Hey, my friend, what's up? And welcome back to another episode of do life big. I am super excited to have you here today. And before I dive into this episode, I just wanted to let you know that my mindset accelerator program, my signature program, is going to be opening up for enrollment very soon. Now listen, I don't have the doors open to this course all the time. You can't just decide you want to do it at any time during the year. I only open up the doors to get in and work with me in this mindset accelerator program a few times a year, and I only keep the doors open for about a week at a time, that's it. So I'm not exactly sure the exact date of when the doors will be open, but if you want to be one of the first ones to know and you want to check it out and see what it's all about, just go to the mindsetaccelerator.com, I will put the link in the show notes. You can click it, read a little bit about it, just put your email in, and then as soon as it is open, you will be notified. You will be the first to be notified. All right, so go ahead and share that with your friend if you think they might benefit from it, and let them know as well. We're gonna dive right in today.
So if you've been following along with my journey, I'm gonna kind of start this episode off with my update on the program, 75 hard. Now I'm not trying to sell you on anything, because this is completely free to do if this is your first time listening to this episode, but I just thought that it would be kind of cool to give you guys a little update every week before I dive into my podcast. Episode kind of let you know how it's going. Now, for those of you who don't know anything about 75 hard, this is basically a 75-day commitment to develop mental toughness and discipline and grit and to really challenge yourself to see what's possible for yourself. During the 75-day period, you need to commit to any workout program that you want. It can be anything. It needs to be 45 minutes every day. And on top of that, you also need to commit to something for 45 minutes outside, some kind of exercise, walking, riding a bike, raking, whatever it is that you want to do. I've been walking along the beach every morning for 45 minutes wearing my 12-pound weighted vest with my husband. We've been doing that every day, and I've been loving that. So that's part of it. Then you also need to drink one gallon of water a day. You need to follow some form of a nutrition plan. It can be anything that you want it to be. Now for me, I'm not doing anything crazy strict. Mine is primarily focused on having a high protein, lots of veggies, type of diet with no fried foods, no processed foods, no sweets. And here is the hard thing for me, no alcohol for the 75-day period. Now everyone needs to follow that rule of no alcohol for 75-days. On top of that, you need to read 10 minutes of a personal development book, and then you need to just snap a progress picture every day for proof that you actually committed and did all of these things.
So if you're listening to this right now, I'm actually, you know, this is a past recording, but this is currently, I'm waking up to day five right now of this program, right? And let me tell you that last night, it was Thursday night, Nick and I went on our date night. We do a date night once a week because we know it's so important to do that, and it was hard, because usually what we do for our date nights is we go walk along the beach, maybe, or maybe we watch the sunset, and we always go out to dinner, and like we sit at the bar, and the bartenders know us because we go to the same three places over and over again. They know exactly what we like to drink. They know exactly what we like to eat, and that's usually what we do. And then we come home fairly early, and then we go to bed, right? So. We knew we were like, before we started this thing. I also said to Nick, you know, this is not going to be that big of a deal for me. Honestly, I don't even really like alcohol, like, I don't even like the taste of it. It's more of like a habit for me, like, I don't need it. I don't go out and get like, shit faced. I go out and I have like, two, maybe three drinks. They take me forever to drink. And maybe I might feel a little something, but I don't have, like, a problem with it. It's just something that I enjoy doing, right? I don't drink every night during the week. I usually save it for a date night, or if we have, like, a big party at our house on Saturday night, then I'll do it then. So I'm like, this really isn't going to be that big of a deal. Seriously? Well, let me tell you. Yesterday we started, we went out and we did our first we said, All right, let's go do, like, pedicures. So we started with pedicures, right? And then we're like, we're gonna go to our favorite sushi restaurant. So we go to our favorite sushi restaurant. And of course, the bartender lady is right there in the window watching us as we're walking in, like, waving at us frantically. She's probably so