Last Seen Blogs
ideas-thought-and-things
Gonna Put Some Thoughts Here
happypuppypuppy
Slavic-wrestling
coreyjthomas-blog
My life, Your Entertainment
weasleywinchester
J.W.W.
tweaksworld
Tweaksworld
Text
The Truth of the Matter
“We can’t ask people to give to us something that we do not believe we’re worthy of receiving.” – Brene Brown
Since spending some time realigning my values into a better hierarchy, then jumping into a few personal rumble rings, we are back to talk about the mammoth subject of trust. I do not trust myself very much. Truth be told, I feel unsafe around most people, even my own family members sometimes. I’ve come far and long enough to know that this is a mental distortion that I have cognitively designed to protect myself from the repeating examples of betrayal throughout my lifetime. What I did not know was the deep impact trail that my lack of self-trust created in others. We cannot ask others to trust us if we cannot even trust our damn selves! Welcome back to the rabbit hole!
Trust is the polar opposite of betrayal. As with everything else there is a true duality that we must be aware of. Trust is built in the smallest moments. Checking in with a co-worker who is struggling with a sick parent or child. Remembering a friend’s grandparents name. Someone spilling their worst secrets and you never leak it. Letting someone cry their eyes out without any judgement or demands. The smallest moments create trust. The smallest moments create the biggest moments of betrayal as well, your choice. In a previous post, The Rules of the Rumble, I began breaking down Brene Brown’s BRAVING model. If you skipped or missed it, I highly recommend catching up on the last three posts!
I am going to use Charles Feltman’s definition of trust, as it is the best. He states that “trust is choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions... Distrust is deciding that what is important to me is not safe with this person in this situation (or any situation)”. Distrust is a safety concern. How can we take off any armor to rumble if we fear for our safety? Exactly. This is a hella fucking heavy word! One that I recently learned a completely new meaning of. Brene explains that the BRAVING model can help us to cut this beast up into an actionable steps, versus a large accusation when we feel unsafe.
Quick Review, just because I love you!
B = Boundaries (clear, consistent)
R = Reliability (over and over)
A = Accountability (owning mistakes and allowing for the mistakes of others)
V = Vault (confidentiality)
I = Integrity (choosing right over fun, fast, and easy)
N = Non-judgment (compassion, common humanity)
G = Generosity (assuming the most generous thing about a person)
I mentioned earlier that the vault is the glue that holds all this shit together, really it is the glue that keeps trust intact. It doesn’t exactly build the trust, it keeps it sustained through time, testing, and persistence. We as a nation suck at vaulting. We love tabloids, star news, the dirt, the embarrassment of others. Brene quickly discovered in her research that “a lot of times we share things that are not ours to share as a way to hotwire connection with a friend”. She calls it “counterfeit intimacy”. This feeling of “intimacy” is built on the simple idea that we hate the same people. Our closeness is built on talking bad about others. We become intimately involved by having a common “enemy”. You’ve done it. Don’t lie! That’s why this shit is important, ok?!?
Integrity is the medicine of vulnerability. Integrity has everything to do with you and nothing to do with any other impact. Not your environment, your circumstances, your friends, your health… It all depends on you. Brene used about fifteen years of research to write a three-part definition for Integrity. She defines it as “choosing courage over comfort; choosing what’s right over what’s fun, fast, or easy; and practicing your values, not just professing them”. It falls back on your values. It is all on you. Integrity feeds intimacy. Intimacy creates trust.
Judgement is a rough subject. We all judge people or situations as part of our survival. It is how we know not to go to certain areas after dark. Why? Because we are way better at being a help to others than we are at asking for help. We avoid risks that are perceived pitfalls because we are scared to fall- remember that’s what this series is, learning how to bounce. When we can completely fall apart without judgement, and ask for help, we are at our most courageous and vulnerable moments. When others trust us with them at their most vulnerable, we are our most vulnerable selves, creating the deepest levels of trust. The problem we have is that we have assigned a value measurement to those who need help. When you think to help someone, you perceive that they are less than you- you have something to offer that they do not. Hard truth. Be generous with your assumptions and get up close to check it out. As Brene says, people are hard to hate close up, move in.
Meet me back next time as we wrap up the bounce with how you pick yourself back up off your face. See you then!
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Most Dangerous Stories
“Who we are, how we love, how we show up, that is not between us and mortal people. That is between us and what we believe.” – Brene Brown
Yesterday, we set up the rules of engagement for a rumble, and today I promised that I would get into how to actually have these hard ass conversations without your armor on. This is part three of learning to bounce, and today it is all about your values and internal moral compass! Didn’t see that coming, did ya? Down the rabbit hole we go!
The rumble ring. The biggest point I can make here is that a rumble is not a fight. Quite the opposite, actually. What it is about is taking off the armor and being ready to work hard. It’s about battling yourself through the emotions of being vulnerable. It’s about listening in a way that we want to be listened to. To rumble, everyone in the ring has to be fully in it, or they are really just fans that belong on the sidelines. It will end up always being a fight if you let the naysayers in, don’t do that. It takes compassion, empathy, and emotional literacy to win this battle. Know how to set up your ring and who to invite to rumble!
Compassion. This is not just a default response to avoid sitting with someone else’s pain like we have been taught out here in the west. I despise most condolences after a death because they are a default response to protecting ourselves from feeling another’s loss. Bottom line. They are inauthentic ways to cope with not wanting to sit in the dark with someone else. It is the urge to flick on the lights or drag someone else out of their darkness. Compassion is the spiritual practice of understanding our own darkness and the darkness of others. Brene’s definition of compassion clearly states that we must understand that “knowing your darkness well enough that you can sit in the dark with other’s”, without feeling the need to act on our own “gritty underbelly” is the bottom line. Because we all have one, it’s our choice in our decisions. More on that down the page!
Empathy. This is the strongest tool that anyone could ever learn in regard to human synergy. It is also the baseline for compassion. Empathy is also teachable through four skill sets. Yup! You can learn and teach others how to be empathetic! Look at you, you super-being you! It’s hard as FUCK though! Just a heads up! Ha! Ready for the skill sets that Brene has unearthed from her mass of data?
1. Stay out of judgement: Your judgements are just the story you tell yourself based on your experiences. People’s judgements of you are just the story they tell themselves based on your behaviors and decisions. Get out of there! No one is right or wrong. Ever.
2. Perspective taking: Clearing judgement out of the way leaves room to get into someone else’s head. If someone ever gives you the opportunity to view them without the rose-colored glasses, grab every detail you can. Get the fuck out of what you think you know to be ready to learn.
3. Identifying emotion in others: You’ve been big mad lately, right? So have I, my partner, my kids… Respect the fact that everyone has feelings. They are right to feel whatever they feel. You cannot change how other’s feel. Emotions are not a directive. Emotions do not always need a response. We are identifying and feeling the reality that someone else faces. Nothing more.
4. Articulating an identified emotion: I’m overwhelmed. You will hear me say this beauty of a coping line a lot. Most times I default there because I don’t want to burden people with my negative emotions. I don’t want to share my wins with people who are struggling. Why? Because identifying and giving verbal understanding and grace creates a safe enough space to be authentic. This is what really drops the armor off. This is when you know you are ready to get into the ring.
Emotional literacy. Notice how this all has to do with emotions? Notice how we don’t really do that here in our western culture? See the fucking problem?!? Want a bigger one? Our values are just emotions in action, and we do not do that here! We do not do core values here, we do fitting in, and wonder why we don’t know how we ended up in this mess. “Your core values are the deeply held beliefs that authentically describe your soul” and if you do not understand the “feelings” you are having, you cannot ever live into your values. Period. That sucked! I know! Hold on, there’s more! Labels are not fitting here, only canned goods, remember? When we label a thing or a person, we put some people/things inside and some people/things outside based on the agreement we came to with our assumptions. This does not work. Instead, practice truly wanting to hear what someone else thinks, asking for clarity, making it a conversation about understanding and not a lecture about how you think about something. Ps: learn your emotions versus trying to suppress them.
Can you actually name what you value? Get out some paper and write down at least seven of your current values. Really, stop reading, and do it! Now, In that list, do you see why you have made some of the life decisions that you have? Example: Value one is financial stability. I value taking care of the needs of my family, so I work toward keeping an income. Easy, right? Well… what if you notice your decisions do not line up with your values? I work to provide financially for my family, but I value time I miss while working with them too. The hierarchy causes the conflict, not the value, which, in turn cause you to use willpower to fight against your damn self instead of being lead by your values! Yuck! How about instead, you shift the order of the hierarchy of your values? Remember, your values determine the decisions of our life.
As if that wasn’t heavy or long enough, as promised, we are now going to talk about the three most lethal, dangerous, destructive universal stories that we make up to go against our values. Buckle up! We’re going for the throat today! Brene discovered that the worst stories we tell ourselves “question our lovability, our creativity, and our divinity”. The biggest binding factor about these three items is that these are the very few things that another human can take from us. Anytime you question if you are loveable repeat this: “The ability, capacity, or willingness of others to love us” that has nothing to do with us. Nope! They are only the stories they tell themselves based on their experiences. It has nothing to do with you. First shitty story- handled! Whoop! As Brene points out “unused creativity is not benign, it metastasizes” itself into grief, shame, judgement and other really shitty things that are not yours to own. The truth of this bullshit is that the worth of your work does not change based on someone else placing value in it. True value comes from doing a thing for the pure reason of doing it. When it comes to our divinity, I will simply use Brene’s take because I could write an entire book here- there is NOTHING “that has the right to question our divinity”. Nothing. Burn all three of these pages.
