Try Self-Love: Recent Episodes
Becky Barber, Kristen Dicker
Becky and Kristen dive into what self-love means and how to practice it. Are you mean to yourself? Is your inner dialogue a bully instead of a friend? These master life/relationship and health and wellness coaches make boundaries, self-awareness and self-love fun! Join them on FB https://www.facebook.com/groups/tryselflove
The theme this month is "Gifts," and honoring what we want and what is best for us. This falls in line with having good boundaries instead of weak ones and choosing ourselves.
For Becky, honoring herself means that when she knows that she should be doing something she tries to follow through on it whether or not others are going to like her choice or not. She is a person who is kind, loving, and supportive of others and to herself.
So instead of trying to put everyone else first and make everyone else happy, which is an impossibility, she tries to do the things that will give her peace and help her become the person that she wants to be. Each day adding to the person she wants to be.
We can choose to honor ourselves in a self-loving versus a self-seeking way. Sometimes when people try to take advantage of those of us who choose ourselves, they will use manipulation or attack us in some way by telling us that when we choose ourselves, we are being selfish, which can create a feeling of guilt for someone who is a people pleaser.
But the truth is that when you act in your own best interest and are doing what is healthy and for you, you're not harming anybody. You're not out to hurt someone when you do this. This still might hurt people who really count on you to meet their own agendas. Your intention is to be peaceful and to be healthy, not to hurt anyone.
In the past, Kristen was a big people pleaser and would feel so guilty about choosing herself that she simply could not do it. And this created resentment toward those whose agenda she always felt she had to follow.
Creating boundaries creates self-worth and self-confidence. When you feel this way, you are not out to hurt anyone. Building up our own self-worth is the key. We can lovingly support other people, but it's really not our job to be carrying anyone else on our own backs.
When you truly love yourself, you can truly offer love to others. Obligatory love tinged with resentment is not real love. self-trust is also a good way to honor yourself. How I want to respond and who I am is the same in all situations instead of morphing into what I think the other person wants to hear.
Honoring your own best interests is also really important as well. As Dr. Phil says, "We teach people how to treat us." You need to tell people what you need and don't assume that they know already. They can't read your mind. It's on us to communicate our needs and we suffer when we expect people to meet our needs and expectations if they can't or don't know what they are.
You may inadvertently inflict pain onto someone else in the short term. You will have less conflict this way. But in the long run, you will suffer more because you will just be bottling up all the anger and resentment and then explode.
When we are in a situation that is not good for us, we always want to believe that it can return to when it was wonderful. It becomes important to recognize that when something is no longer good for you or healthy or working for you and that it is, in fact, bad for you.
We aren't suggesting that you just go out and end your relationship or quit your job if that's not right for you to do. But just pay attention to what is working for you and what isn't.
Just make sure that you communicate what you need and see how it goes and decide form there. Choose you.
Pain can be a great catalyst for growth and if it hurts someone when you stop choosing them and their agenda, it's a great opportunity for them to step up and start doing what was theirs to do all along.
You need to eventually take responsibility for what you have allowed from others. In the long run, if people start doing what they were supposed to be doing for themselves all along--taking care of what is already theirs to take care of--and us staying in our own lane.
If you come up against a brick wall with someone or some situation and it hurts every single time, the pain of the situation is the motivator. Sometimes having boundaries isn't enough and you need to see the limiting beliefs that are holding you stuck in the pattern of pleasing, not saying no, or not standing up for yourself. This often comes from the fear of abandonment or rejection and other beliefs we took on as children that suggest that we have to do something or we are bad humans.
When we don't have boundaries, we will put up with just about anything to be loved. This is self-abandonment and self-sabotage. It's not easy to honor yourself, but it does bring more peace to say no to what doesn't work for you and to say yes to what does.
Finding a coach to help you to sort out your limiting beliefs that are keeping you tied into toxic relationships is very helpful. Kristen would be thrilled to help you with this, so contact her for help. (www.bloomingintoyou.com or bloomingintoyou1111@gmail.com)\
Becky is stepping out of her life and health coaching role for the time being and doing some soul searching around faith-based life coaching. She might also be going back to school to become a Master's in Social Work and become a grief counselor and marry it with the coaching.
We will be ending the podcast after this episode. We are sad to go and we might be back again one day. We really love and appreciate all of you, our listeners.
Have a wonderful holiday season everyone!
Keep trying. Self-love is this long continuum. Don't give up! The more you love yourself, the more love you have to give to others.
Some of the things we have discussed on the podcast are things that you can read about, but to truly know them, you want to embody the energy of self-love comes after you shift and transform the false beliefs and the fears within. Then you can feel the self-love energetically in your body. This opens up your heart again so it feels expansive. This podcast has been about helping you get on the path of self-love. As you learn and shift more and more, you start to change within more. So, it's okay if you didn't feel a major shift in energy form this podcast. This can serve as a way to get you more on the path toward finding more of it energetically and embodying it.
Kristen plugs coaching not for her own personal horn-tooting, but because it really and truly works if you are willing to invest the time and money in yourself to help your life be better. Coaching, therapy, meditation all can help a lot.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays! Becky gives a short Christmas message that will help you find peace amid the hustle and bustle. Remembering the reason for the season will help you on your path to greater self-love.
Today, Kristen and Becky discuss our personal narratives or the stories that we tell ourselves that run our lives. We can step out of the story, AND that takes some work. On the other side of the story is the unknown, which can make it difficult or daunting to even want to go there.
Author Debbie Ford used to be on Oprah often and she wrote many books about the shadow and our story, one of which is called: "The Secret of the Shadow: The Power of Owning Your Whole Story." There is a quote from this book and it says: "The deeper truth is that I have a story, but I am not my story."
Our story begins with our beliefs and our conditioning as children. In order to survive we create a story because as children, our inner critic takes over and reminds us every time we fail or mess up in some way. Then, we start to see the "proof" of our story in all our life experiences. We grow up living out the story more and more.
When you have thoughts that create your behaviors and your patterns, it creates an identity or the story you are living in. You CAN shift out of the story and start walking down a different pathway.
It's important to be able to step back and ask ourselves what the beliefs and stories are and also ask how they are really serving us. You really need to be aware of the story first and foremost.
You have been living in the story of your family for generations even before you are born, is when you are born, you already are inundated with the messages about who you have to be in the family what role you have to play, so this role and story you are in is already mapped out for you. You are already stuck in the story right off the bat. And this is the only identity you know, so it's just safer to stay in the story you are comfortable in. For instance, it keeps you safe believing that you have to measure up by doing x,y, or z to earn love. A lot of it can be about "I am not worthy unless I am doing this..."
The story keeps growing as we continue to "prove" to ourselves that we are not good enough in some way. The world just continues to reflect back to you the story you believe in.
This is how you start to notice your thoughts: by noticing your life experience being reflected back at you.
The story might be a horrible one, but it has kept you alive since you were little. And now, if you want to change it, you certainly can.
Once you realize that you have a choice, that is when you are able to make the change. Self-awareness is huge, and sifting through your beliefs and your needs that were not met as a child helps you start to be able to move onto a new neuropathway and to have the choice to do so.
This might all sound hard and negative but the cool part about it is that it is very empowering to be able to change your life in this way. You can feel so disempowered when you are in situations where you continue to get abused, lied to, or losing jobs.
These stories are lies. They are not the truth about who we are. Our brains try to protect us and keep us alive by telling us to stay small and to not get hurt. It can keep us in hiding. Once you become aware of the beliefs, they can loosen and be replaced by healthier beliefs.
It's about creating the life that you want. People often want to be loved but when they have to opportunity to be loved by themselves or others, it can actually be very frightening. And this can keep someone stuck because people often believe that they aren't worthy enough to be loved. This can keep you in self-sabotage mode.
When you decide to change your family's story, you are living in your power. Then your children have a chance not to do the dysfunctional things that you and your family have done for generations. This is, quite literally, how we change the world. If we all change ourselves--our beliefs, our patterns, and our stories and we start having new experiences that prove to us that we are living a better life, that...
November's theme is communication. November is Communication Month worldwide, so we want to discuss Nonviolent Communication (NVC).
First of all, Becky and Kristen are excited about Thanksgiving with family around.
About NVC: there are so many resources online for NVC and around the world to learn how to increase your nonviolent communication skills.
This is a fascinating concept that is also a life-long pursuit. Marshall Rosenberg is the creator of Nonviolent Communication. NVC is a way of communicating that leads us to give from the heart.
Words in and of themselves can be "violent" and can wound others. So, this a great way to express yourself more clearly, to be heard, and then to be able to her the other person is saying.
One of the purposes of NVC is to be able to hear our own needs and those of others. There is no way you can hear another person if you can't hear yourself first.
This is because if we take something personally and think they are criticizing us, it will make us react emotionally and feel defensive so we are not hearing what the other one is truly saying.
There are four components of NVC:
Observation
Feelings
Needs
Request
In the Observation stage, it's important not to evaluate or judge or making assumptions about others and yourself. Have compassion for yourself first.
In the Feelings stage, stop denying responsibility for your feelings. "You made me mad!" "She made me crazy!" Instead, say, "I feel..." and to further it: "I feel...because..." Express your vulnerability to resolve conflicts.
When you explain how you feel, use a feeling word instead of making it into a thought.
In the Needs Stage, we need to acknowledge our needs behind our feelings. Judgments and criticisms are just expressions of our own needs and values.
When you are criticizing someone, you alienate yourself from the actual need that is behind that criticism. You are simply projecting your needs and pain from the unmet needs onto the other person.
You have four options when someone criticizes you:
- You can take it personally and blame yourself just as they have done.
- You can blame someone else.
- Shine the light of consciousness on our own feelings and needs.
- Shine the light of consciousness on the other person's feelings and needs as they are currently expressed.
This means that when someone is upset, you have to be very secure in your feelings and needs to be able to put it all aside in order to make them feel validated and heard so they can calm down so you can connect with them.
In the Request stage, we want to make sure it's very clear so the other person understands and also that it is not a demand.
Just ask for what you need, and all they can say is no. People want to meet our needs, but often they don't know how because we are not specific enough.
This was a little overview of NVC. We really hope you enjoyed this episode!
Credit: Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg, PhD
The theme for October is still “Explore” so Kristen and Becky explore what it means to have a relationship with yourself. “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” -Lucille Ball When you have the embodiment of loving yourself, you can accomplish all your goals and dreams without being held back. Psychologist Steven Hayes asks his clients “How tall were you when you stopped loving yourself?” “How tall were you when somebody said ‘you aren’t good enough,’ ‘you’re doing it wrong,’ ‘you’re a failure in some way?'” Before that impactful time, you did love yourself because we are always born loving ourselves. Then we hear it from the inner critic from there on out or other people remind us that we don’t measure up in some way. People don’t realize that others are only projecting their own pain and inner critic’s voice onto them so it keeps the negative beliefs alive. As a kid, you can’t even grasp that and no one is telling you that. Children always think they are in control of people and at some point we may have been told that it’s not ok to cry over little or big things, not ok to mess up, to be overweight, to be messy. We create a block to knowing or feeling our deeper selves. We think that loving and connecting with ourselves will make us conceited or a narcissist or somebody who doesn’t care about other people. Loving yourself makes you care about other people even better. We often spend more time trying to get love and acceptance from other people than we doing knowing and loving ourselves. Many women have been conditioned that if we don’t do for everyone else, we are bad and selfish. We get angry and sad and feel guilty, resentful and low on energy when we over-give and never get our needs met. And if we’re sitting around waiting for permission to do something for ourselves, it’s not going to happen, especially when you have been giving and serving them all the time. You will have to make it happen for yourself. This can be scary for many women. Always do for yourself first in order to be able to give to anyone else. Your cup needs to be filled FIRST. Take time to do good things for yourself like exercising, making a healthy meal, meditating or praying can help you feel more filled up. You don’t know yourself when all you are doing is giving to everyone else. You feel lost. Drinking enough water and eating healthy is just a nice foundation for self-love because then you have given yourself the basics. Playing is also important. Spending time with yourself is really important in order to build a relationship with yourself. Are you ignoring yourself all day long? Do you always have distractions going on? We distract because we really don’t want to fee what is going on inside ourselves. There might be a lot of stuff from a long time ago stuffed inside. This can feel terrifying, sad, confusing, there might be anger, shame and fear as well. Understand what you like and what your needs and values are. You can meet people who share the same values as you do and that can help a lot in terms of loving and trusting yourself and liking your own company. Start with your values. Write a list of what you like and don’t like. And this can include people you don’t like. You can choose to limit who you spend time with. If they are draining you, you may want to move more away from them. These are ways to feed your soul instead of being depleted all the time. Creating a relationship with yourself does require you to take baby steps at first. Ask yourself, “What makes me lovable?” Then, be aware of what you are thinking about and any objections that arise. Doing healthy, loving actions also shows yourself that you are important. Create the habits to support these better beliefs. Accepting yourself is also a good way to get to know yourself. Challenge your inner judgments. Look at your inner bully and see where it...
