Episode 492: The Power of Our Mind

No need to whine, it's Whiny Palooza! Have some wine and join us on the Whiny Palooza podcast with Rebecca Greene.

Welcome to the Whiny Palooza podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Greene. I'm a wife, mother of 3, and licensed clinical social worker. I also have 3 fur babies at home too. My passion has always been to help children and their families. I always dreamed of being a wife and a mother. Parents are always learning through their struggles, failures, and successes and joys. I am no stranger to this wild ride of parenting, and I know behind every great parent lies a team of supportive friends and family. I want to be part of your support system. I want you to know that you are not alone. We are in this parenting world together. Join me every week for insightful discussions with experts on parenting and marriage, as well as other parents who have found the secret to successes in parenthood. You'll learn tips and tricks to make life with your family better than ever. I hope you will follow along with me while we dive into what it takes to achieve a happy family.

Hello everyone, happy Whiny Blues Wednesday!

Hello everybody!

You've joined in on my intro.

I have.

You've drank the juice.

The Kool-Aid, I have consumed it.

Well, how else do you start? You need to say hi to everybody.

Hi everybody.

How do you, how would you start?

What's up Facebook Live peeps?

I like how I do it. Yeah. Tanner, move, move.

That's why I tried to put the ottoman, but you told me not to.

Well, go ahead, put the ottoman. So the dog. He needs to be behind him so I can block him. Dog is a handful. It's been raining.

All day.

And raining.

All day.

And our dog does not like the rain and has been panting for days. And I'm exhausted from the dog.

Is our weather system— no, in advance for days when it's gonna rain.

Tanner, move.

Okay.

He, um, yes, he is not letting me sleep very well and he's driving me crazy. And yes, I've tried a Thundershirt, and yes, I've tried drugs, none of them. And yes, I've tried reassuring him. Um, I have two, two more ideas. We've tried CBD, so feel free to give us your ideas. But my son wants me to buy him like a, some, a house type of thing that he can go hide in with like blankets.

And my other thought, a doghouse in the house.

Yes, something that he could go like get in.

Okay, because we got lots of space where he could afford to give up a third of a room to a dog bed.

Okay, the other, the other thought, which I don't think would help maybe in the middle of the night is a white noise machine so that he can't hear the rain. Oh, that would have to be— sorry, I'm exhausted and I'm off topic, but the dog is panting and he doesn't like the rain.

It's good thing we don't live in Seattle.

Oh my God, can summer come back?

Yes.

So we have, um, Yeah, nice weather in Buffalo, New York. So we're topic— we're going to move on to our topic. So I had a list of things that I wanted to write about, and I realized that this most important topic needs to come up every so often because I think it's the most important topic. And I think that I have worked on it and gotten really good at it.

You work on it every day.

Not perfect, but really focus on working on this, and I want to share because I hear the negative thinking regularly from people in my life, and it's a lot. It's a lot because I feel— sometimes I feel bad, sometimes I feel like I'm like the negative police, but I know that negative breeds negative.

It does.

Okay, so there— so I read a lot, and it's like, she reads a lot. Um, I like to learn and study, and I'm all about human behavior. And the research shows, scientists are proving, that the more you have negative thinking, the more negative thinking you get. So venting to your spouse complaining to your spouse and your friends and gossiping and complaining and negative. It's not good for us. Even the venting of all the shit— oops, I swore. Am I allowed to swear, Seth?

We'll find out.

I have never sworn on this before, but, um, all the stuff, all the stuff that we spew out and we think it's helpful because we're venting and we think that venting is good for us What my husband is going to be so happy to hear is that his wife has been studying this and that venting is not good for you.

Awesome!

So he is going to celebrate that he doesn't have to listen to me vent for hours.

Yes, usually the time you had previously picked was right before bed because you were getting it out to be all relaxed so that you could sleep, and then you would be, "Woohoo, I got it all out, I'm good!" and relaxed, and then I had this emotional dump on me, and now I'm like, okay, great, I'm glad you feel better, I feel worse.

Well, and the interesting thing is, is that I usually do feel better when I get it out, but it's not fixing it and it's perpetuating it.

You're putting out negative energy.

So then I just wanna vent every day. It's an addiction. So it's not good for us. So when I hear people constantly venting, being negative, complaining, gossiping, It's hard for me, I'm not gonna lie, it's hard for me and I try to be a good person and a good wife and a good friend and a good daughter and all the stuff, even a good mother, but it can get really tiring listening to people be negative all the time.

Right.

