The Ease of Living an Aligned Life

In this week’s episode, Sophia dives into the transformative power of aligning every area of your life so that each piece supports—not sabotages—your goals. Building on the recent conversations about intentional living and vision boards, she explores how alignment allows life to feel less like swimming upstream and more like floating in flow.

Sophia walks through eight key areas of alignment that make it easier to create your favorite life:

1. Values – Identify your top two guiding principles and use them as a compass for every decision.
2. Personal Goals – Get clear on what you want most in your life and ensure your choices support those desires.
3. Business Goals – Align your work with your lifestyle and family vision so that professional success doesn’t compete with personal fulfillment.
4. Brain – How You’re Wired – Understand how your mind naturally works (especially if you’re neurodivergent) and design your routines to match it.
5. Personality – CliftonStrengths & Enneagram – Build your days and your business around your innate strengths and motivators instead of trying to fix your weaknesses.
6. Energy Management – Learn how your unique energy operates and structure your life to flow with it rather than fight against it.
7. Time Management – Craft rhythms and routines that honor your season of life and keep you in alignment, not overwhelm.
8. Relationships – Surround yourself with people who fuel your growth, believe in your dreams, and align with where you’re going.

Sophia also shares the official launch of her new six-month coaching container, Aligned, designed to help women in business apply these principles through 1:1 coaching, group support, and a restorative retreat in Asheville, NC.

Click here to join Aligned

Discover how aligning every area of your life creates ease, joy, and unstoppable momentum toward your favorite self.

Purchase your copy of Unleash Your Favorite Self book and the corresponding journal.

Interested in one-on-one coaching? Click here to schedule a Roadmap session with Sophia.

Download the Favorite Self app in the Apple Store or Google Play.

Connect with Sophia on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube

Have a topic you would love to hear Sophia address on the podcast? Send your ideas to hello@sophiahyde.com

Transcript

Sophia Hyde (00:01.08)
Hi, welcome back guys. As I am recording this, looking out my window, it is snowing. is actually snowing and I'm recording this on Monday, November 10th and my gosh, it is just bringing me so much delight. I just can't even tell you. I can just see the mountains and they have like the snow peaks on them. I'm just.

I just love so much. I'm just like in my happy place. So enough about that. This week we are going to talk about the power of aligning every area of your life so that it is supporting you in your goals and every single facet of your life can help you get there a lot easier or can make it a lot harder.

and we're gonna dive into what it means to live an Aligned life. Now, before I start down that conversation, I wanna give you guys a heads up that when this episode drops, I am also announcing a six month coaching container called Aligned that I am so crazy excited about. I will give you the details at the end of what that means, but it does launch today.

when you're hearing this, which will be on Tuesday, November 11th. And it will be run from December 1st until the end of May. It will include one-on-one support, group coaching support, and a retreat to Asheville, North Carolina. I booked some cabins and I am so excited to host my very first retreat up here. It's going to be on a lake.

in the heart of the West North Carolina mountains. And I am just so excited. I just can't even guys right now. I'm talking about this retreat I'm excited about while snow is falling outside my window. My birthday's in a few days. I just feel so good right now. But okay, let's dive into this conversation. What does it mean to live in a line of life? Okay. Let's start off with why this conversation matters. And the reason is when you're setting goals in your life,

Sophia Hyde (02:25.069)
and you're deciding where you want to go, whether it is something that you want in your career, something you want in your personal life. Remember, the last two weeks have really been building up to this episode. I'm trying to like stack everything to guide you guys towards creating your favorite life. Because first we talked about the difference between living with by default or living with intention. Well, if you decided you're going to live with intention, then you have to say, what does it even mean? What do I even want? Right. And I gave you guys the tools and the resources to start figuring that out for yourself.

Last week we did, we talked about the power of a vision board. If you weren't able to participate in the workshop, just download my app and you can buy the course. It's only 27 bucks with all the resources and the recording. They're just sitting in there. And you can learn how the most powerful way to design your own vision board. And so now you're looking at these goals. So here you are, you're like, I know what I want. I've done all this work to this vision board and I've set these goals. Now, how do I get there? And the

most powerful thing you can do is to analyze your life and figure out what is working for me and helping me go the right direction but what's working against me. If you have parts of your life that are misaligned then it's going to feel like you are swimming upstream.

