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Episode 153: Embracing Impermanence & Change 

In this heartfelt episode, Shelby explores the concept of impermanence and the challenges of embracing change, particularly for parents experiencing alienation and ongoing trauma. Drawing from her own journey and client stories, Shelby discusses why we resist change, how that resistance can deepen our pain, and the transformative power of leaning into new realities.

Key Topics Covered:

• Why we resist change, especially after trauma and loss
• The emotional impact of clinging to the past and the illusion of control
• Shelby’s personal story of selling her home and the lessons learned from resisting change
• The cost—emotional, financial, and relational—of staying stuck in resistance
• How embracing change can open doors to growth, healing, and new possibilities
• The importance of developing a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset
• Practical strategies for navigating change: breaking big transitions into small steps, focusing on what you can control, and celebrating small wins
• Practicing self-compassion and challenging fixed beliefs

Notable Quotes:

• “Safety and healing come from acceptance, adaptation, and learning—not from clinging to your past.”
• “Your pain is not going to last forever. Change is inevitable, but so is growth.”
• “The best revenge is success—make the change yours and flourish.”

Actionable Takeaways:

• Break overwhelming changes into manageable steps.
• Focus on areas you can control in your daily life.
• Balance time spent grieving with time spent exploring new possibilities.
• Practice self-compassion and celebrate small victories.
• Challenge yourself to see how change might benefit you, even if it wasn’t your choice.

Connect with Shelby: If you’re struggling with the effects of alienation and want support in your healing journey, visit: ⁠https://www.beyondthehighroad.com/HealAfterParentalAlienation

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Episode Transcript

 You are listening to The Beyond The High Road Podcast with Shelby Milford, episode number 153. Stay tuned.

 Welcome to Beyond the High Road, a podcast dedicated to healing your heart and life following the grief of alienation. I'm your host, Shelby Milford, a twice certified life coach specializing in post-traumatic growth. If you're experiencing the effects of alienation and you're ready to heal, then this show is my love letter to you.

Stay tuned.  Hey y'all, what's happening? How are we doing this week? So today we're gonna be talking about impermanence, embracing change basically. It came up because so much of our struggle is because. Change is happening. Negative change. Most of us would say, probably all of us would say as a result of somebody else's doing, you know,  somebody else's making decisions that are negatively affecting, of course, your children and then you when that happens, we in our freakout mode.   Today I'm gonna talk with you about why that freakout mode probably isn't serving you.

So first we're gonna talk about why we resist, much of this is probably obvious, but I think hearing it all in one place will help you to sort of put the pieces together for you. Um, and then I'm gonna go into a story about me and my. Experience with the resisting change.

It was like the big experience, I guess, of, of resisting change and how that panned out for me. And then we'll talk about why leaning into change really matters. , And then how to feel in control and what have you. Okay, so it's like four, five parts to this. I think that this topic though we've visited it, in different ways previously. I think it's important, to keep talking about because it's one that.  So many of my clients alienated parent clients, struggle with myself included, where I was so resistant to change, partly because like in large part, due to the fact that alienation itself    is so traumatic,

The effects on us and on children and everything are so traumatic and because of that repeated ongoing trauma. We, of course you guys know this, we feed into a free state and we want nothing to change at all. We are so resistant to it because the more change that happens all at once, the more that we feel out of control, right?

So it makes sense that , we do this, um, we also do this because, , embracing change many times, especially when it got kicked off by somebody else doing something like the alienating parent. . It also means that we have to    accept that change. And if we don't like the change, we're seeing,  hello. Our children.

Were once in our home and all of a sudden now they're not. Then how are we supposed to even start to embrace it? It feels like a catch 22. Right? And so of course this isn't right, so we must resist. It makes sense.  When it does to me. I get it. But I know I'm gonna tell you a story here in a little bit about my experience with it.

Hopefully proving that that resistance actually knocked me further back in my healing, in my progress with Case like, um, legally and then also emotionally and day-to-day life for me was  a living hell. Because of the resistance that I was creating for myself, um, every second of every day.

,  Another reason that we, resist the change is, A lot of times when we're grieving something or when we've just come through or in the middle of traumatic experiences happening, lots of them. 

 It may not be outwardly like our routines in like the day-to-day how we tighten up our environment, but inside our minds this happens so often where we get very rigid with our own selves, the tone that we take to ourselves, and then of course, maybe to whoever else, loved ones or whoever else is living in your home with you.

, In order to find a sense of control, we  clamp down on the things that we think that we do have control of, or the things that we think they could also go to. ,  The tendency is to hone in on those things and make them, it's a like, micromanaging, right?

