#201: Reframing & Reclaiming Your Life's Work
Does anxiety, fear, dread or something else like this hold you back from truly experiencing your day-to-day and your work with more ease, joy and resilience?
I just got back from a speaking on a panel at a conference in Nashville, Tennessee, The Country Music Radio Seminar, about the small and simple things we can do to help ourselves reclaim our experiences through cultivating a reframe practice.
Listen in to learn how you can cultivate awareness, get curious about your thoughts, and invite in the permission and possibility to experience your connection with work differently.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
How to cultivate a daily reframe practice to gently shift your mindset and energy
Practical ways to shift self-talk that holds you back from ease and fulfillment
Approaches to resilience and well-being tailored for those creating a life and business on their own terms
Reclaim Your Calling Audio Course - $47
Go from a desire to share your soul-led business’ message to clearly defining it so you can start attracting and building trust with your future audience and customers.
00:00 Why building your business holistically is important for success
06:07 How I took the leap into entrepreneurship using my reframe practice
15:47 Why curious questions invite meaningful shifts and invite new possibilities
20:53 If you’re experiencing a new beginning, our Reclaim Audio Course walks you through this reframing practice using curious questions and a journal practice to go from a desire to share your message to clarity and attracting your most aligned people
Visit for more Boss-Goddess episodes: https://www.boss-goddess.co/podcast
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Read the Full Transcript
Christina Barsi [00:00:50]:
So I just got back from Nashville, Tennessee, speaking at a conference that I've never been to before, and it actually was not a podcast conference. For the first time for me. All of my presentations and speaking events have been at podcast conferences— Podcast Movement, Podcast Evolutions, Outlier, and a few others. I can't think of one that I've done that wasn't a podcast conference. So this was a really fun experience for several reasons. I was asked to join this panel for the country radio seminar, which is a whole new world for me. I'm not traditionally a country music fan and I don't come from radio, but there's definitely some overlap nowadays with radio streaming, podcasting. A lot of podcast originals, meaning the people who started out really experimenting with podcasting, came from radio.
Christina Barsi [00:01:56]:
So a lot of senior people in the podcast industry come from radio. And the person who pre-approved me for this panel and added me to it and organized it, her name's Ileana. She works for a music licensing agency, I believe. I joined her on her podcast, I want to say a year or two ago. And of course we ended up talking about what it means to build a business holistically and intuitively and how we incorporate our well-being and kind of focus our strategy around sustainability and, and ourselves as the business owner, making sure the business serves us so that we can serve those we want through the business. So this was when I was starting out with launching Boss Goddess, which if you didn't catch last week's episode, I talk more about the original idea and then how it kind of evolved into what was actually the original idea on my heart that I I didn't fully lean into the first time when I started the rebrand. So more on that in last week's episode if you want to check that out. But a lot of this came about because of burnout.
Christina Barsi [00:03:09]:
I didn't want to build another business that led to burnout or that came from burnout. And there was a lot of circumstances that contributed to my personal experience with that, but I also noticed a lot of women experiencing this too, and All to say that our conversation kind of revolved around these kinds of themes, even though maybe that wasn't the original intention that Ileana had for our conversation. But from that came this opportunity where she placed me on this panel and then asked me if I would actually go and, you know, do it. And this was late last year. And for those of you who don't know, I'm also now 6 months pregnant, so I wasn't sure. If I would be able to travel. And I promise this is going somewhere. I'm going to share with you what I taught while I was there, um, to the audience.
Christina Barsi [00:04:01]:
And the panel itself was about resiliency and well-being and balance in the workplace for people who work in the radio industry, the music industry, et cetera. So I thought I would just share that with you here because it's totally on theme with everything that we talk about anyway. But I cleared it with my doctor and she said, yes, I could travel by plane still. So I said yes. And I was really excited about it. I was looking forward to it ever since she told me that I was selected to speak on this panel. So it was really a fun experience to kind of build this out. The other people who joined me on the panel are— two of them are therapists, also a coach, one of them as well.
