MR-logo-footer mr-logo-moth menu-closed menu-opened

Ep #54

How Hard Can You Believe?

Ever notice those people that have gone through hell and back, and still they get out of bed each day and have compassion? Or the people who have suffered beyond measure, but you wouldn’t be able to tell? 

These people have something that I want to help you have too. It’s their beliefs about the world, themselves, and their circumstances. They have an awareness that none of us were taught, but all of us can learn.

In today’s episode, I’m teaching you how to have complete agency over your feelings and what you create in your life. It’s called emotional adulthood; learning to manage your mind through awareness. I’m sharing my experience with believing hard, and how you, too, can choose beliefs that guide you to a life of beauty, resilience, and compassion.

What You Will Discover:

  • What it means to believe hard.
  • What most people have difficulty comprehending about circumstances.
  • How we were taught to blame the world for our feelings.
  • The new beliefs I adopted about myself and about Covid.
  • Some examples of things you may want to believe about your life.

Resources Mentioned:

Enjoy the Show?

New Tab Download

Renegades,

How are you? Oh my gosh; I’m so good. I wanted to do something special with Faith that didn’t include our normal routine and surprised them with some Goat Yoga. You want to experience pure joy, laughter and bliss? This is your answer, my friends. It’s the cutest thing ever. Don’t go if you are under the impression that you are going to practice yoga. There was an instructor leading the class through a series but 98% of people were sitting and holding goats. Which I might argue is better for you than regular yoga. Y’all. They were dressed up. In little holiday outfits. I mean, come on. I tried to encourage Peaches and Pablo to wear sweaters and other weather appropriate clothing, but they never seem too happy about it. Not just because of their resting bitch faces, but the way their legs and bodies move. And when it comes off, they are rubbing and rolling all over the floor. They are very dramatic about it. The goats don’t give a fuck.
Speaking of optional drama, let’s talk thinking thoughts brains and believing hard. Especially when you don’t want to.

Maybe y’all have noticed but there tends to be a theme to my podcasts and what I’m talking about besides dating. Think about it; each week I’m telling you stories but I’m teaching you. One main concept. Awareness around your brain. Every week I ask you to pay attention to what you are thinking and then think on purpose. To direct your brains thinking.

But there is this one thing that I’ve noticed most people have a difficult time comprehending; That circumstances don’t cause your feelings. Circumstances are neutral. Circumstances are the things we could prove in the court of law. They are the facts. The people, places, and things like weather, flight times events that happened in your past that are out of your control.

Then there is your thoughts about these things. Your thoughts are what cause your feelings. Now, the fact about this is that you are thinking so many thoughts subconsciously that you think you feel something before you think about it, but that’s not the case. Your brain is registering the thoughts while you’re focused on something else and sending the chemical release that comes from it out of your brain and vibrating into your body.

Your feelings are caused by your thoughts. Never the circumstances.

Check it out.…

You believe if you had the boyfriend, you’d be happy. That if you had more money in the bank, you’d feel relief. If you could lose the weight, you’d finally meet the man get the job and be successful.

Guess what? The man? A circumstance. The money? A circumstance. The weight loss? A circumstance.

Those things are all neutral. Until YOU have a thought about them. How do we know this? Well, for example.

Let’s put relationship in the circumstance line. Your thought, ‘I’d be so happy - that is describing how you would feel. But what causes you to feel happy is all the thoughts you think about being in a relationship. I’d have someone to workout with. Hold hands with on walks… Our beach trips would be amazing. I bet we’d love binging on Netflix. That would make me so happy. To be all booed up on the couch watching shows with a boyfriend. Thoughts.

Here’s how we know it’s your thinking that would make you happy and not the relationship; the world would not agree that being in a relationship makes people happier. Not everyone wants to be booed up on the couch with someone. There are some people out there quite content not being in a relationship. There are some people out there vowing to never have one again. You could not prove in the court of law that having a boyfriend creates happiness. The whole world would have to agree for it to be a circumstance. Your thoughts are not right or wrong. They are yours and you get to choose them. But they are what cause you to feel how you feel, not the circumstances.