I will let Brene summarize today with her words in lieu of my own as I work at tearing and burning some of my own pages.
“Living into our values means that we do more than profess our values, we practice them. We walk our talk- we are clear about what we believe and hold important, and we take care that our intentions, words, and behaviors align with those beliefs.” - Brene Brown
0 notes
Text
The Rules of the Rumble
“It’s very hard to have ideas. It’s very hard to put yourself out there, it’s very hard to be vulnerable, but those people who do that are the dreamers, the thinkers and the creators. They are the magic people of the world.” - Amy Poehler
I warned you that we would be talking about the loathed subject of vulnerability again today. It was at the top of yesterday’s list. Well, here we are! I wanted to stop here first because it is meaty. It is so meaty that I have purposefully left vulnerability breadcrumbs throughout the rabbit hole for you thus far. It is the biggest building block and if it is wobbly, everything you build onto it will be too. Brene Brown will be helping out again today with her BRAVING Checklist. You ready?!? Down the rabbit hole we go!
Boundaries. We all have those little lines of respect. We all have things that trigger us or set us off. Most of us, however, do not set boundaries effectively. We set boundaries for acceptance. Then the weight of the armor hits when one of our values or morals is smashed. It’s an ugly cycle. Brene gives us insight into boundaries by simply setting the rule: “You respect my boundaries, and when you’re not clear about what’s okay and not okay, you ask. You’re willing to say no”. Your boundaries should be clear, intentional, and protect your morals and goals. More on this soon!
Reliability. We all have at least one friend that you know you cannot ask for anything. You love them, just are unreliable. They don’t show up on time, if at all. They make a ton of excuses the few times you do actually ask for their help. They do things without thought or care when they do show up. You know you cannot rely on them. If you know how that friend makes you feel pushed aside, don’t do it to someone else. Brene’s rules on reliability are pretty logical: “You do what you say you’ll do. This means staying aware of your competencies and limitations so you don’t overpromise and are able to deliver on commitments and balance competing priorities”. It’s okay to say no when you cannot help/do not want to help, but if you can help, do it! And actually be bought the fuck in and present!
Accountability. We are humans, we error. We say things we don’t mean, do things we don’t think all the way through, and we all get emotionally lit from time-to-time. Admit it when it happens, when it happens. Better yet, preface that you are struggling before engaging with other humans, if you know you are. You impact everything, good or bad. Brene suggests that “[y]ou own your mistakes, apologize, and make amends” as soon as you realize the error. Long-term, if someone is in a tough position that they have to judge your character, they will remember that you do not lie to cover your mistakes as a rule, they lean into trust through experience. This is one of the biggest things you can do to aid in adding trust to your relationships. AND absolutely no chucking others under the bus to avoid your uncomfortable. That’s tacky and destructive.
Vault. This one! This! This is so fucking important! I’m passing the mic directly to Brene for this one: “You don’t share information or experiences that are not yours to share. I need to know that my confidences are kept, and that you’re not sharing with me any information about other people that should be confidential”. I’ve said it a hundred times, it is hard to put yourself out there. Imagine trusting to do that and the other person runs to tell that to everyone they know. Imagine the lost trust. Imagine the anxiety, pain and trauma. Even if someone simply asks “Hey! How’s so and so doing?” Do you know how they are doing, really? Is this your information to share? Really think about this because this one thing is the glue that holds the other checklist items together.
Integrity. We all want to be accepted. That’s how peer pressure pushes even the best-behaved teens over the edge everyday. Why? They are not bought into their values yet! So how on earth would they ever choose being morally sound over popular as a high schooler? They wouldn’t, but you would because you are no longer a high schooler, and you are way more courageous than that. Hard truth: “You choose courage over comfort. You choose what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy. And you choose to practice your values rather than simply professing them”. Or did you not mature quite yet? Asking for a friend! More on this soon too!
Nonjudgement. Again, we want to be accepted! We want to feel safe. We all need help getting our heads right form time-to-time. These are basic human needs. When someone comes to you with the story they tell themselves and you hear what you want to, you paint your own picture and deny them theirs. You deny them empathy to truly listen. You deny them the right to be heard and understood without your own shitty guttersnipe ruining it for them. Brene makes it clear by suggesting that: “I can ask for what I need, and you can ask for what you need. We can talk about how we feel without judgement”. Just shut the fuck up and enjoy the story! No “fixing”, no comparing to what you relate to, no rushing to make the point or trying to fill in the gaps, just listen to understand. This will change every single one of your relationships. Facts.
Generosity. I mentioned early on in this dive that most things that you think you know are wrong. They are your best guess at what you perceive based on your personal experiences/history/trauma. Our guesses can be close to the target, but the only way to get to the kill zone is to listen to each other with the intent to understand. To not assume the worst. To understand and believe that everyone is human and we all feel like we are not enough. The benefit of the doubt can be the most beautiful light in a dark cave. As Brene points out: “[y]ou extend the most generous interpretation possible to the intentions, words, and actions of others” if you are truly being generous with yourself the way you would want them to be with you. Think platinum rule here: treat others how they want you to treat them.
All of the above is referenced into trusting others, but also applies to boosting your self-trust as well. When we are interacting in the wilderness, we can be fooled by fear and arrogance. Leaning into the BRAVING checklist can be the pivot to create huge change. Tomorrow we will talk about building an appropriate ring for you to rumble bravely in. This includes having really hard and fucking uncomfortable conversations. Until then, I’ll leave you with this…
“You can change the world again, instead of protecting yourself from it.” - Julian Smith
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Bounce
Last time, we talked about automatic negative thoughts and the antihero: positive empowering thoughts. We learned some new tools and I spent the last few days practicing them, myself. You see, this is not just a blog connected to what I do. It is the actual unfurling of the learning I am doing within myself. It is a journey to undoing my own personal traumas and psychosis. I have made a deliberate decision to do this work in the most vulnerable way. It is hard. It is terrifying. It is a lot of reading and studying and masterclass dumps to get to the point of where we are in the rabbit hole right now. I decided to do this because I understand that we are not taught how to bounce when we fall. How to take a knee until we can stand. How to rise out of fear. Ready?!? Instead of a dive, today we are going to bounce into the rabbit hole.
Imagine with me that you are in a restroom. You are comfortable because it is clean, and you urgently need to handle business. Maybe that was too much coffee? Everything is fine, so you make yourself just about as vulnerable as a human can, and BOOM! The automatic lights go out! It’s dark now and you panic. You grab ahold of anything and possibly shout for help, ignoring the fact that you are completely indisposed. You hold tight to that rail and freeze. Why? Not because you are afraid of the actual fall, but because you are not sure how to get back up if you do. You cling to the fear and physically will not let go. You refuse the first step toward growth for comfort in safety. Welcome back! PS: This is an actual traumatizing story that most vertically challenged Zapponians can relate to- I’ll save the turn-styles for another day- not joking!
I will turn to Brene Brown’s research on vulnerability most of the times that we talk about this topic because of the quantity and quality of her research. It took her almost twenty years to discover what I disclosed above, and she has qualitive and quantitative data to put her money where her mouth is. Remember, I am a logical person who loves science, so her and I, we’ve got this! I am enlisting her help today by using her metaphor of the personal armor that we put on in the form of personal protection behaviors. The “mask” we put on when we are inauthentic is actually an entire suit of armor. This armor can be seductive to put on if we partake in things like people-pleasing, perfectionism, or the like. Brene points out that the armor weighs about a hundred pounds, but the resentment of wearing it weighs at least a thousand pounds. I know, right?!? So why do we keep putting this shit on? Because we are more terrified of not knowing how to get back up, than to let go of the fucking rail and walk out of the dark! There is a thin line between adversity and trauma. Choose adversity because you must let go to move forward.
It takes courage to be vulnerable. We’ve talked about this here a whole lot! But what the fuck is courage, actually? Well, it’s weird because courage is just a juxtaposition to vulnerability. Look! Courage: “the willingness to show up and be seen when you cannot control the outcome”. Vulnerability: “the emotions we feel during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure”. Same. Same. It took Brene so many years to have a “brave leader” tell her that they were terrified all the time. She found other “brave leaders” and found the same central theme. That they didn’t find a way not to be terrified out of their minds, they just pushed past it instead. What?!? Yes! In any risky situation, even the most calm war hero or proposing husband is equally fucking terrified. How do they do it? They understand that there is no such thing as courage without vulnerability. That it is a strength that keeps them out of the negative thinking loop of what if I would have shown up? Tried it. Took the risk. Remember that resentment weighs at least a thousand pounds. Get comfortable in the uncomfortable. It weighs less.
Good news is that in all of this pile of data came about the fact that courage is teachable, measurable, and observable. There are four simple key skill sets that are required that we are just not teaching as parents, educators, or friends anymore. This is why people stopped bouncing and started falling flat to stay there. It is not our fault, but it is our responsibility to self-correct. The next few days we will spend time breaking down the rules Brene discovered, but for today I will leave you with the skill-sets.
