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Transcript

Why fighting reality only makes life harder · #BeMoreLobster

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever caught yourself saying something like, This shouldn't be happening like this?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Or I wish my life didn't look like this, or why can't things be different?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I know that I have.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I also know that when I used to go around saying things like that, my life didn't look or feel the way that I wanted it to.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now my life looks very, very different.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to share with you today why you need to stop arguing with reality.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're ready, grab your brew, let's dive right in.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: When I look back at what my life was like 10, 15, 20, 25 years ago, it feels like night and day, it feels like it was somebody else living in my life.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe there's some of you thinking, well, of course, Louise, like it's a long period of time.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I also want you to know that a lot of people don't really experience a different life.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: They experience a different shade of the same colour, but they don't change the colour of the palette.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I do believe I've put that in a podcast somewhere else, so you'd have to go back and find that.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: But my life looks like a completely different colour palette, not just a different shade of pink or yellow or blue.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that has probably, no, that's not probably, that has been the biggest gift I've given myself.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: That is the thing that I'm most proud of.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: That there have been so many times in my life when I've gone, no, I'm not doing this anymore.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not settling for this anymore.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: I want to have something different.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I want to have something more.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be the creator of my own life.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: But there were many, many years when I was stuck in a space of arguing with reality, wanting it to be different, wanting things to change.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: I found myself suffering with depression.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was in a horrific marriage.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: I became a single parent, claiming benefits, I've been blacklisted.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like there have been some really, really tough times.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: But those tough times became so much easier when I became a co-creator rather than feeling like I was being squashed by my circumstances.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the biggest thing is like just recognizing that no matter what the circumstances are, like you have the ability to choose how you think about them and what you're going to do moving forward.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: So when I first met my now husband, we had to give the keys back to a property that we couldn't afford to keep.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: There was£110,000 negative equity on that property.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: We'd never got out of overdraft.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like our once we got to zero, like that was our starting line every single month, and we just progressively went more and more into overdraft every single month just to live.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was pretty tough.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: But because we'd made the decision between us that somehow, somehow, we didn't know how, by the time the blacklisting finished in six years, we would we would have enough money to buy our own house.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: That was where our thoughts went.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got a really exciting episode coming next week that's going to give you three things that's going to help you to do the same.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: But for now, let me retrack my steps a little bit and come back to this arguing with reality.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because the thing is, when we argue with reality, we're always going to lose.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're fighting against something that just is the way that it is right now.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: When we sit there and we talk about wanting it to be different and we're hating and being frustrated and whatever other sort of unresourceful emotion we're having in this moment, it's like trying to fight your way out of a paper bag.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: There is no space here for you to consciously and powerfully choose a forward motion.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know that some life circumstances are way harder than others.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I'm going to deliver to you today is more for the space of a place where you can be resourceful.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So let me give you an example of that.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: When my dad was dying, and after he died, that was one of the darkest, hardest times of my life, hands down.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I recognise now that there was definitely an element of PTSD, and combined with the grief and perimenopause and moving house and having problems with my daughter and her mental health.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: I at the there are times when I was like, this is never going to end.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if I had been listening to myself right now, delivering you this podcast, I'd probably would have turned you off and said very nasty words at you or myself.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to just like preface this with in these dark, traumatic times, this can still apply.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I also know that it's very, very difficult, and so you might want something else.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope I've made that clear.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: So let's go back to when we fight with reality, we always lose.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this doesn't mean to say that you have to like where you're at, you don't have to like what's happening, you don't have to take it as um this is just the way it is, like this is I'm I'm gonna be living here.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to make this your residence, but it just means that we can be in a place of acceptance, and when we're in acceptance and we stop the fighting, we become free.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you think about fighting, how much energy does that take up?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: How much more negative energy does it produce to keep fighting against something?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Think about if you've ever ever had an argument with your partner or one of your children or somebody, and it goes on and on and on and on, particularly if you're living in the house with that person and you're walking around and you're trying to avoid them, and maybe like you stay in different different rooms and you don't use the kitchen at the same time, and like you spend all your time thinking about just like throwing them the evils.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Please tell me I'm not alone in this because I used to do this with my husband all the time when we first got together.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: I would spend days in our bedroom and would only come downstairs when he'd gone out.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's exhausting, it's exhausting, and it's not even creating a different result, it's just making a current result even worse.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: So fighting drains us, but accepting it frees us.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: What I've noticed when I'm coaching clients is when they're really trying to argue for their limitation, when they want to say, Yeah, but Louise, I need to be here because there are a few things that are going on in their brain.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: The first potential blocker is that they have a belief that if they accept it that they're giving up, absolutely not true, and we'll come to that.