So in my exhaustion, I decided to be helpful or to try to attempt to be helpful to change things. So I'm hoping that by the end of this, and I'm hoping you'll go read the blog, it's at whinyflusa.com Go read it out step by step. I'm hoping you'll read it and buy into it and practice it with me so that I can get more people working on their negative thinking and shifting to a better way of being. Because, you know, as I wrote, if you're happy with your life and you're happy with how you think and you're happy with your life, then maybe you don't want to listen and you don't care. But if you would like you're to experience your days better, then this is for you because I want us all to experience good moments and good days. So I'm going to start with reminding you that the negative thinking breeds more negative thinking. So we don't want to entertain ourselves just having the negative thinking. We want to work on this. And you know, I am very big on you know, doing the squats, doing the lunges, doing the tricep curl— tricep extension extensions, doing the bicep curls, doing all the exercises. I'm very big on that, but I also realize that our body needs exercise and our mind needs exercise. And my mind can, can get better with doing the mental exercises of retraining my mind. So if I retrain it to think differently and I practice it then you get more of that.

Yeah, I had— we talked about that. I had just read a book that said 95% of your thoughts are unconscious, and you have to retrain your subconscious because it's wired for survival, which is why we have a lot of negative fear-based thoughts. This is why we wake up with negativity first thing in the morning, and you have to recondition your brain to take over and feed it what you want so that it stops getting rid of— it gets rid of those 95% negative thoughts, which you are really good at. Can— I don't know if you're gonna get to it— can you talk a little bit about what you replace those negative thoughts with?

Oh, we're way not there.

Not there yet. Okay.

We're gonna start with step 1.

Okay, step 1.

Okay, but I want to say that your brain is doing its job. Seth is saying your brain is trying to protect you. It's trying to think of every negative possible scenario so that your brain can keep you alive. The brain wants you to stay alive. So it's like, what do I need to do to keep you alive? So thank you, brain. For trying to take care of me. So I want to start with, we're not going to like beat ourselves up during this process. We're not going to be like, "Oh, you did negative thinking again, you suck." No, we're going to be patient and kind and have compassion. And if you do hear our dog panting, we apologize. I don't know if you can hear it. Tanner, no, no, no. So we're gonna start with step 1. So step 1 is I just want you to try to become more aware of your thoughts. So I just want you to become an observer of your thoughts because we can't change anything, whether it's a behavior or our thoughts or anything, until we become more aware of it. So we're just gonna start by practicing just be an observer. So notice how you're thinking every day. So you don't have to start with, okay, I'm gonna replace all my thoughts today. No, you're just just gonna observe and become aware. And then after you feel like you're becoming good at noticing, oh yep, that's a negative thought, that's a negative thought, um, I literally would picture a red stop sign. And I feel like the red stop sign helped me kind of like grab hold of my thoughts because it was like this visual image of, okay, stop, like red light. Red stop sign, whatever you wanna picture. I need to stop. So, you're gonna become aware and then you're gonna practice grabbing hold of your thoughts and saying stop. And it's like, as we practice these things, we move to the next step. So, you've become good at awareness, you've become good at stopping yourself. Now we're gonna talk about my favorite words.

I'm ready for the rewords.

I love the R-E words, okay? And you're welcome to comment more wonderful R-E words. I just realized relax is an R-E word that I need to get better at. Rewind, reset, regroup, replace. And I want us to remember to take giant deep breaths while we're doing this. So we're getting good at practicing that we're gonna like go back, okay? So we had the negative thought. So we're gonna rewind, we're gonna reset and breathe. And now this is when you start practicing replacing. Okay, so replacing, reframing, they're both wonderful words to use, but you want to practice taking those negative thoughts and putting a positive spin onto it. So I wrote some examples.

Awesome.

Okay, so I love it when you get practical. And I want you to— I want to give you my examples, and then I would love you to come up with some. Okay, so my latest one that I had was, I'm done parenting X, it's over.

Like, he's away at college.

So I was like, oh my God. Like, my negative thoughts were, oh my God, he's 18. Oh my God, it's over. How did it go so fast? Like, there were so many negative thoughts. And I was having those thoughts over and over, and I started to notice them. See, I wasn't beating myself up. I was like, ooh, you're having a lot of negative thoughts about Max. Like, it's not over, people. So what have I practiced over the last 2 months? 2 months with replacing. My replacement thought is Max will always need me, I will always be his mom, and parenting never ends. So it doesn't matter that he's 18, it's not over.

How many times did you talk to your mother today?

