Being indecisive is “easier”

September 1, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Just decide.

Have you ever needed to make a decision about something but you allowed yourself to be indecisive about it instead?

This could look like overanalyzing the pros and cons, asking other people for their opinion more than once, doing “more” research, switching back and forth between one decision and another, and procrastinating on taking action.

It can be worrying about whether it’s the “right” or “wrong” choice.

So we let ourselves stay in the mode of “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure.”

Our brains want to keep us safe and staying in “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure” is one way it does this.

When we keep telling ourselves “I don’t know” or “I need more information” or “How will I know this is the right choice?” we block ourselves from deciding, because deciding can be scary.

Deciding means we will have to take action.

Deciding means stepping into the unknown.

Deciding means we could potentially fail.

Deciding means possibly having a difficult conversation.

Deciding means we may have to take on more responsibility.

Deciding means we may be successful beyond our wildest dreams.

All of that can feel scary. And all of that will also help us grow if we’re willing to see our decision as an opportunity for growth. If we’re willing to learn what there is to learn from this choice, even if it ends up being the “wrong” choice.

Personally, I don’t believe in “wrong” choices–they’re just experiences to learn from. And we can always change our minds.

Also, think about how much energy goes into being undecided. Our brains keep going over and over the options, the pros and cons, the potential outcomes, the worst-case scenarios, etc.–sometimes for hours or days or weeks. For the same decision.

That’s a lot of brain space that could be used for more productive means. Like creating the life we want. But instead, we think and think without creating forward momentum from all that thinking.

One thing that is powerful when making decisions is to like our reasons. Are we making this decision because it’s the “easy” choice, where we don’t have to stretch or expand ourselves? Are we making this choice from a place of self-love or self-sabotage?

When we like our reasons for our decision, there is liberation in deciding.

We won’t know what will happen until we decide and take the next steps.

Your turn: Do you recognize when your brain is keeping you safe by being stuck in “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure”? Are you willing to just decide instead, to like your reasons for your decision, and to have your own back?

Will this choice move you toward an inspiring future or will it keep you stuck in the past? What’s the worst-case scenario if you make the decision you want to make? How will you be able to survive it?

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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help create a more meaningful life in which you start committing to yourself and show up the way you want? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 45-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

Trust yourself even more

August 25, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

How you do it.

There are different ways we learn how to trust (or not trust) ourselves. One of these ways is by doing (or not doing) what we say we’ll do–especially when it comes to ourselves.

Most of the time, we’re used to doing what we say we’ll do for other people. Likely because we know the consequences of not following through: the other person will feel let down and disappointed and possibly change how they think about us, and then we’ll feel guilty for having disappointed them and think we need to make up for it somehow.

But what happens when we say we’ll do something for ourselves and then we don’t do it? Let’s say we put on the calendar an hour to do one of the following things: go to the gym, do a yoga class, take a walk, journal, read for leisure, or cook a healthy meal.

But we end up blowing ourselves off during that hour by using that time to keep working, scroll on social media, go out for drinks instead, or do something else besides what we had planned for ourselves.

When we’re the ones not keeping our commitment to ourselves, we feel a double whammy–we’re the ones who are let down and disappointed AND we’re the ones feeling guilty about letting ourselves down. That feels doubly bad. And yet we might not even feel the need to make up for it somehow.

Knowing this feeling, the next time we go to make a commitment to ourselves, we might preemptively avoid disappointing ourselves and feeling guilty about it, so we might think, “Why bother? I’m not gonna do it anyway.”

And then nothing moves forward around keeping commitments and building trust with ourselves.

That’s how a defeating mindset begins when we think about making commitments to ourselves. We diminish our trust with ourselves when we don’t commit to what we say we’re going to do for ourselves.

To build trust with ourselves, we can take small steps. “Today I’m going to get up from my desk at 2pm and drink a glass of water and walk around the office/house for five minutes.”

