YouTube Challenge : Letting Go & Moving Forward : Live AMA

Foreign. Hey there everybody and welcome to yet another live Monday Ask Me Anything. Today we're going to be talking about letting go and moving forward. I'm going to wait just a couple of minutes before I get started on talking about that particular topic because of course I'm starting a little bit early, but I was ready so I figured hey, why not just start, start. Rather be early than late. Right? I hope everybody had a wonderful weekend. It was absolutely beautiful here in Middle Tennessee. We spent a lot of time out in the garden and getting things ready and clearing around our, our BlackBerry bushes that desperately needs. Need to be transplanted. So that should be interesting. But anyway, yes, and let's see, we had some adventures, animal adventures, running into different various snakes and, and things which you know happens when you live on a farm, but. Hello, Aurora. Hello Adriana. Hey space time. Good to see you back as always. I'm wondering when, when it comes. Okay, Addie, thank you. Well, hello Addie. I'm glad you're actually still here. Sometimes if you log in before I log in, I don't know, it seems like people don't get the messages I send. But I am glad to see you, Addie. Hello healing energy. And Anna. It was Adriana. I really enjoy being, being able to be outside, play with the dogs, you know, romp around. We had the cutest little fox, well, big fox squirrel in our front yard today. So I enjoyed watching him. Every time he would stand up, he'd expose his room, rusty colored belly. And they're huge. They're huge. I don't know if you have them where you are but. And they've got the longest tails. The longest tails. But anyhow, Anyway, as I was saying, when it comes to letting go and moving forward, that's our topic for today. I'm wondering what types of things, things you struggle most with letting go and in what ways you try to move forward. The things that work, the things that don't. But definitely focusing on things that work to help you let go and move forward even if for just a minute. Hello Angelica. These Monday ask me any things are really designed to give you a chance to interact with me. I'm hoping to switch them over or add, I guess. Add, not switch, add. An option for y' all to have a, a weekly live video chat with me but that, that's not quite available yet and we'll see if it takes off and if it does, great. If not then it'll be a short lived experiment. But I know I like talking with people when I can actually see them, even if it's through zoom or whatever. And I like the ability to be able to have a more focused back and forth discussion. And I mean this, sometimes we do do back and forth, but there's, there can be, there's a great, much greater chance of missed messages. So anyway, hello, Jaya or Haya? I'm not sure how you pronounce that. I'm not sure where you are or what country you're in, if that's Haya or Jaya. So as we're waiting for people to filter in, let's talk a little bit about letting go and moving forward forward. Letting go is hard. Letting go involves grieving. You're letting go of your control, you're letting go of a dream, you're letting go of a person. And it's hard. In order to let go of something, you do have to go through some something of a grieving process. Even when you get married, for example, you're letting go of being single. It's a change. And that can be something that you need to work, work on as you move forward into this new chapter of your rich and meaningful life. Things just aren't the same. And then there's the letting go and moving forward of our resentments and our guilt. And resentment is anger at other people. Guilt is anger at ourself. And letting go of those things can be very, very difficult too, especially if we don't feel safe and empowered. Because holding on to anger often helps people feel more powerful, feel protected, if you will. Because if I'm angry, then when you come near me, I know to bow up and I know not to trust you. However, anger in and of itself drains our energy. A better use of anger when we feel like we've had somebody do us wrong and we feel angry instead of develop developing this resentment that we nurture. Identifying number one. Is this something I really care about and want to devote energy to? Maybe somebody said some snotty comment to you, okay, do you want to get angry at and nurture that and hold on to that for the rest of the day or the rest of the week? Or is it something that, you know, it's just not worth your energy? Other people's perceptions are none of your business. And I heard that from somewhere, I stole it from somewhere. But it's true. Other people's perceptions are influenced by their prior experiences. And with us, with other people, and with other people like us, maybe we remind them of somebody. And it's important to use our best cognitive behavioral skills when we do start to feel angry or we do start to feel defensive and recognize, number one, as I said, is this something worth my energy or was that person just being a snot? And maybe they're having a bad day, whatever, but it's not worth my energy to hold on to. If it's worth my energy, then instead of stewing on it and being resentful, addressing it. A lot of times people don't realize when they have offended you or they may have unintentionally done something wrong to you. And by addressing it, you can regain your sense of safety. Now, sometimes the people know good and well what they did and they don't care. And in that case, we learn to set boundaries. We use our energy to learn from that situation. This is what happened, this is what led up to it. These were the signs. Learn from it. Figure out how to prevent it in the future. That's