But what I have found is a lot of the goals I have achieved in my life. Like I had some story in my head that had to be hard. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that everything falls in your lap. But when life is aligned, damn, it's so much easier. It just feels like you're just in the flow and things just unfold. And so what does that even mean? How do we get there? How do we live this life that feels like we're in flow? Well, that's when you have redesigned your life in such a way that

It's like a river and everything is moving in alignment with one another in the same direction. And you can get to your destination so much easier. And it can feel like just floating in the kayak or the, you know, going tubing and you're just like enjoying the view. It can feel like that. It doesn't have to be hard and like you're banging your head up against the wall. Actually, if you do feel like that, you're probably forcing something that doesn't want to naturally happen. And so

Sophia Hyde (04:46.487)
These are the, let me see, I didn't write numbers. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight areas that are the top things to pay attention to. Like are these areas of my life aligned to help me go in the right direction? Number one is your values. Now there's in, I talk about this in my book, in the workbook you can,

There's like a lot of different ideas of different values you can live by. follow the most powerful recommendation that I have was from one of Brene Brown's books where she teaches to pick your top two values and then run every single decision you ever make along those two values. And if it doesn't align with your values, it doesn't align with your life. And I used to have 12 values I meditated on. And then when I heard this and I did that exercise and I picked my top two values,

It brought so much clarity because to her point, if you're trying to decide like, this a yes or is this a no, if you have a lot of things that are important to you, your brain can't filter that much. But most likely, many of the values in your life fall under one of you to fall under a couple of values like a big umbrella. And so for me, that's love and authenticity. Now, I don't know what yours are. I actually have never worked with a client who I've done this values exercise with, who also had the values of love and authenticity because we're all

different. So we're all going to value different things. These are just mine. This is the way I move through the world. And so no matter what choice I am making, whether it's in my personal life, my business, my friendships, my relationship, everything, I have to ask myself, am I coming from a place of love? And does this feel authentic to who I am? And if I run everything through those lenses, it has helped steer me towards things that are no's.

Because if I can't show up in a way that's authentic, most authentic to myself, or do it from a place of love, then I can't do it at all. And when I am moving through every area of my life in accordance with my values, then it's just easier. But I'm sure we've all felt that moment where there's something that we're trying to do or participate in, and it feels like it's out of our integrity. And you don't want to do that. It's miserable to live a life that's not aligned with your integrity.

Sophia Hyde (07:15.167)
And that doesn't mean that it's like bad, right? So you can do something that's very aligned and very high integrity for you that would not be high integrity for me. And no one's breaking the law. It's just like, you know, square peg ground hole. It's just not a right fit. OK, the next two things that need to be in alignment, and I'm going talk about them at the same time, is your business goals and your personal goals. So whatever you're trying to accomplish in your career, whether it's at work or with your family,

your business goals and your personal goals. have to be in alignment because gosh, life is miserable when they're not. And I thought of a couple of examples. What does it mean when these areas are not aligned? And I thought of a couple of I've had this happen to a couple of friends. Guys, I'm distracted right now because of my window. It is. I just can't even right now with how beautiful it is watching the snowfall down. I'm sorry.

I know that's not productive, but you're listening to a podcast from somebody that has ADHD. And I'm just like, I'm just in so much awe right now. OK. I have a couple of friends who have become, over the years, realtors, which is a great career. I have several friends who are realtors. And there's different approaches for how to run that business, right? And one of them started her business when she was just married.

and she was hustling and she loved it and my gosh, it was so successful. But then after she had kids, and in her mind it was I'm gonna build up this real estate business because when I become a mom, I can be flexible and X, Y, Z and plan my own schedule and work for myself. But then she actually had kids and realized that she was miserable because so many of her buyers wanted to go look at houses in the evenings or on the weekends and she only had childcare during business hours.

