Hello and welcome to this week's Choosing Happy Podcast.

This week I would like to look at the inner game.

I think 2025 is going to require a little bit more mind control than maybe ever before.

We've already seen a lot of external events that are really rocking the world.

So how can you get through 2025 thriving, happy, joyful, intentional, and achieving all of the goals that you want, while resisting the urge to get caught up in the outside world?

All of this will be discussed, plus some tips and tricks for maintaining happy in this week's Choosing Happy Podcast.

Foreign welcome to the Choosing Happy Podcast.

I'm Heather Masters, your host, and this week we're focusing on your inner game.

To choosing happy in 2025.

The focus is about enhancing happiness through inner work and mindset adjustment as we enter 2025, about building resilience, but in addition to that, creating systems and structures in your world that help you, that support you when change happens, when things maybe don't go as you expected.

How can you flow with everything and find the joy in your life?

That's what we're looking at today.

And to begin with, I'm going to look at the definition of inner game and what I specifically mean by inner game in the context of happiness.

For me, it's more than just resilience.

It's that alignment with your inner knowing.

It's creating certainty in uncertain times.

It's being grounded and balanced and sitting in your power and your greatness when the world around you is kind of falling apart.

But you have this unshakable trust and vision that keeps you moving forward.

And I think that this type of mindset, and it actually goes beyond mindset, it goes beyond normal beliefs.

It goes into your beliefs around your identity and who you are, but also beyond that, into your higher self, your alignment with your purpose at this time and your mission for being here during this extraordinary time on the planet.

And I hope that you find today's episode helpful.

Now, mindset is about thoughts, is about beliefs and how they shape our experiences and perceptions of happiness.

But even more than that, it's about understanding where conflicts occur, where our values might be in conflict or our values at a general level might not match the values at identity level.

And I think we're moving into a bigger game in 2025.

And this is all my perception, but I say we're being called to to be bigger, to be stronger, to be more resilient, to stand in our truth, in our agency, to take responsibility and to show up fully ourselves in all of our beautiful magnificence in 2025.

That doesn't necessarily mean we're going to be world leaders, but we might be world leaders in our living rooms.

And I think that's really, really important.

We're all here for a purpose.

I believe.

As I've said in previous podcasts, we're all part of the bigger jigsaw.

And one bean missing from the thousand bean jigsaw is still a gap and still a hole that's yet to be filled.

And we're all important, we all make up that bigger picture as we move forward through this shifting and extraordinary times.

So the first thing I'd like you to do as an action step is to reflect on where you find yourself at the moment.

I did this exercise yesterday and found it very, very powerful.

I'm going to do kind of a mini version today.

I just want you to reflect about where you are truthfully, in terms of your thoughts and your beliefs, in terms of where you kind of ended the year.

You know what, what is your life like?

If you looked at all of the areas of your life on a circle, if you looked at relationships, he looked at work, you looked at spirituality, you looked at health and fitness, you looked at your social life, you looked at family, having a look at all of those areas and add more areas if you want, but having a look at each one of those and really reflecting, are you where you want to be?

Did you achieve everything yet that you wanted to in those areas?

And if you're not, it's about really being honest about where you are.

If it's painful, acknowledging the pain, don't sit with it for too long, but just acknowledge that it's there.

Acknowledge that you might be disappointed, acknowledge that you might be even ashamed of where you are, but don't sit in that shame.

Just acknowledge that that's part of where you are at the moment.

And what I'd invite you to do then is to write down where you want to be.

Where do you want to be at the end of 2025 or even where do you want to be in three months time and really visualize it.

We've done this work before.

If you listen to last week's podcast as well, about stepping in, visualizing it, looking at the beliefs that you would hold in order to be that future version of yourself, looking at how you would show up, looking at how you would behave, what actions you would be taking, and really feeling what you would be feeling.

What difference would it make if you'd already achieved those where would your life be now?

What's the ripple effect?

How does it spread out into all of those areas of your life and beyond?

How does it impact your children?

How does it impact your friends, your family, your parents, your work colleagues, your clients?

How does your success impact other people?

I think sometimes I know I've done this for myself is that I think that my success doesn't matter.

