This week I heard a quote from Rob Dial, a motivational speaker on social media, “Your nervous system doesn’t move towards what is exciting. It moves towards what is familiar.” This quote really resonated with me. For much of my life I have struggled with anxiety and clinging to the familiar to ease my anxiety. It made me think about how many people think they are chasing goals, but the reality is they are chasing comfort or familiarity.
Our nervous systems are created to inherently prefer the familiar because predictability equals safety. The brain is designed to save energy and it is always looking to automate recurring experiences to conserve cognitive load. It is constantly searching for known patterns, even if they are uncomfortable or unhealthy, because the unknown is processed as an unpredictable threat. Familiar stimuli require less mental processing, which is easier for the brain, therefore it registers as positive and safe. The amygdala, part of the brain that detects threats, is wired to anticipate the future based on the past. If you survived a familiar environment or dynamic, your nervous system will naturally steer you back towards these same familiar patterns in order to guarantee survival, regardless of whether the experience was objectively healthy or not. Repeated behaviors and emotional states become encoded in the part of your brain called the basal ganglia, which controls voluntary motor control, procedural learning, and reward-based decision making. This wiring can become very ingrained and incredibly difficult to break and retrain.
Since the nervous system equates unfamiliarity with danger, attempting sudden or big changes can trigger the fight- flight response. You can break the loop by gradual exposure. When you introduce micro steps, it makes change more manageable and your brain is more easily able to process the new in your routine as safe. This can be something as simple as visualizing that scary thing you want to do, then take one small action towards this new thing, then keep taking small steps towards your ultimate goal. You can also practice somatic regulation. This is just consciously calming your body when you begin something unfamiliar. You can do things like box breathing or paying attention to your 5 senses to ground you. This is a signal to your nervous system that everything is okay and you are not in danger. You can also consciously remind your brain that the discomfort you feel is normal for someone trying something new, and is not actually dangerous. We must continue to expose ourselves to the unfamiliar over and over again to get used to that feeling of being in a situation that feels scary because it is unfamiliar. Over time this gets easier and you are able to do more and more exciting things! Ultimately, familiarity is built over time, it is not innate.
Because our nervous system tricks us into wanting to stay comfortable, we must recognize that if we want change in life, it’s not always necessarily about more motivation or more discipline. What we really need to focus on is creating that familiarity in our lives. Once we have that mastered, we are actually able to move towards the exciting!
Here is the YouTube video I shared in conjunction with this blog post.
We all have a narrative about ourselves living inside our heads. The question isn’t whether you have a story you tell yourself, it’s whether your story is true. Many of the limits we put on ourselves aren’t real limits we have, but rather old beliefs that probably surfaced a long time ago. I recently heard a story shared on the Mel Robbins podcast from Dr. Shade Zahrai about a study that was done by a professor at Dartmouth in the late 70’s, early 80’s. He had two groups of people and with one group he drew a very noticeable, visible scar on their face, he let them see the scar so they knew it was there. With the other group he did not put a scar on their face. Then he sent them out to have conversations with people. When they returned he asked how the conversations went. The people with the scars on their faces felt like they were judged, like their conversation partner was cold, and that they were treated differently because of the scar. While those without the scar reported that the conversations went well. While that would have been an interesting experiment on discrimination, the fascinating thing about this study was right after he showed the scar participants their scar, he said that he was going to put some moisturizer on the scar to make sure it set but he was actually removing the scar entirely! So these participants went into the conversation only believing they had a scar, which led them to have an expectation of how people would treat them, which led them to pay attention to nuances in the conversation that objectively did not exist. So it is good to think about what kind of scars you are carrying that create this narrative of who you are and how it affects how you enter each conversation or circumstance in life.
A simple definition of self narrative is the ongoing story your brain tells you about who you are, what you are capable of, and what you deserve. From psychology we know that the brain is a meaning-making machine. It is always labeling and filing your life experiences. And then these narratives become the lens through which you filter each experience moving forward. Most of us don’t acknowledge that this complex process is going on, and therefore tend to live on autopilot, basically letting old stories or narratives about you make decisions. This can show up in any aspect of your life – home life, relationships, habits, self worth, and more.
