“Awareness is the greatest agent for change.”
Behavior Patterns
You know those people who year after year experience little to no change?
They set goals and don’t achieve them. They feel stuck in things like their career, marriage, health and finances. They think “this is just the best life can get for me.”
They don’t know how to spot their behavior patterns.
If they did, they’d make goals and reach them. They’d never feel stuck again. They’d know and experience first-hand that the life they dream of can exist.
Just ONE experience of spotting (and overcoming) a behavior pattern is life-changing.
It shifts everything for you.
I know because I’ve experienced it first-hand and give these life-changing shifts to my clients all day, every day.
One of my favorite life-changing shifts I witnessed from spotting a pattern was with my client, Brooke.
Brooke had a tough exterior. She knew how to get things done. She excelled in her male-dominated career despite not having an ideal childhood. She had attended years of therapy but decided to coach with me to find deep fulfillment in her career and to help her lose weight.
During our first few calls, Brooke had a lot of anger. (And rightfully so, she had put up with some crap in her life past and present.)
At the end of one of our calls, I told Brooke, “I know you feel a lot of anger right now but this is surface-level. What you need to feel is sadness and you’re so busy being angry at everyone else that you’re failing to see how angry you are at yourself. You talk to yourself in a very negative way and you treat those thoughts like facts.”
She sat silent on the phone but listened. It was one of those moments as a coach where we potentially risk the relationship to tell the client the truth of what they don’t see. This can be jarring to some and cause a reaction. I was fortunate she wasn’t reacting, but instead chose to take my words to heart.
She listened back to our call recordings and started hearing what I heard. Her mind was blown.
She said later, “I had no idea how horribly I was talking to myself. From that call, I stopped talking about others and instead focused on how I could be kinder to ME.”
That call I had with Brooke was just 3 months ago from the date of writing this. Brooke has now increased her income by at LEAST $30k+ (she’s up for bonuses too), her anxiety has diminished greatly, she’s loving herself and she’s losing the weight.
We were able to spot a pattern here that changed the game for her. You can start to do this for yourself too so you will never again feel stuck.
TUNE INTO THIS EPISODE AS I TEACH YOU:
- What behavior patterns are so you can start to spot yours
- Why it’s vital to spot your behavior patterns if you want to accomplish your dreams
- An exercise to start to spot your patterns now (without the help of a coach)
…and so much more
Get ready. This episode can be a game-changer. Listen 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
Breaking Behavior Patterns
Full Transcript
This is the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast with Lindsay Preston Episode 87, Spot
Your Patterns.
[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, my friend. I am recording this episode right after Thanksgiving 2020, here in the
States. I hope you had a good thanksgiving too. Mine was a little iffy. If you listen to me
closely or you follow me on social media, you know I’m always trying to put a positive spin
to 2020 and saying it’s all on our mindset, you can accomplish whatever you want if you
have the right thoughts and blah blah blah, but I must admit, there are times that I am like,
“Eff this year, I’m so over aspects of it.” It’s really this COVID crap.
I am so ready for my two-year-old son to be back in school. I am so ready to be able to just
invite people over to our home and not have to worry about things and bring in a
babysitter so my husband and I can have a date night. Gosh, we had our in-laws in town
too, or my in-laws in town. They’re older and so then we had to take even more
precautions of things. I’m just over it, so over it. Just know I’m in the boat of misery with
you at times. It’s just like, “Oh my God, can we just move on with our lives?”
Now, granted, total first-world problems. So grateful for my health and everybody else’s
health out there. Hopefully, you’re healthy if y ou’relistening to this. That’s the ultimate
blessing. Still, it’s like, “Dang, can we move on, please?” Anyways, we’re not talking about
that today, we’re talking about spotting your patterns. This episode is a really good one
because if you’re somebody who just doesn’t have what you want in life, maybe you’re
somebody who sets goals, you don’t achieve them, you just feel like you’re stuck. Maybe
it’s in one area of life, like your career, marriage, health, or finances. Maybe it’s more than
that, maybe there’s several areas of life where you feel stuck.
I hear from a lot of women, they’re stuck in their emotional health. It’s just like, “I just feel
the same all the time. I just don’t feel confident. I just feel anxious and I don’t want to feel
that way.” They just haven’t learned in essence how to spot their patterns yet. They don’t
know what it is that’s holding them back. They just start to think things like, “Well, maybe
this is just the best life can get for me.” It’s just not true.