Um, so I was just gonna say that I asked my mom a few questions today, right? But it's not even like the needing her for advice or questions, it's just the contact. Like, I just want contact and I want her in my life and I still feel like I need her and, you know, I'm, I'm an adult. Yes. And I need my mother. So I am living proof that it doesn't end, right? Yes. So I'm gonna keep going. I just said this in my Whiny Plus a Mom group. It's on Facebook. It's free. Come join. Um, I'm having such a bad day. It's such an exaggeration that we all do. It's maybe we had a bad moment, so replace with, "I'm having a bad moment in my day. Let's move on to some good moments." So, it's not, "Oh my God, this is the worst day," you know? It's like we just chalk it up to the day sucked. Do you do this?

I have learned a lot from you. You are better at it than I am. I had a situation today that thankfully I bounced back from pretty quick, but it was still longer than I would like. I still had a negative feeling about it like 20 or 30 minutes later, and I know like you bounce back in minutes, so—

Oh, there she is.

What is it, cat puking? This is life, people.

Our pets. Parenting is never over, even with the pets. Okay, negative thought: my daughter is so mean to me. That's such a negative way of thinking. How about— how about if I have some empathy? She's overwhelmed and tired. Give her some space. That's such a better way of looking at it.

Yes.

Okay, where am I? I'm feeling so anxious. How about I'm having a little bit of anxiety right now and I can handle this?

I'm a wee bit worried about something.

I knew you were gonna say that. I knew you were gonna say that.

I like the wee bit.

I don't like the wee bit.

You don't like the wee bit.

I like a little bit.

Little bit.

So I think that we say things like, I'm so sad, I'm so depressed, I'm so anxious, like it's just such a, like a big dramatic way of wording things.

Intensifying our feelings.

Yes. So like, just tone it. Start toning things down. You don't have to tone down your happiness. I'm I'm so happy, I'm so excited. Do you know how many times I say I'm so excited?

There's a lot of excitement.

I get on my podcast, every time I do a podcast I am so excited because I get to interview this amazing lady. Oh yes.

Erin says I need to get better with the positive thinking.

Erin, I have to message you back, but I want you to read my latest blog.

MindBluesa.com.

It's about— what is the title? The Power of Our Mind. And I think it is really relevant to what we were just talking about. So please read it and give me your feedback and let me know your thoughts. But, um, I have so much to do and I will never get it done. I have done that to myself a lot, so I have learned to replace it with— and I've practiced this so much that it's becoming routine— take it one step at a time. You always get it all done, and it doesn't all have to get done today. So I've gotten really good at what really has to get done today, and let's start there.

Priorities.

So better at making priorities, better at seeing that I don't have to do 10 things in a day. How realistic is it that we need to do— I always tend to see— there I am with the always, I'm being exaggerated, I'm exaggerating. Um, I tend to think that I can do— I do a lot Um, I was thinking today how much I did today, but I tend to think that I can do more than I can fit in before it's like 3 o'clock and I'm going to get the kids. Yeah, so, you know, I need to be realistic. I need to tone it down and I need to prioritize. I need to realize that there's always tomorrow.

Realize is a reword too.

I love our e-words.

Rebecca.

Yes, but that's not how you say it.

I know, you know I know. I'm just emphasizing the re.

No one appreciates me. Oh my God, I hear so many women say this. Really? Do you really think no one appreciates you? Because I'm gonna fight you on that.

I appreciate you.

Your husband, your children, your friends give you appreciation.

You might not feel appreciation in that second, but there is some appreciation.

I want you to look for— because we listen we get more of what we look for. So we're not looking for the "I'm not being appreciated." We're looking for the "Ooh, they appreciate me. Ooh, look at what they just said. Look at what they just did." And it's not always in words, sometimes it's in actions. So how about "No one helps me with anything"? I hear mothers say that all the time, and I don't buy that either. Do we do a lot? Do we do most of it?

Too much.

Do you get no help at all?

I, you know, I will fight you on that one.

I get a lot of help. I get a lot of help. Um, my husband and my parents give me the most help. Yes, but my friends would help me. Um, my daughters most of the time would help me. We know when my son's home, he'll help me.

Yes.

Um, no one cares how I feel. This is more stuff that I just hear from women, and you know, I'm gonna fight you on that too. So my reframe for myself, if I'm ever feeling like that, and I really don't feel that way a lot, you are so good at helping and caring about everyone in your life, and all that love comes right back to you.

Oh, I like that, right?

