“The goal is not to feel good all of the time, the goal is to feel our feelings all of the time.”
Getting through tough times has never been more necessary. Let’s face it, there’s a whole lot of crappy circumstances in the world right now.
We’re in the middle of a global pandemic that’s impacting millions of people’s employment in the US alone, we’re stuck in our homes nearly 24/7 possibly dealing with some family drama that comes with that and for some of us, our kids may not go back to school in the fall leaving many feeling overwhelmed and burnt out.
We’re also in a time where racial tension is higher than ever. White privilege has become beyond apparent and many white people are uncomfortable learning this for the first time. For people of color, they’re taking in the yet again of how they’re treated differently, and it hurts.
If you’re someone who’s experiencing ANY crappy circumstances right now, this episode is for you.
IN THIS EPISODE, I SPECIFICALLY TEACH:
- What to do to overcome crappy circumstances in your life to make it the best thing(s) that ever happened to you
- Why the goal of feeling good all the time is toxic to your health
- My #1 strategy to feel, deal and heal from crappy circumstances
- How to program your brain and achieve maximum success DESPITE what’s going on around you
…and so much more
Listen to this powerful episode via the link at the top of this page.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
→ Continue the conversation in my free online community
→ Get The 4-Day Accomplish Your Dreams Free Training
→ Download the FREE printable of the self-coaching model here
Full Transcript
This is the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast with Lindsay Preston Episode 54,
Overcome Crappy Circumstances.
[music]
Welcome to the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast, the show for goal-getting, fearfacing women for kicking ass by creating change. I’m your host, Lindsay Preston. I’m a wife,
mom of two, and a multi-certified life coach to women all over the world. I’ve lived
through enough in life to know that easier doesn’t always equate to better. We can’t fear
the fire, we must learn to become it. On this show, I’ll teach you how to do just that. Join
me as I challenge you to become even more of the strong, resilient, and powerful woman
you were meant to be. Let’s do this.
[music]
Hey there Miss Unstoppable. Thank you so much for tuning in to yet another episode of
the show. Although if you’re tuning in to this one, you are likely going through some
crappy circumstances, and you are not alone. At the time of recording this, it’s July 2020,
and we are going through a global pandemic with the coronavirus. We also have a lot of
racial tensions going on here in the US, among so many other things, just being at home,
and things like child abuse being up, and domestic abuse, and who knows if the rate of
divorce is up, I could totally see that happening.
Just a lot, right? There’s a lot going on, a lot of change, a lot of unexpected things, people
are being laid off or furloughed. Unemployment has been fruitful with supplements from
the government right now, but that’s ending. There’s just a lot, right? It wouldn’t even
matter if that was going on right now or not, and you may be listening at a time when it’s
not going on anymore, but crappy stuff happens all the time like people get in accidents,
or there’s death, or divorce, or breakups, or illness, all that fun stuff that we all have to,
unfortunately, put up with in life.
Today, I want to give you some resources, and some tips, and tools, and my number one
strategy to overcoming crappy circumstances. Now, I must admit, where I’m at right now,
despite going through everything we’re going through, my life is pretty good, but that
doesn’t mean it’s always been this way. There have been many times in my life when I feel
like I’m looking at everybody else and thinking, “Look at them, they’re doing so well right
now. Why is it that I’m struggling?”
Especially, there was a period there in 2012 to 2013 for me that was really hard. Even just
a few years ago when I was pregnant with my son, that was not a comfortable or enjoyable
period, even though I was so grateful to be pregnant with him, I just felt like crap, I was- it
brought up a lot of things with my former marriage that I needed to let go of, just very
uncomfortable stuff.
