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Life Happens Through You: Finding Hope through Daily Choices · No Shrinking Violets Podcast for Women

• 0:00
  Mary: Hi, and welcome to a mini episode of No Shrinking Violets.
• 0:04
  Mary: So, the one of the concept that I want to talk about today is I say it like life happens through you, not to you.
• 0:13
  Mary: So I think often we feel at the mercy of all the things that are happening around us.
• 0:20
  Mary: And that's not untrue.
• 0:23
  Mary: However, we get to choose how we react.
• 0:28
  Mary: So when we think about, well, we'll start with, I think one of the hardest things, the global issues or the national issues.
• 0:38
  Mary: There is a lot there that we don't have control over.
• 0:42
  Mary: And it can feel very demoralizing.
• 0:45
  Mary: It can make us feel hopeless.
• 0:48
  Mary: And I can own some of this.
• 0:50
  Mary: I feel like some of the things happening nationally now, because of what I really care about, it feels a little hopeless because I care about at the very base of things, I care about kindness and supporting people and respecting diversity.
• 1:11
  Mary: And you guys know I love, love nature.
• 1:16
  Mary: I am a tree hugger.
• 1:17
  Mary: Um, I am a nature nerd.
• 1:21
  Mary: So the things that are being done right now to destroy the only earth that we have, a lot of that feels so out of control and like I can't do anything about it.
• 1:34
  Mary: But really, everything that we do starts right at our front door.
• 1:39
  Mary: And so I choose to have flowers outside my home during any time that I can.
• 1:46
  Mary: I live in the city now.
• 1:47
  Mary: So there's people that will see that a lot more than where I lived before.
• 1:51
  Mary: So I choose to cultivate an environment that is not only beautiful, but there are native plants.
• 1:59
  Mary: So I see the bees and the butterflies.
• 2:03
  Mary: And that's a small little thing I can do.
• 2:06
  Mary: And then beyond that, it's using this platform to educate people, writing my book, Nature Knows, which really not only can help you find fulfillment, but it also I think, well, part of what I wrote it for is so people understand more about the world of plants and nature and how amazing it is to our well-being.
• 2:28
  Mary: So if we also tighten the lens a little and look more at our own specific life, sometimes we can feel that there's so much going on that we forget to live with intentionality.
• 2:43
  Mary: And I really believe, and what I've seen also in my clients is the more that we can curate and create the life that we want, the more aligned it is, the more fulfilled we are, the more physically well we are.
• 3:04
  Mary: And I can already hear the protests because I've done the same thing.
• 3:09
  Mary: I'm too busy to be intentional.
• 3:11
  Mary: And it's like it makes me think of my mom who is she's not living anymore.
• 3:15
  Mary: But at one point she said, I don't have enough money to have a budget.
• 3:19
  Mary: And so that became a joke with my siblings because who needs a budget more than somebody without a lot of money?
• 3:25
  Mary: And when you don't have a lot of time, intentionality is actually more important.
• 3:33
  Mary: So, how do you do that when you have maybe you're raising kids or your job is stressful or you're struggling in your main relationship?
• 3:44
  Mary: You do that by taking time each day to ask yourself a couple questions.
• 3:52
  Mary: One is, what does my body feel like?
• 3:55
  Mary: Because our body is really the key to how we're doing.
• 3:58
  Mary: And if you're finding tension, if you have areas that are painful, or maybe you have digestive issues, or you get headaches, or your feet hurt, those are almost always clues that whatever's happening mentally and emotionally, it doesn't feel good either.
• 4:20
  Mary: And so take stock of that.
• 4:22
  Mary: Where are you holding tension?
• 4:25
  Mary: The other question, and there's many questions, but another question I like to ask myself if I'm feeling blue or I'm feeling a little bit of that hopelessness.
• 4:35
  Mary: The question that I ask is how do I want to feel instead?
• 4:40
  Mary: And when I first heard that, even as a therapist, I was like, well, that's a dumb question.
• 4:47
  Mary: Because if we could decide how we're gonna feel, I wouldn't be diagnosing depression.
