78: The Cost of Perpetually Positive

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Welcome to Grief and Guts. I'm your host, Melissa Dugulecki. It is my honor and privilege to serve you by sharing stories, tools, interviews, and strategies that will help you transition from what do I do now? How do I get through this? Those feelings of overwhelm and uncertainty to truly standing in your power. From my grief journey in losing my daughter laden in 2014, that I learned.

Practiced, was exposed to all these tools.

But they are not grief specific. In fact, they apply universally to all of our unique situations. You've already done the hard part by showing up, by opening up to something new. So without any further ado, let's get to the good stuff that's going to help you in your journey. Let's dive in.

All right, guys, I have a sprint episode here based on one of your questions. And I've been asked this a few times. And recently somebody said, you know, I really struggle and I feel like you're really positive and how do I deal with negative thoughts? So I want to hit that because one, it's really heavy to feel on top of any struggle that we're having that like, why am I not more positive? Or I need to be positive. I really want to separate out positive and productive and help you guys. So thank you for sending your questions because it always allows me to give, you know, the most valuable feedback. I'm not, you know, my voice is in my head all the time, guys. It's kind of exhausting, to be honest. Right. But if I'm going to share my voice with you, I want it to be one of service and I want it to be one of value. So again, thank you so much for sharing your questions, your thoughts, and this one was great. So let's break it down first. Do I have negative thoughts? And I guess the answer to that is that I probably define negative differently. I have thoughts of days where sometimes I am really exhausted or I didn't get as much done as I wanted to do. Maybe I didn't show up as powerfully as I wanted to show up, or I would do something a little bit differently. But I don't think it's so much the thoughts that arise. Now, in nlp, we talk a lot about our thought processes. Right. And reprogramming our brains. So absolutely it's going to be two part. But I want to first answer this question. It's really the judgment that we attach to what pops up that can create this quote unquote, negative experience. Right? So, for example, if I used to maybe have a day where I Didn't get nearly as much done. It could spiral into, I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy enough. Am I cut out for this? I need help. Prior to doing any work, it could have spun out to pointing fingers. It's usually what happens is first we point fingers elsewhere and then we point fingers within. And then what we really want to do is learn just not to point fingers. And that's where I'm at now, right. So I don't point them out externally, I don't point them internally. I do always first look internally at what's happening in my experience, but I really lead with curiosity. So these negative thoughts will always pop up in the sense of typically though, the negative thoughts around challenges. So the challenges are always going to pop up. Things not going as planned is always going to pop up. Off roading is always going to pop up. Challenges are always going to pop up. But the thoughts that are attached to those don't always have to pop up. Now it's going to first start with you noticing what you're projecting externally, right? You're putting out there externally. Because a lot of that's all, a lot of it, it is all about your internal experience, right? That's why I always say, like, you know, we can't spout criticism if we're not internally, you know, unless we're internally critical. And so when someone's very critical, I think, wow, that must be very exhausting for them, right? That must be very exhausting. Now, it doesn't mean you don't have an opinion. I have opinions on things, but I also don't think there's any one right or wrong way of doing things. I think it's about alignment, right? And, you know, the number one thing that I align with is direct communication, standing in truth. So if somebody's standing in their truth and I'm sitting in mine and they just don't fit, doesn't mean that we're right or wrong. It just means it's not in alignment. So that's a big part of understanding these negative thoughts. And like, do you have them now? The second part that I want to get into is about retraining your brain. And this is where the daily work is important. Five minutes, guys. Give me five minutes a day for three weeks. I challenge you. Maybe we just make that a thing right now. Five minutes, three weeks. I challenge you to do this and see how it changes your mindset. So first, what we want to do is we want to recognize what are the voices that are popping up in my head. And where do they come from? Typically they're from stories, traumas, examples, things that were said to us and we store it and they live in us and then we're out there looking, fight or flight, and