In this solo episode of Life Intended, host Kelly Berry dives deep into the power of self-reflection with her guided process of 10 Questions for a More Intentional Life. Kelly, a strategic leader, coach and podcast host, helps listeners reconnect with their authentic selves, offering tools to gain clarity, uncover limiting beliefs, and set intentional goals. If you're seeking ways to live more in alignment with your values, this episode is for you. Topics include personal growth, the importance of boundaries, and cultivating gratitude, all while focusing on living with true intentionality.
Kelly highlights the importance of taking time to ask yourself meaningful questions. Routines and daily obligations can cause us to lose sight of who we are and what truly matters. By stepping back and reflecting, we can reconnect with our authentic selves and gain insights into our desires, values, and emotions. Self-reflection is a powerful tool for living intentionally and setting a vision for a fulfilling future.
One of Kelly's key questions encourages listeners to challenge the beliefs they hold about themselves that may no longer serve them. Many of these beliefs are formed subconsciously in childhood or through difficult experiences. By identifying and questioning these limiting beliefs, we open the door to personal growth and new possibilities. Kelly recommends Mindset by Carol Dweck for those wanting to delve deeper into this work.
Boundaries are crucial for protecting your time, energy, and well-being. Kelly shares practical strategies for setting boundaries across various aspects of life, including work, relationships, technology, and personal habits. Healthy boundaries are essential for preventing burnout and making space for what truly matters. This episode references a previous discussion with Emily Steines on boundaries, highlighting their role in maintaining balance.
Kelly emphasizes the importance of trusting your intuition as a guide for making aligned decisions. Over time, cultural conditioning often leads us to ignore our inner voice. By tuning back into our intuition, we can make choices that resonate with our true selves, leading to greater confidence and ease in navigating life.
Gratitude is a simple yet transformative practice that can significantly improve mental health and overall happiness. Kelly shares insights on cultivating gratitude in daily life, emphasizing its impact on shifting mindset and focusing on the positive aspects of our journey. She references Dr. Robert Emmons' research on the profound benefits of regular gratitude practices.
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Kelly Berry (00:00)
Hi friends, you're listening to Life Intended, a podcast that explores what it means to be true to yourself and live an authentic and purposeful life. I'm your host Kelly Berry and each episode of Life Intended explores my guest's version of personal growth, self-discovery, and the pursuit of becoming the best version of themselves so that you can take what you need and incorporate it into your life to live with more intention and authenticity.
Whether you are seeking to develop your leadership skills, overcome challenges, or simply live a more fulfilling life, you will find guidance, motivation, and practical strategies to help navigate your unique journey. Today, I have a solo episode for you, and I'm gonna walk you through 10 questions for a more intentional life. I think this is gonna be a really enlightening episode, especially if you haven't done something like this before. So here we go.
When was the last time you took a moment to check in with yourself? To ask yourself some big questions. The kind of questions that you don't have easy answers to or even right answers to, but that can change everything when you take the time to ask and reflect. I'm gonna guide you through this. Asking yourself and reflecting on thought-provoking questions to help you gain clarity and to prepare in setting a vision
and intentional goals for the upcoming year. And I know it may seem early to some, but I start thinking about and planning for everything early, the next quarter, the next year, et cetera. It really helps me to spend some time in reflection. I think reflection is just such an important practice and awareness so that I feel more confident than if I were just to wake up one day or on New Year's Day and take action on what's top of mind, what hurts the most, what I'm seeing.
This is kind of like priming I would say, creating this space, this time to think, time to check in and time to be curious. So today I'm sharing 10 questions that have the power to help you reconnect with your inner self, uncover what is holding you back and guide you to a more authentic fulfilling life. So why is asking questions of yourself so important? What is in the power of a question?
So I think it's powerful and important because we all fall into routines. Whether we're juggling work, family, trying to make it through the day, know, or kids school, a hundred different obligations. This kind of daily grind and chaos keeps us from taking the time to listen and understand ourselves. It doesn't provide us time to challenge our assumptions or to check in on our beliefs. It keeps us feeling stuff.
both emotionally and physically. don't get me wrong, I love a good routine. have a lot of them and I think there is a time and place for those and I talk about them sometimes. Routines here aren't the enemy, but when we live without intention, we lose sight of who we really are and what truly matters to us. So asking these questions of ourselves gives us that time and space to think about.