I want you to be somebody who makes goals and achieves them. I want you to feel like
you are never stuck again. I want you to experience, first-hand, what it’s like to live a life
where your dreams can exist. I know these things can be possible for you because I am
living it. I am not some magical unicorn here, my clients experience the same thing. They
are not magical unicorns, although they are awesome and I do love them very, very much
so, but we’re not special here. We just know how to spot our patterns, or we know how to
reach out to somebody like a coach to help us spot our patterns.
As you hear me say often, many times we are so close to our own mind and our own life,
we can’t see the things that are holding us back the most. Today, I’m going to teach you
how to spot your patterns. I’m going to give you an exercise on how to do that. It’s going
to be one that, hopefully, you start to implement in your life. If you can just change one
thought pattern, it can open up so many doors for you.
I’ll give you a story. One of my favorite life-changing pattern shifts that I’ve seen was
actually a client that I just wrapped up the first 3 months with her. I’m going to call her–
I’ll call her “Brooke.” Brooke is a go-getter, for sure. She rocks it in her career, she’s in a
male-dominated industry. She has this tough exterior and she has done very well for
herself, especially considering that she did not have an ideal childhood. She attended
years of therapy, and she loved it. She got a lot of progress from therapy, but she came to
me in coaching because she’s like, “I just feel stuck. I’ve done some great things in my life
but I’m just not moving the needle forward.”
We ended up working together, obviously. In one of our calls, she had a lot of anger. She
did have a lot of anger in the other calls. It came across as this resentful, badass bitch kind
of anger that sometimes we all like to embody or have at times. “You can’t eff with me,”
kind of stuff. I remember in one of the calls, I said, “Listen, the things that have happened
to you in your life, you absolutely can be angry about that and be angry about the people
at work who aren’t performing the way you want them to and not behaving the way you
want them to. Really behind that is sadness, and I just want you to realize that.”
I just left it at that. When I say hard truths like that to clients, I must admit there is always
a part of me that’s like, “I hope this doesn’t ruin the relationship,” because it’s hard to hear
that sometimes. She was not in a space at all where she was even thinking about sadness.
It was just all about them, them, them, anger, anger, anger, blame, blame, blame. I could
tell she had held on to this story for a long time.
Then we go into the next call and she said something along the lines of, “I listened back to
the call recording of our call, and I listened back to some other ones, and you are totally
right. I’m just starting to process how I’m blaming everybody.” The other thing that I told
her, I forgot to mention this, was I said, “You’re really, really mean to yourself. You think
that you love yourself and you think that you’re just mean to everybody else, that you don’t
think those things about yourself, but you are really, really, really mean to yourself.” Then,
as I said, when we came back on that next call, she’s like, “You’re right. I hear the way that
I’m talking to myself and I’d never even heard that before.” It shifted a lot in her.
We did, of course, the coaching process. We’re healing that kind of stuff and we’re
diminishing that stuff naturally. That’s just the way the process works. We just wrapped up,
as I said, the first 3 months. She said to me, “That was the moment that shifted. It just
shifted everything. I had no idea how negative I spoke to myself. I had no idea that beyond
the anger was other stuff. I had done years of therapy and I had done all the personal
development stuff, it was just I couldn’t see that in myself. I couldn’t spot the pattern in
that sense.”
From there, she got to a place at her current job, she once thought, “Oh my gosh, I can
never work here. I need to get out of here.” I told her early on, I was like, “Listen, I don’t
want you to change jobs for the next few months. We’ve got to work this stuff out
beforehand before you even think about it.” She knew that, but I just reminded her of like,
“We want you to get a place where you’re in a really strong mindset, because otherwise,
you’re just going to manifest probably the same thing in a new job.”
Anyways, what has happened is she got moved to a different team at work. She’s like, “Oh
my gosh, my team is just so much better. This is awesome,” and all of the things. Then a
job reached out to her and offered her a position. They’d been searching for somebody for
two years for this position. She’s like, “I’m really happy at work now. I’m really content,”
because, again, we worked on all the things in her mindset that was really just about her
and this pattern of holding on to this anger which was really sadness and her working on
her own “inner mean girl,” as we call it, with the negative talk, that she was really happy at
her job, and so they wanted her even more.
This is what I talk about on the podcast. As I say, you’re going to get to a place eventually,
as you do this kind of work on yourself, where you’re just content with where you’re at.
