Coaching with LDS values

Episode 72 Choosing to Feel the Bad and the Ugly Welcome to the podcast, loving On Purpose. I'm your host, Bonnie Lyman. If you're having trouble navigating through your relationships with your adult children, if you are struggling to connect with them or having specific challenges, you're in the right place. I'm Bonnie Lyman and you're listening to episode 72, choosing to feel the bad and the ugly. And that's just kinda the mood I have been in for several days here and it's okay, and I'm coming out of it. I wanna welcome any of you that are listening for the first time. And I especially want to welcome and thank you that have been following and listening to me all along. Thank you. Because like I said before, I can feel you out there and I actually do feel like I am talking to somebody. Somebody out there tonight needs to hear what I have to share and it's kind of bad and it's kind of ugly, but I've kinda had a tough couple days. I didn't wanna do the work of going through the model of figuring out what I was feeling and then figuring out what my thoughts were that was causing my feelings. Because if you haven't listened to my podcast before, you have to go back and listen to the podcast on the model and Apple Podcasts. Anyway, if you get listen to your podcast using the Apple podcast. They have decided to quit numbering the podcast, so I can't even give you the number, but it's, it's on the model and I explain what the model is, and then I have a coaching business where I help. Moms build a more meaningful, loving relationship with their adult children and so maybe some of you have started listening because you're in that situation where you're struggling with it. And so there is a way out of feeling negative feelings, but sometimes it's. Too hard to do the work, and so we just kind of have a pity party and that's okay. Because that's part of the human experience, and I'm gonna share some things that I learned about myself that at getting so good at using this model. And the model is the circumstance or the happenings, the situations in your life trigger you to have thoughts. And these thoughts, depending on what kind of thoughts they are, that cause us to have either a positive feeling or a negative feeling, and then it's our feelings that cause us to behave in a certain way, causes us to act a certain way. We either react or we act maybe kindly, maybe not so kindly, or we withdraw and the way we act determines the result and we either like our result or we don't like our result. So how we use this model is, first of all, you have to become aware of your thoughts and you have to believe, and I believe with all my heart, this is true, but you gotta go back. Listen to my podcast on the model. That explains why it is not the circumstances that causes us to have a certain feeling, but it's the thoughts about the circumstance. It's the meaning that we put to what's happening in our life that causes us to feel a certain way. So if we don't like how we're feeling, we do have power over that we can feel any way that we wanna feel. And that is what is so amazing about the model. You just plug into the model and you can figure out what was a cause of your feeling. And then if you decide, I don't wanna have that feeling in that situation, you decide what feeling you want to feel, and then you start trying on thoughts that would cause you to have that feeling and the end result being is that you have the result that you want in your life. So if you want to have the satisfying relationship with your adult children, one where you feel connected to them. Then you need to behave in a kind and loving wa toward them all the time. But that's impossible to do because we're human. So we mess up some, but we strive for that. So if we want to be kind and loving, we have to feel love. And you can't, you can't be angry or resentful and fake it being kind cuz they see right through it. It's not the same, it's not the same behavior than if you were truly feeling love. So in order to feel loved, We have to have loving thoughts or kind thoughts or compassionate thoughts about what's going on in the happenings in our relationship with our adult children. It sounds like it's pretty hard to do, but when you get some guidance from a coach, it's a lot easier, and I love helping people do this. I just got a text the other day from a woman, and I love my clients. I could hardly read this text without shedding a few tears. Of how magnificently she was handling a very most difficult situation with one of her sons, and she said the only way she was able to get through it. And to accept what's going on and to love her son, regardless of the decision she was making was from getting guidance on how to use this model, and she thanked me for teaching her these tools of how to use the model. But it's all on her. She, she wouldn't be in this peaceful, calm, loving place regarding her feelings and her relationship with her son if she hadn't applied and practiced it. I was just the messenger. I gave her some tools. I su suggested some ways of how to use them. My cry to the women in the world that are suffering in the relationships with her adult children is, it doesn't have to be, there is a way out, but you have to be ready. And committed to change your whole perspective on how you view the relationship that you have. So enough about the model, but the model has served me so well. The model has helped me apply Jesus Christ admonition. To love everyone, even if they're difficult to love and to forgive those that don't deserve to be forgiven, because how do you do that and where do you start? And I, I have some answers. I can help you with that, but I wanna tell you. About my day, how it started on Monday. So when we use the model, we talk about thinking on purpose, and that means that we choose the thoughts to think. That cause us to have the feeling that we want to feel and sometimes we have to practice thinking those thoughts for a while so that they become a belief. And so we, we train our brain that that's kind of the path we wanna go down. But Monday, I had one of those days. I have a health issue that I'm dealing with right now and I am on some very expensive medication and I had a bill from the place that administers. It's not a medication, I take it home, I have to go. And they give me an