Nine Questions That Changed My Life

In this episode of More Like You, Angie Mizzell shares the nine transformative questions that changed her life, taken from scenes from her memoir, Girl in the Spotlight'. Angie discusses the importance of self-reflection, emotional healing, and the courage to confront one's true feelings and desires. Each question serves as a guide for listeners to explore their own lives and make meaningful changes.

Takeaways
-Recognizing when something feels off in your life is crucial.
-Your personal history shapes who you are today.
-Self-reflection can lead to significant life changes.
-It's important to know how you feel, even if it's difficult.
-Understanding your perspective can foster compassion for yourself.
-Letting go of burdens can lead to personal freedom.
-Embracing uncertainty can open new possibilities.
-Facing fears can diminish their power over you.
-Visualizing your perfect day can clarify your desires.
-Listening to your inner voice is essential for authenticity.

Sign up for Angie's free weekly inspiration and encouragement: angiemizzell.com/subscribe

Get Angie's memoir Girl in the Spotlight: angiemizzell.com/book

Connect with Angie Mizzell on Instagram

Transcript

Angie (00:00)
Hi, I'm Angie Mizzell and welcome to More Like You. This is the podcast where we explore what happens when you step away from the life you thought you should live and into a life that feels more like you. Today, I'm sharing the nine questions that changed my life. Let's dive in.

One of my friends from high school reached out to me recently and she invited me to be a guest speaker for a group of women at her work. These women are participating in a leadership networking program. The program sounds really great. It's a year long program and each woman is responsible for teaching a topic to the group. So for my friend's lesson, she invited me to be a guest speaker. My friend wants me to talk about how I wrote and published a book.

how my memoir, Girl in the Spotlight, came to be, how I developed a passion to do something and went for it. But I joked to my friend, I'm like, you know this book is about leaving my career in television news, right? I don't want to come to your work and then inspire everyone to quit. But she assured me that everyone is satisfied with their work and it's why they're part of this leadership program.

And all kidding aside, like if you've read the book, you know that it is about more than a career change. It's much deeper than that.

But it is about recognizing and acknowledging when something feels off about your life and then having the courage to call everything into question. Maybe you're in a life transition or maybe you sense that your current season has run its course. And if that's the case, I hope that my book will help you look at the next chapter of your life and see it with a fresh set of eyes.

So my friend got copies of the book to share with her group and they're all going to read the book before we meet. So that's really great. It's going to be so fun to have a meaningful conversation with these women about these topics that are so important to all of us. It's just something that really lights me up.

So just the other day I got a text from my friend and let me read to you what she said. I started the book, cry emoji. I had no idea you went through all that. I would never have imagined that you were dealing with that in high school. You did a great job of pushing through. I can't wait to continue the story. I teared up multiple times already.

So my friend is not the only person who knows me, who has reached out to me after reading the book and has said something like that, who has said, I didn't know that. I didn't know that you were dealing with that. But we all have a backstory, right? You know, we go out into the world and we're living and we're working and there's a part of our life that the outside world may never see. And whether we're fully aware of it or not, that backstory, our personal history,

has shaped us. So some of you might be listening right now and you might be living from a set of beliefs that you've never fully questioned or you have grief that you haven't processed or you've experienced trauma and you've never received help or support. My book is a personal story, but I wrote it hoping that it would become a roadmap for people who need it to help you save your own life. I wrote it to be a guide to help you get free.

So woven throughout the book are key questions that were presented to me by mentors, ministers, therapists, personal fitness trainers, authors, and friends. And today I'm going to share these questions. feel free to reflect upon them as you listen, or you might want to write them down so you can journal about them later. So here we go,

Question number one, how do you feel? When a mentor asked me this question, I was a senior in high school and it was just before my mom got remarried. And I remember replying, I don't know. And he said, well, you need to know. You need to know how you feel.

You know, sometimes it's hard to get to the true core of how you feel, especially if you've been conditioned to take care of other people's feelings. If you live your truth, if you speak your truth, you may worry about how others will react. But consider this. You don't have to share your feelings. You don't have to express them. You don't have to act on them, at least not right away. It's just important that you know how you feel. And if you're not clear about how you feel about something, you can start by giving yourself space and permission just to figure it out.

