Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 400. Yep. You heard that right, 400. I feel like that’s a milestone for me. Just yesterday I was on episode 5! Here’s to 400 more. I’m so glad you’re here, thank you for that it means a lot. And welcome to my listeners in Ireland and also Israel! Im super happy you’re here, thanks for listening.
Do you guys ever read a quote and it just gives you hope or puts things in perspective for you? Happens a lot for me. I read this one this week.
“It’s not what you did it’s what you’re doing and what you will do in the future that matters now”. it always fills me with optimism to hear that because We can’t change the past but we can create a different future. it leaves the door open to so much possibility no matter your past. We are evolving beings. Our human brain makes sure of that. We either evolve towards decay or we evolve towards growth. A lot depends on what we do with our human emotions. How we act when we feel sad or mad or depressed or anxious or bored. The actions we take in response to this will dictate our life.
We all have human emotions. And a lot of times we tell ourselves well I couldn’t help it I was mad or hurt when I did it. We think the emotion is the problem. We say..Because I was mad or because someone hurt me I did this, which caused a mess. So, We wish we wouldn’t have those emotions but Emotions are not the problem. It’s what we do when we have those emotions that make all the difference in the world, right? We are going to have them but what you do in an emotional state is really important for your quality of life. We all probably know someone who lashes out when they are mad or lashes out when they feel hurt and then they excuse it by saying well, that wasn’t my fault, I was hurt. But we can give grace and we can give ourselves grace but ultimately we live with the consequences of our actions. That’s why self awareness is such a big topic. Self awareness and taking personal responsibility for your actions in my opinion are very attractive. It tells me someone is stable and has taken the time to work on mindset. Now we cant expect Perfection, but we can expect that we will be self aware most of the time. It is our responsibility in life to see to it that when we have emotions that don’t feel good we check that the actions we take in that moment, don’t make things worse. That’s what we often do when we live a reactionary life or one that is on autopilot. We get mad we lash out, we feel hurt we hurt someone else. But if you think about it that’s how a 2 year old acts and look we all act like that sometimes. I did it just this last week which I’m gonna tell you about it but you see….
Self Awareness isn’t feeling no emotion, it’s being aware of our emotions and acknowledging that we still have the ability to act or not act which will create a peaceful life or one that’s harder than it needs to be.
When you feel angry, you can acknowledge the feeling and acknowledge that anything you do or say from a place of anger or hurt can create more anger and more hurt and now you’re having to repair.
You guys know I’ve been really working on catching the thoughts in my head before they cause problems and I’m usually really good at it, to the point where I don’t have a lot if bad thoughts and if I do I know I have to recalibrate by doing something to get me out of the state that’s causing the problem. Which usually means meditation, a walk outside or listening to a positive message. But there’s this one area of my life where I recently realized I have A lOT more work to do! And I’m not proud of it but it is a good example of emotions and how the actions we take because of them will either make things better or worse. Because sometimes things catch us off guard and that’s what happened for me. OK so Im talking to my little sister Molly on the phone she was driving here from Nashville to visit us and we were just chatting away when sh said oh guess who I just talked to for an hour? I said who? She said our sister that we never talk to. If you’re new to the podcast, the sister we never talked to shunned us because we are not part of the religion she is in, well mainly me because she felt Eric and I had influence with her kids who we were super close with but now haven’t spent much time with in 4 years. So that’s a short version of what happened. So my baby sister who is truly my best friend, said she had called her because their dog passed away and they talked for an hour. So I listened and I could feel myself being mad about the conversation. And I also knew it was childish of me, I knew this in real time. But that didn’t stop me from doing damage. Molly and I are very in touch with each other to the point where I hadn’t said anything and she said wait are you mad at me for talking to her? Now right then I had a choice, I could have used softer words but I chose to say I felt betrayed by the conversation. Now betrayal is a strong very harsh word but I used it and that of course caused a major reaction from Molly and so now here I am having to repair when I knew as I was saying it I shouldn’t say it. I can be honest about my feelings without causing more hurt but that’s not what I did. So now I’m having to repair and the bad thing was I knew I was acting like a 2 year old, I was coaching myself in my head to be careful and did I it anyway. As I quickly got back to speaking from the part of my brain that makes good decisions I apologized immediately and told her she of course did nothing wrong, in fact I am proud of her for reaching out to our other sister, but there were a few moments where I because I felt hurt, caused someone else to hurt too. Now I could justify all the reasons why I reacted how I did, there were several things going on that week that had reopened that old wound. My parents were in Disney land with my niece and nephew which we used to always go with them and it was thanksgiving week and we used to always get together as a family on the day after thanksgiving but we haven’t done that since she shunned us either. So the wound was open and that phone call just added salt. Now. Whose responsibility was it to act like an adult even though emotions were high? It was mine. It doesn’t matter that I felt justified in being hurt. It’s my responsibility to work through those emotions without making things worse for myself and anyone in my path. Now Molly and I will often as sisters do have little spats and they last 15 min max and then we work through it quickly because we know it doesn’t do either of us any good to stay mad so we don’t. Molly is one of my most loyal listeners of this podcast and her mindset is thankfully on point most of the time so we don’t have a lot of spats anymore and if we do we are quick to acknowledge the real issue.
My point in telling you this is that just because I was hurt, didn’t give me the right to turn around and hurt someone else. It’s still my responsibility to act in a way that is good for me and good for those around me. That’s when life becomes really peaceful. And I would like to think that after 400 episodes of doing a podcast on mindset that I wouldn’t have to tell a story about myself like that but looking back I’m proud that I caught myself so fast. I’m ok it happened because it showed me where I have a lot of work to do. And it reminded me to not speak when I’m in a high emotional state. Wait until you aren’t mad or hurt or depressed or full of anxiety to take action on anything. That is our responsibility. That is how we live a more peaceful life. That is how we nurture our relationships. Our emotions or feelings can’t be the problem because we have too many. It’s the actions we take because of them that gets us in trouble or not.
Feelings and emotions are what make us feel alive. You don’t want to not have them but you also don’t want to wreak havoc on your life and someone else’s because you’re having a moment.
We are human and emotions are part of that. What we do with them determines the quality of our life.
With this 400th episode I realize I guess I’ll just keep working at this mindset thing because I still have to catch those thoughts that make me miserable..the ones where I start to beat myself up…just a few days ago I was doing yoga and thinking about after Molly and I had that conversation and I caught a thought that I had. I had the thought that Im a fraud because I talk all about being mindful on my podcast and then I did that. But I flipped the script quickly and said it’s because I work so consistently on my mindset through the podcast that I was able to catch myself in real time and acknowledge my complete responsibility and then fix it and next time I bet I will handle it better and I hope it helps you do the same. We don’t get to a point where we we will be always perfect at everything. That’s not the goal. The goal is to always be improving. That’s the goal of this podcast is for us to always be evolving into the best version of ourselves that we can be in that moment and that takes a lot of being mindful. lord knows I’m always gonna need to be mindful so I guess I’ll keep going on the podcast and I’m sure at episode 800, I’ll probably be sharing another human mistake and how I handled it and what I learned and how I’m using it to make me better and hopefully it makes you better too.
My only challenge for this episode is to love yourself. Love yourself enough to accept that emotions are a normal part of our human experience but wreaking havoc because of them doesn’t have to be. Share this with 3 people who have human emotions. I love you guys. Here’s to another 400. I’ll talk to you in a few days.
