Building Lasting Change: Transforming Your Life for Good

If you're not making the progress you want, it's probably because you're not dealing with some sort of limiting belief and you're not changing the core of who you are. Because big changes in life are more than about changing a behavior. If you've got a destructive behavior pattern, we all have one or two of those that you're trying to change. It's probably pretty hardwired in, and it's probably tied to. To some deeply ingrained thoughts and beliefs about yourself, about the world, about what's possible. And it's not. You're not going to get the transformation you're looking for until you confront these beliefs. Now, these could be any number of limiting beliefs, but I'm going to give you a bunch of examples in four different categories, like the four big categories. We're going to go through those. I'm going to give you some examples and. And hopefully that will prompt you to start being able to identify and figure out what your own limiting beliefs are that are keeping you stuck. If you've ever had one of those, like, I call it like a light bulb moment where all of a sudden somebody says something, you read something, you hear something, you hear in a video, whatever, and then it's like a light bulb goes off in your head and something shifts and everything looks different to you than it looked before, and you just feel completely different because of it. That's what I'm talking about. It's a light bulb moment. And probably what's happening there is like, you learn something that totally shifted your perspective on something important. And it's like, amazing how much change happens in that one moment. Having worked with people for years and years who are making big changes, you know, everyone talks about like, it's the rock bottom, it's the this, it's the note, it's the light bulb moment, right? It's the once you start to see things differently, it's all different from there. And actually, once you have that moment and that shift, I'm not saying it's easy, but it's way easier than what's been happening. I'm not saying there's no struggle, but it won't feel nearly as tough as it used to feel. So identifying this thought process and this belief that's holding you back is super uber important. We're going to look at four categories today. Going to look at relationships, self, money, and of course, because this is an addiction recovery channel, we're going to look at irrational thoughts related to addiction that could be keeping you stuck all Right. So we're going to start out with relationships because if our relationships aren't right, nothing's right. Right. If our relationships aren't right, we don't function well. We're, we're upset. There's drama holding us back. And a lot of that drama comes from us inside of our own head. We keep ourselves stuck with resentment and frustration and aggravation and most of that comes from us. I know other people can be aggravating. I'm not saying other people don't do anything wrong. I'm just saying the aggravation comes from inside of us. And I want to help you understand why. For example, I know you've heard this before, but you, but you might not have like completely digested it, the idea that other people are not responsible for your feelings, which also is true in reverse. You are not responsible for other people's feelings. Now I don't say that in the way that like some people say, like, well, you shouldn't care what anyone thinks ever. You can just walk around the earth and say and do whatever and be hurtful or rude or controlling or mean or whatever. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying when you know your intentions are good and you know you're not behaving in a mean or cruel way to someone, if they interpret something in some kind of way and that makes them feel some kind of way, that's not on you, that's on them. And the same thing for you. So we do that sometimes to other people. And I want you to keep listening because I'm going to give you a really good example of a situation just like this. I think it's going to make it all come into focus for you. Another thing that can get you really tied up in a bad place when it comes to relationships is any kind of shoulds or ought to's that you could be holding on to. I know that seems a little bit confusing, but growing up, you know, we learn lessons from our mama, grandmama, our best friends and all these people and you know, our ministers, whoever in our life and about the way the world's supposed to work, about the way people should and shouldn't act and all that kind of stuff. And so these things become so wired into us. They, they're very like, subconscious. We think people should do certain things and they shouldn't do certain things. And the problem with that is when people act outside of our shoulds and shouldn'ts, we get real upset because they're breaking this rule, this universal Law. It's actually not really a law. It's actually not really a rule. There's really no such things as shoulds and shouldn't. There's behaviors that are more effective and less effective, but there's no such thing as someone should or shouldn't do something any kind of certain way. And when you have a lot of that built up and people don't abide by those, you gonna find yourself real upset. Especially if you're the kind of person that feels like there's, like, a right way and a wrong way to do something, you're gonna find this button gets pushed in your life, and when you let go of that, you will release so much stress, you will free yourself up. Like, the things that used to bother you so much before will no longer bother you now. Also with the shoulds is the ops. I don't know if they say that we're everywhere in the country like we say in the south, but you ought to do this, and you ought not do that. It's another version of should. Okay? And so if you have a lot of ought to's, nots, shoulds, and should nots. When you feel yourself having a thought like that, I want you to confront it. Like, a thought that occurs to me sometimes that I have that I have to fight with a lot is like, people should talk to their mom and daddy with respect, and they ought not be using attitude when I talk to their mom and daddy. Now, that's one of the things that when I see happen, boy, it will just, like, climb all over me. And I was even like that as a teenager when I would see my friends talk to their parents. Nasty. It just didn't work for me. Even if I'm in session and it's my client, usually