I know how it feels, and I know there may be some jealousy with that because I know I’ve
experienced that myself. I just want to let you know that these crappy circumstances
you’re going through right now can be something that changes your life and ignites your
fire. I know when I went through my divorce, and I was broke, and I didn’t have a job, and
all these bills are coming in, I just felt emotionally gone. I felt like a zombie, I wasn’t
eating, I have lost so much weight, I had horrible anxiety and depression, I was taking care
of my daughter 24/7, and her dad was doing all the things he was doing. It was hard, it was
really, really, really hard, but I look back on that situation now, or that circumstance now,
and oh, my goodness, it just ignited a fire in me to change my life. I’m so grateful I went
through that, it made me a stronger person, it just changed my perspective on things, it
made me see that no matter what happens in life, I can get through it.
I really want you to feel that way too, even if it’s just a minor, crappy circumstance right
now. I know many of us who have kids, we’re just thinking about school in the fall. For
many of us, it’s coming to fruition that maybe our kids aren’t going back in the fall, at least
right away, and I was really hoping for that, and I was really planning on that. I’ve already
pulled my son, he’s only two, he goes to a mother’s day out program, but he’s just at an
age where he picks up everything, and it’s going to be hard for them to regulate stuff. I
wouldn’t even be surprised if they ended up closing because it’s just too much.
I ended up just pulling him, and I’m still trying to figure out what to do with my daughter
who’s going to be in fourth grade. There’s a lot going on, especially here in Texas, we’re a
hotspot right now. It’s just a lot, right? That’s a minor, crappy circumstance, but I know for
many of you, there’s just like one thing after another piling on right now. We’re going to
talk through that.
Before we get to that though, I just want to give a quick shout out to anyone who’s left a
review for the show, especially if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, it makes a huge
difference to go and leave that review, so other people find the show and I can keep
delivering this amazing content to you.
I do want to give a shout out to my clients right now, they are rocking it. I have been
actually busier than ever right now because so many people are waking up that life is
short and that there are goals and dreams that they want to accomplish before they leave
this precious planet of ours. They’re tired of it, and they’re ready to make changes. The
clients that I have right now, for the most part, are really go-getter, and ambitious, and
getting it done, and tackling it, and making things happen. So many wins, so much growth.
A lot of them right now are in the middle of everything, it’s not like I can say, “Look at their
beautiful before and after story,” like we have last week on the podcast with Cecilia’s story.
That’s when I really love to give you the full picture. Again, they’re in the thick of it right
now, but beautiful, stuff going on, and just want to let you know that I have some spots
available for clients right now.
I’m actually going to be changing the way that I’m packaging my coaching. I’m only going
to have a limited amount of spots moving forward because I’m going to take on less
clients. Now, it’s a really great time to get on my calendar for a consult. Let’s talk through
what your goals are, and see if coaching together with me would be right for you because
it takes a few weeks to get on my calendar, I get booked out pretty quickly. From there,
once I’m full, I’m full for basically the rest of the year.
If you’re wanting something, you’re ready for coaching, you’re ready for a change, go take
my free coaching assessment. You can find it at lindsey, L-I-N-D-S-E-Y,
epreston.com/assessment. Go take that a couple of minutes, and then you can get on my
calendar for a good fit, and then we’ll have a free consult, all right? Okay, let’s get back to
today’s topic, Overcoming Crappy Circumstances.
Before I get into all the strategy pieces of everything, I want to make something really
clear for you. That is that the goal of life is not to be happy, or joyful, or just feeling good,
whatever you want to call it, 100% of the time. The goal of life is to feel our feelings. I’m
going to leave that there for a second because if somebody would have told me that a few
years ago, I would have been a little bit mind-blown, A. I would have been discouraged,
and I would have maybe even been angry or upset because I was at a place where I just
felt really weighed down.
Now, granted, externally, things looked pretty good in my life, but I just felt like I was
dealing with the same problems over, and over, and over again, and the same feelings
over, and over again. I was so tired of it, and I was only in my mid-twenties at that point.
I’d only been dealing with it for a few years as a young adult, I can’t even imagine dealing
with it longer than that.
I just kept thinking that the goal of life was to be happy, and I wanted this magic ticket to
make me happy. Even when I went through coaching, I remember there were so many
parts in the process that I would tell my coach like, “Okay, now are we at the place where
I’m not going to have problems anymore?” I don’t think she really got it for a while what I
was asking her, and then finally it was like, “Lindsay, [laughs] we’re always going to have
some sort of problems. They’re always growing and evolving.”
