E90: Outgrowing Your Season: How to Transition with Clarity and Confidence

Life and business are filled with seasons of growth, transition, and waiting. Are you holding onto something that no longer serves you? In this episode of The Positive Voice Podcast, I share a heartfelt conversation with a former client that sparked an important realization: growth happens when we let go of what no longer fits.

We’ll explore:
✨ How to recognize when you’re in a new season.
✨ The power of letting go and reframing it as making space for your next chapter.
✨ Four actionable steps to move back into alignment.

From emotional resistance to inspired action, this episode will empower you to navigate life’s changes with clarity and confidence. Let’s stop forcing ourselves to fit into personas or ventures that no longer align and step boldly into what’s next.

🎧 Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Free Download: Outgrowing Your Season: A Guide to Recognizing and Embracing Change
• Atomic Habits by James Clear (a must-read for small, impactful changes)

💡 Share Your Thoughts:
What are you holding onto that no longer fits in this season? Drop your reflections in the comments!

👉 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share this episode with someone who needs to hear this message.

Let’s connect:
🌐 Website: www.coachchefkim.com
📩 Join my email list for weekly inspiration: Sign Up
📱 Follow me on social: @coachchefkim

Remember: Growth doesn’t happen by clinging to what was. It happens when you courageously step into what could be. 💛

Visit https://nutrimill.com/KTD for $20.00 off your next purchase of a Bosch mixer or Nutrigrain Flour Mill

Transcript

Kimberly Houston (00:01.038)
Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of the Positive Voice Podcast. I am Coach Chef Kim. I am your host and I am the one who is going to take you on a journey today. So this is a little bit, I would say out of the realm of the things I've been talking about lately, but also right on track with what I've been talking about lately, right?

So for this episode, I want to share a conversation that happened over the weekend. And yes, I have permission to share this conversation with you. So I was talking to one of my former clients, Turn Friends. And I just had this feeling, send her a text. And so I sent her a text. And then our conversation went left based on an answer that she gave me.

And so let me set the scene for you. We were having a discussion and I was checking in with people to see what are they offering in this season? What are you offering right now? The reason I did this is one, because that was a part of my homework for a coaching program that I'm involved in currently where we needed to have our offer. And we're only talking about that offer, right?

And so for people who are multi-hyphenate entrepreneurs, it is really difficult for us to focus on one thing at a time. And so that has been my assignment for the last couple of weeks is to focus my fans and focus the people who follow me, who listen to me, who are on my email list in the midst of this TikTok ban like the whole night, right? Focus people so that they know why they should come to you. Like what are you known for? Why do people need to come to you? And so some of the things that I've been doing

as a part of this is like I have narrowed down, Kimberly is your alignment coach, right? Like, yes, I'm the positive voice in your head, but being the positive voice in your head is not helpful if you are out of alignment. And so everything that I've been talking about for the last two years on this podcast leads you back into alignment. And now I am just more focused that that is the thing that I talk about. So as an alignment coach, when I'm having a conversation with people and

Kimberly Houston (02:12.554)
I ask you what you're doing. When you tell me something like, I'm open to that. Yes, people can still do this. What she said to me was, I still have this available while I'm working on this. And I said, is that a decision being made out of fear or abundance? And the immediate response was fear.

And I know that there are a lot of people who particularly culturally, we were raised that you must have a plan A, a plan B, a plan C, a plan D. There should always be a backup plan. There should, you you don't leave one job without having another. Like this was embedded into us as we were growing up.

I believe in that fully, right? This is not a podcast episode that's going to tell you to just jump ship and not be able to support your family. That's not what this is about. As an alignment coach and as someone who can see things differently than people who are in the midst of their own struggle.

If the plan, I think if it had been set to me a little differently, then it would have been like, no, this is an abundance move. Then I'm making sure we still have this in place while we move to this. That was not the response I got. The response I got was, this is still here in case this doesn't work out. That's not a decision that is made in abundance and there is a difference, right? And so then naturally that rolled over into a real life.

in Coach Chef Kim podcast episode. And we'll get into the things that we discuss later, but I think it's important that we have this conversation.