And then at 2pm, we do what we say. We get up, drink a glass of water, and walk around for five minutes. When we do this, there’s a sense of empowerment, a sense of accomplishing something and fulfilling a promise to ourselves–no matter how small.

“It feels good to do what I said I would!” Hi five to self. Celebrate that and remember the feeling.

This is how we start to strengthen the muscle of trusting ourselves more, knowing that we can have our own back. We can continue to make another small commitment to keep each day–it could be the same one!–until it’s just automatic for us to keep our word to ourselves. Until it feels uncomfortable when we don’t keep our word to ourselves.

When we get even better at keeping commitments to ourselves, we build even more trust with ourselves. We start to know what it truly feels like to have our own back–no matter what.

And this trust with ourselves allows us to have our own back when making the bigger decisions and bigger commitments that we want to make, to have the lives we want for ourselves.

Your turn: You make decisions based on you and what you want for yourself; no one else can make these decisions for you. When you trust yourself to have your back no matter what the outcome is, there is no “wrong” decision. Just an opportunity to learn more about yourself and what you want or don’t want. What are you willing to do today to build even more trust with yourself?

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Does your day “come at” you?

August 18, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Step into it instead.

Do you look at your phone and check work email the minute you wake up?

This used to be my morning routine: the alarm on my phone would go off. I’d turn it off and since my phone was in my hand, I would immediately check my work emails. I wanted to see what my day might look like.

It seems like a productive thing to do, right? To “prepare for your day.”

I want to offer that when you do this, your day might appear to “come at” you.

All the requests from other people and all the time you need to spend on emailing others for info, looking for info, and creating responses once you have the info. Along with the other meetings and projects you had planned to do that day–or last minute meetings and projects that have popped up overnight.

It might be overwhelming. Starting your day immediately feeling overwhelmed likely doesn’t contribute to productivity in a way that serves you.

What would happen if you didn’t look at your phone and check emails the minute you wake up?

I’ve talked to clients who said they feel anxious just thinking about not checking email first thing.

What if instead, you have an alarm that’s separate from your phone? And what if you took five minutes after waking up to start your day in a way that you want?

This could look like intentional breathing, a short meditation, or some gentle movement and stretches for your body. For five minutes.

It could look like lying in bed and recalling a dream you had or just savoring those five minutes for yourself in whatever way you want.

It could look like writing down your thoughts or drinking a glass of water to rehydrate your body and feeling it flow through your system. Five minutes for yourself.

It could look any way you want it to look. This creates space for you to step into your day the way you want to. Instead of having your day come at you.

Your turn: How would your days change if you stepped into them the way you want to? What would happen if you start by exploring with five minutes to yourself at the start of your day, without your phone? And what if you could stretch that to 10 minutes? What about 20 or 30 minutes?

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I wish I learned this in school

August 11, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Who’s responsible?

We’ve all likely heard the saying that “You’re responsible for your own happiness.” It likely makes sense on an intellectual level, but how many of us actually embrace this?

If we’re responsible for our own happiness, that means we take responsibility for how we’re feeling–with any emotion.

We learn the opposite from adults and sometimes even in school. We hear adults say, “You hurt Jimmy’s feelings. Say sorry!” or “Did she hurt your feelings by doing that?” And we’d likely think that “Yes, she hurt my feelings by doing that.”

Eleanor Roosevelt is quoted as saying, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

What’s really going on is that we’re making what someone else says or does mean something about ourselves. We’re basically agreeing with what they said or did, which is the only way something can hurt us–if we let it. If we think it’s somehow true about us or if we somehow deserve it.

Again, intellectually, this may make some sense. Living it and practicing it can be harder though, because we’ve been conditioned to believe that we cause other people’s feelings and that other people cause ours.

But we know from the Model that our thoughts create our feelings. Always. It’s not the external circumstance that creates our feelings, even though it’s so easy to think that the circumstance is causing us to feel something. It’s what we’re thinking about the circumstance that creates our feelings. Our thinking creates our feelings.

