20. Mental Rehearsal and The Alignment Journaling Course

Hello my beautiful friend, and welcome to the Mind Body Alignment podcast. I'm your host, Tessa Romero, and also your coach. I'm here to teach you powerful skills and tools to not only know who you are, but how to become exactly who you want to be with a mindset that finally supports you. I'm so grateful that you're here. Let's get started. Hey, hey my sweet friends. I'm so friggin pumped to be here with you and talking about mental rehearsal and. And the reason why we're really talking about that today is because I have spent the last month creating this new journaling course, Alignment Journaling to help you not only know how to journal, but to journal in a way where you're no longer relying on prompts to tell you what to write, when to write, and guide your mind to this place of feeling like you even have something to write about. Because I promise you, you already have all of that right inside your mind. And you do not need this endless list of prompts and to figure out what you need to write about. You need to go inside to figure out what you need to write about. Because you're the only one that knows what's really going on inside of your mind. So I've spent the last month creating this course. Um, and I just feel so, so, so excited to have it in your hands next week. So On Monday the 23rd is when this course is going to release to you. And I am offering a one time. I'm not guaranteeing that I'm ever gonna do it again, but a one time opportunity coach you through the course through the month of June before I have our baby in July. So I will post all the details for you guys on there and all those details will release on a website on Monday. But I wanted to give you guys just a little bit of insight to that so that you can feel so pumped with me. But that's also why I have a little bit been MIA on the podcast and my email list. Not because I don't love you and I love pouring into you, but because I was taking all of that love and energy and just all the ways I wanna help you and serve you and pouring it into the course. But let's talk about mental rehearsal because that's a huge part of my journaling method and I want you to see how powerful it is and that it's something that you're already doing on a daily basis right now. You are already mentally rehearsing how things are gonna go wrong. You're mentally rehearsing how terrible you're gonna handle a tantrum. How your children are going to wake up in the middle of the night and you are going to feel so exhausted and beat, tired and irritable and frustrated that before the middle of the night even happens, you're already feeling that way. And isn't that amazing? Just pause for a second to think about how absolutely incredible that is, that you can think something and believe it so strongly that you actually feel in alignment with that thought. Right? Because thoughts create feelings. So before something even happens, you can believe that it has happened and feel as if it has happened. And you think about past experiences that sometimes we get confused of. Like, is this a memory or was this real? That's because you can believe things happened that didn't actually happen, but we can believe it as if they have. And oh my gosh, I just feel like the human mind is the most fascinating thing to really just like, learn about and focus on. And not only learn about and focus on it, but use it in a way that serves you every single day the more you learn about it. And that's what I really try to share here, is understanding everything that I've had to learn about myself and in my life. And I've said that over and over, that everything I coach through is something that I've had to personally implement and overcome myself. And. And that's why I love coaching so much because I'm like, I freaking get it. I freaking get the negative mindset. I get feeling limited by your circumstances. I get the negative mental rehearsal. I used to do that all the time. I get it. But I'm not going to just sit there and say, oh my gosh, yeah, you're right. Let's all just stay here. Like, there's gotta be another way, right? There's gotta be something else that we can be doing, ways that we can help ourselves. And that's what I feel so strongly about. So you're already doing mental rehearsal literally every single day. Every single day. And when you're doing that, you're basically looking at your circumstances and predicting how you're gonna handle what happens. Like you're future pacing yourself. You're always living in the what's coming next, what's gonna happen tonight? Um, it's 10 o' clock in the morning and you're thinking about 3 o' clock in the afternoon and the things that you have to do and what it's gonna be like. Or you, I don't know, just got like into a divorce. I'm Thinking about some of my clients. You just got into a divorce and you're thinking about what the next two years are going to be like, what the rest of your life is going to be like with shared custody and the financial end of things. I mean, you're getting a job one day and part of your mind is wondering, but what's next? And your future. Pacing yourself all the time in every single area of your life. Which again, is fascinating that we have this ability to think so far into the freaking future, and yet time stays the same one second after the next. I could tell you. I could tell you seconds right now. Let's count five seconds together. