34. Roots and Fruits! Get down to the root!

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. Woohoo. We are going to talk about roots and fruits. And I know part of you is like, what is Tessa going to talk about today? What is going on in the actual world? That's right, roots and fruits. So if you're not aware, one, I love analogies. I think they are just so good for bringing a vision to your mind to make better and deeper connections of what we're actually talking about when it comes to your self discovery and healing journey. So I use them often. Two, I love gardening like I, I love my garden. My garden has taught me so many valuable lessons and analogies that involve mother nature and earth and just things that are so natural, like plants I love so much. So roots and fruits, my friends, consider this. Let's imagine that you have a lemon tree growing in your backyard and every day you go pick lemons off of this tree, but you want an apple tree. So you pick a lemon. And you're just so frustrated. You feel so frustrated that you keep getting lemons off this freaking tree and you keep on picking lemons, thinking, okay, tomorrow I'm going to get an apple. Tomorrow I'm going to get an apple. Apple. Tomorrow I'm going to get an apple. Are you ever going to get an apple off that lemon tree? No, you're not. Because the roots in the ground are designed for lemons. That entire tree is growing lemons. That's what it is, is a lemon tree. Now if you want an apple tree, what do you need to do? Well, you need to plant seeds for an apple tree to grow. That way the fruits on that tree will be apples. So don't try to change a lemon tree into an apple tree. Right? Let's uproot the lemon tree. Let's take out the lemon tree and plant an apple tree. How does this relate to mindset? What is this whole thing with roots and fruits? Well, I love to think of negativity and those negative thoughts as weeds in your garden. So imagine that your mind is just this beautiful garden and you have some marvelous plants growing and you also have some weeds. Now if you're unfamiliar with gardening, think of this. Weeds are like the thieves of the garden. They Steal sunlight and water and nutrients from the plants that you intentionally put there that you want to see grow. And then the weed comes up and it's stealing nutrients from that plant that you want to grow. Now, weeds are very resilient. They're very resilient. They pop up out of seemingly nowhere. And it's your job to tend to the garden, to manage the weeds. And we know that if you've never pulled weeds. I've been pulling weeds my whole freaking life. But if you've never pulled weeds, you need to know that it's much easier to pull weeds when they're small. It's so much easier to get the whole root out when you find a baby weed. And it's also easier to pull weeds after it's rained, after we've been in this season of rain and the ground is wet. It's also loose, and you can pull weeds out more easily. So how does this relate to mindset? Your negative thoughts are weeds in your garden. Your positive thoughts, who you want to become. Those are the marvelous plants that you intentionally put there that you're trying to nurture and grow. But those plants that you intentionally put there, the positive thoughts, the I am statements that you're using, who you wanting to become, you're not going to become that version of you if you still have weeds that are stealing what you need in order to become that. Remember, weeds steal the water, the nutrients, and the sunlight from the plants that we want to grow. So it's our job to tend to the garden. So when your negative thoughts are bigger than the ones the positive thoughts that you're trying to grow and condition, when the negative thoughts are bigger than that, those roots are deeper. They're stealing the nutrients that the positive thoughts need. Right? Your belief. Let's assume that your belief is sunlight. Sunlight. So the sunlight's going to this weed, and the weed is growing and the plant that you want to grow, that positive thought, I am productive is not getting your belief. Because all of your belief, sunlight is going to. I am lazy. That weed. Do you see how that sunlight is not going in the right place. And sunlight is your belief. Now, what could water be? Water could be your actions. Yep, your actions. Your actions are the water. So I'm making this up as I go right here for you. So the sunlight is your belief. The water is your actions. Your actions are reaffirming the negative beliefs about yourself. I am lazy. So we are choosing actions. We are responsible for our choices, guys. We are watering that belief by choosing actions that Align with I am lazy, maybe procrastinating, putting things off, not doing the things that you say you're going to do. And I'm not saying you are lazy. I'm just giving you the analogy of what's happening and why it's happening, because the actions are reaffirming the negative beliefs rather than the water actions, but going to the positive beliefs about