Pursuing the Happiness Habit with Kara Payton

🎶 Podcast Intro: Welcome to the pursuing uncomfortable podcast, where we give you the encouragement you need to lean into the uncomfortable stuff life puts in front of you, so you can love your life. If you are ready to overcome all the yuck that keeps you up at night, you're in the right place. I am your host, Melissa Ebken let's get going. 🎶

🎶 Episode Intro:  Welcome to another episode of pursuing uncomfortable. In today's episode, I am joined by Kara Peyton. We dive into the power of internal conversations, the impact of subconscious beliefs, and the importance of reframing our perspectives. Together, we explore the journey of personal development and overcoming fear to create lasting change. Kara, who started a podcast called the happiness habit, shares her own transformation and the evolution of her show. Join us as we unpack the uncomfortable and discover the keys to pursuing happiness. 🎶

Episode:
Melissa Ebken  0:01  
Kara, welcome to the Pursuing Uncomfortable Podcast. How are you today?

Kara Payton  0:05  
I'm doing wonderful. Thank you so much for inviting me, Melissa, I've been looking forward to this. 

Melissa Ebken  0:09  
It's my pleasure I have been also. Tell us a little bit about what you do.

Kara Payton  0:17  
Well, I am a jack of all trades. And I would consider myself an authenticity strategist above all else as far as working with individuals in humans, author, speaker, podcast host and just a slew of other things, but all centered around the focus and theme of creating authenticity and everyone's life.

Melissa Ebken  0:40  
Well, I can't wait to dig a little deeper into that. Where do you, where are you zooming in from today?

Kara Payton  0:48  
I'm in the Kansas City area, just about 30 minutes south of that. It's in a suburb called Overland Park. And so right smack dab in the middle of the country.

Melissa Ebken  0:57  
Perfect. I love it. So Kara, you didn't always do this work. Tell us a little bit about your life before and how you got into doing what you do right now.

Kara Payton  1:08  
Oh, that's, that's there's been many iterations of my life. So. So the first one that comes to mind to bring up is I started into the workforce in the restaurant business, and was working for somebody else and had my time and focus dictated by someone else. So I spent 12 hours, sometimes 16 hours working, but I had a son. And he was in a daycare center that I eventually found out he was being mistreated in and so all of a sudden, I quit. And that turned into an accidental career in photography that led to being in the wedding industry for 20 years. And upon a life crisis, somewhere smack dab in the middle of that I ended up in a Tony Robbins event, and was just drank the Kool Aid gulp after gulp. And that was that was my entry point into the personal development wellness space, where you you're just, it was just a full blown veil tear of what I knew happiness, well being, mind; your the way that you process your mind and deal with the things that you think about, I had never even thought that that could be a collaborative process. And so getting into Tony Robbins world was absolutely just like jumping into a pool of ice water, it was nothing like I had ever considered in my life. And so of course, you know, started out volunteering got offered a staff position. Toured with him around the world, it was one of the happiest and most amazing chapters of my whole life. And eventually the staff positioning, and would require me to travel, you know, two to three weeks out of the month. So our paths diverted from there, and I started my own thing, but then immediately just got, you know, this was 2019 or so. And I just decided, You know what, I'm gonna go back to what I know, I became a wedding professional again, and then the pandemic happened. And it became very obvious and glaringly aware that the things that I learned over the course of my career, as well as the things that I had learned developmentally and spiritually and physically and all of the stuff that I had used to improve my life was super, super relevant in this space where people are talking about anxiety and depression and being really, really aware that in their own four walls on lockdown with nothing else to think about, there's a lot of questions that are going unanswered in the space. So que my stage reentry into that world and started the podcast, just wanting to create a conversation where people are getting answers to some of these big life questions that they have. And went full time after my brother in law lost his battle to PTSD in November or in October of 2021. And that was when you know, I just I fully stepped with both feet into the arena of this space understanding that there is a lot more people needed in the mental and emotional space in there are in the wedding profession. So that is that is the long winded way of where I've gotten to today.

Now I've worked in restaurants, and I do weddings, and you see an interesting side of human nature in those fields, let's just say.

Yeah, it you see the best in the worst. You see what the catalysts of stress and demands and collaborative efforts and even the hierarchy of job placement of what you know a boss or regional manager or a director or just like regular employees. Not to mention you know, the wedding profession of that type of that type of event and that caliber of event especially when it is just for, you know, some of them are just for the vanity metrics of throwing the biggest, best, most relevant most trending party? And some people that are actually marriage based as opposed to wedding based? And yeah, I would definitely say I observed some interesting people, but I would I mean, everybody has the opportunities no matter what you do, you could do DoorDash, or deliver pizzas or be a congressmen all find yourselves in the throes of human human condition. 