So those are just kind of things that I have trained myself to think. They're not untrue, they're all true. Um, my daughter had said to me, well, what if it isn't true? But it is true. And it takes practice. It's not that it takes practice to believe it, it just takes practice to do it naturally, get good at it, and retrain your brain. It's like any exercise, so it just— yes, I was literally just gonna say you just need a lot of reps. Like, I need a lot of reps to get stronger and to get more, more toned, and I need a lot of reps to get better at my thinking. And it's not something that I will ever feel 100% at because, you know, I'm, you know, negative thinking sometimes. My husband can vouch for me.

What? No.

If you think that I only smile and I only have positive thinking, you know, I don't get on here and go on a rant when I'm angry or sad.

Um, we could try that and see how it goes.

I mean, I don't want—

see, but then you'd be spreading it out.

Okay. So I'm going to explain to you that I never attempt to give you a highlight reel. I never, I never attempt to give you an illusion that our life is perfect. I think for me, what my goal is, is I don't want to give you— I want to give you the negative stuff to be helpful, but I don't want to give you the negative stuff because I don't want to perpetuate that in my brain, right?

But you've also shared some of the challenges we've we've gone.

I think that there's a difference between— this is a challenge that Seth and I are working on, and we want to share it with you, and we want to tell you how we're working on it. Because if we're having a challenge, we know that you're probably having a similar challenge, and maybe we could be helpful. And it also helps us to talk about it. Yeah, right. Yes. Whether we talk about it by ourselves or with you. Yes. But, um, I don't like to put anything negative on social media or on Winey Palooza because I don't want to train myself to think that way. I don't want to give it attention, and I, I feel like the more positive stuff that I talk about and spread, the more of that I get for myself, for me to think that way. So I hope I'm explaining that well, but I definitely, I I definitely have been guilty of complaining, negative thinking, venting, and gossiping. And those 4 things are 4 things that I would love to tell you I'm at a zero, but I'm not. Um, I think there's been tremendous improvements, but, um, I don't like attack myself when I screw up. I just kind of notice.

So much better at that, right?

So I notice, and then I try to. And, and the other thing is I'm not always in a good state to replace and reframe. So there's two ways to handle that. Um, number one is the practice is going to make you bounce back quicker and do it quicker. And, um, the other thing is sometimes I need Seth. Seth will have a gentle reframe. I mean, you can't come on aggressive when somebody is feeling upset. You have to be gentle in your approach or they're gonna run away.

Yep.

And you're not gonna get through to them. You're not gonna get through to them. You gotta be gentle. So you wanna practice. You want maybe to get some help with thinking differently. And you wanna give yourself time. Like I might at 6 o'clock be angry about something, but by 9 o'clock I've already totally reframed the whole situation. Now I didn't do that at 6:15, I did it 3 hours later, right? But I still did it.

Yes.

So, um, how would— how have I taught you all of this?

Yes.

How would you rate yourself on all of this?

Um, what is my scale?

I want you to be honest with us because I would like to know where you're at. Um, okay, so like a 7?

Sure, out of 10.

So where do you think you were at before I taught you this?

4 or 5.

Okay, so you feel like you've made improvements?

Oh, absolutely.

So do you feel like more practice will help?

I practice every single day.

So what do you think would be helpful for you to get you to like a 9?

I think I just need more reps.

You think it's a reps situation?

It is.

Okay, and where do you think I am at?

8.5.

I knew you were gonna say an 8. I didn't get the half, but I thought you were gonna say 8. Okay, so I think I— you gave me the half that I didn't expect. So I think that that's a pretty good score, um, and I think that I might even be higher than that, but he's accounting for the fact that he hears all the venting.

I do.

Like, all the venting goes to Seth. I mean, my mother, my mother gets a lot of it. Um, my mother saves you from some of it.

I did not know that. Thanks, Marlene. How about some more?

Oh, you don't want any of my venting.

You just told me not to have any of it. It was your idea.

Okay, so I think that— okay, so here's the new approach in the greenhouse. The new approach is we're not going to vent because it's not helpful. We are going to say this is the situation and we're going to work on the situation together. So it's a— Seth, I feel alone in this situation.

You're never alone.

I'm— no, I'm never alone. I'm just explaining to them.

Sorry.

I'm never alone. I always have supports. We all have supports.

Sorry.

So I feel alone in this situation. I feel like I need help with this. Sometimes I can handle things on my own and sometimes I can't. So if I'm bringing it to Seth, then I obviously need help. This is the situation. I need help with it. And then I think that a lot of times we hear the line, do you want to vent? Or do you want help? And I'm here to tell you that venting doesn't help. So that's what I'm learning.