Granted, yes, you want goals and you want to reach things, but you would become more
magnetic, and people want you even more. This happened with her. This job reached out
to her and said, “We think you’re the best fit for that, we’ve been searching for two years.”
She’s like, “Listen, that salary’s not going work for me. This is what I want instead.” They’re
like, “Done.” She’s like, “Okay. Well then, I want a sign-on bonus.” They’re like, “Done.”
She’s like, “Okay. You want me to go on office? Well, I want to work remote.” “Okay, done.”
She’s like, “Holy crap, Lindsay. What have we done here?” I’m like, “See, this is good stuff,
my friend, this is how you can live.” It all goes back to us just shifting some things in her
mindset. Like the example I gave you, we were able to spot the pattern and change it and
that’s what creates momentum.
I talk about sometimes in my copy and I think here on the podcast too, is we change one
belief or a pattern and it makes a huge difference. It changes everything, but when you’re
in coaching, you’re doing this all the time shift, shift, shift, shift, shift is what we call, we’re
shifting those beliefs. I experienced this as a client. I am working through some stuff
myself and it’s just like one thing after another, after another, that I’m spotting in myself. I
use this tool called the model.
I mentioned a lot on the podcast as well and that is the best tool to start to see, like, what
am I thoughts here? When you start to see the same thoughts that are coming up for you
over and over and over again, it’s fricking mind-blowing. I just had a call earlier today with
a client where we do the exercise where we talk about her top 10 worst memories. The
reason I do this exercise with clients is not because I want to hear the worst of the worst
of their life, it’s because I want to know what were the things their brain has determined
as the worst and what were the thoughts that person’s brain took from that incident about
themselves, about others or about life in general.
As I said, I had one of those calls today and so she’s talking to me about her memories and
should we pull the lot of leaf patterns. If you hear me clicking it’s because I’m pulling up
the list, but we pulled things like I’m not protected. I can’t trust others. I have to be
successful so I can protect myself. You can’t get close to people because they’ll turn on
you or they’ll leave. I’m not good enough. Others are looking at me and judging me. I have
to prove myself. I have to be a good provider, blah, blah, blah. Right?
We’re pulling this long list of at least 20 of these, in essence, patterns, these thought
patterns that now she’s saying, oh my gosh, because this thing happened to me in either
childhood or early adulthood or even late adulthood, it’s just something that now my brain
has, in essence, built these brain wires around thinking like, this is just the way that life
works because my brain wants to keep me protected and so it just says, okay, hold on to
this belief or this pattern.
Then you’ll be safe and secure, but then when she’s coming to me, she’s like, “Lindsay, but
I feel anxious and I have social anxiety and I just don’t have the confidence I used to have
and I just feel like I’m working all the time.” Now I’m starting to see, and she’s starting to
see too, it goes back to these thought patterns that she has, like the ones I mentioned, I
have to be successful to protect myself. That’s why she’s in this pattern of overworking.
Others are looking at me and judging me. That’s why she’s having some social anxiety.
Isn’t that crazy? It’s crazy, crazy cool how once we just start to see spot these things, how
it can change everything. So, you’ve seen the importance of this? I hope so.
I want to give you one more story before I get into more of the hows and all the things. I
had another client call today; she’s passed this exercise of the top 10 worst memories.
She was talking about her boyfriend and she was mentioning a couple of things about him
and she was talking about that and then she was talking about something at work and
then she was talking about something in her family. I said, “Do you see here, the way that
you’re describing all of these things and the way you’re doing all of these things, you have
this thought pattern, in essence, of like, it’s my job to take care of others.”
Then what happens is that you do it and then you resent them and then you’re mad about
it because they didn’t really appreciate you in the way you did but really it’s because you’re
not really appreciating yourself because you didn’t want to do it in the first place. She’s
like, “Oh my gosh, I knew the pattern was there because we had pulled it before but now,
I’m seeing even more how it’s playing out in my life today and it’s like, whoa, this is why
I’m stuck in the pattern that I’m in.”
I’m like, “Exactly. We spotted the pattern and so now we can go in and we can start to do
all the work to heal it.” We’re not going to get into that today. We’re not going to heal
patterns. We’re going to spot patterns because if you don’t have awareness, you don’t have
shit. Awareness is the first step to change always. If you’re not aware of it, it’s like, what
the hell can we change? We don’t even know what to change. Right? So we’ve got to bring
as much as we can to the conscious mind, we’ve got to get it out of the subconscious and
even the unconscious and bring it up.