But then she also worked in business hours. And so what she ended up finding was she just felt like she was working 24 seven and drowning. So what she had to do to work in alignment, the whole reason that she left the career she was in before it became a realtor was she thought this would be a family friendly career. And then she felt like it was hurting her family. And so the way that she aligned her goals was she realized that she

Sophia Hyde (09:40.968)
needed to partner with another agent to send her referrals to and she stopped working with buyers and she only started working with sellers because she found Sometimes she might need to meet with a seller on an evening or a weekend, but she could prioritize her family and the needs of her selling her sellers, but if she referred out her buyers then

She could get like a small commission off the referral fee or whatever, but somebody else could take people around to look at a dozen homes. And it didn't take away from her family. And so then she started building a business focused around how to attract sellers. And that's an example of what I mean when your business goals and your personal goals are aligned. If they're not aligned, it can feel really messy. She wanted a successful business. She wanted to have a lot of time at home with her kids.

and the two, they weren't working. And that doesn't mean that you have to give up one. I'm just gonna give up my career or I'm just gonna give up the idea that I want to be, have my evenings and weekends with my family. You don't have to sacrifice either one. You just have to realign, okay? So that's an example of a misalignment. All right, what's the number four thing that needs to be aligned if you're going to create your favorite life? And that is,

Your brain. Our brains are all wired so differently and so often when I am working with clients, I'll get into a conversation and I'll realize that they're setting themselves up for failure just by how they're designing their days or their weeks or their months like, yo, you were not operated to work this way. I thought of a couple of different examples with this. When I think about the brain, I think of the stark difference between like how I used to try to manage

my life in my 20s when I just was following all the time management advice that the world gives out and conferences and podcasters and influencers, all these people who told me how I should manage my time. And then I got my ADHD diagnosis. And then I realized, whoa, no, that's like, I have very specific needs, right? So I have to hold, it's funny because I need a lot of boundaries, but I also need a lot of freedom.

Sophia Hyde (12:05.643)
Right, so 80, 80 people need structure but hate to feel controlled. So I had to find a way that I could manage my life where I have very strict office hours that I abide by but then I have windows in my week that I can have this freedom. I had to understand how my hyper focus works. I had to understand that I'm basically always chasing dopamine. So I schedule my appointments and my coaching clients in a certain way, in a certain rhythm.

so that I am using the way my brain is wired to my advantage. Now, this won't, my schedule would not work for everybody, because I think of like my daughter and my husband who do not operate. So I am deadline driven. So I oftentimes will procrastinate intentionally. It's like, I understand I'm gonna procrastinate to the deadline anyways, so I'll invent deadlines for myself and then I don't start working going into like the day of the deadline or before or whatever.

I don't put myself in stressful situations. have hacks. Sometimes I invent deadlines or involve other people to hold me accountable to these invented deadlines so that I don't actually screw my life up like I used to. But all that to say, my husband is never surprised, right? When I'm like right now, this is great example. It's Monday and I'm recording a podcast that's supposed to launch Tuesday morning. Very Sophia move. Now, my husband and my daughter, that would stress them out so

much. They need to have things done far in advance. both of them, the way that they're operating is like once something is on their plate, they want it done immediately. They don't like having a to do list. They don't like have things floating out there. It's like as soon as I am aware that something is my responsibility, I will get it done as early in my schedule as I can accommodate it. So you think about this on like a Saturday if you were doing chores, I am the one who would like wake up, chill and have this like

really relaxing Saturday morning where I just read and drink my coffee and I do nothing that I eat some blanching them. Okay, it's afternoon. Let's go. And then I will spend my afternoon in my evening getting all the stuff done and then chill like an hour before bedtime. That would stress them out. They need to wake up, eat breakfast, and then let's tackle this list so we can have our afternoon and our evening off. You see the difference? It's I...

Sophia Hyde (14:29.133)
I don't want to rush into that. Like I'm not going to get stuff done until I feel that deadline crunch. So all this to say, you need to know how your brain is wired and have you built your life and your schedule and everything to accommodate it. Another example of how I aligned my business with my brain is understanding that as an ADHD person, I chase interests. So I had, I realized that by when I decided, okay, I'm going to become a life coach.

