“Toxic behavior is bringing us down as a whole. It dims our light. It dims our energy.”

I’m talking about toxic behaviors today – particularly toxic behaviors that may be inside of you that are not only causing harm to yourself, but to others.

If you’re a mother, you DEFINITELY need to listen in today as any toxic behaviors you have can cause trauma and pain for your children.  

Behaviors are many times learned and if you’re doing things that are harmful to yourself and others, you need to know about it before the cycle continues with your children.

If you aren’t a mother, this episode is still important because your energy is something that others are CONSTANTLY feeling around you. How you feel about yourself and the world is constantly being thrown back at you and creating a reality for you that may not be allowing you to thrive.

This episode is not a light, fluffy, easy peasy topic. I’m going to be very frank on some things today, but it’s to help you grow in life.  

Be sure to listen to the episode on the link above.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

→ Apply to coach with me

→ Continue the conversation in my free online community

→ Get The 4-Day Accomplish Your Dreams Free Training 

Full transcript:

Episode 8: ARE YOU TOXIC

This is the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast with Lindsay Preston Episode 8, Are You Toxic?.

[music]

Welcome to the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast, the show for goal-getting, fear-facing 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]

Hi there, friends. You, miss unstoppable woman, you. Welcome, welcome back to the show. We’re on episode 8 now of the show, it’s going by fast. I can’t believe we’re already on number 8. If this is your first time listening, hi, if not, thank you for coming back to the show once again, I’m so happy you’re here. I’m going to warn you, today’s episode is not a light fluffy easy-peasy topic. I’m going to be very frank on some things today, but it’s to help you grow in life. Sometimes we need that honesty in order to kick our booty in gear to making a big change and big changes is what I want you to create.

Before I get into it all, let me first just say a few things. First off, if you have left a review for the show recently, thank you. It has been a joy to read those reviews recently on places like iTunes and my Facebook page. I really appreciate you taking the few minutes that it takes to write that review. It makes a big difference in my world with visibility and credibility and, to be honest, it gives me traction on showing up and doing the show.

As you can imagine it takes some time to produce these episodes and research them and edit them and all the things, and this is free. I’m not making any money off this, so when I read those reviews, I think, okay, this is helping people. This is making a difference and so it continues to be a priority on my list. If I don’t see those reviews, I think, okay, nobody wants this stuff. Even though I see download numbers and sometimes they get emails, I know, I know, but those reviews are really my momentum to keep doing this stuff.

If you haven’t left a review yet, please, please, please, just pause this episode right now. Go leave a review on iTunes if that’s where you listen, if not, and if you can’t leave a review wherever you listen, go to my Facebook page. Just search for Lindsay Preston, you’ll see my little image pop up. It’s the same image you’ll see here on this podcast of me with the girl power shirt, go leave a review on my Facebook page. That would help me out so very much so. Thank you.

Now, the other thing I want to share is I have been running a live coaching group through my program called the Life Luvers Challenge, and have had this program for a while but what’s different now is I’m running it live. I have not done this in years and the momentum you can create with a live group is so much fun. I forgot how much fun this was. We’re doing weekly group coaching calls together, and many of them have already committed to doing my Become An Unstoppable Woman course, which is typically the second step after the Life Luvers Challenge.

They have just started coaching with me for 14 days now at the time of this recording, and they are already talking about how they are mind blown, that their results they say are incredible, and I keep telling them, “Really? They’re already incredible to you? You’re already satisfied?” They’re like, “Yes, I’m so satisfied,” and I keep saying, “Well, this is just the tip of the iceberg. We’re going to get even better results than this.”

Some of the results they’re getting are quitting jobs that no longer serve them and then immediately getting a new job offer the same day without even asking for them, which sounds crazy, right? That’s like the kind of BS you think there is no way that that is happening, Lindsay. It’s true. They’re finding the strength to finally own themselves, they’re quitting those things, and then it’s like magic these new things start coming into their worlds, but that’s because of their energy. They’re going after things in a different way and when we come into life with a really high vibe positive energy with clarity and with boundaries, life just starts to become really magical in that way, believe it or not.

Some of the other results they’re creating, they’re feeling more peace and balance in their life than ever before and people in their life are noticing and saying, what are you doing, and they’re doing random things like bringing them gifts and their relationships are changing because of that. Marriages, parent-child relationships, friendships, work relationships, they’re all starting to gradually change in ways that once felt almost impossible, to be honest with you, they’re starting to show up in different ways. They’re feeling more happy and energetic lately.