So in that sense, we can see how we are responsible for what we feel. Once we really become aware that this is how it works, we can be intentional about how we want to feel. Which means being intentional about how we are thinking.

I think some of us have a misconception that someone else is supposed to help our lives be great. When we abdicate ourselves from taking this responsibility, who do we think it belongs to?

I used to want someone to come save me from my life when I was feeling dissatisfied, like things were missing from my life.

You know what was missing from my life? ME. I wanted someone else to take the responsibility that is mine, to help my life become better than it was. To create more income for me, to find opportunities for me, to find a partner for me, to find a place for me to live, to help me eat healthy meals, to take care of me. How could someone else do this if I wasn’t willing to do it for myself?

No one is going to do it for us. No one is going to live our lives for us. That’s our responsibility. We get to take care of ourselves and our lives. Intentionally.

We have everything we need within us to take responsibility.

And that is great news. Because then we realize we can have the exact life we want when we take responsibility for creating it and caring for ourselves along the way. Intentionally.

Your turn: What have you been giving responsibility to someone or something else to fulfill for you? Are you willing to take responsibility for this? How might your life be different if you started taking even more responsibility for what you want? How might your life be different if you practiced intentional self-care?

Dive Deeper: Do you feel any resistance to the idea of taking responsibility in this way? If yes, why? What if those thoughts are just limiting beliefs about what’s possible for you?

Want to learn more about the Model and how your thoughts create your feelings? Sign-up for an exploratory session here.

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Why should I feel uncomfortable?

August 4, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Stop buffering.

This week we’re talking about buffering. What is buffering?

We buffer to avoid feeling emotional pain or uncomfortable emotions.

When we buffer, we use external things to change how we feel internally. This means engaging in an action to put a buffer between us and a feeling we don’t want to feel. The action could be something like overeating, overdrinking, overspending, over-Instagraming, over-Netflixing, overworking, over-cleaning, or over-exercising. It could be anything if we’re using that thing/action to prevent ourselves from feeling an emotion.

These things become false pleasures that have a net-negative outcome: When we overeat, we gain weight. When we overdrink, we end up with hangovers and half of the next day is ruined. When we overspend, we go into debt or don’t meet our savings goals.

If buffering is what we do to avoid pain/discomfort, it makes sense that when we stop buffering, we’ll feel pain/discomfort. But most of us don’t understand this, which makes it almost impossible to stop buffering.

We have to be willing to feel uncomfortable in order to move past our buffers.

An analogy for this is like stepping into a house and turning on the lights and the house is a mess. The obvious and easiest answer is to turn the lights back off (to buffer) so the mess will “go away.” But the mess doesn’t go away–you just can’t see it now because the lights are off.

It’s similar with emotions. Avoiding an emotion doesn’t make the emotion go away—it just helps us not to see or feel it. We pretend it isn’t there, but it is there, and it’s there for a reason.

In order to figure out the reason, we need to stop buffering and turn the lights on. Then we need to remember that yes, the mess seems overwhelming, but we can handle it, we can clean it up. Turning the lights off prevents us from cleaning because we can’t see. Going unconscious by buffering has the same effect.

When we stop buffering, we’ll likely experience temporary pain. And the pain isn’t caused by the lack of buffering. What we need to do is stop buffering ourselves long enough to find the cause of the pain.

When we give up our buffers, we’ll still get upset, but we’ll deal with it differently. We won’t head for the ice cream, which will just make us feel sick or regretful. We’ll deal with it by becoming aware and examining why we’re upset. Soon, we won’t even want ice cream or chips because the pleasure we get from food—or whatever buffering actions we’re doing—actually diminishes, and the pleasure we get from taking care of ourselves and fueling ourselves increases.

When we trade the false pleasures in our life for real well-being, we gain confidence, and that confidence creates more confidence, which creates even more confidence.

