Self-Leadership for the Really Hard Seasons

Why Relationships Still Come First

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What is going on, my people, and welcome back. We have been having episodes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays talking about like some areas that people are challenged with. The last one was relationships, and because relationships are really, really important to me. I feel like a lot of times, especially in the coaching world, there's a lot of people who want like tangible results. They're like, How is this going to be something that gives me tangible results? And I'm like, if you look at my life related to my relationships, I would have paid all of the money, all the time, all of the growth that I had just to be able to have the relationship that I have with you and with the kids right now. The good thing is that I don't have to choose. I still get to do all that other stuff and have the business that allows us to do this. But in reality, I'm like doing life with the people that you really care about the most. Relationships matter

Hard Seasons Without Shame

SPEAKER_00 0:40

to me the most. So today we are talking about the hard seasons when life circumstances get thrown your way. All of the things that we were talking about over the last couple of days, zero of them are meant for any shame, guilt, or blame. And today's going to be one of those as well. All right. If you have handled situations differently, you didn't know any better. Okay. I want you to bless or release that. If you were like, ah, if I could go back in time, that is actually not a helpful thought. Believe it or not, like going back in time and changing something in order for you to live a different life, that is also not helpful because we're living in the present right now. So if you hear something today or any of the last couple days and kind of stung a little bit, I want you to analyze your thoughts because none of these are a personal attack on you. They're all awareness to things that potentially could keep you stuck. And your brain will convince you that it was an attack on you, that something is wrong, somebody had wronged you, you're the victim. Anytime it tries to do that, it's just trying to keep you safe. Okay. It doesn't mean that I'm going to come on here and be an a-hole to you. Okay. I promise I'm not going to do that. You still get to analyze that and make a decision from there. But the thoughts that I'm sharing with you guys as we go through this process are thoughts that not only have I coached thousands of people through, but even my own personal thoughts that I realized, even though they felt like they were good thoughts in the moment, they were actually getting me off base. They were getting me to not take ownership of the things that I can control and making it feel like the whole world and life was out of control for me. Now, today we're going to talk about this

When Circumstances Become Excuses

SPEAKER_00 2:10

just whole idea of like the hard seasons. Okay. The hard seasons. Now, I'm curious, when you think about a hard season in your life, I just want you to think about what that looks like for you. We all have different hard seasons. Sometimes it's, you know, the kids going back to school. Sometimes, like we said, it's a diagnosis. Sometimes it's you lose a job. Sometimes you get a divorce. There's a lot of hard stuff. And I'm not one to want people to go through hard stuff. I also don't want to go through hard stuff myself. However, I do know that when we are put into situations that are quote unquote hard, that those things do have lessons and capacity work that needs to be developed so that I can make it through, get stronger on the way out, and be able to help so many more people with it. And so when I think about these kinds of things, I tend to see how people have these thoughts of this circumstance happened and it ruined everything. I can't grow my business. I can't spend time with my family. I can't, I can't, I can't. And it's all of these things were pointing to the outside circumstance. And it's a very easy thing to do. It's easy to go, well, I can't do this because of X, Y, and Z. I develop an autoimmune, so I can't start a health and fitness business. Who's going to want to learn from somebody who has ulcerative colitis? Apparently, a lot of people do because they're like, wow, you have that and you're still in amazing shape. How do you do that? I didn't think that in the process because back when I was diagnosed, that's what went through my brain. It's like, keep me safe. How can I like convince myself not to do this anymore? And these are the things that when I'm walking somebody through these circumstances, they tend to point to and saying, that's the thing that ruined. That's the thing that makes it so that I can't grow. Right. I mean, even to the extent of like kids. I mean, I've been on calls with people where they're like, I can't grow a business like this because I have kids. And I'm like, well, lots of people have come before you who have kids and they also have a business. And a lot of people have gone through very difficult things and they haven't shut down their business. They haven't walked away for two years. And yet at the same time, they're like growing in a different capacity. So we get to decide what we do, obviously, the thoughts that we have, how empowered we are in that moment. And we don't get to decide the circumstances. But if we point to the circumstances, it prevents us from actually being able to lean in and develop what we need to and be able to get through it. So I'm curious, like what comes up for you when you hear me say that?

SPEAKER_01 4:34

It's so different for people because one person's hard season could be someone else's easy season, you know? It's so different. And we get to witness that with the, you know, all the different people that we that we coach. But allowing a thought to really kind of take hold of you in your life when something happens, like things are gonna happen. Like we cannot avoid that. Like things are going to happen. Hard things are gonna happen, hard seasons are gonna happen, but we get to decide what we do with it. And I'm not talking about like, oh, what lessons can you learn from that? Like it's not that. It's about how you want to think about those situations and how you can still move forward despite what's going on.

