Ep: 38 Taking back your power

You are listening to episode number 38 of the Reinvent You Podcast, how to stop allowing situations and other people to dictate how you feel.

If you're someone who wants to make major changes in their life, someone who wants to achieve their goals, or maybe you're someone who knows this is not as good as it gets but you have no idea where to start, on the Reinvent You Podcast We explore different types of people, their successes and failures, and how they reinvented themselves to create the life they love. It's our hope that from hearing their stories, that you too may have more insight into what it takes to build a life that you envision for yourself. Here to help you do that is performance and life coach Travia Steward.

Hello, my peeps. It's 2021, we're off and running. And I've already seen on social media memes and posts about people who are already writing off 2021. You know, January is not even over yet and they're already writing it off. And I admit that, you know, I've set some bold goals for 2021, and I would like to have the chance and the time to achieve those goals. I don't want to rush through 2021. I don't want to write it off because every day is precious. And I mean, I do admit that sometimes there's a sense of urgency and I get anxious because it's not even the end of January, but I want to be half— I want to have achieved and accomplished half of the goals that I set out to accomplish. But again, all of that comes from having the right mindset, having the right attitude, and not allowing these outside circumstances, really our thoughts, dictate how we feel. So on this episode today, I'm going to share with you what I think works in taking back control that we've given to certain— to other situations and circumstances, and the control that we've given to other people, how to take those things back and control how we feel every single day. So before we dive into it, I just wanted to think, you know, I've set a goal to increase my presence. I want more people to be able to find the podcast, and especially if they're finding something valuable about it. So I wanted to spend a moment and thank, you know, my latest new reviews. Like, um, we— I got one from Coach Pokey, and as a matter of fact, Coach Pokey wrote hers a couple months ago, but I failed to mention it in a couple episodes ago. But I don't want anybody to ever think that I don't appreciate what they do. I also want to thank Cajun 810 for writing a great review and also Change Architect and then DL Coaching. So thank you guys so much. And I really appreciate it. And again, share the podcast with someone else that you think might benefit from it if you're getting value from it. So let's go with episode number 38. There is probably someone you hate, someone you dislike that you work with that makes it terrible to show up to that job every day, right? You hate the way they look. You hate the way they look at you. You hate how they dress. You hate how they talk. They have a lisp and you can't stand it. Everything about that person, you know, sometimes makes your skin crawl. They might wear their, their pants or their jeans too tight. And how dare that, that man wear white pants and, you know, and what have you, you know, they shouldn't have worn that color. You know, it's just on and on and on and on and on. And if it wasn't for that specific person, you would love your job, right? You would enjoy your time at work more if that person would just go away. Do you ever let circumstances or situations set the stage for how you feel throughout your day? Because this thing happened, damn that, I am in a terrible mood for the rest of the day because this happened, and I am no longer in a good mood, right? I remember a few years ago when I was on— you know, I was always on either a weight loss plan or a build muscle plan, you know, because I'm always trying to grow, to get better. I always wanted to either lose a certain amount of weight or build a certain amount of muscle. And so I would be so excited through the week because I felt like I was working my ass off on the treadmill, on the stationary bike, you know, lifting weights. I felt like, you know, oh my goodness, I was keeping my heart rate up, you know, above, you know, whatever I wanted it to be. Sometimes it was an average of 130 because I was like, oh my God, I burned 800 calories in this one workout. And I always felt like Yeah, when I get on the scale on Saturday morning, I'm going to be like 3 pounds down, you know, boom, because I really worked hard. Well, of course, what would happen? I would get on the scale on Saturday morning and it would be either up a pound or sometimes it would be, oh, it's just the same as it was 2 weeks ago. And then it would piss me off. I would want to quit, second-guess it. I worked my ass off all week for nothing, right? Isn't that what we do? We want to throw in the towel. We want to quit right then. Why am I doing all of this? I can go out and eat and drink as much as I want. It still won't matter, right? I'll probably gain weight. But my God, to get it off is so tough. It's so hard. And so why work that hard when we're not seeing progress? And then I would let all those thoughts go through my mind and dictate how I was feeling the rest of the day, because the results were not as I expected them to be. So what is the part of the problem here? The part of the problem is having specific expectations. You know, about a week or so ago, I— Received an email from a potential client, someone I didn't know, someone who found me, you know, through my website, and they expressed interest in wanting to work with me. So, you know, I of course responded, sent an email back explaining what it would look like to work with me and, and, and, and