First of all, it's why I chose life over business, because I knew that I could always customize it and be changing it all the time. I can have a million topics I'm interested in. I can do podcast, book, speaking, coaching. I could have all these different things so that there's so much that I can do with this career that it's literally impossible for me to ever get bored with it. Because if I get bored, then I just dive into a new thing I haven't figured out or challenged myself with yet. It's like...

Life is endless life is infinite infinite. So there's like no way I could ever get bored with this but For other people like what you need in the business could look it's gonna look so different. So have you wired? Your life your the structure of your days in your weeks to accommodate what your brain needs, which is a perfect segue into number five and number six Which is also aligning your life with your personality

and how your energy moves to the world. This is one that I really spent a ton of time with, with my clients. We dive deeply into this because there is no right or wrong way or perfect way to structure a day or structure a week. We really had to tailor it to their needs. And so the top three systems that I use, personality typing systems, are...

CliftonStrengths, Enneagram, and Human Design. I've talked about them a million times on this podcast, but today I'm gonna give you some different examples of them. I'll teach the energy management one first, because it's faster and simpler. All of our energy moves different. Some of us operate on a 24-hour energy cycle. Some people move in waves, so they'll have a couple of weeks of a lot of productivity, and then they pull back, and then they just need a lot more rest than usual.

Sophia Hyde (16:54.441)
other people, their energy moves from like idea to idea to idea. So they hop a lot. There's all these different ways and this is a lot of what human design focuses on is how to support your energy. And I love this because you can get so much more accomplished if you understand how your energy works. For example, if you're a projector, you will actually accomplish more by working a five hour day than an eight hour day.

Yeah, you will get more done by working five hours instead of eight hours. So that does not apply to me. I'm not a projector. I go way too distracted to able to do that. But projectors, they take in a lot of information. They're very observant. And so then they observe, observe, observe, and then they can sit down and like have five hours of focus and they put out a really high quality product. But if they start to work longer than that, and it doesn't have to be five. It's not like five is a science. The point is that they don't operate.

They don't work as long as the average person. But they have a really high output when they sit down. But if they go past that output, they actually start draining their energy because they're so observant and operate at such a high efficiency that if they push themselves for too long, then they start draining their energy and it works against them. And so if when I'm working with a client that is a projector,

We're going to schedule their days so differently than I would schedule my day because I honestly don't have high high output. I get easily distracted and so I have to give my time myself extra time to do all the things right. Energy management also touches on when I look at somebody's calendar I am always looking at like how is all the ways this is flowing together how is it going to be making you feel.

So what are you doing to support your energy that involves what you're eating, how you're moving your body, what things that you do for work or your personal life, what things restore your energy, what things drain your energy, and are you putting too many of those things back to back? You don't want to have an exhausting Monday through Friday and then all your restoration on the weekends. You're just going to live your life like a yo-yo up and down. You know, it can be easier than that. And so how does this

Sophia Hyde (19:13.281)
flow together? Do you have the respite in between the outputs? And we're looking at all those things. I don't teach time management. I actually teach energy management because you can spend the same 20 minutes talking to somebody on the phone. But if they are somebody that drains you, you will be exhausted for the next three hours. If they are somebody that excites you and builds you up, then you will have more energy for the next two hours because that was an energy exchange with that phone call, that person you just took.

And so everyone in your life, you're exchanging energy with them. And are they helping to propel you or are they sucking and draining your energy? This is the kind of thing we need to be paying attention to. So now let's go over to the personality thing. I love Enneagram. I use it a lot, but not going to dive into on the podcast today. Today, the examples I want to give are from CliftonStrengths, because I think it's so good when we're talking about living in a lined life, although.

Aligning with the enneagram, it's really important too. We just can't cover all the things. So when it comes to the, I love the CliftonStrengths assessment. If you've not done it before, highly recommend. I do this with most of my clients. And it's so fun because everybody has a different top five strengths and your top five strengths, they're the things that are your superpowers. You may not even realize you're so good at it. But if you can build a life that asks you to use your superpowers,

I can't even explain how much easier life is. can't, it's like night and day. It's so crazy. I like on the assessment to have the full 34 traits. So the CliftonStrengths looks at the 34 different traits that humans have. They're different strengths and we all have some, but they're just different and they're not things that you would think of.

