Krista

Owner at Evolve: Live. Grow. Give.
I'm Krista, the owner and creator of Evolve. I have a masters degree in Business Administration and I am passionate about development, motivation, and change. I love stories in all of their forms, and believe in continuous learning and the power of positivity.

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Welcome to episode six of the Real Life, Real Passion podcast. Today our guest is Life Coach Cary Mac Arthur. Today, our conversation revolves around the process of becoming and how Cary used her own experience of finding her voice to build a platform geared toward helping others do the same. Her passion is connecting women with their virtue, power, and purpose. We talk about mindset, inspiration, habits, and why it’s important to live a life of continuous improvement. Cary is full of amazing advice and offers some great resources. Come get motivated to make positive changes in your life!

Introduction

Cary Mac ArthurCary was raised in a small town, and she is the oldest of seven kids. She has always been really capable. However, she learned early on how to avoid feeling uncomfortable, and how to avoid getting made fun of (and things like that). She picked things she was really good at and worked to be really good at them, and she avoided everything else. She thought that was success.

She wasn’t a big dater, and when she went to college, she had zero intentions on relationships. She went so that she could get a degree. Yet when she went to college she met her husband right away. She was 19 years old, and despite her intention, three months later they were married. They’ve been married now for 26 years.

Cary’s Box

There was something about her new situation that made Cary feel like she was stuck in a box. She found herself falling into a role. Her opinion after she was married, was that it was her role to do everything for everyone else and to put everything she had ever wanted to do away. There was no force and it happened slowly. So slowly, she didn’t even realize it was happening.

Cary put everything into her kids, and as they started getting older, like many moms, her passion became supporting their passions. She did everything to support them.

She would say to them, “You can do anything you want to do, you can be whatever you want to be.” But as they got older, her kids started noticing that she wasn’t doing what she was telling and encouraging them to do. She was telling them that they could be anything they wanted to be, and she was not doing that.

She started to notice that even though she was with her family all the time, especially her kids, she felt like a stranger to them. She knew that they didn’t know who she was, and she didn’t know how to share herself and let them know either. Instead of that close relationship that she had always wanted with her family, she was drifting further and further apart.

Wake Up Call

Cary would always tell her daughters that they were beautiful. But one day one of her daughters told her, “I learned how to hate myself by watching you.”

That statement hit her hard, and she really didn’t know what to do. But at that point Cary knew she had to do something different. She had to make a change.

Her husband could tell that something was wasn’t right. He remembered who he had married, and then saw her unhappy. He took initiative and took Cary on a retreat. They went to a private island in Belize, where she was finally able to step out of her comfort zone.

Breaking out of her box was an awful experience, but when she was finished, she felt something that she hadn’t felt for a long time. She hadn’t even realized that she had become numb to feeling.

The Beginning to a New Life

ziplineThose first steps out of her comfort zone, “was the beginning of the rest of my life.”

Now, she has committed to doing something that scares her every single day. This challenge, in addition to working on things such as her mindset and her intentions, has helped Cary come out of her shell and rediscover her passions.

Her life, which was good before, is exponentially better now. The exciting thing is, that she knows it will get even better. Every day, she is reawakened with joy. It is amazing that something so simple can do so much.

The process of Becoming

The process of becoming is first understanding who you are, the essence of who you are, and then creating a belief around that.

For the longest time Cary thought she knew who she was, and she was waiting for something to happen to make her that person. What she’s learned is that she actually has to start believing it first, seeing it, and then take action towards it to actually become who she wants to be.

One of her mentors says, “When you start to be that, then you’ll have that.” You attract what you’re being. The advice made no sense to her, and it made 100% sense to her. It took accepting and working towards it, to make the principle work in her life.

The process of becoming is “creating belief and taking action to prove it to yourself.”

It is a simple process. It can be hard to implement, but the principle is simple. We tend to go to work to over-complicate things. It creates an escape around the real issue.

Cary found that if she stayed busy all the time and always made sure that things were complicated, then she didn’t have to deal with the truth. The truth that she wasn’t confident with who she was.