, Sometimes we'll do it outward and it'll be like, you get, all of a sudden you're very rigid with your routines you're very strict you need everything planned out.

I spoke about this actually, um, a few weeks ago talking about a Reddit post and how some parents and this parent that Commented on a Reddit post, needed to keep her days very, very busy so that she wouldn't , be alone with her thoughts. Basically and we do this too when we're in resistance. As a way to feel like we're in control.  Not that that's a bad, um, mechanism, like a coping mechanism to put in place. However, if it's creating more resistance in your life and you don't know what to do with yourself when there's free time, because what's gonna happen up in your brain and it's gonna make things dark and ooh,  then it might be something to look at because you could definitely, um.

Improve, maybe that's not the word that I want to use here. Uplevel your experience. Like, let the resistance go and find some more peace within,  he other reason we resist change is because of external pressure. We, as y'all know, we often face so much. , Judgment and persecution from the eliminating parent, from the professionals in your life.

Whoever, if you're still in the middle of your, the custody, quote unquote, battle. , You may have evaluators or gals or whatev, whoever is a player in your life currently, and you feel the judgment or the pressure therapist, whoever coming on many times. What that will do is lead to feelings of shame for us, right?

If you've got them telling you, breathing down, down your neck and you should be doing it this way, and why didn't you do it this way? We internalize that, turn it into shame. And that increases, of course, your resistance to changing any of your strategies or perspectives because again, you're like tightening up, like clamping down on the last,

beliefs or practices that you've been using? Like you're just like, these are mine. This is what I'm gonna stick to because I know that this is right. You know, it's just the increased rigidity that we have in, fear of losing our identity and of course fear of losing our children and our whole belief system and who we are and what our life means, meant.

Our legacy and all that sort of stuff, and when that feels threatened, then it can feel of course very shaky.    Also we hold on to, this is just a given is we hold on to the memories and the hope of restoring the old version of the relationship with your kid or kiddos, we want things to go back to how they were. I mean, I cannot tell you of one parent. I don't think that's ever not said that. You know, in my consults most parents that I speak with, that's like the most common thing I hear is  I just want things to go back to how they work.

I just want our relationship to be restored to how it was, you know, before this all started. And, um, that, as you guys know, it, nothing can ever really go back there.  It doesn't mean that you can't, the possibility out there for you to build your relationship. With your child even better than it was back here. You can always go forward and better. But we can't go  back to how it was. It just won't. It can't, it can't happen. We can't go back in time, but that's the idea. Well, if none of this would've happened, if we could just erase all of this and just go reverse right back in time to right there, that snapshot, then everything would be fine.

You know, and that's actually just how grief works in general, is that if you've ever lost a loved one to a death, um,  every time I talk about death and alienation, I think about that one review, that one review on Apple Podcast that forever tainted the five star review anyway, but  if you have ever lost somebody to a death, if they're close to you, how many times did you go over, God, I wish I just had some more time with them so I could tell them more things, so I could show them how much I love them so that we could share more experiences. Whatever it is we always wanna go back to before they died so that we could do it better,

or do it even the way that we were doing it, but just more of it. So I think that's just part of grief. But anyway, those are the basic reasons we resist change. It's a lack of overall. Like, to summarize that, it's just this fear of losing control of our own narrative and the narrative that we leave out there, like what we mean  of value that we provide to our children and of course to the world, our roles, you know,  

   change also just means confronting painful truths, right? Possibly acknowledging loss and altered relationship, which can be absolutely terrifying for us, the rejected parents.  Right. Absolutely terrifying because the focus has been on us and we feel like we are already like swimming around in a fishbowl, right?

With ev eyes on us. Everywhere from all the angles, we're getting blamed for all of it. And now we're being made to jump in on the change, but then also come to terms with.

Accepting this new way, right? This new lack of connection with our kids. And that's just devastating, so I wanna talk with you guys about   my, um, resistance to change. How that came about. Many of you are familiar with, The story about me having to sell my house or choosing really to sell my house in order for me to pay for the last bout in court.

However, I don't know that I've talked about it from this perspective before.  So I, I bought that house, It was mine, not my, at the time, the second husband's or anything. It was just, I bought that house for my daughter and I to live in. I picked this perfect spot that was still in the same district, school district as where my daughter was going, but far enough away that I didn't feel like it was just a good location.

It was a great house, brand new, it was a beautiful, every, it was. My dream house for her and I to live in for her schooling years, you know, and when all of the shit hit the fan and like the last lawsuit came on uh, my dad and I were having a conversation one day and he said, you know.