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. No matter what you were thinking about in those five seconds, five seconds pass just the same. Time is so beautiful because it doesn't care. It doesn't care what you're going through, what you're thinking about, where you've been, where you want to be. It's going to move at the same exact pace, no matter what. And we have that to trust in. We know time's going to move at the same exact pace. So be it five seconds passing or five hours going by, it's not that time went by faster, right? No, it didn't. It went by at the same exact pace. The only difference was you weren't present. You weren't looking at what's going on in front of you. And using mental rehearsal to empower you in those moments of what's going on in front of you to handle things in a way that you feel really proud of, you've been doing the opposite. So every time you're mentally rehearsing how your toddler's gonna throw a tantrum when you don't give them XYZ and you're gonna handle it really poorly. Hasn't even happened yet. You're just making a prediction based off of your past experiences. Because that's what your brilliant mind loves to do. It loves to not only make pre, but it loves to be right. Which again, can be really funny when our. When we think about our thoughts and what the frick our mind is doing, it's just making predictions based off of our past experiences. And until you get in the driver's seat and you start saying like, okay, these predictions no longer serve me. Making predictions that you're never going to have enough money, enough time, enough resources, that you're always going to struggle in these family relationships because it's the way it's always been. You and your husband are always going to fight about the same thing because it's the way it's always been. So you're taking those past experiences and making predictions. Do those predictions feel empowering? Do those predictions feel light and like there's something you can handle and you honestly feel excited to start overcoming things and solving things? No. Those predictions feel negative and limiting. You're using mental rehearsal in the wrong way. And the reason why I want to do a podcast episode on this is, yes, I have my journaling course releasing on May 23rd. I'm so freaking excited for it. But this is the way I've been journaling for almost three years now. And I have been a lover of journaling my whole life. Like, I have notes that I had written all the way back to 7 years old and then journals that I kept throughout my entire life when teachers made us journal as like schoolwork, activities and little diaries that I would keep. I remember I just always loved having a diary. A journal. And when we had classwork that involved us keeping journals and writing, I truly always loved it. That does not mean it's always served me now that I know what the frick I'm doing and how to use mental rehearsal in a way that serves me and how to use my journal to reaffirm who I am and build a mindset that supports me. Now that I know how to do all these things, I'm like, goodness, could we imagine who the frick I would be if I learned how to do that when I was 12? Or how about when I was going through that really hard thing when I was 14? That would have been really helpful. Now I'm really grateful that I didn't know how to do it then. I've learned so much because I didn't know how to do it sooner. And I beyond deeply grateful for every single lesson that's come. And I want you to be able to say that about your life too. Being so grateful for the lessons that you've learned. Because no matter how much you want to change your past, you don't get to. But we can accept our past. We can accept our past. We can change our perspective of our past. We can accelerate our healing when it comes to our past so that we can be free moving forward into our future and being who we want to be. And that's the approach that I personally take. You obviously don't have to do that, but I fully encourage you to try. So anyway, I've always loved journaling and it is interesting because when I look back at like 7 years old and and Progressing in my life through my journals and the little notes that I have that I've always written. Like, when I look at those, I'm like, oh, my gosh, the harder my circumstances got, the more, like, critical I was of myself and the more limited I was in my thoughts and. And the focus on solutions just wasn't there. And every time I would go to my journal at a time in life where things were really hard, maybe someone had passed away. Dysfunctional family relationships, experiencing bullying at school. Gosh, so many things. So many things. Every time I look, look back at those journal entries, all I'm doing is rewriting what had happened. I'm experiencing it again on paper. I'm reliving what I've already been through because it's the thing that I'm writing about. And when you really think about your journal that way, and everyone's like, oh, no, you just need to, like, dump your thoughts out. I'm totally fine with that. Like, please, I don't. I'm not going to freaking tell you the right way to journal. I'd love to teach you a new way to journal, but I'm not going to tell you what's right and what's wrong. I just want you to know that you don't have to stare at every blank piece of paper and feel intimidated by your own negative thoughts. You could learn a whole system of how to make your thoughts serve you, how to use mental