Kimberly Houston (04:09.746)
When, if you ever coach with me, here's something I need people to understand. I am a coach who doesn't just rely on facts. I also follow feeling. So I know when you say something to me and it doesn't sit well with me emotionally, I need to say something. I know that you're not going to. And so I am going to say it. And you have to understand the importance of wise counsel.

in your life. There are people who are going to give you advice that's unsolicited. There are people who are going to give you advice who've never done what you're doing. And then there are people who have already walked the walk and they can make your journey a lot less treacherous, heartbreaking, hard, difficult. There are people you're going to meet that can make it easy. And because

I stand flat-footed in being an alignment coach that believes you can have anything and everything you want with ease. I'm always going to look for that outcome for you. And so one of the things I think we need to realize is that seasons change and so do people.

Kimberly Houston (05:23.978)
In this episode, we are going to talk about seasons changing. We're going to talk about people changing. And I'm going to give you some actionable tips that will help you, one, identify if you are in a new season, two, what to do when you're in that transition, and three, how to continue to move forward. So in understanding what it means to be in a season of life, a season of business, we're going to look at this as phases of growth, transition, or waiting.

There are going to be times where business is booming. People are constantly calling you, you cannot keep up with the orders. You are looking to expand your team. Everything that you touch turns to gold. You are in full alignment. You feel fulfilled in your business. Money is great. Family is great. Kids are great. You are great. That is what we all strive for. Then there are going to be times in your business where

the phone doesn't ring. There are no chimes on PayPal or Stripe or Vidmo or Cash App. No one's beating down the door trying to get your product. No one is signing up for the new course that you spent $500 with an AV team creating for people because you know it's going to change the world and no one bought it. There are going to be times when life happens.

and you suffer something traumatic. There's an injury, there's a death, there's something that shakes you at your core. And there's absolutely no way for your business to continue operating because you do not have the support that you need in order to show up as your best self.

These are seasons of life, seasons of business. The same way we look at the four seasons in the calendar year, right? You've got spring, you've got summer, you've got fall, you've got winter. I can tell you that my favorite season is fall. My favorite season is autumn. It is not too hot, it's not too cold. I can still be cute and carefree in my hoodies.

Kimberly Houston (07:43.266)
with t-shirts, I can still wear shorts on some days like I'm living a dream. I can wear other beautiful fall colors. I love seeing the leaves change color on the trees and they are falling and it's just such an incredible time for me. But if I were to look at what's actually happening, the leaves are all in transition. Nature is in transition. And while things look beautiful in autumn,

while the leaves going from green to yellow to red and orange. The next thing that happens is the leaves fall off the tree. The leaves fall off the tree. I have never seen someone pick up a leaf and try and put it back on the tree that it fell off of. And the reason for this is because it's a new season.

the leaves are supposed to fall in that season. And so that's when the yard work of raking up all of the things that are no longer going to serve that tree during the winter, raking up all of the things that no longer serve you in your next season. What do you do? You get rid of it. You throw it away. You crush it up. You

you might get your leaf blower and blow them away. There are actual things you can purchase for that particular season in nature that are not going to serve any of us in the coming months because the seasons have changed. And what you have to understand is that this is what happens in life. That there are going to be seasons where you have to let go of things

because they are not going to serve you at this time in your life. If I can make this make a little bit more sense, let's make it personal. If you are a parent and you have children.

Kimberly Houston (09:49.748)
Even if you don't have children, if you were to walk into a grocery store and you saw a child in clothes that are clearly entirely too small. If you saw a parent taking a kid around with shoes that don't fit, with clothes that don't fit, their skin is like out and it's in the weather.

you would question the type of parent they are, right? As a parent, you are not going to intentionally look at your child who just had a growth spurt and say, you gonna have to figure out how to wear them clothes.