yourself, I am intentional. Well, you're not going to believe that about yourself if one, it's not getting any sunshine, the belief to be instilled, and two, the water of actions that align with I am intentional. So our actions matter, where our beliefs go matter, and we are choosing what grows here. And finally, let's decide right now what nutrients are going to be. So sunlight is our beliefs, water is our actions, and our nutrients are going to be our influences. So what do we choose to consume? Who do we choose to be around those influences? I've told you guys about influences on social media, the radio shows you listen to, the podcast episodes that you listen to, the movies that you watch, the friends that you connect with. All of that matters so strongly in your journey to become who you want to be, because you are only going to become who you think you can be. And if you're around other people that don't think they can be who they want to be, good luck thinking you can. Our influences matter tremendously. So nutrients. Nutrients are influences. Okay. How likely is it for this marvelous plant to grow that you want to grow so badly if all the influences. Right. I want to be intentional. It's who I want to be. But all of my influences are not. They're not breathing like an intentional lifestyle. Maybe they have a lot of victim mentality surrounding them, and you're constantly consuming those. Those influences which are nutrients. So I love this analogy. I really do. Roots and fruits. And if you have a lemon tree, don't expect to get apples. But let's talk about the roots. Why are the roots so freaking meaningful? Well, number one, the bigger a plant gets, the harder it is to rip it out of the ground, right? Especially with weeds, I mean, trees, all of that, their roots get so stinking strong down deeper and deeper and deeper into the ground because this plant wants to survive. So as you have these negative thoughts, and they've been ongoing for so long getting all the nutrients that they need, all of the sunlight, all of the water that they need to be strong plants, you're going to have a really hard time ripping them out of the ground. And people often make this mistake Imagine a weed in front of you. There's a weed in your garden. This is the mistake people make. They pull off a leaf. They pull off a leaf. So now they're aware that the weed is there, they have this negative thought that says, I am lazy. And they know it's there. So they pull off a weed. I'm sorry, they pull off a leaf. And that leaf is, no, I'm not. No, I'm not. So they decide to only go with, no, I'm not. And it's basically equivalent to pulling a leaf off of that weed. Did you stop the weed from growing? No. Have you slowed down its growth? No. You've battled the weed a tiny bit? No, I'm not. And you pulled off a leaf, but you have not made effective, sustainable progress and truly removing the weed entirely. So pulling weaves off does not help. Now, let's imagine that you take a pair of scissors to this bush of a weed and you decide, I'm just going to hack it at the stem. Right? Okay. So you go up to the weed and you hack it at the stem. And let's say if the belief is, I am lazy, you hack at the stem. And that is equivalent to you creating new positive affirmations. So instead of just saying, no, I'm not, you decided to create a new positive affirmation that says, I am intentional and I am productive. But you didn't take out the root of that weed. So just because you have an affirmation does not mean it's going to effectively overcome your negative beliefs. Those weeds, they're not just thoughts, they're beliefs. Right? The sunshine that goes on that plant is the beliefs. The waters are actions that reaffirm that belief. The nutrients are our influences that strengthen that belief. But saying an affirmation is not going to remove the weed. It's not going to uproot the entire belief that you've had for probably a very long time. So I love affirmations. I do. I love it when we have a negative thought and we say something like, that's not true about me. No, I'm not. Or we hear something said about us and we say, no, I'm not. That's not true about me. I love that I do, and I recommend that we do that. But you have to learn the skill set of uprooting actual roots. You have to learn how to do that. So cutting a stem off the weed itself is going to grow back probably extremely quickly. Have you ever noticed that weeds grow much faster than flowers? I planted flowers for the first time this summer, and I could not freaking believe how long it took for those stinking flowers to grow. My green beans grow to 20 times faster than those flowers, and weeds definitely grow faster than both green beans and flowers. So it's interesting how much faster, really, how weeds correlate to negative beliefs so much. Because weeds are easily rooted. They're easily believed, they grow so fast. But growing flowers takes so much more intention and time and effort and patience than growing weeds. So I. This is why I love