excited thinking we're gonna sit at the bar. And immediately I go, oh shit, she saw us. And Nick was like, Kathy, it's fine. So I walk in, we're like, hi, yeah, by the way. And then you go to then you feel like you need to, like, justify to people, like, why you're not sitting at the bar anymore. So I'm like, Yeah, we're not sitting at the bar anymore now, because, you know, we don't drink alcohol anymore, and we're gonna be going on 75 days of no drinking, so all I can have is water, right? So we're not gonna sit at the bar tonight. We're not ready for that. I didn't want to be that tempted; you know. But at the same point in time, too, I purposely do when I commit to some kind of hard challenge, I like to face it head on, and I'm that weirdo that likes to just sit there at the bar and, like, stare at the alcohol bottles and be like, see, I'm strong enough. I don't even need it. I don't need to drink that Captain. I don't need to have that dark and stormy or that Espresso Martini. I'm fine. But for the first week, we were like, you know, let's just sit at an actual table. So we sat at the table. I ordered a green tea. It was so lame, right? And I noticed that I'm starting to get really frustrated, okay, that I'm not drinking. So this is when I realized, clearly, you have some kind of dependency going on there with the alcohol cafe, right? You know, so pure as you think you are, and I'm hearing all these other tables around us, you know, they have all their drinks on their table, and they're like, laughing and like, kind of joking around. And then I'm getting, like, annoyed because they're having fun with their alcohol, and I'm sitting there with a damn green tea and a water in my face. So we order our sushi rolls, and because, you know, like we're eating healthy. So I heard a couple sushi rolls, had some edamame, you know, didn't get the fried things that I usually get when I do go, and all of a sudden, I bite into one of the sushi rolls, and this super hard, sharp thing goes directly in between the teeny, tiny, little space between my back molar, my two back molars immediately, and it was so sharp and I could not get it out.
So I got up, I grabbed a toothpick. I went to the bathroom. I'm trying to look in there and see, like, What even is this? It kind of looked like it was like a shrimp tail, but I guess there was no shrimp in that sushi roll that I had, and I was trying to poke it out with a toothpick, and I couldn't get it out. The toothpick just snapped in half. So now my whole jaw is like, throbbing in pain right now. So I just tell Nick, listen, you got to pay the bill and pack this up. I'm going to go wait in the car. Like, we got to go get something take this out. Like, right now, I can't handle it anymore. So needless to say, he packed it all up. He let the waiter know, the bartender, lady who, like, loves us so much, was like, Oh my gosh. Like, I'm taking it off the bill. Next time you come back, I'm going to give you free dessert and free drinks. And we're like, well, save it for November 9, because remember, we can't drink for like, 70 more days.
So we drive home, now there was like a major torrential storm, by the way, too, like the night that we went out, so all the roads were flooded, and it was just crazy, like thunder, lightning, torrential downpours. And so we're driving super slow, as everyone around us is driving slow. And I'm like, Just get me to the CVS on the island. So what do you know? We pull up to the CVS and sure, shit, there's a sign on the door that says, Sorry, we're closed because the cash registers aren't working. I'm like, oh my god, I just want to get this thing out of my mouth. So we go next door, and Nick runs in. He grabs some tweezers, couple little whatever, toothpick thing in my jiggies, and I had to pull it out with the tweezers, and it came right out. But it was like, this, oh my god. It was so gross. It was like, it was pretty big, like a piece of, like white, like plastic, but like, tough, thick plastic. That, I guess the bartender had said that they, like, roll along their sushi in or something, I don't know, but Oh, Jesus, it immediately felt so much better once I took it out of my tooth. And then I said, you know, that was date night number one, sober Kathi, not one drink. And this is what happens. So I went home, went to bed. Oh, man. But anyways, it's going okay. Honestly, it's being in those situations at the very beginning. You know, when you're trying to form a new habit and you're trying to be disciplined, like you really should kind of at the beginning, avoid it a little bit, because it just makes it that much more tempting, like really tempting during the days. I'm fine during the day. I'm totally fine. I'm fine with the workouts. I'm fine with the drinking of the water. I'm fine with following and eating good things. I'm fine with doing personal development. These are all things that I do anyways. Of course, the additional 45 minutes of exercise every day is something I do not typically