it's my client client talking to their parents. Nasty. I'm like, oh, no, no. I can't even defend you. Even if you're my own client. You do that because it just hits a button in me because I don't ever. I don't know that I was ever told that. I may have been told that, but I definitely learned that somewhere along the way. Like, out of bounds, uncool. It's just not cool. So it's one of the things that if my. If my son does, it'll hit my button faster than anything. And I'm probably, like, one of the most permissive parents that you ever met. I know y' all probably don't think so because I'm addiction counselor, but it's true. Ask anyone that knows me. Ask all my kids, friends, parents. But the attitude and the sassiness, that'll get me because I have it in my head as shoulds and ought to's and ought nots. And that's not necessarily the case now. Like I said, there's more effective behaviors and less effective behaviors, but there's really no such things as should and ought. To. Let me give you an example that really is gonna clarify for you what I mean when I say you can't be responsible for other people's feelings and behaviors. All right, I got this comment or this message that got sent to me via Facebook this week, and I didn't respond to it. It's not a nice message. Just warning you now. It's not a nice message. I didn't respond to it. I just sort of let it sit. I definitely felt defensive when I read it and about every second sentence or so when I read it. I'm. I want to have, like, a sassy talk back to it, but I'm not going to do that. But you guys feel free to do that if you want to. Earlier this week, I posted in the community section on YouTube, I posted this comment that I had gotten last week or something like that, and I. And basically I just put it up and I said, what would you say? Or how would you respond to this? And. And all you guys, like, jumped on there, and then you said all these things, which were, like, so much better comebacks than I could come up with. It was so fabulous. I didn't respond to that person's comment, but just hearing you guys say it, I felt totally, like, vindicated. I just lived vicariously through you guys. All right, so here's. Here's this message that I got. This is really, like, projection is what's happening here. The person sent me a message says, my daughter, who is trying to recover from a relationship with an addict and the loss of a friend, has been watching your YouTube videos for therapy. She's had me watch them, too, because of what you say. And now she has it in her head that her parents are the problem. She disregards all of her own actions, most of them aggressive and mean, and blames it all on us and uses your YouTubes as ammunition. You like to talk, but you don't ever consider that your advice backfires. It does. All caps. We're good. And we were good until she started watching your videos. You are a hack and you should be ashamed of yourself. Btw, she refuses to acknowledge her drug use. She says it's the way she copes with us. I say that's bs. Her drug use is her attempt at dealing with the addict that she fell in love with and couldn't handle or what he was doing to himself. Any chance I get, I will shout from the rooftops that you do not know what you are talking about. Have you ever been in these positions that you love to give advice on? Doubtful. All in capital letters. So that's the message that I got. As you can imagine, I had a lot of defensive thoughts about that. But what I see here is, I see here that somebody that's upset because a relationship is not going well, an important relationship is not going well, her relationship with her daughter, but she's sort of blaming that on me. And if you, those of you that have seen my videos, you know that, like, literally this is the opposite of what I teach in my videos. I tell. I tell families all the time that if someone has an addiction, they're going to split, they're going to make you the bad guy, they're going to vilify you. And that is exactly what's happening here. At least that's what this person is describing. I don't. I can't really, like, know for sure this daughter's doing this or not. I don't know these people at all. So you've got somebody who's like, projecting all of that frustration on me now. I can't. I'm not going to take ownership of that because, number one, that's not what I talk about in my videos. And if this person had watched my videos, they would know that actually my messages are the exact opposite. That I don't blame families. I do empower families, that there are some things you can do that are more effective and less effective. But no way ever did I blame. Do I blame families. And also pretty regularly tell you guys, don't use my videos as a weapon. That's not what they're intended to do. So don't. If, if this person is doing that, it's just a good time for me to say it again. If you want someone in your life to watch a video of Mom Bomb, something, a video that I say they're going to agree with, don't find some video of mine and use it as a weapon to be hurtful towards somebody, at least I can't stop you from doing it. But I'm going to ask you not to do that. You guys let me know what you think about that in the comments if you want to. And put a little emoji beside it. So I'll know that you're. That you are responding to that, like a little face emoji or something. Now, that's an example of how someone negatively projects something on you. But I want you to guys, keep watching to the end because I actually have some really good messages that I've received lately that are the opposite of that. To show you how, you know, people are going to take what you say, how they want to take it sometimes, and I'm going to share those with you. They're very heartwarming. I'll have to try not to tear up, but I'm going to share those with you, too. So that way we get in on a good note. Now let's move on to some limiting beliefs that you could be having about yourself that could be holding you back in ways that you don't want to be held back. Maybe you want to do something big in your life, but you're telling yourself, I don't know how to or I'm not good at that. Well, the thing of it is, everything you do right now and everything that you're good at right now, there was a time when you couldn't do that and you didn't know how to do that and you weren't good at it. So telling yourself, I can't do something because I don't know how to do that is silly. Because you. We never have a skill until we