5. Shift Your Perspective To Find Good In The World: When You Feel Jaded By Alienation

okay guys so this episode is especially for you if you are having a difficult time seeing the positives in the world or in your day or if you're just feeling like you're in a rut where everything seems so negative you're seeing political war illness and you're seeing the effects of alienation maybe your kid or kiddos are being especially inconsiderate right now whatever it is you're just seem to be noticing all of the the the darker parts of this 50 50 world we live in and so today I'm going to share with you how I shifted my perspective and also contrary to popular beliefs how healing your heart and healing your life does not impede your ability to confront or contend with the

alienator or the narcissist in your life how it in fact healing actually It prepares you to confront anybody so stay tuned welcome to be on the high road a podcast devoted to Healing your broken heart following the grief of alienation I'm your host Shelby Milford twice certified life coach specializing in post-traumatic growth I'm also a Target parent and a former codependent who had a tendency to develop addictions to pretty much anything that made me feel better in the moment that any of this sounds familiar then this show is my love letter to you stay tuned so I just was listening to a podcast that made me think about you because the subject was operating at higher

frequencies I forget the title of the podcast but the idea is you know we always hear and I'm sure maybe you have said it yourself like this world is okay let me just talk about me I know that there was a point in time when I wasn't as so we say I wasn't as cheery as I now am there was a time when I would have like been like uh at me because I thought that the world was an awful toxic place to live in I didn't understand how such horrendous things could happen namely alienation how my own sweet daughter child small child could be separated taken from me robbed is how I thought of it and sometimes still do but robbed from her own mother with the Law's help which made it even

worse that much more shameful that much more is it me like what's happening here I was never like a conspiracy theorist but there was a time a long period of time actually maybe three years where I saw the world as dark and Gloom and I would look at a pregnant woman and give her this like dirty look like how dare you bring somebody into this world this awful world like serious like I was I thought the entire world operated in the way that I saw it and it did because that's how I saw it and so it took a lot of intentional thought work in order to change that and in fact when I was doing it I wasn't doing it with the idea in mind that I was going to change my view

of the world it wasn't to get to where I'm at today it never was it was just so that I could make it through the day that I was currently in back then like I just want to feel better right now I just want to not deal crap persecuted I knew all the things that I didn't want but I didn't know what I did want that's for sure and it definitely I didn't set out to find love and puppy dog tails and rainbows about the world that wasn't it I just wanted to get through I just wanted to survive and that's where it all started for me anyway I get it and I know the feeling of looking at the world like it's an awful place to live there's such Darkness there's such evil they're

such bad yada yada yada I understand it and if that's where you're at I want you to know too that I understand how exhausting it is how pennies I get it I know I have an intimate knowledge of what it feels like to see the worlds coming from that place I also want to offer you hope okay so now I actually I was driving earlier for the first front of that and I'm actually at home now with my mic and my laptop in front of me so the sound quality should be better so if you are in that spot like I was describing where you can't imagine the world getting brighter you can't see a way around the darkness that you're currently feeling you don't see how you would ever get unstuck or have a

life beyond the child or children that you are missing then I'm hoping that this will sort of help you at least understand the kind of mindset that I adopted and what helps me I think it's realistic at the same time offers you some actionable steps and like a sense of motivation okay so just bear with me while I go through the negative part we established in a last episode that we've been around for you know hundreds of thousands of years and in that time humans have suffered there have been murders and earthquakes hurricanes and there has been cancer rapists and very ugly people and ugly things out there these things are part of the human experience these are the

real challenges that we as humans are presented with and I can already hear you through my headphones on the other side saying yeah but how come some people have such bright and cheery lives and they look like they never have anything go wrong with them I'm getting there so just hold tightly so there is suffering suffering has always been part of the human existence in fact not even just human existence like existence look at the animal kingdom it's not exactly an easy world out there so there is suffering knowing that that is part of it let's bring it to like alienation to what we are suffering I think that it's always helpful to keep in mind that for me anyway what helps is knowing that

overcoming adversity overcoming these struggles is growing you and I know that used to piss me right off people used to always say God you're so strong and I'd be like I don't want to get any [ __ ] stronger like I don't want to get stronger I'm over being strong like I've I've been doing that for too long but that attitude was the wrong attitude for me I'm not going to tell you what to do but it was the wrong attitude for me because I was looking at it as if I was a victim to being stronger which is the antithesis of strength does that make sense so because I was looking at as something that I had to do is as opposed to what I chose to do then I was at the effect of

it okay so if we are looking at the World in this way that it is dark the entire world there are bad people everywhere there are bad things that happen but there is disease crime there is political war all of the things we can't Heal the World all at once there is no way to heal them as a whole and I come from a very positive mindset but we can't like just wave a wand and cure everything at once but there are two things that we can change and that will affect your entire View and also have a ripple effect on the world what we can do and what I think our purpose is here in this world is to heal ourselves that is the purpose and because if I heal myself and you heal yourself and