But I love looking at the bottom ones because I can tell you when I'm investing in my time into trying to make my weaknesses better, those bottom strengths, it's exhausting. Example, three of my bottoms are consistency, discipline, and empathy. These are really great things for other people in the world to have. I am an Enneagram seven, which means my greatest fear in life is pain. And so

Sophia Hyde (21:35.126)
It's not that I can't be empathetic, but when I have to spend time sitting with somebody in their pain, it takes everything out of me. Like it's really exhausting. It's sometimes I am a life coach, so sometimes those things come up. But it's why I am so I can sit with somebody, but it's why I didn't go into therapy. It's why I have a lot of friends who are therapists and I sometimes refer my clients to them or.

I've brought on a couple of people too with you guys in the like Amani and Dr. Katie, who they're not therapists, but they do like energy work or hypnosis or different forms to address like trauma healing. I don't touch that stuff. I'm not the person who's gonna help you heal from your trauma because for me to witness and sit in someone's pain.

Not only is it a learned skill and not a natural one for me, but it takes everything out of me. Like one hour, I had a client who went through some hard things last year and of course I showed up for her. And of course I, I mean, her results were great. I know how to do it, okay? So they don't know how, but for my calendar, I would schedule one hour with her and then two hours of recovery.

because that's how much it would exhaust me to sit in that pain of what she was going through. Of course I loved her through it, but I ended up giving her three hours of my day, not one hour of my day, because after that call, I would always have to recover my energy from having sat inside of that. So I'm not a trauma specialist, right? That's not aligned for me. And then like the consistency and the discipline factor, that's not, like you don't want me in there, but my strengths, my strengths are,

Activation strategy, futuristic. I can talk strategy all day long. Literally, I have spent I have had eight hours before of back to back coaching calls where I am just sitting talking about your future and the strategies to get them and the actions we're going to take. And I get off that call. And not only am I not exhausted, I am energized. I am pumped. Like, let's go. I can coach back to back all day if we're inside those top areas where I thrive. OK.

Sophia Hyde (23:55.31)
I prepared a couple of examples, this is just so great. let's talk about sales, right? So a lot of people who are entrepreneurs are starting their own business, they have to like find clients, right? So sales is obviously going to be a part of running their business. Well, if you are aligned, if you are living in a way that every area of your life is aligned,

then the way you approach sales in your business should be aligned with your strengths. What do you bring to the table? How do you move through the world? And I thought I've been helping two of my clients over the last year. I've been coaching two of my clients through sales because both of them own their own business but haven't had to do sales before for different reasons.

And this is very new. One of them, was her husband's business for a long time and she entered into it. The other one made partner at a law firm and this is being expected of her, but for a long time, you she was associate, she was outputting, but now she's having to operate for more of a leader role. And so it looks different. Now she has more of an owner mentality and she's having to help with the sales where she didn't for her whole career. So both of these women are having to learn sales and bring in new business. And I've been doing this my whole career, right? I've been...

I've either been in some form of sales or an entrepreneur, literally my whole adulthood. So I have a ton of experience with this. But what I did with, if I were to use these two women and myself, the approach for all three of us is completely different. And I strategized all three of these approaches based on their CliftonStrengths profile using their top five strengths.

So the one client who went to go work, her husband owns a very successful IT company and several years ago she left the other line of work she used to be in, went to go work for him, was doing different roles inside the company but then about a year ago, maybe the beginning of year, it kind of all runs together, somewhere around a year ago, he suggested she move into sales and take it over from him because she'd be so much better at it.

Sophia Hyde (26:16.127)
And she was shocked. She was like, me? I've never done sales in my life. And her top five strengths are all centered around people. In her former career, she was a teacher. And she is just the most grounded person. When you talk with her, just feels like you feel immediately safe with her. You feel like you immediately trust her.

and i should have actually pulled up hold on

Sophia Hyde (26:56.781)
She should have actually had this in front of me. Hold on. I'm actually going to read what they are. Give me one second. I'm almost there. I didn't think of pulling this up in advance, but in the moment it makes a lot of sense. Okay. Her strengths are developer, which is people, belief, which means she really believes in people. This one is a strategic thing. She thinks to the future. Connectedness, which means she's really good at connecting things together and people together, and an achiever.