I had to really mourn that for a little bit of, “Wait a second, I’m going to have to use these
tools to manage my mind for the rest of my life?” I did not understand that at all. I feel so
many of us are duped into believing that being happy all the time is the goal, and it’s not,
it’s feeling our feelings.
Now, being on the other side of all that, and being what I call an evolved human, I don’t
know, somebody would call it woke or, I don’t know, so many terms for it. Now that I’m on
the other side of that, and I feel my feelings and I get to experience the ups and downs of
life and not in a roller coaster way, but in a way of just being a feeling person, man, life is
so good. It is so flipping good. You would not think that because our brain wants to avoid
emotions at all costs and here’s why: it’s because we’re not taught how to process our
emotions and that’s why we just keep repeating the same things over and over again.
A lot of times, it’s in our unconscious mind. It’s just like, “Oh, why is it I wake up every day?
I just feel tired,” or feel this, we don’t even realize the weight of what we’re carrying
around until we learn how to release that and process those emotions. You’re like, “Whew,
that feels amazing. I feel so much better.” I’m starting to call this process where you feel,
deal, and heal them. In essence, I’m teaching my clients part of this process, right, but I
just, again, wanted to make that clear is that the goal is not for us to feel happy all the
time.
You going through something crappy right now, feeling something negative right now is
okay, there’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing has gone wrong. You’re not necessarily
doing anything wrong. It doesn’t mean that life is bad or hard. It just means right now
you’re going through something uncomfortable and you probably want to pull yourself out
of it. Now, what probably doesn’t feel good is if you’re feeling stuck, you feel like it’s just
like a hamster wheel, again, I’m just going around and around and around and you don’t
know how to pull yourself out of it.
That feels like crap. It feels horrible. What feels really good is when you encounter a
problem and you know how to overcome it, be it an emotional thing that’s come up for you
or some external problem for you. You have all the tools and you say, “Okay, this is hard,
but I know how to get through it,” and so then you can continuously grow and evolve. It’s
like the saying new level, new devil, right? Every time you’re evolving, you get to that
place. It feels really good at first, probably for the most part, and then you’re at this place
for a while.
Then all of a sudden it’s like, ooh, new things are coming up, and then you have to learn
how to deal with those new things. And then you evolve again and you evolve again and
you evolve again. Before, when I had my pre-coaching life, it was just me dealing with the
same thing over and over again, and I didn’t really feel like I was evolving. Sure, on paper I
was. I would have new jobs and maybe get promoted here. Maybe make a little more
money here. Maybe change out some external things but internally I always just felt the
same.
I really looked to my circumstances to decide how I was going to feel about my life and
feel about myself. That was just not a way to live because if I had crappy circumstances,
then I felt crappy and so I felt powerless a lot and I felt like I had to control all of these
external things outside of me when we all know we can’t control things outside of ourself,
what we can control is ourselves.
Again, just want to really make that clear to you. I’m going to say it again. The goal is not
to be happy or joyful 100% of the time. The purpose of life is to feel our feelings. If we can
feel our feelings, that’s what makes us flipping unstoppable because then we’re not
avoiding them. We’re not using distractions. We’re not feeling stuck anymore. We feel, we
deal, and we heal.
My new little saying, right? We feel, we deal, we heal, and we move on, and we evolve. I
just want to say one more thing about this real quick, because, in the personal
development space, a lot of people preach this, including Rachel Hollis. I know I’ve
mentioned her and I promise you, I’m not trying to dog on her, but she is going through it
right now. She’s going through a divorce and one of her big things that she is always
putting out there is choose joy, choose joy, choose joy.
