Leave the pain in the past

Deciding that your past was exactly the way it was supposed to be is going to allow you to stop fighting with it. When you fight with the past you lose 100% of the time, because you can’t go back and change it. You can only start looking back at the past through a different lens. I know that if I asked you to tell the story of your past through the lens of it was amazing, it might be hard at first, but you can tell that story and share amazing things that happened. You can see how God was with you in it all. You can see how He moved mountains and took care of you. You can have an appreciation of who you were in the midst of it all. But it would take you making an effort to view it from that point of view.

But when you do the work of looking at it from a different perspective you are the one that gets to decide how you want to keep telling the story. And in telling the story in a way that really helps you and serves you and where you are going, your past stops having a hold over you. Leave it in the past, only take with it what you really want.

I was kicked off the volleyball team in college. I used to tell such a painful story. One where I was the victim. Every time I told the story I felt horrible. I was filled with all the emotions again. I felt betrayed, accused, wronged, let down, sad, and hurt. When we tell the story, we feel it like it is real, and our body thinks it is present. That is why when we go to counseling and relive a traumatic experience you actually do “relive it” in your body.   I remember the day I decided I was no longer going to tell the story the way that I used to. I have rewritten it, and it feels so much better. I have chosen to still keep some of the negative emotions surrounding it. But I choose ones like sadness and disappointment, and let go of some of the other emotions like; robbed, wronged, etc… Because when I look back on that situation I do want to be sad. I wanted to play volleyball all four years and I didn’t. I wanted to stand up for senior night with my parents, and I didn’t. So, when I think about it like that, I am sad. But the thoughts that make me feel those other emotions are gone. I have let them go. I no longer tell the story like that. I tell it in a way that feels good. It was for me. Me being let go was actually a gift I didn’t know I needed. I am open to accepting how it happened exactly as it did. I accept how I acted, how the coach acted, how the assistant coach acted, how my teammates acted. And when I do that, I stop fighting it. I stop wishing it was different than it was. I start to believe that the way it was, is exactly as it should have been.

When we can go back and look at our past that way, we glean what we want from it. We allow what we want into our present and we take from it lessons and opportunities to grow with us. The past doesn’t hurt us, it propels us forward into who we are becoming.

So take your break up, your divorce, your childhood, your failed class, the money wasted or spent, the weight gained, and retell the story in a way that moves you forward.

Practicing going back even to yesterday or last week and choosing to rewrite the event in a way that works and helps you, and you learn from. Doing this regularly is so incredibly good for your brain. Your brain is constantly looking for danger and so it is easy to focus on all that went wrong, or was painful. Your brain does this because it doesn’t want you to feel the negative emotions that you did then ever again. It wants you to be prepared and change so you never have to be in that situation again. Instead of allowing that to be painful and hard, look at it in a way where you feel growth and gratitude. Practicing this will allow you to do this regularly and that will eventually create a quicker bounce back time during trying times.

Philippians 4 says, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy- think about such things.

God knew that our lower brain was constantly focusing on whatever is awful, hard, uncomfortable, scary, negative, and he knew we would need to practice focusing on the alternative. So do that continually. Take everything through the Philippians 4 filter. Take any scenario and just pull out what is good. It will take work, but it is so worth it.

I am getting so much better at seeing something and letting my brain know thank you for bringing all that negative up to me. I can see it, but I don’t have to believe it or act on it. I can say, “Noted, but thinking that way isn’t going to be helpful at all.”

Your past can’t hurt you now unless you let it by thinking those thoughts that make you feel pain today. Leave the pain back there and bring the lessons forward with you. It feels a whole lot better; I promise.

Simple exercises to strengthen your brain

I have a lot of small exercises I use to keep practicing thinking differently than I have before and stretching my brains capacity. I am working on giving my prefrontal cortex more air time and hearing the lower brain but not believing it or acting out of it. So I wanted to share some of those exercises with you.