injection once a week and I got a bill and I've been sitting on my table and I thought, oh, I better open that bill because usually open it and it says, you owe us $20 or something like that. And I opened it and it said, Please pay this bill of $4,000, and I immediately felt pretty upset. Now I'm usually able to manage my thoughts pretty good, and I could go to. Oh, this has to be a mistake. I'll figure this out. There was just an oversight. This can all be taken care of. No worries. I can be the boss of my brain until it went to what to think. But at that moment, I was tired. I my husband had said something to me that morning in a very unkind way that was a meaning I put to it anyway, and I. Was hungry. So a combination of those things can intensify our feeling. I mean, I sometimes don't feel hunger hungry, but when I start getting grouchy or I start getting sleepy, I know I need something to eat. So we wanna take care of ourselves in all sorts of ways, physically and emotionally. But I decided when I saw that bill of how much I owed and I got on the phone and called my insurance company, they said, yep, that medication was never approved. And I thought, was I supposed to call? I guess I was, that's my responsibility. I should have called and had it approved. But previously it's my doctor that calls and gets approval before they even see me or treat me or give me anything like this. But I was tired and I was hungry. And there'd been a couple things negative. I call it somebody throwing darts at me. One was the unkind comment by my husband, and that's just a thought. And the other was this bill. So see, it's just not relationships with people that this model can help you. Feel better about, but your relationship with money, your health, your body, what's going on in the world, just your whole relationship with your life can be controlled and enhance if we choose to. But sometimes we just choose. Not to do the work, and that's what I was deciding that day. So I had gotten so good at managing my thoughts because I practice it all the time and I'm teaching people these tools all day long when I have coaching sessions. That it, it becomes automatic when somebody cuts in front of me on the freeway. Yep. I have a little jolt of fear. It catches my attention, but I don't blame him. I don't have ill feelings about him for doing that. I have gotten so good at being the boss of my brain. It defaults to compassion, and my thoughts are usually, I'm okay. I need to pay extra attention, because things like that can happen. And I wonder if this person. That so quickly just cut in front of me so dangerously cut in front of me if he was racing to the hospital because he had just heard that his 16 year old son was in a serious car accident, but I'm missing something. When I jump so quickly to the new thought, because it's very important that we take a moment and just feel that feeling of fear in that case, and I felt it, but just for a second. I needed to feel it a little bit longer that, so when I got that bill and my husband made that comment and I was tired and I was hungry, I just wanted to feel the bad and the ugly. Most of us, most of the time, we just wanna feel good. It's, it's not even like we wanna feel euphoric or maybe not even happy. We just wanna feel good. We. You know, don't necessarily wanna feel excited or motivated, but we just wanna feel at peace. And so if we wanna do that, we have thoughts like it's all good. This is only temporary. I don't have control. Over changing this, so why not just accept it? How about things never stay the same or I can figure this out. I can. I can make this work. I only have in my pocket five or so empowering thoughts. That I are kind of my go-to thoughts when those negative emotions come up. And so I've thought them so many times that my brain intentionally defaults when a circumstance triggers me to think thoughts that cause me to have a feeling that I don't wanna feel. That's where my brain goes most of the time, and it serves me. Pretty well, but on this Monday morning, I just didn't feel like hanging on to those empowering thoughts. I didn't feel like doing the work because this was a circumstance I hadn't dealt with before and it was. A circumstance having to do with my relationship with money, and I figured out that the bill I had gotten was only for two injections and I had had about eight of these injections, so that meant that I would be owing around $14,000, and I didn't like that. But I was too tired and I was hungry and I was hurting over several things. I also had some physical pain in my back, and so when something new and big happens, I. All those things that we have kind of dealt with in the past that we thought that we had accepted, that maybe we still wanted things to be different, but we, we had accepted that we didn't have control over them, but I had control over what I wanted to think. And so my feeling about them was, and it just made me feel just good. But I didn't feel like doing the work. I didn't wanna figure out a new thought. I didn't wanna get curious about why I was choosing to have such negative thoughts. I didn't wanna figure out what feeling I wanted to feel. I. I didn't want to do anything but feel the bad and the ugly, and so my thoughts grew and I was starting to build a story. Why couldn't my husband just be nice to me this morning? Why? Why does he ever have to talk that way to me? Why can't he just not say anything at all? I had a whole story going. Of blaming him and me being the victim. I was feeling rejected, disrespectful, disrespected, resentful, unloved, misunderstood, judged, and I was feeling victimized by my insurance company. So what did I do? I went in my bedroom and sat in my chair and I broke down and socked. Now I kind of got control of myself, but if anybody had said anything to me or if anybody did say anything to me, like my husband made a comment. See you later. I just broke down and cried. You know, I had the thought, he's, he's just being passive aggressive here. He's just patronizing me. I had a doctor's appointment that morning and I could tell that I was feeling all these emotions inside of me. But I wasn't processing them. I was just still in my head building my story, and when the doctor came in and asked me how I was doing, I couldn't contain myself. I broke down again in sobbed. I wasn't