In this enlightening episode of the "One Small Change" podcast, host Yvonne McCoy converses with Candy Motzek about the transformative power of daily journaling. Candy shares how the simple act of writing down thoughts has provided clarity, challenged her perceptions, and fostered personal growth. The duo also delves into the role of journaling in understanding emotions, reducing resistance in tasks, and sparking creativity. Candy offers practical tips for beginners and emphasizes the importance of weaving curiosity and resilience into daily life to embrace change and new possibilities.

Guest Bio: Candy Motzek is a life coach, podcast host, and an advocate for personal growth and mindful change. Through her work on "She Coaches Coaches," Candy inspires others to transform their lives by recognizing personal thought patterns and making conscious adjustments. Known for her practical approach and encouraging spirit, Candy has embarked on numerous personal quests, including taking ballet after 40, showcasing her commitment to lifelong learning and exploration.

Key Points:

1. The Impact of Journaling [06:15]
2. - Candy discusses how her daily journaling habit has helped her gain clarity and better understand her thoughts.
3. Thought Downloads [12:40]
4. - Learn how Candy uses "thought downloads" to organize her thoughts and identify patterns.
5. Resistance vs. Motivation [22:10]
6. - Insights on how understanding emotional resistance enhances motivation rather than seeking it externally.
7. Tips for Journaling [35:25]
8. - Candy provides actionable steps to start journaling with thought downloads and setting goals.
9. Change and Exploration [46:50]
10. - The importance of using curiosity to explore new possibilities and step outside comfort zones.

Main Quote: "Journaling is a way to understand your thoughts and emotions, allowing you to make conscious changes in mindset and actions."

Links to Guest's Website:

• Visit Candy Motzek's resources and journaling prompts at
• candysfreegift.com
• Listen to Candy's podcast "She Coaches Coaches" at
• candymotzek.com

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the One Small Change, and I

am so happy that you've made time in your in your life to join on

this journey of exploration and transformation. And I'm

your host, Yvonne McCoy, and I bring almost 30 years of

entrepreneurial experience. And I have a passion for

discovering growth through the power of seemingly small change.

So I wanna thank you for joining me. And this week, we

are talking with one of my favorite people, Candy

Motzek. Candy, I probably murdered your last name, so say it

correctly for me. That was It's it's close, but it's not quite.

Motzek. Okay. So so

that was here's a hint to you. Make sure you always talk to your guests

ahead of time about name pronunciation. But I wanna I wanna

gush on you for just a minute before we actually go into the

interview. And I have to say, when I first started

doing podcast, this lady was one of the first people

who picked me out of the crowd

and said, let's do an interview. And I appreciate that so

much because we've kept in touch and we've we've, you

know, done things and used each other as a as

a, you know, to brainstorm and stuff like that. So I am really

happy to share her with you today, and I think your time will

be well spent. And so, Candy, tell us a little bit

about what you do and and what was the small change that had

that unexpected or insignificant, you know, that

small change that had kinda transformed

your life in a way you know, more than you expected. Yeah.

Yeah. And so first, thanks so much for having me on your show. I

really I love doing interviews, and I enjoy our

conversations. And we talk when it's not podcast time too, and

so just really pleased to have that time with you.

So, the question about one thing that

seems insignificant, but actually

had a huge change on me. And I think the, you

know, the wall behind me here, you can see all those

journals on the wall behind me there. And so for me,

the small change was to

start journaling. And it's something that I

now do every day. I've got quite a robust practice,

but it started with this idea that, you know, if I

wrote in a journal every day, I might

do something different. I might change. I might learn something.

And just that opening that book and

holding onto a pen, I've got a favorite pen that I use,

that small step has really transformed my life.

So that's my seemingly small change that's really

had a huge effect. Well, you know, one of the things that you said that

I think sometimes people overlook is that when you're

doing something for yourself, it is

worthwhile making it special. And

you just said, you know, I have this special pen. When I

was losing weight, one of the things that I did was if I

kinda wanted to break a cycle, an eating cycle that I was in,

I would have a glass of water, you know. But I had

this crystal mug that had this beautiful

blue handle, and it was, you know, I put the lemon in it. It was

just beautiful, and it really made it special. I mean, it

kind of said to me, you're special enough to, you know, that

you've got this special glass. So I think, you know and it can

be the special pen or it could be the you know, I know a

couple people who have special journals. Mhmm. You know, the

journals themselves are, you know, I for me, I I'm

not I have journal during times of my life,

and for me, it's really important that it it's spiral bound,

so it'll lay flat. It drives me crazy trying to write in a book

that's you know? So

tell me what else you think the journaling does for you that gives you

that, you know, that impact. Yeah.