the garden analogy, because I think it's just spot on with life in general and the way things work and what our mind is doing. But we can grow flowers in our mind. We totally, totally can. And I'm living proof of that. But cutting a weed at the stem is not killing it. It's going to grow back. So what do we need to do to effectively remove the weeds of our mind? To effectively remove the. The negative thoughts in our mind? What do we need to do? We need to pull out the entire root, just like the lemon tree. If you're not happy with the fruit you're getting off of that tree, don't ask the tree to change. You need to plant a new tree. You need to get rid of the lemon tree. Right? You want an apple tree? Plant an apple tree. Nurture it, grow it, let it become the strongest thing in the garden. And you will love the fruits you get off of that tree. And the fruits are the new beliefs that come. I can do this. I am worthy, I am deserving. Things work out for me in my life. I'm always given what I need. Those are the new fruits coming off of that tree. And you never got those fruits before on the lemon tree. Yeah, because the lemon tree was just doing what it's supposed to do, give you lemons. But we want an apple tree, so we need to plant new roots. So the roots of those weeds, where are they coming from? Why are they here? It's not. People often think about negative thoughts as, like, oh, they just randomly come out of nowhere. And that's not true. I don't believe that's true. It's not a fact. I believe that our negative thoughts come from our experiences. We created a belief about ourselves when we went through something traumatic, shameful, hard, difficult, whatever it was. We created a belief about ourselves, a belief about the world, a belief about life and the way it works and the friendships that we have. And this always happens to me. You don't just randomly think that one day you have experiences that happen. Roots that are planted seeds that are planted and those grow so strong because the belief is giving them sunlight, your actions are giving them water, and your influences are giving them the nutrients that they need to become very strong. So when you are like, okay, Tessa, I really want to go on my healing journey, you have to get comfortable with looking at your past experiences to better understand why you have these beliefs in the first place. Because I'm telling you, pulling a leaf off of a weed or cutting it at its stem may feel like the very easy thing to do. And that's why we try to do it, because we want to do what's easy, we want to do what's comfortable. It freaking sucks, like, to pull out this great big weed, Especially if you don't have gloves to protect your hands. What if there's thorns on it? It hurts to pull it out, but keeping it there is far more painful, right? And it takes so much more out of you than the amount of effort that it took and honestly, pain that you endured to grab that weed and pull it out. The effort that it took to sit there and dig it out, even if you had to get out a screwdriver, you know, to really get the roots out. I don't know if you guys have had weeds like that, but I totally have. When you do that, you get the actual root out, and then you're no longer experiencing the continued beliefs that are just coming from that root. You would not think I can't do this if the roots of those thoughts were not there. The roots of those thoughts are looking at past experiences that say, I can't do this, it's too hard for me. Or maybe someone told you before in your life that you're never gonna amount to anything. So when you have this great big dream, you have a limiting belief, deeply rooted, that says, well, I can't do that. I'm not capable of that. Yeah, I know that sounds nice, but I'll never be able to do it. It's not that you just have these random negative thoughts. They come from somewhere. The random negative thoughts are just the fruits. They're the fruits of the tree that is there. And when you allow yourself to view it this way, we can view ourselves one as normal. Which is always helpful to know that there's nothing wrong with you. Your mind is doing exactly what it's supposed to do, exactly what it's programmed to do. And it's your job to reprogram it. It's your job to plant something new there. And in my 12 week course, I love Going through past experiences because they freaking matter. Past experiences give you the opportunity to understand why you have these beliefs in the first place. Why do you do what you do? Why do you put all of the sunshine, your beliefs, the water, your actions, and the nutrients being your influences in these negative places? Well, because that's what's growing. That's what's growing. And the weed's gotten so big, it's basically stealing the nutrients now. And it's going to take work and effort and to get those nutrients back and to really prioritize the plants that you want to grow. But you can do it, especially when you have a proven roadmap to follow, which is mind body alignment. I