What are our emotions? What are our feelings? What are our desires? What are our beliefs? And from those questions and that reflection, that is where the things that do truly matter to us start to surface. So you may be listening to this and you may be thinking, I don't know if this is for me. What is this gonna help me with? So I wanted to give you just some things to think about. Like what are some of the signals that I think surface within you?
They tell you, okay, it's time to ask myself these questions. It's time to spend some time in reflection. So what those signals are or what you may be feeling, you may feel stuck or like you're just going through the motions. Another is something inside of you is telling you something isn't right. Like you're not doing the right thing. You're not reaching your potential. There's more, but you're not sure what more is.
The next one, you're going through a transition. There's tons of life transitions, right? A new baby, a marriage, a kid in college, divorce, career change, death, all kinds of things. Whatever it is, there has been a big change. Perfect time to ask yourself these questions and reflect. Another one is you feel overwhelmed or you're experiencing burnout and you're not really sure why. Another is
Everything looks good on paper, quotations good on paper, but you feel very unfulfilled. Another one is you can't easily answer the question, what do I want? All of these, I think, are really good signals and prompts to yourself that now is a good time to ask these questions. And that last one, what do I want? It seems so simple, but it is not easy. And a lot of you actually just told me that. I recently ran a
poll on my Instagram and the results I think were telling. 43 % of you feel like you're not reaching your potential and nearly half of you said, 48%, you can't answer that question I just asked, what do you want? And 39 % of you said you can't easily answer the question, what do I need? What do I want and what do I need? Two very important questions that we should be asking of ourselves often to kind of stay in alignment.
with who we are and what we want. those numbers tell me, show me that many of us are craving clarity and direction and that's exactly what these questions can help provide. So here's what I think is in this for you if you stick with me and walk through this with me. Number one is self-awareness. This is probably my most important takeaway. Whether you take any steps or any actions on these questions and answers and reflections.
Deepening your understanding of your values, passions, and goals is so important. Self-awareness is everything. It's the foundation for making aligned decisions. It's what you need to know and what you need to understand what truly matters to you so that you can live in a way that reflects your deepest desires. Number two is clarity. These questions help you get clear on what's working and what's not.
And when we take the time to reflect, we gain a clearer understanding of where we are, what's holding us back, and what changes we need to make to move forward. And then the third thing, motivation for change. Using what you learn through your answers as a catalyst for taking action. So awareness, even though I do think it's the most important, awareness alone isn't enough. It's what you do with that awareness, how you use it to make intentional changes that truly, truly transform your life.
And I'll say this as a caveat, awareness, I do think is where it starts, but change doesn't have to happen as a result of that awareness, especially, you know, right now or in the near future. You can decide when it's time for you to take action on these things. So don't feel like just because a lot of things may surface through these questions that everything has to be addressed at once. So I also have all of these questions. I'm getting ready to ask them. We'll walk through them.
in a download in the show notes. So you can print that, you can follow along, you can keep it. It's got some links and some other just great information on it, but I think it's a really, really valuable tool. So without further delay, here are the 10 questions. Number one, when was the last time I truly felt like myself and what was I doing? So this question,
encourages you to reflect on a moment of authenticity, a time when you felt most aligned with your true self. This one helps you remember who you are at your core without the influence of external expectations or comparisons. So take some time to identify a recent moment when you felt most like yourself. That will help you gain clarity on what activities
what people or what environments help you thrive. So you can pause here if you wanna answer it now or you can come back to it. But I will say one book that I think helps a lot with this. And I think that this is kind of like some self discovery, some self worth going on in this question. The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown. I love this book. It dives into embracing authenticity, letting go of pressures and really helps you
with self discovery. if you haven't read that book, I would highly recommend it, especially if you feel like, I don't remember the last time I truly felt like myself. Brene is the queen of authenticity and all of the things. And so she is a great teacher to learn from. two, what beliefs do I hold about myself that may no longer be serving me? So this question is gonna help you uncover
and challenge the subconscious beliefs that shape your self-perception and actions. A lot of these beliefs that we have, I mentioned they're subconscious so we may not be fully aware, but they were formed in childhood or during difficult experiences and they just may no longer align with us or serve us. So by identifying and challenging these beliefs, I think that's one of the first steps towards personal growth.