practice the skill. You didn't know how to read until you learned how to read, didn't know how to ride a bike till you learned how to ride a bike. Right? You didn't know how to use the Internet until you learned to use the Internet. So don't hold yourself back with the thought of like, I'm not good at something. You're not good at it because you haven't practiced it enough or done it enough. Now, if it's something you don't care about being good at and you don't want to learn, then who cares? Don't learn it. Don't waste your time. But if something that you really want in your life and you're letting this idea that I'm not good at that hold you back, that's silly. For example, when I first started thinking about, like, doing online videos and stuff, like way back before I Even started making YouTube videos, I was having that thought and I thought, I don't know anything about technology. Counselors. Don't. They're not IT people. Which is for the most part true. At the time, I didn't Even know how to put music on my iPhone. That was the time when you had, like, download music on your iPhone. The only thing I had to do is ask my husband, like, hey, babe, can you put this song on my phone? But I found myself thinking that thought. I literally can remember where I was at when I was having this, like, conversation with myself. I was walking in my neighborhood and I thought, well, I'm not gonna let that stop me. That's dumb. If you can learn to do it, I can learn to do it. And I figured out all this it stuff. It can be learned. Another thought that you could be have, that's irrational. It's a limiting belief that could be holding you back is some. Any version of my past has broken me. I can't because I messed up. I always mess things up because whatever bad thing has happened to me in my past, and I'm not trying to say that bad things haven't happened to you, Bad things have happened to all of us. And I'm not trying to say that it hasn't had, like a major impact on you, but I would venture to say that whatever those bad things that have happened to you, not that you would want them to happen, but you have some kind of gift or unique perspective or there's part of your greatness is connected to whatever that bad thing was that happened to you because you had to grow some kind of special insight, ability, skills, adaptive something in order to overcome that. So instead of thinking to yourself, I can't because I'm broken, I want you to look at whatever that thing is, and I want you to say, actually, I have this gift because of that broken piece. For me, it's very similar. Like you hear about people who have disabilities. Like, if you can't see, your hearing is probably stronger. It works the same way. Even with these emotional things, you just have to look for it and find it and find the ways that whatever that thing is that has happened to you actually makes you stronger in some way or department. You can succeed because of it. Now, another one that's very, very common is I can't because I don't have time. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this one because we all know that you have time for whatever you make time for. You may have to rearrange. You may be a busy person, you may have five jobs or five kids or whatever it is, but I don't have time usually means it's not high enough on my priority list. So whenever you're having that thought I don't have time. I want you to convert and translate that thought into, is it high enough on my priority list? Do I want it to be high enough on my priority list? Because it's perfectly fine to say no. It's not really up there enough for me to make time for it, that's okay, too. But if it's something that you really want, you can't use an excuse of I don't have time. Another limiting belief that can hold you back is this belief about I need to be balanced. I don't really believe in that. If there's something in your life that's not where you want it to be, for example, if your relationship is in a mess, if your finances are in a mess, if yourself is in a mess, you can't fix that and be balanced at the same time. Any area that you're trying to grow in, you're going to have to put extra additional effort and energy and resources into in order to get that area up to part of where you want it to be. Now, there may be seasons in life where things are going okay for you and you are more balanced, but sometimes you're trying to accomplish something great and people will tell you, oh, you're working too hard, you're obsessed, you're this, you're that don't want to throw you off. Like, no one ever did anything great. Being balanced, I promise you. So now I would say there are some things you put your time, energy into that are not productive, that are harming you and not helping you. But this idea of I need to be balanced and I need to, like, be good at every single thing. Like, I need to, like, be sure I'm like, a good mom and I'm good at my career, and I keep my house perfect and I cook all the meals from scratch and they're really healthy, and I do meal prep and I walk the dog every day that trying to balance all those things, you're never going to be great in any of those things. So you got to kind of decide, what am I okay with either letting go or having someone else do it. But the idea of letting go of that balance and feeling like you need to do everything and your. Your attention needs to be equally divided. It's kind of irrational, right? But you'll hold yourself back because you'll feel yourself growing or focusing on some area that you want to, and then you'll make yourself feel guilty about it. Don't. Don't do that, because that's the only way you're Ever going to get those areas that aren't where you want them to be to be where you want them to be. Another self thought that could really be holding you back is a thought about self confidence. You could be telling yourself, I'm just not confident enough. I don't have the confidence to pull something like that off. The thing about confidence is you aren't ever going to feel confident about anything until you feel confident doing it. And, and you're. And that's not going to happen before you do it. You're going to have to do whatever it is that you want to do long enough and you're going to have to do it crappy and you're going to have to mess it up long enough that you get competent at it. And then the confidence comes. If you want to be a singer, you can't sit around and wait till you feel confident enough to go sing. It's not going