96: Two Steps For More Energy

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. It is 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, everybody.

Welcome back. So in my grief journey, taking things personally was something I had to really learn. I'd say prior to losing my daughter, Leiden, I took most things personally. Whether it was at work and I had criticism, whether somebody wasn't available or canceled plans or had a negative comment or maybe their energy was off, I made it about me. And that's very natural. That's very common. But. But it's also very exhausting. And so in grief, when I'm struggling, when my world is shattered, when I'm absolutely exhausted, I literally couldn't afford to take things personally. I literally couldn't afford to take things personally. And so I had to understand our energy reserves. Now, think of it like this. Think of it every time that you kind of switch and you go from a steady state to, like, very wound up and upset, back to a steady state, and then maybe very wound up and upset. And those are triggers, right? Those spikes, Our triggers. Every time we go chasing our triggers, right, and we react on our triggers, we're literally exhausting energy. Think of it like a standard car. I can't drive one. I still don't know how to drive one. But every time you shift gears, you're using more energy. Think about that for your own emotions. Every time you shift gears, you're using more energy. So how. How did I. And how do we begin to reduce the amount of shifts that we're doing? Well, for me, I had to really dig deep, build some empathy, and learn not to take things personally because, you know, somebody who didn't know I had lost my child, like, I'm walking around, like, the whole world should know, and somebody's rude to me at Trader Joe's and tells me to, you know, what am I doing to get out of the way? Because I literally was Standing there, like, paralyzed, like, I. I couldn't remember what I'd gone in for. I remember being at Starbucks one time and in line, and the person behind me was annoyed because once again, I couldn't remember my order. I couldn't, like, form, formulate words, right? And if I had reacted to that person and taken it personally, I would have exhausted myself on top of already being exhausted, which is no bueno. No bueno, no good. I'm here in Tulum, Mexico. I love throwing in my Spanish, mi espanol. So what did I do? I had to really learn empathy, right? And I had to really learn to look within myself. So I'm going to give you guys two steps. Two steps to not take things personally and to feel more energetic freedom in your life starting today, right? You don't have to wait on this. This could be starting today. Now, a lot of you guys wanted to learn more about relationships and growth. Last week, I did a podcast episode all on relationships and growth. This is a tactic, a skill, a tool that you can use in your relationships to improve them. Because if you're not constantly just reacting to your triggers in your relationships, your relationships are gonna strengthen, they're gonna find much more steady, and you're gonna have much more energy to put to things that better serve you, right? And I think we can all agree that we'd love to put energy towards things in our relationships that better serve us. So when I feel myself triggered, the first thing I do is I ask myself, why is this triggering me? Right? Why is this triggering me? Right? There's that phrase like, nobody else can steal your peace unless you allow them to. And it's true, right? It's true. So for me, for example, if somebody says to me, you know, I'm a mean person, I'm probably not going to feel any type of trigger. I'm going to be like, wow, what's going on with that person that they are having that experience? Or what are they carrying or what triggers lie within them that I'm holding a mirror up to because I know I'm not a mean person. I know I'm a very caring person. Now, if somebody does something or says something in an area I'm feeling less confident in or insecure in, it's going to trigger me, right? It's going to trigger me. I talk a lot about this. Example, when I would see people running when I wasn't committed to my fitness, and I would think, like, oh, like, I would feel bad about myself. It would trigger me, right? I would Think like they might not work as hard as I am or they don't have this going on and I go to that victimization. But the reality is now when I see somebody running, whether it's pouring rain or early in the morning, I think like, go, go, go. Right? Nothing changed about the runners. It changed about me and how I manage my energy, right? I feel good about how I tend to my fitness now. So first thing that you want to do is when you feel triggered and you're taking something personally to look within. This plays on the concept of personal responsibility, which I've also recorded a podcast on. I've done bonus coaching calls on it. It's a super popular topic in both the business and personal coaching that I do for people and move in a 90 day CEO. Personal responsibility. How am I taking responsibility for my reaction? How am I looking at my trigger? How am I looking with in so important? That is step one and really exploring. In order to do this, guys, we have to get curious. We have to quiet the ego. We cannot judge ourselves, right? We cannot scrutinize or analyze or try and control. It's more or less like, wow, what's this triggering? What is this holding up a mirror to me? For what do I not feel totally good and whole about in my own life? Okay, so that's step one, personal responsibility. Explore that trigger. Look within. If somebody, maybe a friend or a family member, cancels plans on you, for example, and you take it really personally, instead of recognizing they might have stuff going on in their life or recognizing it's actually a beautiful thing. If you can be a safe place for people to choose alignment and cancel plans if they need to, if they're chronically doing it, that's a different conversation. That's a conversation about them taking on too much in their own capacity. But here or there, if it triggers feelings of rejection or abandonment or am I worthy, that's for us to take personal responsibility and go in and do the work. Go in and do the work. This plays into ego work. I've done a bonus call on that. If you guys are interested in learning more, let me know. I highly recommend studying ego work in 2021. If you have not, it will absolutely change your life, I promise. It will absolutely change your life if you choose to really commit to studying ego work. So step one, we go within, right? Step two, we go without and we explore their perspective. Now, I like to call this sustainable empathy where we don't get in their experience with them. We have like this out of body experience where we pull ourselves out and it's