It would be wise if you sold the house, because that would give you the money, the retainer for your attorney, and then you could go get a smaller place because it's just you right now. And I remember where I was standing, , while I was on the phone with him. I was in my driveway 

and I felt like my world was crashing down around me, the him, the mere mention of selling the home that my daughter and I lived in. And at this point I was hoping that she would be coming back to this home, and I wanted to keep everything the same so that. She, there was some continuity and, uh, sense of security for her that things are not ever changing and up and down in my world, right in, in her world.

Um, I wanted to keep the home as I guess like an anchor, that was symbolizing. Stability for her and for me even too. So when the first time that my dad suggested that I was on the phone with him and I immediately flew off the handle, I felt it. I can feel it now in my body. The visceral, immediate, visceral response that my whole body had just by him suggesting this. 

And I probably hung up the phone on him and probably didn't speak to him for months to come for fear that he would bring that up again. I don't know. I was in a place back then. I was highly reactive, but , I knew that he was right maybe not right, but I knew that he had some strong points.

But I just didn't wanna face it because again, I was so resistant to making more things change in my life when all this change had happened at the hand of somebody else. And in my mind back then, none of that change was good. So the more that I resisted the change happening, like me selling the house and any other changes happening as far as like with my daughter and what was happening with court.

The more that I resisted that, the more I sort of turned inside like internal and was almost like I'm picturing myself right now, sort of barricading my own self each time somebody else suggested any sort of change that might be to come with regard to my daughter and I or with. Even and change to me at the same time was also like keeping things the same.

How they were her taken away from me. I needed things to go back to where she was home with me. I would've given anything, which I know that you guys understand that like I feel that pain right now thinking about me standing, in that house, my body like aching.

Needing things to go back to how they were. So if that's where you are at right now, trust me, God, I feel for you. And I know the pain like so well. And I stayed in that pain, stayed resistant to any sort of change from um, almost two years. Almost two years. But because I stayed in the resistance.

And I, speaking about the rigidity that I was talking about earlier with like how  I was holding onto people, activities, habits, things that were so unhealthy for me in my opposition to having anything else change in my life.  So I clung on tightly to an abusive, now ex, husband , he brought so much chaos into my life on the everyday, all the time basis la, my stress response system was in way overactive high alert at all times because of.

His influence in my life,  and yet I desperately needed him to stay a part of that life because in my mind. Not everybody can leave me all at once, there's too much change happening right now. I need things to stay the same.  And so I was grasping on. This kind of reminds me of, you know, like I think , it might have been in the,

How trauma changes you or I forget how I titled that. I can maybe put that, link for that. In that one, I talked about how.   we will, coming from trauma, make even the unsafe safe. 

And that's what I was doing with my ex. Now, ex I was clinging on so tightly to him and the crap he was dealing me,, I mean he was, there were lots of hospital visits going on. . Very chaotic and abusive, but at the time I was making that feel safe because the more unsafe would be me left alone. 

Which by the way, looking back on it now would've been the best thing for me,  you know, for me to embrace change at the time get with it and start, well, I don't wanna

give you the solutions right now because that's coming, but it would've been so much easier on me and I would've been so much less miserable if I would've just. Leaned into the change made the change my own.  My problem back then was that I felt like it was all being done at me and I was a victim to every circumstance in my life back then.

Pretty much every circumstance, any major thing that was going on in my life, I was, it was happening at me. Which  y'all. I just want to spell this out and I know this sounds so simple. That is just a perspective. If you happen to have that perspective right now where like things are just being done at me right now and I'm being attacked everybody's against me and I'm having to fight for my own, and you're holding your ground, right?

You're standing for what you believe in, which by the way, I will never tell you to give that up. Always stand for what you believe in, but when you are in resistance to it, you will end up imploding. Completely. It'll blow your world up because all of that    resistance is just fueling negativity inside of you. 

And so a lot of things can happen there, but much of it is because you're white knuckling and you end up either petering out or acting out, um, as a result of it, and you get yourself into trouble, whether that's internally or by having, . Consequences happen from the outside, you know, from your ex or from the courts or what have you.

So there's that. I had another point to make right there. Um, of course I started like not working from my notes and lost my train of thought. my desire to maintain or regain control of my life by resisting change only created more drama, more chaos,

friction  And it because I dug in so hard and was like, no, this is wrong. Again, we'll never tell you to not stand for what you believe in, but no, this is wrong. So I'm going to, revolt basically, and I'm gonna stand my ground and this is what I'm doing because I know that I'm right  it's like, I mean, something is, I've probably used this example before, but if you ever like pressed against something hard, a wall or you know, some hard object, just pressed as hard as you can into that, it takes a lot of energy, just stabilizing against you.