the next person heals their cells if we each focus on our own healing and spreading that love that ceiling to the community around us it's a collective effort like I think the lockdown was good for a lot of reasons I mean there were some awful things that happened as a result of covet 19. I do not mean to make light of that and out of adversity comes gross and one of the best things that came out of the lockdown in kova 19 in my eyes was that there was a lot of innovation where there were confusings but a lot of innovation happened and a lot of ceiling happened people spent a lot of time with their minds with their own selves and as a result I think it set the ball rolling for a lot of

outward healing our mental health is on the Forefront of people's minds we are talking about things in the media these days that couple few years ago people wouldn't dare to address or bring up so I do believe that we've already got some momentum behind us to begin healing the suffering that we have I'm not trying to heal the world well yes I am in a way right if we we all continue to do this then I think we do have a chance we are like if you will dare to look at yourself and your life and your adversities and your suffering and your challenges as a way to move through them and grow from them then you will essentially be part of the world that you're saying that you want to live in

does that make sense I'll talk about me like I was saying I knew everything that I didn't want but I wasn't being a part and contributing to the things that I did want because I didn't have the energy to do so I wasn't there I wasn't there mentally I wasn't there emotionally I couldn't be there physically because I didn't understand what that meant I was operating at a lower frequency and as I sit here I'm striving to be at a higher frequency than I am currently at this moment like we should always be evolving that is what we as humans are meant to do so if I am looking at the world and saying I hate what I'm seeing then I'm only contributing to that problem and the

only way that we can like what we see is to change to evolve and grow in our own lives and with our own struggle so that we can get to that higher frequency to get to just a better version of ourselves but if we are just only paying attention to what we don't want we're not moving forward so it's like when you're looking at the alienation for instance instance and you're saying yeah but nobody else has to deal with this or so like all my friends they have normal relationships with their kids and they have normal relationships with their ex and you especially around this time of year if you're listening to this in November of 2022 there's all those like Hallmark holiday movies where it's this

idealistic version of like the split families I think it's important to remember a couple things about this well number one these are Hallmark movies they're not reality right but if you're looking at like your neighbors or the quote unquote typical traditional sense of a family then you're going to disappoint yourself there because of a couple things first off things are never as they appear people may look so on the outside but you never know what's going on inside of their homes we just don't know we don't understand what someone else truly is going through and I think that's so important is to you know develop a desire to understand and others this would help with our view but

also what I like to remind myself and my clients is this is the way I like to think about it anyway like at Birth each one of us is given a backpack think like Dora's backpack and in that backpack we each have our unique set of tools but we don't really know what those tools are until we get to the challenges where we need them right and then we have to figure out which tool works but so each time we come to a challenge we are equipped we are perfectly equipped for that challenge we just may have to learn how to get through it right may have to go digging in the backpack to find the right combination of tools that brings like the drawbridge to the waterfall down

with our challenges throughout life this obstacle course and the tools we were equipped with these components make up the perfect ingredients to make us the best version of each one of ourselves does that make sense without the all of those specific tools and without all of those challenges we couldn't each one of us couldn't get to where we're supposed to go we all have different paths and these were already put in place before like predetermined that's how I like to think about it it does help me to move through things and I get a lot a lot accomplished this way for me the alienation was already determined and it used to hurt my ego but we'll talk about

that later that was already determined it was already going to happen so when I look at it in that way then I can say okay well the goal of this challenge is for me to grow from it stay with me here because it is good news and I'll explain it here in just a sec if I continue to avoid looking at it and resist it then I'm never going to learn from it and if I never learn from it then I will always continue to fear it and to be and suffering about it okay so if I decide to lean into it I'm not saying to agree with it what I'm saying is acknowledge that it's already there that it happened so that I can gain understanding about it because when we resist something we

also resist knowing what it is and then it stays a mystery and stays something that we cannot overcome okay and I think it's very important to mention here that this does not only apply if you have decided to not go back to court with your or for your child or children right this applies especially applies if you want to continue to fight your custody situation this is especially important for you and here's why if you don't get right and if you don't process and if you don't get some distance from the situation like perspective wise then it will eat you alive during the proceedings right during the legal proceedings you getting up on the stand you will go through stress response

after stress response you won't be able to think clearly so when you apply the steps all of the steps that I talk about in this whole podcast then you're able to think more clearly think on the spot and to recall the proper facts the proper sequence of events all of the things because when you're in the stress response box as you know what will happen is everything gets all jumbled up in your head and you you can't think correctly because your cortisol is being released in in your body and you're in an emergency state so you're never able to perform at your highest right in fact you're in shutdown mode so these steps sometimes I've had clients come to me that resist doing this because they

think that if they give in to Healing themselves they will become weakened like their momentum will stop right and they'll become they'll acquiesce into the role of being an alienated parent I promise you what I'm saying is is when you take these steps this will Propel you because you'll be able to see things with zero shame with a A Renewed sense of self and sense of purpose and you will have your side of the street Street completely cleaned up and your self-worth will be so high self-worth not your ego but your self-worth will be so high that you know what you are deserving of okay so I think that I can't say that more emphatically and enough times I wish I