So journaling has a lot of, you know,

there's a lot of, studies that have been done on it that show the impact

that it has, but I'll just talk about my personal experience because that's kind of

the most important thing is for me, I

learn what my is going on in my

head. And I know that that sounds kind of small and no big

deal. But lots of times, we have thoughts that we

just think as habit thoughts, and we just assume that they're

true. And it's only when we write it down

outside of our head and we look at it on a piece of paper that

we can start to question some of those things that we just

assumed were true. And so for me, it's

getting it out of my head. I do something called a thought

download just about every day, and that is just set my

timer for 5 minutes and write just what's on my mind. What's going on in

my brain right now? And so to

understand what's happening in my mind gives me clarity and

it gives me awareness. And as soon as I've got that awareness

about what I'm thinking, then I get to take back my

power. Maybe I'm thinking that something's too hard. Maybe I

think I'm overwhelmed. Maybe I think it's confusing,

but is it really? Well, if it's just

swirling around in my brain, yes. But once you write

it down, you realize, oh, wait a minute. It's really

not that big of a deal. Right? So it really helps me to keep a

lot of clarity, brings back awareness. And once I've got awareness,

then I've got power. Then I can just choose what I wanna do and how

I wanna approach it. And do you I you know, I I'm a big

advocate of doing brain dumps. And so, basically, what you're

saying is that you do a brain dump every morning and take a look at

what's there. Exactly. And for me, when

I do a brain dump, one of the things that I like to do, and

and you can tell me if you've got some practice that's kind of like

that, is I like to go, oh, you know, if I put

this with this, I can get 2 things done

at the same time. Or, oh, if I put the if I put this with

this, then I've got something new. I mean, I find that it can be a

it can be a productivity,

effort, and it can also be a creative effort. It doesn't sound like it would

be because it's like, you know, just dump the brain.

I've never thought about it in that way. And you're the productivity

expert, though, so that's that's I love that you've used the

creativity of the journaling to support that as well.

For me, what it does is I see thought patterns,

and I see that, for example, I have a habit

that the minute that I want to do something that's a little bit challenging,

and being entrepreneurs, we do stuff that's challenging all the time every

day. The first thing I think is, oh, I don't know how to do that.

Well, listen. I've been around the block a few

years, and I can actually do a lot more

than I might at first think. So the minute that I see that,

I call that the old chestnut, I don't know how, the minute

that I see that come out of my head, I'm like, oh, okay.

My main my mind is just playing a little game with me here.

Now it's time to say, so is

that really true? Is it not true?

What can I learn from this? What is this showing

me? And so for me, I use it in that way as

opposed to creating some kind of a great combination

that becomes a super good productivity approach.

Can I also ask you about you said something about patterns?

And patterns are like, if you can

recognize your pattern, it's really an amazing thing. So can

you talk more about that, you know, where you have found that

useful? Yeah. So

there's a saying that says how you do one thing is how you do everything.

Right? And I don't even know who said it, but I heard it once, and

I was like, yeah. I can really see that.

So the pattern is that the more that I think in a

certain way, I get to decide,

am I going to be creative and open and curious about it, or

am I gonna go down the negative nelly and hopeless

and I'll never figure it out path? So when I know what

my pattern is, that I might have this kind of

thought, and, when I have this kind of thought, then I just

kind of swirl in confusion. The minute that I see

the thought, I know, oh my gosh. There's the pattern starting. And it's

like it's it's, almost like an

unconscious ritual. And then as soon as you can sort of

extract the trigger for the ritual, then you can

change the pattern. So I see that a lot with my clients as

well, where they have a particular pattern,

especially around the area of overwhelm or confusion

or being indecisive. Lots of entrepreneurs struggle with

those things. Right? And so it's like, as soon as they

know, oh, I have a pattern, which is just a

habit that I created. And I created it at a time that

it was helpful, but maybe it's not helpful now. Right?

And then we can go back to that place where we can decide how we

want to be instead of just being reactive. Well, I think

I think what you're saying is is so important because,

a lot of our habits we got from childhood, and they

were partially to keep us safe. They may have

served us well, and they may not have. But, you know, we carried them

into what we're doing, the way we we face fear and

uncertainty. I mean, I know for for me, one of the things when

thing you know, before I change my thought pattern about,

you know, failure is a natural part of success and that it's an

experimental process as opposed to being a binary choice

of you succeed or you don't. You know, the first thing I would say

is what's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? Why can't

I get this? Like, you know, I should be able to do this, you know.