Christina Barsi [00:04:47]:
And then. The woman who is moderating, her name is Cheryl Mann, did a wonderful job putting it all together. And her business is one of those sort of companies that goes in and helps people working in corporate with their, you know, interrelationships, communication, change management, leadership, uh, coaching and things like that. She does like corporate retreats and sort of coaches the teams and the leadership and all that good stuff. So also I was very curious, like, what are people really struggling with? Cuz my background is not in corporate. So it was just a fun experience to go and do. I just got back a few days ago and luckily traveling while 6 months pregnant wasn't terribly difficult. I did go by myself.
Christina Barsi [00:05:32]:
I kind of wanted to go by myself because I don't know when I'll be able to do that again for quite a while once baby comes, who's due in June. It's a girl. Very excited. And there's no hiding it anymore. It's, it's very obvious that I'm pregnant when I walk around. So that was kind of like a funny thing to see people react to my being there. But the, the panel itself went really well. It was scheduled for 8 AM in the morning, something that I was originally dreading, but it ended up being totally fine.
Christina Barsi [00:06:07]:
I was kind of glad to have it be the first part of my day and then be able to do, you know, what I wanted for the rest of the time I was there. And I'd never been to Nashville before, so, and of course country music was kind of a new experience for me to be surrounded in or immersed in. So what I talked about primarily was how to apply a reframe practice, how to cultivate a reframe practice and how to use it in spaces in your— for your own shifts, essentially, in your day-to-day. So really small shifts is the goal. For me, I shared a story about how this practice turned into a very big shift in my life. It's what the tool that I used the most when I was trying to believe that I could do something I've never done before, which is become an entrepreneur, start my own business. And finally close the chapter on working in the service industry. I worked in restaurants as a server or a host or a bartender or, you know, something of the sort for 19 years at the time, which is a long time.
Christina Barsi [00:07:19]:
And that's because I started when I was like 17. So my entire work history was just this industry, this service restaurant life, and One, my body was getting really tired of it, even though I was in really good shape then, thanks to it. But it was just time to really see if I could offer more to this world and lean more into my own purpose. So the reframe practice goes like this. There's 3 steps to cultivate it. The first step is to start to just come into some awareness, some observation. I recommend doing this for about at least 48 hours, but a couple more days would be useful. Just choose some of your day-to-day, very, very common work days or your usual day, and you're just noticing what's coming up for you.
Christina Barsi [00:08:18]:
You're staying aware of any things that you haven't been aware of for, anything you're noticing that is becoming sort of a trend across the days of observation. So that's why you want at least 2 days to compare. And you're not judging yourself, you're just noticing and taking inventory. And the things you're taking inventory on are, you know, how do I feel during different parts of my day? Does any, like, anxiety show up in my body? Are there any emotions coming up that I would like to be different? Are there any self-talk that isn't serving me? And some very easy ones to dismiss, but common ones too. They're usually really small nudges, and that's why this awareness practice is so interesting and important to do once in a while, because we don't even notice it often that this is going on in the background, like sitting down at your desk, let's say. And then having a little like anxiety or dread creep into your body, or something tightens, right? Your stomach feels different. It shows up differently for everybody, and you may not even have this going on, but if something is coming up, these are the kinds of things I, uh, it's good to notice. And sometimes it's just like having to sit and do emails, or knowing that you have a meeting that you're kind of like not super excited about or worried about, or certain personality that you have to interact with.
Christina Barsi [00:09:52]:
Just things like that that might be coming up. It could also be things you're saying to yourself that you may not be aware of. For me, it was, this is so hard, this is going to be hard. All day long I would say to myself, this is hard, and I didn't realize how often This was just my inner monologue. This was my narrative. I was telling myself constantly that I had a hard life, basically. And that's just what my belief system became, that things are hard, that it has to be hard to fill in the blank, to do anything, that everything is just hard. And I was very surprised by that.
Christina Barsi [00:10:37]:
And this was I want to say this is like 2016, so a while ago. And the shift for me, the reframe became, what if it were easy? So we talked about step 1 being observation and noticing. Step 2 is getting curious about what you noticed. And I say curious because we don't want to judge ourselves again. We don't— we want to stay away from that. And we want to find the reframe. We want to find the shift that we're looking for. So the way to do that is to create a curious question.