do, so that's a little bit much, but honestly it really is the most challenging part is the alcohol, because everything that we do tends to revolve around alcohol. You know what I mean? Friday night comes, it's like, thank God. Let's just make a captain and watch a movie. You know, Saturday night rolls around. Let's have all of our friends over. What do you do? You have a couple of drinks. So anyways, forming those new habits is going to be a little challenging, but I know it's going to get easier and easier as the days go by. I mean, we're even going to a concert to see Morgan Wallen on October 4, and we are not drinking. Now, that is going to be hard, but at the same point in time, I'm kind of hoping that by then, by then, I should be in a really good swing of things. I do feel much better during the days. I feel so much clearer. I have been filling my mind every second of every day with tons of really good PD, drinking all that water to flush all the toxins out. So I do feel really good, but it was just being in that first date night where we typically drink, and I didn't that was like, Okay, this kind of sucks, so I'm curious to see where this goes. Definitely not going to be that kind of person that kind of person that cuts out alcohol for the rest of their life. Sorry, but that's just not going to be me. I mean, maybe I will have a different feeling on this when I come to the end of the 75 days, but as of right now, I am counting down those days till I can have a drink.
Anyways, that's it. I just wanted to update you on our 75 hard progress so far. And I also like to do this too, because you know, once you have a goal for yourself, or you have an idea that you're going to do something, and you tell somebody, it just holds you more accountable, right? Because now other people know, you know, like, we have a Facebook group for it. There's people in there, not everybody's in there, but we have a good group of, like, 25 people, plus my husband's doing it with me, and I'm sharing it on social media every day. I'm updating here on the podcast, and it's just more accountability. People check in on me. How's that 75 hard going? I can't be like, yeah, quit. It was too hard for me. It's like, Yep, here it is. I'm just trucking along one day at a time.
So today's episode is going to be really kind of short and sweet and sweet and to the point, and I really kind of had this I was thinking about this today as I was walking along the beach. You know, I was walking along the beach like I've been doing for the past five days now, with my 45 minutes and the weighted vest. And, you know, you say you have this like idea, or you have this goal, or you have this vision, something that you want to do, something that you want to achieve, it could be anything like a business. You want to start an investment property that you want to get into for the first time, being able to quit your full-time job and run your business full time, anything right, like you want to start something up. You have this goal, you have this vision, you have this idea, and you have this idea for it. And so many times. What do we do when we have that idea, that vision, right? Do we act on it, or do we tend to kind of just push it aside? And the majority of the time, the majority of people push it down. And the reason why we push it down is because any time that we have an idea for something new that we're trying to challenge ourselves, and we're trying to come out of our little box that we've been in for so long. Our brain doesn't want that. Our brain is 85% negative thoughts on repeat every single day, and of those thoughts. Also, 90% of your thoughts that are on repeat every day are from the previous day, just on autopilot. And so anytime that you have this idea, like, oh, you know what? I think would be awesome if I started this business. I've always wanted to do this. Boom, your brain will feed you all of these lies to produce fear and to produce doubt and to get you to shrink back down and not take action on that goal. And it could come out in things, in ways, like you start thinking, you know, oh, you know, that would be a great idea, but I'm really just too busy now, like, when would I possibly do it? I'm already doing this. I'm already doing that. It was just, I just don't have the time. Say, or, you know, I'm getting too old now, you know, what are people going to think if I do this? Or, like, I'm already doing this, maybe I should just stick with this and see what happens. Or, you know, but what if it doesn't work? And then you start thinking like, I just don't know if I'm capable. Like, do I really have what it takes to do that? And here's what I want to tell you, if you are granted this vision and this idea and this thought, whatever it is for you, it's different for all of us, but whatever it is that has been on your heart, that means that it's already yours. That means that you are equipped to be able to achieve whatever it is that you have on your heart. You already