Welcome to another episode of “A Season of Me Stories.” In today’s episode, titled “Outrageous October: Lessons Learned from a Month of Adventure and Growth,” I, your host Heidi Kleine, am thrilled to take you on a journey of reflection and growth. As you may recall, I embarked on five trips last month – three for business and two for family. Little did I know, these adventures would bring forth valuable lessons and unexpected discoveries. So, join me as I share my learnings and delve into the power of pushing oneself, the importance of saying yes to the impossible, and the rewards that come from embracing the unknown. Get ready for an inspiring episode filled with personal anecdotes and insightful reflections. This is Heidi Kleine, and you’re listening to “A Season of Me Stories.” Let’s dive in!

Episode Transcript:

Heidi Kleine:

Greetings, my friends, and welcome to episode 5 of season 4 of a season of me stories. This is the episode that I’m calling tales from my outrageous October, and I am just, excited to share with you the learnings of this past month that I am calling my outrageous October. If you’ve been following along, you have heard me talking about, for the fact that for a variety of reasons In my schedule, it occurred that I had 5 trips between the last week of September and the last week of October this year, which made for a bit of an outrageous month. 3 of those trips were about business, and 2 of those trips were about family. And there were a lot of lessons that came out of this whole experience. And so I just wanna share with you a few reflections as I am sort of landing back into the routines of my more normal life, and beginning to look back. As you know, with a season of me, the pillars are always intention and reflection. Right? So, this is the reflection aspect of looking back over a given period of time that you’ve designated to say, what were my learnings? In what ways did I grow? I like to be very intentional about doing that.

Heidi Kleine:

And as I have thought about this last month, that reflection has been very valuable. So kind of as an example to you, I wanna share Some of my learnings from this month and the process that I go through to reflect on it. As I mentioned, these trips varied. It’s I started the month, with a mastermind trip, sort of working on my own personal growth and my business goals and assessing where I wanted to go next. I followed that with a family hiking trip that was followed with another family trip to, visit to my grandchild, and then came back to 2 kind of back to back, trips that revolved me speaking and presenting and doing some of the things that I have had my heart set on for a long time. So as I reflect back on this month, I’ve been thinking about several things. First of all, Amazing things happen when you push yourself. This was something that I knew was going to be a challenge, that just Being out of town as much as I was going to be this month and having to keep on top of things, but also in the middle that second trip with my family that we’ve talked about where we hiked up to the the top of the highest mountain in the Smokies.

Heidi Kleine:

And so it was a a physical challenge that I threw in the midst of this sort of business challenge and life challenge, And I have found myself kind of on a bit of a high after that experience, really Pushing myself to do something that was super hard actually energized me in all kinds of other areas of life. It has me, just motivated to take more action, to be more assertive and aggressive about pursuing the goals that I have for myself. And so one of my learnings was that I can do hard things, but also that when I’m feeling stuck, doing hard things actually might be the thing that pushes me through. So often, when we are feeling stuck, We find ourselves wanting to rest, and and I have I’m a a proponent of rest, as you know, but sometimes we can almost, like, over rest through that stuckness. And so I encourage you, if you’re finding yourself stuck, to ask yourself what what do you really need. Do you really need some rest, Or do you need actually to to push yourself a little bit? And so that leads me to my second point, which is As often as we talk about having boundaries and saying no, sometimes when you’re in a rut, Saying yes to the thing that feels kind of impossible, to the thing that feels a little bit too much, actually might be the thing that you need, and I had 2 instances of that this month. 1 was actually a local, conference that I attended that at the very last minute, I had the opportunity to go. And I was in the middle of my outrageous October, and it didn’t feel like I had the time.

Heidi Kleine:

It didn’t feel like it would be the responsible thing to take these This day and a half and go to this local conference when I was already traveling to Texas and traveling to Tucson and all these other things that were happening this month. But I went ahead and did it, and I found the time, and I found myself in the absolute perfect environment, the place I needed to be. At that event, I met people that I am so excited about, People that I’m now connecting with as I follow-up on these experiences, and saying yes made a difference. Similarly, I had that second opportunity to speak. I was in a situation where the organization I was working with, had someone I’m out of doing a workshop, and they asked if I could step in and do a workshop. And I had material. I actually had some material that I had wanted to sort of try in a workshop setting, and I said yes. And that made a difference for me.

