Reframing What You Want: How To Build Calm & Confidence (Because Less Anxiety Isn't The Goal)

It's important how you speak to yourself about the things in life you don't like and how you're going about changing them.

Hey there and welcome to let's Talk about it with Laurie Streeter. A space to talk honestly and get real about mental health, therapy and all things wellness. I'm Lori, licensed therapist, speaker and your host, here to bring you insights, tools and information you can actually use, whether you're navigating anxiety, healing your relationship with food, or trying to figure out which techniques will work for your life.

I'm so, so glad you're here.

Let's dive in and let's talk about it.

Welcome back to let's Talk About It. This is the first episode of 2026, dropping on January 1st because I upload on Thursdays, so this just happens to fall on January 1st, which is awesome. And it's perfect timing because I really want to focus on how we talk about the things in life we don't like. And I know a lot of people set resolutions this time of year. They set goals. Some people don't want any part of that, and that's fine, too. But I do want you to be very careful about how you talk to yourself about the things you want to change, because a lot of times we focus on the negative. So when we describe the things we don't like in life or the things we're struggling with, we can do that in detail. What I find when I talk to people, when I talk to my clients, is that the vision of what they do want is pretty blurry. And their focus kind of gets stuck in the problem or the issue with the thing they don't like. And then it becomes like this negative thought process instead of reframing it to what they're after. And that's what I'm going to help you with today. That's what we're going to do. So I want you to learn to shift from focusing on what's wrong to what you want to build and what you want. So, like, in terms of anxiety, yeah, we want less anxiety, but the goal, what we really want generally is more calm and more confidence. And you're going to hear me talk a lot about this, moving into the new year, this concept of calm and confidence, because those are two words I hear across the board so much. And they're so important to people because so many people lack a calm feeling and they lack the feeling of confidence. And that has become my North Star. How do I help people feel more calm and more confident? So you are going to hear me talk a lot about that. And this is kind of the first big episode where we're really going to dive into how do we do that Again, I want you to think about less or no. Anxiety isn't the finish line. We do want less of that. That's awesome. But that's not the finish line. That's not the destination. We're. Anxiety is information. Your mind and body are saying, hey, something's going on here. The destination is feeling more calm and confident. So think about if it's not anxiety for you, if calm and confidence aren't resonating with you, Think about in life what you want right now. What kind of information is the thing you don't like giving you? Do you get sick to your stomach every time you look at your bank account? It might seem obvious that the issue is that you're in debt or you don't have enough money. But the message is, hey, we need some financial literacy here. Hey, we need to figure out how to pay off debt. We need to figure out how to make it so we don't get a stomachache every time we open our bank account. There are skills you can build to understand the money. But because people feel so uncomfortable when they look at their bank account, if their bank account is an issue, that they avoid it all together. And then they get stuck again in that negative thought process about that thing that's creating the issue in their life. So it's what information is this experience or this situation or this feeling giving me right now? That's how I want you to really start to think about it. Remember, you get stuck on the negative because your brain's job is to keep you alive, to keep the blood flowing and your muscles moving and to keep you alive, it is not to make sure that you focus on the positive and that you have a good day. Your brain's job is doing great. It's to keep you alive. Your brain is going to track problems and try to predict negative outcomes. We used to have, I'm going to age myself here, but we used to have radar detectors in our cars for the cops. And it would go beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Like, as you got closer to the cop who had a radar gun. And now your brain is like detecting possible issues, possible threats. It's scanning for potential struggles. And so what your brain is doing, if you're not training yourself to focus on what's the information here? What is my body or my mind really trying to tell Me, What. What am I really after in this negative situation? Like, what do I truly need to change here? That radar detector, that threat detector, that scanning that your brain does is going to constantly stay focused on the problem. It's going to constantly be looking at. What's the issue here? We don't like this. How do we make this go away? I have anxiety. How do we lessen anxiety? How do we lessen anxiety? How do we lessen anxiety? And then the message stays around anxiety. Instead of your little detector saying, oh, how do we build calm and confidence? Right? Like, those are two completely different messages. If you're struggling with something, yeah, we want that problem to lessen. We want that problem to essentially go away. But the thought process around it stays very stuck in the negative, in the fact that this thing is an issue. And that is a hard spiral for a lot of people to get out of the continuing focus of the problem and what you don't like versus coming at it from kind of the way I'm talking to you about it right now. And a lot of times what happens is that the negative focus, the problem, the issue, the thing we don't like becomes part of our personality. It becomes part of our identity. So it sounds like I struggle with anxiety and my body is telling me I'm lacking confidence. And in these situations, what can I do to build the skills and assertiveness and improve my confidence? Instead, when you're caught in that loop, in focusing on the problem, you say things like, I'm so socially anxious. I'm just an anxious person. I can't make this anxiety go away. Or how do I feel less socially anxious? They make sense, but the difference is reframing it into a message and seeking information and what do I do here versus it? Staying in this acceptance of this is just part of who I am. This is part of my personality. This is part of my identity. We want to get away from that. You want to identify with being a more calm and confident or more financially literate, whatever it is for you kind of person. You don't want to say, hey, I'm this anxious person. And then in a year you're like, I'm a less anxious person. You want to be saying, now I'm an anxious person. But in a year being I'm a calm, confident person. Like, you have to think about how that sounds. And that's what we're really, really after here. So it's important how you speak to yourself about the things in life you don't like and how you're