Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #256| Shift Frustration Into Peace By Reframing Your Thoughts (Here's How)
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: What if you could change a feeling of total resentment to peace or even happiness without the situation changing at all?
- 0:08Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:20Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:25Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's Working Woman experiences.
- 0:30Michelle Gauthier: And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.
- 0:37Michelle Gauthier: Hi, friend.
- 0:40Michelle Gauthier: Today I'm going to tell you a story about a client that I worked with this week.
- 0:44Michelle Gauthier: And I just thought it was such a great example for anyone that I asked her permission to tell it on the podcast, and she obviously said yes.
- 0:51Michelle Gauthier: We talk a lot on this podcast about how sometimes the quickest way to solve a problem is just simply to change the way that you are thinking about it.
- 1:00Michelle Gauthier: So today, when you listen, you'll discover why your circumstances, the things happening in your life, aren't actually causing the way you feel.
- 1:08Michelle Gauthier: And what is a quick way to change resentment or frustration or overwhelm into a much better emotion.
- 1:14Michelle Gauthier: And lastly, how that one change has a ripple-down effect on the rest of your life and all of the people around you.
- 1:21Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so let's talk about my client.
- 1:23Michelle Gauthier: We were on our coaching session for this week and her college son was home and she was so frustrated.
- 1:29Michelle Gauthier: She had been waiting and waiting for him to get home.
- 1:31Michelle Gauthier: She was so excited that he was there and he was staying up until like two or three in the morning and then sleeping until way past noon and just barely functional during daylight hours.
- 1:41Michelle Gauthier: And she was so annoyed, and understandably so.
- 1:44Michelle Gauthier: If that was you, you'd probably be annoyed too.
- 1:46Michelle Gauthier: Cause she's trying to run a household like she normally does and has a life that operates on a schedule.
- 1:52Michelle Gauthier: And here is this grown child just horizontal and asleep.
- 1:56Michelle Gauthier: So she came to our session with that frustration sitting right on the surface.
- 2:00Michelle Gauthier: And that wasn't the problem that she brought to me for the day that we were going to work through, but we realized that it was permeating everything that she was thinking about.
- 2:08Michelle Gauthier: And as we talked about it, something really started to shift.
- 2:12Michelle Gauthier: We started looking at the same situation, her son being home and him staying up all night and sleeping all day and how frustrating it is.
- 2:19Michelle Gauthier: And we started just poking around and looking at potential other ways that she could see that situation.
- 2:25Michelle Gauthier: And what we landed on was this when her son comes home, he can just fully exhale and he feels so comfortable.
- 2:32Michelle Gauthier: He can sleep, he can rest, he can let his guard down completely.
- 2:36Michelle Gauthier: And the reason he can do that, and the reason he feels safe enough to do that, is because of the home that she built and the warmth that she created, it feels like the safest place in the world to just recover.
- 2:47Michelle Gauthier: And once she realized that that also felt true to her, it brought tears to her eyes.
- 2:52Michelle Gauthier: And she knows she's not raising a lazy kid and he's not doing it to disrespect her or her home or the rest of the family.
- 3:00Michelle Gauthier: It's a completely different way to look at it.
- 3:02Michelle Gauthier: And I watched her whole energy shift from resentment and frustration into peace and pride for being a good mom and the frustration softened.
- 3:12Michelle Gauthier: And I have no doubt that when she did see her son in the house that evening, that he felt it too, even if neither of them said a word about it.
- 3:21Michelle Gauthier: How did my client go from feeling super frustrated to feeling at peace in a matter of minutes?
- 3:26Michelle Gauthier: Here's what actually happened in the session.
- 3:28Michelle Gauthier: I want you to see it clearly because it really changes everything.
- 3:31Michelle Gauthier: Her son's behavior didn't change.
- 3:33Michelle Gauthier: She didn't talk to him about any of it.
- 3:35Michelle Gauthier: Not one thing about the situation was different at our end of the conversation than it was at the beginning.
- 3:40Michelle Gauthier: He was still sleeping in, that was still true.
- 3:42Michelle Gauthier: What changed was the thought in between.
- 3:44Michelle Gauthier: Most of us move through life thinking that things happen and then we feel a certain way about them.
- 3:49Michelle Gauthier: So my son sleeps all day and I feel resentful about it.
- 3:53Michelle Gauthier: The situation causes the feeling, but that's not actually how it works.
- 3:57Michelle Gauthier: There's always a step in between those.
- 3:59Michelle Gauthier: There's always a thought about the circumstance that is sitting between what happened and how you feel.
- 4:04Michelle Gauthier: So if you slow this way down, what you can see is that the situation, the sleeping son, is neutral.
- 4:11Michelle Gauthier: Then you have a thought about it.
- 4:12Michelle Gauthier: And this is not her thoughts, this is some example.