to happen, people. You got to sing enough times long enough. Even when you feel insecure about it, even when you feel unconfident about it, until the confidence comes. So it's action before feeling. Don't wait for that confidence to come. It'll come after you get good at it, not before. Let's see, I'm going to move here. I'm going to share another. One sec. It's hard for me to multitask here. Message that I got that kind of reminds me of this confidence, self belief kind of thing. This actually came to me yesterday in an email consult. Somebody had like filled out the form and requested an email consult on our website. And so when you do an email consult, there's like a few questions you answer. You sort of tell me the backstory and you tell me your question and then if there's anything else I need to know, we answer you back. Here's what I got in this email consult and I did get permission to read this to you guys. Obviously I'm not going to give you names or anything. I'm just going to read you what this person wrote because I thought it was kind of impressive actually. The email consult said. Hi, Amber, I'm reaching out for your insight on how you and your programs can best help me and my family. I'm 64 years old and I've been married for 38 years. I've used drugs and alcohol for most of my adult life. Recent events have brought out my realization with my wife's hard truth that I am an addict. I have abstained from using drugs and alcohol for parts of my life. I know the addictive behaviors are still there. While I have gone to counseling a few times over the years, I have never addressed the addiction problem. Thankfully my wife found your videos on YouTube and both she and I have been watching many of them over the past week or so. We have been watching them separate and discussing them afterwards. My behaviors towards my wife and her as a long term codependent have put her in a hole and I have kept her there. I want to do whatever I can to change so she can get out of the hole and get her life back. I have said I would change my behavior over the years but it has been short lived at best. I know I can abstain from the substance use. I've done it at times in my life. It is the destructive, self centered behaviors that I want to change. There are many wrongs I need to make right. I owe it to my wife and my kids and myself to change. I pray it's not too late. I want to find people who can help me gain insight and change and I want to find people who can help my wife in the process. It seems you and your team might be the resource of that. I'm not sure how much I need to share in my initial email, but my actions and behaviors are too Many to list. 38 years of abuse that my wife has endured is overwhelming for her. I want her to get to the point where this does not define me as a person. And then there's some questions where the person was actually asking for the consult about the reason I'm reading this to you is because you can tell from reading this this person has had a heart shift. This person has had a mind shift after all these years. Why is it that this person decided or not really decided, but opened themselves to seeing their situation differently? I don't know about you, but when I read this I can really feel like a genuineness, a humility, a willingness, and most of all a readiness to make change. Now I can also tell when I read this the person is they're a little bit stuck on well, you know I've tried in the past but I haven't done good and the addictive behaviors are still there. And why do I keep falling back? I don't know because I'm literally told you everything I know about this person because I haven't met them before. So you know everything I know. But my guess is is that it was this heart shift, it was this mind shift, it was some sort of limiting or irrational belief that was holding this person back and probably that was about some kind of limiting or irrational belief about addiction. So let's take a look at those. And as we look at them, maybe you can think to yourself if you have any of these or, or you can think to yourself maybe which one of these might have held this person back in the past and what light bulb came on and what helped this person shift to be not only being able to see that I have an addiction, but being able to see that I want to get better, being able to see that I can get better, being able to acknowledge how their behavior has affected someone that they love. That's a lot of light bulbs. That's an amazing amount of humility and willingness. And my, my guess is, I don't know, my guess is some of that probably had to do with the wife. There may have been years and years that this wife thought, well, he should do this and he ought not do that and why can't he see that he has an addiction? And once she stopped thinking that and just sort of backed up instead of saying he should or ought to or all this or all that and let that go and then try to figure out, okay, what might help, what's going to be more effective and less effective. It lets the light bulb come on. And we get more and more and more messages like this, notes like this, first time consultations like this. It's really quite amazing. So for those of you who are thinking my spouse or kid has been using for 20 years, there's no way they're ever going to change. They don't think they have a substance abuse problem. When you see something like this, which we see every day, it makes you a believer that it's not too late. People can see it, they can figure it out. And when that light bulb comes on, everything shifts. I'm not saying everything fixes overnight, but everything shifts in that perspective which then opens up all kinds of avenues towards healing. So let's take a look at those addiction related, limiting beliefs. I will let you know, I've got a note up here to make myself remember to tell you guys that there are always resources in the description. And today because we're talking about making lasting changes, I made a coupon code for you. If you are not already one of our members in our Advanced Recovery Skills membership and you want to be, I made a code for you. It's only last for one day, 24 hours only. It's in the description. I'll put it up here in the comments too. And the Coupon code is 20% off for as long as you have the membership and the code is lasting change all caps, no spaces. 