Christina Barsi [00:11:10]:
If you've listened to this podcast for a while, then you may have heard me talk about this before, but I love this process and you can use it several, several different ways. In the last episode, I mentioned that we have courses. Both courses incorporate a version of this curious question asking. So the way this works is, let's say, let's, we'll use mine as an example. This is so hard, you may start by saying, what if, or what would it feel like? I like what would it feel like to start out because that's kind of what we're trying to shift is how we feel. That's really like how we experience things. We're processing that through how we feel. So what if before we got to my defining reframe that I worked with, which was what if it were easy, what if we started with something different? Like what if the exploration part, the getting curious part went like this? What would it feel like if this were more fun? What would it feel like if this were simpler? What would it feel like if this were more neutral? And I like neutral because sometimes we don't need it to feel in a total opposite pendulum swing to the other side.
Christina Barsi [00:12:24]:
That may not feel very authentic. Sometimes we just don't want to have to worry or think about it at all, like emails, right? That doesn't have to be fun necessarily. Maybe we just want it to kind of be a neutral part of our day. So play with what energy you want it to be like, and that's how we start to explore what the actual reframe we want to continue to work with is. I say narrow it down to one if you can, just for the exercise, just for the practice. You can always change it. Try it on. If it's not super working for you, then revisit step 2, getting curious, and come up with another one.
Christina Barsi [00:13:07]:
But the key here is really, what would it feel like if, or just what if this, right? And the other thing I want to point out here is that we don't want to create questions that include sort of the negative or for lack of a better word, the negative part, right? The thing that we're wanting to shift, the feeling that we're not happy with. So what we want to avoid is, what would it feel like if this were less dreadful? Or what would it feel like if I didn't feel anxiety? Because your brain, the neuroscience behind it is that your brain will just hear the dread part or the anxiety part, the worry part, whatever that thing is that you're wanting to shift, it will just plug in a reason for why. It'll give you all the reasons of— it'll give you like the excuses of why you feel that way. And that's not really what we're looking for. We're not trying to figure it out necessarily at this point. We just want to acknowledge it, allow it to exist, get curious about it, and create the shift. We can kind of bypass the judgment part this way, or the fear, or this more negative self-talk that can come up when we notice things like this. It's very easy to see something and then beat ourselves up about it and wonder like, why am I doing that? Why do I— why is this little thing bothering me so much? And if you do, it's fine.
Christina Barsi [00:14:40]:
Just give yourself a little time limit, like, okay, I'm gonna let myself wonder about this, um, for like, I don't know, 5 minutes. Or if you need more time, like half an hour, and then just maybe like go through all of the brain dump stuff that you need to walk through and then let it go, allow it to stop. It depends on how you operate. If that feels like impossible to stop once it starts, then bypass it and just allow yourself to kind of move into the step of creating the questions that do feel good. And that's the key here. You want to notice, all right, how do I feel when I say, what if this is more fun? How do I feel when I step into the energy of like this just being neutral? And really allowing yourself to notice which one feels better and realistic that you can work with, right? And then you go, okay, that's the reframe. And so for me, it was, what if it were easy? Like, what if life wasn't so hard?
Christina Barsi [00:15:46]:
What if it were easy?
Christina Barsi [00:15:47]:
And that may feel like a stretch at first for some, but that's what I landed on and that's what I worked with. And I did it in 3 different ways. And the first way I recommend everyone start with, which is replacing the feeling when it comes up. So you just have to stay in awareness. 'Cause you'll have to keep noticing if those feelings are popping up and replacing the self-talk when it pops up, right? The phrase I was actively saying to myself, this is hard, or this is going to be hard, things of that nature. So whenever I noticed that coming up, I would bring up my reframe. Well, what if it were easy? So whenever I noticed the self-talk coming up, 'cause to me it was the same phrase over and over again, this is so hard, this is going to be hard, and just noticing when I'm starting to say that to myself and just replacing it with, What if it were easy? But what if it were easy? And allowing that to exist as a possibility. So we're inviting in a new possibility.