judging myself for doing this. But I still kept growing my story about how unkindly people were treating me, and I couldn't stop the thoughts coming. Nobody understands what I'm going through. My children and my husband. Should be acting more kindly to me. I could die tomorrow and they would all be better off. I wouldn't even be myth. Now keep in mind, I could tell I was not suicidal and those can be suicidal thoughts, but I was just having my little pity party and usually after I have a good cry, it takes care of these negative feelings. And I go back to my empowering thoughts that they weren't intentionally trying to make me feel bad, and I show up as a better version of me. So I did what I should have done at the very beginning. I closed my eyes, I took a couple deep breaths. I imagined looking at my heart and my ribcage so I could see inside my body, and I started describing to myself what. The feeling of disrespected look like it was right in the solar plexes of my body, right at the base of my ribcage, right where my strum starts. And it was kind of this gray mask. It was lightweight, but it was very dense. It wasn't see-through, and it was about six inches across. It was irregular shaped, this kind of old shape. But it wasn't smooth and it kind of had like little pores in it. I can see it right now and if I describe it, and I just allowed myself to feel the negative emotion. And then I could feel it start to fade and I had a call, I had to get on. And so I was in a good place because I love my clients and I chose to focus on that on them rather than myself. And we had a good coaching session. But I wasn't willing to do the work right then. And that's okay. We can get bombarded with so many problems at one time that we kind of have to pick and choose this. I'm just gonna have to process my feelings and be willing to feel that negative emotion for a while. I'm not going to die and remind myself that it's cause from the sentences in my mind. And so it took me about three days. I wasn't feeling the bad and the ugly anymore with this negative emotion, but I was pretty emotional, good and bad. I got emotional when I got that text from a client I had. And what was happening with her son, and it wasn't necessarily what she wanted, but I was so proud of her and how she was dealing with it. I was so glad that she could apply these tools, that she could find a way out and then, I would get just a little bit sad because I was feeling disrespected, but just not resisting feeling. That feeling will deintensify it and you will feel it start to fade. So what I am telling you, That I hope you'll get from this episode. Sometimes we just don't wanna do the work. Sometimes we just don't wanna use those tools to feel better. Sometimes we just wanna feel sad and it's okay. But we just don't wanna stay in that place forever. And so the next step I took was I went to the Land of Curiosity, and I just got curious about why I wasn't willing. To do the work when I know it would feel better, and I just got curious about why I wasn't letting those negative thoughts go. Not only was I not letting them go, but I was allowing them to grow. And I kept creating, I kept fueling, and it was because I was tired, and it was because I hadn't processed my other negative feelings before. But I just jumped to the new thought too fast. So I want to tell you if you ever get in a situation like that, number one, I think it's probably because of something physical that's gone on in your, in your body. And we call that not a feeling, but a sensation. If we're hungry, if we're tired, it's harder to come up with thoughts that cause us to feel the way we want to feel. So it took me three days, but I have arrived and I know. Everything is gonna be okay. I still haven't gotten that bill resolved, but I know that my doctor will go to bat for me and he will tell my insurance company that if I don't have this specific medication. I'm going to die Now. He hasn't told me. He's going to said, say that, and I'm not going to die if I have to switch medications, but out of such a negative experience and a hard three days that I've gone through. The most meaningful thing that I have is that I trust and I love my doctor, and there are people out there that have my back just besides me, and everything is going to work out exactly like it's supposed to do. I was supposed to go through this experience so that it was a reminder to not skip over being willing to feel those negative emotions. Feelings are for feeling. There are no bad feelings. They just. Need some attention sometimes those negative ones, so let's just give some attention to them. If you want to know how to really process a feeling, how to deintensify this severity. Of the feeling. That's part of my eight week coaching program. So you can go to bonnie alignment.com and book a call with me and we'll get on the phone and we'll talk about whatever's bothering you. Whatever situation, circumstance is going on in your life, that's you feel causing you a lot of suffering and hard brokenness will talk about it. I'll give you some help and then we'll talk about. What options we have to move forward in getting you out of your misery and into peace and hopefulness and learning how to love on purpose. I hope you have a fabulous week, and I promise you next week. I'll be a little more upbeat. Until next week, have a great week. If you like this, be this episode and you felt it was of benefit to you, I ask you to share it with somebody that perhaps it could also benefit. But if you're still feeling kind of stuck in that you don't know how to apply, what was talked about or where to start on on changing your thoughts, on changing your perspective, on bettering your relationship, get on a call with me. And we can have a discussion and I can tell you how to apply it and where we start. And then you get to decide what you want to do about this relationship that maybe you're struggling with with your adult children. There is no reason to go on the rest of our lives struggling. With our relationships with our adult children, let's assume the best. Let's assume that we all love each other and we're just trying to figure out how to maintain our own boundaries and respect another ones, but I can help you with everything. So just go to bonnie lyman.com and book a call. I can't wait to hear from you. .