Awesome.

And my husband is thrilled.

Yeah, I am.

So you learned something tonight.

I did.

And maybe I shouldn't have shared that with him.

I'll try not to hold it against you. You hate it when I do that.

Well, the problem is, is that I teach him things and then he says, you said—

yes, I quote you back to you and it drives you crazy.

I don't like when he quotes me back to myself. I have to practice what I preach, right? I have to practice. So part of me sharing this with you is that it helps me.

Yes.

So I don't know if you realize that, but everything, every topic, most of the topics, when I talk about them, it helps me. And when I write about— when I wrote this down, it was actually really helpful because I like the repetition of going over this. Yes. And it was really nice for me. Gabby doesn't know this, and I don't know if Gabby listens to these, But, um, Gabby, who works for me— Gabby is newer to exposure to Winey Palooza. So Kristen, my, um, wonderful— our wonderful graphic designer.

Thank you.

Um, I'll give you some credit with Kristen.

I'll give her— sign her.

Okay, I'll give you all the credit. I'll give you— no, I'll give you 99%. I don't get any Kristen credit, so, um, I just utilize her talents. So anyways, um, Kristen has been exposed to Winey Palooza for, um, 12 years. So Kristen has read pretty much every single blog for like ever, and Gabby is new. So Gab— well, not new, but new to the year. Yeah. So when I'm sending her blogs, because she does the newsletter and Kristen does the design, Gabby is like, oh wow, this, this topic is so interesting.

Oh, I didn't know this.

She doesn't know, like she doesn't have exposure to all the many topics I've done. So as I'm giving her topics, she's like, oh, this is cool.

Like, that's awesome.

Like, she doesn't— she hasn't read all of them, right? So she doesn't know that I've like done stuff like this.

Awesome.

So it's really cool getting her feedback. Now, when Kristen says something like that, it's huge because she's read so many of them.

But it's probably what, 12 years, one a week, 600?

No, because I wasn't routine when we started. Did I do it every week when we started? I don't think I did.

I think we did. I think there— that was your one issue why you said you couldn't do it, and then your brother told you just get a few ahead and then you'll be good. I think we've done every week for 12 years. I think you have 600, but I'll go check as soon as we're done.

Okay, so it doesn't matter if it's 500, but there's a couple things I want to tell you before we talk about the podcast, um, I want to tell you that you can search in two different places. If you go to winelicious.com and you, in the search bar, you put a topic like anxiety, depression, marriage, uh, I don't know, bullying, whatever. If you put in a topic, I could almost guarantee you that it will come up and there will be blogs for you to read about it. And if you have a topic that doesn't come up that you want, you can always tell me.

Yes.

And if you go to the podcast, there's almost 500 episodes, and if you search a topic, there's probably— it's probably there because there's almost 500 episodes of topics.

Yep.

So I just wanted to make sure that you all know that, that you have access to that, and, um, On the podcast this Friday, a new one comes out every Friday, is— where did I write it— Andrea Dindinger, Stop Fighting and Start Reconnecting. Isn't that a great topic?

Yes.

So I loved talking to her. That was a great conversation, um, that I was so excited to have. And what else, honey?

Go to whinypalooza.com, scroll down to where you see the big pink banner that says join the Whiny Palooza community newsletter. Enter your email address—

too fast—

and get Rebecca's free email newsletter. Check out the podcast, the blog, the vlog, and as always, please like, rate, review, comment, share, and subscribe so that all of the networks show her content to more wonderful mothers like you.

And if you have no idea what he just said, comment below, let me know what you need help with, because we have gotten questions of, I don't know how to We've gotten the questions, I don't know how to subscribe, I don't know how to rate, I wanna help you, I don't know how to do it, I don't know how to share things. I think that—

I'm gonna make a tech support video.

Oh, I think that's a fantastic idea, honey.

It'll be a demo tutorial of all the things and we can post it.

And a couple more things. Susan Gatewood won the October challenge. She is back in town. So I will go drop off her prize tomorrow. So Susan, if you are watching this, your prize is coming. And I would love for you to share this with someone who you think, um, well, we don't want them to know that you think that they have negative thinking.

Everybody's got some. No one's perfect.

But no, but everybody needs this. So send it with someone that you think could benefit from this. And we want to thank you so much for joining us, and we wish you a wonderful week.

Happy one of the blues at once.

Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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Until next time.

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