But her number one strength is developer, which is part of the relationships and people aspect. And so with this, what we developed for her, she's also pretty introverted and likes to connect with people one-on-one. So her sales approach is to meet people one-on-one with in-person networking, whether like going to events and that kind of thing. And...

When I first met her, they were going to a lot of conferences, they'd done some speaking things, but what's not in her strengths is she at the bottom is, I think it's her very last one, woo. Yeah, woo and communication are her bottom two. In comparison, this is why I said I'm gonna give you three examples, woo and communication are in my top two.

Woo is, just kind of think of the word charismatic. You can just woo a room or an audience. Communication, that's pretty self-explanatory. A good conversationalist, presenter. And so you can see my sales approach, a ton of my business has come from speaking engagements, my podcast, writing a book. You can see how I have a lot of these traits, so it makes sense for my sales approach to be something that involves audiences and a room.

My bottom, her number one is developer, my number 34, my bottom strength is developer. And so I am better with a crowd and an audience than I am going to be trying to develop relationships one at a time. Even though everything is networking your relationships one at a time, I'm going, it's easier for me to be in front of a big group and just let the people come to me and then go and then take it one to one than to try to start with a one to one because of the way I'm wired, right?

Sophia Hyde (29:21.483)
So for her, what we started doing was she started going to networking events, building relationships, and she has landed several really great clients, but her strengths are that people feel like they trust her. And if you're an IT, this is safety, this is security. So we're using the fact that she's just this naturally trustworthy, introverted person and adapting a sales approach around it, which is the complete opposite of mine. And then the third example was the attorney.

And a lot of her top skills inside of the CliftonStrengths, they're in the purple color, if you're familiar with CliftonStrengths, which is high executive function, meaning she gets stuff done. She is so good at executing. She's also a very highly intelligent woman. But then you take that same person, you put them in a networking event, and this is not her strength, right? She's introverted, she likes to talk to only one people, she's not going to woo a crowd. She probably has...

the best advice in the room, but she's not going to insert herself and just start offering it. That is just so not her, right? So as we looked, and she also doesn't have a ton of time. So even though she is good with people one on one, she's not strong in a room and she doesn't have the time to just go to lots and lots of networking events because she is an attorney with tons of work to get done and that's that is her strength. That's where she thrives. So the approach we made for her

her was to, cause she has like no orange, which is the influencer side of CliftonStrengths. She has none of that in her top 10. And so again, you want to like surround yourself with your strengths and then you want to surround people, yourself with people who their strengths are your weaknesses. So her approach that we've designed is for her to have, sometimes she does do the group things, whether it's a panel discussion or networking event, she'll show up in the rooms.

but her objective in the room is to find the people that have those extroverted, charismatic personalities. They probably have a lot of orange in their profiles and then invite them into a one-on-one where there's a coffee or a lunch because she is really strong one-on-one and then grow those relationships and have a lot of those orange people in her network because they're going to be out there talking,

Sophia Hyde (31:47.598)
and meeting new people and going to events. And then when they ask for a referral, when something comes up or they hear something, then she would be the go-to. They're like, my gosh, you probably should get legal advice on that. Let me send you to my friend. So the more friendships and relationships, professional relationships that she can build with those orange personalities that are different than hers, now sales just became so much easier. So do you see in these three examples how

different they are, but how much easier life is when you're aligned with your strengths. For me, it is so much easier. Like honestly, it is what was I telling somebody the other day? They were asking me to do something. It was supposed to be something super simple. And I said, it would be easier for you to throw me in an arena and ask me to keep 80,000 people entertained.

than to ask me to do the very simple thing you just asked me to do. I don't know what it was, right? But like that's, I have a lot of the orange, right? I just said that is my personality. And so I've built a business that uses my strengths. So for me, it's speaking engagements. For the other client, it's going to lots of networking events. And for the other client, it's investing in just one-on-one coffees or lunches with very strategic people.