Find Your Voice

Finding your voice is a metaphor for finding who you are and becoming.

For Cary, the process of finding her voice was literal as well because she has a soft voice, and it used to be even softer. One of the things she had put away almost completely was singing. She used to always sing, she loved it, but she had stopped doing it.

While working with a mentor she decided to create a program to help others find their voices, because that was her own story. She had to rediscover her own voice. She started thinking through all of the steps that she does repeatedly. She put them into introspection, action, and then into expression. She created the acronym VOICE, to illustrate these steps.

V – Value. Finding value in who you are as an eternal being. Knowing what your core values are.

O – Openness. Learning new things and being open to trying new things.

I – Intention to Act. Action has to accompany intention. Set an intention and then do it.

C – Clearing. Clear out your old beliefs and replace them with new beliefs. If you don’t develop and replace old beliefs with new beliefs, then the old beliefs will come back, and visa versa. If you don’t get rid of the old beliefs, the new beliefs have a really hard time staying because the old beliefs have been there a really long time.

E – Expression. Be who you know you are. Don’t hide behind it, be who you are.

None of the steps need to be done in order, in fact, Cary’s first step was action. Doing the thing that scared her and stepping outside her comfort zone led her to work on the rest of the steps.

It’s like an archway, the V for value and the E for expression are the cornerstones, the foundation of the archway. Without those two solid pieces in place the arch won’t amount to much. The keystone, the one that holds everything together at the top, is the Intention to Act. Because if we are not acting then the other steps will never come together. The O and the C, the openness and clarity are essential to form the complete archway.

VOICE

You can’t really leave any of the steps out.

For example, if you act without the belief, the actions will work for a while, but then they will die off because the belief will come back to your old patterns. But if you have belief without the action, then you can stay afraid and hide from who you truly are.

These steps are also indefinite. The process of becoming is just that, a process. It is not something that you can just do once. It is continual action and continual growth.

Confidence is a Byproduct of Finding Your Voice

graduationMany people think that faith and belief create confidence. “If I have faith, eventually I will have confidence.”

When you have a vision and you act on that vision, that’s what confidence is and it will lead you to your next step. The confidence won’t be there without the other steps needed to find your voice. They all work together, and one can’t come before the other.

Confidence often is not present before steps are taken to find your voice, but it is created by going through the process. Confidence will help you keep going, but you can’t have confidence without starting.

It’s a product of finding your voice, and it’s essential as you continue to work toward it.

Personal Story with Confidence

Cary feels like she has something to say. She has a message she wants to share and she want to help others. In order for people to hear her message, Cary will need to do public speaking. So, she started taking speaking courses. She knew what she was saying, but she was standing slouched over, because she was still nervous, still unsure.

Then she starting thinking about what a confident person would act like, and took on that role of being confident. “I had to be confident to be able to find more confidence.”

“The action of confidence creates the feeling of confidence.”

Mindset

Mindset is where our identity comes from. Our mindset is how we create our life and who we want to be. If we don’t understand this, our identity is given to us by our experiences; by our environment, by the people around us, by the things we see in the world, and we are given a mindset of limitation.

If we don’t do anything to change the identity we are given, we stay stuck. But, when we realize that our thoughts are things, and that you become what you think about, you have the power to create your life.

“As a man thinketh, so is he.” – James Allen, author As a Man Thinketh

“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Proverbs 23:7

Our mindset can set us free.

To change our identities, first we need to have a vision of who we want to be. Then we create thoughts around that person. Tell yourself that you are that person you desire to be. Then take actions toward proving to yourself that you really are that person. Eventually your beliefs will change and your identity will change with it. It takes conscious effort and action. It needs to be daily action, like a habit.

We like things to happen quickly, but lasting change takes time. We can’t do a step once or twice and master it. It really is a daily effort.

“Our mindset makes or breaks us.”

The Power of I Am Statements

For a long time, Cary believed the power of I Am statements, but she refused to do them. She told herself that it was because the words, I Am, are sacred to her, which is true because they represent our Savior. She felt like she couldn’t say I Am statements, because she didn’t want to overuse His name. That was her excuse for not saying her power statements.

