Hi guys!
Welcome to episode 299 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! Yikes! We are almost to 300! Can you believe it? I just love creating new episodes that speak to the things we deal with on a regular basis. I always try to keep the episodes short because our attention spans are short. Let’s face it. We are busy. A 10 minute reminder of a simple way we can improve our week is valuable. If you find it valuable, someone else will too so share an episode if it speaks to you.
And thank you for those of you that have shared them. In my yearly recap, the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast was in the top 15% of most shared podcasts in the world and has been heard by people in 23 countries.. That’s pretty big, so thank you because you made that possible.
Do you guys remember when you were younger and roller coasters were a big thing? Are they still? I don’t know. But I will say this I will never forget getting on the walbash cannon ball and the roller coaster operator walks up and down to each little car making sure you’re all buckled in and Im pushing on the harness making sure its locked….then he walks over and takes that lever you know the one and he pushes it down and off you go, slowly at first clink clink clink up that first big hill. I remember looking off to the side and seeing the metal stairs and thinking I could scream for him to stop it and I can get off before we make that big drop, but once you hit that drop you are on that roller coaster with all the twists and turns and ups and downs, there’s no turning back, you in it until the end. And it all started with the push of the lever.
We all go through different seasons of life, sometimes we are sailing through and sometimes we are slogging it out. No matter where you are right now whether you’re sailing or slogging, 100% of us have two things in common. You might not think that’s possible but I challenge anyone to prove me wrong. The first this is this: You take you with you into every season. No matter where I go in life there I am. And the same is true for each one of you. No matter where you go, there you are. You are the only 100% constant in your life.
Have you ever thought about that? Your family will transition. You went from living with your parents and siblings to maybe living on your own for a while, maybe you had a few different roommates, maybe even a few different spouses. But one thing that has always been a constant is YOU. And that is not going to change.
It’s eye opening when you think about it.
The second thing 100% of us have in common is everything outside of us is constantly changing. You can take that to the bank and cash it.
Everywhere you go, there you are AND everything around you is constantly changing.
It’ quite powerful to know that. When I really sat down and thought about it, it’s sort of an epiphany and I hope it will be for you too. Why do I say that?
If everything around you is in constant change, what happens if you are searching for happiness outside of yourself, what happens if you’re looking to someone else to make you feel loved, what happens if you’re looking outside of yourself to feel anything constant? I will tell you what happens, and it’s how most of us live. Me included. It’s a constant roller coaster of emotions. When my family invites me to dinner, I feel loved, when I don’t get invited to family dinner I feel unloved. If someone at work ignores us, we ruminate for an hour of what we did to make them mad, if the stock market crashes you panic if it goes up you’re elated. If our side of the aisle wins congress we are elated if they don’t, it’s the end of the world.
I don’t know about you but I would like to get off the roller coaster. Or at the very least, I would like for the roller coaster to be one I ride every once in a with the realization that I control the levers, so that when it starts getting out of control I can check myself and reign it in. That is actually where I think I am. I find myself on a roller coaster of emotion blaming someone else for the dive when the lever has been in my hand the whole time, I just didn’t see it.
Nothing will have you on a bigger roller coaster ride than when you set expectations for people in your life and they don’t live up to them. When I imagined my family had family dinner without inviting half the family, I was at the top of the big drop on a roller coaster, and I knew it. So I took control and I pulled my husband to the side and we talked through it. You see I created this whole story that Friday after Thanksgiving was still family dinner day, and it is not. That was the core of the problem. It was the story I created and expected everyone to play out their role exactly as I wanted them to. That’s a recipe for disaster. I now know that family dinner has changed, it’s no longer a thing, now I just get to be happy whenever I get to spend time with my family. No-one has to act the way I think they should, they wont anyway. See, I get to decide what I make anything mean. I don’t get to control what other people in my family do but I do control what I do.
You might be thinking easier said than done. Ok, I’ll give you that. But what’s the alternative? Never ending roller coaster rides for life where someone new is at the lever every time it goes around. Doesn’t have to be family. Your friend goes to lunch with your other friend without you, your pickle ball partner teams up with someone else, your husband leaves his clothes on the floor AGAIN, your kids don’t come home for Thanksgiving, the waitress is rude, the driver cuts you off. You are making stories up in your head about everyone of those scenarios anyway, why not make stories up that serve you? You know Im right. If I let my brain have it’s own way it will give me 5 different horrible self torturing stories about how I’m not important to them, blah blah blah that will have me so mad at someone simply because they canceled a coffee date. Get off the roller coaster or at least acknowledge you hold the lever. And look YOU DO ALWAYS HAVE CONTROL OF THE LEVER. You may hand it to someone else temporarily, but it’s always attached to you and you can take it back whenever you decide to.
When everything around you is constantly changing, there has to be something in your life that’s stable. That something has to be you. And for me, it has to be me. Nothing else will work.
Anytime you start to make up a story in your head and we all do it, make up a good one, because when you play the victim you’ve dropped the lever. When you’re throwing a fit, you’ve dropped the lever. When you’re blaming someone else for how YOU feel, you’ve dropped the lever. But when you train your mind to wake up when you start to take a deep dive, you pull that lever right back and you slow things down and you remember to tell a story that empowers you. It’s not delusional, it’s empowering. It’s the thing that will keep you sane in an ever-changing world. Knowing you hold the lever to the roller coaster.
My challenge to you this week is give yourself one example that you control the lever. Notice a victim story you’re telling yourself. Notice when you’re starting to escalate an emotion that isn’t going to end well. Notice when you’re wanting to blame someone else for the way you feel. Notice and then visualize pulling the lever back. Visualize stepping off the roller coaster and say I get to choose what this means, and Im not going to tell a silly made up story that victimizes me Im going to tell one that empowers me. Guess what? You now control the roller coaster. The more you do that, the easier it gets. I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days.
