Ep 82 - What I Learnt From Everything Is Figeroutable

Faye Casement Author

Jan 04, 2024 |

Hello hello hello and welcome to Episode 82. This week I am doing something a little different. I asked the membership and free community what they would like to see in the show and one of the suggestions was book reviews.

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I love a good self-development book and having read a few this seemed like a genius idea. So I set about looking at the books I had read and the notes I made thinking I would do a summary of them all but they are all just too good and this is certainly the case for the book I am going to talk about today and so decided each one will have its own episode jam-packed with my takeaways and unique spin.

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So then came a decision where to start? How do I pick from all of the amazing books.

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Everything is Figeroutable

In the end, the decision was easy... 'Everything is Figeroutable' By Maria Foleo (#AD). Hers wasn't the first book that I read but I know it had a big impact on me. I also use the phrase "Everything is Figuroutable" several times a week so it seems like a great place to start.

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Now I make notes when I read books like these I don't know about you?

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In fact, my note-taking and keeping has got a bit geeky after learning about the concept of the 'second brain' but this is a story for another time. But coming up to do this episode it sure helped to go back to those notes and I have to say it reminded me of a few concepts and was quite re-affirming in other places. So I wanted to encourage you to take notes, jot down things as you go through life I use OneNote mostly as my 'second brain' to capture things as I go for work, personal, and business. I mostly started this by accident as I was sick of saying 'I've read that somewhere' Now I have a searchable resource whenever I need something so it saves me so much time and energy. If you want me to do an episode on this let me know.

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Anyway, let's get back to it.

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So let's get clear from the outset why do I think you should read or grab the audiobook 'Everything is Figeroutable.'  [Grab A Copy]

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Why Read The Book?

For me personally, after reading it I really, like really really started to feel unstoppable. That I could choose who I wanted to be and build that life. I had perhaps been building to that moment as I had been working on myself a wee while by this point from memory but I absorbed this book like a sponge.

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Marie tells the story of how she asked her Mum how do you know to do things when nobody had shown you, her Mum turned around to her and said "Nothing is that complicated in life if you just roll up your sleeves and get in there and you do it, everything is figeroutable"

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Marie talks about how this blew her mind and it blew mine too.

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I have always been a doer, someone capable of figuring most things out, someone who was generally good at and enjoyed solving problems. I'd love a good murder mystery, logic puzzle and would I guess have prided myself on being 'Capable' BUT and here is the big but I would only take it so far and in some cases not try because if I thought it was going to be 'too hard' or 'I wouldn't be able to do it'.

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I have said many times on the show that I am a recovering perfectionist. Now 'perfectionism', wanting to do a good job, the right thing etc is not a bad thing of course it's not and I still pride myself in doing things well and right, the recovering part comes in the fact I took it took far. I have worked hard on not beating myself up any more, worrying ahead of time which is pointless and doing it to the point where my health and well-being are affected. I have learnt how to give myself more grace and to be kind to me and that is all thanks to my weight loss with love journey.

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But I have also learned how I can work through my limits and more importantly any limiting beliefs that are holding me back.

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It is a funny thing really that you can strive for something, like being perfect or good at something only to put so much pressure on yourself that you end up not doing the thing you want to and in doing so not reach our full potential. We can try so hard to be perfect that we then end up not being perfect as a result. I see this all the time in weight loss how we can want it so bad but then this pressure means we don't take the actions to lose the weight.

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Looking back on my notes I think Marie was the first person who started me off realising the importance of our beliefs which has led me on the journey I am on now. I was taught that our thoughts lead to our feelings lead to our actions and onto our results and maybe I was taught that the thoughts came from our beliefs but I either didn't receive that information or it didn't make sense at the time.

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To quote the book she says:

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"There can be no change in the world unless we have the courage to change ourselves. In order to change ourselves we must first believe we can"

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So true.