- 4:15Michelle Gauthier: But if the thought is something like, it's so disrespectful that he's sleeping all day, or I can't get anything done when he's asleep all day, that creates the feeling of resentment.
- 4:24Michelle Gauthier: Not him sleeping, but what you're thinking about him sleeping.
- 4:27Michelle Gauthier: And here's the thing that matters, we almost never question that first thought or even realize that we're having it.
- 4:33Michelle Gauthier: Often that thought is unconscious.
- 4:35Michelle Gauthier: So it comes quickly and it feels true, and we act on it and suddenly we're resentful before we've even stopped to ask if it's accurate or whether it's the only way to say things or whether it's the most useful version of the story.
- 4:48Michelle Gauthier: And it usually isn't.
- 4:49Michelle Gauthier: Now, normally when I bring up this concept, especially to a new client, they feel a lot of resistance to this idea because they're afraid that I'm gonna try to make them do some sort of toxic positivity or pretending something doesn't bother you, forcing yourself to feel happy, but that just doesn't work.
- 5:05Michelle Gauthier: I could try to force somebody to do that, but it wouldn't work because when you think a thought that feels like a lie, your body knows it's a lie and it won't work.
- 5:12Michelle Gauthier: So you can't go from feeling super annoyed to feeling peaceful if you don't believe the thought that makes you feel peaceful.
- 5:18Michelle Gauthier: My client didn't decide her son's schedule was fine and that she had no needs.
- 5:23Michelle Gauthier: She just found another thought that was also true and more useful.
- 5:27Michelle Gauthier: So here's how to do this in two quick steps.
- 5:29Michelle Gauthier: Number one, you have to find the thought that you originally had.
- 5:32Michelle Gauthier: So maybe the thought was he doesn't respect my household.
- 5:36Michelle Gauthier: She didn't say this, I'm supposing here.
- 5:38Michelle Gauthier: Or he's taking an advantage of me, or he doesn't want to be around me.
- 5:43Michelle Gauthier: Get specific about what that thought is and remember your brain is just offering that thought, just offering it as an option.
- 5:49Michelle Gauthier: You can't work with a thought that you haven't identified, so find it, maybe even write it down, and then ask yourself two questions.
- 5:55Michelle Gauthier: Is this thought actually true?
- 5:56Michelle Gauthier: And is there another version that is also true, but less painful?
- 6:00Michelle Gauthier: So if my client's original thought was he's disrespecting my home and my schedule, her reframe turned out to be he completely relaxes here because he trusts me.
- 6:10Michelle Gauthier: Or I have created a space where he can come home and recover from the exhaustion of doing all of his finals.
- 6:17Michelle Gauthier: So we played around with several thoughts until she found one that really felt true.
- 6:22Michelle Gauthier: And that thought that worked that felt true let her walk back into her house with warmth instead of resentment.
- 6:27Michelle Gauthier: And that had to create warmth instead of resentment.
- 6:30Michelle Gauthier: The great thing is when you change the thought, it changes your feelings, and then everything downstream changes with it.
- 6:36Michelle Gauthier: So I was not in her house, but let's imagine that she saw her son that evening just sitting in the house and she thought, oh good, yay, he's awake.
- 6:44Michelle Gauthier: And maybe they had a great conversation with dinner, maybe they hung out a little bit that night before she went to bed.
- 6:49Michelle Gauthier: And I hoped her house felt a lot more peaceful.
- 6:52Michelle Gauthier: And when they had that peaceful interaction, I bet the rest of the family noticed.
- 6:56Michelle Gauthier: And I bet she was able to take that to work with her the next day to the people that she worked with.
- 7:00Michelle Gauthier: Changing the way that you feel has a trickle-down effect on everyone else who you come in contact with.
- 7:06Michelle Gauthier: So next time something is bothering you, before you try to change the situation, try those two steps.
- 7:11Michelle Gauthier: Name the thought and find another true one.
- 7:14Michelle Gauthier: See if you can shift your own feelings.
- 7:16Michelle Gauthier: It's the easiest way to solve a problem.
- 7:18Michelle Gauthier: Before we wrap up today, I want to remind you that if you are feeling overwhelmed and you know that your thoughts are working against you, like replaying conversations or assuming the worst and saying yes when every part of you wants to say no, you are probably feeling overwhelmed.
- 7:34Michelle Gauthier: And if you're feeling overwhelmed, I have created just the thing, which is the why am I feeling overwhelmed quiz.
- 7:40Michelle Gauthier: It takes less than two minutes and it tells you the root cause of your overwhelm and exactly what your first step should be in solving it.
- 7:47Michelle Gauthier: Because you can't think your way out of a pattern that you haven't correctly named, and this quiz will do that for you.
- 7:53Michelle Gauthier: The link is in the show notes.
- 7:54Michelle Gauthier: Take the quiz today and have a great weekend.
- 7:58Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 8:05Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.com.
- 8:11Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.