All or nothing thinking

My brain loves to think in big clear black and white terms. I like to think and sort into good and bad, right or wrong, works and doesn’t work. I see this with my kids. They will say is this a good guy or a bad guy? They are trying to sort it out and put it in a category. My brain likes categories, because there seems to be a safety in it. I don’t have to wrestle with what is if I can just sort it into a category and move on. I do this with people, concepts, situations, world views, etc. Our brain likes to feel certain about things, we don’t like the uncertainty. But practicing this simple switch of the word and is a way to start pushing your brain. I recently was doing this with I am a good and bad mom. I don’t have to be one or the other, I can be both. The problem with believing both pushes me to be accepting of all. That maybe sometimes I make bad decisions or do things that I don’t love that I do, like raising my voice, looking at my phone instead of giving them my full attention, shaming them with my words, the list goes on. I also am a good mom that loves them well, listens to them, cares for them, and serves them. I can be both a good and bad mom. That will stretch my brain and allows me to hold the space for the friction that even thinking that brings. I like it when I am the good mom. I don’t like it when I am the bad mom. But if I am both I work at accepting both of them; the good and the bad.

Practicing this type of thinking with issues in the world will stretch your brain. When you ask yourself how can the vaccine be good and bad, you start working on holding space for both views. When you do this you practice thinking cognitively and allowing for cognitive dissonance, which is the tension you feel when you hold two opposing views. We want to get better at thinking in ways that allow for cognitive dissonance, it helps us to look at both sides. Our brain likes the comfort of one side. It likes to think I am right. It has a hard time thinking I could be right and wrong and still make a decision from there.

Worst case scenario and best-case scenario

Another similar concept is working to push your brain to look at both scenarios. You are often met with the worst case scenario in a lot of situations. You might get asked out on a date and immediately think of all the things that could go wrong. But, I want you to start practicing giving the same amount of air time to the best case scenario. So thoughts like it could work out. We could be a great fit. He might be just the guy I have been looking for. He could be interested in me and want to pursue this relationship.

Now your brain doesn’t like practicing this because if you start allowing for the best-case scenario and it doesn’t work out, you are left with disappointment. If you just think worst case scenario you just have to deal with fear and worry. I want to offer you that practicing the best-case scenario isn’t any harder than the worst case scenario it will just push you to be open to feeling the negative emotion later if it doesn’t happen. You can either feel all the negative now, or try, believing in the best, and it doesn’t work out that way and you have some negative emotion then. Either way, believing in the best is actually harder for your brain and that is why we need practice in that type of thinking.

So allow for the worst case scenario, and then think of all the best-case scenario’s and work from  there. Allowing room in your brain for both to be possible and decide how you want to act regardless of the outcome. 

Both sides of the argument

When you are chatting with someone and they share an opinion that is different than yours allow them the opportunity to be right. I love to do this anytime someone shares something about me. Someone told me I was too loud, and immediately my brain wanted to get defensive and say no I am not. I wanted to spend energy and words telling them that they were wrong. But stopping, pausing, and thinking how are they right, really helps me to just let it be there. When I defend myself I want them to see that they are wrong and I am right. But what if they are right? Just allowing for that doesn’t mean they are, it just pushes our brain to stop fighting anything we don’t like. Maybe they think I am loud. That is okay… maybe sometimes I am loud. Is it a problem to be loud, maybe sometimes, but maybe not all the times. I can be loud and be told to be quieter and not take it personally. You can practice this anytime someone says something and you notice you want to defend. Stop, pause, and think; how are they right? Just doing this over and over will allow for you to expand that cognitive dissonance and be less offended by others.

Just the facts

Maybe the most useful practice for me has been breaking down any situation to just the facts. I have a lot of thoughts that I think are true but when whittled away they aren’t at all. They are just thoughts that muddy up the situation I am in. Practicing just looking at the exact words someone said, or the actual numbers, or the bear bones of a situation is so helpful to making things neutral. The facts are that, neutral. The way we think about them is what creates the emotions behind it all. I can have a number on the scale and that is absolutely neutral but the minute I add a thought it becomes emotional. Seeing everything through that lens helps me take things less personally. I can remove a lot of the judgment or hurt or offense if I just peel it all back to this is exactly what happened. I want to think about it this way. The trash didn’t get taken out. The tire is flat. The video is not on my computer anymore. She said she is hurt by what I said. He said he was disappointed in how I handled that. Those all become very factual and I don’t have to make them about me or affect me. I can look at the facts of it and be more subjective. I can show up and affect circumstances in a better way when I am calm and not charged up.