• 4:53
  Mary: I wouldn't be diagnosing panic attacks or generalized anxiety disorder.
• 4:59
  Mary: But it's different than that.
• 5:01
  Mary: Those are often things that what I'm talking about, what our diet is impacting, our life situation is impacting, our environment around us.
• 5:12
  Mary: And sometimes it's the things that chemically are happening in our brain.
• 5:18
  Mary: So I'm not downplaying those more intense diagnoses.
• 5:23
  Mary: What I'm saying is when you think about how you want to feel instead, that first of all makes it possible.
• 5:34
  Mary: Second of all, what comes after that is what do I need to do to move closer to that feeling?
• 5:40
  Mary: So that's kind of the third question.
• 5:43
  Mary: We know how to create the way we want to feel.
• 5:47
  Mary: We just sometimes either assume we can't do it, we don't take the time to think about it, or we just, I guess, feel like it's out of reach.
• 5:57
  Mary: And so let me give you a little bit of an example.
• 6:01
  Mary: So I'll go back to the national global situation.
• 6:05
  Mary: So if you feel hopeless, acknowledge that.
• 6:08
  Mary: Yeah, it feels hopeless.
• 6:09
  Mary: How do I want to feel instead?
• 6:11
  Mary: Well, hopeful.
• 6:12
  Mary: And then you can also dissect hopeful a little bit.
• 6:16
  Mary: So what plays into hopeful?
• 6:19
  Mary: Well, powerful, right?
• 6:22
  Mary: Because to not feel hopeless, you need to feel like you have some power.
• 6:26
  Mary: So maybe empowered is what you want to feel.
• 6:30
  Mary: Impactful, that could be another part of wanting to feel hopeful.
• 6:36
  Mary: And so as we think about what does hopefully like, what are the other parts of hopeful?
• 6:44
  Mary: And we come up with impactful and we come up with empowered, then we can start to think, what can I do to feel empowered?
• 6:51
  Mary: Well, you just decide you're empowered and you do the first thing.
• 6:55
  Mary: So for me, I went out and I bought all kinds of flowers and I filled my flower boxes in front of my house.
• 7:03
  Mary: Did I find some trash in there over the last few months?
• 7:06
  Mary: Yeah, I live in one of the most walked streets in the city.
• 7:11
  Mary: Does that mean it's not worth doing?
• 7:13
  Mary: No.
• 7:14
  Mary: Because I guarantee you that like I walk past houses that people take time to make them beautiful.
• 7:21
  Mary: I know people get joy out of that.
• 7:24
  Mary: So, you know, even with my back garden, I had to dig a lot of the plants up that I love when we got Alfie our puppy because they were toxic to him.
• 7:35
  Mary: Did it make me sad?
• 7:36
  Mary: Well, yeah, for a second, but then I get to decide what am I gonna, what will I put in place of that?
• 7:42
  Mary: Maybe there are native plants that are safe that will also bring in pollinators.
• 7:47
  Mary: So kind of my point is we get to decide, we get to choose what we're gonna focus on.
• 7:56
  Mary: And even though there are many, many things we can't change, when we are intentional about thinking about our life, how do I want to feel?
• 8:06
  Mary: What do I want to be part of my life?
• 8:08
  Mary: How do I get there?
• 8:10
  Mary: And so when you think about how do I want to feel instead, and then we dig down into what are all those other parts of that feeling, and then what do I do?
• 8:19
  Mary: What is one little thing?
• 8:21
  Mary: We are not going to change the world in a day.
• 8:24
  Mary: No one has done it.
• 8:25
  Mary: Often the biggest changes can feel like they're destructive changes, but you know what?
• 8:31
  Mary: It is way harder and more important and more impactful to build something beautiful than to knock it down.
• 8:40
  Mary: It's very easy.
• 8:42
  Mary: You know, if you have any siblings and you ever built something with blocks or Legos, it's way easier for your younger sibling or your older sibling that's being a jerk to knock that down than it took you to build it.
• 8:55
  Mary: But the building is what the important part is.