None of these are right or wrong. They're just different. And this is what I mean about every area of your life needs to be aligned with your goals. And I spent a lot of time on the sales example, but we could take that and we could apply that to what you're eating and how you're moving through your days and what kind of workout you're choosing and on and on and on and on and on. Like it doesn't end every area of your life.

needs to be aligned to support where you're trying to go. Okay, number seven and number eight, the last two ones I was gonna hit on, were how you're managing your time. So are your days set up from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed to align with the way you like to move through the world and align with your goals? And then the last one is your relationships. And this one is huge. I saved the best for last.

Sophia Hyde (34:09.933)
Do you know that who you choose as your partner is one of the most important business decisions you will ever make? Because if you choose to get married, your spouse will either be the person who killed your business, your ideas, they either don't believe in you or don't support you to make it happen, or they will be your catalyst because they will be the one who is your biggest cheerleader, your biggest supporter.

moves their life around to give you more time or mental load or whatever to free up the space that you need to go do the thing you want to do in the world. And so is the person the people that you're sharing life with are they helping you get there or are they making it harder for you? And then this also applies to your friendships because there are people in your life who are either draining you or fueling you. Are the people in your life supporting you? Are they aligned with where you want to go in the world?

Remember that there's that quote, like, some people are in your life for a season and a reason. If there are people who are not helping, and I'm not saying that you're using people as a goal. That's not what I'm talking about. I have so many people in my life who've been in my life for 25 or 30 years. I'm not talking about using people. I'm saying that like all every friendship of mine has to be helping me achieve a goal. That is not what I'm saying. But the people who I let stay around for the last 25 years.

and the people who I have had to drop, the difference is were they encouraging and supportive and they believed in me or are they the people who brought drama or like didn't believe me or criticized me all the time or maybe full judged or like I would be spiraling for three days about the thing they said that just threw me off and not in a helpful way. I'm all about constructive criticism and great feedback.

but not in a way that like hurts you at your core, right? Those are the people that were not helping me get where I wanted to go. They were hurting me and I had to drop them. And so are the people in your life, are your relationships helping you? Are they aligned with where you wanna go in the world? Couple of final notes, common misalignments, the things that are misaligned, the most common ones I see are if you allow thoughts in your head,

Sophia Hyde (36:27.135)
around what you should be doing. Whether others said you should do it or people in your industry say you should do it this way, shooting all over yourself because something worked for somebody else that you saw somewhere, that is a recipe for disaster. Like it's just, that's not helpful. Like you have to use all these things I just said and is the idea that whatever the thing is that you're shooting yourself that you should be doing, does it align with your life? Cause if not, it...

It might've worked for somebody else, that doesn't mean it'll work for you. Okay, another one is comparing yourself to people in similar roles. Whether that is because it's somebody in the same industry as you, and this is how they grew their business, or it's just something simple as the way they mother versus the way you mother. Or maybe it's something like how they... gosh, I don't have another example. It's not coming to my brain. But you get the point.

When we compare our lives, like how they're spending their money. Yeah, like they bought this or they have this car, this purse, this house or this whatever. When we compare other people in our lives, it is not helpful whatsoever. Because first of all, the way they're moving to the world, you don't know what their strengths are and you have different ones to bring to the table. So you're only responsible for utilizing your strengths. Also, you don't have the information. I know somebody who compared themselves a lot to a person who later, I kid you not, this sounds like it's out of one of these romance novels that I read, but no, I kid you not.

They were comparing themselves and being themselves up to this person they knew who had similar line of work as them and they couldn't figure out how they were reporting their life. And like 10 years later, they learned that their grandmother had left them a trust fund. They were literally beating themselves up and comparing to themselves to somebody who was living off of a trust fund from their grandmother. You can't compare yourself to other people. You don't have all the information.

That's very important detail when you're trying to figure out like decisions they're making versus decisions you're making and they're so different Yeah, because they have completely different resources So comparing is not helpful Another major misalignment is to not sometimes people don't realize that you need to Recalibrate your life after a major event So whether that's you've had a child or you've moved to a new place or maybe you've taken in a parent who needs caretaking

Sophia Hyde (38:46.647)
There's all sorts of things when maybe you've had an injury. I have a friend who was in a car accident, had a traumatic brain injury and she moves to the world in a different way than she did before the accident. When major things happen in your life, you can't keep comparing yourself to yourself of the past. I know I said it's not helpful to compare yourself to other people, but it's also not helpful to compare yourself to former versions of yourself when you are now in a new season.