The fall is such a wonderful time and traveling in the Fall is also so fun too, so we decided that the theme should be "explore." In this episode Becky and Kristen discuss ways to get inside our own minds and hearts and discover what is holding us back. Becky and Kristen give updates since last month about what that have been doing to create better eating habits and balance in their lives as was mentioned on previous episodes. If you are feeling overwhelmed by new changes you are trying to incorporate into your life, just take a step back and try to break things up into smaller pieces. Baby steps are important. Make sure that you really want to do and desire to do the thing you are blocked from doing. So, question it. Ask then what that will do for you. How will you know when you have accomplished this goal or desire? What do you have to let go of in order to have your desired goal? Your WHY is so important to figure out. The questions can be quite profound in helping you find that why and for transforming yourself and your habits and motivations. Due to not really knowing yourself or not having done the inner work, you don't really know why you are holding yourself back? Maybe it was family conditioning. We aren't always aware of what is going on. It's really hard to go against everything you were taught as a child. A coach can help you by reflecting you back to you. Self-awareness is always first and foremost in terms of transformation and change. Becky struggles a little bit with writing her book and the limiting beliefs she has: fear of failure, inadequacy, not good enough. Compare yourself with only yourself or you will feel like you won't be good enough or measure up. Leaving your comfort zone is also a way we keep ourselves from moving forward. People lack confidence and don't put themselves out there because they don't believe in themselves. We are grateful for one another and our listeners. Until next time!
In today’s bonus episode, Kristen sits down with her friend and fellow coach Julia Pontillo. Julia is a body relationship coach as well as a health coach specializing in transitioning into a whole food plant-based diet. She has a background in speech therapy which awakened her love for neurology and opened the path for developing a true fascination for the human body. She is now helping women all over the world to heal their relationships to their bodies, ditch dieting and use food as an instrument that works for them, not against them. Julia has her own story of how she fell in love with her body, as can be hard for many of us to do. She grew up in a very safe home—in a protected environment--in a small town in Northern Germany. Her main problems in her life were around weight and body image because people started comparing her with her sister, who was very thin. Julia was a little chubby at the age of eight. She was cute but people compared them nonetheless. She started her first diet when she was 12 years old. This is a hard time of life to diet and restrict nutrients and calories since you are growing and developing hormonally and in other ways physically. But, she and her mom didn’t know better and the family culture made it likely that she’d be ensconced a dieting mindset. She was preparing for her final exams in speech therapy when she was 22 and she started her first and last very extreme diet where she worked out consistently by doing a high intensity workout and restricting her calories to not more than 1600 calories per day. She did this for about eight months. She lost 18 pounds, lost her period, developed hormonal acne, and had to cut her hair off from chest-length to neck-length. Her hair was so damaged from dieting. She didn’t see herself accurately and did not think she had lost any weight. She had developed body dysmorphia where she just couldn’t see her body correctly. People would congratulate her on her weight loss and willpower. She wanted to keep going until she lost every single fat cell on her body. Then, luckily, she moved to Australia. She started binge-eating, which was the exact opposite of what she had been doing previously. Binge-eating is when one consumes a lot of food in a very short amount of time without stopping. Within 15 minutes she’d have a chocolate bar, one or two bags of chips, gummy bears, licorice. This was a really hard time for her and her body, emotionally and physical. She then moved to California and started her health coaching training. This is when things really started to change for her. She got very deep into self-development and mindset work, which laid the foundation for where she is today. It wasn’t until January or February this year that she was able to say that she really and truly loved herself and her body unconditionally. The most important mindset shift that helped her get there was to realize that having unconditional love for someone or something is not a destination that you need to reach or you will suddenly reach once you accomplish the goals you set for yourself. Many of us might be able to relate in having the thinking that, “Once I lose ten pounds, or once I get rid of the acne, I will be able to love myself.” Then we reach that point and there is still something in the way. We never really reach that destination. Loving your body does not happen immediately. It involves a lot of reprogramming and making a decision every day until it becomes second nature. You can start to realize that you can love your body for what it is. And it’s not really about the looks because Julia says that she still is not 100% in love with her looks all the time. It’s important to understand that your body is not your looks; it’s so much more than your looks. Your looks are just the outer layer of your body. Understanding that you can control how much you love your body empowers you. Julia also says it’s important to educate yourself on your body’s language
Today Kristen and Becky talk about habit change. Taking it very slowly with habit change is the most effective way to lasting change. Small steps equal big change. When we change our habits, we change our entire lives. Our beliefs or our thoughts create our emotions and from there our behavior is created. From there, we create patterns and that becomes our ingrained identity. So, you become a person who “eats a lot of junk food” or you can become a person who “runs every day” but it all starts with the way you think and the way you believe about yourself. This is why we do the belief change work as well because when you change your beliefs that were ingrained from a very young age and you have your inner critic telling you need to be better to do better and is on your case all the time, that might make you run many miles a day to be thinner or more fit or better than other people, but if you are being pushed by that inner critic, it can be hard to maintain or to live a life that is really happy when you’re doing such extreme things based on how you believe about yourself. So, we want to change your beliefs so that your inner judge isn’t the one driving you. Your authentic self is. The punitive part of you that is forcing you to militantly exercise or do whatever habit you are doing is not healthy, according to Becky. She says we can run ourselves ragged for the wrong reasons and we can also lay around a lot, thinking we are giving ourselves a break and it’s really not healthy either. It’s a fine balance. We need to start our slow. Our brains do not want us to change. This is why when we set our alarms for an early time with the intention of exercising, we can hit the snooze button several times. We are not going to WANT to do good things for ourselves. Becky listened to a TED talk by a man who has been teaching how to exercise for thirty years and he teaches “You’re not going to want to exercise, so just do it for less than twenty minutes every single day. It’s going to take you five years to want to.” Becky actually loves to exercise. She loves to make it simple and walk and lift some weights a couple times a week. She is not in the gym punishing herself, but there are people who thrive in the gym atmosphere. So, there is no good or bad way of doing it, but there are bad reasons for doing things—especially if it’s out of self-loathing or trying to punish yourself. Becky has been noticing that she sometimes can mindlessly eat sugar (namely a certain chocolate bar) to help her calm down when her traumas come bubbling up to the surface in her life. So, a habit change she made is starting intermittent fasting. She has made it work for her. She can make her fasting window as large or as small as she chooses. There are many health benefits to eating this way. She is figuring out her balance and being flexible with herself. Making small goals and habits that can be measurable helps to know you are being successful or not. Taking small steps helps you slow down, helps you have more control and more decision-making in your life and helps you sustain things better. You have to work your way past that part of your brain that doesn’t like change. If you decide you’re going to get up at 5 a.m. and run six miles and you’re not used to doing that, you might do it for like a week or so—and you could push yourself by will power to get up—but eventually, your brain will stop you. It's important to have your “WHY’ in order to make a permanent change. Ask if what you are doing is working for you or not and be willing to step back and re-evaluate things. Also, just a reminder that shoving food down into our bodies as a way to avoid feelings can actually make us sick over time with things like heart disease, diabetes, obesity, autoimmune disorders, or cancer. The only way we can sustain healthier habit change is by taking smaller steps. Also, taking things more slowly helps to heal. Find the thing you like to...
Welcome back for Season 2! On today's episode, Becky and Kristen discuss what they have been up to the new beginnings they are creating in their lives. First of all, we have decided to have monthly themes this season. for September, our theme is "New Beginnings." September feels like a good time to start anew. Kristen has been traveling a little and moving kids into college and to new places after college. She has been taking some classes she enjoys and doing some podcast interviews as well. Becky took some time off of coaching and building her business this summer and spent time with her kids and family, taking some small trips, and starting some deeper therapy for some old trauma she was holding onto. She says her kids told her they had a bad time on their trips, but she is not convinced because they seemed to be having fun. Kristen has been broadening her coaching skill set by taking courses toward her certification in trauma recovery coaching in order to help her clients with another level of healing. Kristen started as a spiritual coach and then it trickled down into emotional coaching and life coaching and then health coaching and now trauma recovery coaching. To Kristen, this symbolizes the "rooting it out" process in healing. We look at the past to help you spring forward. Trauma can lead to spirituality and awakening--at least that has been Kristen's experience. She is now taking an Advanced level of trauma recovery coaching for another certification. However, she has lost the balance in her life, become more of a workaholic recently is now trying to find the balance in her life again. She was running away from feelings as well. Becky brings up the point that trauma is going to be different for different people. We can't really judge one another because trauma is individual. We have all experienced some form of trauma on this planet, but often we are not aware that we were even traumatized. It can be a scary word for many people as well. Normalizing trauma can help people face the fear and shame that it brings up. Having a coach or a therapist standing there with you as you face that trauma can really help a lot. Becky had a coach tell her about the trauma she had experienced and pointed out that she will not have the business or the life she truly wants until she faces it. That was a real awakening for her. She now realizes that she needed to re-focus on herself and look inward. We're here to help one another and lift each other up when we fall on hard times. Kristen is hiking, coaching, talking classes, having some housework done and spending time with her one child left at home. Her oldest son is learning to fly on his own out in California and it's a good thing. Becky went to have lunch with her youngest daughter Layla this week and it made Layla's day! It made Becky feel great, too, and she will be going to spend time with Layla every week now. Layla just turned eight and will be baptized in their church this coming weekend. Lots of Becky’s family will be coming in for the celebration. Becky’s eighth grader does not want to have her around much at all, so it’s just the opposite of her eight-year-old. Becky is working on a book about her life she is writing now. This is the truth about her life. It is excruciating for her to write. She wants to run from her feelings while writing the book. She hunted down her secret chocolate stash. She has decided that she at least wants to write it and then she will decide if she wants to publish it later. She is processing her feelings while she writes. Kristen is really excited for Becky’s book-writing opportunity—especially for the healing that comes from writing. This is just a catch-up episode. We have a lot planned for this season. The interview with Jill Krause really touched Kristen and reminded her that the deep conversations are important and okay. It doesn’t always have to be meaningless fluff we discuss in life. Until next time!
In this summer bonus episode, Becky chats with Marie-Eve Ward. Marie-Eve is an Emotional Wellness Coach for women and breast cancer survivors. She empowers women to break emotionally-triggered habits so they can shed physical and emotional weight, achieve their goals, and reach their highest potential. Marie-Eve discusses how we get stuck in lower vibration emotions much of the time. The most common ones that come up are stress and anxiety, and they make it really hard to move forward because they are heavy and dense emotions that weigh us down. When we are able to release them, it makes us feel so much lighter. It's easier to loop in these lower vibration emotions rather than in the higher vibration ones because our brains are focused on the negative. This is because it's the brain's job is to keep us safe, to scan around for any danger. So, it's very easy for us to recognize what's not going well. This stresses us out and gives us anxiety! It is very easy to stay there if we don't take the steps to move out of those emotions into the higher vibe emotions. This becomes a habit. Emotions become habitual when it's their main way to handle a situation. If it's so ingrained in us to turn to stress to handle situations, it feels natural and normal. This, of course, until we learn how to dela with it differently next time. The conditioning from childhood can be so sticky until we realize that we can change. When we are so deep into it, we often cannot even recognize that there is another way. Finding emotionally safe people who vibrate a little higher can help it feel a little easier and make the struggle less so. We do tend to attract people who are at the same vibration we are and who have the same emotional wellness that we have. If we resonate with those who are at the same level, that can be nice to be so understood but can also drag us down a little bit lower because there is no energy to pull you up a bit. For example, there are relationships based on complaining. This is why when you emotionally grow, those same people may not stay on the same journey with you. This can be hard for people to do--let go of the old. But we have to let go of the old to bring in the new. We don't have the capacity or the energy to let everyone into our space. So, it's very important to choose who we do allow into our life and who we allow to have access to our energy. We are taught from when we are young that when we embark on anything, it should be forever--a marriage should be forever; a career should be forever. When it doesn't work out, we feel like we are letting ourselves down. It's painful because it's a belief we have had for so long. You have to be able to weight the pain and decide how important it is to keep carrying the weight of a hard relationship. When we have the attitude of "I don't need to change. I am perfect the way I am" it can keep us locked into the beliefs, behaviors and emotions that don't really serve us anymore. Life is meant to change us and make us better. You may not make the best changes for yourself in terms of a career or relationship if you aren't willing to change when it is time to change. If we're not pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone, then life will do it for us. Marie-Eve says her breast cancer made her aware of how unaware of how her actions led to her outcomes. She was going on about life like everything will be okay. She wasn't reaching her potential because she didn't believe in herself. When we're not pushing ourselves, it's usually because we have these limited beliefs that are keeping us in our comfort zone. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer at 29 years old it really opened up her eyes to everything that she was not doing. She had to really look at how she had played a part in inviting disease into her body. While she was predisposed to breast and ovarian cancer at an early age and genetics do play a part in the development of cancer, it's not the end all be all....