going about changing them. All right? So if you remember, in the top of the episode, I said, anxiety isn't the destination. The calm and confidence are in terms of anxiety. Right. Less anxiety is great. We can't just stay there. We can't focus solely on that. You can put energy into building the calm and confidence that will help you feel less anxious. Those are the destinations. The calm and the confidence are the destinations. The less anxiety is kind of the byproduct of building calm, of building confidence. So you can use that formula for anything you want to change. For my clients who are struggling with emotional eating or obesity, because I also specialize in bariatric counseling, they say things like, I'm so uncomfortable in my body. I hate the way I feel. And, yes, what they want is to maybe weigh less or to wear smaller clothes or to feel better in their body. Right. But that's not the destination. The destination is, I want to feel confident. I want to be proud. At the end of the day, I want to feel accomplished in my fitness routine or whatever it is. Like, lessening the issue. Isn't the sole destination what we're really after? The positives? I guess you could say that's the destination. When you work on that stuff, you'll naturally. The byproduct. Is that the issue? The problem will lessen. So if we put our energy into improving this thing over here that we're maybe lacking, the negative is gonna go down. But if we are focused on the negative and putting so much energy into how do I make this go down? How do I make this less? And how do I make this problem go away? You're gonna miss almost like a shortcut to naturally having the problem go down as a byproduct, because you're building the confidence and calm. You're building accomplishment, you're building pride in yourself. You're building nutrition and fitness and all the other physical and emotional feelings that come with. Again, whatever you're working on, you have to pay attention to how you're framing things in your mind about a problem or a struggle. Hey, I don't like this. The goal is less of this thing. Yeah, that's a very simplified way to go about it. I really want to drive home and encourage you to start to think about what is the actual destination here. So a couple things you can ask yourself are, what am I struggling with most right now? Like, what in my life do I not like? Is it a relationship? Is it my financial status? Is it my job? Is it my weight? Is it anxiety? Is it depression? Whatever it is, right? What are you struggling most with right now? And if that struggle were to lessen by half, what would be different? So if you're socially anxious and you were less socially anxious, you probably would feel more confident in social situations. So the goal isn't less social anxiety. The goal is to build the confidence. Because I don't want to just lessen the anxiety. I want more confidence and I want the anxiety to go down. If your struggle is weight or binge eating or emotional eating, yes, we want that stuff to go down. I don't like that. That doesn't feel good. But if that were lessened by half, how would I feel? Well, I'd probably feel proud of myself. At the end of the day I would feel accomplished. I would feel like I was someone who had a routine. So if I build the pride and the accomplishment and the routines, that's naturally going to lessen all the stuff over here. The binge eating, the overeating, my weight, whatever that struggle is over here. So what are you struggling most with right now? If that struggle were to lessen by half, what would be different? How would you feel? And then kind of like I just did, you name that focus in a sentence. So now I'm focusing on XYZ as I work on my fitness and nutrition or I'm focusing on building my confidence in social situations which will naturally lessen my social anxiety over time. That three step process is how you will start to reframe this if you want a quick recap. Again, what am I struggling with most right now? If that struggle were to lessen by half, what would be different? And then you name that focus in a sentence. I'm focusing now on X, Y, Z as I work on this issue. Right. This thing I don't like. But my focus isn't just to make this thing I don't like go away. My focus is to build up this thing over here which will lessen the thing I don't like or the thing I'm struggling with, or my problem or my issue in life. A couple other examples I can give you because I think the real world examples are important. Is someone who struggles with overthinking. I was trying to think about people I've worked with recently that we've worked through this kind of process. Someone who struggles with overthinking. If you're an overthinker, yeah, you'll want to overthink less. But the goal here, the true goal is to be able to trust yourself. Because as you Build your ability to trust yourself. You'll, in conversations and social engagements, won't doubt yourself as much. The overthinking will naturally lessen. So when I've worked through this with a client and they've been struggling with overthinking, it's like, well, if this went away, how would you act or behave or engage in conversations? How would you feel? And then we focus on that, which naturally lessens the overthinking. An example for perfectionism is they're the person I'm thinking about right now. Their North Star was to focus on making really fast and clear decisions and shooting for making steady progress because their perfectionism was holding them back and keeping them from starting projects or getting something out into the world. And so the plan wasn't to lessen the perfectionism. The plan was to build their ability to make decisions quickly and clearly and build their ability to make progress on a steady, like, steady trajectory so that their perfectionism stopped getting in the way of them working towards something, accomplishing something. I really, really just want you to think about how you are talking to yourself about the things in life you don't like. And I think this is naturally something that comes up all the time, obviously, but especially around this time of year, a lot of people are. Even if they're not setting goals and they're not setting resolutions, there's still this air in the world about, what am I doing this year? What am I after? What am I working on? A lot of people set an intention or a word of the year, which is amazing. But you do that probably because there might be something you just don't like or you just don't love about your life. There's something you've identified that isn't quite in alignment with how you would like it to be. You wouldn't have a goal if everything in life was perfect. So I want you to really look at how you talk to yourself about these issues or the things in life you're struggling with or the things you don't like. How are you talking to yourself about it? Lowering the anxiety, lessening the stress. It's great. But what you truly, truly, truly want and what you're after are the positive feelings that come along with less stress and anxiety. How much better does it sound when you say, my focus is building my confidence and working toward a calmer life instead of I have to lessen my anxiety or I'm gonna go crazy or something like that?