Resisting,   causes you to tire out pretty quickly if you're actively pushing and that's basically what you're doing in your whole life. Imagine you doing that with. Go at all angles at all times, you can't physically do it

it's exhausting. 

So I was resisting. Selling the home. Didn't want anything to change in that regard. I was of course, resisting this whole debacle, or this disaster of my daughter. Gone from my house and only seeing her once a week if that, via a supervisor. At first, she was coming back, to our home, like to the house that I was holding onto

and then after some months her father put the kibosh on that for whatever reason, that wasn't. Safe to go over to my house anymore, though we'd been doing it for however long. There was no changes that brought that on, but that's what it was. And then we went to, we had a property.

Me and my now ex, the other guy had a property and a really, .

Bougie neighborhood that was in between my house and where they lived and so it was a great halfway point. So then we used the pool there at the property that we had for a while, and then they decided that that wasn't good anymore.

And so we went somewhere public. But anyway, each one of these changes, I resisted tooth and nail and it exhausted me and caused me to feel increasingly, , victimized. And on top of that, I was resisting this change with this joke of a marriage, , we never really even cohabitated. He lived in one home and I lived in another, and it was just a mess. He would just come in like the Tasmanian Devil and fuck some shit up and then leave, right? But because of what was going on with my daughter and me needing things to stay the same, resisting all of that change.

I was clinging onto him without even realizing what I was doing. You know,  I could not stand being with him, but I also at the time just needed consistency, which he was not providing. But I was not in my right thinking, I was not thinking rationally then because I was so all in, invested in the resistance to the change with my daughter,  which.

Actually me resisting like my daughter and then resisting this dissolution of this fake marriage, Took up so much of my time, like mentally, emotionally, physically, like actual time, and distracted me from getting so much accomplished, like with the case and with my own self and all the things. 

It's just a, , it's a buffer, like when you're resisting change, you end up holding onto, like irrationally, holding onto. Security blankets in your life that may not be serving you at all and may be keeping you stuck even further back in time. it's like the more resistance that you have in your life to things changing, the more resistance that each one of those create and compounded makes it one big ball of resistance, fire that ends up setting you back, in time, but also setting your healing back and keeping you smack dab in the middle of trauma, like unhealed trauma. And you're adding more of that each moment that you resist,

resistance when I was in resistance too, because it's so exhausting. I needed an escape because I was so hell Ben, on standing my ground and not knowing what to do with it because my mind was constantly filled with ways and reasons this was so wrong, what they were doing  because my mind was so focused on only the problem, I could never get to any solutions viable solutions for me.  You know? And so all of that resistance, caused me to tire out so early and feel , exacerbated and like frustrated and out of control in that way. And so in order for me to deal   and what I would think was like decompress and get away from it, escape, I would drink. And that of course only added more resistance onto my life. It was like these layers of huge patterns, habits, things that I was holding onto people, that I was holding onto. 

That became like these heavy liftable blankets of resistance that I was putting onto my own life.  Um, so I had the habit of drinking. Um, and also with that came this habit to deny. my need to escape as ever a problem. And I, Because that's just the way that, , addiction goes, right, or habits go, is that we want to defend them.

Deny that anything is wrong with our habits because those habits are serving us and the way that we're thinking when we're in 'em. So we deny, which is resistance. Right to change resistance, to acknowledge what's going on so that we can learn from it and grow and move through it and not resist anymore.

Right? But because I was still in that pattern of creating this fortress around me I was thinking that this is what was creating safety in my world. Like I needed an environment that stayed familiar and those familiar things were all pretty much dangerous to me.

And so let me just skip to when Push came to shove and I decided, alright, something's gotta give. And it's either this house or it's my daughter. And my daughters , she will always win over any material thing, any, anything really. Of course I chose my daughter and I sold the house.

Now, I will say that once I put the house up for sale, there was a sense of relief because I knew that it was one thing that I was finally like not resisting anymore.

And then when I finally moved though, it was very scary. It was also like that one, um, I wanna, I think of it right now in my mind is almost like a floodgate opening and in a good way, like once I. Started leaning into the whole process of finding a new home for me to rent.

Um, and the excitement of finding a, great place where my pa Nita could run. 'cause at this point she was getting to be bigger and I was looking at places that were closer even to where Scarlett was. And I just got excited about all that stuff because, and this is where we get into some of the solutions.   Once you, start to educate yourself around what the change is, or like just change in general, then you start to notice that there's some excitement that builds because, oh, I'm learning about something new and this wouldn't be so bad. 

