TRANSCRIPT
Hi everyone and welcome to episode 89. We’re going to talk about the power of following your joy. And we’re going to continue with this theme of shining your light. And I ask you the question—what lights you up? Today’s episode is for anyone who has ever felt stuck, uninspired, or, like many of us, we feel like we’re just going through the same motions day in and day out. And if you’ve ever wondered, “Is this all there is?” this episode is for you.
We’re diving into this powerful concept of what lights you up, and it’s all about tuning in to what excites you, what energizes you, and what makes you feel most alive. Because many times, as adults, we forget that we’re allowed to do the things that light us up. We’re allowed to have play and fun and joy in our lives. It’s not just about being mothers and fathers and, you know, our work lives, our career lives, our wives, husbands, that we’re allowed and supposed to feel joy even as an adult.
What’s interesting, though, is when you start following those things that light you up, you have to know, like we’ve been talking about, that people are going to have opinions. Some will support you, others won’t. And again, we’re going to go back to that Mel Robbins theory: let them question you, let them judge you, and you keep following whatever lights you up. Because, again, my friends, you are not here to live a life that pleases others. You are here to live a life in which you feel fully alive and that sets your soul on fire, and that is available for each and every one of us.
Let’s just talk a little bit about when is the last time you’ve even asked yourself that question—what really lights me up? I know that when I was running my women’s coaching program, there was a participant in there, and she said, “Kim, for the last 12 years I’ve been so absorbed in mothering, in wifing, in going to my job and producing there, that the other night, I had forgotten that I loved to listen to music. I have not just sat at home and listened to music in almost 12 years.” And she said, “I started to cry when I allowed myself to do that because that is how much I have lost myself and who I am. I had forgotten that I simply loved to listen to music.”
As I talk through this episode, I want you to first understand that many of us—you know, I saw this quote by Robin Sharma recently, and it said, “You don’t want to live the same year 75 times in a row and call that a life.” And it did really resonate with me, because while I’ve made lots of moves in my life and, yes, I followed my joy and I have followed my passion in many ways, I still really hold back in a lot of ways. There’s still certain parts of my career that I’m afraid to tread water in that arena because I don’t quite know if I have what it takes or I’m afraid that if I start talking about the topics that I really want to talk about, that I’m going to get a lot of pushback, especially, you know, how I serve in the education space.
It made me also think about all the areas in my life where I don’t take action. Like, travel really lights me up. But I don’t do—I mean, I travel with my work, but I’ve always wanted to do European travel, and I won’t do it because I’m afraid to leave my dogs. I’m super attached to my dogs. And my husband. And I keep saying we’re going to go spend three or four weeks in Florida for a month, and we’re going to work from home in Florida. And yet, we don’t do it. Why do we stop doing these things that bring us joy? I’m guilty of this, too.
But I want you to think about: What is something, an area in your life, that makes you happy, that brings you excitement? What is something that, when you do it, you feel completely in your element? Maybe it’s as simple as writing. Maybe you don’t write because you don’t think you’re a good enough writer or you don’t think you’ll ever be published, but you’re not supposed to write to be published. You’re supposed to write because it brings you joy. Or maybe you like painting, or maybe dancing brings you joy.
For me, the number one thing that brings me joy in my business is speaking. There’s nothing I love more in my job than getting on a stage with thousands of people in the crowd and lighting them up. That is like my zone of genius. That is the thing that makes me feel most alive. And then when I get to connect with them after I speak and they come up and they hug me and they share their stories and their tears, all of that lights me up.
Maybe what lights you up is helping others. Maybe it’s travel. Maybe it’s building something from scratch, or maybe it’s something you haven’t even given yourself permission to admit yet. But I really want you to sit with that question this week: What is it that lights you up? Or what is it that used to light you up that you haven’t allowed yourself to do for so long?
I’m going to go back again to Rebecca Campbell’s book, “Light Is the New Black.” She says that the things that light you up are not random—that they are clues from your soul guiding you towards your purpose. But most people really get stuck because, one, we ignore what excites us because it doesn’t really fit with our current life. For example, I recently met with a chiropractor in town. He’s a successful chiropractor. He really still loves working with his patients, but he’s been called the last year or so to really dive into functional medicine. He’s really interested in the metabolic pieces of building a body that is metabolically balanced so that it doesn’t lead to disease. And he really wants to serve in this way.