In today’s episode, Kristen chats with fellow coach Elizabeth Soto-Baez who is a Transformational and Master Certified Women’s Empowerment Coach. She works with divorced women in their 30s and 40s who have lost their identity, self-worth, and passion for life. After losing herself in a 13-year marriage, numbing out, and moving through life as a robot, Elizabeth now desires to draw women back to themselves, building the lines of communication within, and igniting self-love so they can show up in the world empowered and ready to give their best selves. Elizabeth created Launch Your Life Coaching as a community for women to safely shed societal and cultural expectations and reclaim their intuition and personal power. In this way, women can show up for themselves first, love themselves first, and honor who they areas they go into the world to nurture and love those around them. In addition to being a mom to two beautiful boys, she loves to sing and play guitar. She has built a meditation practice as a way to stay grounded and present in her life, and enjoys keeping active through yoga, weight training, and running. No longer lost or on autopilot, Elizabeth works to make conscious decisions about how she shows up in the world, honoring herself first in order to love and serve others well. Elizabeth found her particular niche in coaching because in 2019 she realized that she could no longer be married. She had been married for 13.5 years and she realized that it was not healthy. She didn’t feel very good in the marriage most of the time. So, she decided to file for divorce and she went through with it and saw therapists and coaches and friends in order to figure out what she was going to do and who she was after the marriage. This story was no longer her story and she needed to figure out her new story. She discovered coaching. She wanted to take her story and her experience and use it to empower other women. She started having people calling her to find out how she has the courage to get a divorce which fueled this realization that other women are like her and other women are suffering in their marriages and living in a dark space. She wanted to able to help any woman who is having this kind of problem feel like there is someone on their side, reminding them that they have worth and value. She helps them understand that they can show up for themselves. It may be hard, but it can be done. Elizabeth speaks about how part of her mission is to help women shed societal and cultural expectations and reclaim their intuition and personal power by helping women who have forgotten that they do have these qualities remember. Through her work, she is realizing that many women in these situations feel lonely and feel like it’s their fault that they can’t make their marriages work. She created her community so that women have a space where they can be safe and seen by other women in the same situations. They feel less alone in their pain and loneliness. They feel less shamed and judged in this space. The personal power and intuition pieces come into play in her work where she wants her clients to know that we all have these aspects, but we live in a society that doesn’t necessarily acknowledge women’s intuition and personal power. Things are changing, but women are still on the lower part of the totem pole regarding what we feel and what we think. Many religious communities still don’t acknowledge women as equal to men. And Elizabeth says that it doesn’t have to be like this anymore. Elizabeth explains how she realized that her husband made it her job to make him and their family happy and that when she couldn’t do that, it was her fault. She needed to be different or better to make him okay. Often mom and wife have this unspoken expectation of needing toa make everything right: you need to make everybody good; you need to show up as your best self all the time because you are the reason things move and function
Becky is talking today with Liz Georges who is a health coach, a lifestyle consultant, energy therapist, and a consulting practitioner at Thrive Healing Center in Chesterton, Indiana. Liz helps her clients overcome metabolic dysfunction and return to a more balanced state of health so they have more energy, less pain, and are able to participate in activities they love. Since her pre-teen years, learning from her grandmother, Liz has taken an interest innutrition and natural health. After continually resolving her own health concerns in her 30s, while working as a radiology technologist in a family practice, she realized the medical industry has a very limited but crucial function--treating disease or delaying death--but not teaching patients how to avoid or reverse health conditions. Feeling frustrated at her inability to counsel patients in her role and wanting to help people achieve better health the way she experienced, Liz left her job and returned to school. Earning her Bachelor's degree in General Studies with a concentration in Social and Behavioral Sciences and a minor in Sociology, graduating with high honors. Not satisfied with her opportunities, she became a certified health coach and started coaching clients. The following year, wanting to dig deeper into her clients' health concerns, Liz discovered Functional Diagnostic Nutrition and has been helping her clients restore their natural vibrance ever since. When someone calls Liz for her services, she first explains what a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner is. She lets them know that she bridges the gap between a health coach and a doctor. She looks at more clinical aspects. She runs six lab assessments in order to see what is going on in the body in order to find healing opportunities in the body. All the body systems are connected to each other, so she finds out where her client is experiencing dysfunction in the body--in the adrenals, the gut, if it's oxidative stress, liver congestion. She looks at very targeted areas of the body, which are all connected so that she can provide detailed self-treatment opportunities. She says that food sensitivities are a big issue and if you are sensitive to lettuce and you are eating salads to lose weight, you are actually harming yourself. She wants to figure out what is not working for her clients so that she can figure out what will work. She tests so taht she doesn't have to guess. It's not like she is doling out a bunch of things that don't work. She actually gets to know her clients' physiology. She says that people's lifestyles are also a major contributor to stress. Besides people using drugs and alcohol, how much sleep are you getting? The body needs more than five hours of sleep each night to be able to function properly. The body does a lot repair, detoxification, and work all night, is seven to eight hours is necessary for proper healing of all the systems of the body. She also finds out if her clients are taking care of their food sensitivities and stress. What cookware are you using, what chemicals are in your home, what skincare products are you using? These things can also cause a great deal of stress and toxicity on our bodies. If you are in a really stressful relationship or have to take on your partner's stress, how is this affecting your health? She had to learn from her own stressful relationship situation that she had to make herself a priority and focus on herself in order to help her relationship improve and to be able to even help her boyfriend out at all. She goes really deeply into her clients' lives to get the overall picture of their total health. She needs to go in depth so that she can find the right protocol that is feasible for her clients' lifestyles. She wants the client to be able to actually do the program and not feel defeated by trying to do something that is not manageable. When someone has sleep issues and food sensitivities and can't even get the right...
Becky is sitting down with Ali Ringer today who is the founder of Recov.her.y Life Coaching and is a life and business coach and also a published writer. Ali specializes in breaking free of toxic cycles--the cycles we often fall into without even realizing just how much they hold us back from living our most aligned life. Yes, including our businesses and our abundance. This began with breaking free of her own toxic cycles, at 10+ year emotionally abusive relationship, crippling perfectionism, anxiety and panic disorders, self-harm, sexual trauma, a corporate job she hated, money scarcity. The list goes on and on. But she recovered from every piece of it, and now she lives her most aligned life today with her healthy partner, thriving businesses, and completely ailment free. Through her own recovery, she discovered her soul purpose was sharing her experience and supporting other women in ending their cycles and finding their power. Ali does one-on-one coaching and group coaching and with her one-on-one clients, the program is structured to their particular toxic cycle needs. Common themes she works with are mindset and confidence, which streams into anxiety, not thinking we are enough, feeling like we don't have what it takes. This is a common one that many women are battling with in society today. Once she has gotten their confidence to a good level, it becomes about letting the rest of their life match this on an energetic level. Becoming energetic matches for the life you desire. This looks different for everyone. Common themes: Having a job that lights you up, living in abundance so that you are capable to having time freedom, energy freedom to do and live however you want. You are able to become a match for partners who are going to light your soul up, friendships, community. It usually starts with the individual toxic cycles that are internal and then you become a match in the external world and you call in what your heart desires. This is the broad scope regardless of the cycle she is working on with her client. She can go anywhere and focus in on what the client really needs. Today, Becky and Ali will focus in on the abundance mindset or the money scarcity issue. Women still don't hold the majority of wealth in our world, so wealth is still in the hands of 65% men. She believes this should be more of a 50-50 split. Projections indicate that money in the next 20 years will be going more into the hands of women. She is passionate about helping women step into this mindset so they can be a part of this movement or keep themselves in a place of scarcity just because that has been their money story that has always played out in the world. Ali's story is that she was in high school in 2008-209 when the recession happened and her parents were divorced. She saw both of them lose their houses and their cars. They had to move a lot. She had to drive about 30 minutes to school in order to be able to graduate, so she also had to work to pay for her gas and car insurance. They started empowering her to get a job, which was hard at the time, but helped her in the long run. She has always had a mindset that she can have it all if she really wants it. She had a great opportunity to work with teens on reproductive education. She decided to work full-time for two years and save money so that she could pay for college in cash. She worked between four and six jobs at a time for those two years. She went to college and graduated in three years so that she could afford it. When she got out of college, she had no student debt, but she still felt the scarcity. She felt like she had to work SO hard to get the things she desired. She wanted to figure out how she could do this. She had a corporate job that she hated and that was not fulfilling at all. So, she decided that she would start her own company. On the other side of her life, not related to the abundance aspect, she was also doing her own self work and digging herself...
In today's episode, Becky sits down with Melissa Rohlfs who is a certified holistic health and life coach who helps busy women break free from sugar without deprivation, so they can be happy, healthy, and love their life. She's committed to empowering women to break free from dieting, emotional eating, and self-image issues, so they can ditch the diet mentality and feel empowered in their own skin. Melissa loves to teach women how to find freedom and peace with food, their bodies, and their lives. After her own tumultuous history with food, withholding and then, later in life, with bingeing, she learned how to deal with the core issues around her broken relationship with food. AS a result, she felt called to go to school and learn to teach other women how to do the same. She graduated from the Health Coach institute as a Holistic Health and Life Coach in 2018 and is the proud owner of "Free to Be Coaching." She's a proud Boilermaker Alumna living in Arizona with her husband Chad and two kiddos. Mellissa says the back story of her bio is that they lived in Illinois and had a newborn who wasn't sleeping through the night and they also had a two year old daughter who had undiagnosed food allergies and sensory processing disorder. Her husband was also traveling or work and she had recently been diagnosed with PTSD from childhood trauma. This overwhelmed her and brought her to her knees. So, she got help in the form of therapy, changing her daughter's diet, and seeing a naturopath for her own vitamin and mineral deficiencies as well as her cortisol levels being out of whack. All of this inspired her to go back to school so she could help other women in the same position. It wasn't just the food. It was also the life. It is all connected; it's holistic. Becky notices Melissa's compassion for herself when she mentioned that she was lying in a fetal position whenever her husband arrived home from work each night and how she knew she needed to get herself some help. Melissa acknowledges that there is a correlation between childhood trauma and sugar addiction. There is a connection because we just want to feel good. When we eat sugar, it releases dopamine in the brain, which is that feel good chemical. And over time, we need to have more and more sugar to get that same dopamine rush to feel good. It's the same with alcohol and drugs, but sugar is just more socially acceptable. Melissa started on her sugar addiction journey when she was eight and her trauma was happening and had been happening. She hid candy and cookies in her room. Sugar was how she numbed and self-soothed and pushed down the feelings because she didn't know how to handle it. Becky mentions to just think of that little child who had a hard time and have so much compassion for him or her. Melissa then continued on her journey and she and her family moved to Sioux Falls. Her friend was a Beach Body coach so she decided to do Beach Body, and drink the special shake and try to lose weight. Beach Body helped her find this piece of herself that had been missing. People noticed her weight loss, but she didn't really care that she had lost weight She wanted people to know how good she felt about herself more than the weight loss. She felt calm and not who she used to be. She didn't attribute the change in herself to the therapy or changing her diet. She gave the credit to Beach Body and became a Beach Body coach. Other women weren't having the same results that she was having. Beach Body seemed to be missing something--habit change and mindset change was not in their program like it was in her health and life coaching program. She knew there had to be more to it than changing your diet and exercising. That felt to her like behavior modification and she knew there was a way to help people with their habits and she knew that she needed to figure out what she had done to be successful so that she could teach other people that too. Melissa acknowledges that...
This week, Becky and Kristen talk about safety and feeling safe within ourselves as the way to grow in self-love. We love to talk about deep things and we think the world needs to be talking about deep things more. People are in pain and the more we talk about our pain, the more it creates a sense of safety. When we talk about something heavy, we vent and release it. But when we talk to people who don't make us feel safe and judged, that is hard. So, this episode is about creating safety in yourself in order to create more self-love. Telling someone your story is very healing and much of the time we don't realize that. Becky met a new friend and was worried about sharing too much and wondered if what she said might freak her out, but the new friend could related to her and understood her and it was really nice. Becky is pulling in her tribe! When we heal and we love ourselves, find that sense of safety and trust in ourselves and stop doubting ourselves, we start pulling in people who help us see our worth. They mirror and reflect that back to us. Especially when you are the kind of person who gives a lot and wants to help people, it's often not reciprocated by others. Oftentimes growing up in our families and in this society we don't feel a sense of safety--because of abuse or neglect. We are also taught not to be vulnerable and the collective reflects that. "Don't air your dirty laundry," or "You're a burden" or "That is just too much for me" are messages we often get. When we try to go to people who have a lot of stuff they haven't processed, it might be too much for them to take on your stuff too. They might make you feel invalidated if they dismissively ask you, "Why are you unhappy all the time?" or "Why are you so negative?" It's not that you want to be negative, you just want to share and vent to get it off your chest and move on. You get it out, speak it, and then it starts to float away. People often can't handle anything but a false happiness. They may just not be the person you need to listen if they simply cannot be real and compassionate with you. You don't want to end up feeling more ashamed of yourself when you've already got a lot of shame going on within yourself anyway. On the self-love journey, a big part of it is trying to source from within and often that might look like turning inward to a higher power. If that feels out of reach, that's okay, but at least try to source from within by being your own best friend. And once you create a sense of safety inside yourself, that builds trust, you create boundaries, and you don't let people influence how you feel about yourself anymore, that is huge. Then you don't feel like you have to "burden" anyone else or that you are "too" something, and maybe then you will feel a little bit better about sharing some of your things with people. Just to be clear here, talking about negative things or thinking about fearful things doesn't create more if it. It's when you don't validate and feel your feelings fully that the negative things are more attracted to you. So, you want to talk about it. Inner resourcing is wonderful and there is also nothing wrong with having people who you can talk with about your problems. But building that up in yourself is very important because people do come and go in your life. Build up your inner resiliency; look at your strengths and see what you have been through and how you've come through it. Feel all your feelings and be safe with yourself. Nothing is off limits because if you resist it, it's just going to grow. It takes great strength to sit in your pain and allow it. Listening to our episodes on surrender and positivity might be beneficial to this conversation. There is nothing wrong with being positive, but you can't be truly positive if you don't feel out the negative. We so often want to avoid pain so we distract ourselves with "doing" and "addicting" to things. You can get to the underlying feeling of joy that is
Today Becky is interviewing Sheri Johnson, a coach who helps women who are childless not by choice to awaken their worth in a world that makes them feel inadequate. Her passion is inspiring these women to live full and joyful lives of meaning instead of lack. She coaches women immersed in loss. Her clients vary from women who never found the right partner with whom to bear children; women who are married and cannot have children of their own; women who feel "less than" because they are not mothers. Sheri suffered three miscarriages and 6 years of infertility before deciding with her husband not to continue attempting to bear children. Entering this new phase of life influenced her decision to change her coaching practice. Sheri is offering a free quiz for you. Is your self-worth blocking your happiness as a childless woman? Once you finish the quiz you will unlock some other really cool free gifts. www.sherijohnson.ca Some of her clients are still very much in grief. After emerging from the depths of that sadness, issues with self-worth show up. Sheri teachers them to feel their emotions in a safe space. There is no manual to grief. And when you have had grief before, that can compile. The feelings from a previous loss (of any sort) compounds into the next loss. It brings up all the feelings again. Never compare yourself to others, especially with loss. The more you judge or feel judged, the less love you're going to give yourself and the less love that you will be able to give to others. If you don't feel you're worthy of love and care, you won't take care of yourself. Sometimes a big loss can crack you open to healing. These cracks in the walls around your heart allow the light to come in. You are heartbroken when you lose someone, especially a baby or the dream of a baby, but that is when your heart is open to the healing God (or your higher being) can offer. Sheri says she is a completely different person after her losses. She had the chance to put the pieces back together in a way that serves her better. The life she leads now, where she is able to serve women in this way, would never have been available to her without having gone through this journey. Self-love is a practice. Just like a muscle you have to use it to make it stronger. Your children could choose not to have children so that type of legacy is not a guarantee. Instead think of the legacy you can leave the world when you leave it. How did you leave this world a better place? Will it be a book, a piece of art, or maybe a contribution to whatever field you serve? All women "mother" in different ways because we are natural nurturers. We have the innate drive to love, comfort and support those around us. This is another way to leave your legacy on others. There is a beautiful life waiting for all women, whether they have children or not. This is available but you will need to take action. You are worthy. Motherhood does not equal worthiness and womanhood does not equal worthiness. We all have value and it is up to us to cultivate that self-worth through self-love. When we find someone who understands what we have gone through, that is part of the healing. We are strong and resilient; when we learn from our trials you will then be able to offer others, as well. We don't look back enough at what we have been through and what we have grown through. We deserve to celebrate and acknowledge that. All women deserve to be celebrated!