And if you haven't done work on your belief system before, I thought I'd give you some common ones to help you get started thinking through what yours may be. So one is, I don't have enough experience to do that. I can't do that because I haven't done anything like that before. So I'm not good at dot dot dot anything. I don't have enough time, money, space, experience, all the things.
and know, whatever word you say there. You may hear things come out of your mouth like, I'm too old to change careers or I was just born this way. And this is a kind of funny one, but I think of limiting beliefs every time I hear somebody say, I'm not a runner. These things are not true. You're telling yourself that they're true, but they are not actually true. So by questioning these beliefs, you open the door to new possibilities and
a more empowered mindset. Another resource for this one, if you know me, if you've heard me, if you've listened to the podcast, you know I love the book mindset. I think it's foundational for this kind of work in your life. Carol Dweck is the author and her research on mindset emphasizes the power of shifting from a fixed mindset, which are the things that I said before, I don't, I'm not, I can't, I'm too, you know, all of those things, to a growth mindset. Believing
that you can develop abilities. this shift can really help you recognize and dismantle any of those limiting beliefs that you have. Number three, what would I do differently if I fully trusted my own intuition? This is a big one. To me, this may be one of the most important questions in this list. Intuition is such a powerful guide, but we often override it with doubt or fear.
I believe and I have seen where trusting your intuition can lead to more aligned decisions and help you navigate life with greater confidence and ease. There's so much to be said about this, why we have conditioned ourselves to stop listening to ourselves, where that comes from in our culture. Maybe we've never really listened, but we can and we should wake this part of ourselves back up.
This is where truth and authenticity come from, from ourselves, from our intuition, from our desires, our values, our beliefs, all of those things that we are telling ourselves that we are choosing almost always to shove those thoughts and feelings back down and listen to other people. We can't possibly know the truth, you know, we can't possibly know the right answer. I don't know what decision to make. So this is one, think.
There's a lot of work to be done here, but it's a great question to kind of tap into how are we listening to ourselves? Are we listening to ourselves? What are we telling ourselves? And what would change if we did that more often? Number four, what are the three things I value most in life? And how well am I living in alignment with them? So this question invites you to reflect on your values.
and evaluate whether your actions and your lifestyle reflect what matters most to you. And I think that this is really important because living in alignment with your values leads to greater fulfillment and purpose. When we have this big disconnect between what you value and how you live, it often results in that feeling of something is just off. And I believe that a lot of us have never really stopped to think about this. So this question
It may just be scratching the surface and that's okay. I think it's still a really important discovery to make. So what are the three things that you value most in life? Number five, what are the sources of my biggest stress right now and what small changes can I make to reduce that stress? So this question, I think helps you pinpoint specific stressors in your life and encourages you to think about
very small, actionable steps that you can take to get rid of those stressors. So why I think this is important in this list of questions is because stress can overflow from one area of our lives and just flow into every area. And when we don't stop to think about where is this stress coming from and pinpoint the very specific stress, it can feel like everything is stressful.
And so I truly think that taking some time and identifying the one area or maybe two areas that it's actually coming from can help you prevent it from affecting things outside of that. And then of course, there's the breaking it down into manageable parts. What can you do about this? What actions can you take to get rid of this stress or how can you manage it? I think that can have such a huge impact on your wellbeing, your mindset, your mental health.
all of that. So that is why I think that this is a really important question in this list and the reason that it's included. Number six, what boundaries do I need to set or strengthen in my life right now to protect my time, energy and wellbeing? So this question I think is a really good one and I think reflection here has a lot of benefits.
Boundaries, I just had Emily Steinis on here and she talked about boundaries. I'm going to link that episode. But boundaries are one of the biggest things that can affect our regulation or dysregulation. And that has impacts on our mental health, our physical health, our ability to react and respond, so many things. And healthy boundaries are essential for maintaining balance and preventing burnout.