Rumble in your vulnerability
Know your values and living into them
Braving trust
Learning to get back up
See you next time!
0 notes
Text
Stranger Than Fiction
“I’m such an idiot! I can’t believe I said that! They must absolutely hate me! How will I ever recover from this? I hate it here!” We all do it. I’m guilty too. No one is immune to automatic negative thoughts. We all toss around these negative thoughts to allow us to imagine potential threats and problems. It is literally in our survival DNA to come to the worst-case-scenario. This gives us an opportunity to correct our behaviors to avoid harm, it’s necessary. We learned about a piece of this neural network last time, when we talked about loneliness. Today, we will really examine the sneaky little cognitive distortions that lead to chronic stress and body trauma. To do this, we must look at the story we tell ourselves to recognize our automatic negative thoughts. Ready for the dive into the rabbit hole? Here we go!
90 percent of the thoughts we have are habitual, that is, we have the same thoughts, daily, for the majority of our lives. What is shocking is that most of those thoughts are negative. Research has concluded that these negative thought patterns change the physical brain and our overall health. Any study done on chronic stress will prove this point repeatedly. The problem with automatic negative thoughts, or ANTs, is that they become habitual at a neurological level. We are literally creating physical neuro pathways to change the structure of our brain and thinking patters each time we engage with these thoughts. After some time, our behaviors and beliefs of logic change. Our mind convinces us that something is true that has no accuracy. Yikes!
Dr. Aaron Beck discovered “ANT thought streams” way back in the 1960’s when he was working with depression patients. They had very similar thinking patterns and stories that they told themselves about how they “fit into” the world. They had streams of thoughts in their heads most of the day about how they were not fit for the world and that they aren’t deserving of anything positive. He was able to narrow down thousands of repeat thoughts and separate them into three clear categories: They displaced negative ANTs about themselves, the world and the future. He quickly realized that the basis of these negative thinking patterns created a level of stress equal to a natural disaster for both our physical brain health and our mental well-being. Today, I will tell you that noticing your own personal ANTs and employing some tools to challenge and control them is an amazing return of investment to yourself. Turning off this useless, debilitating, negative chatter is one of the most powerful things you can do for your well-being. You are worth it, I promise!
Today I will break down the nine most common ANTs so that we can recognize when we may be off the rails. I will also give you four main tools to add to your toolbox that just may change how you think about most of the world. I advised you that this would happen here, so let’s just rip off the band-aid and get on with it, shall we?
Black and white thinking. We have already touched on the beast I like to call the “should monster”. This guy is the president of the always and never club. He tells us that things will always be this bad and that it will never get better. He completely misses all the good opportunities. He’s a jerk and a set-up. Quiet him!
Focusing on the negative. We all get into funks sometimes where everything just feels blah. Sometimes someone cuts us off in traffic and the entire rest of the day is a steaming pile of shit. Everything goes wrong and everyone is annoying. Noticed that? It’s not the world hunty, that’s you! Do the roses have thorns or do the thorn vines have roses? It’s up to you!
Fortune telling. No matter what they say to you, you know you will suck. You will bomb and everything that you imagined going wrong truly will. No one can change your mind, even yourself. You finish the project and get great reviews, yet still, you believe it failed. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point. See why you cannot get a different result here? You have decided to turn off your logic for fortune telling, why? Stop that. No one is that damn powerful!
Mind reading. “Oh, boy! I know they hate me! I can see it in their face. They look bored and pissed! Ugh! I know they absolutely cannot stand me right now”. Did you ask? Did you ever stop for a second and say, “hey, what are you thinking about”? I bet if you did you would learn that most people are thinking about their own ANTs a lot more than they are thinking about you. I know that probably stung a little, but the fact is that most people think about us way less than we think they do. Most times when they think about us, it is not in a negative light, but because they need help from us. Proven fact. Believe it!
Thinking with your feelings. You will hear me say it until you are sick of it: feelings are not directives, only warning signs. We need them but do not always need to act on them. It is okay to label and call out our emotions to try to reflect on the why, but this is where it must stop for your sanity. If you spend too much time here you create physical neuro pathways, remember earlier? Why the danger label? When you lay these pathways, you go from feeling something to actually becoming the feeling. This is a form of self-harm. Yes, again. I know!
Being ruled by should. Ah! The “should monster” strikes again! See why I call him a guttersnipe? He sits up on his pedestal and tells us how we should be doing things, thinking thoughts, caring for ourselves and others from his own level of survival. He’s a real Richard! We proved in an earlier post that guilting ourselves into change does not change behavior, see the alcohol and tobacco industry for quick examples. Guess what? It’s just more self-harm that actually demotivates you. Hard truth.
Labeling. Anyone who knows me understands that I struggle to label people. I have a hard time giving police an accurate description of people because I just do not label people or things. I cannot easily identify race, ethnicity, social status, and sometimes even gender because I have not practiced judging others on these things. However, I label the shit out of myself! Bad or aloof are two of my favorite labels for myself. What have I learned about this? Labels simply are thoughts that become self-fulfilling prophecies for yourself and ruin your relationships with other people. Labels have no place except on canned goods. Rip them off and throw them all away!
Taking things personally. As I mentioned with the sting earlier, people do not think about us as much as we think they do. When you see that someone is focused and engaged in their own mental turmoil it is so easy for us to assume that they are upset with us. We see their face, notice their body language. Hear their sighs of disapproval. Automatic thought: I must have said or done something to upset them. It has to be me because I looked at them. I noticed their turmoil so it’s me! Again, did you ask? Again, I bet it’s not even about you! They may be nervous about an upcoming presentation or meeting. They may feel ill prepared for a test. They may have gotten some bad news and not know how to process it… Most times, it’s not you! You’re not quite that important.
Blame. My alarm didn’t go off this morning, so it ruined my entire day. You didn’t call ahead to give me enough time, it’s your fault we’re late! Why didn’t you tell me right away? It’s your fault it got so bad! Sound familiar? It is easy to scapegoat people because we have a genetic need to be right. We need to be sure to feel safe. Truth is, you are the only person responsible for the condition of the pavement on your road. Only you. Own that shit! Sorry- not sorry.
I know that some of that hurt and it should if you do any or all of these things. Usually reflection and ownership feel a little bad at first. It’s okay. In fact, the only place we can start is where we are. How will we ever start if we cannot face the idea that we are only what begins us? Dr. Robert Emmons certainly can give us insight and hope through the practice of gratitude. He discovered that gratitude is the most powerful promoter of mental and emotional resiliency, while minimizing underlying negative emotions. It is easier said than done, though. Ready for the tools of the trade I promised?
Personify your own inner critic. You already been knowin’ he’s a shit. Give him a name and personality. This makes him real and gives you an added edge to get to know his ticks from outside of yourself. Take the time to really dig into who he is and how he is different from you at your core. He is a part of you but separate, make it that way mentally!
Get bored with his stories. We all have that one friend that tells the same three stories over, and over, and over, again. We know how to deal with that friend right? We deal with those same old repeating thoughts just like that friend. “Oh geezus! The same old story again dude? Really?!?” Eyeroll…
Reframing your “shoulds”. I should go run. Scratch that! I want to go run because I feel so much better after I do. I should go to work early. Wait! I want to get in early to gain traction on my day- I’ll get so much done! I should cook something healthy instead of getting take-out. No, sir! I am worth the time to make myself something that will encourage me to get me closer to my goals. Do THIS all the time. Never stop!
Countering ANTs with PETs. Positive empowering thoughts are the counterbalance to automatic negative thoughts. Remember everything that is negative has a positive, that’s the hope we find for change. This takes a piece of paper and a bit more work. This is one of the best tools you can use though, so worth the investment! Here how you do it:
Separate your page into three columns. The first one you will name “Trigger”, next “ANTs”, finally “New Thoughts”. In the first column you would place what triggered the ANT. Did you make a mistake, say something you didn’t mean? In the second column you will write your actual thought like “I suck because I messed up. I don’t deserve this job!” Finally you will take the time to write a new thought like “I am new at this. This is the first time I have done this and now I know what to do/not do next time. I’m growing”. The more you do this exercise the more you will understand your own ANTs and how to practice combatting them. You should quickly notice your common triggers and automatic responses. Super powerful! As with ANTs, PETs also create physical neuro pathways. Just like ANT’s, PETs can also become self-fulfilling prophecies. Go on now- do the fucking work, I’ll see you next time!
0 notes
Text
High Lonesome
“High lonesome can be a beautiful and powerful place if we can own our pain and share it instead of inflicting pain on others. And if we can find a way to feel hurt rather than spread hurt, we can change.” -BRENE BROWN
John Cacioppo has been studying loneliness for more than twenty years at the University of Chicago and describes it as “perceived social isolation”. We feel lonely when we feel disconnected or like our social interactions are meaningless. Take note here that loneliness is just an emotion, and like all the others, it is not a directive. Just a warning sign that we may need to seek out quality connection. That’s it, nothing more. Nothing less. Yet as Brene points out, “living with loneliness? It increases our odds of dying early by 45 percent”. An emotion has the power to physically harm us, can you believe it? How do we avoid it? We start by looking at how we got here… Down the rabbit hole we go!