Life is happening so fast right now and we are often being sort of forced to surrender in many ways. Sometimes you just feel like you have no choice but to take it slowly, be in the moment, think that it is what it is to a certain extent, and just let go a lot. It can just be hard because we are so used to thinking that we are in control of so many things, and when it comes down to it, we really are not. The truth hurts. Surrender isn't giving up but it kind of feels like it is at times. It's really about making peace with the situation but not give up. It's an interesting balance. You don't want to give up, yet you are fighting so hard to go against the flow. You want to lean in. Author Mark Nepo describes surrender as a fish finding the current and just going with it. So, if you can just find your flow, find what you are supposed to be doing, even with the inevitable setbacks--and do it. Find the answer to the question, "Now what?" Now what is like being in the reality and accepting what is. You can still hope for a better outcome eventually, but for right now, this is the way it is. This helps you make room for something different and/or better to come along. Surrender is kind of like giving up in that you might need to grieve your loss in order to come into more of an acceptance. You might need to be laying on the floor shattered for a little while. Eventually you will get up off the floor. You will find a new way. Honor whatever feelings that come up. No one wants to feel the pain, the anger, the disappointment, but give yourself space and grace to feel it all. As Mark Nepo mentions, we're so attached to our narrative and our dreams and that this is like a cocoon and once we come out of it, we don't need it anymore. It doesn't mean it wasn't true or important, but the cocoon got us to where we are today and is helping us get to the next place. The "bad" things happen for our own good, really. Just make peace with it. Also, the cocoon is part of the transformation into the butterfly. And surrendering into the pain helps you not suffer anymore. If you avoid the pain of the "bad" situation you are facing, then you are going to suffer more. So, you might want to sit in that cocoon, feel that pain, and then you will transform into the butterfly. You completely transform and are then at a higher level of spiritual evolution. We get attached to relationships and the old beliefs and we don't really want to let go of them even if they are no longer serving us. When it's time to move on from those, that's when we have that conflict. Appreciate and learn by leaning into the pain. It's easier said than done, obviously. And you can't really make any changes until you are aware that it isn't want you want or is serving you. The feelings stay, fester and grow the more you push them down and away. As Kristen often says, "The universe hits us over the head with a frying pan" when we don't get the lesson the first time and don't get what's happening. It will force us to grow no matter how much it hurts. It feels very bad but it is always meant for you to grow from. You become wiser as a result. Going forward, when you see red flags, start paying attention to what feels off or not ok so that you can let it go earlier and not have to be in so much pain in trying to let it go later. Psychology Today says that when trying to surrender you are going to try to resist it, reject it, fight to not go there. True surrender is when you realize that you really don't know what to do. You can't think your way out of it or barter your way out of it or plead or beg your way out of it. Surrender is when you realize that you can't do anything. You can't control any of it. It is what it is. This is out of your hands and the only thing you can control is yourself--how you're thinking, how you're showing up. The "I don't know" space is a big part of this. Being okay with it too. you may need to grieve this feeling of not having all the...
In this week's episode, Kristen and Becky discuss "The Martyr Complex" and what it means to know someone who is a martyr or recognize it in yourself if you have this kind of patterns or identity within you. The old school definition of a martyr is: someone who is willing to die for their country, religion, or belie." These days, a martyr is someone who unnecessarily sacrifices themselves for others while ignoring their own needs. They have a victim complex, but in their heart they are really trying to do the right thing for other people. It's a little like being codependent where you think you can save or rescue someone, but it becomes self-righteous and out of range because then you get upset when people don't do what you think is right for them. Or, you get upset when someone isn't grateful "enough" or prove of you "enough." It's not intentional but the martyr feels like that is the only value they can offer others is to serve and give and take over for other people, but people don't like that and the martyr feels resentful because they aren't being appreciated for all they are doing for the person or people. Kristen has been affected by martyrs and has even exhibited it in her life, especially with her kids, at times. It's good to catch it when you notice patterns you have picked up from your family or society. We are often doing a lot of things we were conditioned to do on autopilot, and unless we are totally conscious of the things we learned before we could even talk or think about it--often before we were born we were already marinating in our family or society's patterning. And we might think that we don't want to behave that way once we are adults, and that might be very true for us, but it doesn't mean that we will automatically not behave that way. When you can't be as conscious because there is stress in your life, you might forget to be aware of changing your automatic, conditioned responses. As long as you catch a pattern or behavior and reflect on it later and remind yourself that you want to change it and not act on it again, then try not to beat yourself up because you learned it at a young age. So, it's all about becoming self-aware. Becky tells a story about a young five year old boy who spills some milk and his mom reacts in a lot of anger. Instead of comforting him, she starts to talk about how she is the worst mom ever and then he feels a need to comfort Mommy instead. He learns that her feelings are more important than his own. Later, he is taking care of his sister, bringing his mom medicine and food. This is where he thinks he is getting his value. Later, as an adult, he is the one who sacrifices himself at work--he is always willing to cover an extra shift; in relationships he is always over-giving and over-doing. These patterns just pop up. We don't choose them. This man's mom never meant for him to take this on and yet she was probably so proud of him for taking such good care of his little sister and helping her out so much. Sh wasn't thinking that his feelings don't matter and that hers were more important than his and that he needs to take this new pattern to his grave. Parents don't think like that; we are all on autopilot until something wakes us up and we are willing to do it differently. It is tricky to overcome this, but it can be done. And it might not be a pattern you do all the time. It might be something you do occasionally. So, if you do it, notice it, and forgive yourself for it. We don't know all time about the things that we are doing. We might not even know that it's a bad thing to do. There is a lot of blame and shame when you are a martyr. The martyr doesn't take responsibility for their behavior. They victim-blame and shame and they act like they are the victims. So, if they do something that you don't like and you ask them to be accountable for it...for example, you tell them that you don't like the way they treated you or spoke to you, then all of a sudden they are...
On today's episode, Becky interviews her good friend Jill Krause, who is a certified cancer empowerment coach, oncology yoga teacher, and breath coach. She is the owner and founder of YOUniversal Love, a community creating space for women who have been affected by cancer--whether by diagnosis or by genetic testing results. Jill created Youniversal Love to fill the void she felt when she was diagnosed with breast cancer almost 12 years ago. She had an arduous three-year journey treating her cancer. She endured eight surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and targeted therapy. Jill has spent the last nine years surviving the diagnosis and its treatment and she has been healing her body, mind, and soul. She wrestled with accepting her new body with the missing parts and she spent years feeling more like a science experiment than a woman. She struggles with long-term side effects that include pain, medically-induced menopause at age 38, osteoporosis, and lymphedema. Blessed with the tools from therapy, coaching, yoga, breathwork, and prayer, Jill currently owns her feminine energy and womanhood. She accepts all of who she is and embraces the magnificence of her body--every scar, missing eyelash, new curl in her hair, and hot flash. She now appreciates her body's amazing ability to adapt and heal. Jill is dedicated to empowering women to re-connect their own healing powers, to create a community to remind women that they are Universal love, and embody everything they need inside of them. Women feel safe to exhale and let love return. Becky says that our podcast is about self-love and that it is the key to healing and living your best life. Jill's story began at 38. Right off the bat she plugs the idea of knowing your body--knowing the ins and outs of your own body. Wash your body with your hand, not with a loofah or a washcloth, so you can feel every mole, every birth mark, every cellulite dimple, so you know your own body. Normally, she wasn't doing a regular breast self-exam. One day, she was showering after her workout and she lifted her breast and she found something. She says that when you find something that your body is not used to, you try to find out if it is real. She moved her body around in different ways to see if it might disappear, but it did not disappear. She said it did not feel like anything she had ever felt before. She double-checked with her husband and he confirmed it was actually there. She went to see her OB/Gyn who also felt it and found a second lump. She thought it was a cyst and told Jill to go and get a sonogram and a mammogram and that they would probably just aspirate it right then and there. The doctor was not concerned, but Jill knew something was different and off. What she has learned in her long journey is to trust that gut wisdom. She believes that is God or Spirit or whomever you believe in--whispering to you. The radiology tech couldn't get a good mammogram picture--one lump was right at her nipple and one was just under. They tried for three hours to get a good picture and they couldn't get one. She went onto her sonogram and they told her they had never seen anything that looked like that before. The radiologist said that she was fine and that she could come back in six months. Jill suggested that she had been there for four hours, she has two palpable lumps, the tech has never seen anything like this before, so she wanted to speak to the radiologist. The tech said, "No, he says you're fine." Jill wasn't having it and had her go and get the radiologist, but the radiologist would not come and see her. So, she ground down into her core and advocated for herself and asked for everything that was taken that day to be delivered to her in the waiting room. She took the films to her internist for next steps. Her internist sent her to a breast surgeon. She did that and the diagnosis came back as breast cancer and she found out that cancer had spread to her lymph nodes. If she had
We want to know you! Please feel free to email us with any questions, comments, feedback, or topic ideas. Our email is: tryselflovepodcast@gmail.com. Or, join our Facebook group called "Try Self-Love." We love interacting with our listeners and we love making new friends, so we hope to hear from you! Today, Becky and Kristen discuss the importance of having a morning routine to get the day started off in a healthy way. Kristen had a life-giving instead of a life-sucking morning today by exercising first thing. Every article anywhere discusses the importance of exercising first thing in the morning. Getting it over with in the morning helps Becky and Kristen feel great and feel more organized throughout their day. Becky feels like she struggles with a morning routine all the time except for when it's a break for her kids from school. Then her kids sleep in later and she can get a lot done like exercise, read her scriptures, pray and other things in and her cup is filled up and she is then ready to go and face people. This is not the norm for her, however, because on school days her boys are up before 6a.m., so getting up even earlier is challenging for her. Summer will be here for her soon enough and then she can have her mornings to herself again. But as soon as summer is over, she will go back to not having that time in the morning again. The morning routine is a habit that can be built in if we take it in small chunks. It's very rewarding but sometimes waking up at 4:30 a.m. to meditate or to do anything at all might not be feasible for people. Kristen was able to do this much more easily when her kids were babies and little. She would get up before them and clean the house, journal, or meditate. This helped her feel centered and when her kids got up, she was ready to do the mom thing with her kids. This made her feel like a better human and a better mom and that she had control over her life. A morning routine is a great way to love and take care of yourself. It shows you that you matter to yourself. When Becky lived in Texas several years ago, her kids got to go to school later in the morning so she had from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. all to herself and she felt amazing as a result. Now, in Tennessee, she is getting three kids ready for school and out the door between 5:45 a.m. and 7:45 a.m. and then she is exhausted, so she often takes a nap then for a little while and then goes about her day. She wishes she could exercise before she even got her kids out the door so then she'd at least feel a little more awake. Kristen thinks that you want to find what works for you and what is actually sustainable. You want to ask yourself, "What works for me?" "What makes sense?" When you continue pushing it off until later, later often never comes. So, if you can find one or two things that you know you CAN do early in the morning and show yourself that you can do them, that gives you the confidence to know that you can do it. Find something that makes sense for you. If going to the gym at 6 a.m. and doing aerobics isn't fun for you because you hate bouncing around at the gym with people at 6 a.m., that won't last very long. We also judge ourselves a lot for not doing enough and that shaming only makes it worse for us. Becky used to have a friend she walked with in the early mornings and now she doesn't anymore, so maybe it's time to make some new friends. The idea is not to judge yourself and to just do something that feels good and right for you. And sometimes we get into a funk or a rut and it is hard to get out of it. We stay in the pathway of least resistance and the comfort zone we are in. Kristen just made it happen today because she was inspired by seeing other people walking out of the gym this morning who were already done with their workouts. So, she just decided to get on her spin bike at home and get it done with and it felt really great. If you think about it too long, you just may not do it--ever. So, just...