But when I think about what I can do, if I am reaching the goals that I want to reach, I am definitely making a greater impact in the world.

And it might only just be my world, it might only be me and my dogs getting more walks.

It might only be, you know, being able to travel further, whatever it is, but it's still important to me.

And that's where your values are, what's important to you, what really matters.

And once you've got that vision and you're looking at the gap, it's then deciding how much do you want to close that gap.

And in looking at that gap, coming up with and identifying those limiting beliefs.

Now, I've been through this in previous podcasts, so I don't want to sort of drag onto this too much.

But look at, you know, sit with these, with this gap and just ask yourself, what's stopping you right now?

Have you got a fear of failure?

Are you comparing yourself to others?

What's hindering your happiness right now?

What's hindering you from being that truth person, showing up as who you truly are?

Now fear can really paralyze individuals and prevent them from reaching their goals.

And we're living in a very fear based paradigm at the moment, especially if you're paying attention to any social media or mainstream media news, you know, there's, there's all sorts happening out there.

And I think for me, releasing fear, getting to a point where I'm in alignment, I'm sitting with my intuition, with my guidance, can really help me release my fears and sit in that positivity.

That knowing that certainty that I mentioned earlier and journaling can really help you to explore your fears, to check out whether they're valid or not.

And again, there's a whole other podcast on that as well.

So I'm just really touching on this today because I wanted to emphasize that I really do think that 2025 is about the inner game.

I think it always has been, but I think it's about the inner game and beyond.

It's about stepping into who we are with it in terms of our sixth sense as well as our five senses, and actually being Present as much as possible, increasing our awareness so that we know what's happening without getting caught up in the emotions, without getting stopped by what's happening in the outside world.

It's like working for the emergency services.

If you like, you know what's happening.

But it's that ability to ground yourself and to act from a place of power rather than getting caught up.

I think it's that strength that is really going to help us thrive through this.

What's already an extraordinary year and we're only nine days in for inner transformation.

There are a lot of strategies now.

I've been revisiting my goals already this year because of information that I received that I'd been blind to over the last few months.

And I decided that I have to get very, very focused this year on who I'm serving, what I'm doing and how I'm showing up.

And in order to do all of that, I went back and did this exercise that I've just explained, but also went a bit further as well, because I really do believe that often we don't take the time with our go, we kind of move mechanically through them.

And even if you work with a good goal setting coach, for me it's about creating and clearing the way before you even start to set your goals.

So starting with some of the belief clearing.

So where now we've already got this where we want to be and where we are.

We've already identified some beliefs.

Now if we begin to clear those beliefs, that vision for, for moving forward might change.

We might be able to see greater opportunities because we're not coming from that limited space.

So what I like to do up front is to work with the limitations, to really go through anything that might be preventing us.

Our upper limit zones, our incompletes and messes, even trauma.

And are you associated, dissociated?

Are you really disconnected from life or are you living life to the full?

Are you feeling into it?

Are you able to be present?

I think that is one of the things that I know for myself.

I didn't realize for quite some time that my ability to be present was being hindered by, by previous traumatic experiences I'd had.

And so I think it's important to really clear the ground.

And I've mentioned it before in my clear clarity, create.

That's what we, we actually do.

We do the clearing and then we get absolutely clear on what it is we want to achieve.

And we only do that, as I say, after the clearing.

And then we create by using timeline and visualizations.

Vision boards, all that good stuff to create some compelling goals that we are absolutely certain to achieve.

All of this has to be aligned with your values.

You're very, very unlikely to achieve a goal if you haven't first of all identified your core values and you really see what's important to you.

Because what's important to you is where you spend your time and is where you focus.

So if you're doing something today that's not moving you forward, you, you've got to kind of check in whether that's a value, whether there's a values conflict and clearing those and creating new values or creating new focus, establishing why a new value is more important than the old one, and really getting to it.

Unconscious level is so important because without your values aligning with your goals or your goals aligning with your values, you are very, very unlikely to achieve what you want.

And the other part of that is having conflict within yourself and aligning all parts of yourself if you like to support you in reaching your goals and your visions in 2025.

And you know, that's really what's again what the clear clarity create is all about.