Processing Pain With A Thought Ladder

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Yeah. Yeah. We teach something called processing pain because like whenever somebody goes through a very traumatic situation, they had to find a way to be able to process it. And processing it doesn't mean immediately jumping from the negative into the positive, like you were saying. This is you lose a job or you get a diagnosis or something like that. You're like, oh my God, this is the greatest thing ever. However, there are stepping stones for you to lean into in terms of your perspective because when you think about putting all of your attention and energy on the things you can't control, it is the worst thing to spend your time and your energy on because you're compounding the negative. When we teach this process, my coach taught me this is like life is 50-50. You're gonna have 50% of experiences that are quote unquote positive, 50% that are negative. Our goal here is not to make more than 50% positive. It's just not possible. Our real goal is not to make the 50% negative compounded by focusing so much time and attention on it, we compound that into 75% negative, right? And then before we know it, we think that nothing is actually happening for us. And so here's what I mean. In that situation, I want you to try on something like this. Like, what if you started to think that while you're going through this, you don't wish this on you, you don't wish it on even your worst enemies, but you realize that you were actually made to do hard things. You were put here on this planet because you are resilient, you can get through it, you've climbed many mountains before. This is your next mountain, and it's hard AF, but you know that this is a part of the plan. And the part of the plan is I don't have full control over what this does to me per se, what the end result is, but what I can control is what I focus on. And I can control, am I going to allow this to make me stronger or not? We call this a thought ladder, right? You think about what's a slightly different perspective that will get you to focus on you having back the control. Because one of the things that circumstances cannot do is take away your control unless you let them. And when you go through that idea of like processing pain and being able to go through it and see it, it's very easy to give your power, your personal power away to this other thing. And a part of that is like, it's just a normal part of having the human experience, the human brain. But it's a matter of choosing to process it, make a decision, and not use it as their detriment, but instead find a way to think about it so that you can really step into the best version of you while you go through it. Right.

Isolation Makes It Worse

SPEAKER_00 7:43

So here's the thing like when people are going through stuff, that's when they isolate. So when you're going through stuff, yes, it's important to be able to not give power to the outside circumstance, but it's very hard if you don't have somebody else to lean on to be able to help you with that processing and be able to find more empowering thoughts for you to focus on. But also like people who've been through the stuff themselves. Cause like if you know somebody who's been through the stuff and they get on and they have a conversation with you, it feels just so much more empowering as opposed to somebody who maybe read about it in a book who's never been through anything hard. Because the truth is, is you getting through hard things makes you the perfect person to help somebody else through it too. And so while you're going through this, one of the things that I want to make sure that I challenge you to is when you're going through the most difficult seasons, do not do it alone. And here's what I mean. Do you know how many times that people are like, oh, when things slow down, when things cool off, when I'm in a better spot, then I will get help. That is like saying, hey, my house is on fire, but once it's all the way burned down, then can you call the fire department? You have to be willing to do that while you're going through it, not afterwards. And being able to see when your brain does that, get you into isolation is so very critical. But also like when you respond to people for help, when you get down there and people reach out to you and you deny it and you deny it, and you say no, once everything and you go back into isolation, that is a protection mechanism, but it actually doesn't serve you. It doesn't serve you at all. Even just opening up to like one or two people, sometimes that's just empowering by itself, especially if there are people who are not gonna get you to buy into your circumstance, right? We call this jumping in the pool. When they, oh my God, I'm so sorry, this is happening, all that kind of stuff. Maybe you, if you have friends like that, that is awesome. But if you have a coach or you're doing some self-coaching with yourself, going down that path of just empowering the circumstance, you need to find a way to be able to combat that. Whether that's getting a therapist, which I highly encourage if you're going through some type of processing pain, getting a coach while you're working with a therapist to be able to help you through this, but also so you can coach yourself through it in not just the moments when you're on with a coach, but also afterwards, because there is work to be done in terms of being able to do this and coach yourself through this process, but you do have to learn some skills in order to do that too. All right. It's not isolation. Isolation is not the key.

Focus On What You Control

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

All right, guys. Today we talked about the hard seasons, the times when it feels like things are completely out of your control. Being able to focus on the things you can control, that's really the game changer. That's really where the work is. And if it was easy, everybody would do it. That's why, like putting in not only the awareness piece, but getting some help to be able to get some support while you're going through this. And I don't mean just by us, I mean being able to reach out to a therapist or friends or groups or people to be able to pour into you while you take back that control of your inner world because the outside world is just going to keep changing. It's going to keep throwing you things. Everything's going to happen, right? I mean, it's just the nature of the beast and how you respond to it, that's ultimately what the critical part is. Very similar to the other episodes, but sometimes the hard seasons just feel harder. Yeah. Right. But they don't have to be so hard as long as you're willing to lean in and get some help with it.