One day she listened to her talk to herself. She heard her say things like, “I’m so stupid,” “I’m so clumsy,” “I’m so annoying”… and it struck her that she was using His name anyway to talk negatively to herself.

It struck her that using His name for negative self-talk was a surefire way to abuse it. So, she decided that if she was going to use His name anyway, then she was going to use it to create and say powerful and positive things about herself and not negative things.

She wrote a list of I Am statements, and she now says them out loud.

They say it takes 10,000 hours to become a master at something. Cary figured that maybe if she said her power statements 10,000 times then she’d master them. She did 500 a day until she reached her goal. It really worked, and has made a difference in her life.

When she feels herself going backwards, she uses her I Am statements. They help her re-frame and get back on track much faster.

Inspiration

Cary pulls inspiration from multiple sources and then she filters the information she’s learned back through the scriptures. The scriptures are her foundation. She believes that we came from wholeness and truth, and that if we are to find that, then the scriptures are the source. Prayer and meditation are also an essential component of finding truth.

People are another continual source of inspiration. Cary loves people that inspire her, she listens to what they say, then she goes back to the scriptures and looks for the same truths. She always finds them, and it’s exciting because it opens the scriptures up to her. It brings new light and understanding.

One of her favorite moments of every day is when she discovers truth in the scriptures. Especially when it’s a passage that she’s read over and over and all of the sudden it expands to a new level.

Recommended Reading and Listening

Successful People That Influence Cary

podcastCary’s husband immediately comes to mind when she thinks of a successful person. When he gets an idea, he just goes for it. It is fun and inspiring for her to watch him.

“He is a real life example of  changing your mindset to change your life. He breathes hope to a lot people, I am lucky I get to have him as my life partner. He is my best friend.”

Another successful person that comes to mind is one of Cary’s mentors. He’s become like a big brother to her, David T. S. Wood. His business is Amplified Living. He is very successful. He does whatever he wants. He is a multi-multi-millionaire, but that’s not what matters. The money is just a product of his mindset. He is one of the most generous, loving, and wise people that she’s ever met.

Sandra Yancey of the eWomen’s Network is another mentor and inspiration. She is so full of love, and her purpose is pure. She is empowering women and Cary loves it.

Biggest Challenge: Negative Self-Talk

Cary finds that her biggest challenge is her own negative self-talk. Identifying her fears is another challenge, but it is necessary so that she can work through them.

Cary has recently accepted a new challenge, which has to do with dancing, which is one of Cary’s most paralyzing fears. She was down in the basement dancing and watching herself in the mirror, and the experience made her feel raw and unprotected. Even though she’s been dancing for a while, she’s just now starting to watch herself, and that has taken it to a whole new level. Her brain brings to mind all her old past beliefs that Cary thought she had conquered.

To overcome these negative thoughts, Cary deliberately does things she’s not comfortable with. Like wearing her hair up. Her whole life Cary has felt uncomfortable wearing her hair up, even at home with her family. Another is wearing lipstick. When Cary is feeling extra vulnerable, she will pull her hair up, put lipstick on, and take a selfie (all those things that she hates to do, but she does it anyway to remind herself that she can). Doing these uncomfortable things helps her get her confidence back.

“Our negative self-talk has been with us so long it’s like our best friend.”

We have to sever ourselves from our best friend, and it can be really painful. It’s possible to get over it but it takes work.

Although it will never truly leave us (because it’s a part of who we are), we can learn to quiet it.

First Step to Find Your Voice and Develop a Passion

The first step to finding your voice or developing a passion is wanting to. “Even if you just want to want to.” It will motivate you to at least look for a way.  If you don’t want to, then nothing is going to change.

In her experience with those who start the process of finding their voice, real progress starts happening when they start to identify and overcome fears.

Her mentor David Wood says,

“The right thing and the hard thing, are often the same thing.” – David T. S. Wood

It’s dealing with that hard thing and doing it, that makes real progress happen. This is when the exhilaration of success starts to come, and it builds motivation to keep going.