He was explaining that he really feels like there are so many medical ailments and prescriptions that we are prescribed that if we metabolically had our nutrition right, if we had our exercise right, it would prevent so many of these illnesses. But he’s like, “I’m kind of like, I want to do this, but I’m kind of afraid to do it.” And I said, “Jared, if this is—if this is a whisper, this is a nudge, if this is something that is lighting you up, that is your soul speaking to you, telling you this is something to follow. Don’t—those whispers are there for a reason.” And so many times we just dismiss those whispers. We just think we made them up or something. They’re there because you’re being pulled in that direction. You’re being called to do that work.
Sometimes we ignore it because it doesn’t fit in our current life, we think. Or we go, “Well, I can’t quit my day job, so how could I possibly do this?” Well, I will tell you that when I had the dream for two and a half years to launch Strobel Education, I didn’t know how I was going to do it. I didn’t know how I was going to find people. I didn’t know how schools were going to want to contract with me to provide training. I didn’t have any knowledge at all about business or marketing or how to launch a business. I knew none of it. And I thought, “How do I do this? I can’t quit my curriculum director’s job right now. I still need the paycheck; I need the insurance.” But what I did is I started building my business on the back end. I worked nights and weekends, evenings, building my business before I launched it. And my golly, come January 2016, I had the courage to launch it. And my life has been forever changed because of that.
We have to understand that sometimes these are excuses that we use that say we can’t follow our passion, we can’t follow what really lights us up because we don’t have time for it. Sometimes that’s a misconception, right? Or we worry: what will other people think? You know, a lot of times our parents, for good reason, will try to talk us out of something. I was talking to my husband the other day, and he was raised in a very conservative family. And when we bought our first investment property, which scared us to death—$83,000—because my husband and I had spent a big part of our life living paycheck to paycheck. And we read this book, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.” It taught us how to buy our first investment property. We were scared to death. We went to his parents’ house, we were excited though, we shared that we’d taken the plunge. And his sweet dad was just panic-stricken for us. He thought it was the worst idea ever. What a risk, you know? And so again, just understanding that people will judge you, even people who love you, when you step outside the box because it makes them uncomfortable.
We’ve been talking about that on previous episodes. And so I really do want—we’ve been talking about owning your light, we’ve been talking about showing up for yourself, we’re talking in today’s episode about thinking about those things that bring us joy, that bring us excitement, those whispers, those nudges that tell us we want to do more with our life, and really starting to pay attention to what is calling you right now.
Again, you know, we’ve got to think about how—how does this look in our life? And I think about Stuart Brown’s work. So, Stuart Brown has these, I think there’s eight play personalities, okay? And I love Stuart Brown. He talks about how—he’s a researcher who has studied play, and he says that as adults, we are biologically wired to play. Like, you’re not supposed to stop playing as an adult. You’re not just supposed to become an adult, become a mom, become a dad, become a teacher, become a nurse, become an attorney, and stop playing. He’s like, you’re biologically wired for play.
What he has found is that when we chase that light, when we allow ourselves to play in our lives, when we allow ourselves to play in the workplaces—when I go in and I’m working with hospitals or insurance agencies or even the FBI or schools and we’re working on creating a culture of positivity and excitement—we talk about the power of play and that we must bring that play to our work. We know that Google does it, you know, they have ping pong tables, they have bikes. Like, when people play, it actually spurs their creativity. It increases their productivity levels, it increases their engagement levels, it makes them show up as a better version of themselves during the workday, but also in those other parts of their lives.
Stuart talks about the power of play and that we all have these different play personalities, right? And this is how we experience joy and fun and creativity, and it’s thinking once again about what lights you up and how can you bring more joy into your daily life. I’m going to cover the eight play personalities, and I want you to kind of think about if there’s one that resonates with you. I have, like, four of the play personalities in my own life.
The first is the Joker. So if you’re the Joker personality, you love humor, you love playfulness, you love making people laugh. My brother Brad and I are huge into the Joker play personality. We’re always pranking each other, playing jokes, sending videos to each other that make us laugh that we’ll just watch over and over again. You know, the Joker really has a great sense of humor, and they want to have a lot of fun. So think about that.
The second play personality is called the kinesthetic player. That play personality is lit up with movement. They like moving their body. It might be dancing, it might be yoga, it might be sports, it might be fitness, it might be hiking. For me, it’s running. I love to run. It lights me up, it fires me up. I’m in such a better mental space when I run. My endorphins are going—I’m very much a kinesthetic person, and movement lights me up, so I do have that one too.