I have a group of moms in this group, some with young kids, some with older ones. Because the challenge with older ones, if you haven’t reached that season of life yet, is their activities. Oh my gosh, the activities, my eight-year-olds, oh. These moms are coming to me and they’re like, “Okay, I know some of this is a season I’m in, but I’m starting to lose myself and I don’t want to lose myself and I want more energy and I want to feel happier with my kids. I find myself yelling at them sometimes, they’re just totally, disconnecting, I don’t want to be that.”

They’re already saying, “Oh my gosh, Lindsay, I’m not yelling. I have better energy. My health is even starting to improve because I have more energy, and these health problems that felt like these big scary things that couldn’t change are starting to change.” I know that’s like a total brag moment there. You may think I’m total BS, but this stuff is happening and I want to share it with you because if you feel called to work with me, now is a really great time to do that.

I’m going to start another life group here soon because the momentum right now is just really fun. Not only with the people I’m attracting, but with myself. I’ve taken these two years off to have my son, I’m coming back into this just a stronger woman, a stronger coach. I’m pushing people in a way that’s deeper now because I own my power more. My old clients would tell you, but Lindsay, we got great results too, but now it’s different. I don’t know what it is, but it’s just a really, really cool energy.

I just feel I guess, just really empowered now. I guess this time off has just really shown me my way again and how much I miss it. Oh, I would just love to have you, I’d love to create some great results in your life. If you’re feeling called to take that next step, go and take my free coaching assessment if you haven’t yet. I’m just going to ask you a couple of questions, we’re going to see for a good fit to work together. You’ll know with clarity if we are and if we are, you’re going to gain access to my calendar to book a free one-on-one discovery call.

You can go to Lindsay, L-I-N-D-S-A-Y E Preston.com/assessment to take that. Again, it just takes a few minutes and then we’ll have a free discovery call together. I hear from women sometimes they feel intimidated to have that call, but please don’t, I’m just a normal woman. I’m sitting here right now, basically in my pajamas almost, recording this for you. I chase around a one-year-old a majority of the day and deal with my eight-year-old’s attitude from time to time. I’m just a normal woman. Please, do not be intimidated by me.

Some people feel shame or embarrassment about some of the things they’re going through. Again, there’s no shame in your game. I hear it all the time. The thing that will help you the most is finding someone that can help you and create a safe space for you to share those things and give you the tools for success. If you think, well, Lindsay, I don’t know how much coaching is with you. I don’t know if I really want to do that, just get on the call with me.

Even if you don’t sign up for coaching, I would love to learn more about you. The more I learned about you the more I can make episodes on the show for you, the more my social media posts can be directed toward issues that you’re dealing with, so I would love to talk to you. Go to Lindsayepreston.com/assessment to take that assessment.

All right, so let’s get into today’s episode now. Whoa. Today’s episode, I’m not going to lie, is one I have been preparing for mentally for months now, and I am just recording this episode days before it goes live because there’s been a part of me that’s been a little bit nervous, to be honest, to record this. You put out there, “Are you toxic” in the world, that can kind of put people on the fence, right?

I’m hoping today’s message is met with love and compassion to see maybe some blind spots you have in yourself, and two, to help you deal with toxicity with other people. Because this is a big thing that I’ve struggled with and that I hear many of my clients struggle with is dealing with these kinds of negative toxic people in their world. We’re going to talk about both those things.

Now, this episode is especially important for those who are moms. You definitely need to be listening to this episode today as any toxic behaviors you have, they’re likely coming out on your kids and those kids are little sponges. They’re soaking that up and they are likely going to repeat that pattern of those toxic behaviors. We do not want that, do we? I know you want to show up in this world as a mom that you envisioned for yourself, but you may not know how to be that mom, you may not know otherwise how to break some of these patterns. Today is really insightful and I hope you are ready to listen to it.

Now, if you’re not a mother, this episode is still important because your energy is something that others are constantly feeling around you. I talked about it already on this episode of how my people are getting these great results and I’m saying it’s about their energy. That’s the same with you. If you’re putting out this negative energy, if you are doing things like gossiping or being manipulative, or even having feelings of depression, anxiety, all those kind of things, those can seep into our world around us and cause other people to feel certain ways. We don’t want to be that, right?