I have a lot of clients who will tell me, “Lindsay, I don’t have a lot of memories, especially
of my childhood.” I’m like, that is totally okay because we’re going to open up the portal, in
essence, to let’s start pulling memories and it’s amazing what happens. I even see it
happen with clients who do have good memories. We go in, we spot patterns, we heal
those patterns, and then they experience an uplevel in their life. They accomplish typically
the goal that they want to accomplish, that we’ve been working on, goal or goals, and then
they ride that beautiful wave for a while and then they set new goals and then we need a
spot new patterns and then we need to go in and heal those things.
The reason or the way that we go in and spot new patterns as we pull new memories, the
brain offers a new set of 10 memories. It’s like, “Oh, here’s the next 10 worst memories of
my life.” Then we just go in and we rinse and repeat over and over again. It goes back to
what I talked about, it was last week on the show, how to uplevel. It’s like you set the goal,
and then your brain’s going to pull all the crap that’s keeping you from the goal. If you
don’t know how to bring that to the conscious mind, you’re just going to feel funky. You’re
just going to be like, “Oh, I don’t know why. I just can’t show up for my goal.” Everything
just feels really hard.
I said that I want to up-level my career, get better in my marriage,” and it feels even worse
now. Then, so you tell yourself, “Oh, well I don’t even want to set these kinds of goals. It’s
just too hard. I just need to settle with what I have. I’m just high maintenance.” All the
things it’s just too much. No, it’s just that you need to know how to spot the pattern and
where it comes from. Now, again, I know I’m selling you on this. I feel like I have to sell
you on all of these things sometimes, this is big stuff and I’m clicking around because the
client I referred to earlier, who I said, we were spotting a pattern in her everyday life now, I
want to brag for a minute on her and on me.
She said, “I’ve done more in two months since we’ve been coaching than I’ve done in the
whole year,” and this girl, she achieves almost too much where I’ve had to slow her down a
little bit and because I’ve had to slow her down, it’s actually sped her up. It’s made her
more strategic in the way that she’s achieving. We talk about sometimes on the podcast,
frantic versus massive action, getting her more in that massive action place.
I’m like, “Damn, that is fricking cool.” One of the reasons that she is having such fast
success, because normally when somebody coached with me the first three months, they
have action and they have change, but not as fast as this girl. One of the reasons why she’s
experiencing such quick change is because she listens to the podcast. Yes, does she do
coaching with me? Of course, and that is like 80% of her results but because she intensely
listens to the podcast, it takes it next level, which just reminds me how powerful these
episodes are.
I hope you take them seriously and if you’re a client of mine and you don’t listen to the
podcast regularly, because some of my clients, I tell them directly as like, you need to
listen to the podcasts, you have invested this money, go all in, listen to the podcast too,
because it’s part of the package. Please listen to the podcast. It makes a difference. I had a
consult earlier this week and she was the first consult I’ve ever had in six years. Out of
how many consults I’ve done at this point? First console ever, where she knew all the
things that were holding her back.
I did not offer her anything new. She knew all of her patterns. You know why? She’s
listened to every single episode of this podcast. Every single one. You could tell she had
studied and she was even like prep for the call because she’s heard me talk about the
consult so much on these episodes and she’s like, “I know what you’re going to ask me and
so I’m ready.” She’s like, “I even did an intense Google search and I found this behind the
scenes page of how much your coaching is and once I filled the number, I got a little
freaked out, but then I even coached myself.”
I was like, it is worth it. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, how crazy powerful is that?” That just again,
shows how powerful these podcast episodes are. Side tangent for you but I had to just
brag on her because she is freaking rocking it, so much fun. Patterns, big deal. Are you
getting that? I hope so. Let’s talk about now how you can spot your patterns. Oh, I have
one more story. You’re probably like, “Lindsay, what’s up with the stories?” I totally forgot.
This is the whole reason why I wanted to do this episode.
I’m getting to the age where it’s about to be my 20th high school reunion. I get on
Facebook one day and I get a notification to join a Facebook group that says, Class of two thousand two.
Then it says my high school reunion. I’m like, “Oh my God, this is so cool.” I don’t
even think twice about it. I click the link, I’m in the group, I’m seeing all the things and it
hits me, a couple of different things. First off, holy crap. 20 years. I have been out of school
longer than I was in traditional schooling, what the f? [laughs]
It was one of those age moments where you’re really like, “Holy crap, I’m entering my late
30s. Whoa, it just seems like yesterday, I was 16 years old ready to get out of this place.