She hadn’t posted in a while since she announced her divorce but she posted, I think it was
yesterday and she said, “I haven’t posted because I just didn’t have anything joyful to post
about, but I got a dog and so here’s my dog,” kind of thing. Yes, the divorce has been really
hard, but she didn’t really talk about it and she doesn’t have to talk about it,
right. She’s going through the thick of it. I totally get that but here’s where she’s been
getting in trouble lately, especially with her followers, they feel like she hasn’t been
authentic and that she hasn’t been clear about what life is. She’s preached this message of
the goal is joy and the goal is to be happy.
At least that’s what I’ve taken from it and a lot of other people have taken from it and so
people are coming around and saying, “Hey, you just portrayed like your marriage was
great and amazing and awesome a lot, if not all the time and then yet, all of a sudden,
you’re getting a divorce? What’s going on here?” When she posted that yesterday, I just
happened to reply and I said, “Rachel, what if you just choose authenticity? What if you just
shared with your followers all the ups and the downs?” and ended up getting some
traction on that comment and then I actually read an article a few weeks ago, a similar
thing about Rachel Hollis and how she wasn’t being authentic.
I posted something about that and it ended up getting like hundreds and hundreds of
responses on it. I didn’t even know. I don’t even check this platform. I was like, oh, my
gosh, it got as many responses almost as the actual article. There were a lot of people out
there who are waking up to this idea that it’s not about being happy all the time and right
now is a really great time for many of us who didn’t know that before to wake up and see,
“Okay, my circumstances aren’t so great right now.
How am I going to get through this? How am I going to overcome this? How can I get to a
place where no matter what happens to me, I know how to overcome it and I know how to
feel pretty good in it?” Meaning I’m not an anxious ball where I lay in bed all day like I felt
during my divorce. I would get so anxious during my divorce. I would just itch my back. I
don’t know why, but my back would itch so bad that I would just like have scratches all
over my back because I was so anxious and I couldn’t sleep.
I couldn’t eat and I lost a ton of weight and I just thought, oh, my gosh, I want to get
through this but I just don’t know how and I wanted to learn the tools to never be in that
place again, that no matter what happened to me, I wouldn’t be overcome with that much
anxiety. Now, who knows, knock on wood, I don’t have to go back to a place like that, or
even worse than that. Of course, my brain will go there sometimes, but at least now I know
the tools and the tools help me get through things all the time.
That’s why I think too, right now, this time, isn’t that crappy for me because I just have
these tools and for my clients, they don’t feel things are crappy even if things externally
are crappy, if they’ve lost their jobs or had transitions in some way, or just waking up to
racial injustice, either as a white person or healing things as a black person or a person of
color. There’s just a lot right now but the difference is me and my clients and other people
who’ve learned tools like what I teach just they don’t put that much weight on their
circumstances.
That’s the next thing I really want to emphasize for you is that if you were weighing your
life on your circumstances and the quality of your circumstances, then something is off and
the circumstances don’t really have that much power over us. It’s the thoughts we have
about the circumstance and you’ve listened to a lot of current podcasts. You’ve heard me
say this because I just keep saying it over and over again and yet I see all these people
around me who are just in these balls of anxiety because of their circumstance. I’m like,
“Oh, no, it’s your thinking about the circumstance.” That’s what the problem is. It’s not
about the actual circumstance.
The example I always give is in my divorce. The first few weeks of my divorce, I was an
anxious mess, like I said, I was doing all the things and the ball and the anxiety and not
eating and blah, blah, blah. I finally got to a point where I just had this epiphany of I’m
going to make this the best thing that ever happened to me. That belief just fueled me of,
“I’m going to make this the best thing that ever happened, the best thing that ever
happened to me.” I just kept saying it over and over again, and little by little, day by day,
things started to feel better.
Things started to look better. I started to take different actions. I started to get different
results and ended up leading me to coaching, which has opened up this huge, amazing
pathway as a person and professional. It’s just been incredible and I’m so glad that that
thought was brought into my mind by what seems like a miracle, like somebody like an
angel I even say sometimes like brought me this thought of, “Lindsay, are you fed up? Are
you done? Are you going to make this the best thing that ever happened to you?” And I
was like, “Yes. Yes, I am,” and that’s what changed everything for me. When you’re in this
crappy circumstance, start to analyze, what are your thoughts? A lot of our thoughts are
negative and a lot of them are repeating from the day before unless we analyze them and
they’re in the unconscious mind. It’s like a whisper in our ear. We don’t even hear it. It’s
really important. We do things like just write a circumstance on a piece of paper.