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We can go around wishing and wanting our lives to be different, we can want to achieve our goals, to lose weight, to get the house, to land the dream job but that takes courage. Courage to try, courage to take a loving look within ourselves and examine the beliefs that have shaped our thoughts for so long. It takes courage to question those ingrained beliefs and consider the possibility of new ones but remember it is not necessarily as hard as you may think to change and shape your reality you just have to be prepared to take a little step with love into unfamiliar territory. It means rejecting the old ways that do not serve you and the courage to explore new paths. It also means standing up to our inner critic who tells us that we'll never be good enough or deserving of happiness so that we can stop replaying those old stories in our minds, that lead to us getting the same results over and over again and feeling stuck. It is time to break the mould and this book supercharged this for me.

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Marie encourages her readers to ask questions as this is how our brains are designed to ask questions and to solve problems. This is what I do as a coach and facilitator ask questions and hold up a mirror to you so that you can see the answers when you are struggling to do so but you can ask the questions yourself. The key is to make sure you are asking empowering questions so rather than 'Why can't I lose weight, what is going wrong with me?' 'It would be how can I lose weight?'. Do you see the shift there? I incorporate these empowering questions into the Triple-A-Way Method™️ in the planner for example it says 'How can I move forward with love?' And 'What can I learn from today?' Rather than what must I do and what went wrong? Which would would you like to answer more?

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This works also with our thoughts and trying to catch those that are limiting. She highlights how certain phrases can limit us like: 'I don't know'; or even 'I already know' as they close down creativity or to flip our thoughts so rather than saying 'This will not work for me' which is limiting, say 'How can this work for me?' These are all powerful shifts.

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She also pops out other gems throughout the book like: "The most powerful words in the universe, are the ones you say to yourself"; "All beliefs are choices and choices can be changed" and "The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves". She said these throughout various chapters but I have brought them all together because they have a running theme that we are responsible for ourselves, that we can empower ourselves and we can take control of our beliefs and thoughts and change our lives.

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I don't know about you but that gives me chills.

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I want to be in control of my life, my destiny, to be the person I want to be, the question is do you want this as well?

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Do you want to take the bull by the horns and change your life or do you want to sit back and let life happen to you and around you? No judgment if you are the latter but I know for me I want to sort my shit out. I don't want to be the one standing in my own way. I don't want to be there saying I can't, saying I don't know where to start or I don't have time etc.

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So what is holding you back? What is stopping you right now from figuring it out? Whether that be in life and or weight loss.

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What's Stopping You From Figuring It Out?

In the book, Maria has a whole chapter about fear? Maybe it is fear holding you back? Fear of success? Fear of failure? Fear of being seen? Fear of judgment? Fear of getting hurt? Fear of losing yourself? Fear of finding yourself?

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It is ok to be afraid but you don't have to stay there. I could honestly quote Marie all day she says "FEAR is False Evidence Appearing Real" and how fear is like a baby it can't talk it can only send you the signals by sending feelings. Those feelings feel shitty and so we try to avoid those feelings, so we then avoid the things that would actually help or we can buffer the feelings away and for any of us who have struggled with emotional eating we head to food. So again just like with perfectionism, it is funny how our brains work that we can be so fearful of something we don't take action to solve the problem and in doing so the fear wins and what we were scared about is then likely to come true. Whereas if we didn't listen to the fear and question whether it was true or not and push through it with love we would not only get rid of the fear but likely achieve the thing, whatever the thing was we were trying to do in the first place.

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Fear has its place in our range of emotions, the same as other often perceived negative emotions such as 'doubt', 'anger', 'overwhelm' etc they may be uncomfortable feelings but they have a purpose if you listen hard enough. The difference is you do not have to accept them as true and you get to decide if they stay or if they go.

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So I will leave you with my final thoughts...

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Final Thoughts

Everything IS Figueroutable. If you want to figure it out you 1000% can.

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I am here to help you on that journey if you want it.

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Take time to reflect on the episode.

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Read the book.

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Pop into one of the Wellness 4 Women groups either the Membership (for paying members - join here) or the complimentary group and tell me what your takeaways are.

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How are you going to apply the episode and what you have learnt?

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How can we help you in the journey?

The legal bit!

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