Boundaries are what help you protect your time and energy and they allow you to make space for what's important. So when we're just talking about our values, if we're not living life aligned with our values, it may be because we just don't have enough space and we don't have enough space because we haven't set the proper boundaries. So all of these things are kind of interrelated, but I think that this is an incredibly important one. And also what's so important about it is to think of boundaries
More in bigger ways than you may normally think of it. I think a lot of times we think of boundaries with people. That's important. absolutely should think of boundaries with people, with family, with our kids. Work is another one. What are our boundaries with work in our personal life? With the start of our work day, with the end of our work day? With technology, when are we allowing technology in our lives? When are we
looking at social media, when are we looking at email, boundaries with alcohol, boundaries with saying yes, boundaries with junk food, boundaries with TV, all of these things that we are, that are a part of our day and maybe we want them to be a part of our day, but we don't want them to consume as much as we're allowing. Like how can we protect our time so that we create the space to do the things that are really important to us. So boundaries can be tough,
But I think that the awareness again of what things do we need boundaries around and where can we start so that we can begin to protect our time energy. Because another limiting belief that comes up all the time is I don't have time and a lot of that has more to do with boundaries than actual lack of time. Number seven, who in my life truly supports me in becoming the best version of myself and who might be holding me back?
that this question really just encourages you to evaluate your relationships and consider who uplifts you and who might be draining your energy. I think in one of my podcast episodes, I called this like the sofa friend. Who are you around in your life that after you get done spending time with them, you feel like you need to lay on the sofa and take a nap. You are so tired. You know, maybe that's a good cue for you to use to think about your relationships.
Another might be who gives you so much energy that you feel like you could stay up all night or run a marathon. I think you can think about it from both sides, but really thinking about relationships from an energy perspective, I think is really valuable, but also that support, like who is there truly making a positive impact on you. So I think by recognizing which connections are positive and which may be toxic,
you can make intentional choices about who you spend your time with. I think it's also good to maybe audit the type and quality of these relationships to make sure that you have enough of these healthy connections. I just had an episode, I'll link it with Dr. Julie Radlauer when she talks about strong ties and loose ties and the importance of creating this community that will be there for you. I won't say
I won't paint this picture that making changes in this category is easy. It can be really hard, but I do think it's important again for this awareness. Who am I around? They say that you are the average of the five people that you surround yourself. I have heard that that is true in income and weight and health, know, all of the things. So the people around you are very impactful to who you are and who you are going to be. So it's really important that you
kind of audit those connections and make sure that you are surrounding yourself with people who are in alignment with who you want to be and where you want to go. Number eight, how do I feel about my current financial situation? So this is an important one, especially for women. This question invites you to reflect on your financial wellbeing and whether it aligns with your values and goals.
So I also have a new episode coming out. I'm really excited about it. So after it comes out, I'll link it in here as well. But I think there's a lot to reflect on as it relates to your money stories, your role in finances, in your relationship and family. And to that point in my Instagram poll, finances was the category that the most people selected that they wanted to improve the most in their life. Financial stress is a really common concern.
but bringing some awareness to the surface of your financial habits, your mindset, and where you are in relation to where you wanna be, just helps you be able to take some actionable steps toward greater financial security and empowerment. And I will say this, like relationships that I just talked about and stress, finances are an area that can affect a lot of the parts of your life. So it's really important to sit with this one.
and recognize the sources of both your discomfort and your desires. Number nine, how am I taking care of my physical wellbeing and is there a change I can make to better support my health? So this one I think is pretty cut and dry. We all know our physical health impacts our mental health in a lot of areas of our life. Our sleep, how we feel, how we can keep up with our kids.
how likely we are to have disease in our life, all of these things. I think that this is an important one to always have as a part of your overall well-being. Basically taking a look to see where you are compared to where you want to be, see if there are opportunities to make some positive changes. I think you'll see significant improvements to how you feel overall. In one book that I'd like to recommend to people who are
not where they want to be physically or with their health or movement in general. Atomic habits, I think we've all heard it, but this book has really, really practical strategies for just building good habits and breaking bad ones. So while it's not like health and physical health related necessarily, I think it's really applicable. And there are a lot of things in this book that are just, it is a best seller for a reason. There are a lot of things that are just,
great, great, great applications in your life to help you make progress in really all of the areas that we're talking about today. Okay, question number 10. What am I most grateful for right now and how can I cultivate more gratitude in my daily life? So this one, gratitude, I think it's been shown through extensive research that gratitude improves mental health and overall happiness.