Right. Uh, this is stuff we learn in, you know, grade school probably. But when it comes to the big stuff it's difficult to grasp that concept. But anyway, so once I started looking for, um, new places that sort of just opened up the floodgates to curiosity, I guess, and I started to find security in the unknown a little bit. This happens every time.

I think for a lot of us, it's just a matter of, like, that was the beginning when I resisted so hard that it took a while for me to get my bearings and now my resistance , you know, over so much time now is so little. I think it is a natural, , tendency to resist change when we get comfortable in where we're at.

Right. And your work and your daily routines and whatever it is that's going on. And especially in relationships when nobody ever wants to say goodbye to something. Well, maybe sometimes we do when we know it's been enough, right. But otherwise, when it's not done at your hand, it's really difficult to, at first to latch onto the new thing.

But once you do, and once you start diving into learning about , what you wanna make the change be for you, even if somebody else, instigated like they were the catalyst for change. And right now you're not liking it, that's okay. You can still, when you're ready. Instead of resisting and creating that hell for yourself that I just described, and I'm sure you guys have your own stories about that.

Once you decide to lean into it and get curious about what that change could mean for you, and you make it yours, that's when everything opens up for you. Your creativity and innovation and all that stuff start coming in and curiosity about how you could make this really great.

that's when things start opening up. And when I made that change to move, um, that's also sort of was the catalyst to finally letting go of that terrible relationship I was in. Yeah, no, it for sure was because I really actually count when I moved from that home as our breakup, though, it still took some time, , there was a transition period where it didn't just end like that.

You know, I had to get smart first, but that's really when it started. My move from that house was the catalyst. , And so I really truly believe that that is when I opened up and let go, started to let go of my own resistance to change in general. but to go back on that, just to summarize my little move and all that , the cost that.

I incurred by resisting for two years, basically. That I was full on digging my heels into the ground and pounding my fists, The cost financially was huge. Because of the legal troubles that I got into by standing my ground. , I was on probation still from this DUI that I got from 10 years earlier and it didn't go to court for a long time. So I didn't finally get on probation or have anything happen until the le two years before that.

Anyway, it was like a whole long saga because of my resistance. I was dragging my feet 'cause the punishment that I was getting from even the DUI that I actually caused myself, I was still blaming them for meddling in the case to begin with.

So I wasn't completing my requirements for probation because I was blaming them, meaning the stepmother for meddling in my case. I'm not gonna bore you with all those details, but I was really, really invested in my stance against this friction that was being dealt to me as a result of them in my mind.

Like all the problems that I ever had, I blamed on them except for my choice and guys. Which I mostly knew that that was my choice, but I still felt a victim to that too. So anyway. I was at a place I was definitely not taking responsibility for, like owning my choices. I did shame myself for the choices that I made back then.

I mean, I beat myself up about any of the mistakes I made and the choices that I like continued to make, much different than taking responsibility and ownership of those choices, learning from them. Changing my ways. Instead, I dug my feet in even more.

And it wouldn't be like this if it wasn't for them. That resistance ate up every area of my life, and I'm not even fully explaining this. I hope I'm articulating it in a clear way so that you guys can get the picture, but I'm really not even going into all the areas it affected, but it was, it was everything.

I was like steeping in like this hot, swamp. Of negativity, my own negativity because of the thoughts that I continued to think over and over, and the resistance that I had to any sort of authority or anybody opposing me, knowing that I was this mom who was going through so much help, like a twilight zone of hell. At that time, I didn't really have the word alienation in my vocabulary, um, but knowing what I was dealing with, and it was all their fault.

I was miserable anyway.  So it cost me, everything really. Um, it cost me, my own dignity and my own,

freedom. Really, 

I mean, I felt a hundred percent jailed. It was like I was publicly jailed because I felt like everybody, and I did live in a pretty small community and a lot of stuff did get around, so I'm sure that there were people talking on just at some level, but I really blew that up in my mind. And everything that was happening at me to me, um, was like it was being put on display as if we were back in the old days when,, I was being.

Publicly humiliated in the town square, I ostracized myself more from my own community, you know?

But here's the thing, is that.

As you guys know,   impermanence is inevitable. Like change is bound to happen and that's where I know that I've done some episodes on this.  I'm thinking back to like, um, let it all Fall apart. Was one of them one of the very early days episodes. Um, and some other ones that I've, that I've put out there about how we are always evolving, we are always changing.

The world is always changing. And the more that we dig our heels into and want to resist that change, uh, find our own powerlessness in that change, that's when, and all of your options go out the window, all circumstances,  even the painful, this is what's important to know, is that if the, the good circumstances can change, like things can be taken away from you .