We want to be a light in our world. We want to create a legacy that at the end of this journey, we are looking back and saying, “Yes, we did it,” and people around you are feeling inspired by you and not saying, “Oh yes, well, but she can never get it together,” or “She can never really be that person,” or “Remember, all those things she did to us? Woo. Yes. Woo.” You don’t want to be that person. I know I didn’t, but I didn’t know how to change that, and so, I’m just so grateful I am at that place now where I know I’m creating that legacy I want and I want that for you.

Now, you may wonder, “Well, Lindsay, how do you know about this whole toxic behavior thing? Are you just one of those magical unicorns that maybe just came out all bright and bubbly and was never toxic?” Let me just tell you, I used to be super toxic. If you listen to episode 2 of this show, I talked about my journey to becoming an unstoppable woman. In that story, I shared examples of toxicity that I did in my world. You may not have even caught it though, because some of the things I mentioned are things that are just normal in our society of gossiping about one another and internalizing things to a point where we’re depressed or anxious. Those are things that were just brushed aside but those things, they make an impact.

Now, let’s just talk generally speaking here, what are toxic behaviors? Because you may be scratching your head and thinking, “Whoa, depression and anxiety, Lindsay? Wait a second, are you saying that those things are toxic?” I am but I’m not at the same time. Let me just give you a basic definition. This is my definition. Toxic behaviors are defined as behaviors that bring others including ourselves down. I’m going to say it again. Toxic behaviors are defined as behaviors that bring ourselves including others down.

With that said, we’re all toxic in some ways. We’re human. Our brains are wired to study, compare and observe others, so we can understand if someone or something could be a threat to us. Our brain determines what is a threat dependent upon the ways that we have been hurt in the past.

Say, for example, let’s look at this at a very, very basic level. If we have never been exposed to a hot stove, we may not know that that is going to hurt us until we try it out and say, “Whoa, okay.” If you don’t know anything about fire, if we were to see that fire we would say, “Okay, got it. Fire hurts,” but, my one-year-old son, for example, he hasn’t learned that yet. Even though I tell him no, hot, all those things, he doesn’t get it, and so he may likely try one day of touching something that I say no, hot, and realizing, “Ah, that hurts.” His brain would build a wire that most of us all have now of stove-hot, right?

Those are good things. We want those wires in our minds. We want to be able to survive in our world around us. We don’t want to be dead, but some of those wires don’t necessarily serve us per se. Our brain has wired it to view it as a big threat when maybe it’s not. The way that we interpret it, and the way that we process it is not healthy and that’s what I’m saying here.

Let me give an example, say you walk into a restaurant and you see the person that you’re dating, or married to, or whatever, talking to a very vivacious skinny blonde girl who’s very flirty. You see your partner there with them and you start feeling those feelings of jealousy, and anger, and rage, and fear, but say, somebody else walks into the restaurant, they see that blonde girl and they may feel nothing towards that, nothing. It will be dependent upon your past, what you’ve interpreted, and your past experiences in regards to how you feel.

Now, I’m not saying there’s one right way or wrong way there per se, but the way you process it. There is a healthy way and there’s a toxic way. You may go and you see that. There are sirens going off in your head of, “What is this girl doing with my person?” You may go and you may be angry and you may be manipulative. You may go and internalize it. You may push people away in the process of that. Those are toxic behaviors. They’re harming yourself, they’re harming others. Or you may go to that situation, still filling those sirens, and say, “Hey what’s going on here?” “Oh, okay, you guys are just talking.”

You’re listening to your intuition. You feel that there’s nothing going on there. You’re able to calm yourself in the moment and move on, and maybe you even talk to your partner, spouse, whatever you want to call it, and say, “Hey, can we talk about that? I felt like that was a little bit disrespectful toward me. I’d really appreciate. We need to kind of set some boundaries around these things,” and blah, blah, blah, and you handle it in a healthy way where you’re not harming yourself, you’re not harming others, but you’re still being authentic to yourself.

It’s not like you’re suppressing your emotions there. You are authentic saying, “Hey, that brought up some fear for me, let’s talk about it. Hey, let’s try and see how we can fix this in the future.” See the difference? Our brains are just like drinking water. Our drinking water, believe it or not, has some toxicity in it. You health people out there, you know that, but at some point, there’s a limit to the toxicity in our drinking water and it’s the same with our brains.