Keep the Momentum Going

Journaling is a great way to keep your progress and momentum going.

Setting time for yourself every day is critical. Make your own “Power Hour.” Even if it isn’t a full hour.

We all say we don’t have time for that. Cary remembers when her kids were little. Sometimes you are never alone… But you can be intentional about it. You can make the time. You can get up earlier, before everyone is awake.

All of us have the same amount of time. We can all find it. We can all make it. But it’s a decision—an important one.

Reading is a great way to inspire yourself to keep going. Cary starts with the scriptures then moves to another book.

After she has found her inspiration for the day, she goes to her journal, and she takes advice from Sandra Yancey by thinking of her favorite memory from the past 24 hours. Cary writes about her favorite memory and it brings back the emotions that she felt. Then she writes three things she is grateful for, which intensifies her feelings. Then she can build her entire day on those positive feelings.

Build Your Day on Positive Feelings

Every day in your Journal, write:

  • Your favorite memory from the last 24 hours
  • 3 things you are grateful for

Start your day with strong positive emotions. It’s a small thing that makes a huge amount of difference.

Check In

This piece of advice Cary gives often takes people a while to start using, but it really has an impact.

Cary sets an alarm on her phone for three or four different times during the day. She uses these moments to answer three questions.

  1. What are you feeling?
  2. What are you thinking?
  3. Why?

“We all think we know what we are feeling, and we all think we know what we’re thinking. But we don’t. There is always something running in the background.”

Our tasks, our to-do list is up at the front, and we just go, we don’t take the time to stop and feel. This practice helps you stop and pay attention to how you are feeling. If you don’t feel anything, then pay attention to your body. Are your shoulders tense? Is your heart beating fast? Are you slamming cupboards? …Oh, I must be frustrated. Why?

Evaluating your feelings gives you a chance to think about what is causing your feelings so then you can proactively work to solve problems, or at least recognize the root cause. It brings awareness of your thoughts and feelings.

“Awareness is power.”

These habits are things that need to be done over and over again.

It’s easier not to do them. It’s easier to keep doing what you’ve always done and stay inside your comfort zone. But you can’t stay in your comfort zone and still grow. You have to keep working, keep finding inspiration and motivation. These simple things, these habits, will help you develop into something more.

Developing a Habit is More Important Than The Intensity

The simplest smallest habit, if it’s intentional, toward the bigger vision is key. You need the habit to find success.

“The little things really make a difference.”

The challenge is in thinking because they are small, that they are insignificant, and many people will stop. It really is in “mastering the mundane” that helps you grow.

What’s Next?

This is the year Cary feels like she is ready to really start sharing her voice. She is going to start speaking and make an effort to master her ability to articulate what she wants to say and inspire people. She is looking forward to working with more people and sharing her program.

Her vision is to spread her message all over the world. She loves culture and languages and has a burning desire to see the world.

Ultimately, she wants to be the best Mom and Grandma that she can be. This work, her passion for finding her own voice and helping other’s find their voices, is helping her be a better person, wife, mom, and grandma.

The same daughter that told Cary that she taught her to hate herself, recently sent Cary a new message saying, “I’m watching you be happy, and I want that. And I want you to teach me.”

For Cary, that statement is worth everything. She wants her children to continue building belief in themselves, and she can lead by example because she is working to build belief in herself.

family

Tools and Resources

CaryMacArthur.com

Cary’s Guest Article on Evolve: Find Your Voice, Follow Your Purpose

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References

  1. Amplified Network Marketing. (2017). Retrieved from http://amplifiednetworkmarketing.com/
  2. CaryMacArthur.com. (2017). Retrieved from http://carymacarthur.com/
  3. eWomen Network. (2017). Retrieved from https://ewomennetwork.com/page/meet-our-ceo
  4. Learn Out Loud. (2017). Retrieved from http://www.learnoutloud.com/Catalog/Self-Development/Goals/The-Strangest-Secret/47127
  5. Mechanic to Millionaire. (2017). Retrieved from http://www.mechanictomillionaire.com/
  6. Motivating the Masses. (2017). Retrieved from http://motivatingthemasses.com