Instead of using external things to change how we feel, we can use our minds to change how we feel. Or we can even choose to feel and process the emotion in the moment.

Your turn: What feelings have you been avoiding? What are the false pleasures you’ve been engaging in? In what way would your life be better if you didn’t have these false pleasures? Are you ready to stop buffering and willing to feel some discomfort instead, to move towards real well-being?

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Not having it all together

July 28, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

No need to hide.

In the past, I wanted to portray myself in a way where others would think I had it all together. That I knew what I was doing. That I had everything I wanted. That I was “fine” and living a “fine” life the way I wanted to.

But I was hiding. I wasn’t allowing myself to be open and vulnerable. To be real and tell the truth. Why?

Patriarchal concepts, especially within my private equity job, played into my perception of myself. I used to armor myself, metaphorically, to put forward a competent, self-sufficient, capable version of myself who wasn’t emotional or sensitive. Who was there and could do the job no matter what, pick up the pieces for others–even at the expense of myself sometimes.

I didn’t give myself space to be authentic, partly because I didn’t know what that even meant for me. Who was I? What did I want? What brought me joy? I didn’t know the answers internally–I based what I wanted on external, societal, patriarchal values of what I “should” want or have for myself as a “successful” person.

I didn’t allow myself to be known because there were parts of myself that seemed unacceptable to me, because I thought they were weak. And I didn’t want other people to know about those parts.

It wasn’t until I started therapy after going through emergency open-heart surgery that I had a chance to look more closely at how I was living my life, by questioning beliefs I held that weren’t actually serving me, to redefine what success looked like and meant for me, to understand why I had armored and hid myself.

Through therapy, coaching, and deep self-care practices, I learned how to accept more parts of me, to start telling myself the truth about what I needed and wanted, about who I am. I learned how I can share myself with others in a more authentic way, to hold space for myself and for them to show up in real ways, not in people-pleasing ways.

I continue on this journey and I get to learn even more about myself and others along the way. I’m passionate about sharing how self-care can shift us to a place of self-acceptance and eventually to self-love.

Self-care is not just about bubble baths and massages–it goes beyond that, if we’re willing to see how powerful it can be.

Your turn: What parts of yourself have you been hiding and why? How would your life be different if you learned to accept those parts of yourself? How might practicing powerful self-care help you show up differently in the world, for yourself and for others?

Go beyond bubble baths. Find out more here.

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When it’s time for self-care

July 21, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes our brain gets in the way.

Why is it so hard sometimes to make changes in our lives that have long-term benefits?

It can be hard because of how our brains have evolved. The prefrontal cortex is the part of our brain that makes us human. It can plan and think about what it’s thinking about. Our primitive, lower brain is the same brain that animals have. It wants to be efficient, avoid pain, and seek pleasure–this is the Motivational Triad.

The Motivational Triad can get in the way of us making the changes we want. Why?

Change is new and different. We’re not used to doing new things. So the primitive brain doesn’t get to be efficient when we’re implementing changes. It wants to go back to doing what it knows how to do and what it’s already good at doing. The easy stuff that we’ve been doing and that might not necessarily get us the results we want in our lives.

When we’re making changes in our lives, we’re usually also experiencing discomfort. Whether it’s because we’re waking up earlier, eating less sugar, drinking less alcohol, feeling deprived, moving our bodies more, or spending less money.

We’ve been used to the instant gratification, which is what the brain likes–the seeking of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Doing these new things doesn’t give us instant gratification. But it will give us long-term benefits.

How do we push past the discomfort? It’s not by using willpower. It goes back to processing and allowing feelings. And to using our prefrontal cortex.

We use our prefrontal cortex to make plans to implement long-term change. But our primitive brain likes to try to override these plans because it wants to be efficient, avoid pain, and seek pleasure.

So we make a plan first—and know that the primitive brain will try to impose.

If we want to stop overeating, we decide 24 hours ahead of time what we’re going to eat and eat only that.