How do we know when something becomes too toxic in our minds? Well, in society standards, it’s typically when we’ve broken the law. Society will say, “Oh, this is too ‘toxic’,” right? You cheated, you’ve lied, you’ve stolen, you’ve hurt somebody. That’s how we know and society’s standards that that is a bad toxic, whatever you want to call it, behavior.

In the mental health standards, you go to a mental health professional, you say, “Hey, this is what I’m feeling, this is what I’m doing.” They diagnose you and they say, “Okay, you have depression, you have anxiety, you have this personality disorder.” Whatever it is, they give you that. In the mental health and standards, they view that in a way of, “Okay, this is behavior that needs to change. It’s harming themselves. It’s harming others. It’s toxic.”

Now, what about the rest of us? What about the ones who aren’t breaking the law? What about the ones of us who may not even have a diagnosis at this time? That’s where really life coaching comes into play is, okay, this is going to be a system that’s going to allow you to start to understand your thoughts. It’s going to allow you to understand and process your emotions, even to heal some of your emotions, and learn how to handle them in a way that feels empowering and is healthy. At least that was the situation for me and that’s what I give my clients.

Everyone’s coaching situation is different. People coach in different ways, just like there’s different variations of therapy as well. That was what the game changer was for me. I was able to very quickly understand, whoa, okay, that is an unhealthy or toxic way of dealing with something. Let me figure out a different way to do that. Because I started to change myself, my world started to change too and I stopped hanging out with people, even though I love them dearly, I stopped hanging out with people who were doing these unhealthy toxic behaviors.

Things like gossiping about others, withholding information from their spouse, being manipulative about certain things, because it just didn’t feel right anymore. It just brought me down. I realized once I was out of those behaviors how much they were just really putting me in a bad state of mind, but I didn’t know any different. I hadn’t experienced anything different.

To be honest with you, I really hadn’t been around these toxic behaviors in a while. Yes, of course, my clients come to me, they want to change things, but we work together in a way that we’re changing that. I’m not the recipient of their toxic behaviors as they’re changing them per se. Sometimes I am, but I’m able to talk with them in a deeper way. In my personal life, I can’t really do that. I’m not sitting there coaching them, they’re not necessarily wanting to change, and so I’ve just decided I don’t want to hang out with those people. I want to hang out with people who are in a healthy place and know how to process their emotions and were in a similar headspace.

Recently, I went somewhere and I was exposed to a person who had a lot of toxic behavior. She was very gossipy. She was very anxious. She was very blaming. She was talking about manipulating people without even really saying that directly. That experience really was eye-opening for me in a lot of ways. First off, I had forgotten what that had felt like to be around somebody like that, and it took me days to detox of that experience because her energy seeped into mine. It was so negative and I wasn’t prepared for it. I didn’t expect it. It came out of nowhere.

I’m also a very intuitive, highly empathetic being, so it’s very hard for me to be around that energy, to be honest with you. Again, it took me days to get into the right headspace again to a point where I was more toxic after that. I was gossiping, I was going off on people. Even my husband called me out and he was like, “Dude that is toxic, stop.” [chuckles] I really just took in, oh my gosh. Hey, this stuff still exists out there because, again, I hadn’t been exposed to it in a while, and two, when you are exposed to it, man does it bring you down.

That was my inspiration for this episode today of saying we’ve got to change this. We cannot be having this. We cannot have women walking around like this anymore. It’s bringing us down as a whole, and it’s bringing us down because when others of us have to be around it, it dims our own light. It dims our energy. It makes us feel worse and we don’t need that. We do not need that at all.

I guess I had just truly forgotten that everyone doesn’t have the tools that I have to live the way that I live and I want even more so for you to have those tools. I want you to be happy and healthy and fulfilled and peaceful and joyful and the most grateful person on this planet. Like I said, I want you to leave this earth and feel like you’re leaving the legacy you’re out to create, but it’s really hard when you have these behaviors that you don’t know, A, are even harmful.

Two, you don’t know how to change them and so you’re just stuck on this hamster wheel of experiencing them over and over and over and over again, versus someone who knows how to process them like me or someone who goes through a coaching process with me of, “Okay, I’m aware of this feeling or this thought. Okay, I know how to kill this thought. I know how to change it,” and then they’re able to just move forward in life and they’re not stuck on that wheel. They can just continuously up-level and up level, and up level, and up level, and this is really one of the keys to success.