If you just took one of these and worked on thinking differently in one aspect of your life you will see change and growth. It is like going to the weight room and picking a piece of equipment to get stronger in your quads. I want you to pick one piece and get stronger in that this week. Come back to this post and practice different parts of our thinking. It will take practice but you will get stronger.

Exercising right along with you,

Angie

The Thought Download

Awareness of yourself is key to being truly known and understood.

I really struggled to understand myself or truly know what was going on with me. I am a verbal processor and would often rely on talking something out with other people to gain a better understanding of where I was with a situation. Many times someone would ask me how I was feeling about a something and often times I didn’t know how I was feeling or even what I was thinking. I was such a people pleaser I often defaulted to asking them how they felt about it, and then tried to gauge if I felt the same way. Most often I would agree with them as to not ruffle feathers or have opposing opinions. I got in the habit of not knowing and over time I became less and less aware of me and couldn’t figure out how to get in touch with my actual thinking and feeling.

Many times I would be dealing with something and just feel off. I could tell there were things brewing under the surface and I didn’t know how to get to that part of me. Then little things would happen, and after they piled up I would hit a wall and fall apart. It felt like a bomb blew up. I couldn’t really sort out the shrapnel it was just all over the place. I was filled with emotions and thoughts but they felt all over. I would typically feel overwhelmed by the mess and I didn’t know what to do but to just keep moving on, hoping things would eventually get better. I would repeatedly feel the need to “get away” or take a break from my everyday life. I would then question my ability to have boundaries or take care of myself. I would be frustrated that I couldn’t manage my emotions or my life and it sort of felt out of my control.

Then came the thought download. The first time I did this exercise it truly gave me insight into so much of me. For the first time I understood what was really going on with my brain. I could see it all out on paper. Now don’t get me wrong, I have journaled so much over the course of my life. Often I wanted to write things out so I wouldn’t forget them. Many times I would hit a wall and think I just need to journal. I think i knew that my mind needed to get it out so I would not have it all swirling. But the thought download has become something that is vital for seeing myself. It is on paper where awareness happens and then understanding can follow.

Let me explain the thought download. It is when you take a physical piece of paper and a pencil or pen and you just start writing. You write out all your thoughts, you don’t hold back. You don’t edit or try and hide. You spill it out and either write for a period of time like ten minutes or for 3 pages or for until you can’t write anymore. You take everything in your brain, all the thoughts you can get out, and you write them down. It is amazing what happens when you stop trying to make sense of it in your head, and you get it all out, and then try and see on paper what is really going on. When we try and figure it out in our head we have conflicting thoughts that we have a hard time seeing. When it is down on paper, we can see it.

The thought download is different than journaling. When I journal I am telling a story or remembering what happened. I seem to be trying to create a narrative so that if anyone picked it up they would be able to see the story. That is not a thought download. My downloads look like this:

• Order the belt for Thatcher’s baseball uniform

• My throat is sore, I wonder if there is a different allergy medicine that would work

• I am behind on posting social media

• I want to batch more content

• When is the date of Kamp out?

As you can see I am all over the place… after I did my thought download today I came to realize my brain is filled with wants and desires and lots of things that need to go on a calendar or to do list. I haven’t gotten them down on paper to really see them. Now that I see them I can understand why lately I have been feeling very forgetful or fearful that I will forget something. I have a lot of thoughts about don’t forget to…. I have also been feeling like my mind is full. Once I saw everything out on paper I can see that I have been using my brain as a storage unit. It’s like i have stuffed little post it note reminders in my mind. And my monitor has no more room for post-its.

Our brain is not meant to store information. It is meant to compute or solve and when I give it random facts to store it tries to solve them. My brain is struggling to solve all the important dates and events that are going on with the end of school and needing to register for summer things and trying not to forget all of the important details. But because I have filled my brain with random don’t forgets, I am not able to use my brain for solving or processing. I want to use my brain to process but it is like I am getting an error message: too full. So after getting it all down on paper I can begin to see and understand me. No wonder I am feeling a bit overwhelmed.