Right.

I hear this stuff day in and day out with my clients. And when you phrase it in a more positive, productive, working toward change kind of way. It's much more accessible, it's much more palatable, it's much more desirable than just continuing to stay stuck on how do I make this problem go away? How do I make this problem go away? How do I make this problem go away? It's just so much more productive to do it in the way that I've explained it to you today. One comes from a positive place, the other one comes from continuing to focus on the problem or the thing you don't like. So stop asking yourself how do I make this go away? And start asking yourself, what am I trying to do here? What am I trying to accomplish here? What am I trying to build here? A little different of a reframe as we move into the new year. As always, send me a message on Instagram, let me know your thoughts. Tag me in a photo of you listening to this. I know a lot of people are driving or cooking or cleaning and it's always cool to see where you're listening from. I appreciate you so much. I am very excited about 2026. We are going to be doing a lot of calm and confidence building and all of the things you're after and we are going to focus on what we're truly wanting versus just trying to make problems go away. Let's focus on what is going to help us build a life that we want and that makes us happy and that feels aligned versus solely keeping our energy into I don't like this and my energy is just going into how do I make this go away? We are really going to build up that positive, the calm, the confidence or whatever you're truly after. So hope you enjoyed this. As always, I appreciate you. And until next time, take care.

Thanks for hanging out with me today on let's Talk about it with Laurie Streeter. If this episode resonated with you, it would mean so much if you'd leave a five star review, share it with a friend, or come say hi on Instagram at lauristreeter. Your support will help this podcast grow and I so appreciate you being here today. I want to help people just like you feel like they're not alone and gain the tools they need to grow. Until next time, take care.