experience happens. We want to understand it to make sure we're safe. We attach a story that we've buried inside of us to that and that can have a negative connotation in our mind. So we first want to identify what these voices are. Now, I can't do this for you guys in a quick podcast episode. This is a majority of the work that I do, right in 90 days, CEO in move or in my one on one coaching. So it sounds super easy. It's a process. It's a process. So first we want to understand what are these stories, where are they coming from and can we start to call them out. So I've actually created a four step method. I've gone through that in earlier podcasts. Please check it out if you want to learn more. But it's the four step method of like that story that comes out to creating a new one. So that's going to be one that's kind of like releasing and like decluttering and cleaning out our internal kind of clutter, right, Our energetic clutter. Beyond that, we really want to look at how am I affirming what I want. So quite often we focus on what we don't want to happen, we focus on what we don't want, we focus on what we want to avoid. And what we really need to begin to do is, you know, universe doesn't know negatives. It's whatever you put out there, you're going to get back. If you are focusing on what you don't want, your attention is still going to the very thing you don't want. Where energy goes, energy grows. So you're actually growing the very thing you don't want just in your own thoughts. So this is the next piece that we really work on. Like, okay, how do we begin to shift that? How do we begin to shift that? Then how do we affirm? How do we go even deeper? Now this kind of follows the four step process that move was built on. So step one, foundation. So that's where we're kind of like decluttering. Step two, letting go. So we stop focusing on what we don't want. Step three is power. And this is more affirmations, right? So we do a lot of affirmations. So it's going to be a lot about like, what do I want? What is great about me, what do I love about myself? And affirming the very things that we struggle with. And it's uncomfortable. At first I avoided it. I didn't want to do it, and now it's just very natural. It's muscle memory, right? It's brain muscle memory. We are training and rewiring these patterns you can start with. And that's why you do feel good when you see those quotes out there that inspire you and tell you you're doing great. But why can't we inspire ourselves and tell us ourselves that we're doing great? Right? Why do we need some fancy Instagram tile or something out there that's like, oh, that's going to make me feel good about myself? Can we provide that for ourselves? It's really hard at first, and it's so powerful. It's where the transformation lies. So I'm going to encourage you guys to go through this process. I know I'm throwing a lot at you, so any questions you have, send them on over, right? Send them on over. The last thing that I want to tease out here is helping you understand that being positive, perpetually positive, isn't actually productive. All right? So being perpetually positive isn't actually productive because, you know, it's like I always envision, when I think about it, you know, like that quintessential stereotypical, you know, character in the movies who's sitting there with, like, perfect homemade brownies and a lasagna with, you know, sauce and probably noodles made from scratch, and kids in matching, like, gingham or plaid, and two and a half kids somehow, and a white picket fence and a dog that doesn't bark and, you know, a spouse, a perfect spout. Perfect, right? And they're sitting there like, everything's great, everything's positive. I'm so great. This life is so great, right? But inside, like, shit's just falling apart, right? Maybe it's not a healthy marriage. Maybe there's significant amount of debt. Maybe those brownies put them into more debt because they had to go buy the certain chocolate that was really expensive. I don't know. But this need, this pressure from society, and then we put on ourselves to be like, everything's great all the time. Makes us work really hard to put something out there that always looks really great, that could cost us a lot more money, a lot more time, a lot more, all the things, right? It's like, you know, you can tell. You can tell on social media when somebody's thing is real, and you can tell when it's not. Authenticity, you know, wins. Authenticity prevails. And, you know, that's why you're gonna get. You get me on here, like sunburned. No, nothing fancy. No makeup, really. A little mascara for you guys. That's all I got. And, you know, just it. I don't even have a script. I'm just talking, right? I'm just talking human to human. But that's my authentic me. That's my authentic me, right? So I'm going to do that. And I want you to be your authentic you. Perpetually positive. Actually masks. It's a form of denial, right? It's a form of avoidance. So when we need, when we have this, like, obsession, this attachment, like, you know, I hear this a lot and this is a