Question number two, how would the story look from your perspective?

My college writing professor asked me this question after she read a personal essay that I wrote for her class. I had written a story from the perspective of another family member. She handed the essay back to me with a note in the margin and it read, this is a brave piece of writing, but I wonder how the story might look from your perspective.

In chapter 12 of my book, I write, I was struck by the gentle way she suggested it, presenting a challenge without force. I had a voice, I had a story, and that's the one she wanted to read. It felt profound. This question, how would the story look from your perspective, is closely related to the first question, how do you feel? I think it's very important to be able to put ourselves in other people's shoes. But we need to be aware of how it feels to walk in our own shoes.

So asking yourself, how would the story look from my perspective is a powerful exercise to help you develop compassion for your younger self. It shines a light on the parts of your personal history that you might still need to process, grieve and heal.

Question number three, what are you holding on to? This question came from a sermon I heard in church. Is there something in your life that feels heavy, something that you're clinging to? Perhaps you're holding on for dear life. Maybe your identity is so wrapped up in this thing you're holding on to and you feel like you can't live without it. You don't want to let it go, but you're wondering what would happen if you did.

Question number four, what should I do with my life? This question is the title of a book by Po Bronson and my husband gave me this book many years ago. The question and the book itself gave me permission for once to be in a state of uncertainty. At that point, I'd not fully admitted to myself that I was even questioning the path that I was on and that's because my self-worth was very tied up in everything working out like I planned.

Which leads me to question number five, a question from my therapist. She asked me, if you could do anything at all, what would that be? So this question is essentially the same question as the one that came before, what should I do with my life? But when presented in a slightly different way, it added a sense of possibility to it. And the answer came to me right away. So I told my therapist that I wanted to write for magazines and work at a gym.

So then she threw in a bonus question. Why don't you do that?

So then I went on to explain all of the obstacles in my way, all of the reasons that I couldn't do what I just said out loud I wanted to do. And isn't that the way it goes? Sometimes, you know, we have a moment of clarity and then doubt settles in and then we talk ourselves out of the thing that we had just said out loud. That's where question number six comes in handy. What's the worst thing that can happen?

Imagining the worst case scenario can feel very counterintuitive and negative. But my therapist explained to me that when you say your fears out loud, they lose their power over you.

Time and time again, I found this to be true. When you turn and face your fear, when you look at the worst case scenario, you can decide if what your heart is telling you to do, if the direction your heart is pointing you towards, is it worth the risk? Question number seven, what would you do if you weren't afraid? This question is from the book, Who Moved My Cheese? I love this question.

If this question knows you're afraid, this question isn't judging you for being afraid. This question is taking into account that the fear is there. The question simply asks, what would you do if you weren't afraid?

Question number eight, what's your perfect day? A personal trainer asked me this question once and my perfect day visions have ranged from driving in a convertible on an ocean highway, palm trees lining the road, to simply having enough time in my day to exercise and my house is clean, or I'm doing creative work that's challenging and it also fills my cup and my soul and I'm contributing and doing something meaningful. When you take the time to consider the answer for yourself, what your perfect day looks like, whatever it is that you see yourself doing, take a moment to consider how that vision makes you feel because quite often it's the feeling that we're going after.

There's more than one way to get to that feeling. Quite often that feeling we crave comes from within us, not from something or someone or someplace outside of us. Question number nine. This one came from a friend and it's a good one to ask yourself when you're deep in the not knowing. Why don't you try to stop thinking about everything so much? I'm definitely an over thinker, but sometimes you can't think your way into clarity. You have to feel your way. So start to notice when your insides feel constricted, like very tight, maybe like a pressure cooker, and then pay attention to when that feeling shifts to something lighter, more expansive. That's your inner voice, that expansive feeling, that is the real you. And the real you is telling you something. So listen to it.

These are the nine questions that changed my life and they came from my memoir, Girl in the Spotlight, which you can order online from your favorite bookseller or by visiting my website, angiemizzell.com.

If this episode was meaningful to you, I invite you to subscribe, leave a review and share it with a friend. Let's build a community of people who are ready to step into that next season of life with authenticity and courage.

Thank you for listening to More Like You. I'll see you back here next Thursday.