If we want to stop overdrinking, we decide 24 hours ahead of time how many drinks we’re going to have and have only that.

If we want to stop overspending, we decide 24 hours ahead of time how much we’ll spend and spend only that.

The primitive brain will create urges. So when we have an urge to overeat, we have to allow that urge to be there and feel it. Usually the urge will pass if we’re not fighting against it.

When we have an urge to buy something new, we allow the urge to be there and feel it. And let it pass and stick to our spending plan.

When we have an urge to do anything that deviates from our plan, we allow that urge and let it pass without fighting it or thinking we need to answer that urge.

It might seem impossible at first. But once you start practicing allowing urges, it can become easier.Your turn: Think about the last time you did something that seemed impossible for you to do. But then you decided to do it and you did it. When you actually did it, what did you think of it afterwards?

The fact that you did it probably felt gratifying and instilled the confidence that you could do it again if you wanted to. What would happen if you made a plan 24 hours in advance and allowed an urge to be there without answering it? How would doing that bring you closer to the results you want in your life?

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How to feel an urge

July 14, 2022July 14, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Delay gratification.

Why is knowing how to allow and feel urges important when we’re working towards a goal?

Because when we give in to urges, we move farther away from our goals.

Urges feel important–they feel urgent. Most of the time, when we feel an urge, our automatic response is to react to it by giving in to the urge. Because when we give in to the urge, we’ll no longer feel the urge. Feeling an urge can be uncomfortable and so we want to get rid of the feeling as quickly as we can.

But giving in to urges for instant gratification keeps us from getting what we really want, especially when we’re wanting to lose weight, exercise more, spend less, drink less, create something, or to separate from an ex, as examples.

When we want to lose weight, the urge is to overeat.
When we want to exercise more, the urge is to sleep in or “not feel like it.”
When we want to save money or spend less, the urge is to buy something new even if we don’t need it.
When we want to stop overdrinking, the urge is to have a second (or third) drink.
When we want to create something, the urge is to check social media feeds or consume content in other ways that prevent us from creating.
When we want to separate from an ex, the urge is to text or call or look at their social media accounts.

It’s pretty clear how giving in to those urges would keep us from moving towards our goals.

So I want to offer that instead of reacting to and giving in to an urge, we can allow it to be there and to feel it. Even if it’s uncomfortable.

We can get mixed up about what it means to allow or feel an urge because when we’re not giving in to it, we’re usually resisting it and trying to push it away. We might be thinking, “I don’t want to have this urge. I should have more willpower. Why can’t I stop wanting this?” This also is not allowing an urge to be there if we’re fighting against it and beating ourselves up for it.

Allowing an urge to be there without reacting to it looks like this:

Notice when an urge arises and allow yourself to be curious about it.
Acknowledge the urge with something like, “OK, I feel the urge to eat something right now even though I know I’m not physically hungry.”
Let the urge be there, instead of resisting it and trying to push it away, with something like, “I‘m feeling this urge and it feels so uncomfortable. I feel this urge, and that’s okay.”
Notice the discomfort of NOT giving in to the urge–in this example, by not reaching for a snack right away.
After 10 minutes or so of having allowed the urge to be there, see if the desire to reach for a snack (or some other action related to the urge you’re feeling) is still there.

When we get good at allowing urges to be there, we get closer to our goals because we won’t give in to the urges that take us away from our goals. We learn to delay instant gratification for the real gratification we desire from obtaining our goals.

Your turn: What is a goal you’re working towards? What urges would you want to practice allowing in order to move closer to that goal? Are you willing to feel the discomfort of NOT giving in to the urge? What happens when you tell yourself, “I feel the urge to _____, and that’s okay”?

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The questions you ask yourself

July 7, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Want to feel more empowered?

When we ask ourselves questions, our brains love to go to work to find the answers.