Just taking the 10 minutes to get it out I am reaping the benefits of seeing me, knowing me, and understanding me. It is like I just sat with a good friend and got it all out. But the crazy thing is I don’t even need another person to sit there and help me do that. I can just dump, sort, and make sense.

When we just start practicing getting our thoughts out we free up space in our brain. If you practice this regularly you can begin to organize your thinking better. I like to think of it like a closet. The more times I see what’s in the closet the more I can take out what I don’t want anymore, and I can see what else I want to add.

Often my brain just needs a good purge. So the more often I thought download and see myself the more often it stays tidy and the less likely I get to feeling off. Now I know why I am feeling the way I am, it is because of the way I am thinking.

Now sometimes I will do a thought download on a specific topic. I will write a topic and then start getting it out. I did this recently about weight loss. For those of you who did the 5 day challenge you did this about being single, dating, and even marriage. Again the process of just really digging around and getting out every thought about that category is so amazing. You will begin to really see yourself and have an awareness and then understanding as to why you are feeling the way you are about a specific topic.

I want you to feel confident and capable to use this tool yourself. The women who have gone through my group coaching program know what to do after the thought download, but just having this tool and using it regularly can be super helpful as you begin to invest in your mental health and cleaning up your brain.

Here’s to dumping,

Angie

What feeling stuck can teach you

Stuck is believing you are unable to move.  Many women come to me there.

Feeling like they know where they want to go, but they don’t know how to get there.

Maybe they’ve tried a few things. Maybe they haven’t tried anything; they just know they don’t want to be “here” any longer. They have lived here long enough.

 You might be feeling like you’re not living the life that you were meant to be living.

You might feel stuck somewhere that you don’t want to be, and I think this is good.

I think being stuck is a beautiful thing because it’s a nudge. It’s the nudge we need to pursue our dreams to become who we are and who we want to be. It doesn’t matter why you’re stuck. Being stuck might actually help you decide what you want and then decide if you are willing to go after it.

The key here is to see what you most want. For some women it is that they really want to start dating and they want to get married. For other women they want to move out of their parent’s house and start a life on their own. Other women really want to stop some bad habits they have picked up. Some want to lose weight. Others want to start a business, lead a ministry, or change jobs.

Whatever it is you’re wanting, feeling stuck where you are is actually a great sign for you. It’s letting you know that you want change. And change takes effort. It takes intentional thinking and intentional action towards something new.

You want to start focusing on where you want to go and give yourself permission to go big and dream bigger. There is nothing wrong with wanting to change circumstances.  But I want to address something that often goes missed.

Whatever you want to change or to have different in your life is so you can feel different than you do.

 Often people come to me wanting to feel better. They will say that something out there in the future (husband, weight loss, new job, new home, etc) that is different from today, will make my life better.

 They think changing their circumstances and having something be different than it is will make them feel better. The problem is that when we change circumstances to feel better, it may temporarily, but it doesn’t fix the root issue.

Here’s how I learned this for myself:

I thought marriage would fix a lot of my issues that I was dealing with when I was single. Once I was married I would feel wanted, loved, encouraged, less frustrated, and life would be easier. Which is great because I knew what I really wanted, but I never addressed why I wanted it. I wanted marriage because I believed marriage, or my husband would make me feel those things. And when I did get married and I wasn’t feeling those things I would just blame him for not doing things right. Marriage was never going to make me feel that way. Feeling those feelings was and is my job. I was thinking about my current life of singleness in a way that made me not feel wanted, loved, encouraged, frustrated, and that life was hard. I didn’t know that I was creating all of that. I just saw marriage as the solution. But really changing my thinking was the ultimate solution. And I didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t know that it was totally fine to want to be married, but there was still going to be issues when I was married.

When you focus on changing your circumstances it might temporarily feel different. When you get the new place you are excited, but eventually you are left with the same feelings and struggle, until you tackle the underlying emotions.

That is what I teach women to do.

I teach women exactly how to figure out what they want to feel and how to feel that right now without any of those circumstances changing.