There is a sigma in the western world around loneliness. Think about the term “loner”. What comes to mind when you think of it? An anti-social drifter? A criminal on the run? The shy kid sitting in the corner of the high school lunchroom? We have equated being lonely to something being wrong with us. We have linked it to shame. But how did we get here? That is the question at hand, right? Fear. “Fear of vulnerability. Fear of getting hurt. Fear of the pain of disconnection. Fear of criticism and failure. Fear of conflict. Fear of not measuring up. Fear.”
We’ve talked a few times about our survival wiring that drives us to feel like not being accepted is fatal. I mentioned how we needed to join tribes for protection for a while in early history. We discovered that it no longer is fatal to not have a tribe. I will mention today that the biggest fear people report to me is not feeling accepted. They are too scared of failure or constructive criticism to take a chance. This is the biggest thing that people who go to an empowerment coach mention. The fear, that is no longer fatal. This is because we are programmed right to our DNA to be happy and free from suffering. It is a basic human need. Like anything else in the rabbit hole, this is going against your wiring, and it’s going to be uncomfortable!
The funniest thing about loneliness is that it does not mean that you are alone. You could live in a crowded and loving family and still feel lonely. You could also be completely alone in your environment but not feel lonely at all. We live in one of the most connected generations in history, and yet, 46% of Americans reported feeling lonely regularly. And this was a pre-COVID statistic! You cannot protect yourself against loneliness because it’s part of your biology. Bottom line. Sucks right? Maybe not!
Social pain. Because it used to be fatal if we were rejected, evolution gave us the gift of this big guy to deal with rejection. Oh look! Another feeling, fun! It is just a warning sign that what you are doing may not be looked at the best by your social network. Rejection hurts because our brain thinks that we need to be accepted or we will die, even though consciously we know we will not. Social pain shares the same receptors in the brain as physical pain to help mold our behaviors to those in our social setting. It’s necessary but still not a directive.
If we look all the way back to the renaissance, we start to break all of this down to where we are right now. Fancy dresses. Top hats. Galas. Protestants engraining that each person had an individual moral responsibility through religion. The focus was removed from the tribe and placed onto the person singly. The industrial revolution further forced people out of their farming villages and into factories and mines. Today, in modern times, it is extremely usual to leave your social network for a job or educational opportunity. Once this happens, we frequently become busy in our careers and personal goals. We move about until one day we realize we accidently become lonely.
Isolation. The biggest problem with isolation is that it can become chronic. Especially as adults, it’s hard to create authentic connections. The scariest part is that once it becomes chronic, it can become self-sustaining. You turn to self-preservation mode, a.k.a. fight or flight. Others cannot connect with you because you are in defense mode and you continue to feel isolated. You further isolate yourself by declining invitations all the while asking yourself what’s wrong with you that people don’t want to be around you. Cycle ensues. Sound about right? What if I told you that people get medically sick and die when they are isolated? It’s true. Isolation is a form of self-harm.
Fitting in is not connection. One more time- being accepted by a group of people based on how you behave when spending time with them is not connection. Nope! Not it! We need three things to feel connected to another: our authentic self needs to be seen, heard, and valued. You cannot go out into the world and just find connection. It is not something that we can simply purchase or engage in on a whim. Connection requires us to go back to doing things we love and doing them with intention. It takes work and vulnerability.
The biggest catalyst to the public health crisis that we refer to as loneliness is the idea that we have to suffer alone. I am the first to admit that I am guilty of this. When I feel “off” or negative, I retreat. I hide. I run. I stop texting because I do not want to share my pain. This. Is. Bullshit! The biggest piece of it we were ever fed, actually. If we look to the places some refer to as “blue zones”, they live the longest and happiest lives. Some of these areas have seen the most war and natural disasters, yet they are happy, connected, and outliving most of the world! What gives? Ready for it?
They prioritize their connections by focusing on their relationship rituals. They share meals, with no cellphones, that last hours. They stroll in parks taking in the sunset together. They share wine and company on the couch sans the television. But there are three main things that really set them apart: 1. They talk to every and anyone they meet. The cashier, the bus driver, the shopper next to them. 2. They genuinely reciprocate by sharing about their authentic selves. They don’t simply disclose the title of the book they are reading and move on, but they share their honest opinions of the book and others like it too. 3. They lean into connections when they are in pain versus hiding alone. After spending all of this time and energy cultivating these deep connections, they almost automatically turn to their rituals after a tragedy. The shared meals, the grounding walks, the wine and laughter on the couch.
You understand that I numbered those to challenge you to pull them out and practice, right? See you next time!
0 notes
Text
You Know What? Fuck All Of It!
“I wept for the girl that I couldn’t comfort back then. The girl who didn’t understand what was happening or why. I wept for the parents who were so ill equipped to deal with my pain and vulnerability. Parents who just didn’t have the skills to speak up and comfort me or, at the very least, run an interception on the story of not belonging with them or to them. These are the moments that, when left unspoken and unresolved, send us into our adult lives searching desperately for belonging and settling for fitting in… not belonging in our families is still one of the most dangerous hurts. That’s because it has the power to break our heart, our spirit, and our sense of self-worth.” -BRENE BROWN
I took the week off. Not in the traditional sense that I went on a holiday or to a beach or a spa. I took a break from my own sense of busy. All the things I do as a mother: the washing, the cooking, the scrubbing, the gradebooks, the schedules. The things as a wife, a blogger, a coach, student. I didn’t do anything this week that did not serve my family or myself genuinely well. I did not try to solve any problems or dig for new solutions. I simply was available to who and what seemed the most important or valuable in the moment. I took the week off from the pressures of external expectations and I learned more than I could have in any book or masterclass.
We’ve talked about vulnerability here quite frequently. The love-hate relationship that we concoct with it. We’ve talked about the bravery it takes to be authentic. We’ve talked about the need to be authentic, how fucking important it is to the whole deal! But what we have not talked about is what happens when your fantasy doesn’t align with your reality. We haven’t talked about what happens when the truth means change or loss. We have not talked about what happens when you are not happy or your authenticity hurts other peoples feelings/expectations. I hope you took this time to reflect because back down the rabbit hole we go!
True Belonging. As part of my self-care this week, I re-read Brene Brown’s Braving the Wilderness. If you have not read it, I recommend you do! If you have, you will be familiar with some of the references today. I respect her work and her commitment to true research. Her and I are a lot more alike than I wish to admit, and the volume and quality of her research is almost diabolical. Brene believes that: “True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are”. Simply, if you want to be part of something real, you have to be real yourself.
Approval versus belonging. We are all hard-wired for approval. We proved this earlier when we talked about our need for tribes in early nomadic times. Rejection equaled death. Just as anything else that we have learned together in the rabbit hole, we need to go against the grain of our survival wiring. At least if we want to do more than just survive. Approval is just a generic brand of belonging. It is hollow and most times only accompanied by artificial value. It does not showcase your gifts or talents, it does not show how you think differently. It shows how you can do a good job pretending to be “normal”, it is not true acceptance. Acceptance brings belonging.
Ideological Bunkers. I do not have to use any examples to explain that we live in a world, fractured down the center, by our ideas. Our opinions. Our theories about how the world “should be”. It is true that the world is a war-zone. I will not argue that fact at all. I will argue that you do not need to stay in the bunker. It is not a fatal fight. In fact, the only way to end this war is to get out and sit with other ideals. I think we’ve clearly understood through this journey that most of what we think we know, it’s wrong! We need more experiences that do not support our own. Go get them!
Sitting with other’s pain. This is exactly how you get experience. You open your thick ass skull just enough to really hear and feel how someone else views their reality without your own ideas clouding it. I do this very frequently- coach stuff. However, I am not practiced at sitting with it. I always run to the solution. We have to fix it! If I can’t fix it, I research it, understand it better, look for new solutions. I’ve taken the same approach with myself, and guess what? This is wrong! This is the worst mistake as a coach that I could ever make. It is also what keeps me chickening out of running head-first into the entry of my own dark cave. This is where acceptance is fitting. No. Person. Needs. “FIXING”! We are not things. We need to be understood and accepted. It doesn’t seem hard, but I implore you to try it- Not a single suggestion, just sit there, and lemme know how that went, k? This is hard work!
Intentional Living. Brene has isolated three outcomes when our hearts, spirits, or sense of self-worth is broken: “1. You live in constant pain and seek relief by numbing it and/or inflicting it on others; 2. You deny your pain, and your denial ensures that you pass it on to those around you and down to your children; or 3. You find the courage to own the pain and develop a level of empathy and compassion for yourself and others that allows you to spot hurt in the world in a unique way”. Just as she mentions herself, all three have been broken in me, and all three outcomes ring very true. This is the only solution to “fix” you, to break dysfunctional, generational, and family curses. You have to be BRAVING. See you next time!
0 notes
Text
The Tribe Of The Lost
I used to think I knew what I was here to do. When I was really small, it consisted of wanting to help sick animals. That slipped away when I discovered science and engineering. That’s actually why I love food the way I do- it’s a science. It’s logical and I feel in control of the process. I was supposed to go to culinary school directly out of high school. That, too, slipped away. I didn’t learn the lesson that I am a student until after I was already a mother. Of course, I chose the ultimate people-pleasing career: nursing and then into special education. I could heal others so that I didn’t have to heal myself, it was perfect! That slipped away too, as all things do. All things change with time, including people. I have changed greatly from the little girl who didn’t want to see animals suffer, but I still worry that I’m not enough, just as she did.