Here’s an extreme example that helped me get this; September 11, when the twin towers went down. Most of us would agree that was a horrible day, but the entire world would not. The terrorists? They were quite pleased with the results. The world can agree that the twin towers were bombed. Everyone has their own thought about it causing them to feel the way they do.
Covid is another example. Some people think it’s nothing. Others think it’s the end of mankind as we know it. It’s a neutral circumstance. It was around before you knew about it and you had no feelings or thoughts at all about Covid. I bet the thought you first had isn’t the same thought you are thinking today, either.
I’m sure by this time you’ve had a plethora of different thoughts that have created a variety of feelings but that’s not the point.

Separating the circumstances, the facts, out of the story you have and addressing your thoughts about them and seeing how it causes you to feel and act is not easy work in the beginning. It requires daily practice.

Renegades. Learning to observe your thinking and take responsibility for it and your feelings was never taught to us. We were taught to blame the world for our where we are and how we feel. To try and control everyone and everything around us so we can feel good. What I’m teaching you is that you have complete and total agency over your thinking and feelings. I’m teaching you emotional adulthood. How to take responsibility for your choices and life. How to manage your thinking and emotions.

And today, I want to take it a step further. I want to challenge you Renegades. I want to know; just how hard can you believe when things aren’t going your way? When circumstances are less than ideal?

You set a goal to get 100 clients in 90 days. You think Nothing is going to stop me. You feel determined. You start making calls, asking for referrals, marketing every day. In 90 days it turns out you didn’t get 100 clients. Do you still keep believing, nothing is going to stop me, or do you believe, that didn’t work and quit?

Let’s say you grew up thinking, ‘I believe in love and marriage.’ One day you meet the one and you get married. You’re living your life when your spouse comes home and tells you they’ve been cheating on you. You think, it’s over. You feel enraged. You ask for a divorce and leave. Do you still keep believing in love and marriage or do you think it’s all a lie now?

How hard can you keep believing in your dreams, ideals, positive affirmations, when life throws you a curve ball?

This week I asked some friends, all of my clients and my Instagram audience to pick one belief or sentence about how they wanted to view their life. I was slightly astounded by some of the responses or lack thereof. Literally was told by one person that there was no way to have one for all of life.

First of all, I asked for a belief about HOW YOU WANTED to view life. You would have thought I was asking for an explanation on time travel through a black hole that you’d have to discover by solving a specific equation. People wanted to get back to me… How do I want to think about life? I can’t just answer that. I need time to research science and things.

Renegades.

First of all; can you just remember who you are talking to? It me! Stop being so serious. You know what, I just decided for some of you, your default life motto is Life is serious. Or Life is hard, get a helmet.

This is the part when I tell my clients, we get to make up anything we want. Literally, you can say anything you want. Play with meeeeee. Spit ball. Throw paint let’s see what sticks. No one is going to hold you to it. Let’s just pretend life is fun and this is a game.

So I’m asking you; If you could choose to look at life, however you’d like and could believe anything about it, how you want to experience it, what would it be in one sentence? I’m not asking you to literally land the plane, just land the plane.

Here are some examples.
It doesn’t get better than this.
The world is my oyster
I’m going to live my best one
Carpe diem
This is badass
I’m here for a good time
I can find the beauty in all of it
I’m here to learn
Anything is possible
This is the fun part
There’s always a silver lining

That wasn’t so hard, was it? Did you come up with one?

Now, what if you could only believe this thought or a variation of it. Even when life’s circumstances are less than ideal.

You go to the DMV and there is a line of people out the door- insert your new belief: It doesn’t get better than this! There is a shut down and you’re being told you have to work from home and quarantine for 4 weeks: If I’m badass, how do I approach being at home for 4 weeks? You just got the test results back from your doctor and the prognosis isn’t looking good. There’s a silver lining in here somewhere.

See where this is going….

I mean, we know it’s easy to keep believing life is beautiful when things are being qualified as easy, but what about life when circumstances are not going our way, how hard can you keep believing then?

Life is going to hand you a bag of tricks and you better believe that there are going to be some in there that make zero fucking sense, some you don’t want, some you love, some you want to collect and keep, some that are so difficult you think they might break your brain.

There is no way around it.

But it doesn’t mean you have to view your circumstances the same way. Meaning, if the trick is broken it doesn’t mean you see the situation as broken. You can look at every trick you pull out of the bag and think, “I’m here to learn” and approach figuring it out from that perspective.

If you are letting the world and your unmanaged mind decide how you should think and feel, you will never feel good about anything. Your brain on default will never reveal to you the optional upside. It will go to doom and gloom. It’s designed to do just that.

