Unpacking the Real Problem

Welcome to This Daring Adventure podcast, where we work on bridging the gap between where we are and where we want to be in order to live a bigger and bolder life. In this podcast, we will provide inspiration, tips, and skills you need to make your life the adventure you want it to be. Here's your host, mindset mentor and life coach Trista Guertin.

Hey everybody. Welcome back to This Daring Adventure. This is episode 83. I am your host, Trista Guertin. Thank you so much for joining me.

So today I wanted to talk a little bit about problems and what the real problem is for you when we are thinking that a particular situation or person or something they said or did. Or something out there in the world, it could be anything external is the problem.

Oftentimes I have clients coming to me and the problem is their partner or their children or their boss or their sister or their parents or the ex husband. And the truth is that these things are not actually the real problem. This might not make complete sense to you right now, but stick with me here. And I know that if you talk to your friends or you talk to your colleagues, And you're complaining about your boss or your partner, your mother, or the weather or the president or prime minister, they're going to agree with you that this is the problem. He is the problem. She is the problem. She shouldn't have said this. He shouldn't have done that.

And we think that if that thing or that person would change or stop doing that or start doing something else or that it would improve or that we should quit our job or change houses or towns, get a new boyfriend or girlfriend, then we would feel better. the reality is that those are circumstances.

Those are all external circumstances and they don't have that much power over us, unless we give it the power, we give our power to it, those things, all of those things that I described, your boss, your partner, your sister, your job, president, or prime minister, the weather technology, whatever it is, are neutral. They're completely neutral. They're not good. They're not bad. They're not right. They're not wrong until we have a thought about them. We have an interpretation. We have a judgment, we have a criticism, we have an opinion, and then that creates our experience of it.

The circumstance, in fact, does not have to change in order for us to change our experience of it. We have the power, we have the ability to think a certain way. It may not feel like that at the moment because our thoughts come very quickly. They happen and they feel automatic and they feel like facts. but we actually have a lot more control. We have a lot more power over them a circumstance is a fact.

So when I talk about your boss, your partner, your sister, your children, technology, The weather that is an external situation. And when I say the weather, when I say rain, there's no opinion there, there's no judgment. I could prove in a court of law that it rained and I don't have to describe it. There's no description. It's not cold. It's not hard. It's not soft. It just it's rain. I'm not describing it to you. It's just the fact. for example, I could say my sister was rude to me.

Now, that is not a circumstance that is not a fact because what does rude mean? And what's rude to me may not be rude to you, If you've ever traveled, if you've ever experienced a different culture, you know that sometimes what's rude to me is not rude to someone else. instead, we need to look at what she said exactly. She said, you're always late. I have a thought that she is being rude to me. Her saying, you're always late, is the circumstance. It's neutral. Then I have a thought about it. I have an opinion. I have a judgment. I have an interpretation. It will be subjective. this is really important because everything we do is because of how we want to feel or not feel and how we feel is based on how we're thinking.

So if I am interpreting or judging a situation, a circumstance, then that is going to create A feeling in me, and oftentimes we attribute our circumstances for how we feel. in this instance, my sister said, you're always late. How I want to feel to my sister is closer. I want to feel more connected, but when I think about what she said, you're always late. And I have a thought about that, that she was rude to me, then I'm feeling judged. I'm feeling disconnected. I'm not feeling closer to her. I'm feeling somehow that she is judging me. And so we think the problem is the circumstance. I think my problem is my sister for saying that to me, but it's not. It's our thoughts about it, which creates our feelings. So my sister is completely neutral. What she said, you're always late is neutral until I have a thought about it. I have a thought that she's being rude. I'm having a thought that she's being disrespectful to me.

And so understanding that and having that awareness, we can look at our thoughts and decide, is it helpful? Do we want to keep it? How do we want to feel about that circumstance? How do we want to feel about what she said? I have a choice as to how I want to think about it again.

These thoughts come up very quickly and we have to slow down and we have to have that awareness and we have to take a moment to look and to think. When my sister says to me, you're always late. I can just say I disagree because last time I was early or I can think, okay, she's seems really stressed. Maybe she's had a bad day. She's taking it out on me. All right. Or I can have the thought she's really rude. She's rude. She's judging me. She doesn't appreciate that I've come here, whatever.