rehearsal. So that way, when the circumstances arise that are outside of your control, because that's circumstances for you, when that happens, you feel empowered. You feel in alignment with who you want to be, and your mind has the, oh, my gosh, remember when we handled it this way before it even happened? And I'm going to talk to you more about that because it really is just such a fascinating experience to put yourself through. But the harder my life got, the more negative my journal was. Everything was so unfair for me. There's nothing I could do. Things were always going to be this way. I don't deserve the treatment and the things that I'm going through. And no, I didn't deserve that. However, it wasn't helping me see how to get through it. I never took that approach. So just three, almost three years ago, when I started journaling this way, I didn't even understand what I was really doing at the time. Now I understand how and why it's been so powerful and so effective for me. But at the time, it was just like, okay, I really need to stop. I really need to Stop. Just like, brain dumping all the negativity. Because I feel freaking worse leaving the paper. I don't feel better leaving the paper. Worse. When I write about how much I can't stand XYZ and how unfair ABC is and all the things literally outside of my control, that doesn't feel very awesome. So taking this new approach, what I'm going to teach you how to do in the course is really a lot of mental rehearsal, looking at what's very real going on in your life right now and spinning it in your mind in terms of this is what I'm going through and this is how I handle it. And I'm so proud of the way I handle it. And I love who I am and. And the way I show up to this circumstance and allowing yourself that freedom to see the best version of you and believe in her ability to overcome, no matter what, what comes your way. So in the journaling course, I talked about one of the circumstances that I had been through recently, which was my miscarriage. And that felt so freaking hard, obviously. Like, nobody wants to go through a miscarriage. I would never wish that upon anybody. But it also was out of my control. So would journaling about the miscarriage. And again, I'm speaking from personal experience. You're welcome to journal in whatever way feels right for you. But in speaking of the circumstance and the experience of my miscarriage, it didn't feel awesome. Like, I didn't feel like I want to go to a journal and just write out how this is so terrible and it shouldn't be happening to me, and this is so unfair and I hate my body and I can never trust it again. I'm never going to get pregnant again. And if I ever get pregnant, I'm going to have another miscarriage. And my dreams of having another baby are completely shot. Like, that didn't feel helpful when I was already having a hard time through that circumstance. What did feel really helpful was accepting my circumstance as the way it was presenting itself to me in reality. Right. Reality is what it is. My thoughts about it are up for debate. So the reality was I was experiencing a miscarriage. My thoughts about it are what are in my control. So approaching my journal in a sense of, like, how do I support myself through this? How do I lift myself up? How do I know who I am, keep my self worth, my self worth intact, hold on to and nurture the love and respect that I desperately want to have with my body? And I've worked really, really hard to get to a place where I have that with my body, and I don't want this experience to ruin that. I know what it's like to not love my body, and I certainly don't care to go back to that place. Worked really hard to get out of that place. So I refused to allow that circumstance, as hard as it was, to just completely dismiss the relationship that I have with my body and what I've worked so hard to build and who I really am and all the opportunity that I have of healing here. So in the course, I really walk you through that with that experience there, the circumstance outside of my control and how I use journaling to help me through that. But let's go back to the idea of mental rehearsal and your daily circumstances. Let's say your child throws a tantrum every single day. Every single day, around the same time, around the same thing. The freaking fork, guys, or the water bottle. Like, all the things on social media that we really pick on toddlers for, like, oh, my gosh, a completely. A fit being thrown for no reason at all. And they're like all these mean things which really aren't even true. They're not true. But anyway, your mind says, this is how my toddler's gonna react. And your mind doesn't just say that. Your mind is rehearsing how you're gonna react. My toddler is going to throw a fit when I give them this fork and I'm going to throw a fit back. I'm going to yell at them. I'm going to feel super frustrated. I'm going to shut down. I'm not going to know what to do. I'm going to have to walk away. I'm going to. It's going to ruin the day, you know, you're doing your mental rehearsal that way instead of doing mental rehearsal that way. I want you to try and challenge your mind to do mental rehearsal in a positive way. A positive way. What would that look like? All right, let's accept the circumstance for what it is. Your child, at some point in the day is going to have a hard moment. Call it a tantrum, call it a fit, call it whatever the freak you want. I don't care. But