It could be the coronavirus right now, or it could be, I lost my job or it could be my
marriage is XYZ. My kids aren’t going back to school, whatever it is, and then just start
writing what the thoughts are about that. I’ll give you an example of my life with my kids
not going back to school. I had to do this this week because I started to feel anxiety and
how would I call it? Maybe frustration even of just, “Oh, here I am, again. I want these kids
to go to school.” I’d have to write down all of my thoughts with that of, this sucks, I don’t
like this, what a burden, blah, blah, blah. It was really great to see those thoughts on paper
because then you can ask yourself, are these thoughts serving me? Are these thoughts
helping me out right now? A lot of times, our brain just feeds us things and it thinks that
it’s helping us to feed us the negative stuff so that we don’t get hurt but what it’s doing is
actually making us fail before we actually fail and be a person we really don’t want to be
because that’s just the way the brain is.
It’s just trying to keep us safe and secure. That’s what it’s built for. That’s why we have to
analyze our thoughts and we have to say, “Okay, do I want to show up as this person who
feels burdened and feels like, “Oh, I just want to get through this?” No, I don’t want to be
that person. I don’t want to think about that in this situation.
It’s not my kids’ fault they can’t go back to school, and so how do I want to think about
this? I want to think about this as that, man, what an amazing opportunity to spend time
with my family, what an amazing opportunity to up-level the way that I connect with my
kids, what an amazing opportunity for me to become an even stronger businesswoman
because my time management is going to have to get even better.
Another thought I had was what an amazing opportunity to connect even longer with my
marriage before we’re pulled in many different directions with activities and his meetings
and me doing all my stuff. I just started to consciously select the thoughts that I wanted to
select and having the thoughts of, “I’m going to make this the best thing ever, what an
amazing opportunity,” are really great ones for you to just play with.
A lot of times, it’s called trying thoughts on. It’s like when you go to a store and you try on
clothes or at least how we used to do it. It’s just like trying thoughts on of, start thinking
different thoughts of, “Okay, let me try that on for a second. Do I like the way that feels?” I
do this a lot with my clients and I’ll give them suggestions and I’ll say a couple of different
things and they’ll say, “No, the one you just said. Tell me, two thoughts, what did you say?”
I’ll say it again. They’re like, “Yes, that’s the one.”
You know when you hear a thought that you want to start consciously thinking. What
happens is when you start consciously thinking a thought, there’s a wire that’s built-in your
brain and it just becomes a habit. It’s just like when we were learning to type or to drive or
to do all the things we do in life. At first, it feels really foreign. We have to think about it.
Every day, we have to consciously say, “Okay, I’m going to go practice my typing today and
learn where the letter A is on the keyboard, and A, A, A, let me type a million As to figure it
out. Then a lot of B and C and all of that stuff.”
Then now when you type, you don’t even think about it. It’s the same with your thoughts.
You have to go in and consciously wake up every day and say, “What an amazing
opportunity” or “I’m going to make this the best thing that ever happened to me?” If you
are laid off right now, you could be saying the thoughts of something like, “I have X job
making X amount of money.”
All these different things and consciously saying them at least once a day and holding
space for them, meaning, like you’re feeling it for about 17 seconds of just really
envisioning it and feeling it in your body. I know this stuff sounds woo woo. I used to think
this stuff was like such bullshit back in the day. I remember my coach first told me about
this. What it’s called is like mantras or positive affirmations and sing these things.
I was like, “I am not saying that, Daniel.” I just feel like an idiot. I don’t like that. What I
wish he would’ve told me at the time was, “Well, is it serving you to tell you yourself all
those negative things?” That’s what would have been the wake-up call for me. That’s
again, what I want you to tell yourself. I know I’ve already said it here, but I’m going to say
it again.