have coached hundreds of women over the past four years using this course. I improve it every year based on the feedback. What I'm experiencing, what I notice in others, I improve it. And when you're in this group setting of other vulnerable women choosing to work on themselves, take total ownership, overcome their victim mentality, refuse to, to continue nurturing these negative beliefs about themselves, you will experience insane positive growth. Truly you will, because you're not alone. You're becoming invested in other women's experiences and stories and growth, and they're becoming invested in you. So it's accountability on a much grander scale and so much more meaningful because we believe in each other. We know you can do this. We get, we. We just become invested in one another. And it's amazing. So I am inviting you to join me inside of Mind Body Alignment. I only run this course twice a year and the enrollment for it is open. Early enrollment for if you have my alignment. Journaling course is December 1st to the 10th. Open enrollment for everyone else is December 11th through the 21st, and we start together on January 1st. And I promise you, if this podcast episode, you're like, oh my gosh, it makes so much sense. My past experiences have put these deep rooted beliefs in me. And this whole time I've been yanking off leaves and I've been cutting the weeds at the stem and then feeling surprised that they're still there because you haven't gotten to the root. You've just felt disappointed with the fruits that you're getting. But the fruits make sense. The fruits make sense when you consider what's growing there. So when you are ready to uproot the beliefs that you've had about yourself and life and what you can and can't do, and you know you're ready to overcome those fruits that you've been given of self doubt and Negativity and limiting beliefs and pessimism and the victim mentality. You're ready to change all of those fruits. I am your girl. Mind, body alignment is your community. That's what it's for. But for now, maybe you're still on the edge. I want you to allow yourself to investigate where your thoughts are coming from. Ask yourself, why. Why do I think I can't do this? Oh, my gosh. Because my mom always told me that I wouldn't amount to anything. Oh, well, there's the root. There's the painful root that needs healing. Changing thoughts is pulling off leafs, right? Swapping thoughts, pulling off leaves. You have to get to the root of why you believe it in the first place if you want to see true sustainability. And, and it's extremely effective to do that way. It's not effective to pull off leaves and cut off stems because it's gonna grow back. You didn't do anything. I mean, you temporarily changed something, sure, but it's going to come back. So when you allow yourself to do the self discovery work to figure out where are these beliefs coming from? Where is all this hurt coming from? And then the healing work to remove the thorn from your arm, that's what we have. We have thorns in our arm. And instead of pulling out the thorn because it hurts to touch it, it hurts to bring this up, it hurts to touch it. So we choose not to touch it. And we decide to just guard it. And we're gonna armor it up. But then that makes us extremely insecure and timid around other people. Cause what if they bump my thorn? What if they trigger me? Those triggers are just bumping your thorn in your arm. But if you remove the thorn from your arm, you are no longer triggered. You're no longer insecure and worried about people hurting you because you've healed your hurt. What are they gonna do? What if they bring up something that I'm so ashamed of? What if you weren't ashamed of it and you just totally owned it? Then you wouldn't have to fear anyone bringing anything up to you. You don't have to fear them finding out because you know you. You love you. You own your story. We're always gonna care to an extent about what other people think of us. But the goal is to care more about what we think about ourselves than what other people think about us. That's the goal. Not completely. Just I don't care what anybody thinks about me ever. That's not the goal. Because we can learn a lot about ourselves when we choose to observe and inquiry what other people think. Well, I think you're super selfish. Is that true about me? Am I super selfish? No. But you know, they're referring to this instance that I did this particular thing, and I can see how that came across as selfish. I know why I did it. So we still don't have to shame ourselves. We can learn and grow and heal without shame. Shame does the exact opposite. So it's a good thing to care what other people think because you're willing to do self reflection. You're willing to continue learning and growing, but you don't have to do it at the expense of the relationship with yourself. That's what we're trying to nurture and grow here is a beautiful, thriving, fantastic relationship with yourself. It doesn't mean you're perfect. It