Kimberly Houston (10:41.102)
If we saw parents neglecting their children's growth by not providing the things that they need in order to grow, if the only thing you put your child in is clothes that they outgrew two years ago, as opposed to buying things that they can grow into, we would call DFACS.

We would say you are a bad parent. We would call the authorities and yet we become adults and we continue to put on personas that we have outgrown. We continue to try and show up in spaces that we have outgrown. We continue to run businesses that no longer serve us in this season. There is no difference between the baby that you won't buy the bigger clothes for

and yourself that you refuse to give yourself the space in the room to grow. There are going to be times in your life where you have to say, I've outgrown what I continue to put on. I've outgrown the things that I am making myself carry. You're the adult. You have adult money. Go do the things you need to do in order to move freely into that next season.

So let's talk about how you know when you're out of alignment because I get asked this question a lot. Number one, there is emotional resistance. So if you are doing something and you feel stuck, you feel frustrated, you are unsure about what is next and you're trying to hold on to what is familiar, but it's no longer serving you, you're out of alignment.

Number two, lack of joy or fulfillment. If you wake up every day and you dread the life that you're living, that's a choice. That's a choice for you to dread the life that you're living. Lack of fulfillment in work, in your decisions, in your actions, in your lack thereof of actions. That is a sign that you are out of alignment. Needing external validation.

Kimberly Houston (12:58.656)
It's also a sign of you being out of alignment because to me that signals you don't know how to trust yourself. And if you don't know how to trust yourself, how is it that you are trusting other people? That for me is a problem. Staying in a phase of your life, staying in a season of your life that you know you've outgrown because of what other people are going to say is a problem. Let me make this one real clear. If people have invested in a dream that you had five years ago,

But life has lifed. And I mean this in the most respectful way I can. Y'all realize that five years ago, we went through a global pandemic. If people invested in a dream you had pre-pandemic, and you are still holding on to that, not giving space for the fact that you have changed over the last five years after surviving a pandemic,

after having to pivot your business, the dream might not be your dream anymore. The dream might not even make sense for the world we now live in, right? If you are holding on to the idea that you should not be able to move forward and do something differently because people invested in something that was a previous version of your dream.

you need external validation and I want to give you permission to let it go. If you are holding on to a business or a job or a relationship that no longer serves you because other people told you at a particular season in your life, this is something you should be doing. I'm giving you permission to leave. I'm giving you permission to trust yourself and to not depend on the external validation of other people. And then number four,

The fourth sign is know that you're out of alignment when you're moving into a new season is avoiding the change out of fear. Are you afraid you're going to fail? Are you making your decisions based on scarcity and not abundance? Here's something that I posted earlier today. I either win or I learn. There is no failure. There is no failure. You either win. So whatever you launch, you did what you wanted it to do, or you learn.

Kimberly Houston (15:22.862)
What's the data say? Like I'm not going to make this personal or emotional. What does the data say? Let me go back and look at it. What can I learn from this? Did I launch at the wrong time? Did I only send one email instead of 12? People need to see it eight times anyway before they're going to buy it. Did you do everything you should have possibly done or did you do the bare minimum and expect incredible results? Avoiding change out of fear.

is going to keep you stuck. And that is a lack minded. So now that I've explained those things to you, let me give you four steps for you to move back into alignment. Number one, I want you to reflect and recognize. You need to become a student of yourself. I know me. There were times in my life where people used to say to me, I know you better than you know yourself.

There is not a person on this earth that can say that to me now and it be true. No, you don't. I'm the only person that spends 24 seven with me. I know me better than anybody else because I study myself. I know my patterns. I know when I'm in and out of alignment. I know how to move myself back into alignment. I know when to leave a situation that no longer serves me. These are things I've had to learn over the last couple of years though, right?