how we could make it happen, and here are next steps, that kind of thing. Crickets. I didn't hear a single thing from that person, although they had reached out to me. So a day went by, a few days went by, a week went by. It was over a week and I still hadn't heard anything. And so then I chose a couple of mornings ago to ruminate on that. You know, what, what had I done wrong? To run that person off? What had I done to make them change their mind? You know, I like to pride myself on being a highly energetic person, a pretty optimistic person, a person who sees the glass half full. But I wasn't that person that day. Every day, every morning when I get up, I assess how I'm feeling in my body on a scale of 1 to 10. My number is generally an 8.5 to a 9. And I assess, am I Am I feeling any stress? Am I feeling rested? Did I get a good amount of sleep? Do I have a good amount of energy right now? Well, that morning I got up to assess, and I was about a 5 or 6. I'm generally not a 5 or a 6. I was a 5 or a 6 because I had ruminated on what I made it mean that that person wasn't responding to my email, that I had not gotten a response. I immediately started thinking like, oh, okay. They probably, they don't want to work with me because I'm Black. They don't want to work with me because I have a wife. They hate my website. They hate the colors on my website. I'm too energetic. I'm too this, I'm too that, and on and on and on and on. And after a while, I realized that every bit of these thoughts was ridiculous, but I still ended up spending about an hour ruminating on that and letting myself go into that thought spiral. So then I had to, you know, I had to self-coach to pull myself out of it and realize that I had allowed the circumstances of not getting the response from someone who had reached out to me to lessen my worth, how I felt about myself, to second-guess choices I had made. Because I was like, oh my God, I've just redone my whole website. I should go take it all down because the old website was working better than the new website. And I'm just being way too bold, all those things that I thought were turning people off. And so ultimately I kept trying to figure out what had I done to turn that person off. And I remember when I was working with, with Christina Berkley, you know, as coaches, you know, a lot of us have, have our own coach because yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a good thing for someone to look at my blind spots as well. And I remember I had gone to a coaching call with Christina, and I was so excited about this guy who was going to sign up to work with me. We'd already had 2 calls together. He was like, yes, send me the invoice. I will make payment, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, by the time I go to the coaching call with Christina, I said— she's like, you know, Trey, how you feeling, that kind of thing, what's going on? And I said that I couldn't understand why this guy hadn't paid. And he said he was interested and I haven't heard from him. I sent him an invoice and it's been crickets again. And he hasn't replied. And she's like, you know, well, have you reached out to him? I was like, no, because I bet he doesn't want to work with me. He's changed his mind, all these things. And she goes, because you haven't heard from him, you know what that means? And I was like, what? Because of course I thought, you know, she's going to come up with this great genius gift of information. I will know exactly. I will have all the answers. And so I was like, no, what does that mean? Oh my God, what does it mean? Tell me now. She goes, it means nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was like, you're right. That makes total sense. And as a matter of fact, the guy paid the very next day and he just hadn't done it. There was no reason. He was still excited to work with me, but I had made up all this stuff in my head because I had to make it mean something, right? It's what we do. It's what I've done all my life. I had to figure out what it meant. I had to figure out and get into his brain to figure out what he was thinking. And, you know, honestly, we generally don't know why people do the things that they do. We don't know why they respond or don't respond. But what happens is we set ourselves up for disappointment, and then it puts us into a thought spiral because we have expectations of how we want the other person to react or respond, or how we want that situation to turn out. That's what sets us up for disappointment. So how do we be in control of how we feel? I believe you have to take back the power that you give other people. And situations. How did I go about figuring out what was making the situation a bad thing? A, you know, stress in my chest causing distress. I had to analyze what was causing that problem of were these things actually happening? Were these thoughts that I was having actually true. You know, I— whenever I feel off, it always shows up in my chest. My breathing was a bit shallow that day because I'm very, very aware of when I'm not my normal 8.5, 9. And so it's almost like you can touch it. And so I would feel it in my chest And I would feel like, OK, if I breathe into it, is it getting better? Is it getting worse? And I would close my eyes. And this was while I was journaling. I would write these things down in a journal according to, this is how I'm feeling today, and why am I feeling this way, and what is down at the core of that. And whenever we're writing in the journal, we have a tendency to direct what we want to write instead of just letting the thoughts flow effortlessly. But again, I closed my eyes and I felt like I could almost touch it if I focus on the exact spot, that very specific area that was causing