how we use our energy. Instead of sitting there thinking for hours and days and weeks about how this person did you wrong. Because they're probably not thinking about it anymore if they didn't care. And recognizing that by holding on to resentments, we are allowing them to live rent free in our head and we are allowing them to drain our energy away from the things that are important in our rich and meaningful life. So. So what if they don't like what you did or what you wore? Oh my gosh. The. My daughter is working in retail now and I, I couldn't do it. I really couldn't do it because she comes over and she tells us with that, with regularity. People tell her she looks like crap or she needs to be happier or she's, I mean, they're just horrible. And why, as a customer in a sporting good store, would you even have the purpose? Why would it even come up to tell somebody, hey, you look like crap today. What the heck? And thankfully she's developed a thicker skin and is able to kind of let that roll off and doesn't take it personally. I don't know if I would be able to be that strong and I would have to learn. I would have to learn in order to survive, but I would take it personally. And that's one of those things that we need to examine and say, well, this person came in and said something nasty to me today when I was at work and you know, that was their opinion and let it go because I'll probably never see that person again. And even if I do, do I really care about their opinion? Are they somebody that's important in my rich and meaningful life. When it comes to guilt. Guilt is anger at ourselves for something we did that we shouldn't or something we didn't do that we shoulda and shoulda, coulda, woulda is going to keep you stewing and holding on to things and feeling guilty. What happened, happened. It's in the past. And we need to learn how to prevent that in the future. If, and I've given this example before, when my grandmother passed, I was out on a run. And for the longest time I felt guilty because I wasn't there at her bedside when she passed. I was out on a run. I was taking care of me. And that wasn't probably something that she would have wanted me to feel. I don't know. You know, obviously I can't ask her. But it took me a while to let go of that guilt. And now or. And from that experience, I learned to, number one, recognize the importance of self care. But number two, to make sure, to the best of my ability, that I've said what I need to say to people before I leave. And that's not just referring to people who are in hospice, but referring to anybody saying things to them that I need to before we separate because I don't know if I'll see them again. That's the lesson I learned from it. Instead of using that energy to continue to be angry at myself, to continue to feel guilty, almost 30 years later, I use that energy to make sure that I'm saying those things I'm using. I use that memory and I remember. I don't want to feel that way again. So this is what I'm going to do. So we have letting go of anger, letting go of guilt, Recognizing both of those drain our energy. It steals energy. And I want you to really envision the image of stealing energy from the things, people and experiences that are important in your rich and meaningful life. You're saying, no, you can't have this energy. I'm going to give it back here to this thing that I can't change or this person that doesn't matter. Ouch. You know, probably don't want to do that in terms of grieving, letting go and moving forward. And I mentioned at the beginning, we grieve a lot of things, not just death. We grieve the loss of our dreams, we grieve the loss of time. We grieve. You know, you can go on for hours on that. So being compassionate with yourself and recognizing when you've lost something that's important to you, it requires an element of Grieving now, if you lost something that was not super important, you're not going to grieve for weeks. If you've lost something that was super important, you're going to have a much longer grieving process and that's okay. Working through that process, moving forward as you find your, as my stepfather put it, new normal is an important part of the healing process. And we remember that grief is composed of denial, anger, depression and acceptance. And it's not linear. Most people will bounce back and forth between denial, anger and depression for quite a while before they have reached that place where they are ready to move on to acceptance, before they have a clear vision of what life is like without this thing present in it, without this thing being in existence in it anymore. And if it's a person, for example, you'll still have those memories of that person that you'll carry with you, but they're not there to go to lunch with anymore. Figuring out how whatever that is that you lost is going to influence the next chapter and the chapter after that of your life is really important. Okie dokie. So I've given people a little bit of time to get in as I've been talking. Letting go of disappointment from other people is really hard because you trusted them and when they disappointed you, they may have broken that trust. They, they failed to live up to your expectations. We need to examine, or we could examine what happened there. Did they know what your expectations were? Was it clear to them what your expectations were and they intentionally failed? Was it clear what your expectations were and they just couldn't meet them? That's another problem that a lot of times we have with we set these standards for oursel and other people that may be too high for them and we take it personally when they don't achieve the goals or do what we wanted them to do. We take it personally