And it's a way that I work to create my goals for 2025.

The main thing as well is that once you've done all of this work is to embrace the journey, to keep growing, keep exploring, keep discovering yourself, increasing your awareness, practicing presence so that you're creating a pathway to authentic happiness and to identify what really does make you happy, so that you're spending most of your day doing what you love, enjoying the journey, bringing intention, awareness, open heartedness, joy, laughter to your life.

And those are all choices in the moment.

And if you can create a future that's, that's based on, on those values, while you serve, while you embrace abundance, while you allow yourself to grow and expand, while you celebrate, while you celebrate small wins and all of the progress on your journey toward happiness.

But happiness doesn't have to be an end result.

It's a choice in the moment.

And that's really what this podcast is all about, that we can choose.

And often choosing in the moment is choosing what's important to us in the moment that we love to do.

And even if we have a job that we don't particularly like, we can learn to like it.

For instance, my heating's been out for a few weeks and I was moaning and groaning about the cold, but now I'm doing cold.

As Stuart Wilde, the author, would have said, cold is about a choice of perspective and how you can cope.

Even managing your body and your state.

Managing your body, your state, your mindset, your intention, your absolute certainty that something is going to happen for you are really the superpowers of achieving what you want in 2025.

And as I said, I think these are kind of the warrior skills that we really need to be boosting in 2025, not only to win on our terms, but to contribute to the movement forward in the world.

I would love to hear from you.

I would love to hear your experiences and if you can share your journey or your insights on social media or through the podcast community, that would be absolutely excellent.

I would love to, to hear how you've set yourself up for 2025, what you're doing to succeed.

And if I've missed something, which I'm sure I have because I haven't scripted this today, then let me know.

The top podcast episode for Choosing Happy has been a supporting happy program.

And that's what I intend to do over the next few weeks, is to.

To move into some interviews, but also create snippets and episodes around how you can support yourself going forward.

And I mean really in practical ways as well, such as having music that inspires you, creating an environment that you love to work in, grounding yourself daily, creating habits not only that move you forwards and that keep you disciplined, but you learn to love and embrace and feel the benefits of.

So there's, there's lots of things you can do to support yourself every day, in every moment.

And one of the things that I truly believe in, actually action, is that if, for instance, I have a goal of getting fit and working out every day, if I miss one morning, I have the afternoon, I can still do that workout in the afternoon, or I can start tomorrow, but I don't have to start tomorrow.

You know, every minute, every hour, we can choose differently.

So if I'm not, you know, if my state's a little bit down in one hour, I can choose a different state in a matter of minutes.

I can shift my state through my physiology, through what I'm thinking, through what I'm focusing, focusing on, through what I choose, my decisions in the moment.

I can choose that something is going to bring me down or something is going to lift me up.

You know, there's, there's that wonderful quote.

I think it's from Jack Canfield.

Is it Good morning, God or Good God morning?

And that's kind of the choice you can make.

You can just reframe it.

And that's why words are so powerful as well, and words are going to be something that I am really focusing on to help shift perspectives, to open up opportunities to create visions and create new narratives in 2025.

And I invite you to do the same through journaling, through creating or rewriting your story, rewrite your past story, create a future story.

And taking the time to do this because I really that's why I'm doing this episode.

I think the inner work is what we need to really get us through 2025 in a thriving way.

It's the inner work that produces the outward results.

And if you're focused on the outward and it's negative, you're going to create more of the same.

So anyway, I hope that this has been helpful.

Episode One of the things you can do around all of this is to find an engaging and supportive community who share your values and goals and can provide support and encouragement.

And I am just about to relaunch the Clear Clarity Create, which is part of my New Life by Design program.

And if you're interested in that, you can email me at heather@heathervmasters.com and I can send you the details.

I wish you a very productive week, an excellent rest of your day, and I look forward to seeing you in next week's Choosing Happy Podcast.

Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this week's episode.

If you enjoyed it or think it would be valuable to others, please do share.

And if you really enjoyed it, please leave me a review.

It really helps the podcast.

All of the links are in the show notes and I look forward to seeing you next week on the Choosing Happy Podcast.