Member two, that    your painful circumstances can change too, and they will change. I mean, they, it's, it's, it's inevitable. what we love right now is going to switch. And it doesn't mean that it's going to go into something that we hate. That's your choice. But just know too that your pain is not going to last forever.

So there's that. Also leaning into change matters because, , that's where your growth is. That's the only way you can grow.  Growth happens due to change, 

what I think is, I've got this in my notes and what I think is really important, and probably the takeaway for this whole episode is that you safety and healing. Safety is what I was really craving during all of that time that I was resisting, but    safety and healing come from acceptance, adaptation, and learning, not from clinging to the past. So I'm gonna say that again. Safety and healing come from acceptance, adaptation. Learning not from clinging to your past.  You can create safety for the rest of your life by leaning into the change.

Safety doesn't come from what's in your past. It never will because if it comes from your past, then you will always be.

Fearful of the next time that something comes to threaten your memories of the past or your reluctance for going any further into the future. You're always gonna feel like it's taken away, but if you bank on changes, going to happen.

It's always evolving, and when I can lean into that, then I can make all of this change at my hand as opposed to resisting it until I finally break and crumble and almost fall apart, and then have to pick the pieces up , , put myself back together Then you're behind the game.

This is the time where learning about the change and learning what you can make of the change is so important, right on the cusp of feeling the shift happen,

The best thing that you can do is to just develop a mindset, maybe not the best thing, the most helpful thing

 rather than staying with a fixed mindset, which is basically everything I've been describing today, is to develop a growth mindset  it's a skill really. It's to develop your, propensity or your love of growth, your love of embracing. Possibilities,  the possibilities that you will create for yourself. 

Because if you're stuck thinking about how the change has been happening at you and how they, you're a victim, which you may not use that, that wording, but that's really what it is. You know, like that everything's. Being taken away from you, , it's gonna feel impossible to get anywhere else if you're looking at all the lack, right?

Instead, if you can teach yourself, to automatically start looking for the opportunities. even during grief, , you know how I talk with you guys a lot about like   what else could be true? how could the opposite be true? 

It's sort of the same thing here. Like I'm not saying don't have your emotions or don't have even like the.Natural negative thinking that comes up when we're talking about your kiddos not being with you and those, those routines being interrupted. Right. I think it's very healthy and normal, if you will, to have the grief and support yourself around the grief that you're having.

Because of the loss. Absolutely. But give yourself, and you've heard me talk about this before too, if you're gonna spend, let's say an hour, that's a long time, actually, 30 minutes in the negative aspect of what's going on for you, then also make sure to even that out with  30 minutes of possibilities focused.

exploring,  come up with off the wall ways that may be like in a parallel universe that this could be happening for you just to poke open the walls of possibility for you so that you're not so stuck in the.

Fixed mindset of this is awful. Change shouldn't be happening. Things were fine the way they were. Start to look at  how might this be a good thing? How is it a good thing already? What can I learn from this? Those kinds of questions. I know this is really easy.

almost obvious answers, but so many times when you're in the middle of doing this, you go into calamity mode and panic, right? I don't know what I'm gonna do. This is gonna be the worst thing for me. And when you're there, you go right back to where I was. Just telling you about the two years that I lost basically, and all of the hospital visits and the money that I paid out and just this time wasted and the negative experience overall, very dark time for me because I was stuck in panic.

So you have to like mindfully shift yourself over like you're guiding somebody that somebody that's just like disabled or that cannot see you, guide yourself. , Lovingly but sternly over to intentional thinking of how this could possibly in a parallel universe be something that's good. How can I make this good?

What can I do with myself, from here.  So you wanna break it down to like some of the, . Tools and stuff that I've written down in my notes here is that  you wanna break things down into smaller, like bite-sized chunks. Like back in the day when all this stuff was happening and my dad said You should put your house up for sale. 

That seemed so big and like D Don on, you know. But when it finally came to it and I finally got myself ready to put the house on the market. It was like just breaking things down 'cause selling the house, that just seemed like so many steps go into that and it seemed unfathomable to me.

And so instead it was like,  okay, what's the first step to that?  Okay, that's calling my friend Kristen, who is a realtor, and having her. Do the market research and then come back to me for a listing price and yada yada. And then from there we make the next move. So just breaking things down into small, very detailed steps will help you plan out you the rest of your future and adapting even more to the change that's about to happen.

You know, so    look for ways that you can be the one implementing the change. That's the thing is you really wanna find the areas that can feel controllable by you in your immediate environment, and then  own those things. Like really make them yours.  You know? It's kind of like when you, speaking of moving, like you move into a new place, you could like.