These people that just stay stuck versus the people who can handle when crap hits the fan or hits their way, and then they can just continuously process it and get over it and move on. Again, I want you to have that stuff. All right. That’s what we’re going to talk about today but first, we really have to go into the depth of toxicity here for you to really understand it.

I defined it earlier and it’s behaviors that bring others including yourself down, but there are some different forms of toxicity and it comes in the form of male and female energy. Male toxicity, I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about recently. It’s everywhere from commercials to it’s now a diagnosis in the DSM which is the measurement system or the tool that mental health professionals use in order to diagnose people. Now there is technically a diagnosis of male toxicity which is crazy, right, and it’s all over social media. If you go to any feminist pages or anything of that sort, they’re talking about male toxicity.

It makes total sense because toxic masculinity are things we see and feel more in our world because they’re commonly behaviors that are outward. It’s behaviors of power and aggression, and they’re confrontational, they’re controlling, they’re competitive they’re abusive. We typically see and feel more of that toxic masculinity, especially as women.

I’m going to throw out a couple of stats for you here. The first is that 1 in 5 women are raped versus 1 in 71 men. This is only rape and this is only women who are coming forward to say they have been raped. This does not include assault, harassment, or abuse. Think about that. 1 in 5 women versus 1 in 71 men. That right there is a sign of toxic masculine energy.

Now we also see it a lot with shootings, unfortunately. 88 mass shootings have been in the US between 1982 in October 2017. 88, only two of them were done by women. This is why toxic masculinity is a big thing right now. We are seeing it more, we are feeling it more. It is a bigger deal because they are likely breaking the law when it gets to a point of doing these really toxic things.

For women, it’s a little different. Typically, toxic femininity is inward. These are behaviors like being needy, jealous, feeling victim, being overly sensitive, being overly emotional, feeling powerless, being depressed, and being anxious. I know I’m going to get some push back from that one of, “Lindsay, are you saying that depression and anxiety is toxic?” If we look at the definition of it, it’s a behavior that can harm yourself or others, right? Yes, depression and anxiety is harmful to you. Yes, does that mean that sometimes your brain is imbalanced and it’s causing that? Absolutely. Does that mean that it can be a biologically passed down? Absolutely. Does that mean we can change it? Absolutely. It may just be harder for you.

I come from a lineage of women who are depressed and anxious, and who honestly, many of them probably had borderline personality disorder. Do not sit here and think that I am above this stuff. I am living in the trenches with you, with the stuff, but I’ve learned how to manage it, really, really well with the tools that coaching has given me. I want you to realize that I’m never shaming you, I’m never putting you down for that. All I’m saying is that that is a behavior that you can change and that it’s something that likely does not feel good and especially the way you may be processing it.

I grew up in a world where I saw a lot of women who were depressed and anxious and they did not handle it well. They were emotionally abusive. They really just segregated themselves from everybody. It was really, really hard and that stuff internalized in me and all that stuff. Just take that in at face value. I am here in the trenches with you. I’m not trying to shame me or anything I’m just saying we can change that.

Going back to, a lot of women’s toxicity is internal. These are things that society isn’t having necessarily sirens about per se because it’s not overly harming people and breaking the law, but they are still very harmful. They’re still very toxic. It just depends on how someone interprets that toxicity and spreads it. My daughter, I was telling her about this week’s episode just a bit ago and she asked a question, “What does toxic mean?” I gave her the definition and she’s like, “Huh, okay, can you give me an example?” I said, “Well, it would be like if somebody came up to you and said, oh, you’re ugly or you said that to somebody else.”

She’s like, “Okay, well.” She talked about this one boy at school and she said, “Mommy, so and so says I’m ugly all the time, but it doesn’t bother me.” I said, “Well, that’s interesting,” because, technically it could be toxic because it could be harming someone, but it’s not really toxic to you because in your mind, you know you’re not ugly. You don’t believe that about yourself so you don’t spread that toxicity onward.

That’s just really interesting about toxicity. Even though someone could do something harmful to you like, say something about you or they can even do something harmful to you like abuse you or something, and you may not even process it in that way where you spread that toxicity onward. Again, it’s a very fluid thing here of what is toxicity? It really is, again, it goes back to how our brain processes that.

