Rebooting Your Life: When, Why & How to Hit the Restart Button

My Dear Passenger,

What if you could hit the reset button on any aspect of your life and start afresh with a newfound sense of purpose and authenticity?

On the relaunch episode of the Self-Growth Train Podcast, I, Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco, share my bold decision to remove all previous episodes and embark on a new journey. Tune in to hear my personal story of rediscovering the raw and honest essence of my voice, and learn how restarting from scratch can be a more powerful and empowering strategy than simply adding new methods to a struggling endeavor. Drawing insights from psychologist Samantha Stein, we explore the profound impact of a complete restart on overcoming failure and reassessing life strategies.

Join me as your dedicated tour guide on this continuous journey of self-improvement. Together, we'll explore the importance of not journeying alone and the value of staying connected through our vibrant community on social media. I also introduce our new website, TheSelfGrowthTrainPodcast.com, packed with resources to support your growth. This episode is your invitation to embrace the beauty of new beginnings and stay true to yourself.

Resources used today:
Starting Over In Midlife

Transcript

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 0:08

Hello, my dear passengers, and welcome aboard The Self-Growth Train, a podcast that combines personal stories, opinions and research in order to better guide you through your self-growth journey. My name is Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco and I am your tour guide.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 0:22

First, I just want to say thank you for tuning back in to the podcast. If you are a new passenger, welcome, welcome, welcome! If you're a previous passenger, for over the last three years, also welcome, welcome, welcome! You might have noticed that all of the episodes suddenly disappeared and you're probably wondering: Frances, what is going on? Well, my dear passengers, let me tell you. I realized that when I first wanted to make this podcast, I wanted to be 100% honest, 100% blunt and 100% raw, but then, somewhere along the way, I forgot about what I wanted and I started to focus more on being more professional quote, unquote, and, yeah, the podcast just didn't feel like myself anymore. And when the opportunity arose primarily because I was really broke and I wasn't able to pay for Buzzsprout, so that way the podcast could continue to have all the previous episodes I realized that I had a great opportunity in my hands. I had the ability and the opportunity to restart or relaunch the podcast and start all over again. And you know, a lot of my friends and family were very confused and they were also very worried. I mean, it would mean that I would lose all of my stats, it would mean that I would lose all of the 46 episodes that I had already recorded over the last three years. But I knew that I had to do it. I just felt it in me that it was time for me to let go of all of those episodes and of all of that lessons that I learned in the past and start something completely from scratch. The great news is that with relaunching the podcast, I'm able to re-visualize and reimagine how I want everything to go, which is why I finally get the chance to release blog posts with the podcast episodes, and it's something that I have been wanting to do for a while. So if you're curious, just know that with every release from now on, you're going to be getting a blog post. All you got to do is follow my website at TheSelfGrowthTrain. com - again, the website is TheSelfGrowthTrainPodcast. com.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 2:28

Well, my dear passengers, the time has come to put on your seat belts as we dive into our first stop, that That is the topic of the day, and today's topic is restarting.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 2:40

Restarting is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as resuming after interruption. I think that's a great definition to have, just because whenever I spoke about restarting the podcast, everybody was telling me"Oh oh my !, you're starting from zero. You're starting from scratch and in a way, I kind of am. But what is very empowering is that I am starting from a simple interruption. It means that I get to keep all of the lessons and all of the knowledge that I have acquired over the last three years and just simply make it into something completely new and upgraded.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 3:17

hat today's episode, my main resource is an article that I found on Psychology Today by one of their psychologists, Samantha Stein. Now, the title of the article can be a little misleading, because they're talking about "starting over in midlife, and today I'm talking about restarting in whatever point of your life you're at. But don't worry, because the lessons that she talks about can also be applied to you and wherever you are in your life.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 3:41

But how do we determine when it's time to hit that restart button? Well, it's quite simple -when we're facing failure. I know you sometimes want to keep trying and trying and trying and trying, but then when you do, it just keeps getting worse. If that's the case for you, as it has been for me in the past, then maybe it's time to hit that restart button and it's not going to be something bad. In fact, I'm able to use this podcast as a perfect example.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 4:06

Over the last three years, I have faced numerous successes. Part of it has been due to the fact that people want to grow and they are looking for podcasts or resources that will allow them to do that. But if I sit down and I really think about it as a podcaster, I have failed tremendously in the basics. I'm talking about self-discipline, consistency and also overall content, especially because, according to what I want to do, I want to make sure that my podcast episodes have personal stories, opinions and research, and the reality is that most of my episodes did not follow through with this and that was driving me nuts. So now that I'm able to sit down and see how I was failing, with self-compassion and with self-awareness, I'm able to say "you know what? I kept trying to do things over and over again. But really what I needed to do was just stop and restart, not add new ways to try to do the thing, because by adding new ways to something that was already failing, I was just continuing the pattern and sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn't work right. So that's why it's important to know the difference between adding and restarting.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 5:22

