. 

Okay, so that's actually what I have for you today. I know I said it was gonna be short and sweet because I want you to come back to this one over and over and over again. I just want you to think about and embrace, welcome the feeling of willingness. 

All right, my friends, that's it for today. I think we did pretty good without a script. So I'll let you all be the deciders of that. But that is what I have for you today. I hope you have a beautiful week and I'll talk to you soon, bye bye.