could spread that to the world to every alienated parent out there because this is something that is so commonly misconstrued that if you heal yourself or if you you know process this anger and this hurt that somehow you're gonna lose your power to fight and it's the exact opposite what you don't know is what you're gonna fear and what you fear you run from Retreat from think about when you're in the the mess of all of the alienation and you are fear stricken I'm not taking any action from that place I can promise you that not from Fear anyway from anger guilt shame all of those things you're not going to get much accomplished so you we gotta you gotta process through those and make

normalize whatever thoughts are creating that so that you can get to the good stuff so that you can motivate yourself Propel yourself forward okay and the last point I'll make is that the brain likes to we're going back to how we see the world right and if you are seeing all dark and Gloom then it'll be good to remind yourself first off become aware of the thoughts that you're thinking all the time because you probably have a habit of thinking these thoughts these thoughts are so you're so used to thinking them that you don't even notice that they're happening right when you make the decision to say okay I'm gonna I want to start becoming more aware of my thoughts you will start to become

more aware my suggestion is that you daily take five minutes and write things down the old-fashioned way I think I talked about this in one of the episodes one of the beginning episodes there is something that is very cathartic right but also when you get the separation between you and your thoughts then your brain recognizes that you are separate from them that those your thoughts are not you and you need that distance to be able to become aware of what's going on you know we protect our homes we protect our cars we protect our purses our belongings our wallets if you're a guy we don't protect our own brains we don't look and take inventory of the [ __ ]

that's flying around in our head and we have thoughts that we've adopted since we've been little once we adopted from our parents and from those around us in our dysfunctional families and from high school all the you know all the experiences we've collected all these thoughts and 80 of the world is walking around with those thoughts bouncing around in their head and have never intentionally cleaned house said oh gosh what am I choosing to believe like intentionally consciously looking at the stuff that you're thinking and you're believing my God I mean like our brains are the most powerful tools unbelievable what we think we create right our thoughts create our results

always so if we're not conscious of what is going into our brains then how the [ __ ] are we going to look at the world in a bright and cheery way because our brains this is what I was going to say my dog just ran out of the room because I am so passionate about this I think he just thought I was angry anyway so you can see I get all kinds of fired up with this but if you've ever heard about something called confirmation bias our brains as I've mentioned I think before and you may already know that our brains like to do three things the motivational Triad that we want to seek pleasure avoid pain and be efficient this last one is key and what I'm talking about

here our brains want to do what they know it likes efficiency it likes habits and so even if whatever that the thing that you're thinking or doing is causing you harm because you're not dead your brain is like we're cool we're gonna go with this we know it right that's how the brain works it's just going to keep doing the same thing over and over as long as it's keeping you alive okay having said that putting that just to the to the side for a second confirmation bias is when we when we want to look at the world if I've got a bunch of negative experiences in my life and my brain has prioritized those things because that's what was keeping us alive at the time then those negative

thoughts are going to win those are going to be the most powerful thoughts my brain is going to try to speed those thoughts more and the way it does that is by gathering evidence to support those thoughts confirmation bias your brain is going to go look for things out there that support what it already wants to believe so if I want to believe that my dog is purple then my brain will find every damn way to make sure that I find the evidence to support that does that make sense and the same for you if you want to believe that the world is a dark and ugly and evil place your brain will find every bit of evidence to support that and your brain loves that one

because that goes to the catastrophizing that your brain has already done for you if you're looking at the the world as a dark and evil place because of the trauma that you've been through so your brain says oh trauma we know trauma we know what to do with trauma right and so we're going to find all of the danger signs around us and so you will your brain will only look for that and it will skip over all the stuff it thinks that's not important to it but those things that it's skipping over is all of your lights right so when you make the conscious decision to start looking for the light to start looking for the you know puppy dog tails and daisies and rainbows you will begin to find that you

ever notice like if you have a bad day you'll only see like bad you'll find all the bad things in the world and if you have a good day the opposite is true right you'll see things from a completely different perspective as if a different person was in in your brain right so if we want to change the world if you want to change how you're seeing the world then it starts with intentional thinking for yourself and when you heal yourself then I promise you will see the world differently and you will change your immediate world the people in your world around you just by your [ __ ] you don't have to tell anybody we can but you don't you won't have to tell anybody you won't have to control

anybody the shift is enough that energy you operating at a higher frequency because you're of the shift that you've intentionally made it will shift the next person and the next person and the next person okay so looking at it from this perspective I think has a domino effect on the world so it's not just mental gymnastics it's actually changing things around you okay so that's all I have for today this was supposed to be a mini episode who knows how long it is now it's probably close to 30 minutes okay y'all take care thanks so much for listening today guys I am so elated that you've chosen to share your time with me if you liked what you heard today and

you would like to hear more please click subscribe so that you can be notified of new episodes and um thanks again y'all you are already in my heart until next time