20, 23. All right, moving on to our limiting addiction beliefs. Sorry, I know, I'm looking at my notes. I have a lot more notes today than I usually. These are really common ones. I'm going to give you some common ones. But if you want more of these kind of things, you want to look at them even more and figure out what yours might be. Look at the video from last week, maybe two weeks ago, about self deception. You'll see even more of these. But one of the irrational, limiting beliefs is I deserve it. Not I deserve it as in, I deserve the bad things, but I deserve it as in like, I'm a grown man, I deserve to be able to have some drinks, or I'm a college kid, I deserve to be able to go out and party because that's what everyone does. Kind of silly. That's sort of one of those shoulds and ought tos, right? And anytime you're having that thought, it's. It's an irrational belief. And because you're stuck thinking that you're not going to change that behavior, it's like it's a feeling of it's some sort of right or entitlement that you have. Like, I should be able to do this so everyone gets to do. Like, this is my way of having fun or relaxing or being a kid or whatever rationalization you're using there. Another one that I hear a lot is, I'm not hurting anyone else. I'm just going to call boss on that one. If you're a human being, they're connected to somebody else some way somehow. And when you engage in the kind of addictive behaviors that we talk about on this channel, your decisions impact someone else. So even if you think I deserve it, which I've already told you is kind of silly, even if you're thinking that, think, do they deserve it? Right? If you're thinking, well, I'm a college kid. Every college kid gets to party and have fun. Really? Well, do your parents deserve to have to pay for, you know, you to keep taking semesters over and over when you fail? These are the kind of thoughts that you have to confront. You have to get really honest with yourself. If there's something in your life that you want to change, that, you know needs to make a change, it's probably because you're not being honest with yourself somewhere. And that's what today's all about. It's about identifying those places where we Might be. And we'll dishonest ourselves. Here's a big one. That's totally not true. But you hear it all the time. It's fun. If it's an addiction, it's not fun. Or at least what I'll say, it's an addiction. The unfun part is way bigger than the fun part. That's what makes it addiction. The consequences outweigh the benefit. That's way why it is an addiction. It's sort of like the definition of it. So if you're having trouble figuring that out for yourself and weighing the fun versus consequences or whatever, think harder about it. There's a financial YouTuber guy that I follow sometimes and he talks about. I forget what he calls it. Calls it like the ghost fees or something like. Like his name is Ramit Sarah at any of you guys watch him. Anyways, he talks about like how buying a house isn't always like a good financial investment because there's all these ghost fees that you don't think about. You know, you think, oh, it's a good investment because you put your money in, then you get your money back. And he's like, but most of the time, people don't calculate in. I mean, obviously there's like what it costs to maintain the house. There's seller and buyer fees when you buy the house and you sell the house. There's the taxes on the house, there's the insurance on the house, there's the fixing things that go wrong on the house. There's the keeping up of the property. When you really look at all the fees attached to it, you got to really assess, like, is it really a financial decision, a good financial system? It may be, but it may not be. He calls those like ghost fees, those ones that you don't think about and you don't calculate in. So when you're looking at addictive behavior, there may be some ghost fees in there that you're not calculating in to your formula. When you're thinking about, is this fun, is it not? Is this helpful, productive thing for me to do or not. Another version of that is it helps me. I say refer back to the last one. It's very similar. Something I hear some people say a lot is, well, something's going to kill me anyways. That's sort of one of those limiting beliefs. And one of the things that I would say to confront that is, okay, but do you have to kill five people else with you along the way? Because probably if you're killing yourself with an addiction, you're hurting a lot of people along the way with you. So that's where I think it comes into. You really need to get honest with yourself about it. And then of course there's like the good old classic one of everyone does it, which isn't true. And even if it was true, still not a good reason. Right? Okay, I'm going to save our last little message for the, for the very last. This is a really good one. So you'll hang in there and hear it. But before we do that, we're going to move on to money, irrational beliefs. Because a lot of you may have, a lot of you probably do have goals or things in your life that you want to accomplish that are related to career or finance or money somehow. And I find that probably of the limiting beliefs people have, there's more about money than probably anything else. The number one limiting belief that you hear almost all the time about money is you hear people say, I don't care about money. That's ridiculous. And what I would say to that is, well, why do you go spend 40 or 60 hours of your week doing something in order to earn that money that you don't care about? Because it's not true. Everyone cares about money, but people think you're not supposed to care about money. And that limiting belief comes to an even deeper limiting belief in that people think that money is evil or corrupts you somehow. And that's just not true at all. Money is not evil. It doesn't corrupt you. Now you can do evil things with money, right? Right where you can. If you're evil person, you can use money for not great ways. You can let money corrupt you. But money itself is not evil. And wanting to make money and build a career or build a life isn't a bad thing in of itself. And, and I wouldn't let that stop you from going after what you want because what's really going on there is this. That's a fear about what other people think about you. You are not going to be honest with yourself. You're not going to let yourself go after what you want because you think makes you a bad person. And you're holding yourself back because of that, subconsciously, which I'm telling you is just not