that they are not conforming. So stepping back and examining each instance. Okay, Google was listening. That was really creepy. Anyhow, it's gotten mad about that lately. I don't know what to do. So anyway, back to being disappointed by other people. Disappointment is a normal emotion. It is, it does represent a certain amount of grief. Maybe anger. And anger is part of the grief process. What do you need to do to protect yourself in the future? And if this person habitually and intentionally disappoints you, then you may need to examine setting boundaries because they don't. They're not taking your feelings and your needs into, in, into consideration. If they consistently failure fail to meet your expectations Even though they're trying their hardest. Then you need to examine whether you're able, in your rich and meaningful life, whether you're able to lower your expectations, to be something closer to what they can meet. And that can be really hard if you are in a relationship with somebody and you think that they have all this potential, or you think that they could get a promotion that would help you both out financially, because, you know, promotion comes with more money usually, and you really want them to apply for it, and they don't apply for it, you can feel disappointed. And it's important to step back and examine, number one, why they didn't do what you wanted them to do. Because their behaviors, communication, what are they communicating? I didn't want it. I was afraid I couldn't do it. I didn't think the time that this promotion would have demanded was worth it. In my rich and meaningful life. We have to look at it from their perspective, why they did or didn't do what they did or didn't do, and then have a frank discussion about what your needs are for your rich and meaningful life and what they see as important in their rich and meaningful life, and arrive at some sort of middle ground, Arrive at some sort of win win. So you both can feel like you're getting your needs met. And that can be really hard. But again, going back when we're talking about other people disappointing you, what is their behavior saying? And can we respect their choices based on their point of view? We may have done something completely differently, but can we take their point of view and see how they may have made that decision? I'm wondering if I should let go of the person or let go of the version of myself that's holding me back. And again, letting go of the person is certainly something to consider if they are repeatedly letting you down. We'll take addiction as a perfect example. People who are in recovery from addiction, often, not always, but often relapse. And that is extremely disappointing to their loved ones. The people that, that love them, they see this person relapsing and it feels like a. An intentional screw you when they relapse. To a lot of people, it feels. Feels like the person with the addiction should have been able to resist relapsing. That's not always it. It's not that easy. It's not that easy because we know addiction impacts the mind, body, interpersonal relationships, all kinds of other stuff. So quitting and staying quit is not as easy as one might want it to be for our loved ones. That being Said, at what point do you start setting boundaries and say, I can't do this anymore, I can't go through another relapse, I can't bail you out of jail again for my rich and meaningful life. I can't be worried about you all the time. I can't be waiting for that phone call to come in. And so this is what needs to happen. And, and in addiction a lot of times we call that tough love, but it's setting boundaries and saying, I feel like I can't move on with my life because I'm spending so much energy worried about, angry at whatever you. And yes, that's on me. That's my choice. I love you and I'm concerned about you. However, I find it difficult to just ignore that I can't, I can't love you and not worry about you. So I need to set these, these boundaries here. And this is what needs to happen if we're going to stay together or this is what needs to happen if we're going to continue to, to associate. And that is, it's a hard conversation to have, but it is one that can be eye opening for the other person. Sometimes they may not realize that their poor choices are impacting you that much. They may not realize how much their pain is seeping over to you. You can also choose to modify the version of yourself and however you interact with this person, you know, being, for example, stay with addiction because that's a. Something that most people can relate to. If I see myself as being nurturing and loving and forgiving and supportive and compassionate and then I have to set boundaries, oh, that hurts. And so I need to change my perception of myself and I need to change my perception of what setting boundaries means. I'm not being mean. I'm actually taking steps not only to take care of myself and move toward my rich and meaningful life, but I am going to stop enabling this person to do things that are harmful to them if they want to continue to be in a relationship with me. And sometimes that is the impetus that, that somebody needs. How do we move forward from being entangled in the confusion of experiencing symptoms? Not sure I understand the question. Aurora B. If you could elaborate on that a little bit, it would be great if back to the question about setting boundaries and people who disappoint you. What if you address it and they blow up and get super defensive? They're going to, most likely they're going to. Because when you're confronting them, when you're saying you've disappointed me, then They've got two options. They. Well, three, they can apologize and make amends, but