Who hurts from all that baggage
Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 219 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! I hope this finds you happy and healthy. Have you been managing your mindset by managing what you’re focused on? It matters so much.
I woke up the other morning and I had some anxiety. You know how it is in the middle of the night or 3 in the morning when you wake up, sometimes your brain gets on a thinking tangent. And a lot of times it’s because of what you’ve been focused on, even seemingly harmless things can set you off. So we had watched a movie the previous night “the electric life of Louis Wain”. I thought it was going to be a comedy and it was kind of funny up until it wasn’t. It ended up pretty sad, just a heads up. His family sort of shuns him because of a decision he made. So it’s sad. But he also allowed his childhood nightmares to consume him as an adult. He literally went mad because of it.
So when I woke up in the middle of the night, Eric obviously heard me tossing and turning so I asked him if he ever has anxiety when he wakes up in the middle of the night. He said sometimes his thoughts race but he usually stops them by putting on a sleep story, which I do as well but I asked him if he thought everyone had the potential for madness if they let their thoughts overtake their life. I was not managing my thoughts very well right then. He actually quoted my inner child episode 216 to answer my question, which I kind of loved.
He said It’s just your primitive brain running free. It’s your inner child, sometimes you just have to put it back to bed. I laughed because he’s so right.
We all have baggage. We all have family stuff that sucks. We all have things in our past we wish we hadn’t done. We all have that one mean thing that little kid said or did to you at school or on the bus. We all have things that if we focused a lot of time on them could cause us a lot of problems. And we call it baggage because it’s heavy and we tend to carry it around everywhere. You don’t need that baggage for this journey anymore. It’s our primitive brain that wants to drag all that around to keep you safe, that’s your inner child reminding you don’t go there we got bullied there.
When I talked about the inner child in episode 216 I really didn’t talk about the mental aspects of having an inner child. Your inner child still remembers the pain of being bullied and so she hides away from new people, or maybe your inner child remembers craving mom and dad’s approval but he never got it and so the feelings of unworthiness creep in( that hits home for me) or maybe your inner child remembers hiding her feelings with food and that’s why it feels so good to overeat. I could go on and on and on and eventually I’d hit home for you, but none of us have all day, right?
What I want to say to you is this. Sometimes you gotta be your own soother. You have to be the adult in the room so to speak. The adult in your head. You are not your thoughts. But you are a product of your thoughts.
If you believe you’re broken, you will look for evidence of that. If you believe you’re unworthy your brain will look for evidence of that. How you talk to and about yourself matters.
You aren’t broken. You’re thinking broken thoughts. You aren’t unworthy, you’re thinking unworthy thoughts. You don’t need approval from anyone in this world but yourself.
Those bullies from 6th grade? They cannot hurt you anymore unless they’re still living in your head. Mom and dad didn’t love you the way you wish they had? You can love and take care of yourself better than anyone can.
Sometimes we fixate on things that go wrong, or things that people say or do to us that we didn’t like and we make it mean that we have something deeply wrong with us. No, you’re just human, having human thoughts. Start recognizing and being aware of those thoughts and being completely honest with yourself about whether it’s really a problem now or if you’re hanging on to your story, still dragging that heavy baggage around. And like I always say, we can all be justified in feeling the way we feel because life can be hard, and yucky things happen and people don’t act the way we want them to, but keeping our focus on it to the point that it’s literally paralyzing us doesn’t serve us.
My point is don’t make things bigger than they are. Just because that person cut you off in traffic and gave you the finger..that doesn’t have to ruin your whole day. You don’t know what they had going on. Their actions are all about them and nothing about you. They don’t know you. Other people’s actions are all about them. When we realize that, we start feeling compassion for them rather than anger towards them, because that anger hurts us the most.
Your mom and dad or whoever raised you had a lot to do with how your life was shaped as a child, but now that you’re an adult, that power lies with you. And look, there is nothing wrong with talking to a therapist if you have some trauma that’s never been worked out. I think it was Peter Attia that said at one point “we all need therapy about something”. There is no shame in that. So if you have some serious issues that you can’t get a handle on, talk to someone.
But if you are able to manage your thoughts enough to say, “you know what? I’ve been carrying this burden around for way too long…I’ve been brooding about that apology that isn’t coming, I’ve been hanging my head in shame for mistakes I’ve made in the past, I’ve been mad at this person for way too long. You gotta be your own soother, you gotta be the adult in the room and put that inner child to bed and say “Enough”. I’m done being mad, I’m done feeling shame, I’m over being offended at every little thing. You were born worthy and there is nothing you can do about that and you’re perfectly lovable too, just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them too, that’s on them.
My challenge to you this week is to choose one piece of baggage, whatever it is…maybe it’s a grudge, maybe it’s something you did in your past you haven’t forgiven yourself for, maybe it’s someone that you feel betrayed by and you can’t get past it. My challenge is to let it go…Not for them…for you. And when you do that and you feel that weight lifted off of you, you’ll realize it’s been hurting you more than it has anyone else…and you’re inner child will be tempted to pick it back up at some point but my hope is the recognition of how heavy it is and how good it felt when you let it go, will have you leaving it behind for good.
Share this with the first person that comes to your mind that would benefit, don’t think about it, just do it, you’re spreading goodness…you can’t go wrong. I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days.