When you’re saying thoughts to yourself and it’s starting to become conscious, ask
yourself, “Is it serving me to say that?” It’s probably not. What would serve you is to say,
“This is going to be an amazing opportunity. This is going to be awesome.” All those things
that will lead you to take the actions to get the results you want, because you’re going to
create these feelings that will create an energy that will make you want to get up and
create a different result for your life.
Just like I said with the divorce. I laid in bed for a long time and was anxious and not
eating and all of that stuff. Then I changed the thought and all of a sudden, I started to get
this little pep in my step, started taking little actions, and boom, look at my life now. Gosh,
I was divorced 2013, so seven years later. Seven years later, my life is not even near
recognizable of where I was seven years ago.
Really, I think I got the full results in like two or three years, like a full change and it’s only
getting better. It was just from changing that one thought and that one moment of a really
crappy circumstance. There’s a quote out there that says something like, “One thought can
change your life.” It’s so true. When we’re coaching if you coach with me, we’re doing this
all the time.
That’s why people change a lot in just a few months because they’re just constantly
changing thoughts. Two, they’re also going in, they’re feeling, dealing, and healing the old
stuff. That’s not coming in and being like, “Hey, we don’t want to go do this because
remember when you got hurt that one time,” or remember this or remember that.
It’s a lot easier sometimes to just go in and deal with the past, heal it all, and then start
fresh. What I’m teaching you today will still make an impact. Don’t be like, “Well, I don’t
want to pay for coaching right now. I don’t want to do it. I’m not going to do what
Lindsay’s telling me to do with this belief stuff or this affirmation, mantra, whatever you
want to call it. No, do not do that because what you’re going to do right now is you’re
going to be leading in the right direction.
It’s going to lead you where you need to go. I didn’t have coaching when I started to say,
“This is going to be the best thing that ever happened to me for my divorce.” That’s what
led me to coaching. That’s what gave me the resources to hire a coach. I didn’t know what
coaching was at the time, but it led me to where I needed to go.
Again, start telling yourself those sorts of things and it will absolutely lead you to the
places that you want to go, my friend. When you’re programming those beliefs in your
mind, you are going to be so unstoppable that no matter what comes your way, no matter
what circumstance, you’re just going to keep going.
It reminds me of when I met my husband or my now husband. I had just come out of my
divorce and I had some money because I had gotten like child support, obviously, and a
little bit of alimony. I had sold a ton of stuff around my house. I didn’t have a job yet. I
remember on our first date, he’s a finance guy and I just laid it out there of what my
finances were like.
He looked at me with, I remember these big eyes because I thought my finances are great.
I’ve had a couple of thousand in the bank. It wasn’t a ton, but I didn’t have a job like I said,
and he like kind of freaked out and I could feel his energy about it. Because I had had the
belief of things like this is going to be the best thing that ever happened to me and then,
later on, I added a belief of everything is more than fine.
I have more than enough to get what I need that I had no anxiety about it. I ended up
making those few months where I had what now looks like a little bit in the bank at the
time. It felt like a lot like I said, but I made that time just so enjoyable and I just felt so
much peace. Even when bumps would come along the road, like I was supposed to get an
HR job and I was in the final stage of it, they’d even call my references and they were
drafting an offer letter.
Then, all of a sudden, they pulled the job and they ended up not hiring for it at all. I was
getting at a point where I was running out of money. I didn’t want it bothering me. I just
said, again, my beliefs there of everything’s happening for my best interest, it’s going to be
the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I have more than enough. I just brushed it off
and just kept going.
That’s what happens to so many of us when we start telling ourselves all of these negative
things about a circumstance and making it mean something about us is that we just pile
on the crap of an already crappy circumstance. Really even saying it’s a crappy
circumstance is already piling on junk, to be honest with you, because most, if not all
circumstances are neutral.