true. Think of all the wonderful things that money does, right? For example, when I was making my notes for today, it came into my mind. I remember, I can't remember when it was, but I was watching this like documentary on Bill Gates. We all know Bill Gates has tons of money right in the Documentary. Bill Gates spends like all of his time and energy trying to figure out and all of his money trying to figure out how to like, have effective and efficient waste management services in these countries that don't have clean water. He literally spends all of his money and time and like, brain power trying to solve this problem. So that in these countries that are very impoverished, they have an effective way to eliminate waste, like toilets. So you can't. I mean, and that's. It may seem like, wow, that's what he spends his time. He's like a tech genius and he's figuring that out. But that is such a massive way to create change in the world. Like, it's not sexy problem to solve, right? But it's a massive human problem. And he's taking all of that power that he has, all those resources that he has to solving that problem. There's nothing evil about that. So we have to like, get rid of that thought, you know, Other thoughts about money are, well, I just want enough to be comfortable. Again, that's not an honest thought. That's a thought about what will other people think of me and if I want more than that. And that also kind of connects to another limiting belief about money, which is this one's usually kind of subconscious. You have to really, like, dig in deep to see if you have this one. And there's this thought of there's a limit on the amount of resources out there, whether it's money, food, clothes, whatever. There's like this finite amount of it out there. And if you take too much of it, then someone else doesn't have enough. And so then that on a subconscious level makes you feel guilty, which holds you back. But that's not true. There's unlimited amounts of resources. And the great thing about money and resources and creativity is you put the two things together and you multiply the resources and you make more of it and you make more resources to help. Like, for example, if you're an entrepreneur, you work really hard to make money and you help some people somewhere with some kind of service. That's what entrepreneur is. And you help provide businesses which employ people and that helps their family. So this idea that there's like a selfishness or a guilt associated with money, if you have career goals or money goals or financial goals and you feel like you're being held back, I would dig in deep in this money issue and see if you can find where your limiting belief is. Another one that I hear a lot is like, I can't afford it. Again, that. That Goes to a limiting sort of belief about the availability of resources. It's a lack of either creativity or it's some sort of way you're holding yourself back. Sometimes it's a matter of prioritizing like the time. Well, it's just not where I want to put my money, which is totally fine. I can't afford it and I don't want it. It's two different things. It's totally fine to be like, I don't want it or at least I don't want it that bad or I don't really care that much about it. Completely fine. Another one I hear that kind of irks me a little bit sometimes is like when you hear people talk about like being entitled on being given money. Like I've heard young people say, usually they're. My clients say things like, my parents have plenty of money, why shouldn't they just pay for that? And I'm like, what? That's their money? And they're like, well, they spend it on this and that and they bought themselves like cars. I'm like, that's their money. Like you're not owed that money. You hear it like that in that like young person, sort of immature way. But you also hear it in like people talk about whatever they get paid at their job. And, and sometimes I hear people say like, well, that guy over there, he makes like three times as much as me. He doesn't even have a family. He just has his own self and just drives a sports car and he just goes on vacations. And like I'm the one over here with five kids and two ex wives and three dogs to take care of. I should have got the raise. That's ridiculous. People. The amount of money you get paid at a job should be fairly proportionate to the amount of value you bring to the business. Not how long you've been there, not how many bills you have. Like that's. These are these irrational beliefs that can keep you stuck. Now if you're working somewhere and they don't pay you appropriately, then leave. Then prove your value and ask for more money. Then go somewhere else, start your own thing. But this idea of they should pay you more, that's one of them shoulds. You gotta find it, you gotta call it out and confront it. It's going to keep you stuck. Let's see, let's move on to our last little message. It's a really good one, you're going to want to hear it. And then if we have time, we'll take some of your Questions. If you have questions, go ahead and put them up there because Bri's on and she's watching. And it will help Bri know that you're asking a question. If you put little question marks, several little question marks in front of it that helps her know that you're. That you have a question you want to ask. You're not just sort of making a comment. Alright, let's read this last message because I really like it. This one actually came in the mail to our office. It says, I'm writing to say thank you for pulling me out of the darkness of alcohol. I'm 52 years old and I've been drinking a bottle of wine every day for seven years. I had a health scare this year and I tried to quit, but I could only make it five to ten days max. I had. I remember thinking, I'm just going to drink like this until I die. I had totally given up. And then I stumbled across your video titled what's it really like to get sober? The no BS God, something just click, click. There's no other way to describe it. I could see and name addiction for the first time today. I'm 72 days with no drinking and I never and never is in. Like all calves want to go back to that place. I'm using the strategies to stay ahead. And when I have a bad day, I just remember your words. It will get better, I promise. Thank you for being you and for helping people stay. See the light. Sending love to you all. Now isn't that a nice message? First of all, it makes my heart swell up and my tears get. My eyes get teary. But