When we ask ourselves disempowering questions, our brain will likely find disempowering answers. For example, we might ask, “What’s wrong with me?” And some of the answers that come might be familiar and automatic, “I never get it right; I mess things up all the time; I’m so lame.” These answers aren’t very inspiring or productive. They can keep us stuck.

When we ask ourselves more empowering, curious, open questions, our brain will likely find options that feel more empowering or productive. For example, “What am I learning from this?” And some of the answers might be, “I’m learning that I can do hard things; I’m learning that discomfort is sometimes necessary to move me forward; I’m learning that maybe what I thought I wanted wasn’t actually right for me.” These answers can shift us towards what we want.

Below are some examples of disempowering (sound familiar?) and empowering questions:

Disempowering

Why do I keep doing this?

Why did I have to make that mistake?

Why isn’t he calling me back?

Why is this so hard?

Why can’t I get it right?

What’s wrong with me?

Why am I so messed up?

Empowering

How is this working for me?

What if this was all happening perfectly?

What if it’s okay that this is hard?

What would this look like if it was easy?

What am I learning from this?

How do I want to show up in this situation?

What’s right with me?

Who do I want to be?

Your turn: Are you open to becoming more aware of the types of questions that are going through your mind? What are three disempowering questions that you find yourself asking yourself? What are some more empowering questions you could ask yourself instead?

Feeling challenged to shift towards empowering questions? Book a 45-minute exploratory session and we’ll work it out together!

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What about feeling happy all the time?

June 30, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Life is 50/50.

I want to offer that life and our human experience is 50/50 — 50% “good/positive” and 50% “bad/negative.”

I think we’ve been taught incorrectly that our lives should be good most, if not all, of the time. So when something happens that’s in the “bad” 50%, we think something has gone terribly wrong. But if that 50% is supposed to be there, has anything really gone wrong?

If you felt happy all the time, you would have to feel happy even through things like the death of a loved one, an accident, an illness, someone betraying you. And all of these things, my friends, are part of the human experience. Things that we basically sign up for when we’re born.

In our effort to feel happy all the time, we stay away from discomfort that could help us evolve and motivate us to make our dreams come true. If we can accept that emotional balance means that 50% of the time, we’ll be on the other side of happy, we might be willing to fail epically and try courageously. That is the normal human experience.

Our emotions are an indicator of what’s going on for us. To be authentic, to have a true relationship with our life, is also to be willing to experience negative emotion 50% of the time. If we’re willing to do that without trying to escape it, we’ll remove all the buffers in our life, and at the same time, we’ll remove all the negative consequences that come with them.

What are buffers? When we buffer, we use something to distract ourselves from feeling an uncomfortable emotion. A buffer could be over-eating, over-drinking, over-Instagraming, over-Netflixing, over-spending, over-cleaning. We do these actions instead of allowing and processing an uncomfortable emotion like boredom, loneliness, shame, fear, jealousy.

We avoid doing the harder things (like processing our feelings), and instead, we gain weight, we get hangovers, we go into debt or don’t meet our savings goals, we throw away time consuming other people’s content when we could be creating our own, or doing something to take care of ourselves, like going for a walk, run, doing yoga, meditating, or cooking a healthy meal.

When we allow ourselves to feel discomfort, we will decrease our buffers and the negative consequences they produce. In fact, when we allow ourselves to really feel our emotions, we get to know ourselves in a much deeper way.

What happens when we get to know ourselves in a much deeper way? We start finding the causes of our unhappiness, and then we can start to change them, if we want to. This is sustainable, unlike engaging in the false pleasures we’ve been using to buffer before.

For example, when you limit your drinking, you don’t experience hangovers and get to feel good in your body. When you watch your eating, you get the pleasure of not worrying about your weight. These results are real pleasures, and it’s ongoing and gets better and better.

Your turn: How would you think about your life differently if you accepted that life is 50/50? What if nothing has gone wrong when you’re in the other 50% that’s not “good”? What would you be more willing to do for yourself if you embraced the 50/50 of life?

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