Even the really, really crappy ones of like murder and all that stuff. Yes, of course, we
would decide that those things were bad. If we just look at it for the situation at hand, it’s
just a neutral situation. It’s our thoughts about that that leads us to view it as one way or
another. A great example of this is death. So many people fear death, and they think death
is so horrible, but yet if you talk to a really spiritual person, they will have this amazing
view about death and they will put you at such peace with it because their thoughts about
death is completely different than somebody who fears death.
Again, here, I’m just trying to teach you the power of your thoughts. It’s really not about
your circumstances no matter how bad they are. It’s about your thinking about it and that’s
what’s generating your feelings, and that’s what’s generating your actions, and that’s
what’s going to create your results.
That’s why so many people, they get in a bad circumstance. I was just actually talking to a
friend about this of a family member of his. I was like, “Well, what happened to them?”
Now, they’re middle age and they’ve just never gotten it together. He was talking about
how when she was a teenager, the circumstance happened to her and she just never
recovered from it. I hear stories like this all the time from people and I think, “Oh,” I just
like– There’s a sadness inside of me because I think, “Gosh, if they only knew how to feel
and heal and deal or at least just realize that it wasn’t about the circumstance, it was
about their thinking about the circumstance, and you can go in and you can change that,
then it could have opened up so many doors for them, but yet they’re stuck in the same
thing over and over again that happened 20, 30 years ago that they have let it define for
their life.
Nobody wants that, right? I feel for that because I would have been that person had it not
been for coaching for me because I felt like I couldn’t get over the hump of certain things
from my childhood, and from dating relationships, and all this other stuff. Coaching was a
thing that really shifted everything for me. Therapy was not, as many of you know. A lot of
people think therapy can, and I’m not dogging on therapy, but maybe I just had bad
therapy experiences. I’ve had three or four therapy experiences, none of which have been
that beneficial. They’ve moved the ball forward, but it’s been a little baby pinch that tap
forward versus coaching, for me, and for what I’ve witnessed with my clients, and other
people’s coaching clients is coaching moves you forward so quickly because it teaches you
how again to look at your mind in a different way and how to finally process those
emotions.
Let’s recap what we talked about today. Of course, it was overcoming crappy
circumstances. I talked about the goal is not to be happy all the time and so if you’re
aiming for that and you feel like you’re just falling short, we’re all in that boat. We all need
to feel negative stuff sometimes to feel the positive stuff. That’s just part of life. We don’t
want to feel positive about some of the shitty stuff happening in the world. If somebody’s
getting murdered or there’s racial injustice or people are dying of coronavirus, that’s
something we want to feel. We don’t want to just make it rainbows and butterflies. That’s
what’s going to inspire us to get up and get moving and make changes. You’re not pulling
short at all. You may just need to know how to feel, deal, and heal with your emotions.
That’s it.
The other thing we talked about is your thoughts are what determine everything for you,
your feelings, your actions, your results. It’s not about your circumstances. It’s how you
think about your circumstances, so try-on different beliefs to start to believe. Do what’s
called thought downloads where you take out a piece of paper. In the show notes of this,
I’m going to put something called the Self Coaching Model that will help you journal this
out, too if you want something more structured where it’s going to tell you to put the
circumstance here, put your thoughts here, your feelings, your actions, your results and you
can see how your thinking creates everything around you, just from a circumstance. You
can do it either way, but do those thought downloads. That’s my number one strategy, for
you to start to feel, deal, and heal. It’s a very basic one for you to start to see, “What’s
going on in my mind,” and start trying on different thoughts.
Now, I do want to give you one extra tip there, of something called thought stacking. If you
are an anxious mess right now– If I went back and I told my former self during the divorce,
I wanted to have this thought of, “I love my ex-husband. He’s amazing,” and blah blah blah
blah, I would not have been able to tell myself that because it was just too far off of what I
believed at the time. At the time, I told myself, “I don’t want to have any feelings for this
person, whatsoever. I want to feel completely neutral to him. I want to give him no
thought in my brain. I want it to be where we’re neutral with each other and my daughter
is able to thrive.” I was able to create that. As time has gone on, I’ve kind of stacked the
belief to maybe like him a little bit more and be like, “You know, he’s a pretty good guy.