most of the time, when somebody is provided feedback that we'll call that constructive criticism, they feel vulnerable, they feel judged, they feel defensive. And sometimes they will respond by blowing up because that's how they're protecting themselves. They're like, I. I can't hear that. I don't want to hear that. I'm going to blame you. I'm gonna do whatever I can to try to pretend that that's not really what's happening in if you've ever watched, and I'm not a fan of the show, but I'm going to bring it up because a lot of people have watched it. If you've ever watched Intervention 91 1, people are setting boundaries with their loved one who has an addiction. And some of the time, not nearly as. They don't show it nearly as often on the show as it actually happens. But in any event, some of the time the people blow up. And because they feel rejected, they feel judged, they feel terrified, they feel the need to protect themselves. Having the conversation in a way that owns your stuff can be helpful. However, letting them use anger and bluster to manipulate you can lead to its own set of problems. Now, if they get angry and blustery and then they come back a few hours later or the next day and say, okay, you're right, I screwed up. That's one thing. But if they get angry and blustery and then they stick to their. Stick to their guns, so to speak, then it's going to be up to you to make the decision that obviously they're not going to change or they're not even going to hear the fact that it's important for them to do something slightly different if they want to be in a relationship with you. Behaviors, communication, that says a lot right there if they are. And again, anger and guilt, they can use guilt to manipulate you, too. But anger can come out as me trying to make you feel guilty, me trying to make you angry at yourself. And that can be just as destructive. So don't let other people manipulate you with their anger. Get safe, set boundaries, recognize when they're doing it, and figure out what do you need to do to get and stay safe. And Eshal is right. Sometimes we want to move on, but we don't. And it's kind of like ruminations that we have those thoughts that pop up in our head and we think we've gotten rid of them, and all of a sudden they're back Again, we can get stuck in a pattern in life. And that's where mindfulness really comes in to play, because we look at what it is that we are trying to let go and how will we know? And we've talked before about setting goals, and I always use the phrase, as evidenced by, I will know that I have let go and moved on, as evidenced by these things. I will quit thinking about it every day. I will, you know. And I usually do three or four different examples of knowing that I've let go and moved on. And it's important to mindfully examine your action, your thoughts, actions, and behaviors. When we are letting go of something that has been going on for a while, it takes a minute to change because it's a habit, a hard habit to break. As Chicago said in a song, Using your. Your journaling can be really helpful. Keeping a log of how many times did I think about this today can be really helpful. I'll. If something gets under my skin, and I have a thin skin, I admit it's one of those things that I work on. I'm a lot better about it now than I used to be. But if something gets under my skin, then I'll periodically bring it up and my husband will point out. He's like, when are you going to let that go? Example. We homeschooled our children, and I got my doctorate from the Department of Education in mental health counseling and educating my kids with a predetermined curriculum that we bought. It wasn't like I was just pulling stuff out of thin air that was the best choice for our children for a variety of reasons. And my mother was totally against it the whole time. The whole time. She was totally against it because I wasn't a, quote, real teacher. I'm like, I teach college classes, I teach undergrads, I teach graduate students. I actually am a teacher. But whenever it comes up about, or came up about our children and about educating them and stuff, I would throw in something. Well, that wouldn't have happened if I were a real teacher, which is extremely passive aggressive. And I would never say that to her face, but I would say it to my husband and he's like, let it go. And finally I did. Finally, you know, I. I was like, you know what? Her opinion is none of my business. And I knew what was working and what was important for our children based on their. Their unique needs. And. And so, you know, you know, that was one of those. That. An example of how something will come up and, and I'll just, I'll hear that voice in my head, and it comes out my mouth. Well, if you were a real teacher and letting go of those things. There was a time, and while I'm waiting to see some more questions, there was a time that my son and I were checking out at the grocery store. And this grocery store's name, Publix. And the. The tagline for Publix was where, quote, where shopping is a pleasure. And we had gone after kindergarten one day to pick up some. Some groceries and things. And Sean was standing next to me, and he wanted to get candy off the candy rack. He's like, I'm hungry. I'm like, we're going home to eat. You can't have it. He looks at me and with no volume control, says, well, so much for Publix, where shopping is a pleasure. This from a little kindergartener. I was mortified, and we've laughed about it ever since. But, you know, it's that kind of passive aggressive. Did he hold on to that resentment? I don't think so. Recognizing, though, when our anger comes out and our resentments come out in a passive aggressive manner is really important.