Hi guys! Welcome to episode 304 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! I hope wherever you are you are happy and living a life you love, and if you aren’t, I hope you are working on a way to get there, because it’s possible for each of us but it takes some work on our part so Im glad you’re here because that’s what this podcast is all about. Helping us each Live our version of a Wildly Successful Lifestyle. So share this episode with 3 people, don’t think about it, just do it. OK
I was talking to a young client that I was coaching. She had a lot to say which of course I love. She started it out by telling me she wanted me to tell her what was right or wrong for her in a particular circumstance and what she should do and then she also wanted to talk about a separate situation where she felt she was being bullied and what should she do about that. I told her two things. First of all
- I told her I can’t answer what’s right or wrong for you Only you can do that because She has an internal guide just like we all do and even though she said but some of these things my parents tell me they are wrong to do. But my friends are doing them and they say it’s no big deal so how wrong can they be? If I want to do them doesn’t that mean it must be right for me? So I asked her “Well are they right for you?” She said “I don’t know”. And I said “Yes you do”. To which she quickly said “No they don’t seem right for me”. Ok there’s your answer. Your internal guidance system will always have the answer if you give yourself the chance to listen. We all have things we want to do that we don’t do all the time. We have to learn to tell ourselves no when the urge for instant pleasure arises. That’s called discipline. We all have the ability to be disciplined. discipline is learned. We all have things that we want, maybe we want our body to look a certain way, discipline is the ability to say no to the things that will get in the way of having that body. Maybe you have desires that will feel good momentarily but hurt you long term, drugs, sex, lying, in the moment you had a desire to do it but somewhere deep down you knew it’s wrong for you. We’ve all been there where we have had to make a choice. And we’ve all made a choice that did not serve us and we’ve suffered because of it. I don’t want to dwell on the past and I don’t want you too either. I’m talking about now, and in the future. That’s what you control. The discipline to do what’s right for you NOW so that later you aren’t suffering in fact later you are thriving. Teach yourself the ability to say no to things that don’t serve you and yes to things that do. And while I’m on this topic James clear said this week on the Peter attia drive podcast to make it really easy to say yes to things that serve you and no to things that don’t. You know how you do that? You don’t leave it to chance. You tell yourself ahead of time what you’re gonna do or not do and then make an easy path to doing it. Lay out your workout clothes, don’t keep junk food in the house if you can’t resist it, know when you drink alcohol your ability to say no to things that are bad for you goes way down. Just know that. Alcohol is a big factor for most of us especially since Covid. Being able to say no becomes harder when your under the influence. It also makes your ability to say yes to the gym the next day much harder. So limiting alcohol is a big way to help you say no to short term pleasure and yes to things that serve you long term. We all have choices every single day to either make us better or weaken us. You have the power to say no. The more you do, the better you get at it. Now, The second thing I told her may seem harsh but I’ve had to tell myself this a lot and it’s part of our taking responsibility for our own lives. And that second things is..
- Toughen up. Ok? Toughen up. My young client was telling me about a story where she felt she was being bullied. In the age of technology bullying is so much easier because you do it from the comfort of your own room, not face to face but it can have the same affect. So we all have to toughen up. Girls and women are especially susceptible to this. Little boys jeer each other all the time so they tend to be more used to it. Girls are more underhanded about it. And technology amplifies that. We have to toughen ourselves up. Life isn’t always rainbows and butterflies. Your attitude when life gets hard will either exasperate the problem or make it better. Hard things are going to happen, and what you tell yourself about those hard times make all the difference in the world. If you say things like I’ll never get over this, or you make yourself into a victim, you may not get over it and you may always stay a victim. Bullies love victims. Bullies do not like you to stand up to them. They can’t handle it. Don’t allow yourself to be bullied. Toughen up. That’s why it’s so important for each one of us to recognize that we get to define who we are. Just because someone else says something about you, that does not make it true. Now if there is something you don’t like about you you’re the only one that can change it anyway. But people will always have opinions and we get to choose what we do with those opinions. Other people’s opinions are loaded with their baggage, you don’t have to make what they say about you mean anything about you. Just recognize they have an agenda. It might be well meaning or it might be mean spirited either way it comes laden with their life experience which means nothing about you.
I was getting my nails done and the girl doing my nails was wearing a red sweater and it looked so pretty on her with her coloring so I told her. And she said I like red. Then she told me she loves to wear red but she never wears red nail polish and I said why not it would be pretty too because of your coloring, she said yes I used to wear it all the time but 15 years ago I had a good client who was also a friend like you are whisper to me that my red nails made me look like a hooker and I’ve never worn red nails again. I asked her I said did you like the red nails? And she said yeah I did. So one thing someone said 15 years ago affected her so deeply that even though she liked red nail polish she refused to wear it all because of one persons strongly held opinion of what wearing red nail polish means. I don’t know where she got that thought or why she expressed it but my friend allowed it to mean that she looked like a hooker and she didn’t want that so she never wore it again. We have to toughen up. We can’t be so swayed by everyone else’s idea or opinion of what’s right for us. We can’t let what others think of us dictate how we are gonna show up.
Toughening up doesn’t mean you aren’t gonna get your feelings hurt, it means when you get your feelings hurt you remind yourself you get to control how long you’re going to give this power over you. If you’re like me, I don’t like feeling sorry for myself. No one has time for that. I like to quote that song by Ariana grande. “Thank you, next”. Thank them and move forward don’t waste time playing the victim, because you’re not one unless you give your mind to it endlessly replaying it over and over, imagining that everyone else is talking about it. No they are not. And if they are it will be temporary and they too will be on to the next. That’s life. So toughen up. Have your own back.
Have integrity and always do what’s right and what’s right for you may be different than what’s right for someone else and that’s ok.
My challenge to you is simple. Just because you want to do something doesn’t mean you should. You have the ability to say NO when you know it’s best for you, I challenge you to do that. And remind yourself to toughen up. when you start to feel yourself playing the victim to someone else or feeling sorry for yourself remind yourself that you are tougher than that. We are all tougher than we think we are, I think we forget that. And you have the ability to make the right decision for you and a lot of times that includes unapologetically saying no. I love you guys. I’ll talk to you in a few days.