Just this one thing happened, right?” I’m still not at the point where I’m like, “Oh my gosh,
he’s amazing.” I don’t know if I ever want to get there, to be honest, but it’s taken time.
If you’re at a place right now where things are just really, really bad, just know you don’t
have to go from one extreme to the other. You can go from where you are to maybe just
one step ahead. You know what feels right to you if you know how to listen to yourself.
You will find something that you want to start telling yourself that will just feel right.
Again, it will feel like trying on something at a store and be like, “Yeah, this outfit’s pretty
darn good. I think I want to buy this one. I like this one. I’m going to keep it around.”
Try those thought downloads and then two, just start saying them to yourself at least every
single day and hold space to feel what it is that you’re telling yourself. I promise you after
about three, four weeks, you’re going to feel a little boost in telling yourself that, and then
it’s going to start feeling better and better and better and better. What will happen likely,
is in time, you’ll be like, “I don’t even need to consciously tell myself that thought anymore
because I just believe it about myself. It’s just a part of me now.” Then your crappy
circumstance will be over. Maybe you’ll have a new crappy circumstance and then you’ll
have this tool now, to use any time a crappy circumstance comes your way.
I feel so grateful that I have a tool like this one I’m sharing with you because I know that
no matter what happens to me, even if my deepest darkest fears come true like something
happening to one of my children, I know that I can get through it, no matter how painful
it’s going to feel because I know that it’s really just my thoughts about the circumstance,
no matter how bad the circumstance may appear and how factual it may be on paper
about what happens to something or someone, but it’s really my thoughts. That will help
me process things and really see what I’m feeling and thinking so I can feel all those
things and then I can start to move forward and heal a little bit. Hopefully, that makes
sense, my friends.
Just to let you know, you are doing amazing things. If you’re showing up and listening to a
podcast like this one, that means you’re wanting to change. So many people just really
want to stay in their tornado of emotions and they don’t want to do the really little bit of
work it takes to change their lives. They’re just comfortable with where they’re at and
that’s totally cool and fine, but you’re going to be somebody who, I promise you, is going
to appreciate doing work like this. It’s going to take a little work, yes, but where you’re at
today is actually so much harder than doing this work and dealing with the discomfort that
you’re going to have to deal with by starting new things and looking at what you’re telling
yourself and feeling some feelings. It’s just so much harder where you’re at and you’re
going to see that when you start to, in a sense, take these rocks out of your backpack that’s
been on your back of all this weight that’s been bringing you down, it feels so good.
There’s a quote out there that says, “You don’t know the weight of what you’re carrying
until you feel the release.” That’s the benefit of feeling, dealing, and healing.
That’s the quote of the day, my friend. Feeling, healing, and dealing. It’s so true. You can
do this. I promise you. I’m sending you so much love as you’re going through this crappy
circumstance even if it’s something minor. If it’s something major, I’m sending you so
much love right now as I’m sharing these words for you. Please reach out to me if you
need any help. The link for the free community is in the show notes. It’s also in the outro
so that you can reach out to me if you feel like you need any one-on-one attention. Of
course, if you’re ready to start coaching, look for the link on how to take the free
assessment. It’s in the outro as well as the show notes as well. All right my friends, until
next week, I’ll see you then.
[music]
Hey there, Miss Unstoppable. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. If you enjoyed
it, share it with a friend. Send them a picture of this episode via text, via email, share it on
social media, I’m sure they would be so appreciative to know these strategies and tips on
how to accomplish your dreams. If you are ready to guarantee you’re going to accomplish
your goals and dreams, then it’s time to start coaching with me.
In my nine-month simple success coaching system, I am going to walk you every single
step of the way to ensure that you get the goals and dreams that you want. The first step is
to apply for a free 60-minute consult call. Just go to LindsayEpreston.com/apply to get
started. As always, my friend, remember, you’re only as unstoppable as you believe you can
be, so believe in yourself. You got this.
0 Comments