You have to make sure that you are living in a lined life for who you are now, what your resources are now, what your skills are now. That's, you don't have, I as a mother do not have the same mental load bandwidth before I had kids. I see people in the coaching industry who grew their businesses so much faster than me. You know what, I love this work so much. I probably, if I was not married with kids, I could probably work 70 to 80 hours a week and call that fun. Like literally love every.

minute of it. And would my business have grown faster if I was working through the evenings, working on the weekends? Sure, probably, maybe as long as it was good work and not leaving me in burnout, but it was leaving me excited. But I can't. And so I don't have the mental load that they do. There's just way too many things happening in my brain. Right. And I can't compare myself to Sophia in her 20s who didn't have all the mental load of a kid.

All right, and last one, the last misalignment is listening to the wrong people. So you wanna make sure that the voices in your head, whether they're people in your real life like family or friends, or they're some podcaster you're listening to, if you're allowing voices in your head that aren't serving you, this is really detrimental. So for me, I know in my life it's been like family or friends.

who have no entrepreneurship experience, oftentimes they can be much more fear driven than is helpful for me. And so I don't talk to them about the risks I'm taking in my business or the things that I'm doing. Because if you've never owned a business, you may not understand the inherent risk that comes in absolutely everything that we do. And if you gravitate towards your nine to five job or whatever you're doing for the safety that it provides, there is no guaranteed safety in entrepreneurship. have to create it for yourself.

Sophia Hyde (41:05.951)
And so it's, just don't tell, I don't talk to people about what I'm doing inside my business unless they're also entrepreneurs who I admire and respect the type of business that they run because otherwise their thoughts aren't gonna serve me. I get my advice from people who have been where I want to go. But sometimes the advice is just not helpful. And like the biggest example I can think of is I, for a long time, the podcasters I was listening to were in retrospect,

neurotypical white men who had a Even though they might have had kids they had a wife who didn't work at home carrying all the mental load Their advice is just I don't honestly I don't even listen to them anymore or read their books and not if that's not because I don't like white men I'm married to a white man. I have a son who was a white man. This is not against white men I'm just saying that first of all when you show up into a room as a white man people do respond differently

Than they do if you're a woman or person of color and if you don't believe that go talk to some of your friends who've had experience We move through the world differently and then secondly They can never understand the mental load that it is to be a mother who an aunt to not have a full-time support at home And so they'll be like, yeah, totally know what it's like to have kids

but it's not the same. So the decisions that you're making and what you're prioritizing and how you're moving the world, they're just so different than my lived experience that I found that their advice was not helpful, but also was innocent. We feel bad about myself. Like I wasn't doing as much as I should be doing or could be doing, but I realized they had different resources and access than I did.

And that's when I diverted and I mostly listened to actually the only coaches I've hired have all been women and actually they're mostly mothers too because they've been where I've been. so their advice is going to come through a lens that is more relative to the life that I am living. Okay. We got to wrap this up. Couple of closing notes. One is anything

Sophia Hyde (43:20.705)
that is not helping you achieve your goal is actually distracting from it. There is no neutral. Either this is aligned in your life or it is distracting and causing harm. Things are either ups, like they're either flowing with you, ups, they're going downstream with you, or they're working against you and making you try to fight upstream. And so you want to ask yourself, like what parts of my life feel like I'm flowing downstream?

and what parts of my life make me feel like I am fighting upstream and run that analysis. Okay. Lastly, I told you guys that I was launching this group coaching program. It is called Align. It's gonna be six months. We're gonna have, it's for women in business. It's gonna be monthly group coaching. There'll be courses that drop like online materials specifically for you guys.

Will be one-on-one coaching to what our calls a month with me as well as we will close with a retreat up here in Asheville April 30th through May 3rd the details if you click the link below the details are all there and What I am looking for is a handful of women in business who are ready to Create an aligned life and kick some ass

in their business and their personal life and just yeah, become their favorite self because that's what I'm all about. I'm sending you guys love and I can't wait to see who joins us in April, May. Bye.