Many women I work with still go after their dreams and goals but they do it with a total different expectation of what life will be like when they hit them. And the whole process of change and becoming someone different than they are today grows them differently. They enjoy the process of becoming.

Yes, losing weight is fun, but what you learn in the process and how you manage your mind, feel your feelings, and tackle all the beliefs that are holding you back, now that is transformational.

After working with me, women know why they want something to be different, they are okay with the nudge, and they are able to really uncover why they want something and what that is really showing them. Then they figure out how to manage their mind to focus on their future and where they are headed. The work they do with me uncovers all the beliefs that try and hold them back from getting there.

Don’t believe the thoughts that are keeping you stuck. Think about who you really want to be and what chasing after those dreams would require of you.

Are you willing to go all in and become that person?

Let me help you get there.

How to have your own back

I like to run over ladders that are sitting in the driveway. It is a specialty I have. I am a good driver, I just sometimes hit ladders. But hitting ladders actually taught me a lot about having my own back.

See, I say ladders not because there were multiple of them there when I hit them, but it is because I hit the same ladder twice. I maybe didn’t see it the first time but two times, that’s an art really. Let me set the scene; we had been doing some work in our house and the ladder was on the side of the driveway, out of the way, but when one is not 100% paying attention it is easy to slightly roll over the ladder which is how it went down.

I got out of the car, angry that someone had put a ladder there, and then proceeded to beat myself up internally.

“What were you thinking? You weren’t thinking were you? That’s so dumb to hit a ladder. I’m frustrated that it’s bent. Did I ruin it? That was stupid. My kids think I am an idiot. My husband thinks I don’t know how to drive. Do you know how to drive? You are so careless sometimes. You should pay better attention. How ridiculous to make an error like that. Get it together already. You’re so annoying sometimes.”

You get the picture. Some great self-talk.

And then something happened within me. I think I was really starting to understand that this kind of beat down was ruining my relationship with myself. I would never talk to my best friend like this. I don’t understand why I allow myself to talk to myself like this. Come on, so what, I hit a ladder, get over it. But instead I used that silly instance to berate myself and give me a good talking to. Because apparently that is what is needed whenever we make errors in life. I had come to believe that the only way for me to not mess up in life was to harshly judge myself until I get it and change. Wow, I think I do this to others as well. But that day I realized that this just doesn’t work. I already feel awful for the error I made but then I felt doubly awful because I was rejecting and criticizing myself on top of that.

So I started to sift through the facts. I hit a ladder and it put a dent in it. I can think about that however I want. I decided to start thinking thoughts like: “It’s okay. Nothing’s gone wrong. Sometimes we hit a ladder. That doesn’t mean I’m a bad driver. That doesn’t mean I’m stupid or don’t have it together. It means I am human and make mistakes. Everything is okay.”

That started to shift it. I was choosing to look at it in a different way. And then I thought, “I love you. Even when you hit a ladder I love you. I choose to look past the error and see through to you, and I love you so much right now.”

That moment was a game changer. For the first time I consciously chose to have my own back. I stood by my side. I hugged me with my words when I wanted a hug from someone else.

So, I counted that as a victory of sorts, a turning of the tide. I now know exactly how to have my own back.

And then, maybe three days later, I hit the ladder again.

Another opportunity to practice having my own back. I knew that having my own back was totally worth it. I knew that I wanted to stand by me when I mess up. This second running over of the ladder, solidified for me how important it is to have my own back and be curious with myself as to what happened, instead of accusatory. From love, care and connection I was able to see what was happening that made me run over the ladder not once but twice.

This whole having your back thing is actually amazing. It didn’t matter if anyone else did, I did.

This my friends is available to you too. When you mess up, I want you to have your own back. I want you to think thoughts that remind you that you are with you. You are not abandoning, rejecting, or beating yourself up anymore. You are going to lovingly see what you are doing that is causing you to make the mistake or mistakes you are making.

This concept will help you if you find yourself messing up time and again.

The next time you mess up, have your own back and see the difference it can make.

Check out this blog post on 8 tips for transforming your relationship with yourself. This will also help in making small steps to improve that relationship you have with yourself. A very important relationship I might add.

Believing in you,

Angie