Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 177 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! It’s unbelievable to me that we are weeks away from the holidays. What in the world happened to the year? They say time flies when you’re having fun! Has this year been fun to you? It’s been something but I don’t know what fun’s the word…
We are still dealing with mask mandates in Memphis and that alone makes things less fun, my personal feeling is that if you want to wear one, wear it but I am for the most part done complying with random mandates which basically feel like virtue signaling. This is only my opinion and yours may differ, and I want you to know that I respect your right to feel that way. I’m glad we have different opinions, it keeps us on our toes, it keeps us having to look at both sides and evaluate which feels right. For me, for now, I’m happy with where I am and I’m doing my best to be part of the solution not part of the problem.
We have to be strong. We have to stand up for ourselves. We have to stand up for our way of life. I talked about knowing what’s true and what’s not true in Episode 174, if something doesn’t feel right, don’t do it. Only you know what that is for you. We also have to Always make sure you’re protecting your peace. Part of that is not getting yourself so worked up. I feel like we could be in a constant state of high anxiety easily right now. People are on edge and part of that is because they feel like things are out of their control. But are they really?
Right now, listening to this. Are you safe? Are you ok? Look around you, your home, your community. Things are ok. Not perfect, but they never are, never have been and they aren’t going to be . We would be bored silly if it was perfect anyway. We all need a little excitement in our life now and then…
How do you respond though when something is happening that is causing you to maybe freak out a little or maybe a lot?
Do you ever feel yourself starting to freak out? Maybe something is happening or you’re afraid of something happening and your brain just starts going on overdrive thinking of all the things that could go wrong and you can feel yourself getting more worked up by the second, and a lot of it is because of what your brain is throwing at you in the form of thoughts?
I have a client right now and we are renovating her bathroom. Her home is on a concrete slab foundation so we are having to cut concrete to get the plumbing in the new right place. I don’t ever like doing that but that’s part of it in design. Well as it turns out, instead of her concrete in the bath Area being a normal less than 9” or so, in some areas it was almost 2’ deep. That can be not good in a small space because it’s not like you can get big equipment in to dig that up. I knew and the contractor knew this meant this was going to be an expensive fix in order to get our clients the design we had created. I started really worrying. All these thoughts came up. They’re going to be upset, they will be mad at me. What if it’s not fixable? What if we can’t get deep enough into the dirt? We have their bathroom gutted, what will we do? But number one. I stopped, I took some breaths and I thought: I always work from a place of integrity with my clients, everything I do is done with their best interest in mind. I always let clients know that things come up in Renos that are unexpected, that’s a given.
Now, this wasn’t something I controlled or could have predicted, so I was doing the best with what we were given. What I have trained myself to do is always get ahead of it in my brain by asking what is the worst that can happen? Is it manageable? So worse case we have to change out the tub and faucet so the drain lines up better with the old one. Is that what we want? No. Is that going to be a hassle? Yes. But it’s manageable. But I don’t just let it stop there. I also visualize what the bathroom is going to look like once we overcome the problem at hand and how excited and happy my clients are going to be when it’s done. That’s what I focus on because that’s what I know is going to be the end result. And fortunately I work with a wonderful contractor and of course they figured out how to get to the solution. I also love learning and I learned something new this week. Sometimes when building a house they will just pour the excess concrete in the closest area of the slab because well why not? So that’s something that comes up in the future I’ll know what to do, I’ll know it’s fixable. That’s great. But I also knew that the worst case scenario was manageable and that freed me up to focus on the task at hand…making my client feel confident that it’s going to work out just fine and the end product will be spectacular and they will forget all about this hiccup. I’ve seen it happen too many times. Once you’re enjoying the beauty of the new space you forget all about the pain of going through it. Anyone ever delivered a baby? I hear that’s the same thing.
And ultimately lots of research has shown that a whopping 91% of our fears and worries never happen! 91%!!! I think we can all use a little of that knowledge right now. Whatever you’re worrying about the most, the odds are good that it’s not even going to happen.
I was talking to a friend recently and he is coming to the finalization of his divorce. He had so many fears of what would happen if he got divorced with his kids, his business, his finances and guess what? He had a lot of things he was worried about. He told me this week, you know almost none of those fears that I had came to fruition. He was freaking himself out and none of the worst fears came true. We all do it. Our brain was programmed to look for danger, so we do. But the good news is, we can also control that.
So These are the top 5 things I consider if I’m starting to spiral due to a problem…
- Get out ahead of it. What’s the worst that can happen and how would I manage that if it did happen? I heard one story of a girl who was worried sick about losing everything because she was putting a lot of her money into a new business. When she started thinking about what is the worst that could happen, it was losing her home and her money and having to move back in with her parents. That wasn’t ideal and it wouldn’t have been fun, but it was manageable. That helped her to calm down and be able to focus on her business, knowing that she can handle even the worst thing.
Your brain wants to go to the worst case scenario so go there and feel it and realize you aren’t going to die and the sun is going to come up tomorrow but don’t live there. Think it all the way through if you want but don’t stay in that negative thought.
- Put yourself in the shoes of the other person. We imagine people as being unreasonable when most of the time they are not, the most important thing is communication. I mean my clients know we had no way of knowing that concrete was that deep, and we were keeping them informed so they knew what was going on and how we were fixing it. Keep the communication going and people can generally accept and deal with anything that comes up, especially when you’re coming from a place of integrity. You never have to apologize for doing what’s right or being honest.
- Sometimes you are in a situation where you can step outside of the scenario and pretend like it’s your best friend or sister having the same issue. What advice would you tell them to calm them? Give yourself the same advice as you would your best friend, we are much meaner to ourselves than we would be a friend, I wish that weren’t true but unfortunately it is. Take yourself out of the equation and imagine someone close to you was going through it instead and think about how you would tell them to handle it…It really helps to put it in perspective.
- And finally, I gauge it…is this something that I will be worried about in a week? A month? A year? Most of the time, you will have forgotten it by the next day. So be honest with yourself and gauge the situation honestly…so many times we overreact.
- And finally number five I’ve started imagining my day before it happens, I imagine my meetings and how I want them to go and how I want to show up. It’s kind of like a dress rehearsal for the day. I will sometimes even consider things I will say if certain issues come up. Now, we have to be careful not to create things but being prepared and having visually walked through your day is one of the best things I’ve done for myself in a while especially if you have a big meeting you’re anxious about. Visualize how you will show up, how you want the whole meeting to go, walk through it, you’ll be surprised how often it turns out just as you imagined.
My challenge to you this week is to pick one day and visually walk through the whole day exactly as you want it to go. From the minute you get up to the time you go to sleep. Your morning routine, your workout, your meetings, your interactions with family, or coworkers. Visualize exactly how you want it to go, exactly how you plan to show up. You can even think of anything that could come up and how you will address it. A lot of times our anxiety comes from the unknown, and by visualizing it ahead of time you’ll have already done it once so you’re getting out ahead of it. I love you guys and I’ll talk to you in a few days!