And and, you know, as you said, go down that emotional subjective

kind of path. And that's one of the reasons that when I

talk about when you do something and you learn something,

you kinda have to have a trigger for when to use it because otherwise,

you will. And I think the other thing that you said that

to me is really important that has been a change for me is just having

saying, how can I be curious? Instead of instead of

saying, this is the way it should be done or this is the way it's

always been done. When somebody says something to me, I don't try to

fix them right away anymore. I go, tell me more.

And it makes a huge difference, I mean, in

terms of Oh, yeah. And and yeah.

Definitely. And that approach that you've just talked about

about being curious, tell me more, that's exactly the

process to use with your journaling. Tell me more. How come

how come we think that way? How does that help me? Do I like

the the result that gets me or not? Am I

feeling better? Am I feeling worse? Right? So, like, curiosity is

so important, and I love your idea about being really

experimental. That's my thing too. I'm like, well, let's just see

what happens. Let's just try it and see. Right? Gather data.

Can we prove this? You know? Does it it is it an interesting

approach or not? Right? Well, I and I think that's kind of one of the

when you have a model, it allows you to be

experimental more because you're taking certain steps, and then you can go back and say,

well, this step worked, but this step didn't. Do you know? And it kinda

gives you a, like, a safety net in a way.

But I have to tell you, you know, I journaled a lot

when I was losing weight. I I don't know if you remembered that I lost,

like, a £150. Yes. I know. It's an amazing thing.

I I journaled a lot during that time, and it's one of

the things that frustrated me about it is I could not

figure out a way

to really see the patterns. I mean, it was for me, that was that

was hard. I couldn't you know, it's like I can't remember when I did this

last and which journal is this in and stuff. And so I hit that's why

I like trackers where I Yeah.

Where, you know, when it comes to action, you know, that, you know, you can

track it and you can see it and you can start to see the patterns.

You go, okay. I'm gonna work on these ten things for the next 2

weeks. And then you look at it and you go, I haven't touched this one

once. Why is that? Yeah. Yeah. You

know, so that's that's that's the the the push

pull that I have. I think it's really great to write things down.

I, you know, I I probably have made

amazing awarenesses from writing. I mean, you know,

there was a book called the women doctor's diet book. And

one of the things she she made you do is, like, really write

down why you wanted to lose weight. You know, it started with, you know, because

of my health, because I wanna live longer for my kids, be you know, and

it went down this whole thing. And it was the first you know, you just

kept digging and digging. And it was the first time that I

said to myself, I wanna feel pretty.

Mhmm. And I had never admitted that because that was not a

family value for us. Right. Being smart

was important in my house, but being pretty was not.

And it you know, part of that was a protection thing. You know, my

parents didn't want us to run with the wrong crowds or get in with boys

and, you know, get into trouble and that kind of stuff. So it was like

study. You know, your books are so I think there's

a huge amount of value in the journaling, and I think, you

know, just like anything else, you have to say, what's the purpose?

Mhmm. Mhmm. What am I what am I trying to get out of this? What

is it gonna do for me? You know?

I think I could probably go back and and start journaling again

about my business. You know? You could. And, you know, sorry,

just to interrupt. I love your, use of the trackers,

and I think that there's a really great blend that could happen there. Right?

Like and and, you know, so if you see that there was one of the

10 tasks that you've decided to do, you're not doing

it. Okay. Well, why am I resistant? And maybe there is

something interesting to be unwrapped with that. Like, why am I

resistant about, you know, reach you know, doing

outreach, 5 outreach calls a day or something like that? What

do I really think is gonna happen? What am I protecting myself

from? Right? And I and I think, you know, when you do that

discovery, you know, on that thing in particular, which I think we

both see in our clients, if if

you think you're making the call to get a client

or to, you know, it it's about you.

It's always gonna be hard to do. If you're making the

call with the idea of let's curl collaborate

and see what we can do to help each other, then it's

so much easier. I mean, it's like, you

know, you don't there's room for the magic. I mean, I'm

stuttering over my words, but it just totally changes the feel of

it. Do you know? So I think, you know,

I I this is the second person this week that has

told me about journaling. So maybe that's that's kind of the, you

know, the infamous universe saying, it's time for you to start doing this

again. You know? Because I think, you know, as you

look at the things that you're doing and then you do the tracker to see

if you're actually doing it, then you can say, okay. I, you

know, I am not doing the follow-up calls. Let

me let me journal about why that's not happening.