Kristen is doing a bonus today about a topic that she loves dearly: limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs, or false beliefs, are the beliefs we created as little kids that we needed to have in order to make sense of the world when we didn't have language to help us understand what was going on. Our brains had to interpret what was going on and we had to make meaning out of things and create a narrative or story s that we could survive. As little ones, we thought we were in control of everyone in the room, so if something happened that was traumatic or even just somewhat benign, a child has to interpret that in a way that makes it so that they can feel safe and they can stay alive and they can stay in control of the situation. So, that might mean you got smacked upside the head and you decided it was your fault because that way, somehow you could behave differently and next time that might not happen and you'd survive. Or, something as simple as Mom went to get some laundry out of the dryer at the same time you came to show her a picture of something and then you interpreted it as , "Oh, Mommy doesn't love me. I am not lovable. Next time I'll do something else. I'll be funny and I'll make her laugh or I'll make her pay attention to me in some way, so she doesn't leave me and go do something else like check the laundry." This is all happening at an unconscious level for a child and the limiting beliefs are very important for the child. They actually are protective and they kept you safe your whole life. But when you become an adult, they're outdated and thery're not helpful. They actually get in the way as you grow up. These beliefs end up becoming a burden. For instance, there might be a belief of, "I need to be useful instead of having fun because I am only loved when I accomplish things." Another one is, "I need to stay quiet. If I'm too loud, they'll get mad or they might hit me or they might tell me I'm a bad girl or a bad boy. I better be quiet and I better play small." Or "I need to play small because if I play big, somebody's feelings are going to get hurt and they're not going to like me anymore. So, I want to make everyone happy and I'm just going to please everybody and I'm going to do the right thing, and I'm going to get approval and praise." Or, "I'm going to be a bad little kid ad do the wrong things and I'm going to get attention that way." Either way, they have a belief that they can control a situation and make Mom and Dad love them more, be happier, calm down, etc. These beliefs though--even though they aren't at a conscious level as you get older--are insistent. They start taking over your life. They keep showing up. So, if you have patterns of not being able to keep a job or lose weight or you have all these obstacles and fears and challenges and you can't make a relationship work very well, there's a good chance it's because these beliefs are running the show. They are on a subconscious level and they will literally dictate your life. For instance, you decide to eat well and exercise five days a week. You're going to do the thing, consciously, that everyone says is a good thing to do. The doctors, the media and everyone agrees that losing weight and being healthier is a good thing for your body based in science. But when we try to only tackle it on a conscious level, this weight loss stuff often does not work. And it's because the subconscious part of you that is like, "Well, I don't know, eating sugar has never killed me before...let's keep eating it. This whole thing about eating more vegetables is hogwash because for all I know..." (Me being this subconscious part of the body that is in charge and has all these limiting beliefs stored in it) [this part] is saying, "No. You have never tried this 'healthy thing' and for all we know, we could die." So, you're like, "I don't care. I'm going to just go and do the thing I'm supposed to do.' So, a week goes by and you're doing the calorie and exercise
We really want to know you! Please email us at tryselflovepodcast.com or join our Facebook group: Try Self-Love. Give us topic ideas, feedback , or just say hi and introduce yourself! We love making new friends! Today, Becky and Kristen talk about how to attract your highest love to you! Loving yourself helps you attract your highest levels soul love. Your best soulmate match. We have mentioned things before about attracting your best love to you or attracting the things that you love the most to you, whether it be a job, finances, love, friendship--whatever is good for you. By the same token, we attract where we are right now to us, too. So, if we are self-abusive, we ignore ourselves, we don’t love our job-- we are doing a job only to pay the bills but we hate it, we just don’t really love ourselves or our lives, well, that is also what shows up. Like attracts like so we want to discuss the importance of loving yourself as well as HOW to love yourself into that space where the good things will show up, including your highest vibrational match…soul love. Becky likes that part Kristen mentioned about how when you are in that space of really loving yourself you will find people—friends, not just romantic—who are happy with who they are and happy with who you are. And on the flip side, when we’re in that lower or self-defeatest place or are just so mean to ourselves we’ll find people who will mirror that back to us. In Becky’s marriage, when she is not loving herself she cannot even accept his love. We just have to be really careful with where we’re at and what we are projecting and believing about ourselves. Kristen feels that, when you don’t feel self-loving and can’t receive the love what happens energetically is that when we reject ourselves our partner starts to reject themselves. So the energy starts to feed on each other. So if you are just in a really low self-hating energy and you’re taking it out on the person, they can feel rejected because you are taking it out on them, which is another way of seeing it. An example is someone yelling, “Why can’t you just vacuum the floor when I ask you to?” You’re not really mad at the person, you’re just kind of mad at yourself but just projecting it out onto them and then they sort of feel like, “Ooh, what did I do? I’m sorry, I must be a bad person or something” and then there is this rejection cycle that starts. So one of you has to pull yourself out of that dance and get back to your own self-love so that the communication can start and the damage there can be repaired. You don’t want to cause this long-term resentment. And this is later on down the line when we’re talking about the in’s and out’s of communication style inside of a love relationship. But in order to attract your own best love to you, you want to BE your own best love. People say to date yourself and you should do all the things that you want your future partner to do and that is true. And being okay being alone is huge. Being sovereign: taking care of your health in the best way, feeling a sense of confidence and high self-esteem, doing the activities and things that you love to do, finding the best job for you, and jumping into your passions puts you on the trajectory of the higher version of yourself. This higher version of yourself is the person you WANT to be regardless if that person ever even shows up. The person coming into your life will then just be like the icing on the cake. Becky has been living in like the Crucible the last five years with a lot of stress with moves and losing her second stillborn son Bennett, and so her husband Scott has done a lot of his own inner work. He is really good with himself. She doesn’t lash out. She goes inward and is mean to herself and not to others so when she can’t receive love and Scott sees her like that it makes him sad for her, not really rejected himself. It's interesting to wonder if, as you grow and shift in yourself and your partner...
We are excited to announce group coaching! We will have groups of six to eight people at a time. We want to coach people on self-care and self-love, plus other areas you need help, such as boundary-setting and getting unstuck. We will help you to progress and be happier. Groups are so amazing for people and so empowering. We can't wait to work with you. Look for that in our Facebook group, Try Self-Love or send us an email at: tryselflovepodcast@gmail.com to sign up. We'd also love your comments, topic suggestions, or just hearing from you. In Episode 25, Kristen and Becky discuss ways to reach that higher, more joyful and peaceful vibrational state more often--even when life is throwing you curve balls. The idea is to grasp for the higher vibration place--let's do it! This is not to diminish or discount the pain we have been in for years or decades, but if we can sometimes remember good moments where we could grasp for that higher, lighter feeling or the more balanced or centered space, try to do it in order to find peace. It is kind of a normal feeling. A grounded feeling. These are the moments we want to grow. What we focus on expands so if you are always thinking negatively, that will grow. If you start to try and focus more on the positive, that will be what grows. Energy flows where attention goes. It's easy to stay focused on the negative pathway because that is what has been entrenched in our brains for so long. So, we have to make it a practice to create new, positive pathways. This is not easy to do, but you almost just have to "do it." Make a decision, fake it until you make it, act as if, etc. This is, again, not to minimize painful experiences and blow yourself off. But when you CAN choose a higher path, take it. Just Do It! Gratitude is Becky's number one go-to. She has been dealing with looking for a new car. Car prices are going up and it's been really frustrating. She was praying for some kind of miracle so they could find a new car at a reasonable price. They got $2000 off and that meant something to her. She was grateful for what little she was able to get. Life is getting harder and the weirdest things are happening lately, but try and celebrate what is going well. This redirects the mind toward a more positive pathway. Be grateful for even the littlest things. Becky saw a beautiful sunset and it made her realize that things will be okay. Having faith or trust that it's working out can be challenging, but you just kind of have to make that decision to do it because the more you practice thanking your God, or higher power, the Universe, Source, etc. in advance for what you want or what you already have and just claiming that you KNOW it will work out even if you don't know the WHEN or the HOW (this is surrendering), is a way that you are giving up control and allowing for what will be. Take your hands off the wheel. Practice believing: Something I want or something BETTER for me will show up at the perfect time. Having faith that some higher source wants the best for you might be a hard thing to do when you have had a lot of abuse or trauma in your life, which is why faith is something you need to know without proof that it's going to work out. The more you practice having faith about things that you want, the more your life shifts and you feel more grounded and then you start noticing the things you took for granted like a sunset and having an appreciation for it. You start to feel more appreciation for the fact that you can walk or sleep well at night, or that you have a home to live in. When you CAN or IF you CAN, even if it's small, celebrate that win and it will grow. You can experience both grief/pain and peace/joy at the same time. We don't have to just sit in the darkness all the time. You can find the light. There is still light. It doesn't change your situation at all, or what will happen. Everything will eventually get resolved, life is ups and downs, but if we can somehow have some...
In episode 24 Becky and Kristen discuss difficult relationships. Do you feel like you're "walking on eggshells" around a certain person in your life? Does this relationship feel heavy or do you feel defeated in believing you will always be trapped in it? Listen for ways to cope and how to set up healthy boundaries for better, happier relationships. You can't fix someone or save them. Remember to have compassion for them and compassion for you. Kristen says it’s selfish to try to save other people. It’s up to all of us to take care of ourselves. We are trying to help others but when we focus on them, we are not focusing on ourselves and what is actually in our control. “I know better than you. I am going to fix you.” It is controlling, selfish, manipulative and codependent. It takes time to uncover the reasons behind why we’re doing the things we do. If in your heart you are just trying to help, ask yourself, "Why do I think they need my help? Did they as for it?" If not, let them figure it out on their own. Be kind to yourself but also kind to your difficult person. You aren’t condescending but respectful. You will never regret being kind. The way to inner peace is to do your own inner work and to let others live their own lives. We can get enmeshed with others. We want everyone to be happy. This can happen so easily and it’s not our intention to be dysfunctional. These patterns are learned generation after generation. It doesn’t matter what your background is; you can unlearn unhealthy behaviors. You have choices in your relationships. Don’t let someone else’s mood change yours. Don’t let If this is someone in your life that you can minimize contact with (a neighbor, coworker, boss), go for it. If this person is a parent, child, other family member and you do not want to terminate the relationship Prepare for your time with this person. Do your deep breathing. Stay calm. Expect them to be their usual self. If something about this person bothers you, don’t expect it to be any different. Prep yourself for this person to continue the behavior. However, if their behavior is abusive or offensive, you have options. Choose what you will put up with and what you won’t. If someone is screaming at you and you no longer will tolerate that, put up the boundary. Say, “If you are going to yell at me I will leave.” This is not about controlling their behavior, this is about what you will do to protect yourself. You get to choose how you will show up. It’s much easier to control ourselves with strangers or acquaintances than it is with a closer family member. Taking the time to understand where someone is coming from can open up compassion for the person. We can have compassion for them but we also get to have compassion for ourselves. Don’t let your fear of conflict keep you from bringing attention to the behavior and how it affects you. It’s not helping anybody to not speak up. It’s not a loving action, to you or to them. Know that it may not change the person. Maybe this person doesn’t care that it hurts you. Of course, maybe the other person doesn’t know that their behavior is bad. Give them a chance to hear you. If they are willing to hear you and do something about it, great. If not, know that moving forward, you will have to decide what you want to do about it. You may have to ignore them, slowly back away or just learn to live with it. These are hard situations. We recommend a coach, therapist or even a group that will help you practice what to say. You can role play and decide what you want your life and your relationships to look like. The better you can make your life, the better you will feel which will affect the people around you. If you just live in sad acceptance that this difficult relationship controls you and you have to walk on eggshells, it’s not helping you or the other person. It’s just making the situation worse. If someone is constantly telling you that you need to change or that...
Please email us at tryselflovepodcast@gmail.com with any questions, comments, or topic suggestions. Also. consider joining our Facebook group called Try Self-Love. We would love to have you be a member! We are talking about a sad topic today. Loss. Loss is very personal for Becky. She has experienced quite a bit of loss in her life. And there are different types of loss, but the feelings are generally the same. We want to offer some validation to those who have gone through loss. We are talking about any kind of loss here: losing someone you love; losing a job; losing some papers in your house that you really needed; losing a file on your computer. Loss is loss and the feelings you feel are pretty common to everyone. Primarily you will feel raw; hollowed-out; empty; numbness; your brain will slow down. Your brain will shut you down for as long as needed so that you are protected. It could be as long as a year that you feel shut down and numb or in shock and denial. There is a fog that accompanies loss. You are processing so much, and the brain can only handle so much. In loss, you will feel uncertain, scared, afraid; as though life might never feel good again; accompanying darkness and depression; despair, anxiety, and physical aching of your heart and your mind. All these feelings are valid, normal, and okay. Please honor yourself during this time. It's so hard to lose someone or the dream of someone and to have the expectations you had taken from you. Normally, people live life, have their children, their parents die, etc. But when someone young is taken from us it can awaken us to our own mortality and make us start to wonder if anything is safe or not. Do you have control over anything? And no, you don't. Only your own reactions are under your control. Covid gave us another level of loss. The loss of being in person with one another. And the older generations in assisted living centers--they were already isolated enough and then to have this fear of this virus could kill them and their loved ones had to stay away. There has also been loss of financial security for many people. Another kind of loss is weight loss. Losing weight can change the way you feel about yourself; it can open up fear about negative things happening to you. It can create a sense of an identity change as well. The loss of the identity as a larger person is still a loss. There are so many kinds of losses and some are more severe than others, but every kind of loss should be respected and honored because there may be the loss of the dream that you had of how your life was supposed to go. It will create some emotions. So, make sure that you feel those feelings. This might be the darkest time of your life, but you won't feel like this forever. Grief and loss are not linear. If you feel like you are lashing out at loved ones or strangers, please do get some help. If you are pushing people away or you can't stop crying, these are indications that you have stepped past normal grieving and need some help. Talk to someone who gets you. That helps. Sometimes these losses are so immense for us that navigating through grief is very helpful and when you are all alone in it, you feel inundated by it. Often, we want to jump right to accepting the loss by saying things like, "It's done. It's over. It happened. They're gone" but you really can't fully do this. There is a part of you that isn't okay with it and that part will make you go through all the different stages of grief. Denial and bargaining can be the ones we stay in the longest sometimes because we simply do not want to feel the depression part, even though that is one of the most important ones we have to go through in order to get to full acceptance. The depression stage can make people feel like they are going to stay in the depression, but this is only one part of this and if this was a big loss for you, you might be in the sadness for a longer time than with other kinds of...