I could’ve talked about when I did my Unstoppable Woman Journey, on episode 2. I said, some of the things that happened to me growing up, to certain people, it wouldn’t have been as hard as it was on me because my brain interpreted it a certain way. It made me more receptive to that. It made me more toxic to repeat those patterns because I was so sensitive to that. Does that make sense? I hope so.

These are the moments where I wish you and I were across from each other and you’d be nodding your head or you’d be nodding, “No, Lindsay, tell me more. I have questions about this in this.” I’m hoping that you’re following me here. Toxicity is really then about how you’re interpreting it in your own mind, how you’re passing that on. We can’t control other people, right?

We can’t control what people bring to us. What we can control is how we interpret it, how we feel about it, how we think about it. That’s what I want you to start to understand here is the way that you may be behaving, maybe it’s not the best way and maybe you can be changing that. That was something, again, that coaching really opened my eyes to.

There was an assessment that my coach gave me that I now give in my course called Become an Unstoppable Woman, and it’s a boundaries assessment. In that assessment, you go through and you check off things that you’re putting up with in life, one of which is I allow people to yell at me, and my coach said to me, “Okay, Lindsay, you said that you allow people to yell at you. How do you feel about that?” I was like, “I’m cool with it. I think it’s totally fine.” She’s like “Really? Really, you’re okay with people yelling at you?” I was like, “Yes, I’m totally used to it. It’s not that big deal.”

She’s like, “Okay, well, let’s just try something on for a little bit. What if for the next 21 days nobody yelled at you and if somebody yells at you, you stood up for yourself?” I was like, “Uh, All right,” and I started to do it, and I started to realize how toxic that was in my world, but I didn’t know any different. I didn’t know a world where people didn’t yell at me. Now if somebody yells at me, oh my gosh, it is a big deal because I’m not used to it. It brings me down so much. Not only that, I stand up for myself versus me closing away, and shriveling. I can’t say the word. Shriveling away and not owning my power. I feel the difference between that, but I didn’t know any different because I had been yelled at my whole life.

These are the kinds of things that you can start to bring to the surface of what are some behaviors that I’m doing that could be toxic here and how can I be changing that in my world? I wish I could get into more detail about that here on this episode, but it really is a process of starting to understand our thoughts, starting to change our world with different habits, starting to feel more awareness of ways we’re putting up a toxicity that we don’t even know about. Not to kind of be salesy here but I just have to tell you that really the depth of where we go into that is my Become an Unstoppable a Woman course. Again, if you ever feel called to go there, we’re going to get into so much depth in that course to get there. All right?

Going back to what you can start to do today to start to understand your behaviors, if they’re toxic or not, to start to change it. There’s just one simple question I want to ask you that I want you to start asking yourself. Before you do something, I want you to pause, which can be hard in itself. Say your child does something and you want to immediately react in that moment. Instead of doing that, I want you to just take a one-second pause and I want you to ask yourself, is this contributing to the legacy I want to leave? Think about that. Is this contributing to the legacy I want to leave?

Do you want to be a mom that leaves a legacy of yelling? Do you want to be a mom that leaves a legacy of locking yourself in your room or not connecting in the way that you’re connecting? Do you want to leave a legacy of not being there for the people that you care about? Do you want to leave a legacy of feeling constantly anxious? Do you want to leave a legacy of doing abusive things? I don’t know, whatever that is. Do you want to leave a legacy of gossip? There’s so many things there. Do you want to leave a legacy of overeating? That’s really the first question you can start to ask yourself to understand what a toxic behavior could even be in your world.

We’ve got that basic definition again, anything that harms you or harm somebody else, but it’s hard to understand that because you may have been harmed in that way for so long that you don’t know any different. Again, ask yourself, is this contributing to the legacy I want to leave? Just in that moment, if you realize, no, it’s not, then you’ve got to start to figure out a way to change that.

That’s where the ball really starts to roll in of, “Ooh, where’d I go now, Lindsay? Where do I go now?” This is where, again, it starts to just get a little bit trickier. It’s a longer process than what I can get into this podcast, unfortunately. I wish I could just say, “Here it is, semi thinkers’, magic pill moments. Take this and you’ll feel all better,” but right now, what I want you to do is start taking in that awareness.

The other thing I want you to start taking awareness of, when you’re around behavior, that feels toxic to you. Again, everybody’s going to be different here. Give the example of my daughter on the playground, that guy, boy, whatever you wanna call it, comes up and tells her that she’s ugly. She doesn’t care. She moves on she says, it doesn’t bother her. She can be around that energy and be fine. Somebody else, it will be very hard for them to handle that energy.

