This is episode number 113. Welcome to the Mindset for Life podcast. This is Bethanie, your coach from DrBCoach.com, coaching with power, purpose and practical tools to help you show up with confidence.

Welcome to the podcast today. I'm so excited to have you here! We're going to talk about fortune cookies. Now, it's not really about fortune cookies, of course, it's actually about you. What you think, your thoughts, and what you can do with fortune cookies.

So, I love eating Mongolian barbecue with my husband. In fact, way back when we were just dating, more than 25 years ago, we enjoyed this place in Pocatello, Idaho that was a Mongolian barbecue. We would go there and we would eat the food and hang out. And one of the guys that would cook the food would stop, and he would take a stick, and he would spin a plate at the top.

Pretty soon he had two or three of these things going at once, and it was so much fun to watch him. I think it gave us a permanent happy feeling every time we went to a Mongolian barbecue. So, to this day, we love going to Mongolian barbecue. It's one of our very favorite things to eat.

But my favorite part of the Mongolian barbecue is the fortune cookie that I get at the end. And I've started this habit of collecting the fortunes that I get in those fortune cookies. Some of them are just Proverbs, some of them are just nice ideas, and others are really encouragement, maybe even permission for me to do something totally different.

Now, this podcast is for you, if you love, serve, and help other people, and you just want things to be better. You want things to be different. It's like that same pattern just keeps happening over and over. And we're exhausting ourselves helping everybody else. And it's really hard to get the time to spend on ourselves, to make things better or different in the future. But also to feel better about how things are going. Now today, I want to talk a little bit about the special gift that the fortune cookie message has for you.

And I'm going to read some of these to you just to get us started. So, two that I have sitting on my desk waiting to be taped into my planner. One is, “You will get a great deal on a major purchase.” It's kind of like a prophecy. And this one, “Your perceptions are sharpened through careful observation.”

Now when I got those two fortunes, the first one made me think, “Hey, I should be on the lookout for a great deal.” It's almost like it gives me permission to start spending money and looking for major purchases. “Where I'm gonna get a great deal?” Right?

It's kind of a silly thing, but it really opens my perspective. And it makes me want to go shopping. I just might do that.

And then the second one, “Your perceptions are sharpened through careful observation,” it can go with that major purchase idea. And I might start thinking, “Well, I need to carefully observe what really is a great deal. What is a good price for something?” And that fortune is going to help me with the other one. But it's also going to help me in everything I do this coming week.

I'm going to be thinking, “Where do I need to slow down and carefully observe? Where do I need to start noticing people or seeing things differently? Maybe I need to pay more attention to all of the details.” Whatever it is, I'm going to notice things differently because of that fortune cookie.

Now in my planner, I have taped a whole bunch of fortunes from fortune cookies that we've gotten at the Mongolian barbecues we visit. Think about what these might mean, if you should come across one on any given day.

“You have a natural poise and potential for fame.” Now, if you're a person who's doing teaching and life coaching, and you're selling it out there, sometimes you might be hit with impostor syndrome. Maybe you're worried that no one's really listening to you. Or maybe you're worried that whatever you're trying to sell or put out there is just not going to fly.