The third play personality is the explorer. Like, you love exploring, you love going to new places, discovering historical sites, you love traveling, you love doing new experiences, you love learning. A lot of people are like this explorer personality. My friend Mary loves to explore. She absolutely loves travel. She goes everywhere—Miami, Italy, Greece—she goes all over the place. She gets to see all these historical things, and she loves the experiences of that.
The fourth play personality is the collector. These are people who like to collect items. For example, my friends David and Jane, they love to collect Coca-Cola products. They also love to collect antiques and refurnish them. Some people are coin collectors, some people are stamp collectors. So the collector personality is the one that really likes to kind of gather things and collect items. That brings them a lot of joy.
Now, the fifth play personality is the creator or the artist. You love creating, you love making things. This can be people who love to spend time in their garage, woodworking, building, refinishing things. Might be people who love to write, to create novels or poems. It might be people who love to paint, who love design, who love building. You might be the artist play personality. If you are—are you giving yourself time to do that in your life?
The sixth one is the storyteller. The storyteller is usually the person who loves to tell a good story, they’re very good at narratives, they experience lots of joy by telling stories. Or they love writing, acting, theater, sharing experiences. I’m not really—I don’t have the collector in me, the creator or artist, not so much, maybe the storyteller a little bit.
Then the seventh one is the competitor. This screams Kim Strobel. These people love goals, they love setting goals, they love challenges, they’re like, if they’re playing a game, there better be a winner. And this is how you win, right? They just love competing. So you might love pickleball, tennis, board games. These are the competitor play personalities.
And then the last one is the director. This is my sister-in-law, Tara. Directors love organizing, being the leader, planning vacations, birthday parties, social gatherings, bringing people together, creating itineraries. Those are the directors.
So as I’ve gone through those eight—the joker, the kinesthetic player, the explorer, the collector, the creator/artist, the storyteller, the competitor, and the director—think about: are there any of those that sound like you? Do any of those bring you joy? If so, could you pick one thing and start incorporating that into your life? Because when you incorporate the things that light you up, it creates this ripple effect in your life. All of a sudden, you are starting to follow this pathway that you didn’t see yourself following.
For me, as you know, I have been—I just relaunched the podcast. I’d been out of the podcast for two and a half years because I was overwhelmed with all the content creation. And I found that every time I was having to record a podcast episode, I was just feeling drained. It was like one more thing that I needed to do. And I could tell that I wasn’t bringing the energy that I needed to bring to those last episodes. And so I surrendered it.
Then lately, like the last two months, I’ve just been called to start showing up and sharing more. So I told my team, we’re going to relaunch the podcast, we’re going to continue posting these on the YouTube channel. I feel this strong desire now to show up and become the teacher again. So I’m following that thing that lights me up.
I want you to find space, create time in your life to do that. Because when you do that, it brings you joy, it increases your happiness levels, it allows you to follow your light. And when you follow that light, it’s a game changer.
Let me tell you one more quick story. My friend Jason has been in the food service industry for years. He’s been in corporate. He works 70, 80 hours a week. It absolutely has drained him. About a year and a half ago, he said, “Kim, I really love travel, and I’d really love to create a business where I’m a travel agent for people. But there’s no way. There’s no way I can make the money I make in the corporate world. There’s no way that there’s going to be this many people who want to hire me as their travel agent.” I just kept coaching him for the last year and a half. I’ve coached him along with somebody else who’s been very important to his ability to do this.
But Jason just keeps following those whispers. I will tell you that Jason is probably, within the next nine months, he will probably give up his multiple six-figure corporate gig and step fully into his travel business. Because he is following that thing that lights him up.
When you direct your energy towards the things that light you up, the universe jumps in to support you. The universe hears your calling. It sees you following that purpose, that calling. It sees that you’re listening to those soul nudges, and it really does support you.
So I want you to really think about: How do you start following what lights you up? How do you start living in alignment with what excites you? Think about that. Ask yourself that question. What makes you lose track of time? What gives you energy instead of drains you? Maybe it’s one of those play personalities that lights you up. Maybe it’s just incorporating one of those play personalities once a week to get started. It’s really about just taking one small step. One small step that says, “I love myself enough to know that I am worthy of chasing that which excites me. I love myself enough to know that I’m allowed to create some space in my life, even with all my obligations, to do the things that excite me.” Give yourself that space to listen to the nudges, the whispers that you are being sent.
I tell you, those whispers are there for a reason. You are meant to follow that which lights you up. I would love to hear from you if you do. If this episode resonated with you, I want you to screenshot it and I want you to share with me what is one thing that lights you up and what is one small step that you’re going to take in the direction of that which lights you up.
All right, best wishes. I’ll see you next week.