I have a hard time sitting with myself at times, but I’ve grown fond of isolation, it’s safe. I have an even harder time telling myself the same things that people come to me for. I can actually create measurable change in other people’s lives, but I cannot nudge my own. Can you imagine how much doom comes with that knowledge? I thought that coaching people was good for me. It’s exhausting. I thought that writing here was good for me. It has damaging effects: being transparent. It feels like it is slipping away.
I thought I was happy recently. I really felt like this was the closest I’ve ever been to being whole again. I thought I had grown just enough to see the light. Little did I know that it was just another story I tell myself. It’s slipping again and it is so uncomfortable. Last time I talked about my life being strings of really high highs and low lows, welp. I think that was just the high before the crash. That’s how it goes, right? Up then down.
I honestly wasn’t ready for a crash of this magnitude, though. It is the type of breakthrough that tears a piece of you away that you will never get back. This is honestly not the first blow like this recently, but the greatest, for sure. When you wake up one day and realize that what you thought something was, isn’t what it really is, that distorts reality. That distorts you at the core in a way that cannot be undone painlessly. It feels fatal and so uncomfortable!
Ready for the head-first plunge down the hole? Ready? Nothing slips away. Our effort correlates directly to our focus. What we put our focus on is what becomes us. Mental spins work because we let them! Here I am preaching to the choir about how the brain works and I still spin. Yes, I do, because of my mental scripts, my experiences. The ones I allow in, anyway. That is how you undo everything that you thought you knew. That is how you come up from the rabbit hole of insanity. You realize that it was you that was wrong all along. You get in your wilderness and do the fucking work. Andy Mineo said it best: “Aint that the truth, the only way I lose, I got two choices when I do this- make moves or make excuses. If you know who I’m talking about, then you got me. My biggest enemy is me, and even I can’t stop me.” What story are you telling yourself today? What pieces of you should be cut away? See you next time!
0 notes
Text
Engaging Shields And Swords
“The sad truth is that man’s real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites- day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil. We are not even sure that one will prevail over the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy will defeat pain. Life is a battleground. It always has been, and always will be.” -CARL JUNG
I struggle with authenticity. This is a common side-effect for someone who thinks from a co-dependent mind frame and/or has been emotionally abused in the past. Most days, I struggle to feel any other thing than obligation, what I “should” be doing, feeling, and thinking to be “normal”. That is rough on your relationships. Trust me, there’s residuals. My life has never been easy and I’m grateful for that. It has always been this string of really high highs and really low lows. I have learned ways to embrace this mountain-like terrain that we call life, but I still struggle from time-to-time.
I sit here today empty, trying to undo my present insanity. Memories and events replaying through my head like a streaming service without ads. It’s overwhelming to sit, ripped open, looking at the shit that you have personally left unattended. But it’s necessary. We all have a bag of experience that we lug along and need to clean up after when it spills. We share it’s contents with everyone else when we unpack it and get comfortable. Have you looked at the bottom of your own bag in a while? Do you know what’s in there? Reflection gets it’s own section! Down the hole we go!
No one really expressed feelings in my household growing up and when they did it was usually anger. Consequently, I have learned that I can keep my own feelings down and blocked, then no one gets triggered, at least by me. It saved me from a lot of angry attacks as a child. I wrote, in a very early post, that my stepfather’s death was extremely traumatic for me, and that I made it through that to become this anxious person you see here. When he passed, the main message that I received after an emotional break-down was that I needed to be strong for my mother. It was her loss and it was more important than mine. I was “being overly dramatic”. I understand now, that was the moment that I got lost.
I started therapy as a pretty young child. I couldn’t be honest in my sessions for a long time because the truth of my situation was abusive. I knew how to push things down to not become a trigger for anyone else. To make sure I wasn’t being “overly dramatic”. Too keep everyone calm, to “save” them from themselves. While in therapy I heard every way that I was broken. I was labeled and told “better” ways to think through things or respond. I think I left therapy more damaged than I went in because it just reinforced the idea that I am not “right” or that I am broken. They mutated me into the ultimate people-pleaser by telling me time and time again that my feelings were not valid, I was wrong, selfish. This path was so effective that here I sit today, truly not sure if I’m sad or angry.
I mentioned the other day that people like me can sit in a crowded room and still feel lonely. This is only soothed when the person can actively become “helpful” to do something to bring value, it’s inauthentic. We do not trust our minds, why would we share some off-the-wall thought we had about something. It’s wrong anyway, just stay quiet. Down it pushes. We don’t want to share how we feel because we don’t know exactly what it is that we are feeling. Is excitement or fear? We have no fucking clue! No other choice but to push it down and put on the one that seems appropriate right now. This creates an extremely resilient face for the world while we walk around not knowing if we’re hungry or nauseous. We. Get. Lost.
Opening up the bag and dumping it on the floor and actually picking through shit is the only way to “fix” this, at least that I have discovered. If there were a less painful way to do this, believe me I would, but this is it. The only way to do this is through reflection. Life is a process, a battleground. It is a battle waged in the self. You are your own greatest ally and enemy depending on how kind you are to yourself. Decide what to keep moving forward and how to throw away what is just weighing you down.
Sigmund Freud believed that we unconsciously attribute elements of our own self to other people or groups as a coping mechanism. That’s why we try to hang around other people who are doing what we are interested in. Simply he believed that “Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we discover in our neighbor, and we treat him accordingly”. This of course has a positive and a negative energy to it, just as everything else does. It encourages us to keep going without too much change when it is positive. It is the base of validation. It is also what enforces racism and intolerance on the negative side. Just as the kindness coin, there are two sides to authenticity. Understanding that we are also two sides can help us to understand how our particular behaviors result in actual impacts. Everyone is impacted by us whether we want them to be or not. I know you think the bag is secure, but know, it will spill. I’ve got a lot of junk to clear out of my own, why not give yours a face-lift too?
0 notes
Text
Where The Hell Do You Think You’re Going?
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” – LAO TZU
I am the ultimate people pleaser. I am codependent, so I have actually convinced myself that I can feel other’s pain, disappointments and losses. I frequently forgo taking care of my needs to fulfill the anticipated needs of other’s around me. This got exponentially worse once I became a mother. I’ve allowed myself to get so lost in anticipating and carrying out what I think other people might need, half of the time I don’t even know what my own needs are! Big breakthrough- Yikes!
The biggest problem with people pleasing is that it is generally positive. We use it as a tool to create harmony and connection with other humans, especially when we know they are in pain. Other people enjoy it and our company because we keep them happy. We settle into finding our value in how others perceive us. That is not where self-worth comes from, so the toxicity of it all destroys us through exhaustion, resentment and loneliness pretty frequently. Even in a crowded room we feel alone because every connection we have is inauthentic. Pretty murky, huh? No worries though because kindness is the hero for today! Down the rabbit hole we go!
If we go all the way back to when we were cave people, chillin’ with the dinosaurs, hunting and foraging for survival, we see tribes. Bands of people who gathered together for protection from predators, to pool limited resources, and to share the work that was required to sustain life. It helped us to evolve and have time and mental space to create things like fire, art, and tools. We understood way back then that we needed each other to survive, that not being “accepted” meant certain death. Fortunately, we are at the top of the food chain now and rejection is no longer fatal. It may be uncomfortable feeling inadequate or unlovable, but it is no longer fatal. We have just simply been molded to fear rejection, abandonment, conflict, and criticism. Stop that! It’s bullshit!
Kindness is the sort of invisible currency that creates happiness, authentic connection, and value. It is also the positive link to undo people-pleasing behaviors. Hard truth: If you want more kindness in your life, you have to start by being more kind to yourself first. In order to meet other’s needs and expectations, we must meet our own first. At least if you want sustainability in your life. Any time we minimize or suppress our feelings or needs to make someone else happy or comfortable, we are killing ourselves and them in the process. We enter this wheel where we give constantly and lose our vulnerability. Others lose the real us. How can you become what you want to be when you are still attached to who you’ve been?
When our needs go unmet, we begin to physically deplete. If we keep siphoning ourselves long enough, we begin to feel exhausted, sick, irritable, resentful, discouraged, and hopeless. We become toxic to ourselves and everyone around us. What do we actually need though? I know we could all name off the easy ones like food, water, clothing, sleep, shelter… The ones that most people forget or are quick to neglect are things like a sense of belonging, connection, being understood and accepted, physical affection, mental stimulation, spiritual enlightenment… these are all needs too! Are you really meeting your needs?
When you know that you are doing the “right thing” you don’t really care too much what other people think. Have you noticed that? This simply happens because what you are doing is aligned with your personal values. You do not feel insecure. We only feel the need for external approval when we are unsure or conflicting with our values. We need that approval from others to tell us that we/what we’re doing are okay. Humans rely a lot on reciprocation. We even have a tendency to feel the need to respond to a situation favorably when someone has been kind or helped us in the past. We perceive they have done something kind/helpful for us, so we must do the same because it’s the “right thing” to do. This is the art of kindness. Doing things with no expectations. Just simply doing what you are compelled to do in the moment. The art of focusing on the well-being of someone else. The ability to do something for someone else, not because they can’t, but because you can.