In today's bonus episode Becky explains why it's important to make space for more self-love. If we want to clean up our diet, we remove the less healthy foods and add in foods that will serve us better. If you want to get new clothes you need to make space in the closet by clearing out the old items that you no longer want. The concept is the same with self-love. Whenever you clear out emotional baggage or stories that aren't serving you, you create space to add in self-love. This will make a big difference in how you show up in your life, in your relationships and in the world. Self-love is a choice. It is not selfishness or arrogance. It is accepting that you are worthy of love simply because you exist. If you'd like to be coached by Becky or Kristen, contact us. Join our FB group, Try Self-Love or email us at tryselflovepodcast@gmail.com. We can all make room for more self-love, which truly will change the world.
Please send any questions or comments, or topic ideas to us at tryselflovepodcast@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you. Alternatively, join our Facebook group: Try Self-Love. We love interacting with our listeners! Welcome to episode 22...Are you stressed? Who isn't stressed? Stress is part of life. Life is busy and we feel it in our shoulders and chest. Deep breaths! Kristen noticed stress and tension in her cheeks at the start of the show today and says that your body gives you signals about how you are doing and we often ignore our bodies. It really does tell you what it needs. Sometimes we don't even know that stress is even affecting us. Living with no stress is not realistic. A certain level of stress is actually good for us. Broken down, stress is the body's response to challenge or demand. Like when you work a muscle, it breaks down and then is repaired and rebuilds even stronger. So, stress isn't the bad guy here. It's the thoughts about it and what we make it mean and how it takes over our lives that are bad. All of a sudden we are eating poorly, not sleeping, not exercising, in our heads too much, and beating ourselves up. Even saying the word "stress" makes our shoulders rise up and makes us feel bad. Too much stress can affect you mentally and physically. The mind, body, and soul connection is important in life and everything is connected, so if you're experiencing health problems, there's a good chance that there are some false beliefs about yourself going on. The trauma you may have experienced can also be a factor in how you are feeling and thinking about yourself today as well. Rooting these things out and healing them can have a profound effect on your current state of health overall. The chronic stress you may be experiencing now can be dealt with a little better once we release some of the emotional baggage. Your job being hard and kids doing this and that--the daily stressors--we can't really eliminate all that, but we can talk about how we can deal with the chaos a little better and be more at ease while we're in the middle of the storm. This kind of stress can create a lot of downstream health problems. Being stressed makes your heart rate go up, your blood pressure goes up, you may feel fear or anger. You just notice it in your body, especially the more stressed you get, the more it shows on your face, you're not yourself and you're irritable. Good stressors like having a baby and getting a promotion at work are positive but still considered stressful because they do change your life in a way. If your stress is manageable --you're being spurred to action and you feel a bit overwhelmed but overall still okay, that's fine. But if it's too much stress and it's is affecting you all the time, then you might want to ask yourself what thoughts are leading you to this state. What are you telling yourself? What are you making this mean? If you don't get your to-do list done, are you okay with it or are you using that to beat yourself up? This leads to more stress and then you are already stressed the moment you wake up. Get between the thoughts and the stress, slow it all down, take deep breaths, asking yourself what's going on. When Becky was sick with Covid and a sinus infection recently, she rested and did not feel stressed. She listened to her body and read, watched TV, slept a lot, allowed herself to just be sick. Back to real life after being sick, that relaxation state is long gone. So, she had to ask herself what she is making this mean, why does she live like this? She can't live like she is on vacation all the time and drop all her responsibilities, but she also doesn't have to live so stressed out all the time. There is a balance one can have between being too busy and finding relaxation. When we take time to relax it actually helps us to be more productive later. Also, when life is very hectic and you feel like you can get caught up in the drama, maybe make a decision to take...
It's Becky's birthday this week! Happy Birthday to a wonderful friend, coach, and podcast partner! I am so lucky to know you and to be able to call you my friend! Enjoy your special day this Friday! Please feel free to send us an email at tryselflovepodcast@gmail.com and let us know what topics you want to know about, or just to say hi or give us some feedback. Or, join us at our Facebook group called: Try Self-Love. We absolutely love our listeners and having you in our group is extra fun and special! Today, Kristen and Becky dive into toxic positivity. What is that? People often will say "Don't worry, be happy," "Just think positively," and "It will all work out," which is all fine and good. We all want to think positively and be optimistic overall, but when it's at the expense of feeling true feelings, it sets you up to feel a lot of negative things about yourself. Becky says that toxic positivity is usually when someone does not want to face negative emotions such as: sadness, anger, guilt, fear, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, pain, loss, trauma-induced insecurity, etc. People who are uncomfortable with those emotions will try to escape them in any way that they can by pushing them away, backing away from them, dismissing them, etc. An example is when someone gets fired and their friend or loved one says, "Oh! Don't worry about it. You're going to get a new job tomorrow." They can't even let that person be sad or experience their own negative feelings about being fired. When Becky's son died, her friend (now ex friend) said to her, "Oh, it's okay, you have other kids." That left Becky feeling dismissed and uncared about as though her feelings didn't matter. A person who is thinking only in the positive (toxically) may have an agenda of needing you to be okay because he or she is not okay with hard feelings. This is not a safe place for the person in pain and it's not allowing him or her to feel what they're feeling. This can mean that the person living in the toxic positivity actually does not allow him or herself to feel negative feelings. Kristen says that someone who can't really handle your negative feelings ends up dismissing you. When someone says something like, "Why are you upset that you weren't invited to the party? You have so many other friends. There will be other parties. Who cares?" it puts you into a place of questioning yourself and feeling selfish or wrong for being upset when it actually makes sense that you would be upset. The truth is that you ARE upset. Just be real about it. Toxic positivity doesn't allow you to be real or transparent with yourself. It actually encourages you to ignore your problems, hide from them, run away from them and all of your feelings. It's another way of suppressing your feelings and when you suppress your negative feelings, you can't actually be happy because you are putting on a mask and pretending. This is a way we disconnect from ourselves and who we really are when we act positive all the time and ignore the not-so-happy feelings. This makes you people please and make decisions that aren't good for you. People don't really trust you and you don't trust yourself. People may think that you are way too happy when really you should be feeling not so happy. For Becky, there is an element of shame in it. People will make you feel like you should be happy with what you have instead of complaining about what you don't have. This inspires a lot of shame. Like, "You can't feel that way. Someone has it worse." They are not a safe person. Anything you share will be twisted and used against you. It's like they are saying, "How dare you not be thankful for your life. I know I could list five other people who have it so much worse than you. You should be happy. You should be feeling somehow different than you are feeling." It's just denying reality and not allowing someone to be who they are. It's very dismissive. Your feelings and problems matter. Even if other...
In this episode, Becky and Kristen discuss loneliness and how the pandemic has increased this very real and painful feeling. We need other people and to know that people care about us. The world right now is very affected by loneliness. It affects our children and social media seems to be enhancing and contributing to a feeling of isolation and a belief that we don't quite measure up. During this episode, Kristen is in the midst of having Covid and she feels isolated and is confronting deep feelings in herself about her children, their lives, the hardship they face in this day and age and that loneliness is a feeling that none of us really want to experience. We run from and avoid it as much as we can. We do many things to try and avoid this feeling, such as drinking alcohol, over-eating, doing drugs, shopping, even exercising too much. Even being surrounded by other people who can leave you feeling lonely. Becky says that there are different kinds of loneliness. Losing a pet or a spouse is a different kind of loneliness than someone who is new at school and doesn't have any friends. There are a lot of health issues that can arise from loneliness as well. You can experience heart problems, depression, anxiety, higher stress, poor sleep, and you can also be at risk for drug abuse to name a few. Loneliness can lead to a stress response in the body that can contribute to many downstream health conditions. Feeling loneliness and like you don't measure up can create stress as you begin to ask yourself, "Why don't they like me?" or "Why doesn't anyone want to talk to me?" To live in that stress all the time can create chemical havoc in the body--even if you are trying to avoid the feeling of being lonely. Feelings don't just go away. They live in your body until you bring awareness to them. Handle your loneliness feelings in order to have better health. In this world now where people meet less and less in person, it is a very tricky time. In this post-Covid world, how can we best reach out and connect with people? Kristen suggests that if we want to still do social media going forward (since it's likely not going anywhere), we should assess whether it is meant for connection or for comparison. Building a bridge of communication can create a connection whereas just showing off about yourself can create a desire to compare and create separateness from one another. Getting out again and connecting to people in real life can be very helpful. Becky joined a group called Pace which is an online group of people who are going through similar situations. She joined in order to help herself feel less intimidated about speaking up in a group setting. There are also local Meet-Ups and hiking groups, local libraries that have courses and groups, volunteering opportunities, and churches that all may have your people to connect with. If we could find a way to use social media to help people connect better, that could also be a good idea. People are creative and we need to be more proactive about it. Kristen reiterates how important it is to find your people. Ask yourself Who am I?" "What do I believe?" "What are my values?" in order to find the right people to connect with. In the grand scheme of things, perhaps this pandemic is here to show us how to find our way out of loneliness and back to connecting more with others. Seeing the bigger picture of life, maybe something like the pandemic is happening FOR us instead of TO us even when it feels really bad right now. But we will get through this because we are very strong and very resilient, creative and intelligent. We are animals who are born to survive. The creativity that can spring from his hard situation can mean forming new connections, getting along better, tolerating each other better. It's a great opportunity for all of us. The positive about Kristen having Covid and feeling lonely lately is that she realized that she has been lonely for most of her life and the way she...
Join our FB group, Try Self-Love. We'd love to hear what you're struggling with so we can do an episode on it! Email us at tryselflovepodcast@gmail.com or reach out on FB. In this episode Kristen and Becky talk about perfectionism. This is very important so read carefully: The end of the world will not come if you don’t get it perfectly right. Is that hard to believe? When you're in recovery it doesn't mean that you're "perfect" (pun intended) at not being perfect. You just become aware of this tendency and then work on it. Stop trying to be perfect because you are not perfect and never will be. And that's okay! Perfectionism comes from a place of fear and pain. If you are trying to be perfect then you are trying to control any and everything in order to stave off some future unknown. Spoiler alert: no one is perfect and you trying to control everything and make it perfect is only going to add to more pain, especially when things don’t go according to your plan or desires. This will just lead to shame and blame, as if you could or should have done something else or something more to avoid the outcome. It just doesn’t work. If we could stop this futile attempt to be perfect and become recovering perfectionists the world would be a better place. Progress over perfection. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing; it doesn’t have to be perfect to be okay. Life is beautiful when you can be okay with the imperfections of life. Keep your expectations realistic and life will be much happier for all involved. Perfectionistic expectations may stem from childhood, where you were expected to get it right and be in perfect control. Maybe you saw that modeled and knew that was an unspoken rule at home. Maybe you find yourself living that out in your own home. People will make their choices, especially children. No one wants to be controlled. If you feel like you are being controlled you will become resentful or turn to people-pleasing. You may become passive-aggressive or downright rebellious. Social media is the perfect place (pun intended) to portray only the best of our lives. You can pretend all is perfect very easily online. It’s hard to connect to an image that isn’t quite portraying the whole truth of the person. You also disconnect from yourself when you hide the parts of you that you don’t like or don’t think measure up. People want to connect with a real, flawed human, not a robot who’s fake. We need to learn to have compassion for the parts of us that are never going to be perfect Perfectionism is a way of staying stuck and trying things you really want to do. If you will never be able to attain something, you lose all motivation to try. Instead of trying to make things perfect for you and everyone in your life, let it be good enough. Find the balance. Done is better than perfectly planned but never executed. A 10-minute walk is better than the hour in the gym that never happened. Challenge your thoughts. When it pops up, “A 10-min walk isn’t going to do anything!” Answer back: That’s okay. I enjoyed it and maybe tomorrow I can go a little longer.” What is something that you really want to do? It won’t be perfect but that’s okay. Try it. Challenge the negative thoughts. “You’ll never do it right” becomes, “I’m not going to get it right the first time but I will have fun trying.” Instead of telling yourself, "It wasn’t good enough" you say, "Nope! I did the best I could. I did enough and I am enough." Keep telling yourself this until you believe it.