Melissa Ebken  5:27  
Absolutely. So you mentioned your podcast, can you tell us the name of it and a little bit of what it's about?

Kara Payton  5:35  
Absolutely. I named it in 2020, the Happiness Habit Podcast, because that was the where the conversations were centered around as people that just could not understand how they were so unhappy, deeply unhappy in their life. And it's transformed into a little, a little bit more of a space for the deep, raw questions that are not getting enough air time in the world. And so I would say it actually doesn't really revolve around happiness anymore. It's just, it's got such a great audience. And, you know, I'm definitely a stickler for not rebranding and changing just for the sake of, you know, what it is. My listeners that have been with me for, you know, going on for years now. That's, we've, it's kind of become a little bit of the jest of like, well, you know, it's the Happiness Habit Podcast, but we're going to talk about suicidal tendencies. But it's a great place. And I love my listeners and my audience. And it's definitely not something I anticipated still to be in my ecosystem Three years later, so I'm really I'm really grateful for it.

Melissa Ebken  6:42  
What are some of those topics that really resonated with people, those that you wouldn't expect on the Happiness Habit Podcast, but that really came up and people really connected with?

Kara Payton  6:54  
Oh, gosh, I would say the three main themes were this idea of self abandonment, just the things that we do that are so destructive, to our well being that are so honestly, self, self inflicted, we have these emotional addictions to bad people and bad things, and horrible self talk. And so definitely just that self abuse, that concept of self abuse and what that entails. And then again, unhealthy relationship dynamics, unhealthy relationship dynamics will then be family or intimate or mother to child dealing with parental childhood wounds that were never that were never addressed, that absolutely inform our adult behavior. And then I would say just the mental the mental tornadic activity that we all go through that nobody really wants to talk about, as far as you know, we all talk about, we have oh, yeah, my mind races or I have mental chatter and all that. But diving into maybe the dark corner of that, where it really gets destructive, where we don't really want to admit that when left to my own devices, my mind goes to very bad places. I feel like there's so few conversations about like you said, pursuing uncomfortable, going into a dark corner and going what is going on here? Where am I needs getting met in this completely self flagellating obsession of believing that I'm not worthy, or I'm not good enough? Or that there's something inherently wrong with me? And so I'm like, no, hell yeah, hell no let's go there. Let's all go there. Let's break open that turn a light on it and like actually break down what happens in the mind, what happens in the spirit, what happens when left to the poisonous detriment of trauma going unhealed? And it's, I feel like it's been really well received, people are actually we spent a long time in 2020 scared to death of who we really are, and the truth, the stark truth of that the unflattering light of my relationships actually suck. My life is kind of built on a whole bunch of facade, my personal imagery, and who I've presented as some complete, entirely falsified 2021. We're still asking those questions. We're doing a little bit of searching, but we're so satiated with information that we feel at peace, because we're getting a lot of answers. 2022, it's like the answers aren't quite cutting it anymore. We're still we now know what we know. But we're still pulling ourselves into these crappy scenarios. But now we know that they're crappy. It's like you can't unsee it. 2023, we're like, rubber meets the road. Show me what to do now. So it's been an interesting evolution to watch that subject matter transform my audience as well as myself. I mean, I'm definitely it started out I was pitching knowledge from my my ego. I'm thinking I'm gonna help people, I'm gonna go into the world. But it was definitely a qualifier journey for me as well. I'm like, Oh my gosh, I actually, now that we're in here, I'm noticing I got significant blind spots. Let's break those open too. So it's been a beautiful, beautiful evolution to watch. 

Melissa Ebken  10:17  
A couple of things came to mind for me when you were discussing that. The first is that mindset seems to be a common factor in all that you mentioned. That voice that's in our head that's talking the tapes that we have carried with us our whole lives, listen to me dating myself the tapes that we have in our head. And then the other thing is that, in that journey, when we embrace uncomfortable, we learned that has better questions.