Have you ever been in a public toilet to discover the fear of finding zero tissue? Ever had someone pass some under the stall? Most people claim that this is the biggest act of kindness they can recall. Why? Vulnerability. Deeper understanding is built inside empathy. Empathy comes from sharing other’s pain and understanding that gratitude means that what you put out, you get back. The way we express kindness is very different from person to person and based mostly on our experiences growing up. If we were taught to be gentle and kind to our siblings, we grow up showing kindness through gentle and kind gestures as adults. If we were taught kindness was showering someone with gifts as a child, as an adult, we shop to make others feel good. There is a momentum to kindness. We have an easier time asking someone for help that has helped us before because they empowered us. Kindness is empowerment into bravery. It’s important! Was kindness taught to you growing up as a priority like academics, career goals, sports?
Remember when I said that this is all about being kind to yourself earlier? I meant that! As a people-pleaser I am already really good at being kind to others, myself though, not so much! One big question initiated a challenge: How would my life change if I met my needs? Based on that simple question, I have challenged myself to a thirty-day random acts of self-kindness challenge. Every day I will do a random kind thing for myself on the basis of internal validation. I will only do things that build me up toward my goals. I will practice saying no when I know the requests of me are not my responsibility. I will stop feeling bad and apologizing for saying no because I know my value does not rest here. I will ask people for time to consider requests before responding to break old mental scripts that I “have to” say yes. I will start saying no to other’s lives by saying yes to mine. This way, I’ll actually have a cup to pour from. Can you imagine the potential!?! I’ll end today with this: Where do you want to be? What are you doing to get there?
0 notes
Text
Assets And Liabilities
Last time, we dove into the death-awareness mindset rabbit hole. That is, the idea that we have to obtain certain metrics or reach a certain social status before we die to feel fulfilled. We’ve talked a lot about what fills in our psychological profile along this journey together so far. We’ve slowly dug through the darkest recesses of the few things that set us apart from the ferocious animal kingdom. We’ve targeted just how little control we have over our environments. We’ve learned that our thoughts have more control over us than anything else in our environment. The question today is: Is your mind an asset or a liability? Welcome back!
Acceptance and commitment. Our family mantra reads “It is what it is” and we frequently add things like, “… now make it do what it do!” or “… now what?” when things go sideways. And they do. Often. If there is no control to have, you need to focus on what you can control, and that’s always only one thing. Yourself. Choose micro-changes that serve you and the mission you are on. Do them daily and they create momentum. Momentum creates sustainable change.
Sea legs. You cannot expect yourself to be confident and perfect when doing something new. You’ve never done this before! Giving yourself the time and grace to adjust to your new legs at sea is so hard to most because it requires you to open up. To stop hiding your vulnerability in being busy. The best way to accomplish this is to stop problem solving. Mistakes are not the end of the world; in fact they are usually the best line of sight that confirms that it’s time for a pivot. You have to take time to rally for yourself when growing. When you find you can’t, you have to find the support system that will rally for you.
Comfort is found at the feet of gratitude. Self-sabotage happens when that old friend, the super-ego comes around asking you who exactly you think you are. If we tell ourselves that we do not deserve something, no one, no matter how powerful they are, can change that fact. However, science shows us that people who make authentic connections have better success beating life’s roadblocks. All of this neuro-pathway interaction we learned about is actually the greatest enemy of change. We are going against our survival wiring each time we grow. The mental pivot is actually just a simple mindset swap of moving from busy to intentional. Are you setting out to do this thing on the premise of the desire to know, appreciate, or help? If not, it’s not intentional.
The wagging finger. When did it start for you? When was it that you began feeling not enough, too much, inadequate? I bet you were pretty small, huh? Me too. This is the realized problem in the mirror. When you are beating yourself up about a mistake or a perceived short-coming, you are talking to your self as a child. Would you talk to any other child the way you talk to yourself? I bet not! This is the blame and shame game that we play with the expectations crew. The only way to quiet this jerk is through intention.
Becoming an optimal realist. Nothing ever just magically changes without some force applied to it. That is a law that even gravity follows. Nothing is ever perfect, people let us down, jobs end, things change. we must understand that when things “happen to us” we are not under attack, we are just getting a nudge from our moral compass. Only then can we can start on a path toward looking at how we can still win. What can move forward with us to bring value into our lives? Intentionally living and choosing to spend time doing the smallest things to move you toward your goals instantly kills the “victim of circumstance” mindset. Victims never win.
Serving yourself well. I broke down self-care using Brittany Spears as an example, if you missed it, go back! It’s worth it, I promise! To reduce redundancy, I will say this a bit brutally but very clearly. Pain and purpose are just two separate sides of the same coin. You cannot throw one away without losing the other. Learn to stop telling yourself that everything will go well once you “fix yourself” because life does not have a delete button. You can live now without “getting rid of” that thing. Maintain daily momentum by using your time to do the things that lift you up. Maintain momentum instead of just coping. Pivot!
I’ll end today with this: “The point of life isn’t to be perfect, it’s to be a great student.”– MARK GROVES
0 notes
Text
Imma Need You To Drop The Title
We have been convinced that the opposite of success is failure. It’s when we miss the mark. When we do not fill the “fantasy” that we have created of how things “should be”. We look at our results and the consequences that we have faced based on our past decisions and create a snapshot of our value based upon it. Some people at least find that they have created value in what they do. They are a decent employee, partner, parent, therefore they are successful. Truth be told, this is a mindset for empty success. We’ve already learned here that results do not bring happiness, they only inspire us to crave more. Jezus! It’s a hamster wheel of epic proportions! How do we get off this stupid thing? Welcome back to the rabbit hole!
Fulfillment. Turning to oxford, we will define this one thing that everyone devotes their time and energy toward. “1. the achievement of something desired, promised, or predicted 1b. satisfaction or happiness as a result of fully developing one’s abilities or character 2. the meeting of a requirement or condition 2b. the performance of a task, duty, or role as required, pledged, or expected”. Notice some catch words here? Achievement, performance, expectation… Definition one refers to the idea of meeting social norms/metrics and becoming our “best self” as a finish line. Remember: the only finish line is death, hard truth. The second part of this definition is completely delusional. It is delusional because it is simply the expectation that we have created of what we think we are “required” to do based on our stressors and responsibilities. We inadvertently link our value/fulfillment to our identity. What we do becomes who we are! Yuck!
Evolution teaches that if we develop ourselves into our fullest (or at least better) potential, we will reap social rewards such as respect and affection. We all like these rewards and it happens in nature too- the strongest lion always gets the best mates! The problem with this whole line of thinking starts with the very biological lines that make us human. If we perceive that our status is low, we lower our self-esteem. This creates a snowball effect because our self-esteem is our biggest driver toward motivation. Motivation leads us to our purpose through growth. Without a purpose, we are empty. If we feel empty, entropy ensues.
“For me, what I’ve learned is that it’s not what you’re ‘called’ or ‘what you do’ that matters, whether it’s one thing or many throughout your life. It’s what you bring.”
The psychological portfolio. If we think about all of our trauma and coping mechanisms over the span of our lives, we would call that our portfolio. The more positive trauma and healthy coping skills we have experienced, the better the outlook of our future return of investment. Most of us suffer from a death awareness mindset that is based on beating deadlines, because that is exactly what we’ve been trained to do. Overcoming metrics to prove ourselves to be valuable before we die. This is so extremely toxic because it is the polar opposite of a self-care mindset, which is what we need to get away from death-awareness. Bulking up our portfolio base is only supported through a self-care mindset.
Expectations. They make us oh so comfortable and cause such extreme anguish all at the same time. We expect that when we get on the city bus, we are safe, because our driver is well trained and seasoned. We expect that our job will pay us on the pre-established pay dates. We expect things from ourselves and others without ever really realizing it. We form these expectations out of perceived consequences and results based on our personal experiences. Plus, we add in our emotions to create the snapshot I mentioned earlier. Our expectations are just guessing about how we think things “should be” based on our own experiences. They are a delusion of having control over our environment. Nothing more.
The only way to get off the wheel is through the wilderness. You have to be willing to be uncomfortable. You have to be willing to live here, in the present, to make intentional choices. You have to be willing to serve whatever your internal compass nudges you to do. You have to be willing to silence expectations and stop giving them power over your right to choose. You have to be willing to seek out feedback and growth, even if that means criticism. People only come to feel self-actualized through finding, keeping and repairing their relationship with their true self. You have to be willing to serve yourself first so that you can bring your whole self to whatever it is you are doing. This is the only way to understand who you actually are and what you should be doing. No quotations around “should” this time. Are you willing to pivot? That’s what’s coming up next time. See you then!
0 notes
Text
The Arena
I cannot even count the number of times I’ve wanted to close this laptop. To just stop writing. To go back to what was easy, what I’m good at already. A guaranteed paycheck and medical benefits; instant feedback and quarterly reviews. It’s so hard to write the way I do. I give every bit of vulnerability and commitment of study to these pages. It’s hard to invest into my clients the way I do. I’m an empath and absorb a lot of the shrapnel that is blown about during change. I also have a family and the load of responsibilities that come with the role of wife and mother. Plus, chronic illness just waiting to flare-up. It’s hard to keep the momentum forward because it’s all so fucking stressful! But what exactly is stress?