So I need you to reflect and recognize, use journaling, self-inquiry, like ask yourself, am I holding onto this out of fear or abundance? What does it feel like? When you think about it, is your chest tight? If it is, that's not abundance, that's fear, right? Like what is your body's natural response to the things that you are doing or the things that you're holding onto? Is it fear or is it abundance?

The second question I would ask myself is does this align with my core values and current desires?

Kimberly Houston (17:20.044)
I am working on a course that is teaching people how to move into alignment. And this is one of those things. What are your core values? What do you believe in? I'm not doing anything outside of my core values, right? And so you need to know what are the things that you believe in and are you doing things that align with those things?

Number two for moving back into alignment is acknowledge the purpose of this past season. I know that there have been podcast episodes and if you go back and listen, there are podcasts episodes where I talk about how my divorce served me. I talk about how previous relationships served me to get to this point.

Right? Like if I didn't go through those things, I wouldn't be who I am now. You have to acknowledge and have gratitude for the phase or season of life that taught you.

and served you and allowed you to evolve into who you are now. Refrain letting go of something as making space for your next season, not quitting. Right? Like I didn't quit my marriage. Me being out of the way did several things. One, completely changed my entire life because I had to do a complete overhaul of who Kimberly is.

and deal with that internally with therapy, with prayer, with manifestation, with all the things, right? But also in the wake of my ex-husband having a new wife, if we had stayed together, he would have never found the love that he has now, right? And no tea, no shade, like I knew I wasn't giving all the things that he wanted, desired and needed, and he wasn't giving it to me. And so...

Kimberly Houston (19:27.564)
me being out of the way opened up space for his next season. Our marriage wasn't a failure. Our marriage was a lesson in what we value. And those are the things you look for in that next season with the next partner, right? And so you have to learn how to reframe those things that you've gone through. Number three, define the vision for your new season. Where you going? What's the trip we're on right now? What's the journey we're on right now?

Within my framework, I deal with core values, desires, and then taking aligned action. That's what I teach. That's what I hold near and dear. That is what I did in the pivot in 2020. I defined my core values. I got real clear about my desires. And then every action that I took beyond that aligned with it. And even when I shifted gears to go from

doing custom cakes and cookies and things of the sort to food photography. They were similar but very different and that needed a new vision. When I went from photography to teaching people how to do it, that similar but different needed a new vision. And then from teaching into coaching, similar but different, I needed a new vision.

And so you're gonna wanna visualize what success looks like in the new phase, not what success looked like previously. Number four, take inspired action. Inspired action is a thing that gets me out of bed every day. I don't know any other way to put it. Every time I say something on Facebook that goes wild, that people start commenting on, and it's not all the time. But there are moments where I share my heart.

and it resonates with people so deeply and people are always like, man, you are always doing things. You are so inspiring. Well, it's not that I woke up and then that one day I was inspiring. I take inspired action every single day. Every single day that I wake up, I no longer have a to-do list that's three pages long and I only do one thing on it. That's not how this works for me anymore. I will brain dump all the things that are in my brain and what do I want to get done?

Kimberly Houston (21:52.142)
And then I go through and look at does this align with my goals? Does this align with where I'm going if the answer is no, it gets taken off the list. When the list is brought back down to something manageable, then I say, what is the next best thing for me to do? So on today, in this moment, what is the next best thing for me to do? Y'all some days it's go take a shower. Some days the next

best thing I can do is to go put my body in water. Some days it's clean the kitchen. I cannot work in my office if I know there are dishes in the sink. It's a brain thing for me. We're going to call it trauma from being a chef. I don't know, but I can't work if my kitchen is not clean. Even if I'm not in the kitchen, I can't do it. What's the next best thing? The next best thing is for me to go put the dishes in the dishwasher or, or

Delegated out until one of my kids to go do that. So I have to take the inspired action. And taking inspired action, just one small step, will align me with my new vision. You could think to yourself, the next best thing is going to be pivoting my brand. It could be setting boundaries, or it could be closing out a chapter fully. I don't do this no more. And I'm not coming out of retirement for anybody.