really. What I just shared was an extreme kind of just, you know, image for you guys. But what I hear a lot, and this is, like, getting real here. What I hear very, very frequently is, you know, I've got this going on, this going on, this going on. But it's okay. I'm fine. Everything's great. And I'm just. I'm lucky and I'm happy to be alive. No, no, no, no, no, no. Use the word and let both of those exist. Like, this is really shitty. This is hard. This is heavy. And I kind of went through this in my grief. And I think a lot of it comes from. One is we don't want to feel like we're burdening anybody with our shit right now, of course, like, we don't want to be at nausea and burdening people with our shit, right? We got to take ownership for it. We don't want to dump it on them. We can share it and we can stand in our truth. There's a difference. Otherwise, it's denial and avoidance, right? Or people pleasing, right? And if somebody doesn't want, you know, I went through this in my grief, guys. So if you're going through it, I understand. But if some. If my grief makes somebody uncomfortable, that's for them to work through, that's not for me to carry, right? My grief makes somebody uncomfortable, that's for them to work through. That's not for me to carry. That was hard for me, but it plays into this whole thing of, again, we're talking about it, personal responsibility. I have to be responsible for my grief, and I can't sit there and be like, it's okay. I don't even want to get out of bed, but I have a job and I have a house and a car and I'M really lucky. Like, no, no. And I hear this a lot. I was on the phone with a woman today, you know, who was going through a divorce and who moved and who's been having a hard time in quarantine. And immediately she, like, guilted and shamed her struggle, right? We don't want to shame our own struggles. We don't want to shame anyone's struggles. We especially don't want to shame our own, right? So perpetually positive can actually be very destructive because she felt this need to be like, but, you know, the sun's shining and things are out. It's like, okay, yes, the sun is shining. I understand there's a level of having. Keeping perspective. But don't do it at the cost of minimizing your struggle. Don't do it at the cost of stuffing down your needs, Right? Don't do it at the cost of burying what you're going through and not doing the work. Because what happens is when you know, whoever, whatever her name is, I don't even know Claire, whatever this is, sitting there with her brownies and her lasagna and her gingham and her two and a half kids somehow, and whatever it is, and she's burying it, and she's burying it, and she's burying it. She's not doing the work because she feels like she has to be positive and we need to own the messy and the muck and do the work and get in it, get in those trenches, right? That's what we do here. That's what you guys do here. You're doing it, right? So keep showing up. In answer to your question, I used to have negative thoughts. I really don't. When I have negative or challenging experiences, it's the story I attach to them that I allowed to go forward. But it starts with first recognizing, what are all these voices and stories inside of you. I went through all of this, too, guys. I went through all of this. What are these stories and voices, right? Then what am I going to let go of? Focusing my energy on the wrong things? What new things am I going to affirm? And then removing this obsession, this pressure of everything's got to be perfect, right? And I think as a society, we're getting further and further away, thank goodness. But internally, right? We can't control society. But doing your part and how you show up, allow the challenges to surface. Allow the sadness, the anger, whatever it is, allow it to all come up so you can work through it instead of using the word. But use the word and. And make space for things that you are grateful for, right? And some days that might just be your ability to breathe and let that be. Okay. I'm proud of you. Thank you for doing this work. Let me know what questions you have. As always, it's just an absolute privilege.

To shine my daughter Layden's light and.

Everything that she has taught.

Hopefully help you shine your light even.

More brightly and talk soon.

Thank you all so much for being here at Grief and Guts as Layden's mom. Being able to spread the stories, the strategies, the lessons I have learned through Layden and from Layden is the thing that means the most to me in this world and allowing my daughter's short life to have long and lasting impact by shining her light. Truly, nothing means more if you align with and believe in the work that we're doing here in these messages. The best way to give back and to spread this out into the world is to rate and review on Spotify and on itunes. Thank you for taking just a moment to do that. Feel free to shoot me a message. Let me know what you want to hear more of, what you want to see more of. I am here to serve. I'm grateful to do so, and I'm cheering you on in your journeys.

Always.