Lazarus and Folkman defined psychological stress as “a particular relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding his or her resources and endangering his or her well-being”. Simply, it is the self-created rationality that you cannot cope with whatever is happening in your environment. The trouble with the stress response is that it manifests itself into physical responses. Your body alarms you that something is wrong to get you to act in a way to defend yourself from the conceived threat. It’s a great response for say- outrunning the neighborhood bully. Not so good for us if we are exposed to it for extended periods of times. So then what? We dive back down the rabbit hole!
Western philosophy and psychology have turned stress into the enemy. They teach us all the bad things it can do to our body and tell us to deactivate it. Get rid of it. There’s thousands of YouTube videos that contain the phrase “manage stress”. Again, the standard, flawed teaching is that we need to avoid discomfort in leu of growth. Instead of the thinking that we get better when exposed to stress, we look for how to cope with being uncomfortable in the moment. Stress is a response and instead of strengthening this muscle, we choose to put it in a dark corner. We don’t like to be uncomfortable, remember? What we know about stress is that it releases the hormone oxytocin, the same one that makes us social. The one that primes our relationships, motivates us to get help, and actually repairs the heart muscle. Wait. What? I thought stress hurt our hearts?!? Just sometimes, it turns out.
What if instead of viewing this response as uncomfortable, we view it as a sign of our body preparing us for a new challenge? What if this energy we feel pulsing in our chest is just our body preparing us with more blood and oxygen to defeat the dragon in front of us? We would still feel our hearts pounding, but the simple act of looking at stress as helpful, physically changes the vessels surrounding the heart. They do not restrict- scientifically proven. We can actually change our physical responses to stress by simply changing how we think about it! An eight-year-long study was conducted with over 30,000 people. They were asked two simple questions- How much stress have you had over the last year and do you believe that your stress is harmful to your health? What this crazy study found was that the people who believed that stress affected them negatively had a 43% increased death rate. The people who did not believe that stress affects their health remained unchanged, even if they reported higher levels of stress the previous year. This would have made the 15th leading cause of death that year the belief that stress harms your health.
Shame and guilt. We have to talk about these next. I know, yuck! But they have been linked as the main two things that cause stress so great that most need help coping, so it’s necessary. I do not care if you tell me that your stress comes from your job, your relationship, your children, the traffic… At the end of the day, if it’s intense stress, the root cause will stem from shame or guilt. Shame is an epidemic in our culture due to competitive expectations. Shame is the little gremlin in your head that tells you that you aren’t good enough or that you are “bad”. It says that the self is “bad”. Most of us fall into this trap when we felt a personal responsibility to prevent a trauma. Whereas guilt says “I did/said something bad”, it stems from our behavior. Guilt usually motivates us to be better or to repair a relationship. Shame and guilt are connected through what they need to grow inside us. They both require judgement, secrecy, and silence. It is our inner critic that only has two lines that repeat constantly. The first is “You’re not good enough!” This is the most common one liner he has. With a bit of practice though, you can subdue him to make it to his next favorite line: “Who do you think you are?” This is the one that we usually cannot recover from.
Empathy is the only antidote for shame and guilt. Vulnerability is the path back to ourselves and to each other. It is deciding to take an emotional risk for a huge return of investment. Vulnerability is the most accurate measurement of courage. When we look at stress as helpful it creates a biological change toward courage. The hormones we release drive us to connect, to seek out help sometimes. This connection is what drives resiliency and the motivation to push forward. It’s a loop toward growth. Learn to trust yourself and know that there’s no need to face it alone. I’ll leave today with this: “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred with dust and sweat; who strives valiantly; who errs and may fall again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming”. - Theodore Roosevelt
0 notes
Text
Sick Of The Bullshit
“Recognizing truth requires selflessness. You have to leave yourself out of it so you can find out the way things are in themselves, not the way they look to you or how you feel about them or how you would like them to be… As conscious beings, we exist only in response to other things, and we cannot know ourselves at all without knowing them.” – HARRY FRANKFURT
We spoke earlier about positive image versus clear image. We found at the end of that crazy rabbit hole, the fact that we will always choose the positive images over the clear image. It gives us less to consider in regard to risks. It empowers us to continue forward with momentum because it is already known and comfortable because we feel “right”. I am going to ask again, the very first question I asked at the start of this blog series: Are you ready to challenge everything you thought you knew? Down the rabbit hole we go!
Analytical versus critical thinking. We all think they are the same thing, I know. Are they related? Yes. The same? No. Analytical thinking has to do with using what you already know to make sense out of complex things. In the process we use our conceived reality to break down new experiences and classify them in such a way that WE come to “understand” them. We are simply making a conclusion of what we think is going on, based on what we already have experienced. Critical thinking however, involves mostly the gathering of new information. We ask questions, consider new possibilities and ultimately test a new way to view the world. We do not use what we know to be true, we seek out something new and unknown. A lot of times when this hand-off happens, we move into creative thinking. Most times, we create something new. A book, painting, character. The biggest problem is that most people only use lateral, analytical thinking skills.
Hard truth: You will choose your friends and acquaintances based on how many similarities you have. Your best friends will become people that like the same foods, same books, same music, they will have the same thinking pattern. It is comfortable being around shared ideals. It is easier than needing to defend your viewpoint against an opposing one. Deep down we all just want to be accepted. But you do not grow here. Not at all. The opportunities are found in the valley, not the peaks.
Change is growth. We have convinced ourselves that we do not like change. Why though? Simply, it’s all about statistics. We fear change because we aren’t completely sure of the outcome. It’s something new that we do not have data/experiences for. When we do not know, we make something up to gain control. A lot of times, the gutter-snipe, the super-ego, makes us run directly to the worst case scenario. We sit and stew in the reality that we have created and cannot move on. The human brain needs closure to move forward- scientifically proven.
A lot of times, we avoid making a change because we are not willing to “give up” something old to make room for the new. If we decide this is the year we are cutting alcohol, we run right to the idea that we will lose friends. We will not have fun going out anymore. We will not be invited once people know. We will be seen as a party pooper. We worry about what others will think about the new version of us. Emotion-based decisions will almost always be wrong because you are using old data for a new experience. Research has found that most people would rather be unhappy than uncertain. What then? Just get critical with it!
Our brain is wired to run to the worst case. Let it go there. Yes, really! Come up with every scenario your reality can conjure up- If I go get tacos this late my car will blow up and set the whole block on fire. Everyone will die! Okay, I know this is far-fetched, but it is our example for today. Write them down, all of those “realities” we make up. Write down what actually happened in the past too. All of this is important.
We spoke earlier that control is one of our favorite illusions when we feel unsure. We honestly do not have much control of our environment, our only role here is to put things into perspective. How much control do you really have over tacos being your final fate? How much of this can you own? Can you actually will your car to blow up? Is the weather bad? Is it a far drive to the taco stand? Is there something mechanically wrong with your car? Are you a terrible driver? What control is real and what emotions come up when you think about how much/little control you have?
Accepting that most things are beyond our control is the first step. Any support program will teach you that acceptance is the first step to recovery. “My name is Melissa and I’m so addicted to tacos I will blow up for them” is exactly where we start. Making it clear that I will risk burning down the block to crunch into perfect deliciousness convinces my brain that the risk is worth it.
I have been to the taco stand at least a hundred times. Not one of those times has my car blown up. That’s positive trauma. This particular taco stand knows exactly how much cilantro and lime is appropriate for your carne asada fries. Positive trauma. It’s BOGO night, more tacos for me! More positive trauma. Focusing on positive trauma will help balance the fear of the unknown with known facts so that you have the courage to move forward.
I cannot control my car, the traffic, the weather. I can mitigate the risks I foresee by developing an action plan. I know I need the tacos in my life but cannot control the risks it takes to get them into my mouth. Is driving to the taco stand the only option I have to take action? Absolutely not! Looking for alternate ways to complete a task that is riddled with potential issues sometimes requires some assistance. Sometimes we need to do research, planning, or even phone a friend.
The human brain is easily overwhelmed with too much data. It is completely normal for us to feel like there’s too much happening too quickly when we go through any change. It is hard for us to divide the logic from the emotion when we are knee-deep in our own shit. We easily become blinded by emotion and we know what happens when we make decisions based on emotion- epic fail. Sometimes we need to get a better line of sight by involving another brain that is not in the thick of it to find the logic. We all must seek support in dealing with our stress from time-to-time. Enter: Uber Eats. Save me, big guy!
Change is stressful. Growth is stressful. Feeling “out of control” is stressful. Letting go of bullshit is stressful. Full disclosure: being uncomfortable is the way. Next time, we’ll dive down the stress rabbit hole and how to actually manage it, not just deactivate it. See you then!
0 notes
Text
Hurricane Warning
”A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for.” – JOHN A. SHEDD
I have suffered from anxiety for pretty much as long as I can remember. It used to be so bad that I would sometimes have panic attacks that would require medical assistance for me to breathe through. I’m almost always sweaty and never completely still. I avoid stores, gatherings and eye contact. It’s much easier for me to send an email than to attend a zoom meeting. I’ve been prescribed medications and self-medicated. I’ve been labeled and evaluated. I’ve done everything that I could conjure up in my crazy head to make the anxiety just go away. And this, my friends, is why no matter the method, it failed. Anxiety is not a medical condition; it is an emotion. Welcome back to the rabbit hole!