Kara Payton  10:50  
Yeah, that's, there's so many things that can be unpacked in just what you said with that. Because in those conversations, especially the internal ones, almost exclusively, the internal ones, there are so many. There are so many threads that play on loop, that dictate our life, that dictate our actions that dictate our feelings that dictate our identity, that with going unturned, of going on challenged, and especially if going uninterrupted. We live our life on that record. It's just a self fulfilling prophecy all the time. And it's like a lens, you know, if I were to put on glasses, or put on contacts even better, if I'm putting on contacts, you can't see it. I see now everything through that. I don't recognize that they're there. I cannot see the contacts on my eyeballs. You know, it's not something that I would even know, to question my sight without them. And that's the same thing we do with subconscious beliefs and things that are playing a loop in our mind, we just live our lives through them. And without challenging it without taking out a contact and going oh my gosh, you are what's changing my sight. Subconscious beliefs are the same thing. Stories, programs, identities, false narratives, that are unchallenged uninterrupted. It's the same thing. We live our lives according to it. And if without a better question, without somebody willing to go, is that true? Is what's in front of me what I'm actually seeing? We don't have the opportunity to to back up and actually see it. Oh my gosh, there's a reason I'm drowning. I'm standing underneath the waterfall but until I back up into the cave and see the waterfall and identify that's what's been holding me down. I can't. I don't have the invitation to even create a new reef have a refreshed reframing process. So asking better questions, but then even more so as I've noticed my audience as it's evolved from asking the better question, questioning the question, questioning the presuppositions, we then have to also question the intention of the answer. How I'm answering it, is it with intent to make things better? Or define things as better? Or worse? Am I actually intending to make my situation worse with this answer? Is the question presupposing an answer that will prove a confirmation bias or prove another subconscious belief that I'm not even aware of there. Because multiple multiple most of the time these questions are kind of interwoven with other ones. And they're all designed if you have this, if you have a pattern, a mental or emotional or identity pattern that is destructive, or falls into the identity of well I'm an addict. Well, I'm, I'm, I'm the abused child. Well, I'm the orphan. I'm the failure. Most of the time, your questions are all going to revolve in the same family of proving to itself that story, your brain has to prove itself. If I say that I'm a failure, all the questions I'm going to ask are going to be in an attempt to answer in the favor that I am a failure to prove it to myself in that concept of familiarity. So it's more than just getting really, really clear on your questions. It's also going what type of person asks these questions, and what must they believe about themselves in order to ask those types of questions. And in the further questioning of this entire process, that the details and really reveals, what identity am I trying to perpetuate and all of those?

Melissa Ebken  14:50  
It's so fascinating, and in these 100 or so episodes that I've done now, the people that have been on the podcast here that are embracing uncomfortable that are sharing their stories of inspiration of having gone through this process. There are some common threads through them all. One is, as you mentioned that voice within that our experience, we just assume without even knowing we're assuming it, that our experience is normative for others. Those who had experienced childhood physical, sexual social, emotional abuse, just assumed that that's the experience that everyone has. Folks that had experienced hardship in other ways, just assumed that their experience was normative. That's just what people experience. And the differentiator for all of them was that moment when they realize, no, that was my experience. There are other experiences out there. And I can choose to have a different experience. Now, we can't choose to remake or redo our past, but we can certainly learn from it and reframe our story of it to create something new. And I think that's what you're getting at that these questions when they move us to different actions, different behaviors, different beliefs, those are the powerful questions.

