What if? A SHORT episode with Simon

Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Thriving Adoptees Podcast. Today I'm delighted to be joined by me. It's just me you've got today. Um, haven't done one of these for a, for a while, and it's really, it was prompted by something I'd heard on a podcast this morning. Uh, and it's, uh, the, the question is, what if? The name of this podcast episode is What If? So last week I shared, or maybe the weekend before, I shared an old post that came up in my memories from Facebook from a year ago. And it read something like this. We're not born believing that we're not good enough. We're not born believing that we're not good enough. It's a belief that we pick up somewhere along the way. What if we could put it down? And I got a mixed bag of responses to this, right? Mixed bag of responses to this. And Some, so some people liked it and some people didn't like it. And I guess they felt that I was, perhaps they thought I was victim shaming in, in some, in some way. Uh, and they said, well, what if, you know, I, I, I, I can't do that. I, I, I, I can't put that belief down. Because, and as I read it, I thought, I remember doing that. I remember doing that. So I had a business coach and I think he called himself the possibility guy or something like that. You know, he was the Mr. What If. He had the what if. So I would meet him as a business mentor and he would say, he would, he would question a belief that I had and he would say, what, what if you could? And then I would go on to explain all the reasons why an idea that he'd come up with or that I'd come up with wouldn't work. And it was, what if? And, but what, what I was, what I was doing there, I, I was Arguing for the status quo. I was arguing for this, not, not the band status quo. I was arguing for my beliefs as they stood right there in that, in that moment. And that argument was keeping me stuck. So for as long as I believed that I couldn't do something, I couldn't do something because I was stuck in that belief. I was superglued, superglued to that spot. There was no chance of breaking free from that. And that's not a great place to be, right? Uh, it's not a great place to be at all. We're, we're stuck. We're stuck. And what, what, but what does what if give us? You know, like, what if, what if we remained open to possibilities? What if we remained open in particular to the possibility that the belief that we're not good enough could, uh, dissolve? Could fade away, could be deconstructed, could evaporate into thin air. Now, that's not to say it might come back again, right? I'm not saying that it's once and done, it's once and gone. I'm saying that Is it, is it more likely to happen if we are optimistic about the belief going? Well, maybe that's one for you to consider yourself, right? What if you could? So, As, as adoptees, this, the central theme that runs, uh, our lives is this idea that, that we're less than. And I had a moment last Monday on, on this, and I was mentioning it on one of the podcasts. I think I was, got an email from, uh, a birth mother who I know has been on the podcast. She's coming back on again. Um, she's gonna be doing like a mini host series, mini co-host. So I did one with Hong. She's Laura Engel. She's gonna come on and do a co-host, a mini series of maybe 3 sessions interviewing people that she'd like to interview. And I was thinking, people see me, people hear me at my best. People hear me at the best, on my best when I'm on the podcast. And I, I think some of them think I'm a, a nice guy. And when I, and when that thought came to mind, I, I just started crying cuz I thought, well, do I see myself as a nice guy? Uh, I, I guess what, what if I could? What if I could? What if you could? XXX. You fill in the blanks. Would that make life better? What if it did? Take care. See you soon. Speak to you soon. Lots of love, Simon.