• 8:59
  Mary: So even as you think about your life overall, what do you want to build into it?
• 9:04
  Mary: And so some of the things I'm thinking about now, how do I take advantage of what this city offers?
• 9:11
  Mary: There are so many really amazing educational opportunities, opportunities to volunteer.
• 9:19
  Mary: But you have to look for that.
• 9:21
  Mary: You have to take time to think about what's one thing that will make me happy.
• 9:26
  Mary: I just signed up for a pottery class, a wheel throwing class.
• 9:31
  Mary: Could I fail miserably?
• 9:33
  Mary: Maybe, but I've always wanted to do it.
• 9:36
  Mary: So I might end up with a couple, you know, misshapen lumps of clay, but I want the experience.
• 9:43
  Mary: I want to see, maybe I'll be good at it, maybe I'll love it, maybe I'll meet some cool people.
• 9:49
  Mary: But it took some time for me to clear thinking space to decide what do I want to do with my time?
• 9:56
  Mary: And I think about that more now that I'm going to be 60 in January.
• 10:02
  Mary: And so I think a lot about what do I want to do with the time I have left.
• 10:06
  Mary: And I've been really, really fortunate to be in a situation that I have some time to think about that.
• 10:13
  Mary: And so, again, I want to honor the people that are really chugging along and they're building a career and they have they're raising kids and maybe they have a special needs child or they're a single parent.
• 10:25
  Mary: You can find little nuggets of time in there, whether it's 15 minutes before your kids get up, or 15 minutes when you wake up in the morning, five minutes to lay in bed for a second and think, how do I want to feel today?
• 10:42
  Mary: And then maybe there's one thing you get to do that day.
• 10:47
  Mary: Maybe it's just stretching.
• 10:49
  Mary: Maybe you want to feel more in your body.
• 10:51
  Mary: And so you do some stretches that day.
• 10:53
  Mary: It doesn't have to be a 90-minute yoga class, but we build up to that because the more you do something, the more you're going to do something.
• 11:01
  Mary: And so that's really what's been on my mind.
• 11:03
  Mary: And to be honest, I think the reason it's been on my mind is because when we decided to adopt Alfie, my husband and I are optimists.
• 11:14
  Mary: And so we were not thinking about all the ways that it will impact our life and constrict our life temporarily.
• 11:24
  Mary: So we definitely had the puppy blues.
• 11:28
  Mary: Um, we definitely had some adjustment because we had all the freedom before that.
• 11:37
  Mary: And so we've had to be really intentional about what we are going to do for that two hours while he's in his crate napping.
• 11:46
  Mary: Um, how are we gonna communicate better so that we each can do the things that keep us balanced?
• 11:52
  Mary: And I think the final thing I would leave you with, along with remembering that life happens through you, not to you, and living with intentionality is that everything is temporary.
• 12:03
  Mary: The way you feel now, it will pass.
• 12:06
  Mary: Sometimes it feels like forever.
• 12:09
  Mary: And I'll say in the evening, and this is getting a little better, but the puppy crazies and the zoomies in the evening with Alfie, we were literally counting the minutes to get to bedtime.
• 12:24
  Mary: But it's better now.
• 12:26
  Mary: And so we started to keep a journal so we can remember, oh my gosh, it's so much better than it was.
• 12:34
  Mary: And that's what happens.
• 12:36
  Mary: You know, I think you can if you hate the rain, if you hate the tough times, you can just sit it out, or you can grab your umbrella and walk in the rain.
• 12:47
  Mary: And so I think it's being intentional.
• 12:50
  Mary: Life happens through you, not to you.
• 12:52
  Mary: And remember that the hard times, the difficult times, are temporary.
• 12:59
  Mary: And by living with that intentionality, you're going to make that time not as hopeless.
• 13:08
  Mary: You won't feel as powerless in those times when things are happening around you because you're going to be intentional and you're going to decide how do I want to feel instead?
• 13:19
  Mary: And what am I going to do about it?
• 13:21
  Mary: So, those are my thoughts for today.
• 13:23
  Mary: So, until next time, stop shrinking and start thriving.