Lessons

Lesson Info

Flipping the Story

We left off, its been a little heavy. We're gonna lighten everything up now. Thank God! (audience laughing) but when we left off we were talking about that narrative. And we all have it and maybe now that I brought awareness to it, you're going to start to realize that narrative and what it says. And what other people are saying to you, not take on what other people wanna throw at you. Remember it comes from different places, it comes from their fear, it comes from their ego, their insecurity, and its easy, they're denial, its easy to sometimes put it on someone. It doesn't mean you have to pick it up. Right, you can leave it right there and lighten the load, you don't need to pick it up. And the narrative that you have, learning how to press that stop button is really difficult. So I wanna give you some tools to work on that which is really just flipping the story and reframing. Think about every time you play it how you feel because our reality in words are really so just incredibly ...

powerful in what we feel in our body. And it contributes to the stress that we have all the time. It contributes to not feeling so great. It contributes to having crappy self esteem and feeling like you aren't good enough. And all the stories that you're playing. So, we all do this. It's terrifying. (audience laughs softly) Right? Oh my god, it's terrifying. It's not terrifying. Let's face it, it's a little exaggeration. Sometimes what we're talking about being terrifying is having to drive down the freeway in rush hour traffic to get to the other side of town, is not terrifying. Going over and saying to someone, hi I think you're really cute, would you like a drink? It's not terrifying. It's a little nerve racking, but its not terrifying. So change it, its a challenge. The words you use matter. Its a nightmare. No that's not what a nightmare would typically be (audience laughing) and what we're using it for. Right? It's an opportunity. How 'bout doing that? How 'bout flipping it and saying, that's an opportunity. That nightmare is an opportunity for me to change it into something that I want or need or could bring value to my life, or could be service to myself. I'm dying. How many times do you say that (audience laughing) really, I used to say that all the time oh my god, I'm dying. (audience laughing) I'm so busy I'm dying. I'm so tired, I'm dying. Its funny because we do it all the time but we're not dying. But when you're constantly saying it and its so flippant and when you notice how often you're saying it to yourself, you're not dying. It's a challenge, and its going to be difficult to overcome but your strong and you can. And my absolute favorite. My life is over. (audience laughing) I just can't anymore, my life is over. One of my favorites. Then you're just being a drama queen. (audience laughing) then you're really just like trying to get attention. You're being a drama queen and you're over exaggerating. Your life isn't over even if it feels like it is, to have that toolbox of resilience and getting through difficult situations, managing your outcomes, you can look at that even when it feels like its over, you know inside because you've already done the work of who you are, that you're not gonna give up. That its not gonna keep you stuck, that its not gonna keep you glued, that its not gonna keep you knocked down. You're gonna get up and do it again. And work through it. So the words that we use with ourselves are just as important as the way we speak to other people. Our communication and the way we speak to other people is incredibly important. We're taught to really only share our thoughts. We're not taught as humans to talk about our emotions and a lot of people, typically men, will feel like its a bad thing to talk about their emotions because its a bit touchy feely and mandy pandy and you know, I did it for a long time. I didn't talk about my emotions at all. So the perception was that I was this cold hearted bitch. And not a good bitch, just a cold hearted, ice queen that nothing penetrated, nothing got through to because I'd never talked about my feelings. The story I shared a while, it's the first time I'd said it in public about my part. Never shared that story with anyone. My like, tribe, no, no one else knows. But I asked you to be vulnerable, so I will. The emotion that you know, we often don't talk about is the stuff that does keep us stuck. We don't talk about how we feel, how we wanna feel. I wanna feel happy, I wanna feel liked, I don't wanna feel bogged down by the people that walked out of my business. I don't wanna be stuck in this situation and feel like I'm helpless and hopeless. I don't wanna feel helpless and hopeless. And we get so conditioned to not talk about our feelings, to only talk about our thoughts and honestly, our thoughts are just a direct reflection of our feelings and our emotions. That's all they are. So, its okay to talk about them. Its okay to say to a partner, a friend, a co-worker, you know, a subordinate if you're their boss, this is when you do this, this is how it makes me feel. It makes me feel that you don't care about my business. When you say things like that, it makes me feel that you don't care about our clients. When you say that to me, it makes me feel like you don't care about me, you're disregarding me, you're putting me down, you're disrespecting me. It's okay to say that, it's not rude. It's called a boundary. And when its done in a calm way, right? You're telling someone what is acceptable to you. What you will stand for. I am sorry, I won't accept it when you