means you're willing to continue learning and growing and healing and becoming who you want to be. So if this is something that you're interested in, you want to get to the roots of why you do what you do, they are there. And if you're like, I'm so sick of pulling leaves off of my weeds and cutting them down to stem, I'm ready to actually remove them in a sustainable and efficient way. I'm enrolling in mind body alignment. Do it. That's what we do inside of mind body alignment. We figure out, why am I doing this? Why do I identify this way? Oh, my gosh, this makes so much sense. I've been through so much trauma, so much hurt, so much shame. The way that I was parented did not allow me to feel safe being who I wanted to be. So I adapted because that's what kids do. Kids adapt because they're brilliant. The problem is that that adaption becomes our behaviors and our personality growing up. Because at a child's level, they don't understand that this was an adaptation that they made to survive their circumstances. They don't understand that we did not understand that. So we've just continued on with people pleasing and perfectionism and anger and aggression and negativity and pessimism. We've just continued on with all of that without ever stopping to consider, why did I adopt this behavior in the first place? Why do I do this? Why do I feel more comfortable doing something that doubts myself? Why do I feel more comfortable thinking in a way that puts me down rather than thinking in a way that builds me up? Why? Why is the hurt more comfortable than the good? Why do I feel more safe sitting in all of the bad than allowing myself to Experience good and joy and gratitude and to laugh and be silly and fun and to truly just be who you want to be. Why does it feel so uncomfortable to be who you want to be? Those are the questions you need to be asking yourself. Because I'm telling you, you're not going to change sustainably by ripping off leaves and cutting down stems. And I am your friend that's willing to get to the root with you. And that's what makes it so beautiful. And when you listen to other women going through similar journeys than you, we all have different experiences, but you don't have to share the same experience to benefit from one another and the stories that we share and the way that we're healing and growing. Because inside of Mind Body alignment, we use community and empathetic witnesses and connection to have a more effective healing journey that truly is sustainable. So you, like I said, we become invested in one another's stories. You learn from something, from someone else's perspective shift and their story and what they're learning about themselves. Even if you haven't been through the same thing. Right? Maybe you guys took different roads to perfectionism, but you're both struggling with it. You took different roads to guarding your hurt with anger, but you're both struggling with it. The roots might be different, but you are both experiencing the same fruits. So you can learn by witnessing other people heal. And when we're in a group setting like that, we have a hundred different perspectives, me, you and 100 other women, rather than just me and you and the perspectives that we can create on our own. We get to step into a community setting which increases our healing and it builds more meaningful connections and relationships and we can finally prove to, to ourselves that, oh my gosh, these types of relationships are possible. And this is what I want more of in my life. This is what's meaningful. This is what it feels like to be in a healthy relationship where we're there for one another. We can talk about hard things, but we're not staying stuck in it. We're also allowing each other to come up with solutions. So, anyway, I am obviously a huge fan, been doing it for four years. And I love just that every time I run these groups and truly just this, this path in general that I'm on, this calling that I'm in, keeps my mind in it all the time, all year round, 24 7. My mind is in it. And I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful for that because I get to do it for you. Yes. But I also get to continue doing it for myself because the work is never done. We are always going to be striving towards being who we want to be and we're going to notice things that are out of alignment with who we want to be and then we just work on them. We work on them and we know that we're really good people doing the best that we can. So if you're ready to change your beliefs, change the plants in your garden, and create, you know, new forms of sunshine, nutrients and water for the plants that you want to grow, then I'm your girl and mind Body alignment is your community. So I look forward to seeing you there. I will be releasing more information on where you can enroll through links and things like that beginning December 1st. So watch out for that and just email me if you have any questions at all. 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.