Kick the floor and kind of, I don't know where I'm gonna put things. I don't know. Or you could walk into that space and own it and just start trying shit out and make it yours, Or sometimes we'll move into a new place, get the new place, and you're like, I don't know where things go. I just don't know.

But you haven't really done anything. And so you're sitting more like in this indulgent. Overwhelm and confusion, and that's kind of what happens to us when we're coming from trauma and all this change happens. We get overwhelmed and like confused and we don't know what to do, and we're also feeling so negative because this change in our perception of it, it means.

Dun Dun Don death or the end of our relationship with our kids or whatever it is, but we're not fully pulling back and seeing the big picture on how things could be fucking amazing, like how they could be so like work out to your benefit, you know? Even better than how it was before the change.

That's the thing is like, we'll never, if change didn't happen at. Somebody else's hand, like somebody else's choice on me. Let's just say I would never be where I am right now because I never would've had the guts or the skill or the wherewithal level up, right? Or to change my environment because we all, of course, are gonna, especially coming from what we have, we're gonna feel like we thrive in familiarity.

And comfort, but really we don't. There's no growth happening in familiarity and comfort. Growth happens when we're uncomfortable and how do we make things uncomfortable well, we can do it ourselves, right? But much of the time, let me tell you, some of the biggest growth spurts that I've gone through, emotionally, mentally, whatever has been right after something awful has happened in my mind, the way that I was thinking about it back then due to somebody else's actions.

Right due to something that was environmentally even like think of COVID, right? None of us would've ever chosen that for our own selves, but we're here so we gotta do something with it, right? It's the same thing with anything that's happening for you right now. Even if it feels super negative, just remember that.

I mean, it's change of course. I mean, I'm saying it over and over, but impermanence is inevitable. In life. And so it may feel awful now, but sometimes that is where  all of the best of your growth happens.  Without it, you would be staying completely stagnant. So once you're willing and, to start taking the steps to own that change and make it yours,  even if it wasn't your doing to begin with.

Once you take it on as yours, like sort of adopt that. And step into it, then there's no stopping you.  Like, I'm serious. It's the, our reluctance to it's a ego thing, right? If something like your ex, I'll go back to the example of my client who he moved out of the, her immediate area some few hours away, of course she's gonna feel sad about the fact that her kids are not as accessible to her as they were, even though they weren't really necessarily, um. Getting together all the time, even while they were living in the same town. For her, just knowing that they were there, give her, provided her some sense of security, safety, right?

But now they're gone and she feels like that's a step apart, but she just doesn't know because right now she's focusing on the loss. Right? She's focusing on the lack. Who knows, this could be one of the best things that ever happened. We don't know what's gonna come, but let's lean into, for you, lean into the possibilities.

Like maybe the ex  That's where I was going with this. Sorry, I forgot. Is that maybe the ex meant that, who knows? You know, maybe he was doing it for his own reasons, maybe he was doing it to, to hurt her. Let's just, let's just say. That he was doing it completely vindictively to hurt her.  Well, she could feel really negative about that and be resentful about the fact that he tried to hurt her and then that would keep her stuck.

In all of this time. , She would just be like basically in a spin cycle for however long she chose to focus on the fact that he's punishing her or she could make this change like for her. really lean into the ways that she could grow, number one.

And that's what she's chosen to do because she's a new client here she is, she's using this time now to invest in her own growth, right? And make this whole transition now using it , for her benefit, right? To propel her forward. A lot of times our ego, back to what I was saying is a lot of times our ego is wants to step in.

For me it did too. Like, no, I'm not gonna make this good for me. They're trying to punish me.  It's so backwards the way that we do this, but like they're trying to punish me and they're wrong.  And I

remember thinking to myself, well, I'm not gonna show him that, I am complying or that I am stepping in line to his punishment To me.

Because

that's just letting him win. But  no, what's letting him win? My ex, her ex, whatever is

staying

focusing on the punishment. Like that punishment, whatever anybody wants to try to instill on you, that's their business. Make it yours. And that is winning.  That's the best. Uh, what do they say?

Like, the best? Revenge is success. This is it, you know? And really it's to not focus on getting a revenge. Because if you're focusing on the revenge, then you're focusing on the negative and their punishment on you, which is we'll never get you anywhere and just keep you spinning, right?

So focus on how you can make it yours,  and then when you make whatever punishment they're trying to instill on you, yours, and you start to flourish. I mean, who's winning then,

you know?  So, , okay. Let me look at my notes just to make sure. so focus on what you can control. Identify all the areas like your daily habits, your self care, your boundary setting, healthy boundary setting for you, right?