Right? Like that's what you have to figure out is going to serve you the best. And is that fine? Release the fear. I know you're afraid. I know it. I know you're scared. I know it feels like everything is crumbling around you. I know you are terrified to move into this next season of your life, but can I tell you something?

Fear and excitement live in the same part of the brain. And you can choose to say out loud, am excited for this next season of my life. That is going to give you a completely different outcome than if you say, I'm scared of what's going to happen and you do nothing. You can make a decision to reframe the negative belief.

Kimberly Houston (24:12.866)
to reframe the negative thoughts, to reframe the limiting beliefs, or to reframe the mistaken belief that somebody else has given you that you have now internalized, causing it to become a limiting belief, you can reframe that. You can look at past evidence. There have been times in your life where you have successfully done something different before.

you can go find evidence in your brain of where you have been successful in a transition before. And then you take that evidence and you use that as a reason to help you understand that you are equipped to navigate this season. And then maybe your next step, that next best thing for you to do is to figure out what is the, what's the way that I can get to my destination with ease.

That might not be the easiest way to get there, but how can I get there with ease? If I can make this analogy make sense to you, people can use a GPS to get to a place that they've never been, but that doesn't mean that on that journey, you don't go through the mountains, that weather isn't going to be happening, that there won't be traffic. It doesn't mean any of that. It just means you have a tool that is helping you

get to where you're going. It doesn't mean that the road is easy. It just means that you did it with ease as opposed to having a paper map that you're trying to figure out or not having a map at all. You're just on the road hoping you'll end up where you're going to go. There's a difference between ease and easy.

Kimberly Houston (26:04.376)
So I'll take a collective deep breath on this one. I know that was a lot for it. I know it was. I hope that you understand that this phase of your life, you go through seasons. And if you are in a season of your life or in business that no longer fits you, I do not want you to continue to stuff yourself inside of clothes that you can no longer wear.

Don't stuff yourself inside of a persona that you no longer wear. If you were big on TikTok and now TikTok is gone and you don't know what to do next, I don't want you to attempt that you need to go become a LinkedIn girlie or go and become an Instagram star or go and shuck and jive on Facebook. Like whatever it is, before you make that decision, I want you to think about what you want. I want you to think about what will serve you best in this season instead of

trying to put on things that do not work for you, that do not serve you, that will not fulfill you. I really want you to think about what you want before you continue to move forward. What are you holding onto that no longer fits? What are you holding onto that no longer fits in this season? Let it go. Gift it, sell it, throw it out, whatever it is you need to do.

Let it go and make space for things that will support you in this season. What is one small action you can do today that will make a world of difference in your life? If I could offer a resource for you, every January I read the book Atomic Habits, and I think it's a fantastic book. It's a big book, so if you're not a person who enjoys sitting down and flipping pages in a book, just get the audio book.

The audio book of Atomic Habits is gonna walk you through small incremental changes that will lead to big change later in your life. And that is exactly how you know when you're in alignment. It's not completely overhauling your whole life and throwing everything away. It's making small incremental changes that are going to serve you in this new season. In addition to the recommendation of reading Atomic Habits, it's absolutely one of my favorites.

Kimberly Houston (28:16.418)
There's also going to be a resource in the show notes and it's just something quick that you can like check in with yourself to see if you are in or out of alignment. If you already know you're transitioning, get this. And this might help bring you some clarity on how you move forward in showing up as your best self. If you got anything from this, please share it. Please leave us a review.

on podcasting platforms or on YouTube, if that's where you're seeing this. Share it with a friend. Send it to people. Send them an email. Send them a text message. Hey, I was just listening to this today and I immediately thought about you. I know that you're going through some things right now. This podcast is going to give you some steps, some tools, some tricks in order to move forward with clarity. Please share this out with others. Until next time.

I want you guys to remember that growth doesn't happen by clinging to what was. It happens when you courageously step into what could be. I'll talk to you next time.