These stories that we constructed, often subconsciously, came from many origins. It could come from childhood and the messages we received from parents, teachers, siblings, or even peers, often without these individuals even realizing the impact it would have on us. These stories can also come from our past failures, especially things that we never processed and forgave ourselves for, but instead the mistakes replay in our heads over and over. Comparison is another way we construct these stories about ourselves – we see those around us, like family or friends and measure how we are doing or our worth compared to how others are doing. This often isn’t the full picture as we see the narrative they feed us about themselves. This is especially true on social media – the place that is notorious for the highlight reel. Lastly, these stories we tell ourselves could be informed by cultural messages. There is messaging that comes from society that shows us for instance how a woman “should” be, how a home “should” look, or what success “should” look like. These narratives are rarely stories we choose to believe, but instead they were absorbed, handed to us, or formed in a moment of pain. But we almost subconsciously carry them as though they are fact.
These stories hold us back from becoming the best version of ourselves. They create a ceiling so to speak of what we believe we are or aren’t capable of. They almost become a self-fulfilling prophecy as we subconsciously act in ways that confirm the story. These narratives keep us stuck in “some day” thinking – believing that some day we will be more disciplined, more motivated, have more time, or are more ready to pursue the thing we want to do. It will also show up in how we talk to ourselves. When we make mistakes or don’t follow through on the steps it takes to get to our goals we are very critical instead of self compassionate. For example, a woman who believes she is “just not an organized person” will self-sabotage every organizing system she tries to implement, not because the system doesn’t work but instead because of this narrative she believes about herself that she is “just not organized.”
There are practical ways you can identify your limiting stories. First, watch your “I just am” statements. “I’m just not a morning person.” “I’m just not disciplined.” “I’m just disorganized.” The word “just” is a story pretending to be a fact. Notice always and never statements. “I always mess up.” “I never follow through.” Usually these statements are not true, but we can be prone to use them to support our story. Another way to identify limiting stories is to pay attention to resistance. When you have a strong emotional reaction to something, like defensiveness, shame, or avoidance, there is often a story underneath. There are a couple of questions you can ask yourself. If you are serious about getting to the bottom of your false narratives, spend some time journaling and asking yourself a couple of questions. One is: “What do I believe about myself that I have never questioned?” and/or ask: “Where did I first learn this about myself and was it a reliable source?” I know that self evaluation is not easy. It can be uncomfortable and even painful, but it is worth it.
So how do we rewrite these narratives? First I want to share with you what rewriting a narrative is NOT. It’s not toxic positivity. It’s not slapping platitudes or affirmations on a wound. Instead it is about moving from an outdated, inaccurate story to a more honest and empowering one. Use this statement to reframe your beliefs about yourself: “I used to believe _________, but the truth is ________.” An example would be: “I used to believe that I was a disorganized person, but the truth is I never had the right systems or anyone to teach me.” This won’t be easy. It won’t be a singular journal entry. New stories don’t just stick immediately because old neural pathways are deep. In order to reroute these new stories in your brain, so to speak, it will take consistent effort with intentional thought. Repetition is the key to successfully rewriting these narratives. Community and accountability are important in this process. The people around you either reinforce your old story or help you build a new one. Be intentional about who speaks into your life. Also, you must celebrate the small wins! Every time you act against the old story, you collect proof for the new one!
Did the story about the study done with the participants who thought they had a scar at the beginning of this post resonate with you? Do you have beliefs about yourself that inform the way you interact in the world? I frequently talk about decluttering our physical spaces, but the mind is one of the most important spaces you will ever declutter and organize! This week, think of one “I just am” statement that you have been telling yourself and ask if that is actually true or just a story you are telling yourself!
Here is the YouTube video I shared in conjunction with this blog post.
For today’s Thoughtful Thursday post I wanted to share on the topic of forgiveness. I am fairly certain I have talked about forgiveness in a previous Thoughtful Thursday post, but today I wanted to focus on the idea of forgiveness for your own sake more so than the sake of the person you are forgiving.
Unfortunately forgiveness is a part of everyday life as a human. Like I shared last week, because we are human, we are imperfect. We will make mistakes, we will say hurtful things, we will do things that hurt others – sometimes unintentional and sometimes intentional. Because of this, forgiveness is necessary in a healthy relationship. If we just abandoned relationships when we were hurt, we would not have very many long lasting relationships.
When we are wronged, it can be easy to sit in our hurt and to hold a grudge against that person. It is okay and natural to feel hurt. We must allow ourselves to feel the hurt, but we must choose to move forward and not wallow in the pain. Have you ever heard the saying, “unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” When we don’t forgive someone, we keep ruminating on the wrong done to us which only hurts US, not THEM! Forgiveness IS primarily for our own mental health! When we forgive someone, it frees us from those ruminating thoughts about the incident.