the thing I love about this, as you can see, this is a light bulb moment, right? This is what. What happened for this person is a shift in thinking of. Suddenly I could see this problem differently. And because I could see it from a different perspective, the solutions opened up for me. That's what I mean. I mean, you can see this person says, I try to stop, but I couldn't make it very long. It's literally usually just some belief or thought process or roadblock or stuckness. But it's usually psychological and not all of those other things that we think are getting in our way. It's not that we can't do it. It's not somebody else in our way. Somehow we're keeping ourselves stuck. And if you feel stuck in something, I want you to look deep inside and find where your irrational, limiting beliefs and thoughts are. Because to really make a change, it's not about changing a habit. It's really not. It's about changing who you are as a person. If you want to do differently, you have to be differently, Right? If you want to be Bill Gates rich, which is awesome, go for it. Then you have to become that person. Not. You have to, like, change a certain habit. You have to change who you are from the core and on the inside. And this identifying where you're stuck is the first step of that. If you want to be sober, then you have to think how sober people think. How do they feel? How they behave? What are they like? And you have to become a sober person, and the behaviors and the feelings will come after that. It's a deep change. All right, Bri, hopefully we have a couple good questions on here. Question, Debbie, how do you tell when you've crossed the line into obsession, addiction to fixing of a problem? I was accused by a friend of being obsessed with working out. Well, that's actually a really good question, because that's a really good example, Debbie, of what we're talking about today. You got to ask yourself, is it working for you or against you? You can be addicted to exercise. It's true. I've seen it. You can get so addicted to it that, like, your life is falling apart that your physical health is actually getting worse and worse and worse. And because you're obsessed with it, that's. That's the line where you cross, where it's not helpful for you. So it could be that, or it could be that whatever you're doing, you're exercising makes this other person in your life feel guilty or feel bad, or maybe they just feel left out because you're busy all the time or something like that. And. And that's really not a you thing. That's them thing. And that's where you got to really look inside and get honest with yourself. Is there any truth in that? If there is, let's pull it out on the table and deal with it. Or is this something else going on with someone else? Is this person putting a should on me? Right. And do I want that on me? Good question. Let's see. Hubs will talk mean and then say, I should never take anything as mean because he loves me. That. That's the line of his responsibility versus the way I'm taking what he says. What's the line between his responsibility and the way I'm taking what he says? If somebody's saying mean things to you, then they're being mean. Like, you know, there. There's. There is a pretty Clear difference. But you can't like be really nasty to somebody, you know, I can't go and slap somebody in the face and then tell them like, quit being a wimp. That's ridiculous. Right? So you got to ask yourself, like, where is the line between his responsibility and my responsibility? Now I would say, you know, your responsibility in it is if he's treating you mean and you're subjecting yourself to that over and over and over, maybe that's where your responsibility is. Not that you shouldn't interpret it that way, but maybe you shouldn't put up with it or something like that. But that's where you gotta, you gotta really look inside. You can't act nasty and then tell the other person that that's your, their fault, that's your self responsibility. But like, If I'm making YouTube videos to help people and someone else out there takes it as me ruining their family, that's them, you know, like that's sort of the difference. Anna says question, what about my big emotions that come up when my loved one doesn't respect a boundary that I have set? I can't help but get emotional and feel resentful when I have to enact the boundary. That's a really good question. I'm not sure, Anna, if you saw, and it may or may not relate to your question, but Kim did a video a couple of weeks back. She's our, like our spouse, our family counselor that sees a lot of spouses about the difference in request and a boundary. Because sometimes we, we want our partner to do something like maybe it's just a regular thing, like we want them to take out the trash and then they don't take out the trash and they're like, you're not respecting my boundary. That's really your request. And then that puts you. If you have a bunch of requests, that's fine, but if you have them in your head that it's a boundary and they're not doing it, then you're going to be frustrated. And sometimes if you just put it over into the category, if it's actually a request, a boundary is something protective of yourself. Like, I'm going to make sure I have enough money in the bank to pay my mortgage. I am not going to stay in a relationship where somebody is mean and nasty and abusive to me. I am not going to ride in the car with someone that I feel is unsafe or intoxicated. Those are boundaries which usually has to do with safety, wellness, being okay in some way. Other things that we get frustrated about sometimes we call them boundaries, but they're like more like request. And that's. So separating those two out may help you to some degree. You're not going to love it when they don't do what you request they do. You're not going to feel great about it. But if you try to put like a consequence, if you try to say, if you don't take out the trash, I'm going to do X, Y or Z, then you're really going to be frustrated because then you put yourself. Because what you're saying is I feel upset when I have to hold the boundary. That's what I think you're saying. And so if you put a boundary of consequence, if this, then that with everything, you are going to wear yourself out. And it's exhausting. What about the excuse I'm too old to change or at 60, I don't have that many years left, so why go through the work gets over. That's a really good one, right? Both of the messages that I read