Kara Payton  16:17  
Absolutely. And I think that that definitely falls in line with what I would do with people. Next is after we kind of get clear on this, this personal audit in the beginning of the journey, then okay, we can, we can see where it is. And as long as we can hold it in non judgement and move into the reframing process, that's that's that you kind of let go of all these things that would tack it down into your mind. And lack of resistance is one of them just being able to hold space that, like you said, that was made normal to me, we don't have any other construct, to abide by we go into this. We're born into a dynamic. And what it is, is all we know that is our glow, only until we move out of that home. And we realize that our maybe it goes from house to neighborhood to neighborhood to community to community to region to region to now we have a little bit more of a global scale. And only then can we kind of do these take these comparison notes of like, what was what was normal for me compared to what was normal for somebody else. And I was no exception, I remember the first time I ever left the country. And God, that was such a, you know when they say the word culture shock, that is an indicator that your model of the world was just that limited. And so we have the same type of thing where we realize our model of the world is incredibly limited, inherently limited. Honestly, we're born into the limitation, this almost blind sighted, narrowly focused, narrowly informed, narrowly everything, lens and model of the way that life is. The way that family is the way that love is what money is what all of these things that we eventually kind of tool around in until we figure out, oh, I can actually reverse engineer this. But without the questioning process, and then you know, you have to also have a target of what you want. And that's where most of us if we can if we can reframe this and challenge this and question this, that's beautiful, but most of us can't tell you, okay, I'd like to move from this to z, this is my z, this is my x, that I'm the target that I'm working for. You can tell me what you don't want most people tell me, well, I just don't want to end up like my mom, or, you know, I just I just don't want to be shuffling in a bathroom homeless on the streets, you know, an inherent failure, I just don't want to end up like my dad who was an alcoholic, you know. And so we have all these targets we don't want to hit. But that doesn't tell us that doesn't give us any polarized path straight through it. And we end up hitting all these targets that we never want to hit. There's actually a fascinating story. Even Tony told me years ago, he said that there's an a pole, a curved road that has a light pole or a I think I believe it's a light pole in Alaska, there's a curve, this pole is just placed such that it takes the focus of the driver. This is the most crashed into pole in the world. Why? Because it's an object of I don't want to hit that pole right at that turn. And so we focus where not on the road, but on the pole. And it's the same thing with all of the metrics that we don't want to hit in our own life. I just don't want to crash into the pole. Inevitably we end up perpetually crashing into poles in our lives. It's like, we don't do what we want. We do what we must. We don't have what we want. We have what we need. It's the same thing. It's that law of just the satia in satiation and law of necessity. So we have to also get clear then on our target, clear on who we want to be. Who that is? What, to the extent of what do they talk about? How do they dress? How did they get in morning? How do they engineer their day? How do they speak? How do they carry themselves? How do they stand all of it? What are the habits of that type of person? What are the beliefs of that type of person? How do they speak? What's their language? What's their tone of voice, all the way, the clearer you can be on that. Everything else can be informed by that. If I know who I am, I know what I want. If I know what I want, I know what I must do. So pretty much all questions come from the clarity of the identity of that person. If people say I don't want to, I don't know what I want, I don't know what to do, essentially, you're telling me in a fractory sense, I don't know who I am, in the context on context of wealth, or the context of relationship, the context of health, what that actually looks like. So it's, it's a fascinating process, it's a lot less mysterious then it's made out to be, and the more clarity that we can build around the conversations of that, the more we can empower people to actually take a proactive role in their own journey.

Melissa Ebken  21:11  
I love that. A metaphor I like to use here in central Illinois, I live in the middle of the cornfields and the bean fields. With the roads, the rural landscape, and the roads are like driving on a piece of graph paper. They go north and south, they go east and west. Occasionally, you'll have a curve or a diagonal, but basically, if you're going somewhere and you know, it's west, you don't have to have the exact road, you just know, if I keep heading west, I'm gonna run into it. I don't know where this road is gonna go. I don't know where that road is gonna go. But I know I want to go west. So I'll keep heading in that direction in this road curved, okay, now I need to make another turn and to get onto this road to continue west. Having that fixation on the destination allows you to make adjustments along the way that as long as the path is taking you where you want to go stay on it. But when it doesn't, it's time to pivot time to adjust time to take a new path. And putting that with what you're saying is, you know, what are you focused on? What's your finish line? What's your goal? Focus on those not on the interruptions in the meantime.

Kara Payton  22:27  
Absolutely. My my good friend Ken Joslin broke something down fairly similar. And then after he did, it was this I had a slew of conversations after mine with him. That proved the same thing that all other people that I would consider successful or fulfilled or happy or clear and dedicated they have a sole focus that's that's aparent in their life aparent in their relationships, aparent in their finances, all of that. He says incremental not monumental. And then to pair that with something my my friend Cody Jefferson says he's uh, you know, have the identity piece fixed. Know who you're going to be everything else is informed by that. So what that tells me is find your find your target, find your step 10, find your ideal vision, for now set it in stone, it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be the finished final draft, it can be a shitty first draft, and then the small incremental steps that you can do on the daily. Most people get in their own way, because they think that the steps they're going to take today won't be big enough. And it's like, it's so it's it's frustrating, but it's so understandable. I think that just to certain degree we all struggle from this is just that. I know what I want, but you we have we focus on the gap, this massive differential between where I am now and where I want to be. And we just continue to gaslight ourselves that that distance cannot be true. We cannot be broken down into small daily incremental, repeatable actions. And Brian Covey, I had an interview with him just not too long ago that talks about that. What are some of the things that are guiding you towards this target that can be done on a day to day basis, repeatable small actions, and then you're just building these small, tiny micro promises to your future self. You can't fail. You literally cannot fail small daily actions, repeated that move toward that target that you've already vetted, move you towards your target. And I'm not talking about busyness, I'm not talking about distraction and focus, like if the task that you're doing on the daily, that you vet that those things are actually moving, going to move you toward that target. Success is inevitable, at least, not necessarily success, but your target is inevitable. We prove this into our lives all the time. If we have something that's not going the way we want reverse engineer it on the small daily things that you're doing. Do they make sense for that not going the way you want it? 100% They're aligned to your ideal. And the same can be said for something that you would consider ideal. What does that look like on a day to day basis? Take the 10 Take this, the final step, the arrival point, obviously, the arrival point always moves for those of us in the personal development space, but take the arrival point and break it down. What is this human beings morning look like? What is this human being schedule? What does their bank account? Look, what are some of the habits and the practices? What are some of the beliefs? What are their non negotiables? Really essential? What are some of the identity pieces like if you were to break down to me, the habits and the trajectories of an athlete, notice athlete is identity. That's not saying someone who works out five to six times a week, that's still a non athlete trying to force a habit. But if you take an athlete, this is who I am. So this is what I do. That was the least the sentiment that Cody shared with me is like, This is who I am. So this is what I do. How can we take the step 10 of this is who I am, this is who I am becoming? So what do they do? On a day to day basis, you can't lose with it with a slot machine like that. You're just you're plugging in winning coins every single day.