like we're looking down, right? We're looking down. So that person at Trader Joe's, well, maybe she's got, like four kids at home. She had 12 minutes to get to the grocery store. She's super stressed. She's got to get somewhere else. You know, this was before, way before COVID right? This was in 2014. Maybe she's got to, like, get a lot of stuff done and I'm in her way, right? I'm in her way. Maybe she's envious of me, that I have the time and the ability to just stand there and stare off into space. And that triggered her and she felt annoyed. So I always like to look at what other people are experiencing. If someone cancels plans, like, maybe they're sick and they don't want to talk about it. Maybe they just found out someone in their family is sick. Maybe they had a really bad day of work. Maybe they got a bad email of work. Maybe they've been laid off and they don't want to talk about it yet. Maybe, you know, they're just absolutely exhausted and they're learning to create boundaries and, wow, maybe I can be a place for them to learn to create boundaries right now. Of course, if somebody's chronically a jerk or chronically canceling, that's a different conversation. That's a conversation about if you need to create boundaries with them and not let them in. If someone's constantly canceling with them, maybe you don't make plans with them and you just have a conversation. Hey, I'm not mad at you. This isn't personal. But our plans aren't reliable, right? I don't want to commit my time and energy and be canceled on chronically. Again. That's not taking it personally. That's also standing in your power, holding your own space and communicating directly. Right? You're holding a mirror for each other. One strategy that you can do with this that I find really effective is to think about what else could be true. And so I challenge my clients and the mindset work that I do, right, in Both move and 90 days CEO, to think what else could be true, right? A 90 day CEO. Maybe it's someone who decides they don't want to work with them in their program. Well, what else could be true? Maybe they feel a lack of worthiness in their self. Maybe they have a fear of failure. Maybe they have a fear of success. Maybe they have a fear of it working and they're still not happy, and then they Think, well, now what reason do I have to not be happy, right? So whatever it may be, I really want you to think, what else could be true? And you can get like crazy, like, you know, maybe they just won a trip somewhere or whatever, or maybe they just won the lottery or who knows, right? But what else could be true? And what you're actually doing is you're building the skill of flexible thinking. You are building the skill of flexible thinking, which is a really important skill if you want to be in more control of your energy. It's a really important skill if you want to strengthen your relationships and your connections and you want to feel better. I've never worked with somebody who says, oh, I have so much time, so much money, so much energy hanging around, right? So it's not about waiting for us to have more. It's about how do we use what we have more efficiently. This is truly how I transitioned from over $100,000 in debt applying this principle. I'm not afraid to use energy, I'm not afraid to use emotion. I'm not afraid to use finances. But where am I wasting it, right? Where am I shifting these gears and reacting to triggers for me, where was I feeling triggered and then coping by spending financially or spending on food or on drink or whatever it may be going on shopping sprees to try and tend to that trigger rather than just doing the work and sitting with it. One of the most beautiful things I ever heard in my grief work was when my counselor said, melissa, sometimes you just have to sit with the shit. You just have to sit with the shit. Now think about that. If we can learn to sit with it instead of getting high and low and high and low and high and low, and just sit with it and get curious. And first, one, look within, and then two, look without and doing both without judging or labeling or criticizing or controlling, right? Thinking, what else could be true? Thinking, wow, why is this triggering me? What is this telling me? What mirror is being held up, you guys? There are mirrors being held up to you every single day. Every single day, somebody's holding a mirror up to you for a place of growth. It's up to us to choose to see it. And if you can get really good at looking in these mirrors, which means quieting the ego, right? Quieting the ego. You're going to get really good at cultivating personal growth. You're going to get really good at cultivating personal growth. And the more you go personally, the more you can grow in your relationship. So if you are one of Those people that voted on my Instagram poll, you guys can find me at Mindset and Malba. I do all sorts of polls, all sorts of Mindset shares. If you were somebody who voted and said, I want to feel better in my relationships, well, this is where you start. This is where you start. Do not be a slave to your triggers, right? Do not run from the mirrors and learn to not take things personally. I highly recommend the book the Four Agreements for this. And I go even further to not take things personally that are negative, but I actually don't think things personally that are positive. So if somebody thinks I'm like the best of the best, it's just whatever I'm triggering within them that they're experiencing at this time in their life, it's not about me. It's about how what I'm doing and what I'm providing is making them feel, which is based on their own work, their own energy. That's a whole other level. So let's master level one, not taking things negatively. So I hope this was helpful. Again, as we're getting really into this mindset and energy. It is all rooted in my grief journey, but it applies so much more widely than that. Right? The book that I'm working on right now, the goal is to expand the definition of grief beyond loss of life, right? Loss of future imagined loss of job, loss of relationship, loss of sense of self. Any of these things have the energetics of grief. And when we understand the energetics of grief, we understand the energetics of life and how carefully we want to and need to manage our energy, to be in our power, to be in control, to show up with presence, to show up with connection and to not just waste and burn energy on responding to trigger after trigger after trigger. So, so thank you guys for tuning in. As always, let me know what you think. I am so grateful to be able to shine my daughter's light, share these things and hopefully help you in your own journey. We'll 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 Laden 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.

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