There's some instances when you just have to add new ways to try things, which I guess for the first year that was the way that I should have done things for the podcast. But then there's times, like now, three years after, where I realize no, I can't keep adding because I'm not having success, so why am I going to keep trying to add it when I can just restart and reset myself for success? Because I'm motivated, I know now the things that didn't work, so I can focus on things that I haven't tried before, but I can also create something completely new along the process and I'm not being held back by previous episodes. I'm not being held back by the previous ways that I did things and I'm also not being held back by the previous expectations that I had of myself that I was not being successful at, and you know all of this is covered on her article.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 6:17

But the thing that really struck me was when she talked about the importance of defining what success is to you today. Not what it was three years ago, not what it's going to mean to you five years from now, but what it means to you today. And I think that's so empowering because I know from my personal experience with the podcast again, I'm going to keep using the podcast as the example for this episode. I know the goals that I had with the podcast back in the day and I know that goals that I have with the podcast now and they are a thousand times different. Why? Because I'm no longer focused on the outside validation, I'm no longer focused on the statistics. I'm no longer focused on how many views, and how many downloads. Don't get me wrong, those are important, especially as a podcaster, because it gives you visibility.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 7:11

But for me, what I want to make sure of, and this is my simple goal - I want to make sure that you don't feel alone. I want to make sure that whoever listens to the podcast can say "wow, today I felt heard. Today I felt validated. Today I felt seen, and that has nothing to do with statistics and that has nothing to do with data. That has all to do with what I'm able to provide to you, and part of that also has to do with my personality, because I want to make sure that I have a welcoming demeanor where people are able to talk to me and say, "ey, Frances, like that episode really helped me. So that is what success looks like for me. It looks like people finding comfort in my podcast. It looks like people sharing my podcast because they want somebody else to feel that comfort, and it took me three years to realize that that's what I wanted. So if you're at a place in your life when you're like I don't know what success looks like for me today, figure it out. Take the time to sit down, write it down whatever works for you and figure it out, because if not, you're just going to keep striving over whatever society or whatever perceptions you think you need to be achieving, and this might not necessarily be true.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 8:30

The last thing that I want to talk about is a point that she makes of determining what you want to spend your time on. Again, with the example of the podcast, I used to be like. I'm so passionate about the podcast, I'm so motivated by the podcast. I love the podcast. Well, did I spend time on it? Absolutely not. I use to put it back in the back burner. Why? I don't know. Like sometimes it was because of YOLO, sometimes it was because of FOMO, and sometimes it was because of another four letter word. I don't know what else to say Like I just I wanted to do things that were not the podcast, not because I didn't care about the podcast, but because I had this fear that I was missing out, that I was not living life and all of this stuff.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 9:14

But now I'm able to centralize myself and say what do I want to spend time on? And if my goal is that I want to provide comfort for people, I need to spend time on research. I need to spend time reading, I need to spend time reaching out to people, hearing their stories, validating what they have to say, and I also need to spend time with myself and take care of myself, because that's something that I haven't been doing over the last three years and it has really affected everything, especially with the podcast being about self growth. So I don't know. I think that this particular topic of restarting is something that I'm quite passionate about. You know we go again with that word, but I am passionate about it and I think that, wherever you are in your life whether it be a relationship that is not working, whether it be a job that you're just like man, like I cannot wait to get out of here - think about it. It might be time to hit that restart button and remember yes, you're failing, but no, you're not going to restart from scratch per se. You're going to have all the knowledge and all the experiences and all the opportunities that you got to live and make something completely new if you choose to do it. And the reality is we only have one life. So why do we keep waiting until the moment passes? Let's not, let's do better for ourselves. Let's take the moment to say you know what? I want better now. Not tomorrow - I want it now.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 10:53

Well, my dear passengers, the time has come for the last stop of the day - recap time.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 11:00

Today's episode discusses restarting, which is just to resume after interruption. Now we know that the way to restart is when we're facing failure. We do need to know the difference between adding and restarting. We add when there is some success happening. We don't add when you keep failing. Instead, we hit that restart button so that way we can motivate ourselves to do better and to create something completely new. But part of that is determining what success is to us right now. Not what it looked like yesterday or what it might look like in the future, but what it looks like right this second, because by doing so, you're able to choose what to spend your time on.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 11:43

Remember, self-growth is an endless journey towards self-improvement. However, you don't ever have to do it alone. My goal as your tour guide is to guide you with the best intentions and the best research available. Make sure to follow me on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok at the Self-Growth Train Podcast, and to also follow the new website, TheSelfGrowthTrainPodcast. com. As always, all the resources used today have been added to the episode's description. Well, until the next stop, dear passengers, safe travels. Bye!