Something else I often think of when someone has wronged me is how I have done my own fair share of hurting others. Like I mentioned, this is human nature. We are not perfect and have moments of weakness where our anger or pride gets the best of us, or moments of stupidity where we hurt others without intention. I think about how I would like those people who I have hurt to extend grace to me, so I want to extend that same grace to others.
Offering and receiving forgiveness can truly foster deeper connections with those we love. When we go through the tough work of honesty and openness with one another about our hurts and can work through it with emotional maturity, it can really help those relationships grow deeper and flourish. Believe me, I have been on both sides of this equation being married for 29 years and also having some long term friendships. When we can be vulnerable with one another to share our hurts, it definitely causes the relationship to grow stronger. When we sulk, hold grudges, maybe talk to others about our woes instead of going directly to the person who hurt us, it only creates a wall in the relationship which can keep growing brick by brick over time. If this pattern continues where you don’t address hurts in a relationship, it will eventually become toxic. We are meant to be open and vulnerable with one another so we can work through our hurts.
Speaking of toxic, I will say that sometimes there are people or relationships that are toxic and it is very difficult to reconcile with this type of person. If this is the case, then still forgive them for your own mental health. You can forgive someone who has hurt you, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to continue on in the relationship. Some people have a pattern of hurting others, and it is okay to decide you have had enough. Only you know when you have had enough. Some relationships are worth continuing to fight for, while others it is obvious that things won’t change. When you forgive them anyway, believe me this is a peace that is deep! When you forgive them, you have done your part, even if the other person isn’t willing or emotionally mature enough to work through things with you!
Here is the YouTube video I shared in conjunction with this blog post.
Okay friends, for today’s Thoughtful Thursday topic I wanted to talk about honoring your limits. I think this is something that is very difficult to do these days. It’s so easy to over-schedule or just spend more time than intended on scrolling or binge watching media.
For those of you who don’t know, I do have a YouTube channel and I always share these thoughts over on my channel in a video. I coincidentally had it on my schedule to share on this topic prior to filming the “day in the life” video I shared this week, but it turned out to be such an appropriate topic on this day. I had a lot that I needed to get done on this day, so I actually didn’t film a lot of active things. I just had a lot of chatty footage. I had planned on cleaning out my laundry room on this day so I would have more cleaning motivation other than the few clips cleaning my dining and living rooms, but I honored my limits and scratched the laundry room off my to-do list for the day!
We all have our limits. Each of us has a different bandwidth to manage responsibilities in life. Some of us need more down time and margin in life, and others can go, go, go! I think it can be difficult sometimes for those of us who have less bandwidth in this age of social media and seeing what other people are doing with their lives and their time. But honestly, so often what we see on social media is curated and may not be the full picture. We must honor our limits so we don’t risk getting burnt out.
I do think there are times we need to and can push ourselves a little more than usual, as long as we can schedule in rest afterwards. There are times where we have to push because of extenuating circumstances, like going on vacation, celebrating birthdays or other holidays, moving, or other situations that are not our usual day to day. The day I filmed this DITL was especially busy for me because the next day I was going to take the day off to go with my girlfriends to a mineral springs spa near Austin, so I wouldn’t be able to get any work done that day. Honestly, this whole week was busy as I was also trying to catch up after being down a couple of days for my routine colonoscopy a couple weeks ago.
This was taken at the Mineral Springs Spa my girlfriends and I went to! Ottine Mineral Springs.
We all have physical limits, and must pay attention to our bodies’ cues to slow down. But we also have relational and emotional limits as well. If you are someone who is an introvert, you will need more time alone to recharge, and that is okay! But you need to honor those limits and realize when you need to recharge. For some people, they can manage several friendships and relationships in general, while others feel more comfortable with just a few close friends. Once again, that is okay!
Something similar to managing relationships is honoring your emotional bandwidth. Just like some of us have a bigger capacity to manage relationships, some of us have a bigger capacity to manage emotional input. If you find yourself constantly drained by certain people, content, or any input in general, you need to evaluate that to determine if it is something that is pushing your emotional limits. It’s okay to step back or even away from a relationship for a time if that person is taking too much of your emotional energy. It’s okay to unfollow and quit watching content that drains you emotionally. It is not always easy to determine if someone or something is too much for you emotionally, but we must be aware of our emotional bandwidth.