Western philosophy states that if you have anxiety, you have the choice of two fates: You medicate your “illness” or you “get over it”. Again, we can easily find both of these ideas to be false. There are only two types of people in the world who do not live with anxiety and they are both very easy to spot. The first group is dead people. Pretty obvious without any explanation. The second are psychopaths. They lack the empathy to understand any responsibility of their/other’s actions. The biggest problem with this idea of labeling anxiety as a disease is that it creates a new pool of anxiety for the anxious! Now they have a laundry list of new worry: appointments, medication refills, vulnerability in counseling, medication side-effects, fears of becoming dependent, and the actual label that something is “wrong” with them is the cherry on the top of this sundae.
Imagine with me a ship caught in a storm. You are the captain of this ship. It is the conscious part of the psyche for this example. Now imagine your crew, or subconscious. The main job of your crew is aid you with past experiences to advise you the best decision to make toward your survival. They sometimes get it wrong because of our old traumas, but the main strategy of happiness is always forefront for the crew. They are your most trusted friends.
Anxiety is not an illness; anxiety is just an emotion. A little warning that something is important and needs our attention. You are not ill. Anxiety is not a random occurrence, it is there for a reason, and it would be terrible if you did not have it. I mean, dead or psychopath?!? This is the foundation, accepting that perfectionism and indecision are a set-up for failure. You take control of it when you decide that you refuse to believe you are ill. Because you are not.
This storm you are facing as captain of this ship is honestly just your fear of not being able to cope. You’re not sure what to do to fix it. Your crew keeps sending warning signals that something is wrong. You keep ignoring their texts. Next thing you know, they are calling. You send them to voicemail. Now they’re facetiming you- with video. Declined. How could you not expect them to show up pounding at your door? They are your friends. You decide to not answer the door and close the curtains. They scream their pleas to you until you can no longer drown them out. You are their captain and you ultimately decide what they do. Are you listening to them?
Your crew is there to support you, that is their main focus. Their only focus is your well-being and survival. They are your most trusted friends. Are you good to them? If the morale on the team is already low from this small storm, how will they perform when the big one hits? Our crew and the universe expect compassion. Anxiety is, in fact, your most trusted friend. Maybe you need to take some time today to catch up.
I’ll leave today with this. I experience anxiety, I no longer suffer from it.
0 notes
Text
Taking In The Sights
The view at the top of the peaks is breathtaking. The sun even shines the brightest there. The opportunities live in the valleys, though. The truth is that you cannot fake healing. You cannot pretend to be happy. The trauma will still live there, lurking inside you, just a little more quietly. The only way to heal ourselves is to embrace our traumas and decide what we will integrate going forward. Life is a rollercoaster, a mountain climb… Sometimes it is beautiful, sometimes it is treacherous. One thing is for certain though, being lost is the way. We were designed to be inspired, not happy. Welcome back to the rabbit hole!
The Internal compass. It bumps us every so often to make sure we are headed in the right direction with our momentum. The good news is that everything that we need to be our most authentic and content self already lives in us. The problem, most times, is that we are not pointing ourselves in one direction. Part of us is headed north, another part south. Our inner compass can only go one way, so we feel “lost”. Keeping our line of sight focused helps to realign our internal compass.
Line of Sight. Earlier on, I spoke about the idea that we have to fix or control what we do not like. If we have physical pain, we have to medicate it or cut it off. That’s the way we go, fueled by our emotions and how we think things “should be”. Together, we’ve discovered that this does not work. Having a habitual line of sight toward momentum is the only way to break up with the fix and control fantasy that you’ve been taught. Keeping your eye on the prize cuts out a lot of the distracting bullshit.
Momentum. The biggest problem that most of my clients suffer from is taking big of bites into their goals. They make their daily tweaks too big, too fast, and choke. I often use the age-old story of “The Tortoise and the Hare” to slow them down when I see it happening. It’s great to have big, long-term goals. You should have those, actually. But the only thing you should be worried about is right now. What could you be doing right now to move closer to the goal? What is the smallest step you can take today? Clean off your desk? Wash your running clothes? Find the one thing and then do the fucking work! Every. Day.
The Micro-win. We talk a lot about our western idealized fantasy of success. The image we conjure up when we imagine what our life “should” look like at the “finish line”. We also talk a lot about how our culture is obsessed with the idea that life is a competition made up of a series of accomplishments and failures. What if I told you that there is no finish line, except physical death? When you reach that five-year goal, you will write another. We must instead learn to celebrate progress in leu of accomplishment. Any nudge toward your goal, no matter the size or impact, is the focus. It is hard to consistently do the work, celebrate when you do!
Reinforcement. I recently used an example of reinforcement in sports using the score board. Make a basket, get a reward. We realize we can actually do it, and then want to do it again to make the score go higher. We try harder because we want the score to go as high as possible to see how we rank against other people making baskets. We ultimately grow in the process. Negative reinforcement has the same impact. Anyone who is moderately acquainted with psychology will understand quickly what I mean when I say Pavlov and his dog. He ran an experiment with his bestest boy. He would ring a bell and then give him food. After a few times, he only rang the bell. His boy still drooled, hecka ready to smoosh his meal, because he reflexively thought the bell meant food. Thinking from a space of intention versus reflex can quickly fix your bell responses.
Coping Skills. Coping skills are tools that we use to help us tolerate, minimize or deal with the bullshit flinging at us through the fan of life. There are a ton of things out there that help us, some positive, some negative. Instead of making this way longer than it really needs to be, I’ll get right to the point. There are two types of coping skills: Problem-based and emotion-based coping. As most of you know, I am an empowerment and resiliency coach. This is my area of expertise and I’m about to share an essential component of what I know. Problem-based coping is used when there is a change that needs to be made. Emotion-based coping is used to soothe a situation you cannot/will not change. This is the magic formula! There is one question that I will leave you with today: Do I actually need to change my situation, or do I just need a better way to deal with it? Go cope until next time!
0 notes
Text
The Great Pause
“I think therefore I am.” – RENE DESCARTES
I’ve spent the last few days really listening to my internal monologue and dialogue. It’s honestly not very nice in my own head. It never really is inside the mind of anyone who suffers with an anxiety condition. I was shocked that there are actually people out there in the world, just walking around, who cannot have these brutal beat-down sessions inside their heads. It’s a condition referred to as Aphantasia. How lucky could they be to not have to ever engage in replaying something they did or said, over and over, and over again!
Curtis Reisinger, Ph.D., summarizes that: “Internal dialogue is established early in the formative years, when children begin to learn words and sentences as a mode of communication. It’s determined by a number of factors such as environment, genetics, upbringing, what kind of experiences you’re exposed to as a child, injuries and trauma”. No one is really sure why we have these conversations though. There are several theories that arrive at the idea that these are skills we learn in order to become better/more efficient speakers. Others point to the idea that schizophrenia is the inability to distinguish audible voices from your own thoughts. None can be clear evidentially though.
What they do know, though, is that people who suffer from anxiety, depression and/or eating disorders- particularly Bulimia Nervosa, have the most internal dialogue and are the meanest to themselves when having these conversations. Millions of samples that have been collected since the invention of the beeper in the 1970’s prove this to be the case. There is a direct correlation between negative/defeating self-talk and mental health disorders. I recently learned that reflection is the single-most important thing that we can do to contribute or decline our emotional agility. Brinthaupt and his team published a study in 2009 that found most people have a very hard time describing what their self-dialogue actually is. Through very descriptive interviews, they found four very unique ways in which we use it. “Among the functions served by self-talk are self-criticism, self-reinforcement, self-management, and social assessment”.
Self-criticism. Welcome to the super-ego’s favorite hot stop vacation spot! It’s how we evaluate ourselves against the fantasy we created about how things “should” be. This judgey little gutter-snipe is always around trying to keep us in our own lane, for safety sake, of course!
Self-reinforcement. Rewards and consequences. Have you heard the old saying: “What you will allow, will continue”? Well, what you reward becomes a habit. Bad habits that do not get punished, continue to grow in intensity.
Self-management. Impulse control. Goal setting. Delaying gratification now for something bigger later. All the same idea here. Western philosophy states that habits are either healthy or unhealthy, good or bad. Just like emotions, this is wrong. The idea here is to think sustainable versus ideal. More on that soon!
Social assessment. In an earlier post, I explained the reason we want to do the things everyone else does and try to do them better. This is a social assessment tool that we begin using at a very early age. The biggest difference is that some people think visually, some verbally. In a 2017 study that was published in Neurolmage, results show that most people use visual images along with their inner speech, even when thinking verbally. Most people are drawn to the visuals and correlate them to feelings within their environments. Very few use logic and internal experiences to navigate through their environments. That is exactly why most people will not read an article without a pretty picture attached to it.
Viktor Frankl and Stephen Covey both discovered that there is a space between the stimuli in our environment and the time that we react to it. They both refer to it as “the pause button”, and believe it is the greatest tool that we have to overcoming anything in an intentional manner. Remember, our emotions are not directives, they are little warnings to remind us to check in with our values/intentions. Looking at my thoughts for a week really showed me some of the bad mental rituals I have. The old tapes I play inside my head instead of giving myself space for flexibility. I urge you to hit the pause button, look at your rituals, and then ask them some a few questions:
What if the worst case actually happens?
What would feel better right now?
What would be ideal?
What would be sustainable?
What is my next actionable step?
Do I actually need to act?
And remember: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”- Viktor Frankl
1 note
·
View note