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and I'm gonna kind of talk about these towards the end.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: If I accept it, I'm giving up.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Here's another big one.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm not letting go of it because it's not fair.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: This is about making somebody else wrong.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, what I've just spoken about in the in the conversation around if you have an argument with a partner or somebody and you're like, I'm gonna just keep acting like this until they apologize because I'm right and they're wrong.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: So when they when someone's holding on to something so powerfully and they can't let go, it's often because they're looking for some kind of validation, they're looking for somebody's apology, they're looking for something outside of themselves to change the way that they feel inside.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like it's a not fair.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: If I have to let go, it's not fair on me.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the other thing, like if I fight harder, maybe I can change it.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: I see this a lot with my clients who are small business owners.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: They keep staying in the fight of building their business, hoping that doing more of the same thing is going to change it, rather than letting go, accepting their reality and then moving forward in a different way.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: We've been taught in this world to go hard or go home, to work harder, to do more if we want to change life.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we've become stuck and entrenched in this masculine energy of do do do.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we've stepped away from our wisdom and our innate knowledge, which actually allows us and our intuition, which allows us to kind of make progress in a much more fluid and resourceful and purposeful and sufficient way.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: So if I accept it, I'm giving up.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: I can't let go, it's not fair.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: If I fight harder, maybe I can change it.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: What happens when you stay in that space?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: So resisting really just keeps you stuck in the negative or unresourceful emotions: frustration, anger, despondency, fear.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you're literally allowing yourself to keep swimming in this soup of crappy emotions.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: You're also wasting precious energy on wishing instead of choosing.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: When we wish something to be different, nothing changes.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: When we look back and regret and say, Oh, I wish I'd done this differently, or if this had happened, then maybe this wouldn't have happened, and we play out this whole different parallel world when in reality we have no idea what might have happened because we're in a world of constantly sliding door moments, and then also, this is a big one for me: relationships really get strained when you try to control what isn't yours.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: So if part of your frustration now is wanting to change somebody else's reality so that it makes your reality different, you're really stepping out of your zone of power and you're trying to do something for somebody else that maybe they don't want, and any relationship that that has kind of got that dynamic, it becomes very, very strained.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to be aware of what's yours to control.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: So the thing here is acceptance isn't approval.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've just said, it's not about you saying, okay, this this I'm in this situation, I don't like it, but you know what?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna approve of it and I'm gonna make this my permanent address.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: The acceptance is just clarity because once you accept what is at the moment, you can reclaim the energy, the resourcefulness, the sufficiency, the wisdom, the intuition, and the and the faith to decide what's my next step.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Byron Casey actually calls this loving what is, not because you love the situation, but because you love yourself enough to stop suffering twice.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: How beautiful is that! Because you're actually suffering more than twice, you're suffering over and over and over and over again if you just keep saying, I wish this was different, but, and then not taking that responsibility.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: You can then harness your energy into choosing every single day what's available to me now.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And like I say, we'll talk about this in the next episode when I've got these three literally life-changing principles for you that if you live your life by them, you will change your life, period.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then also you can start to really harness your relationships, you can foster great relationships, you can step into better communication, you can see somebody else's model of the world, you can realize where your control is and where your control ends.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, today I would love for you to begin raising your awareness that you can catch yourself when you hear the words this shouldn't be happening, or I wish this wouldn't like this, or why can't this be different?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Catch yourself, take a breath, pause and ask yourself what is real right now.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because remember, reality, truth, is very rare.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Most of what's happening is a perception, it's a circumstance that feels like your that is your reality because of the thoughts and the feelings that you choose around it.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is real?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: What is available right now?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: What is the actual circumstance?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Take off the emotions and the thoughts and the feelings around it, make the circumstance the naked truth, and then ask given that this is the circumstance, this is the reality, what's the one thing that I can choose now?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: What's my next choice?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: What's what's my next one best step?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: This will allow you to stop mentally resisting reality, to stop making the reality your emotional landscape and put you in charge.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to just finish by saying that the caveat here is it's not gonna be easy sometimes.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: I've said for decades the right choice is so often the hardest one.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: But if we keep choosing the easiest choice, the one that has less emotional discomfort, the one that has the most certainty, we're always gonna keep creating a life on the same colour palette, just a different shade.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I know if you're listening to this, you want a life that's multicoloured, that's a kaleidoscope of experiences and colours and feelings and all those things.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have to be willing to make the hard choices.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Seeking Simplicity podcast.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: I know I did love recording it.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is my jam.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so please make sure that you are subscribed because next week's a banger, I promise you.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And also, please would you take a moment just to leave me a review on iTunes?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: It means the world to me.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what would be even better if you did that with a share.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you could share this podcast on social media and your Instagram stories and give me a tag, I would love that.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, and I will speak to you again in the next episode of the Seeking Simplicity Podcast.