Covid has pushed off this week's episode. Kristen got it last week and Becky has it right now. This week's bonus episode is from Kristen. She gives us a message about self-love and what she learned while having Covid. Whenever life offers you a chance to tune into what you are feeling and experiencing, remember to go easy on yourself. Self-love means accepting all of you. And you are worth loving! Stay tuned for next week's episode on perfectionism. Take care!
Happy Birthday to Kristen! We recorded this episode on her birthday, January 6th. Becky and Kristen talk about the inner mean girl - that bully that mentally beats you up over any and all mistakes. Believe it or not, this part of you actually wants the best for you but we definitely don't like the way it’s being communicated. *What possible positive intention could your inner critic have for you? Becky's inner critic pushes her and tells her she isn't doing enough because it’s afraid she'll quit. We can understand the positive intention without believing the lies. All bullies lie, and our inner bully is no exception. We all need love, safety and belonging. Doing new things can be scary and that primitive part of the brain (the one responsible for keeping you alive) does not want anything to happen to you. Your inner critic stems from that part of your brain and actually wants something good for you (even if we don’t like the method she is using to get your attention). Kristen and Becky expose their inner critics and explain why it’s good to listen closely to the inner bully. Evaluate if what it is saying is true (it isn’t). Next, get curious. What do you want for me, little mean girl? When you realize that this part of you is trying to get your attention and has a reason that is actually for your ultimate good, you make peace with this inner critic and she can stop bullying you. No matter where you are on the self-love spectrum, you are doing important work. When you love yourself you do not become selfish. You have so much more to give. When you are filled up and empowered all you want to do is help others feel the same way. Look for the proof that your inner critic is wrong about you. You can learn to tame your inner critic but it never goes away and that's normal. Work at finding your light, your love and your good parts.
Life has worked against us this week so instead of beating ourselves up we are leaving you with a thought for your day. Self-love is not selfish; it's what fills your well and allows you to give to others without resentment or exhaustion. You are helping so many people; why not help yourself? Stay tuned for next week's episode on perfectionism!
Thank you, Susan, for recommending this topic! If you have anything you want Kristen and Becky to talk about please email us at tryselflovepodcast@gmail.com or join our free FB group, Try Self-Love. Loving yourself first helps you figure out who you are. You were put on this earth for a purpose; there is no one else on this earth who will be the same as you as that is beautiful. Learn to love who you are and accept all of you. Work with yourself, not against yourself. Turn to God (or your Higher Power) for help figuring out what is special about you. Finding your life purpose doesn’t have to be full or pressure or feel heavy. You don’t have a deadline and though you may not be changing the entire world, you can change one person’s world. Our life purpose can change throughout the course of a lifetime as circumstances change. Self-love plays a role in discovering what you love and live for. Loving yourself allows you to accept what you value. This allows you to do whatever you want to do instead of worrying if others will approve or if it will be “enough.” Love yourself and allow yourself to do some fun things. Do something you love to do that also helps other. This will help forge connection with others and you will feel accomplishment and self-worth. Your life purpose can be fun; it can be something that doesn’t serve others at all. When you are happy and in a good place mentally and emotionally, you will want to reach out and lift others. When you know who you are then your gifts and life purpose becomes more clear. It gets easier to share with others. Do you tell yourself that what you’re doing isn’t enough? Our limiting beliefs that tell us we don’t deserve to be happy or we’re not good enough can fall away when you are enjoying your hobby, your talent. Perhaps you are living your purpose as you are. Maybe you are helping many people and yet you don’t see it or believe it’s enough. Some tips for finding your life purpose: Think back to what you enjoyed doing as a child. We may be older and our body may look different, but we are not very different from that child we were. No matter what you are doing, stay in the moment. That is the best way to connect to yourself and to your loved ones. When we appreciate what we have right now, doors open and other opportunities come our way Anything we do that creates connection with others and makes us feel good helps everyone Volunteering is a great way to give back. Helping others gives us clarity on our current struggles Ask people closest to you, people that you trust: What do I have that’s special? What about me is different? Ask yourself: What is something you did that you are most proud of, that you wish you could do again? Look at who you are jealous of - this will help you see what you wish you had in your life. Admiring someone lets you know that you have that inside, too Be grateful - when you look back you can see the strength and the lessons learned from the hard times Believing in yourself; trust that things are working out for you, even if you can’t see it
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/seven_ways_to_find_your_purpose_in_life (https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/seven_ways_to_find_your_purpose_in_life )
How do you know if a relationship is toxic and how do you know it's time to let go? Becky and Kristen jump right into it in this episode. We want to give a shoutout to Kameron for this topic idea. Thank you! We love listener input. If you have a topic you want us to discuss, please email us at TrySelfLovePodcast@gmail.com or join our free FB group Try Self-Love! We want to start by saying that if this episode applies to you, we are sorry to hear that. Our hearts go out to you because we get it and we’ve been there. This is a process. It will hurt. The closer you are to someone the harder it may be to let go. It will be a journey. This is jumping from one roller coaster to another, and this time your challenges will be with yourself. Watch your thoughts! You may tell yourself things like, “You’re too sensitive” or ”She didn’t mean it” “Why does this bother you?” “You’re the only one who can’t get on board with this.” That doesn't help and may cause you more pain. We highly recommend going to counseling or working with a coach if you are having a hard time moving through this process. A counselor will help you examine your part in it. A coach will help you with your goals and transformation so that you can love yourself throughout the process. Don’t beat yourself up if you find yourself in a toxic relationship. You didn’t know better but now that you do, you can do things differently. For Kristen it was a failed romantic relationship. She wanted to make the person see my value, see what they lost. She became obsessed about the ways she could have made it better, what she could have done differently. She thought love was enough to make people love her back. She thought giving and overdoing would earn her the love she was seeking. For Becky it was letting go of her relationship with her mom. It can be difficult to take a step back, especially with a family member. It’s okay to let go of anyone, even if they’re a blood relative. As you get better at loving yourself you can find people who also love you as you are. You can back away from those who don’t love or accept you. We will always want to be loved and accepted by others but we won’t be willing to put up with as much toxicity. When you love yourself you don’t rely on others as much; you learn to fulfill a lot of your own needs. You will see the red flags earlier as you come into greater self-love. You will be able to find someone who can meet you on a healthier plane. Tips: Assess: what are my expectations? For the other person and for yourself. Is this relationship worth it? Journal - Be completely honest with yourself; express anger, pain and hate. Forge this relationship with yourself because it’s the longest relationship you’ll be in while on this earth. Love, accept, listen to and be trustworthy to yourself; all the things you would do for someone else, do for you. Let go of the hope that they will change. The only person you can change is yourself. Let go of the past. You cannot change what happened. When you look back, try to see it clearly, the good and the bad. Maybe you stayed because you didn’t want to be alone and you were willing to put up with the pain because you hoped that it would get better. Leave space for forgiveness. Don’t force forgiveness - that will just cause you pain. Leave room in your heart to forgive yourself and the other person. This is a loss; let yourself grieve and feel the pain. Know that it’s not going to last forever. Find the gift in the relationship. After enough time you will be able to see what you gained from this relationship. How are you different? How have you grown? What did you learn that will help you help others moving forward? Being able to help others in similar painful situations can be so healing to you.
Eckart Tolle, The Power of Now. "[Relationships] do not cause pain and unhappiness. They bring out the pain and unhappiness that is already in you." This is painful. Love yourself, find ways to...
Do you have a topic you want us to cover? Email us at tryselflovepodcast@gmail.com or post in our FB group Try Self-Love. We love listener input! Also, we'd love to hear your goals and resolutions for 2022. We want to celebrate you so email us and we'll give you a shout-out in future episodes. Every year we write our New Year’s resolutions and then we beat ourselves up when we “fail.” We are here to get you halfway to the impossibly high expectations we put on ourselves. We want attainable and sustainable. Stop expecting so much; we aim for so much that’s not possible and then our mental health suffers. For all the goals/resolutions that you want to do, we are here to help. Contact us for help with your insurmountable goals. A coach is a great person to help you break down the big goals into manageable steps. If you're not ready for a coach find someone who will hold you accountable, cheer you on and check in with you and support you. Small changes will help you feel successful so there' s no shame with scaling back your goals and starting small. Have compassion for yourself and what you really want to do. Following through will be easier when you have goals that you actually want to do and believe in. To have success with your goal: Anchor it in: Sticky notes will help you remember your goal but you need to move them around weekly or your brain will get used to them and no longer see them Habit stacking: Pair your habit with something you like to do. Example: watching your favorite show while on the treadmill; saving your favorite podcast for your walk. Celebrate when you do it right! Reward yourself regularly. When you ask a lot of yourself you also need to give back to yourself. We are not going to do it perfectly so let yourself off the hook once in awhile and keep trying. If trying to get exercise in, remember that any movement counts when you are older. Vacuuming, climbing your stairs, walking the dog.
For 2022, what will you choose NOT to do? What Becky is not going to do: I am not going to respond to passive-aggressive subtext anymore. I will let adults take charge of their own emotions. I will ignore, be a gray rock or walk away if I need to. I am not going to have packaged sweets. I will make my own treats, once a week. For 7 years, every January, I have tried to quit sugar. This is more reasonable and realistic. I am not going to be mean to myself from 10am -12pm every day
What Kristen is not going to do: I am not going to sit all day long; I am going to move more throughout the day. I enjoy walking, swimming or biking. On the days I can’t work out I will stretch or get up and walk around all day long I will not over-schedule myself every day. I am an overachiever and need to scale it back. I want more balance in my life and to stop running from my feelings by being “busy” and giving a little too much. I am working on loving my body. This requires baby steps if you're used to hating your body. Find a body part that you appreciate and can love: eyes, smile, elbow. Appreciate what your body does for you. Can you walk? Can you see? Did you bring a child into the world?
Becky and Kristen have their first disagreement! It's over The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. Don't worry, though; they work it out. :)
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! In this very special holiday bonus episode Kristen and Becky explore hope and why it’s so wonderful to cultivate hope in your life. Hope is essential for a happy life, a clear picture of what you want and good mental health. Hope engenders empowerment. Our goals happen with hope because that feeling fuels action and belief in ourselves. Hope opens channels to your creativity and helps you get unstuck from a hopeless situation. We are not talking about false hope - holding onto something that deep down we know won’t really happen. It isn’t burying your head in the sand, hoping things will get better on their own because you’re not willing to do anything about it. We often misuse the word “hope” in the case of worrying about something: “I hope it doesn’t rain today.” Hope is more powerful than that! Hope is a connection to God or your higher power. It’s connecting to good people and even to yourself. Without hope we don’t have joy in our life and we keep on the hamster wheel. Hope is the feeling of believing that things can and will get better. Hope is trusting that what you want to happen can happen for you. We can hope in God or your higher power to help you make your dreams become a reality. The major benefits of hope are: it reduces stress, increases happiness, keeps you moving forward, gives you the strength to bounce back from obstacles, aids in problem-solving and reduces your feeling of helplessness. We wish you a Merry Christmas full of peace, joy and HOPE!