Mhmm. Mhmm. You know? And I think I think you're absolutely right. I think that

they they would go really well together. What other what other things have

you discovered from journaling that that surprised you?

Yeah. And so for me, it's a much deeper

connection with my emotions and why that's

valuable is because for example, with the

tracker idea, if there is a task on there you're not doing,

it's not that you wanna necessarily be more motivated, but you

want to reduce your resistance to doing it. Right? So when I

understand where my emotions are, I can be super excited

about it today, but what am I gonna be like 3 weeks from now when

I still need to do my 5 outreach calls a day? Right? So

if I can reduce my resistance to it, where do I feel resistance?

How do I feel resistant? Where do I actually notice the

resistance in my body? And the reason that it works with the

journaling is because I'm moving slow. Right? I'm not doing it on

a keyboard. I'm doing it with pen and paper, which allows me to

slow down instead of just having my brain going on

going on like crazy. Right? I I have 2 questions

for you. 1 is, can you talk a little bit about resistance

versus motivation? That's the first thing. Because I think,

you know, I I think people are like, why am I not motivated? Why am

I you know? Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah.

So the, the approach is that

mostly the reason that we don't have what we want is

because we have resistance to receiving it. And so this is in the

area of being afraid to fail,

but also having a fear around too much success

because it's unknown. Right? Like, can we really

handle having a business that size? What kind of

challenges will we encounter if our business just takes off like

crazy? So motivation

to me is important to a point, but I'm quite internally

motivated, so it's not something I have to play with a lot. But for me,

it's the resistance. Like, what what do I think is gonna happen

when I take that action? What do I think is

the, what is the the

danger behind it? Do I think somebody's gonna laugh at me?

Yeah. Do I think they're gonna reject me? Yeah. Do I think they're gonna,

you know, ignore me? Yeah. You know? So, like, that's the

how am I protecting myself? Because as,

you know, biological beings, we're much more concerned

about our safety and our security and our survival than we

are about creating the ultimate best life that

we might think. When you look at something like Maslow's hierarchy,

right, where do we spend have the most time and energy is in

the bottom of that triangle or that pyramid around

safety, security, physical safety, much more before we move

to individual transcendence.

Okay. So so getting into some

practical steps. Sure. If you were if you were gonna tell people

to start journaling and they hadn't journaled before,

Besides getting a nice notebook and a pretty pen, and

and and and and I would say a regular time to do it,

what else would you know, for me, it's like when I get up

in the morning, you know, one of the things that I say to myself is,

what am I doing today that's going

to build my business? Right? So what's good what am

I doing to get clients today, kind of? Are there

a couple of questions that you use regularly for your

journaling or you just I mean, what what's the process that you

use? Yeah. So the

process that I use, there's there's kind of a number of different things. Let me

start out with the most basic. It's just like what you talked about with the

brain dump. I just use thought download as my term, but they mean the same

thing. So if you've never really journaled before, you're really not

totally sure, and you're thinking, oh, Yvonne and Candi are telling me to do this

thing. How do I start? You start by getting

yourself some paper and a pen, and it doesn't even

have to be a journal. You could just start on loose paper if you

wanted to and set your timer on your phone for 2

minutes. And at the top of the page, write, this is

what's on my mind today. And then you just

write all the thoughts without judging yourself,

without filtering, without saying, I wanna put

that on paper. You write all of the thoughts, and you do

that 2 minutes a day. You do that for a full week, and you

will start to notice how your brain

thinks. Does it have a thought that it just keeps going

to over and over and over again like me? I don't know how to do

that. I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to do that.

And then can you see that that one thought is where

your thoughts sort of hold you back? Right? So that's

would be the place that I would start. The other thing,

how you spoke about the journaling when you were

doing your weight loss journey was something

that I call an identity statement. Here's my vision of my

future self, and here's why I want to create

that new version of me. And so I will always

write my big goal. I write it at the top of

my page every single morning so I don't forget. Mhmm. Do

this. Do this. Do this. Even though,

like, it feels like it's never gonna happen, not letting

myself forget about it is one of the ways that journaling supports

me in reaching a goal as well. Okay. So

that that I think is really helpful for people,

in terms of and probably the most helpful thing you said is you only journal

2 minutes. Yeah. Exactly. But I

think of journaling. I think of sitting there and just, you know, going and go.