Now, look at me.” Then I’m also taking in the different people in the group and this was a
group initially, the first few members, the first few hundred, I had a graduating class of
something like 700, I think so. The first few hundred members, like I was, were people I
didn’t hang out with in high school.
They were people who I intentionally did not want to associate myself with. I felt like this
inner mean girl part of me was coming back out, like, “Oh, my God. I’m in this group with
these people and this is not where I should be.” It kicked my booty a little bit like, “Whoa,
Lindsay, I cannot believe you’re even going there.” It just was so innate, to go back to that
inner mean girl place, which we tend to be in our high school and middle school years.
Still, it was like, “Whoa, okay.” I took in, because for many of us, when we come out of
those years, we do have a little victory mindset sometimes I’m like, “Oh, well, so and so did
this to me. So and so did that.
My parents this and my parents that,” and because I went back into my old, what I call,
inner mean girl mindset so quickly, and I was able to see just how I was during those years.
I was like, “Man, I was mean too. I messed up too. I made mistakes that I wasn’t probably
always the nicest.” I was taking that part in and I was also taking in that whereas I knew
some of these people, I didn’t know other people.
They were talking about things that I didn’t know anything about, like different parties and
different experiences they had. I’m like, “How did I miss this?” I know, my parents were
strict in high school but I didn’t even know this stuff was going on. I’m going back into my
high school mindset and I was obsessed with dance and this thing called drill team, we
have here in the South, where you do high kicks, and splits and all this stuff, and you
perform at football games, and you do competitions and stuff.
I lived and breathed that thing. In essence, it was my job. I just went all in on it, which is a
great quality but I was just thinking about it all the time. I didn’t think about anything else
other than boys here and there and my friends here in there. Otherwise, it was just like
drill team, drill team, dance, drill, team, dance, drill team. I started to see, I was like, “Oh
my God, I still do that now.”
Even though I don’t work that many hours on paper, I am constantly thinking about work,
constantly. I knew this about myself but I saw this pattern, in essence, play out. It’s like,
“Oh my gosh, it started in high school.” It started in high school, I was just hyper-focused
on dance and drill team. Then in college, it became about drinking and partying and boys
and I was just so hyper-focused on that.
Then it became about work, and it just hasn’t stopped since. It kicked me on my butt, to be
honest. I was like, “Wow, I just sit around and I think about my goals all the time and work
and I just really don’t sit around and connect with people.” It just blew my mind, and that’s
what happens a lot of times when you spot a pattern or somebody spots one for you like in
a coaching session.
I’ve had clients say, “It kicked their butt. It felt like I gut punch.” I’ve even heard some
clients tell me it felt like a bitch slap is what they called it, but it is. For me, sometimes my
mind just feels mind blown. Sometimes when I get really intense coaching, like I did a few
months ago when I was in this really big growth phase in my business, it’s like my head
was just spinning for days because it was just like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t even incorporate
all these things that I didn’t see in myself.” Just know that’s normal but it’s so crazy mindblowing, I just can’t describe it any other way, when you spot this pattern.
Then I just was thinking like, “I have to teach this specifically on the podcast. I have to
make sure that people specifically know how to spot their patterns and see them.” Now,
again, granted, we’re not always going to catch everything right away when we’re meant to
catch it but we do catch it when I think we need to catch it. I just want you to be aware of
how to catch it. We talk to people in our personal life, or at least I do. Some people just
have the same damn stories. Every frickin time I’m talking to them it’s the same problems,
the same stories da da da, la la la la.
I’m just sitting there and this is even before I’m a coach, and I’m just sitting there like,
“Does she even realize that she’s just having the same thoughts day after day and creating
the same results over and over again?” It’s just like, “Dude, get over it and move on.” I felt
like I was that way for a while. I can’t tell you how many years of my life, I sat around
complaining about my mom. I know at least on my high school and college years, it’s like,
“My mom this, my mom that, mom, mom, mom, mom.” If there was any boy in the picture,
especially if we broke up, oh, man, you better believe I was just sitting there complaining
about that boy.