In today's episode Becky and Kristen dive into what it means to be in the moment. Mindfulness helps you to feel more at ease and at peace. It helps offset anxiety and depression. Being present is something that requires practice. If you don’t have an intention to be present then it’s natural that you won’t be. We all have these brains that don't want to be present. They want to fix the future or dwell on the past - all in an attempt to protect us from the pain of making mistakes or getting hurt. Thinking about the past leads to depression and what can never be again. Anxiety is about the unknown of the future. The only true reality is what is happening now. We need to accept things as they are. We try to control too much. We don’t have a time machine so we can’t go back in time to fix things. And we don’t have control over what happens in the future. We can just let things be. Here are a few ways to stay present, even in the holiday chaos: If you notice you are not present then stop and anchor in. How am I feeling? Breathe! You can’t breathe for the past and you can’t take extra breaths for the future. Is there a smell around that can help you get present? Do a body scan. See how you’re feeling. If you feel a tightness, breathe into it. Ask yourself what is going on. Tell yourself, “It’s okay; I am here with you.” Your brain cannot process your feelings. You have to feel it in your body. Julia Cameron says to wake up and write three whole pages of whatever is going on in your brain. Nothing that comes up is off-limits. This is a really great way to connect to your feelings. Later when your brain wants to bring things up you cal tell yourself, “We already addressed this; it’s okay.” Visualize your daily goals every morning when you’re first waking up. Go through what you want the day to look like, no matter what lies ahead (or how bad the night before was). Becky doesn't sleep well so her avatar is tired but happy. “I’ve been tired before and I’ll be tired again - let’s have a great day anyway.” Take a nature walk. When you’re walking mindfully you walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet with each step. You feel the earth supporting you. You can feel gratitude for this beautiful earth and for being a part of it. When you live in the present you are in a meditative state. If you want to live in a zen way then being connected to God or to your higher power will help you to feel calm and grounded. This is the key to peace. Meditation, prayer, journaling, hiking - all gets us into the zone of being whole and present. Accept what is as though you asked for it. Progress over perfection. This is a way to get to know and love yourself better. Do the best you can and don’t be mad at yourself if it’s difficult to be present. We’re just looking for 1% improvement each day. You can do this! Julia Cameron, “The Artist’s Way;” Thich Nhat Hanh, The Father of Mindfulness; Eckhart Tolle, “The Power of Now;” https://positivepsychology.com/present-moment/ (How to live in the present moment) (Positive Psychology article)
Are you experiencing the holiday blues this season? If so, you're certainly not alone. Holiday blues happen in November and go through the beginning of the next year. This is different from SAD (seasonal affective disorder) and MDD (major depressive disorder). If you already suffer from SAD or MDD, then this can exacerbate the holiday blues. Please take care of yourself, especially this holiday season. Symptoms of the holiday blues: -When you no longer get joy out of the activities that usually bring joy -Not getting enough sleep and/or inability to sleep -The zoning out behaviors= gambling, shopping, overeating or overindulging in alcohol/drugs -Wanting to self-isolate -Feeling inadequate, anxious, irritable Tips for caring for your mental health (Combating depression): -Exercising regularly is essential for peak mental health. Go for a walk or run an errand. Get out of the house. You may not feel like getting any exercise but afterward you will be glad you did. If it's too cold to exercise outside you can always find ways to work out at home. There's Youtube yoga, climbing your stairs and even lifting canned goods. -Eating healthy food regularly - keeping blood sugar levels stable helps stabilize mood -Minimize sugar, caffeine. These substances wreak havoc on our immune system, sleep patterns and moods. -Learn to say, “no.” This is a great time to practice having healthy boundaries. People may be more understanding since it's such a busy time for us all. -Try to implement new holiday traditions if the old ones are no longer available. Covid has shut down a lot of our normal activities but we can still find ways to celebrate the holidays. -Be around people. Isolating yourself magnifies depression. Go serve someone, whether in your neighborhood or in a soup kitchen. -Find time to take care of yourself. Does that look like 20 minutes alone in your car? Will you need extra support at family dinner? Look out for yourself and show yourself that you have your own back. If you have thoughts of harming yourself in any way, please reach out to a loved one, someone you trust or call the national suicide prevention hotline 800-273-8255. Help is always available. If you’re grieving the loss of someone you love this holiday season, please know that you will get through it. Feeling sad is to be expected; this is not what we’re talking about this episode. We will discuss grief in a future episode. https://www.buoyhealth.com/learn/holiday-blues (symptoms quiz)
"Am I going to be too rich or too famous and then lose all my friends?" If you have ever had these or other fears that keep you from dreaming big, this is the episode you need! Becky and Kristen dive deep into the fear of success, a.k.a. "achievemephobia" and break down the reasons we stay stuck in fear rather than move forward toward success. The fear of success looks pretty similar for most of us. If you are successful you are afraid things will change. (However, if you fail, most likely things will stay the same.) Worrying, "Will I be able to juggle all of it?" or "Am I going to become a totally different person if I have too much money?" is very common. Many fear of not being able to sustain the higher level of success, productivity. Another consistent dream-killer is the idea that others will think you're full of yourself if you are successful and they're not. Small wins are successes. Only you can define what success looks like in your life. Small wins are successes. Show yourself some self-love as you celebrate the small successes while still reaching for the larger goal. This keeps you motivated to keep progressing. Ease into the changes and recognize that even though things may be changing, you are okay. References: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecastrillon/2021/08/22/top-10-reasons-you-have-a-fear-of-success/ (Forbes), https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-fear-of-success-5179184#:~:text=The%20fear%20of%20success%20involves,t%20fear%20the%20success%20itself. (Very Well Mind), https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/anxiety-in-high-achievers/202105/the-fear-success-can-sabotage-your-life-goals (Psychology Today)
This week's bonus Thanksgiving episode covers gratitude - not surprising, perhaps, but you probably don't know some of the reasons Kristen and Becky promote gratitude all year long. You probably know the health benefits - being thankful means you will feel less stressed, less depressed, less physical pain and perhaps sleep better. You will also feel happier and enjoy increased confidence. Did you know that practicing gratitude offsets negative mindsets such as entitlement, victimhood or resentment? We sometimes think people are happy and then they feel grateful but the opposite is true. The people who practice gratitude feel happiness no matter what their life circumstances may be. The Dalai Lama said that, "We need to learn how to want what we have NOT to have what we want, in order to get steady and stable Happiness." You invite a power into your life when you learn to want what you already have because at one point, you didn't have it and now you do. Being thankful also shows humility to God (or your higher power). We are not owed anything that we have. Everything is a gift. Gratitude is about appreciating things as they are, not as we think they should be. Accepting what you have also shows that you are willing to receive another's offering and their intent behind it. Start your day with a gratitude journal. Even acknowledging one thing that you appreciate each day can have an impact on your mental state. Happy Thanksgiving. We're grateful for YOU, listener!
Believe it or not - the holidays can be fun, peaceful and beautiful! In this fun bonus episode Becky and Kristen share great tips for enjoying the holidays. You can spend this time stressed or you can find moments to practice self-love and self-care. We can't promise you will enjoy EVERY moment but you will certainly find yourself in a better space as you practice these ideas. Taking the time to take care of yourself during the holidays will set the stage for the new year and beyond. With our help you really can enjoy the "happiest time of the year."
How good are you at offering yourself some compassion? Most people are terrible at it! The majority of people don't even think about it. Being kind to yourself does not come naturally but listen to this episode and you will find out how to get better at it. Kristen and Becky want you to learn about self-compassion and how to adopt this essential practice each day. Dr. Kristin Neff explains that self-compassion involves treating yourself the way you would treat a friend, even if your friend feels inadequate or is facing a problem they don’t think they can solve. You can become a person who thinks they’re doing a pretty good job at life. That doesn’t mean you’re perfect and you don’t have things to work on, but it does mean you can give yourself the benefit of the doubt. (Spoiler alert - this allows you to do the same for others and greatly improves relationships!) Resources from the episode: Dr. Kristin Neff, Pioneer of Self-Compassion; The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle; https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m5oiJyailrppNkDnguBjIISKIxLEcS-vG4GGAnVbDMI/edit?usp=sharing (Thought Journal)
We continue the discussion on codependency this week. If you say yes to either of the following questions, you may be codependent. Ask yourself: Do I have a lot of people in my life with a lot of needs? And Do I have a hard time asking for help? If you said yes to either question you may be codependent. Some baby steps to start healing include: 1. If someone comes to you with a problem, don’t solve it for them. Take a tiny step back (don’t worry you’re not abandoning the person). Be a listening ear but let them be the adult in their own life. 2. Practice saying, “no.” You can say it as kindly as you’d like: “Thank you for asking me for help but I can’t this time.” See how it feels not to rescue someone. You may feel badly the first time but when you say, “no” to someone you are really saying, “yes” to yourself. 3. Start to evaluate why you do so much for people. Ask yourself the hard questions. Do I really want to? Am I helping out of guilt? Do I think they can’t do it on their own so I think I have to jump in? It is okay to say “no” to people. Breathe that in. It’s not selfish to love yourself. As you do you allow others the space to love themselves, too. Healing is a work in progress and you can take all the time you need. Codependency can become an addiction. Like other behaviors it helps us avoid our own pain or problems. We can become addicted to the drama of another person’s life and challenges. You did not develop your codependency on purpose. It stems from a desire to help others and your fear of being abandoned or not needed. The solution your brain came up with was something like this: If i can help everyone around me then I’ll be needed and loved. I’ll never be forgotten or ignored.
Kristen and Becky tackle the juicy topic of codependency in this episode. Are you codependent in any of your relationships? Some signs include: low levels of self-esteem; anxiety; stress; poor boundaries; trouble communicating; or low levels of narcissism. Codependency comes from a place of love but is not the healthiest way to be in a relationship. It occurs when you are completely focused on someone else, afraid that they will mess up their own life if you don't "help." You don't want to see your loved one suffer or have any pain so you take over. You solve their problems, cushion their fall and may get resentful when they don't do it "your way." Even if you see some of these traits in yourself, there is hope. Start by focusing more on your needs and filling them in a healthy way. If you want to be coached on this, join our free FB group, Try Self-Love. Both Becky and Kristen would love to help you through a complimentary session to see where you're feeling stuck. Melody Beattie, "Codependent No More"; Teri Cole, Boundary Boss; for more info on codependency go to pyschologytoday.com and postivepyschology.com
In this episode Becky and Kristen break down boundaries and give guidance on how to safely add them into your life. These magical tools are the road map that shows us who we are and what is important to us. Boundaries teach others how we want to be treated. If boundaries are foreign to you (maybe you weren’t taught about or allowed to have boundaries) then it may feel “mean” or wrong at first. Boundaries are not about pushing people away or controlling their behavior. They let us open our hearts for others to safely enter. Just like self-love this takes practice but you can do it and we're here to help!
If you tend to overdo in relationships or swoop in so you can “rescue” someone, you are engaging in people-pleasing. This coping mechanism is learned young; we all want to be a “good” girl or boy and making others happy earns us a gold star. As children we seek love, safety and belonging because it’s how we’re wired; we need others to care for us in order to survive. Learning to make our parents our caretakers happy helps us to feel like we have some sense of control in our little world. One unfortunate side effect of people-pleasing is that you lose yourself; you put on different masks for the different relationships you are in, always trying to anticipate the other’s needs. You give and give only to end up depleted, resentful and angry. You can experience anxiety, depression and a low sense of self-worth. If you see some of this behavior in yourself (we all do it) the good news is that, with practice, you can change! Start by becoming aware of the things you are doing. Before you say “yes” to anything, step back and ask yourself a few questions: Do I have time to do this? Do I want to do this? Does this align with my values?
If the answer is “no,” then please say “no.” It may feel very foreign at first but that’s okay; stepping out of your comfort zone is never comfortable. You can always say, “no” in a kind manner. I like to say, “Thank you so much for asking/inviting/thinking of me. That doesn’t work for me right now but I really appreciate it.” You don’t have to provide any reasons or excuses. You are simply allowed to say “no.” Work on some affirmations to help yourself in the process. Try one of the following: My needs are just as important as anyone else’s. I care about myself enough to speak up about what is best for me. I matter, too. I’m not being selfish when I self-advocate.
Becky and Kristen want to know what's driving your bus? We all have beliefs about ourselves, others and the world, both limiting and empowering. We were given these beliefs as children by parents, caregivers, authority figures, peers and society. These underlying beliefs “drive the bus” of our behavior but we are generally unaware of them. Now is the time to get those limiting beliefs out of the driver’s seat so you can live and love from a place of worthiness, self-love and joy.
Episode 5 explores anxiety and fear. Being anxious takes our thinking brain offline, leaving us with racing thoughts, a pit in our stomach and an immune system that is overloaded with stress. Life is hard but we want it to also be fun and enjoyable. Self-love helps you make peace with what you’re feeling so that you can more easily move through the fear into calm, ease and enjoyment.
This episode covers that topic that everyone experiences but no one wants to talk about - shame! Dive into it with Becky and Kristen to discover ways to minimize the hold it has on you. With several nods to Dr. Brené Brown, the leading expert on shame, we uncover what it is and how to combat it, specifically with the lens of self-love. (To learn more about her vital work you can go to https://brenebrown.com/blog/2013/01/14/shame-v-guilt/ (Brené Brown's website) and get more information.)
Episode 3 is all about the feels, good and bad. In this episode Becky and Kristen explain the importance of recognizing your feelings and the clues they offer as to what is going on inside your head. You also get a sneak peek at what it’s like to be coached by Kristen. Time does not heal all wounds and you can never truly run from your feelings, but you can learn to stop being mean to yourself, which changes everything!
Explore the concept of self-love with Becky and Kristen In this introductory episode. Discover what it is and what it isn't. Telling yourself you’re lazy won’t motivate you to exercise or eat better. Being kinder to yourself will. Many people think self-love is arrogant, indulgent or selfish. They are dead wrong. Self-love includes self-compassion, self-awareness, and self-acceptance. By learning to love yourself you will be able to better love those around you. This is a practice that will change your life - guaranteed. Quote by Brené Brown: ”We can only love others as much as we love ourselves.”
In the second episode of Try Self-Love, coaches Kristen and Becky help you become more self-aware with three simple steps. You can’t change things unless you’re aware of the problem. Becky hates the word, “should” and Kristen wants you to make yourself the focus of your life (in a healthy way, of course). Once you’re in touch with your feelings it’s much easier to offer yourself compassion, understanding and some love! Episode 2 is all about rebuilding your foundation so that self-love is possible. The first step to making any changes is to become aware of what you’re doing that you don’t like. As Kristen says, make yourself the focus of your own life. Through self-discovery we uncover who we are, what we like and don’t like, why we do the things we do. When you can understand why you’re doing something then you’re able to access compassion for yourself, particularly the wounds you carry. To help you with this, Becky developed a https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m5oiJyailrppNkDnguBjIISKIxLEcS-vG4GGAnVbDMI/edit?usp=sharing (thought journal) that you can download. As you practice paying attention to unwanted behaviors or feelings, you can dive deeper into the thoughts behind them. For example: when you are pounding potato chips or shoveling in some oreos (without really tasting them) try to “scratch the record” as Becky and Kristen say; try to get your own attention. Ask yourself: why am I doing this? What am I feeling right now that led me to grabbing food and stuffing my emotions down? Let’s say you get your answer, perhaps, “I feel anxious.” Okay, let’s figure out why you feel anxious. What thoughts were you thinking that led to you feeling anxious? What were you telling yourself? No matter your behavior or feelings - it all begins with the thoughts. We also learned about ANTs - automatic negative thoughts. We have so many negative thought patterns that we don’t even register when we’ve begun to play our “greatest hits,” as Becky calls them, the endless berating of ourselves for every mistake we’ve ever made. Once you start being mean to yourself, all your regrets want to come pile on top, too. Stopping these ANTs takes time, but the first step is being aware of them.