at some point in the day, we can accept the circumstances going to happen that your children aren't going to get along, or there will be an upset moment, a hard moment that your kids go through. Now, what is in your control, that circumstance itself is not in your control. But what is in your control is what you think is say and do in that moment. And if you're only mentally rehearsing how frustrated and annoyed and triggered and overstimulated you are and how poorly you're gonna react and how awful you're gonna feel after you yell at your child, like, if you're only ever mentally rehearsing that it's all you're gonna do. You're not gonna outgrow that conditioned belief system and pattern that you. That you have in your mind. You're not gonna outgrow that you. Because you haven't been thinking greater than that. So in this journaling course, when I teach you every single guideline that you need and what to do with specific circumstances, because I know it's easy to say, but that won't work for my circumstances. Oh, yes, it will. Yes, it will. And how to add in manifestation so that you can also focus on what you want your circumstances to look like. You're not limited to where life is today. You're limited to where you think it can go tomorrow. And then finally putting it all together. So there's four lessons inside of this course. And oh, my gosh, I'm just. I seriously am so in love with this course. It's amazing. Um, but instead of doing all the men, the negative mental rehearsal, I'm going to teach you how to do positive mental rehearsal. So how to use who you want to be. Get crystal clear on her. And build a mindset that supports you so that literally, you're doing mental rehearsal in a way that the next time your child throws a fit or. Or has the hard moment or tantrum, whatever you call it, you show up and your mind is like, remember when we handled it and we got down on our knees and we felt all of the tension released from our body and we just held their little hands and we listened and we validated and we showed them solutions that they didn't see before. Remember when we did that? Remember? You can believe experiences have happened, right? You can believe these things. Your mind and body can believe these things have happened and they haven't actually happened. Isn't that amazing? What if you started using that to actually serve you in your journal? And that's how I journal. I journal every single morning. I've been on this 100 day challenge to journal every single day. And it's been amazing. And Today is day 76. Six for me, which is amazing. I've done that. And now I'm just like, gosh, I feel so good. Why stop? It only takes for me and the size of my journal. It takes me about 20 minutes to fill a page. And I love that timeframe of just like getting so involved in my mental rehearsal and the way that I want to show up no matter the circumstances, looking at the things that I normally struggling with and predicting how beautifully I'm going to handle them that again aligns with who I want to be. Who is she? What does she think? Like, what does she do? What's something she would say? And building out my mindset to support me that way in real life, when the opportunity presents itself, it's an actual opportunity. This is my chance. I mentally rehearse this. I know how to do it. I'm here, I can do it. I'm not future pacing, right? Fearing the next six hours of my life because it's 10am and I know that I have to do X, y, Z at 4 o'. Clock. Like I'm not doing that. I'm taking life one precious present moment at a time and showing up as who I want to be. Because I practice so much mental rehearsal in my journal. And that's what I'm teaching you guys how to do, like positive mental rehearsal. Let's accept that circumstances are the way they are because that's reality until they're not. Because there's. You don't control. You don't control your circumstances. You control what you do about them. So things can still grow and change and heal and get better. But what you believe about these circumstances is going to make a really big difference. And your ability to do mental rehearsal in a way that helps you show up differently to the circumstances, especially the ones outside of your control. If someone's going to lie to you. All right, well, how are you going to handle it? Mentally rehearse how you start to communicate to this person that's always lying to you. Or mentally rehearse how you start to show up to those tantrums. Mentally rehearse how you're going to show up when you with that divorce. How. Mentally rehearse where you are taking your life. So much beauty there, so much fulfillment and purpose and. And what you're doing is you're creating new experiences in your mind before they happen. So I talked about in the beginning how your mind is making predictions all the time. It's really fascinating. I mean, just listen to people and they will tell you their predictions and their predictions are based off of past experiences because your mind takes in experiences and then it makes predict predictions. And I'm seriously just standing at my desk like arms flailing. I hope you can feel how called I Feel to have this episode to you, it just had to happen. But we're constantly making predictions based off of our past experiences. So when you listen closely, you can get a lot of insight into people's experiences in life. If they're making a lot of negative predictions, well, chances are they've had a lot