The other thing, when I went into this high school group, and encouraged me to go and
open up this box that I had of different notes and things that I had from my middle school
and high school years. You all know before the phones, we had notes. We had these
notebooks that we made and all the things. I’m going and I’m reading these notebooks of
things that I wrote. This is in middle school. High school, I was obsessed with drill team,
but Middle School, oh my God, I was obsessed with boys. I created a lot of drama in my
friend group.
Now granted, is that typical for the age? Yes. Out of my friends, I was definitely the most
dramatic one. Even sometimes my friends would say things like, “I know you want me to be
mad at so and so but I’m just not mad at her so I’m not going to be.” I just sat there and I’m
like, “Man, I was just so stuck in this drama, gossip, judgy mindset for so long.” I’ve talked
about on the podcast but it was just so true. I just took it in in a whole new level. I just
don’t do that stuff anymore and I’m so glad because I was able to get that pattern spotted
for me in my very first coaching session when I was a client to end that pattern.
I just took in of how I was stuck year after year after year. I really wish somebody would
have said something along the lines of, “Hey, do you realize this is a pattern in your life?
You really like to cause drama, and you really like to do da da da da?” I would have been
mind blown. This is why coaches get paid what they get paid, is they’re spotting patterns
for everybody else.
Going back to the core of this episode, how can you spot your own patterns without the
help of a coach? You can do it a couple of different ways. The first is to pull one of your
worst memories. Don’t pull one that’s very triggering for you. Pull something that it just
like, “Oh, this thing ruminates for me a lot of times.” Then what you’re going to do is you’re
going to journal it out, like a story.
I’m going to give you an example. This is an example I always give so if you’ve already
heard it, forgive me. The example I give is, when I was in middle school, all the girls were
developing faster than I was. At that time, it’s a big deal like, “Oh, these girls are getting
breasts and their periods and blah, blah, blah.” I wasn’t and so I was in essence, really
avoiding a lot of my feelings with that and thinking that maybe just not everybody noticed
that I wasn’t developing.
I get on the bus one day and one of the cute popular boys said, “Lindsay, you’re as flat as a
board,” in front of everybody. I don’t remember what anybody did but the memory that I
have is that everybody laughed. I don’t know if that’s true or not but I just remember
feeling so embarrassed and thinking, “I’m weird. I’m different. There’s something wrong
with me, because I’m not curvy. I’m not beautiful.”
Right there, my friend, those thoughts that I just gave you are the patterns that you want
to look at. When you write that memory out, ask yourself then, “What were my takeaways
from that?” Meaning what were my primary thoughts I took away from that? Again, for me,
it was I’m weird. I’m different. There’s something wrong with me because I’m not curvy, I’m
not beautiful. Start to then ask yourself, how is this still applying in my life today?
I remember the very first time I told my coach that story, it was like my mind blew because
I just never thought I was pretty. I never thought anybody that I dated, that I was good
enough for them because of my looks. Even though I would look at the people I was dating
sometimes and be like, Man, this guy is really attractive. Why is he with me? Anytime we
would end a relationship, the first thing I would look out when they would date someone
new, I didn’t even know this fully, consciously, was like, how’s her body? She have breasts?
Oh, well, that’s the reason why he left, he wanted the big breasts.
It was just like this huge moment, this huge shift in me. I thought really like, that’s why I
don’t think I’m beautiful because it all started back here, in this moment? Just being able
to do that, and spotting the pattern can be big. Now another way you can do this, and this
is going to take more time. It is a little bit harder until we’re thrown into a situation. For
me, I was recently thrown into being high school Lindsay again, or middle school Lindsay
again, because I was with my people from that time, right?
It was just like, Oh my gosh, I’m with these similar people, again, that I hadn’t really seen
most of them in almost 20 years. Is it 20? Oh, my God. Yes, it’s 20 can’t wrap my head
around that for some reason. 20 years? Oh, gosh. It’s like, whoa. I just saw myself going
into Lindsay of that time again. You can do this too, and think about, who were you as a
little kid? Who were you in maybe middle school or high school? Who were you in college?
Who were you in your 20s? Who were you in your 30s? and so on and so forth, during your
40s 50s, beyond, and just start to ask yourself of like, how am I the same?
Just describe yourself and then look back at it and say, okay, so Lindsay, when she was
little, did da da da da da, and then in high school, she did da da da da da, and in 20, she did
da da da da. Another way you can do this, if you’re looking at an area of life that you’re
working on specifically, you can look at like, if it says it’s your wanting to grow in your
career, look at how you showed up in all the jobs you showed up at?