Notice that our brains do tend to like to default to the negative. It does like to look for problems. it is looking for threats. it's normal that, your first reaction might be, she's rude. She's disrespecting me. This is a problem. And it's having that awareness of what's going on and slowing it down and taking a look. Okay. What's my thought here. How is it making me feel? Is this helpful? What else could be true? Do I want to keep this thought? How do I want to feel about this situation, this circumstance and what she said? You do want to take a moment to notice how you feel when you think that thought, when I think the thought she's rude, I feel upset. I could feel angry, And then how do I respond? How do I act? Then maybe I say something antagonistic to her back or I pull away or I stomp off. And therefore my ultimate goal of being more connected to my sister doesn't happen. And I feel more disconnected to her. But if I choose to think a thought, Oh, okay, maybe she's really stressed. She's had a bad day. Then I don't feel so disconnected. And in fact, I can reach out to her and I can say, Hey, are you okay? Do you need some space? What can I do? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be late. There was traffic, whatever.

But not interpreting it as an attack, as a judgment, and thinking it means something about me, but it could just be her having a bad day. so understanding that the circumstances, the situations are neutral and it's my thinking about it. It's the thought that becomes a problem and is open to interpretation.

This is not to say that you need to be thinking positively all the time. Don't misunderstand me. You don't have to be thinking rainbows and daisies all the time, but it's important to have this awareness of what's going on in your brain. It's important to know that you probably will default to the negative.

It's important to know that you have the option to decide whether this thought is helpful for you or not. It's important for you to be aware of the feeling that it's creating in you, because that's what drives your actions. That's how you will show up. And that's what will ultimately create the results in your life. And when you have that awareness, you have a little bit more objectivity. You have a little bit more space. You can be a little bit more empowered to make a choice as to how you want to think and then how you want to feel intentionally and make those changes in order to create the results that you want in your life.

I'm not saying that it makes it okay for people or you to do whatever you want or to say whatever you want, because it's neutral, that doesn't let you off the hook for being kind, for being loving, for being professional, You can make requests, you can set boundaries, you can make changes.

If you don't like the way your boss is treating you, I'm not saying you just swap some thoughts and then keep your job, but you can have that awareness of how it's affecting you and decide how you want to think about it. And then from that place, once you have a greater awareness of what you're thinking and how you're feeling, and if you want to change it. In order to take action, in order to show up differently, in order to be empowered.

That's how you use this process. You don't just change it to think positively and you don't just change it to make everything rainbows and daisies. You don't just change it so that you get off the hook or other people are off the hook for what they do and they say, but this process helps you to become calmer and to become more intentional and to have a greater sense of peace. There's less drama, there's less frustration, there's less angst.

You have more clarity and greater understanding of what's going on, and then you can be more intentional and deliberate in what you think and how you feel and how you show up and create the results that you want in your life. Don't use this process against yourself that you're wrong for what you're thinking. That's not the intention here. It's not all positivity, but you want to have that awareness. You want to have that understanding. You don't want to be at the mercy of your brain and just whatever thoughts It's giving you your automatic thoughts, your habit thoughts.

You have a choice. And when you have that choice to think about what you want to think about, then you create a feeling intentionally and show up completely differently. You have that authority.

So take a look at your thoughts. If someone says something to you or something, say someone cuts you off in traffic or your sister says something to you or your mother says something to you, look at what your thoughts are.

You can write them out, pick one thought. What's that key thought that stands out to you? What's a fact What's the drama in that sentence that you're thinking. gain that understanding, this is what you're thinking right now. And this is how it makes you feel. Just that observation, just having that awareness starts to give you a different perspective and a little bit more objectivity. then you're just not at the effect of what's going on in your brain. 

You're not at the effect of what everything that's going on in the world. You can get to choose your experience of the world around you, and you can choose to live more deliberately and intentionally.

This is where your power is, and this is how you create the results that you want in your life.

This is how you get unstuck from being at the mercy of what's going on around you. It's not the external circumstances. It's not what your boss says. It's not what your sister says. It's not what your partner does.

If you're interested in learning more about this, you can get on my calendar. The link is in the show notes, book a consultation. Let's talk about how coaching can help you gain that perspective and stop being at the effect of everything that's going on around you.

You can be calmer.

You can have greater clarity.

You can have greater certainty and confidence. You can gain these tools and skills that will help you to create whatever it is you want in your life.

You don't have to stay stuck. And if you're feeling like you're meant for more, it's because you are. let's find out what that is.

Thanks everybody for joining me.

I will talk to you next week. Bye bye.

Thank you for listening to This Daring Adventure podcast with your host Trista Guertin. We hope you enjoyed the tips and conversations on how to get excited about life again.

As always, you can head to tristaguertin.com for additional resources and to book a one on one coaching session.

You can also follow Trista on Instagram at tristavguertin.

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