of negative experiences. Doesn't that make sense? And it helps you have this whole new level of empathy and compassion for people, too, which is completely not what we're talking about right now, but it would be a great topic to talk about soon. So experiences causing these predictions to happen. When you use positive mental rehearsal and you're creating new experiences in your mind, you're giving yourself this new ability to have positive predictions, a new positive mindset, Positive predictions in your life before these experiences actually happened, you can believe them. You can believe them before they've actually happened in your life. You can have gratitude for things that have not come to you yet, but you can exercise gratitude for them as if you just know they're coming. You know you're going there, you know where you're headed. It's beautiful. You are literally, when people say that you're your only limit, that is the fact of life. You are your only limit. And we have so much freedom and empowerment there that I. I want us all to step into more. And this journaling course will totally help you do it. And I'm just looking at it in front of me, and it's so beautiful. I printed it out because I was like, I love this. Mind you. I printed it, and then I, like, flipped through a few pages that I found some spelling errors, and I was like, oh, well, we're gonna fix that before it launches. But anyway, all these good things, what we're doing in the journaling is creating new positive experiences, putting those in the mind, so that way, when the opportunity presents itself, you now get to have a positive prediction. So it really is so powerful in your mindset, and it gives you the opportunity in this course to focus on who you want to be. I talk a lot about identity, and I believe it's foundational, and it's an incredible tool and piece of our puzzles. And so often it's overlooked. So often it's not even overlooked. It's just misused, like, destructively and toxically misused, that I am exhausted, I am overwhelmed, I am lazy, I am worthless, I am inconsistent. Wow. That's not helping. That's not helping. And I want to help you get out of that. So, anyway, mental rehearsal, it's A real thing. It's an amazing thing when you use it to serve you. You're doing it anyway so you might as well start switching it around just a tad bit to actually serve you. And if this is something that you're like, oh my gosh, I really want to be in this journaling course. I want to know all the details. Let me tell you more about it. So this journaling course is going to release on May 23rd. It will be available to purchase at any time. It is totally a self guided course. When you purchase it on the website, it's 97. I wanted to keep it really affordable and also save you money. You no longer have to buy guided prompted journals. All you need is a freaking blank notebook. Every blank piece of paper is now your opportunity and you're gonna feel so pumped about it with me. But yeah, 97 for self guided. And then the one time group coaching that I'm offering before I have our sweet third baby and who is now 29 weeks in my belly before I have our baby at the end of July, I wanted to offer just one more opportunity to work with me this year. And then after that it will be mind body alignment, my 12 week course launching, the opening, the enrollment in December of this year for New Years of 2023. So we've got some months to enjoy postpartum and I'll be talking about all the mindset with newborns and postpartum and and all those good things that I'm still excited to continue serving you but I won't be hosting coaching sessions at that time. So if you're interested in group coaching, that's going to be $297 to work with me for a four week period. And you will have lifetime access to the course. Just like if you did self guided, you have lifetime access to that. There are five video modules to coach you through the introduction, lessons one through four. So five video modules to coach you through it. And then in group coaching you have lifetime access to a private coaching community where everyone comes together working on their journaling and you guys can share breakthroughs together. I'm in there to help answer questions. So if you have a question about this specific circumstance, oh my gosh, help me figure out how to journal about it. I would love, love to do that for you. And we're all going to be getting to know each other but also improving our skill set together, answering questions. And then once a week I'll be meeting with that group to do a live coaching session together where I can answer even more of your questions. Do some self discovery and healing coaching with you because that, I mean that's in journaling so we're gonna do that. The four week coaching option is available for anyone that is interested for June. So anyway, I hope that you will love this course just as much as I have loved doing it for the past three years, but also creating it over the past month for you and it will be available on May 23. But until then I hope you're doing so well and I am sending you all the good vibes your way it. Thank you for joining me on this week's episode. If you enjoyed the podcast, don't forget to subscribe and share it. I love spreading the message of how positivity can come in so beautifully to help you through your journey of self discovery and healing. I'm cheering for you. I believe in you and I'll talk to you really soon.