me the tightness, the distress, and the thoughts, the underlying thoughts of what I was feeling in that moment, despite feeling like, oh, okay, they don't want to work with me because of this, because of that, blah, blah, blah, you know, all the things. But when I got down to the core of it, I had allowed all of those feelings that I've been ruminating on, all of the make-believe that I'd been letting circulate in my mind, I had been making it make me feel like I wasn't good enough. That who was I to think that I could make this happen? You know, if we could control other people in every situation, we'd have it made, right? If people would just behave and act like we want them to, according to the rules that, you know, we live our lives by. If people would just obey the rules, then I wouldn't feel this way. If people wouldn't say things, nasty things to me, then I wouldn't have to react like this. If people would just behave, I would be in a better mood if people wouldn't just piss me off every day. I would feel better about myself, right? A lot of us think those things. The real truth of the matter is people, adults, get to do whatever the hell they want. It's none of my business, is none of our business how they behave. What is my business is how I choose to react to it. How much power I choose to give that person or that situation. And what is it that I'm making it mean about me and my business and my career and my life? So how do we take the power back that we've given to other people and situations? How do we not be so bothered by these things? Well, I believe that we can make a choice. We can be conscious of the emotions we're feeling and the emotions that we're choosing in those moments. There are a few emotions that I love to feel. I love to feel love. I love to feel connection. I love to feel anticipation and exhilaration. And in those moments when I'm not feeling one of those, I have to flip the switch and choose to focus on what I know is true, just the facts of the situation, and not what I've made up or dramatized in my head. So from that example, the only thing that I know is I sent an email and that was it, and I haven't gotten a response back yet. That's it. Those are the facts of the situation. Instead of letting it go and go and go and go Because it's the thoughts in our head that causes the feelings, that causes that tightness, I can flip that switch and choose how I react to it. And in that example that I gave you, I have to know that my best emotion that I want to feel every single day is love. And so I ask myself, what can I be grateful for? What can I learn from this situation? You know, what can I do next time so I don't give someone else power over my feelings and thoughts? Well, I can choose gratitude. And in that situation, I had to choose that I had done something right that the person reached out to me to begin with. I had done something that made them say, I believe that would be the coach for me. So I could celebrate that. I don't know what was going on in that person's life. And of course I can make it up, but we don't really know. And then no matter what that situation is, we don't know what the other person is dealing with. We don't know the facts and the circumstances of their life. So in that moment, find something to be grateful for and not making up dramatizing things and actions and details about what we think it means. In those moments, I have to choose love and connection and anticipation and exhilaration instead of feeling anxious and despondent and unworthy. And if I could choose love every single day— because we get it, we have a choice. We have a choice as to how we feel every single day. If I could choose love, why would I want to choose to feel depressed? Why would I want to choose to feel anxious and stressed and where my chest is tight? Why would I want to choose anything that didn't put me into the emotional state that I want to be in? Well, I have to remember to always flip that switch. We can all flip that switch on what we're thinking when we find ourselves in a thought spiral of negativity. Any thought that is causing you stress or anxiety, flip the switch to focus on just the facts, finding something to be grateful for in that situation, and ultimately choosing the emotion that you want to feel. Choosing love over any of the negative feelings, anything that's causing you distress. So in a nutshell, we can take back our power from the situations, from the circumstances, from other people by choosing love, choosing that feeling that we want to feel, and finding something to be grateful for in that moment. So choose love. Choose to be grateful. Choose to not have expectations of others, because that just sets us up for disappointment. We can't expect other people to know exactly how we're feeling and to know the rules in which we govern our lives, of which we expect them to govern their lives. We can't have expectations of others. We have to figure out, these are the needs that I have in my life. And if I'm expecting someone else to meet those needs, I have to cut that off and go, how can I meet that need myself? And so in that example, I found a way. If I wanted to feel love again, I focused on that person reached out to me to begin with. And then I made myself feel loved and accepted and grateful. So choose to be in control how you feel. And fuel yourself with the feelings that you want to feel every single day, because every moment is a choice and we can choose how we feel. If you would like to explore what coaching could do for you, how working with a performance and life coach like myself could do for you, I would love to have a free consultation with you. Click the link Click the link in the bottom of the show notes and let's schedule a consultation.