The best description of an unmanaged brain that I’ve ever heard is it’s like letting a toddler run through your house with a butcher knife.

How you choose to view your life and its circumstances is optional.

If your belief about life is: “it’s not up to me” you will be at the mercy of your circumstances, held hostage by them and feel powerless.

If you weren’t allowed to think that thought and you could only think I see the beauty in everything, no matter what is happening, your brain will look for it… Regardless of the circumstances.
I’m not implying you will feel positive happy feelings. Don’t misunderstand me.
But if you take this new belief, the one you chose to want to believe about life and apply it to the less the ideal circumstances you can navigate them in a completely different way.

When you get divorced and your ex is moving on, instead of thinking in default mode you could ask yourself, How can I have a good time with my ex moving on?
The good time may be as simple as not letting your brain think all the painful suffering thoughts that cause you flip the fuck out, regret leaving causing you to lose a week on your couch.

Because that Renegades, is the opposite of a good time. Am I right? Of course I’m right.

Dr Edith Edgar writes in her book The Choice about not only surviving a year at Auschwitz during the holocaust but also the guilt she lived with for surviving when so many didn’t and said, ‘it took me many decades to discover that I could come at my life with a different question.
Not ‘why did I live?’ But: “What is mine to do with the life I’ve been given?”
I have reflected on her memoir for inspiration countless times since reading it. If you recall, last year when everyone was screaming that they were so ready for 2019 to over and couldn’t’ wait for 2020 to start I recorded an episode and pulled my top 10 lessons learned from her book- all of which had to do with choosing how you want to view things.

You know, pessimistic vs optimistic people aren’t just born that way. Their brains offered them thoughts that they chose to think over and over creating neuropathways and a habit, if you will of thinking that way and seeing the world that way.

Think about the people you know, yourself included, and how they see the world. What are their circumstances like? The facts. What have they been through in life? Ever notice those people who have been to hell and back and you can’t figure out how they get out of bed every day and yet they are grateful. Full of compassion. They show up despite all the less than ideal circumstances and still find the good in what they have. Or the people who have suffered beyond measure and you’d never know.

At the beginning of the year I decided I was going ALL in on my business and set a financial goal. I had my belief- I did my work around what obstacles I thought might come up- developed strategies - created my compelling reasons on WHY I wanted this result - mapped out what I would have to do.

Do you think I planned on Covid? On all but 2 of my clients quitting. Being on lockdown. Definitely didn’t see that coming.
My brain was quick to say, you can’t make your goal now and you won’t be able to afford to take care of your family.
I sat with that. Asked myself if that was true. Played it out. Cried. I was scared. Not only did I not have proof that I could make a financial living out of coaching since this was my first year going all in, I now had quote unquote evidence all around me like my clients quitting and people losing jobs and flipping out and oh okay now we can’t date and you coaching people’s brains on dating … to say this isn’t going to happen. You won’t be able to reach this goal. It’s time to make like a chip and dip.

I sat with that and then asked myself, based on what? Was it true no one would want to hire a life coach? Was it true that people wouldn’t be dating ever again? Was it true no one was making money?

That day I decided a few things. I went back to my original plan and added new obstacles and beliefs - the main one which I lended to the clients I had and the ones that followed; Covid is not an excuse to give up on the goals we set.
Covid is a neutral circumstance.

I remembered one of my greatest beliefs I have about myself which is, I can overcome anything with the right mindset.

I stopped looking to my past and started thinking about who I’d have to be to achieve this goal. If Covid isn’t an excuse, how am I going to show up? How will I need to feel? If I can overcome anything, how do I grow my business during a pandemic. And so on.

Renegades. You get to decide. Ask yourself the question and decide on your belief. What’s your Renegade motto? In good times and bad. How hard can you believe it? Lead with it or let it guide you.

The world doesn’t get to tell you what to believe. How to feel. You do. And the world doesn’t have to know either.
Keep it like a secret. But listen, I love secrets. So reach out and tell me.

Scroll back to top
powered by

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Episodes

Who Is Lauren? But First, A Parents Worse Nightmare
House of Other | No Means No with Dr. Alexandra Solomon No Means No Is Rock Bottom with Dr. Alexandra Solomon
House of Other | Exploring Rape Culture Exploring Rape Culture