speak that way so I am going to remove myself. I'm only in control of me, I can't ask you to not speak that way but I can certainly control myself and whether I wanna be around it or not. And its also understanding sometimes where someone is coming from. You know, I talk a lot about empathy and I have a lot of it and sometimes, for anyone that does it can be, a debilitating thing sometimes. But empathy isn't sympathy. Its to feeling sorry for someone. For me, empathy is actually a powerful trait because you're understanding how someone feels in their shoes. You don't have to agree with them. You don't have to want to change them. You don't have to think that what they're doing is right. You're just allowing yourself for a second to step in and go, I could feel how I might act that way or say those things if I was in that situation and then just go back to you again. And we do need to be careful of the way we speak to others but most importantly for this in today's class, I want you to be careful of how to you speak to yourself and learning that those words that you're saying, I'm an idiot, right? It's silly, I'm clumsy sometimes. You know, soften it. And lessen it and you'll find that it will decrease and decrease and decrease. And remember that we do all wanna be connected. If you can't be clear with your words and your feelings with yourself, you can't be clear with your words and your feelings with another person. You can't. If you, it goes back to how you one thing is how you do everything. If you have a hard time communicating with yourself and identifying how you feel, what you need, what's going on with you. How to ask for something if you need to ask for it. How to say, this is my boundary and that doesn't work, you just pushed up on a boundary and I can't work with that so I need to remove myself, walk away, whatever it is. You can't communicate that with another human being. And typically, when you try to, it will escalate to anger, to meanness, to not in the right way of communication to get the end result that you're actually looking for. So, what I would encourage you to do, is to speak to yourself as you would a friend or a loved one. Think about the narrative that you're saying to yourself. Would you speak to your best friend that way? Would you speak to someone that you really love, your child, your mother, your sister, your brother, your father, your uncle, would you speak to them the way you speak to yourself? Would you tell them those things? My guess is probably not so you shouldn't be speaking to yourself that way either and if you flip the script, if you reframe the conversation with yourself, in the beginning its hard. It'll create a lot of resistance, it's gonna be really hard to work through and you catch yourself and then you'll call yourself an idiot because you caught yourself doing it (audience laughing) and you'll go through, it's true. And then the more you catch it and the more you catch it, it starts to quieten down that monster and that narrative that's rattling around inside and you start changing the words and it actually will start to lessen it down. So going into this segment, the question that I will ask to you all is how would my life be different if I liked myself a little bit more? I'm sure pretty much everyone in the room likes themselves, yeah, agree? Sometimes, we all have our days, right? But how would your life be different if you aren't loving yourself right now and you don't like yourself and some people watching or some people here may feel that way. How would your life be different if you did? How would you behave differently? What choices would you make that would be different? How would you treat yourself if you liked yourself? If you liked yourself, would you lose the weight that you keep saying you want to because it would just make you healthier and you like yourself so you wanna be healthier and take care of yourself. Would you start that business you're dying to start because you deserve it and you've earned it. What would you do differently, what actions would be different? How would you speak to yourself differently? How would you support yourself? If you liked yourself a little bit more, how would you support yourself? Would that be what you needed to give yourself the incentive to take the action to move forward and create change because you are actually supporting yourself instead of self sabotaging. Would it mean that you respected yourself more? Would it mean that you did find a better boundary within yourself and with other people? Would it mean that you took care of yourself a little bit more. So you had a better work life balance. Because you respected yourself enough to give yourself that. Would it mean that you didn't suffer from imposter syndrome because you liked yourself a little bit more and that meant that even if you were a little bit of imposter because you weren't that seasoned at what you're doing right now you cut yourself some slack and said you know what, I'll become more seasoned the more I do it. The more I do it, the better I become. And the better I become, the easier it will be and so it goes. And come up with solutions for yourself of how you can like yourself a little bit better. What choices you can make that are really small bite size choices that can be easier. Cut yourself some slack. Self care, talk to yourself better. Cut yourself a break, just close it down for a second. We're going to talk about some things that I do and a lot of other people do, of how to self care a little bit more and quieten those monsters down. But that's the question that I want you to ponder.