We all have daily responsibilities as adults, so we must evaluate those responsibilities. Are there things that are not as important or urgent that you can eliminate from your list on a given day that you don’t feel you have the bandwidth to carry out? Or can you delegate some of your responsibilities to someone else? Can your spouse, children, or a friend help you with something that needs to get done? I have found it helpful for me to structure my day with the non-negotiables at the front part of the day, then if I still have energy and time I will tackle some of those other things on the list.
It’s not always easy to honor our limits, but in the long run it is good to be aware of our limits and do what we can to honor them. Since I was honoring my own limits and didn’t film that laundry room clean, the YouTube video I shared in conjunction with this post is pretty chatty! So if you like that type of content like you’re on a Facetime call with me, go check out that video {{linked above}}! And at the end of that video I share some footage from my day at the mineral springs spa!
For those of you who don’t know, this year I have been taking a lot of trips. I wanted to focus on travel this year in part because there were events happening that required me to travel, so I just decided it would be my year of travel, and it felt appropriate because I’m turning 50 next month! With all this travel I have been thinking about baggage. Literal baggage, but the analogies of emotional baggage. So that is what I wanted to talk about for today’s Thoughtful Thursday.
Okay, perhaps I’m digging a little too deep to connect this analogy, but stick with me. This last trip I took I had to wait at the airport for quite a while before my flight left because my sister had to drop me off earlier than I expected when I ordered the tickets. And truly it was fine because I had a lot to catch up on from being away. But as I sat at the airport with my baggage under foot I was thinking about how difficult it was to do anything. If I wanted to go get coffee, I had to take it with me. If I needed to use the restroom, it came with me. I started thinking about how it was parallel to our emotional baggage in how it slows us down.
Physical baggage is tangible and measurable. Our bags are heavy or light depending on how much and what we pack. Emotional baggage is similar but it is all of our unresolved feelings, past traumas, regrets, and grudges we carry. Just as a heavy piece of luggage can cause back pain and fatigue, emotional baggage can lead to emotional pain and mental fatigue or if prolonged, lead to anxiety or depression. I didn’t do a great job packing my bags because I knew I would have plenty of time in the airport to do that. As I sat there unpacking and repacking everything more neatly I thought how often do I do this with my emotional baggage. I unpack everything – maybe with a friend or a therapist, or even just journaling. But do I ever decide there are things I need to let go of and no longer hold onto. Are there things that if I let go of them, my load would be lighter as I walked through life.
Are you an over-packer when you go on trips? I used to be an over-packer and wanted to account for everything and anything that could happen. But as the year went on and I went on more trips I started to learn what I really needed and my anxiety about not having what I MIGHT need started to calm down. I realized that it wasn’t worth carrying around ALL that extra stuff just in case. I got to the point where I preferred to take the risk of not having what I needed in order to have a lighter load. Are we holding onto things in life that are making our load too heavy? Both physical and emotional baggage can be an unnecessary burden we carry. When you are an over-packer you have unused items that become a physical burden, and when we hold onto emotional baggage we burden ourselves with these things that no longer serve a purpose. We can hold onto old grudges, past failures, or fears of rejection, which makes it difficult to experience life to the fullest in the present. Whether it’s physical or emotional baggage, letting go often involves unpacking everything, sorting through, deciding what is essential, and then letting go of the excess.
There is danger in ignoring the weight of our baggage both physical and emotional. When we carry a heavy bag for too long it can cause physical harm, and potentially long term damage if we don’t listen to our bodies. Similarly, when we carry emotional baggage for too long, the result can manifest in harmful ways such as anger, anxiety, or depression. This can affect our relationships, job performance, erode our self esteem, which can have long term effects on our lives. We must acknowledge and deal with the baggage because left unchecked it can end up controlling our lives, dictating how successful we are and our overall happiness in life.
The process of letting go, for both physical baggage or emotional baggage can transform any journey. Traveling light allows us to move freely, explore more easily, and feel less weighed down by possessions. In the same way, letting go of emotional baggage creates space for new experiences and personal growth. We can live more fully in the present and experience deeper connections with our loved ones. We can pursue goals more easily not being held back by our past.
Here is the YouTube video I shared in conjunction with this blog post.
organized with joy 