Even early ones, even when you’re babysitting maybe or working at McDonald’s or
whatever, how did you show up in those jobs? What were the jobs like, the environment
like? Start to see if you see patterns there? If you’re working on relationships, maybe a
marriage or a dating relationship? How have you shown up? I know for me, that’s really
kicked my butt. When I married my husband, I was like, Oh, well, he’s not a narcissist. I’m
like my daughter’s father. I was like, Oh, this is just going to be peachy keen, like, we’re
going to have a baby and everything’s going to be great.
Of course, we had dated that for two years at that point, were engaged a year. We’ve been
together a decent amount, and we had had our ups and downs during that time, that I just
thought like, everything’s going to be great because it was all on him with my ex to cause
all the problems. Now granted, I had taken some ownership of some things but I just
thought like, Oh, this is just going to be so different. What happened was, I started falling
into a lot of old behavior patterns. I’m still working through those, to be honest, and some
of them like being a little bit nitpicky, a little bit critical, pushing him away, not being able
to really absorb the abundance, and open myself up to love.
Very similar things in both of those relationships and if I look back on earlier ones,
granted, they didn’t go as long and they weren’t as intimate, but those patterns have been
there. They even send back to childhood. We talked about my coaching process upon
attachment, and how we attach very early on as a child, and if you’re big in the psych
world, or personal development, you likely know this, we have an attachment style, we
take that attachment style, and then we repeat it time and time again until we change it in
our relationships. That can be a really big pattern too.
I gave you some stuff to start with here. One of the memories, one of your “worst”
memories, and pull what were your thoughts out of that memory? Then two, look at these
patterns of different times in your life, how are you the same? I will give you a bonus
exercise here, is, this is a time of year when I’m recording that’s where we’re in the
holidays. Now, granted, it’s COVID and we can’t see our families as much, and so on and so
forth, but this is a time when you’re likely going back into a similar environment or
situation that you haven’t been in for maybe a few months or a few years.
For some people, they go home, they go to their family of origin and they find themselves
acting a little different and feeling a little different when they’re with that family of origin.
Just spot the patterns there. How do I show up when I’m there? What are the things that
I’m thinking when I’m there? How am I feeling when I’m there? Since you’ve been away
from it for a bit, when you go back into it, it can feel fresh. I even do this, when I go to my
hair appointments. I go every other month and every time I’m sitting in the chair with my
stylist, and I’ve seen her now for like, gosh, almost 10 years.
I think I’ve been with her for a long time. I’m always sitting in that chair and I’m like, “How
am I different than when I was here eight weeks ago? How am I feeling different? What am
I thinking different? How am I showing up different,” because it’s just given me enough
perspective of being away from it to then say, how am I different and how am I the same?
For example, my stylist typically asked, hey, Lindsay, How’s everything? We start just
shooting the shit kind of stuff. I kid you not, for a long time. It’s like, I’ll just work, take care
of kids, I’m working.
She’s like, Oh, do anything fun. Oh, no, just working, taking care of kids. I’m catching
myself of damn, I’ve been saying this for a long time. Now, granted, we got COVID I got
that, whatever. I mean, I could still be having fun, right? It’s like, “Lindsay, this is a pattern
in your life. I’m seeing it again, even more from the high school years, right? This is a
pattern. Let’s incorporate some fun here. Let’s shake this thing up.
Let’s maybe bring in some friendships, do all the things not just think about work all day
because you work and you’re very productive in your work hours but then you don’t need
to go and think about work for the next however many hours of your day, let it go and
move on. Instead of just overthinking about it. Yes. Okay, so hopefully you have some
takeaways from today. I hope you love this episode, that it helped you. I hope you’re going
to go spot those patterns and blow your own damn mind, but if you ever need help, I’m
here for you. Just go apply for that free console.
Let’s get started. Let’s get moving and grooving on that. Right now, my calendar is fully
booked out in December. I only have one or two clients spots left for a while. I’m
considering myself fully booked out right now because I am fully booked out. I’m thinking I
can add in one or two more spots and then I’ll just start a waitlist. Get on, let’s move. Let’s
do this. Start making some results happen in your life. There’s no need to stay stuck. Go
out there, start making some money, start improving all the things that you want to
improve and the way to do it is to go into spot those patterns.
Reach out if you need me, you know where to find me. Otherwise, go out there and rock
with, my friends, and I’ll see you in the next one. Bye.
[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.
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