And I think that the other thing I think that it's really important for people

to know and I you know, is that in terms of in

terms of learning, there are 3 styles of learning. So there's a visual,

there's the kinetic, there's the audio. The majority

of us are visual kinetic, you

know, which means that you like to see it and you you have to

move. You you know, if you like to feel, you know, like, I'm, like, really

crazy. I'll go in and it's like, this doesn't feel right to me,

you know, you know, kind of thing. But that activity

of of moving actually moving your hand,

you know, and seeing what you're writing,

is really a great learning tool, which for me, like, the next step

in the journaling if I say start to put stuff together is I

love mind maps. There's some things for me that where, you know,

you put the goal in the center and then you draw the spike you know,

the spikes out with, like, what it you know? And you look at your list

that you downloaded, you know, if you if you're getting a planning strategic mode and

you go, okay. This is much more important than this. You know, it

doesn't matter if I wait 2 months on this. It just you know? But this

is something, you know, an opportunity is here. So for me,

you know, it's kind of like moving the pieces around. Anyway, alright. This

is what we have to do. Oh, but this is great because what you've just

described is also journaling. And so there's just

another way that somebody who just loves to do that more

brainstorming creative way, they could do it too and still be having

a journaling practice. Oh, boy. We

covered a lot of stuff. So anybody who's listening, you should be able to

get some ideas. And Candy has got a free gift for

us or a link. So before we run out of

time, let's let's talk about that. So I

have, a couple of ways. 1st, if you're okay if I share my

podcast because that's always the easiest way to come into

my world. If you like what Yvonne and I have spoken about, come

and listen to me on my show. Yvonne's been a guest a couple of times,

so you can find her episodes on there as well. And the show is

called she coaches coaches. It's on all the players, and

you'll see my face and my name on there as well. So that's the she

coaches coaches podcast, and I'd love to have you there. And

for a free gift, the easiest is to go to candiesfreegift.com.

So it's candies with an f, and s, free

gift dot com, Takes you to my free resources page, and there's

some journaling prompts on there that you can download. And, of

course, we'll put the that link in the in the in the notes. So,

real fast, your your surprise question. When was the

last time you did something new for the first

I

I am stuck because I do new stuff all the time,

but nothing is coming to the front of my brain. I'll tell you. The thing

that comes to the front of my brain is that when I turned, I think

I was just over 40. I took up ballet as

a hobby. And that was a bunch of years ago, but

that was something that changed my life because it

changed my way of

being. I got to be a newbie again. I got to be

terrible at something. I got to practice something that was

creative, that had no earthly value, and

it was really an amazing it was an amazing experience. So when are you

gonna do something like that again? I'm back

at ballet in September, and I also

have a new side business that I'm gonna be launching, and it's quite

different. So that's gonna be my my next new thing. Sounds

fantastic. I can't believe the time has gone so fast, but we

gotta tie this up. And so I have to put in the commercial part where

it says, you know, the first thing you wanna do is subscribe and share and

engage in the podcast community. And, you know, one of the

things that we're trying to do is give you those pieces that are gonna supercharge

your business. Oops. That are gonna supercharge your business.

Stop. And help you to make connection

in the community. Because one of the things that I found about doing the podcast

that I did not expect is how we're starting to grow a

community and support each other, and it's really been quite

wonderful. So I'm hoping that you're gonna continue to join me on the

one small change and embark on this amazing journey and

that, you know, if you haven't listened to the first episode or

other episodes, you can go to the, you know, the main page and and do

that. So what are your last words if you had to give us a

quote to to to to live by?

A quote to live by. Or just to get through the

day. Well, isn't that isn't it

always the same thing? To me so

Words To Live By is I think that podcasts are an amazing

vehicle. It is one of the things that I just I listen to

podcasts all day long, and I find them so helpful

because I learn stuff, but also this I feel more connected

and more part of a community, and it it it it

affects me more than anything. So for me, last

words is go and listen to some new shows, something you would never have

listened to before and see what you find out.

I you know what? I have to tell you. My this is not a podcast,

but it's YouTube. But when I finish for the day and I go downstairs,

inevitably, my husband's like, wait. I wanna show you something that I

found that is totally unrelated to anything.

I mean, the thing that we watched the other day was about why tadpoles

are still swimming around in September.

Because he passed he passed a frog pod and there were still tadpoles

in it. Anyway, alright. I gotta tell

you, and you know that this is true, that change can be

simple, but it isn't always easy. And if you're curious,

hopefully, you're gonna take that curiosity to help you change for the better.

But it does require some courage and some resilience and a willingness

to step outside your comfort zone to be able to benefit from it.

So continue to join me on the one small change. Let's talk about the

changes that you're making and all the innovative possibilities that

are out there, and I hope that you've enjoyed this as much

as I have. Candy, thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me. This was fun. Until the next

time, guys. See you again.