I think it's an important practice that you have in your life. And I think that doing this will shift your mindset and help you focus on the positive aspects of your life. Dr. Robert Emmons, I don't know if you've heard of him, but he is a leading researcher on gratitude. He has found that practicing gratitude and a gratitude practice can look a lot of different ways, but it's basically like regular acknowledgement of what you are grateful for.
that can lead to increased happiness, better relationships, and improved physical health. So I think that this is just an important part of an overall attitude of recognizing where you are and being really grateful for the things in your life that you're blessed to have. Your health, the people in your life, your family, your career, your job, where you live, whatever it is, taking some time to just acknowledge that and
recognize all of the good that is in your life is just really important for that mindset and positive outlook. So it wouldn't be a list of mine if I couldn't fit all of what I wanted to ask in the allotted number of questions. So I do have three bonus questions and I'll go through these pretty quickly. But these I think are really important if you plan to use these 10 questions to help you plan for the future. So number one bonus question, what are you most proud of this year?
That's again, some more positive reflection that will build confidence to take forward to do more things. What is something that you wish you had done differently and how will you use this experience to improve? I do think it's important to learn and do differently. So I think this will help in goal setting. And then number three, what do I want my life to look like a year from now and what small steps can I take today to move closer to that vision? This is a pretty big question.
but I think it gets the wheels turning for how do I turn all of this awareness that I've just cultivated into action. Okay, so I mentioned I have the worksheet. You can download that, you can print it out. I have those links to it. I would suggest that you kind of like keep this worksheet handy for the next, I don't know, month or so. Regularly review it, reflect on it, add to it if you need to, change.
I do think that this reflection is a process. And if you haven't done it before, it can be challenging at first, but the more you revisit it, the more a lot of these questions or the answers to the questions are just gonna come to you and be useful to you. So I would encourage you to do that. Also, I'm gonna put this out there. I will offer to go over this with you. If you need help,
creating a plan. If you would like to engage in a one-on-one coaching relationship to move forward in any of these specific areas, please reach out to me. You can do that on through my website. You can do that. If you're on my email list, you can reply to any of the emails I get those, or you can DM me on Instagram at either my personal account, which is at Kelly Berry four or at the podcast Instagram account, is at life intended podcast.
I do this kind of work with people and I would be happy to work with you to get unstuck, to make a plan to reach your potential and to overall just feel like you are living more in alignment with who you want to be. I'm also going to be bringing on some guests, future podcast content about these topics. So keep an eye out for that as well. So thank you so much for joining me today on this.
solo podcasts and these 10 questions. Would love to do more episodes like this and plan to do so in the future so that we can together work through how do we uncover some of these limiting beliefs or suppressed intuition and begin living more in alignment and a more intentional life. So thanks for joining me today and I'll see you next week. Thank you all so much for listening to this episode.
It's truly an honor to help bring these conversations to you. I do have a couple of quick favors to ask of you. While we are listening to an episode, could you take a screenshot and post that to your Instagram stories and tag me at Life Intended Podcasts and just let me know what your favorite takeaways were or what you liked about the episode. It really helps me to learn more about what you love and want to see more of. And if you have a few extra minutes, if you'd go to iTunes or wherever you listen, I'd love it if you could leave me a rating and review.
Ratings and reviews are one of the best ways new listeners can find the show, and I'd love nothing more to grow this and help more people live a life intended. See you again here next week.
Kelly Berry is a strategic business leader and business coach. She is known for her operational excellence and her ability to drive growth and results across multiple industries.
She is also hosting her own podcast, Life Intended.