Melissa Ebken  26:17  
Absolutely, I have a doctor, that's phenomenal. This doctor doesn't treat symptoms, this doctor will do that when necessary, but focuses on overall health. Not only looking at the spirit at the physical, but also the spiritual, also the emotional, what are you wrestling with? What are you doing, and told me point blank, that you are not going to change your life until you change something you do every single day. Now that was a powerful message to hear, especially coming from a doctor. Absolutely. And thank goodness, what would we be? Where could we be if more doctors practice in that manner? But that's so true, the little things that we do every single day.

Kara Payton  27:06  
I love it. And that that? Absolutely. When you find yourself stuck in any capacity, you can pretty much always refer back to the basics of okay, that up to the point of feeling stuck, what was I doing that would have reverse engineered stuckness? You can always find a clue, you can always find either a pattern, a pattern of thinking, a pattern of emotion or feeling and a pattern of behavior that brought about a feeling of stuckness it may have snuck in. I'm not saying that people intend to, you know, self sabotage sometimes it is something that is very, very informed by fear. But sometimes it's just, you're not stuck. You're just programmed, you are where you are. And that still needs to be just corrected out. It's something's like hey, thank you for revealing a new habit to me. Thank you revealing a tendency that I now have, I can now pull into my awareness and virtually reverse engineer a little bit of a, I guess a security measure to kind of barricade my insulate myself from that type of hijacking. But those things happen those things things come the I don't know how many times I you know, I'm probably would say about a year seven of significantly intentional personal development journey. I've been doing this for seven years. And this year, this week this month, I still woke up and I find myself going yep, that's pretty cyclical. All right. What's What's that? What's that about having to overturn this, overturn the stone and ask the question, Where's this coming from? What need is this belief, thinking pattern, feeling pattern, behavior pattern, what need is it serving? And it's usually some sort of fear, fear of failure, feeling fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, fear of fear of success sometimes. And so you got to kind of pull into it. Then the you have you have your you have your your set path and it's certain and you know what you're doing all the little derailments and curveballs are very contrasted. You can tell when they're happening. You can feel it in your gut. You're like, I'm significantly anxious today. What's going on? Okay. Well, you have you have a women's conference you're speaking at. To be expected that this is going to come up. What is in that? Where is my desire for comfort showing up here? Where's my desire to play small where's my desire to self sabotage? Where's it coming from? What does it looked like? How is it manifesting? And then how can I choose again, realign myself to Okay, no, this is what I want. This is who I am. So this is what I do. And yeah, it's there's there's we're not without, we're not without guaranteeing that there's going to be some things that come up along the way to really throw us off. But if we have the identity piece set, I find the recalibration back to that is much easier.

Melissa Ebken  30:18  
Newton's laws of thermodynamics, one of them, one of the three says that an object in motion tends to stay in motion. And that's both a bad news, good news proclamation there. The bad habits, yeah, they have momentum, they tend to keep going. And it's going to take a concerted effort to change that. And the good news is, once you establish a good habit, there's going to be momentum behind it. And it's going to be, it's going to tend to stay in motion, it's going to tend to stay going. So, you know, make the hard effort at once its a, choose your pain kind of situation. Do you want the pain of changing this bad habit? Or do you want the continued pain of keeping that bad habit which is going to serve you more. 