You’re going to be the same way. As you go out in your world, start to study yourself as a scientist. Start to ask yourself, does this feel good? Do I like being around this? Then just start to take notes. Really what you’re doing here in this phase is just, again, studying yourself in so many ways of, “Ooh, I like being around this or I don’t.”

I’ll give you an example in my own life. I tend to be a person who really likes to ask a lot of questions to people and likes to listen, which is great for my profession, but in my personal life, it can get me in trouble sometimes. I can get into situations where I’m asking people questions, I’m listening really in-depth, and then they just start unloading on me and unloading in a relationship where it’s inappropriate.

Say for a family member, they just start unloading the stuff on me of all these things that have happened to them and then to them or whatever. I want to be there for that person. I want to be able to hold that space for them in some ways, but some ways I don’t. I think this is inappropriate, I don’t want this. You need to have a therapist or a coach or whoever to unload on this because this is not the relationship that is appropriate based on what I want between us.

At first, I didn’t even realize that I was getting so drained by this, but I had to step back and say, “Okay, what kind of boundaries can I set here? What kinds of things can I do to change this?” Some of that has been certain things that I say, and I still stay in a very loving firm place. It doesn’t mean you have to go out and be a witch. It means that you just start setting your boundaries. It really does go back to a lot of boundaries here, friend, a lot of things.

The other thing too is, putting myself in situations where I’m not going to ask those questions or be in that state of mind or be alone with that person. I just set myself up for success and sometimes that means just not being around that person at all, unfortunately. Like I had mentioned early in this episode, I had some friends who I adore, I miss them so very much, but they were just not in a place that they wanted to improve or change. As much as I would love to continue to hang out with them, I had to choose myself because I have so many things that I want to do in this world.

Again, I keep thinking about that legacy. Is this contributing to the legacy I want to leave? Me spending my Friday nights bitching and moaning about things that could be easily changeable if someone would just prioritize themselves, but they’re not, is not a place that I want to be in and I can’t control their behaviors, unfortunately. I can only control myself. Unfortunately, I had to let that go. That’s where life gets a little rocky sometimes of, “Oh, I don’t know if I want to make those changes Lindsay.” I promise you on the other side of these changes, it gets really awesome and good. In the middle of the changes, it feels really rough, but it gets better. Just know it does that.

I know your brain right now may be saying, “Lindsay, I can’t get rid of my friends or get rid of my family or do this.” I was on the same boat too. I thought, “Oh my gosh. If I say, I’m not going to put up with yelling anymore in my life, I may not have relationship with my mom and I don’t want that,” but it’s crazy where that’s happened is I’ve set that boundary with myself and with her.

If she ever gets that way, then I have a certain boundary with that and she doesn’t really yell at me anymore. I just have accepted that for what it is. I know I don’t need to be around her on long periods of time either because she can get that way. I don’t get in situations with her where she could be triggering. If it does get there, I just know how to handle that.

My friend, I know this is a hard topic. I know it can seem really daunting and overwhelming, but I promise you, step by step, you can get there. Today, I really just wanted you to start to gain some awareness of how you can start to handle this with yourself to bring forth toxicity you may not even know is there, and how to handle it in your world. Again, it’s just studying yourself as a scientist. It really goes back to some boundaries, but you don’t really know what boundaries to set until you know them.

Again, this is why I wish this stuff was taught in school. Why were we sitting around learning all of the things that we were learning, especially like higher-level math? I did not need to learn those things. I needed to learn these life skills. I’m glad that you’re here, I’m glad you’re learning this stuff. I hope today helped you. I hope it was informative to you. Remember to ask yourself that question, is this leading to my greater legacy? Then too, just think about that toxicity, and if you feel called, come and take that free assessment, lindsayepreston.com/assessment, to see if coaching is right for you because that’s where the magic is going to happen.

I can give you tips all day long in this podcast that can help you little bits and pieces, that can give you a big ahas too, absolutely, but it’s going to be that step-by-step process of working with me, handholding you, I’m there with you every step of the way as we change your flipping life, my friend, your flipping life. All right. That’s all I have for you today. I just got to close my little spiel here. Remember, my friends, you’re only as unstoppable as you believe you can be. Believe in yourself, you got this.