you today, the nice messages were from people over 60. So I say that's a bunch of bull, right? You want your last years to be crappy. You want your last years to make everyone else's crappy. Be real. Stop putting yourself off the hook. Tannery. What are good ways to remind yourself of the ghost fees that come with addiction, but more so addictive behaviors? I think you really have to like, I mean, I can tell you some really common ones, right? Like damaged relationships, damaged self esteem, damaged career, damaged finances. Those are ones you can see. You can see those impacts in almost any addiction. But there are some real, like subtle ones that may be sort of very specific to you. Not feeling great, high blood pressure, being more anxious, not having the energy, not being motivated, not having the energy to go after what I want. Not being the best father or mother or parent that I can be. You have to really look at what's really the cost. And when you look at it, those costs are going to far outweigh the benefit. How can I rebuild trust in myself and my own judgment after my addict fiance died from an overdose? He lied so much and did terrible things. But I loved him. I don't know if I can ever trust again. Well, Lauren, I think that. I'm trying to think through how I want to answer this for you because I want to give you. This is a honest, really good question. So I want to give you an honest answer. I think that it's okay not to trust right out the gate. It doesn't Mean, you have to act on that distrust. But for you, like, like let's say you're dating someone again and you don't trust them. Like you're trying to learn to trust them. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to dig through their phone, put spy software on their car or whatever. Like, you don't have to behave in that distrustful way. But you, you also can be realistic with yourself and make sure that you do get to know someone about what's going on. But my guess is, is what you're saying is really more about like, I don't trust myself to hold a healthy boundary with someone. And that probably, if you're having trouble doing that probably goes back to one of these other deeper things. Like, like maybe you have a thought in there if I'm being mean, if I hold a healthy boundary, is that what's keeping you away? Because if you're having trouble doing that, that could lead to you not feeling like you trust yourself because you feel like you betray yourself by not holding the healthy boundary. Is it truly really that you don't see it or is it that you didn't want to see it? And maybe it's true that you didn't see it for a while because people can hide those addictions for so long. But once that happens to you, once it kind of becomes so hyper vigilant in your mind that you really almost can't miss it. I know you can miss it for a while the first time, but it's, it's hard to miss it after that, even when you're trying not to see it. So if it's happened to you once, it's going to be really high up on your radar. You can trust that. What about, what are your thoughts about forcing treatment, such as residential treatment, on my adolescent. I mixed thoughts about it. That's a really hard question that there's not a great answer to. In some ways, I'm not opposed to it at all. Even with an adult, when someone is killing themselves and they're killing everyone around them, I don't have a problem with it sort of like morally or ethically. And if it's a young person, a teenager, then you may have to do what you need to do to keep them safe. But I do think that it's wise to sort of weigh in if you can. No one's ever going to want to go to treatment. Okay? I don't care if they want to go. That's not the thing. But does this person realize that they have a problem on some level big enough that if you forced them in there and they were in there long enough that it might take. Because if you're dealing with like a 14 year old who is like smoking weed all the time or something, they literally think you are being ridiculous. Like there is zero clue in their head that it is a problem. Like they're not even close to the contemplative stage of change. I'm not saying you shouldn't force them treatment because if whatever they're doing is so reckless that they may die before they're brain can mature enough to figure it out, then do it. But if you can wait until the point that the consequences start to outweigh the benefits, then when you do force them in there, it has a lot more likely chance to take. I'm not saying wait till they say that they're a drug addict and they need to go. I'm saying wait till at least you know that they know and it's a problem whether they want to say it out loud or not. Let's do one more. Bri. I don't want to abandon people who need help. I'm a rescuer. There it is. Lauren. I love it. You identified your thought. So it's really not that you can't see what's happening. It's a limiting belief about feeling guilty for not fixing other people problems. That's where your thought is. Nancy says, my son said he can't imagine a life without drugs. I was at a loss of response and I froze. How can I revisit this with him? I probably wouldn't bring it up out of nowhere. Kind of missed your moment. But you'll get another moment, so don't worry, Nancy. But I would just, I would just ask them some more about that if you get that moment again. Like, tell me more about that. Usually that happens because when they're sober, when you deal with someone in active addiction and they're sober, they're miserable, they're in withdrawal, they're irritable, they're anxious, they can't sleep, they have no coping skills, they can't feel joy with anything else. So yeah, imagining life without drugs or whatever they're addicted to sounds terrible, but they don't have a very accurate picture of what that life would look like. So sometimes that's the thing and sometimes they're just telling you that as emotional blackmail. Like sometimes they're just saying that so you get off their case because you think, oh my gosh, they can't live without it. They might hurt themselves. You have to sort of dig through what you think is really going on there. All right, everybody, we are out of time. Thank you so, so much for joining us. To learn more about self deception, there is a great video on it that did like, not this week, but last week. If you want to scroll back and look at that. And don't forget, there are resources for you in the description. See you guys next week. Bye, everybody.