have it inside of you. You have what it takes to make that dream, that vision, that idea, become your current reality. But the problem is we talk ourselves out of this all of the time, because we have this inner critic voice. We have this little bitch voice is what I like to call it in my mindset accelerator program. That's how I describe it. We have this little bitch voice that is constantly talking us out of things and knocking us down day in and day out. Anytime we get like, oh, we should do this. Oh, this would be great to do or, Oh, I'd love to do this. For so long I've been wanting to do that, and it will knock you right back down and produce fear and produce doubt. And so you eventually don't take action at all on that, you know, but I just want to tell you that it's already yours, you know, this vision, that idea that you had, it wasn't given to everybody. It wasn't put in everyone. I guarantee, if you talk to your best friend or your spouse, the idea and vision of what you want to do that's on your heart is not the same thing for what is on that person's heart and what they want to do. It's going to be different. So whatever it is that's with inside of you, you have what it takes to make it happen. You just have to be really aware every time you're making the excuses and you're letting your inner critic and you're letting your little bitch voice knock you down and talk you out of it. You have to recognize what's happening there in the moment and break the cycle and challenge it, and say, Okay, I know I don't have a lot of time, but you know what? I'm going to find the time, because I know that I really want to do this, and I know that I'm going to feel so aligned when I actually do it.
So what's the next best step that I can take to start to move closer to that vision or that goal or that idea or that business that I have? And always start there, always start there with what's the next best thing that I can do? Because sometimes we get really wrapped up in seeing the idea, and we see the finished idea, and we see the finished product, and we see the big business, and we see the employees, and we see all the income, or we see the big retreat with hundreds of people there, and we see all these things, and we're here just living our day-to-day life, and it just seems so far away. It seems almost unreachable. It seems unattainable. It seems way out of reach. And again, that's when our inner critic can come in, our little bitch voice can come in and say, don't even bother that's way out there. You're here. You're barely keeping your head above the water now, how do you expect to get from here to there? And I can tell you how to get from there. I can tell you how to get from here to there. It's by taking small baby steps, acting on it every single day. What's the next best thing that I need to do to start getting closer and closer and closer to that. When you think about that vision that you want, right? When you think about that big idea, I would love to do this, like if I could be doing anything, this is what I would be doing. And you can see it right, and you can almost feel it. You have to act today. How that person in your future would be acting with it already, there in front of them, living in the reality of it. How would that person act? What would they do? What would they say? What are the thoughts that they would think? What are the actions that they would take today, tomorrow, the following day that led them to that point.
So I'm here to tell you that the clock is ticking, as we know, and you can't afford to let your inner critic and let your little bitch voice stop you from going after what you really want to in life anymore. You can't afford to say I'll do it later or not right now, or I'm not good enough, or I'll do it when. None of that matters and none of that is guaranteed. Nothing in your future is guaranteed. All you have is here. Right now, in this moment, and you have everything inside of you that you need to succeed at, whatever it is that you want, any vision that you want the way that you want your life to look, the way that you want to feel, the business that you want to be running, the relationships that you want to have around you. You have everything inside of you right now to be able to create that. You just need to break the cycle of those negative self-limiting thoughts and challenge it and say, I can do this. I do have what it takes. I am going to figure this out. It's been done before. It's on my heart and it's on my heart for a reason, and what's the next best step that I can take right now today that's going to move me closer to where I want to go.
So I hope that this episode helped you out. If you think that this will add value to somebody and help someone else, someone who might need to hear this message, please share it with them. Tag me on Instagram at Catherine Reuter and I'll see you next time. Hope you have an awesome week. Thanks for being here, and you know I love you and I'll see you later. Bye.