Heidi Kleine:

Just having that opportunity to do that workshop, to have it be well received, just reminded me of some of the goals that I have around speaking and being available in those workshop spaces, which actually leads me to the next thing I learned is that when you’re doing what you love, it makes all the difference. So being at that particular gathering and doing that workshop and sharing my expertise in a way that was natural and organic for me and felt good, was energizing. It was exciting. I remember saying to somebody that morning that, you know, I was kind of tired, and it was hard to get motivated to to be in the room. And yet as soon as I was, the energy came back to me. And when I was done, I was fully energized. And so I just encourage you to find those things that really do energize you when you’re doing them. If you are doing work that you love to do, Coming out of that work, you might be tired, but you also find yourself energized and excited.

Heidi Kleine:

For me, that is what happens when I’m done with a really good coaching session or when I have been speaking and has been well received. Those things give me energy, and I encourage you to find the things that You love to do the things in your world that you can do that bring you energy and that excite you. And you’re You’re not gonna do those all the time in anything that you’re doing, but you need to have places where you’re doing that some of the time. And you can lean into the the focus and the energy and the excitement of doing what you love. So that actually leads me to my next point, which is perseverance matters. Sometimes it takes a long time. Sometimes you just aren’t ready to put yourself out there until you are ready to put yourself out there. And the most important thing you can do is never give up.

Heidi Kleine:

I have said for many years that my dream was to be speaking in these kinds of spaces. And I’ve had tastes of it here and there, but I am so excited to have had this month where I have been on stages that that look like the stages that I had in my dreams. And I am excited to share the message that I have to share with the audiences that are there to hear it. And I’m excited with the about the connections that have come out of that. And I’m so glad that I didn’t let myself discouraged by the fact that it was just taking a little longer than I really had thought it was going to, that I stuck with improving my skills, connecting with the right people, doing the things that would lead to me eventually being in a place where I was on the kind of stage I wanted to be. And Now that I have had a bit a taste of it, I’m all that much more excited to continue to look for spaces and opportunities to share my message, and to be connected to the right audiences to hear the things that I want to share. And that also leads me to my next point, which is Sometimes it takes an investment in the experts to help you get where you want to go. One of the things that I did this week was invested stood in, some time with a professional photographer, a professional videographer, and a marketer marketing expert.

Heidi Kleine:

Right? To lean into helping me present the things that I wanna present in my business the way that I need to to do the marketing that I wanna do. And I have a tendency. I have this, you know, good midwestern relationship with money that I’m always trying to do things, as cheaply as possible. And yet, that has actually cost me a lot in time and energy spent trying to learn and do things that are really not in my area of expertise that don’t give me energy, that actually hold me back from taking the steps to to do the things that I actually love. And so I made the decision this month that I was going to, invest in going on these trips, in working with the experts. And doing that has brought a ton of clarity, a ton of, just excitement. I feel positioned better to do the things that I feel called to do, to be putting my message out in the world in a way that I want to. And I’m just really excited about where that can all go as we continue.

Heidi Kleine:

There are going to be some unveilings, over the course of the month of November as I share some, some tweaks that I have made to the season of me program as I begin to to do some work around my own programs and and publicity and things. And all of that is coming out of this month of investing, investing time, investing energy, really leaning into all of the opportunities that were placed in front of me. Even the ones that seemed like I couldn’t possibly fit in, because I didn’t have enough time or I didn’t have enough money or I didn’t have, you know, the freedom that I needed to do that. Leaning in and and really pushing myself during this month of October has been a gift. So I encourage you to hang around because we have got some exciting things coming as we unveil, the new a season of me program as we start talking about all the different ways that you can work with me and, looking for places to to share this message. I’m just super excited that you are here and you are listening. We are we are getting close. We are coming up on almost a year of podcasting.

Heidi Kleine:

And so the the 1st Friday in December, we will be celebrating that also. So I would love to hear from you, hear what you have Really loved about the stories that I’ve been sharing over this last year. I’d love to hear who you’d like me to talk to or if you have an idea of somebody I should interview, what kinds of things would you like to hear on the podcast? You can always, connect with me and on all the socials, or just shoot me an email at heidi@heidikleine.com. I look forward to talking to you, and I look forward to this next season of our journey together.