Do your best. We hear this statement often. And what does it mean? Feeling you did your best should enable you to go to sleep at night feeling fulfilled and satisfied with the activities you engaged in that day. Wanting to do your best encourages you to put forth the effort needed to meet your goals. How do you define your best? The answer depends on your individual goals and gets harder to navigate the more you look outside yourself for the meaning.
Let it hurt, then let it heal. There’s nothing wrong with feeling bad, with being unhappy, or with anger. When you have negative emotions feel them. Don’t push them away, don’t pretend they aren’t there. Acknowledge them, bring awareness to what you’re feeling, get curious …
Our thoughts can be anxiety provoking, they can run away from us and become seemingly unmanageable. You may think you have no power over your thoughts, but you do. The ability to pick and choose your thoughts is your greatest source of power.
Just because you have a thought doesn’t mean it’s true. And it certainly doesn’t mean you have to believe it. You can choose a different thought. A thought that makes you feel good, one backed by facts. You can let the old thought go back to where it came from, nowhere.
Our thoughts are not objective. They are influenced by our perception which is influenced by our past experiences and conditioned beliefs.
How do you choose different thoughts when it’s so easy to listen to the anxiety producing ones? By rebutting them with facts. When your thoughts try to make you believe one thing, list all the facts that prove it wrong.
For example, your brain may jump to the conclusion that your partner is selfish because they didn’t call to say they’d be home late. This thought system would normally put a damper on your night. But does the one act of your partner not calling really equate to the conclusion you drew? Are there facts that rebut this conclusion? These facts can be that your partner is working late to provide for your family. That isn’t selfish. It can be that your partner took over making dinner yesterday because they saw how tired you were even though they were exhausted from work and it was your turn to make dinner. That isn’t selfish. The fact can be that your partner goes food shopping every week even though they hate it. Not selfish. The fact can be the time they surprised you with flowers because they knew you were having a hard time. Again, not selfish. With each fact that you come up with that rebuts your original thought, you’ll start to think maybe your partner is not selfish. Perhaps they simply got caught up at work and forgot. Instead of attaching meaning to the action, you can simply express your preference to your significant other that they call next time.
Maybe you think you won’t make it through the hardships you’re facing, but look at the facts. You made it through every hardship you faced before.
Maybe you think you’re not good enough, but look how far you have come and look at you still going. Look at how enough you are.
Next time you have an anxiety producing thought, next time you brain is mean to you, next time you find it hard to choose a different thought, see if you can rebut it with facts.
Have trouble choosing a different thought? You’re not alone. It takes practice and conscious effort to break the patterns you’ve grown accustom to. Sign up for coaching here to help you through the initial process until you can consistently do it on your own!
There is a period, the time of which is different for everyone, where a gap exists between knowing better and doing better. It is when you have taken the step of becoming self-aware of what habits are no longer serving you, or are hindering you from enjoying your life, however you find yourself continuing to fall into the same unhealthy patterns nonetheless.
Our tendency to fall back into what’s familiar, even if it’s not what’s best for us is why it’s imperative to make healthy coping habits part of your daily routine. Don’t solely keep healthy habits in your back pocket for when life gets hard. Practice them and strengthen them. This will reinforce the positive consequences of their use. The more practice you have, the more familiar these habits will become. The more familiar the healthy habit, especially when times get rough, the more likely you will turn to it instead of a destructive habit.
We go out of the way for the people we love. It’s often how we show them we love and support them. We make extravagant homemade dinners for our families, we pick out the perfect presents for our friends, we buy bagels for our meetings …
Challenge: make a list of the times you have felt genuinely happy or at peace.
This list will remind you that your happiness never came from things looking seemingly perfect on the outside. Your happiness came from being present and open and connected to yourself and to the moment. Let that be a guide as you move forward.
Brianna Wiest talks about this in her book “The Mountain is You.” Have you read it? If you have let’s chat about it! If not, I highly recommend it! It has a lot of great thoughts that will help you become the best version of yourself!
Everything in life is temporary. So when you feel content and satisfied, ground yourself in that feeling. If you’re used to chaos it can be tempting to focus on if or when things may go wrong. Worrying about all the ways your peace can be …
The holidays are a joyful time of year for many but it can also be overwhelming. It’s the season of more. Many times that’s more love, more yummy food, more warmth, more family, more rest. But it’s also more money spent, more parties to attend, more cooking to be done, more conversations to be had, more expectations you want to meet. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and drained it doesn’t mean you’re a grinch, it means you’re human. It’s normal and it happens.
If you are able to step away this holiday season without it having the adverse effect of making you more stressed once it’s time to step back in, that’s great. Keep doing that. But if you find your stepping away is creating more stress than perhaps it’s doing more harm than good. Here’s 7 tips to combat overwhelm this holiday season.
I heard a quote recently, source unknown, that resonated with me, “if I’m too much, go find less.” I’ve been told I’m too much numerous times throughout my life. That I’m too loud, too excitable, don’t know when to stop, too big, too small, too provocative, too shy, too loud, that I try too hard, that I don’t try enough. You name it, I’ve likely been too much of it.
Recently, someone commented that my dog was “too much.” Their intention was not to offend me or my dog, they thought it was a comment made in jest. However, I was triggered. I vehemently defended my dog’s honor. Telling the individual that my perfect puppy was not too much. He was, in fact, perfectly enough.
Whenever you are triggered by something, take it as an opportunity to explore that thing further. Usually, what triggers us is also what we need to heal. The truth is sometimes my dog is excitable. He’s gets hyped up when he sees the people he loves. Sometimes in his excitement he forgets his manners. He’ll jump on you with wet paws, and he loves to lick faces. And although sometimes inconvenient for others, those things are not flaws. They are part of what makes him, him. I love how his face lights up when he sees the people he loves, how his tail wags uncontrollably, how his feet dance in a happy little dance, and how he wants to get as close as possible to us when we come home. That might be seen by some people as too much, some people may not appreciate him jumping up and licking their faces. But these people simply aren’t his people. I, however, am his people. I appreciate and love every part of him. Even when he sometimes forgets his manners in his rush of excitement to see us. Even when he sometimes accidentally scratches me in his rush to say “hi, I’m so happy you’re back.”
And that’s what I wish I would have told my younger self when she was called “too much” of anything. That she was perfectly enough. That the people who didn’t see it that way, simply weren’t her people. And that is okay. That those individuals’ thoughts on her too-much-ness meant everything about them and nothing about her. They could go find less. I did not have to make myself less to keep others comfortable.
Next time you start to let yourself feel bad about what someone is saying about you, remember you are choosing to let yourself feel bad. You can choose for it to mean nothing about you. People who speak badly about others usually have turmoil within themselves. Take their actions for what they are, a “them” problem and let it go. Choose the higher feeling thought. Don’t let it become personal. Remember, the only way someone can make you feel inferior is if you let them. Don’t let them.
