Purposeful Steps: Aligning Your Thoughts and Actions for Success

Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Aneta Ardelian Kuzma, where we are talking all about how can we align our daily choices in order to help us achieve our goals. Aneta is a holistic life coach, executive coach, wellness expert, and yoga, meditation, and breathwork teacher. She is the host of the podcast Live the Width of Your Life. On her show, she explores what it means to live life more fully, with intention, gratitude, and joy. She also recently published her first book, titled Live the Width of Your Life: 365 Daily Meditations on living with purpose, passion, and peace. Her passion is helping others to create lives of purpose, passion, and peace.   KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST Productivity habits and rituals to help you be more successful Setting boundaries and protecting your energy as a busy business owner How to know when you're being kind to yourself and when you're self sabotaging   LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Check out Aneta's website Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook Transcript Teresa: Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. How are you doing? So I hope you've had a good week and actually by the time this recording comes out, it's really early January. So I'm wondering whether you've done your goals, whether you've sorted out what you're going to do for this year. If so, and even if you haven't, this is going to be a great episode for you because my amazing guest today is going to be talking about how we can break down those Goals so that we can create daily actions to align with what we want from our dream life and what we want from our dream business. So I am very excited to introduce today Aneta Kuzma. How are you doing Aneta? Aneta: I'm so well, Teresa. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Teresa: My pleasure. So I was introduced to you cause I did your podcast and it's always so lovely when we can do like a podcast swap because it's like. You don't just get to have one conversation. You get to have a couple and that's really, really nice. Aneta: I love it. And I love that our communities get to participate in these conversations with us as they listen afterwards. Teresa: Yes. Do you know what I did once that was such a good thing? And I should really do it again. I did a two part podcast with someone else. So part one was on mine and part two was on theirs. That's such a cool idea. Aneta: I love it. Such a great idea. Teresa: It was really, really good. And again, introducing people to each other's podcasts and stuff. It was really cool. Anyway. Anyway. And this, I would like you to introduce yourself and explain to us how you got to do what you do today. Aneta: Sure. So, and that's a Kuzma and, it's interesting. I used to be in banking. So I would say the short story of my life is that I was the type of person who just followed all the rules. I did what I thought was expected, you know, went to the right school and got a good education and started my family and found a great job. And I wanted to work for a company that I could grow into the company and my career and raise a family. And, at some point during that time, I recognized that this was probably not where I wanted to finish my career. I still had another chapter in me. So. In my mid forties, I hired a coach and I really wanted to figure out what do I want to do? What is my purpose? What is my mission? And I say purpose with a little P it doesn't have to be a big one. We typically get overwhelmed with that. And so, I started my own coaching and consulting business. And when I started my business, I said, I want to build a business that is so aligned to who I am, that is just allows me to take all the things I'm super passionate about and pull them all together. So I do a lot of one on one coaching, my, I do group coaching. I also teach yoga, meditation, and breath work. I think I continue to expand and add to the things that I do. And as Teresa mentioned, I have a podcast and, I'm also also an author and, Really what I love to do is I help people, typically professionals and entrepreneurs identify what is it that is a successful life for them? How do you redefine success? And then as you said, what we're gonna talk about today is how do you take daily aligned actions to build that life and help you achieve all of your goals? Teresa: Love it. Love it. Love it. So a couple of things. Banking to breathwork, it's not a natural alignment really, is it? Or does it appear to be? Was that like, did it feel like when you were in banking that something was not right? Aneta: Yeah. So I've been a yoga practitioner since, you know, my twenties, so for a very long time. And so definitely early adopter of that and meditation, always very interested in spirituality and took a lot of comparative religion courses in college. And so I always felt like there were two separate parts of me and now I get to integrate them, which is, you know, the spiritual inquisitive, curious part, and then also the professional part. And what I love to share with people is that it's not either, or it could be, and, and you can build an integrated and balanced life. And you get to define what that looks like. So while I was in banking, people knew that I was going through yoga teacher training and that if I had the door closed, I was meditating. So it definitely wasn't a secret towards the end. It was at the beginning, but once I knew I was going to be leaving, eventually, I just started to bring more of myself to where I was. Teresa: Yeah, I love that. And I love the fact of sometimes the, what would appear the polar ends of the spectrum, there is space for all of it. And, yes. And I guess we need to get into a position and a confidence within ourselves that actually we can show up as those alternate versions of us, and that's okay, you know, we are complex human beings and it doesn't actually matter if we like one thing, but it means that we like another that isn't normally associated or seen as a natural fit with the other, we can be complex in that way. Aneta: We can and, and we get to redefine what's okay. Right? Like, I remember, you know, there was no issue with people talking about training for a marathon and, and running, you know, and so there are certain things that they were okay with, or if people were part of a, you know a sports team or something like that, but there are certain things that, especially on the spirituality side, where we just sort of didn't necessarily talk about it. And I do see that now people are much more curious and open to talking about all kinds of different things. Teresa: And I love that you use the word curious and you've used it a couple of times, because that's how I see it. Right. So like, I quite like to dabble into that side of the world. And my thing is, I'm just interested and I'm curious about it. And if it helps or benefits me in some way, then great. let's, you know, I am happy to go with it. Like I don't need all the explanations. I don't need to the debate of it. I don't necessarily need, I do like the science of stuff and I do like to research that. However, I'm also just open to going, Oh, let's see what happens. That's cool. You know? And there's something really nice about that. Aneta: Oh, I agree. And I do think that in society, we're starting to see, as you said, the science, connecting to some of these ancient practices that work, but even as we think about breaking things into action plans, for example, right? That used to be maybe under a self help stage or something that was considered a little bit different. And I do think that people are starting to say, what are the practices that can help me? And, let me see what works as you said. Teresa: Yeah, exactly. And as far as I'm concerned, you know, if it doesn't harm anybody else and you're enjoying it, then do what the hell you want, you know, go with it, go with it. I just want to touch on as well, your book and, tell us what the title of your book is. Aneta: Yeah, it's right there. It's called Live the Width of Your Life: 365 Daily Meditation on Living with Purpose, Passion, and Peace. And, I wrote the book because one of the things that I discovered and even about myself is so many of us read books, we consume a lot of data and information and we have bookshelves filled with them and we don't necessarily take the daily action then to apply those things to our life. And so when I was writing a book, I said, you know, I love reading. Daily devotionals or reading my daily stoic or reading, just inspirational books, whether they're secular or not. And, so I wanted to write something that was easily digestible. And so every day there is a content maybe 1 page worth, and then there's a journal prompt or a...