Kara Payton  31:06  
100%. There are so many different pain leverage points that we have to get honest about, because up to a certain point, the pain of changing was actually greater than the pain of staying the same. I it was this warm, sick familiarity of my life being kind of blase and unfulfilling and extremely lackluster. But you know, until 2015-2016, that was acceptable, because my life had been utter complete chaos until that point, and I had developed myself at least a sense of structure. It was, you know, an unfulfilling marriage, a career that I was climbing that was fairly just insignificant, it didn't serve any kind of purpose for me. There was, you know, health that I was eating food, like substances and not food, but it was, you know, I was, I didn't know any different and so the pain of familiarity was a lot less than the pain of change the pain of the unknown, the fear of the unknown was staggering. I used to run perpetually just run away from it almost at face value. If it was on if it was different to me, if it was unknown to me, it was like immediately just don't go there. And, you know, life crisis and trauma and things like that all can kind of jar us into all of a sudden this pain leverage of the familiarities like, now it's 51%. Now the idea of the devil, I don't know appeals to me a little bit more than the devil I do know. It's like, I know, the ins and outs of this life and it does not serve me it is absolutely more painful. I'm so sick of being here. And so not another day, not another minute, not another second, Tony Robbins even calls this the altered state, you finally get to a place where the law of familiarity and where you are just sickens you beyond like, I can't I can't take myself anymore. And that was that was true for me too. And moving into the unknown, challenging what I did know, it was uncomfortable but it was a different kind of discomfort. Something had changed in the structure of my mind that actually ran toward the unknown. It was because I was starting to question well, maybe the devil I don't know, isn't a devil. Maybe it's actually something that will eventually would better me, improve my life improve a situation it's like well anything's better than that. And when you get to the point where like anything's better than that you are in a magical place, you're in the wilderness. And it's you're definitely off path and there is some significant brush around you. It's like, pulling open the catacombs of all this crap and having your arc organized the archive of all the crap that you've been just letting sit and stockpile but the gumption the something something shifts where you're like I that's tolerable. This is untolerable. The way that it used to be is intolerable. I'd rather deal with I'd rather deal with the raw underbelly of like say the matrix it's like the this life because this steak becomes tasteless and now this you know you can't take the pill and you can't unsee the way the life that you used to have yes would it is ignorance bliss? What I sometimes just like to be like, I wish I just didn't know any of this sometimes, but ultimately it's like no there's that's informed by fear of this uncharted territory. This discomfort of constantly evolving constantly arriving constantly departing from what you did know it's, it can be it can be a lot but when I look back at the comparable that that pain of regret, just like you said, the pain of regret is infinitely heavier and more intolerable to the soul, than if we just, if we just faced it head on, and the the fire of purification, and allowed ourselves to, to embrace that uncomfortability. It's, it's, it's so funny to, to observe our human nature that is essentially just will sit on a hot stove, as a boiling frog, and, and just boil ourselves into these lives of accepting the status quos of accepting the crappy job and the unfulfilling relationship and all of that. And when we do, actually, we do actually see all that clearly, for what it is, it's, we recognize that no matter how much it would be nice to maybe go, oh, maybe it wasn't boiling, maybe it was just a nice little, it was a hot tub. Like, we ultimately know that we would be gaslighting ourselves into settling for something less.

Melissa Ebken  36:07  
If you're not familiar with the imagery and the metaphor of the boiling frog, it goes back to if you put a frog in a pan of water, it's fine, it's comfortable. And if you turn it up just one degree, still fine, still comfortable. And over time, that one degree change isn't noticeable until it absolutely boils you. So don't let your life be like that. Don't let one degree more one degree more creep in. And friends if you'd like to learn more, if you'd like to check out the Happiness Habit. The links are in the show notes to connect with Kara and podcast. I invite you to do that you'll not be sorry at all you did. You'll be really pleased with yourself for clicking that link. So be sure you do. And Kara, are there any last thoughts you'd like to share with us today?

Kara Payton  37:01  
The only thing that I would say is for anybody listening to all of this and these questions is just like if you show up today, you promised yourself today and you keep that promise that is the ultimate pathway to that self trust and the confidence that you need for the road ahead just it's small daily promises that you don't break to yourself. That is that is the key that I would want to leave everyone behind with. 

Melissa Ebken  37:28  
Thank you Kara. All right.

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