Like, how can you make this whole situation even though it wasn't, you're doing it first? How can you make it so that it is in your control? Like all of your daily things, you can't control all of things, but your immediate environment, how can you change it and make it amazing, right? Focus on small, achievable goals.

I kind of talked about that, like break the big changes into manageable steps, right? And then   📍 📍 celebrate all your little baby wins too. Like little wins. Celebrate those. Make sure that you do,  even if it's just like, hey, a wink in the mirror, a boop on the nose, you're amazing.  You know,  really look at the tone that you're taking with yourself.

Remember earlier I was talking about the rigidity that I. created in my own world and the tone that I had with myself about myself, I was feeling the shame and I would turn inward and sort of, , beat my own self up. About the choices I was making. I was not taking responsibility for them, but I would just like yell at and just badger myself sort of.

And I don't know what I was trying to accomplish there. Maybe I was trying to instill some sort of change, but that didn't happen. In fact, the opposite happened. So instead really encouraging yourself and just like giving yourself a nod. For the, the wins that , you do create for your own self on the daily.

Okay. And then, well, the next one, the last one was practice self-compassion, which we already pretty much just went through. So, um, in summary for all of that,  you guys, I just had to, by the way, I had just had to rerecord the last 15 minutes of this because, , I guess I.

Clicked the off on the recording on the first time. So recorded it. I said everything I was gonna say and then lost a good section of it. So I'm doing it again. But in summary, it's just part of the course. ,  📍 📍 The key lessons is resisting change can deepen your sense of. Isolation. And of course, the pain that you're feeling while leaning into it is your first steps towards healing and empowerment.  📍 📍

Okay? Your internal control grows when you embrace impermanence. When you adapt to new realities, the possibility of new realities, new outcomes that you could create for yourself. New choices.  Like back to when I'm just barely mentioned, the pandemic for a little while there, something like that comes on and we all think, oh my gosh, this is awful.

And, and I'm not saying it was great for everybody, obviously with it, we had people that lost their lives, loved ones, and you know, time with our kiddos, right? The pandemic was awful for a lot of us. But at the same time too, there was a time of innovation and of, . Resourcefulness and so much growth also happened during that time period, that is as a result of those that did grow, embracing the growth mindset as opposed to the fixed mindset.

You know, you think about, like, I live in a small town in Florida right now, and I always. have to sort of shake my head, not in judgment, well, sometimes, maybe some judgment at the. People that have grown up here and been here for so long that really are resisting change happening and improvements happening to the town itself.

Like no, things must stay the same. We must keep the charm that's here and yada, yada, yada. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but at the, when I said that, I just reminded myself of Seinfeld. But at the same time, like change is going to happen in any town and any anywhere. Right? And the more that you hold on to No, we must keep things the same, the more ooh, you feel on the inside and it's crotchety and like, you know, rigid, like I keep saying, and it doesn't, it's not a,  it doesn't provide a good experience. 

Then you're spending your whole, your mission in. That let's keep things the same, is in resisting all of the change that's bound to happen. So it's, it's a waste of time and energy in my mind to resist the change. I mean, again, please understand, like it's super important to be compassionate with yourself in the moment because you are coming from trauma, but keep nudging yourself.

Towards the growth mindset and asking yourself like, how could this be my benefit? How can I make this mine? What are the options for me on the other side,  even if I don't like it right now, I don't have to like it right now, but what else could be true about this change for me, for my kids, for whatever? 

Okay. Open-ended questions. Really just, uh, challenging the fixed beliefs that you have current. And also challenging the idea that just because somebody else was the catalyst for change doesn't like, it doesn't mean that that has to be to their benefit only, like they meant to. What? What's that there's a, a scripture about, what was meant for my harm he will make for my good. I think about that these days. Not that I'm against, um, believing in God or anything bigger because I definitely do, but I really believe in personal power and your own mindset and what was meant for your harm, that you have the power to turn that into good for you, and not waiting on some other, , presence or power to do that for you.

That's what I did for so long is I rested on my laurels and hoped and had faith that God would make things better. Again, I'm not me meaning to make this a religious talk right now, but I now have taken my power back into all those situations and it's like become second nature for me, or default way to think, how am I gonna make this good?

Because then there's actionable steps that, that go along with it. So I'm not waiting around for something else to some other, , presence to do that for me. So anyway, change is amazing. It always is. You make of it what you put into it, you know? Okay, I gotta go because now I've just rerecorded that twice.

Okay. Bye. I'll see you guys next week.