Christina Barsi [00:16:49]:
We're giving ourselves permission to experience it a different way. So permission and possibility. We're getting curious and we're inviting in permission and possibility for it to be different. And that is something that you just let go of after you're done, right? It's very simple. If you notice sort of feelings of dread and be like, well, What if it— and it just allows a release, right? What if it were easy? Then just kind of stepping into whatever you're doing next. And eventually the default shifts rather than the default being, you know, the self-talk or the feeling that has been just sort of running in the background for you on a regular basis. Eventually the shift, the default becomes the shift, which is you are more gravitating to the reframe you came up with. What if it were easy? The other thing I did for me, because I was still working at this restaurant that was a very difficult place to work, probably the hardest place I worked ever.
Christina Barsi [00:17:41]:
What I did is from the car to the building, which was only like a 5 to 10 minute walk depending on where I parked, I noticed that I had an inner monologue would really kick up around that time. Like, okay, let's get through this. This is going to be hard, but let's just get the night over with. Let's get it over with. That kind of monologue. So instead I replaced it with a different monologue, which was just, what if all my guests were super easy tonight? What if all the money I made tonight was really easy? Everything flowed. What if all the conflict was just easy to solve? That kind of thing. And then I walk through the door and we move on.
Christina Barsi [00:18:21]:
So I did that every time I would walk into work, which took about 5 minutes. And then what that allowed me to do is to start showing up in the conflict with the same tool. So when things would go wrong, rather than going, oh my God, what am I going to do? Instead, I would go, what can we do? What's going to be easy? And just going right into solution. That really started to change everything. So that's where the real change starts to happen. So a lot of times we prepare for quote unquote resiliency and we think of it through the lens of conflict, like, okay, how do I show up in the moments of conflict? Better or more resilient. And really, we have to build this practice in the background so that when we get to the conflict, we've already— we already know how to be resilient. We already know what to do in that situation.
Christina Barsi [00:19:13]:
And we already know how to be problem-solving. We already know how to be less affected by what's going on around us. That, that was just a simple shift. And I noticed that my teammates around me started to also pick up on this new way of sort of solving problems, getting through the night, working as a team, taking more ownership of the moments. And everyone around me started to do it too. And that was a really cool ripple effect to see start happening. And what I realized on reflection when I was preparing for this panel was what I was teaching myself was self-trust, confidence, and leadership. So by the time I'd done this for— I did this for like 9 months or so, repetitive.
Christina Barsi [00:19:55]:
It just like changed a lot of areas of my life, and it created a bigger shift because I practiced it so diligently, because it wasn't just happening at work. I was saying these things to myself all day. So that shift really allowed me to step out of this like haze that I was sort of living in. And realize that I had more power than that, that I could shift the way I was experiencing my life no matter where I was, even in the hardest place to work, I could change my experience of it. That was really powerful. And that gave me the confidence to finally quit and move on and build my business and start a business in an industry that was just starting. There was no template for podcast production agencies back then. This is a long time ago now, almost a decade, or like a year short of a decade ago.
Christina Barsi [00:20:53]:
Pretty, pretty powerful stuff. That's what I talked about on the panel. And hopefully that's something here that you can take away. If you're just starting a new business, if you're in this place that I was in back then, and I'm in again now in a different way, I'm starting my second business, which is Boss Goddess. Or just another version of what I do, I should say. It's like a rebrand. We're doing different services that come in the form of courses. And speaking of courses, like I said, there's one course available right now called Reclaim Your Calling, which helps you use this tool and use it for stepping into your connection with your purpose, your connection with yourself and your message, and how that's coming through in connection with the business that you're building so that when you show up to talk about what it is that you're bringing into the world, it feels very clear, it feels directive, it feels connected to your purpose and to who you are, and it ensures that you stay true to your authenticity.
Christina Barsi [00:22:03]:
The goal really with the course is to help you connect with your message in a way that feels true to where you are now in the shift that you're experiencing now and what you're building now, all that good stuff. I'll put a link for it in the show notes. Of course, it's called Reclaim Your Calling. You can get it at the boss-goddess.co website, forward slash courses. There's only two there for the moment, more to come. So I hope that your takeaway is that you get to feel the way you would like to feel. You get to experience your experience in a way that feels good to you, and you always have that at your fingertips. It's just a matter of creating a little practice to step back into what it is that you would like to experience.
Christina Barsi [00:22:52]:
All right, till next time, bye for now.
