Ultimate Rejection: Navigating Beyond Your Hurt & Rediscovering Purpose

you are listening to the Beyond The High Road podcast with Shelby Milford episode number 72 stay tuned welcome to be on the high road hi you guys miss ants in my pants right now I'm a little wiggly so had an interesting chain of events I guess you could call them ever since recording last week's episode if you guys remember if you listened it was all about acceptance versus giving in the very moment that I was recording that episode my ex just so happened to be sending an email in response to the story that I was telling you last week in that email he had said that basically here I'll just nearly 17 years old old she's been doing these Zoom calls for a long period of time and has decided that

she doesn't want to do them anymore she has known since the age of 12 that she can go in front of a judge and make it known how she feels about her custody Arrangement and how she feels about the quality of her relationship with her mother as she hasn't been alone with her or in her care since she was six or seven years old she lived with me till she was nine like a week after her 9th birthday so I'm not sure what that's about but um I have done all I can as her father to support our daughter I won't say her name in every way possible to have a relationship with Shelby and keep the lines of communication open even after Shelby chose to move to Florida several

years ago our daughter has always and is still free to do these Zoom calls but she comes away from them unhappy detached and annoyed she says they're awkward and uncomfortable for her I'll just go down they're he's throwing out accusations about the way that I speak to her while we're on the calls that I admonish her demand that she shuts the door respect her privacy very uncomfortable anyway so just all of these things right and then at this point I just don't think she feels a connection with her or likes the way Shelby talks to her I don't know what else to say I'm hoping when she's 18 and an adult Shelby can attempt to repair this relationship with her without a

third party but that will be ultimately up to the two of them so in a nutshell my daughter's father ended all future communication between my daughter and she is 16 she'll be 17 on June 1st and so as you can imagine my world shifted quite a bit that day what's weird is that I had this uneasy feeling on and I don't know who knows right if that was just general anxiety or if that was really an energy that was real and which I want to lean to that because it literally was happening at the same time and I had that feeling pretty much all day Tuesday before I even saw this email this threat between the supervisor and and my ex and so thank God for the the supervisor

because we have a working relationship and she understands what's going on and so here I am broadcasting it to the world but I think she has understood and feels for the situation and knows what the [ __ ] is up right what's going on needless to say I was devastated and I did if you follow me on Tik Tok I put a video out there about it it was like a real in the moment reaction to what was going on and I was definitely upset shaking still heartbroken there was like this low hum throughout my body it's heartbreaking you know the last two Zoom calls we did have were we had so much fun on them her and I they laugh we had a great time but then they stopped and I

I was I was a little bit in shock even though I anticipated it coming up you know what I'm saying I think we have different parts of our body we've got the stress response system and then all of the thoughts coming from different parts of the brain that are having to come together piece together what the current situation is I notice it a lot in parents just after there's a switch in custody order where you expect to drive your kid to school or pick them up or you expect to have them home more than they are and so your brain is still encoded with that routine and so it takes a while for the catchup to happen to realize and so there's a lot of resistance so I was of course super

upset last week and I allowed myself the a couple days to just feel it you know reading that same email even two years ago I would have been silently imploding I would have tried to scan the email look for the pertinent points to see like what the basic gist of it is to save myself the pain and then would have ruminated over those those points and I would have been so worked up I would have seen the insults and the accusations that he was passive aggressively throwing out there I would have been in my brain working like overtime to try to like flash like put reference to and defend myself against whatever outrageous claims he was making against me just in this the quiet and

privacy of my own home I would have been going working overtime to come up with evidence to support reports the opposite of whatever his claims were and then I would have ruminated about those things that he was saying and about my defenses I would have gone over and over and he said this about me and he said that and how could that even be because blah blah blah blah blah like the same thing with like that six or seven years old I would have gone how could he say that she was there till her ninth birthday and blah I would have found all of these counter arguments I would have felt backed into a corner I would have felt like all the labels that he threw at me were like set

in stone that those were defining that I had to somehow fight my way out of these labels that he threw out in an email a halfhazard written email and also I never ever in a million years would have talked about it to anybody I would have read what I read right skimmed and found the bottom line and I wouldn't have spoken about it to a soul because I felt like back then if I talk about this then I'm going to give energy to it and if I give energy to it then it makes it more real and so I would have kept it to myself tucked it like way deep down inside and oscillated between berading him from afar right in my brain and shaming myself for not knowing better for getting myself in the position to

begin with and all of that I would have gone back and forth between those things for months maybe years on end I would have allowed it to affect the way I showed up in my everyday world I would have drank myself into Oblivion and found any excuse I could to numb myself away from it it would have really gotten me down I think I've made my point there and but the point is I would have kept it all to myself I never would have shared anything especially not broadcast and a Tik Tock post real time reaction like I did and I I definitely wouldn't be sharing it in a podcast like I'm doing right now never would I have ever dreamed of broadcasting my dirty laundry

so to speak to every corner of the Earth for all the humans to judge and so what's the difference here what's the difference between before and today I was asking myself this question and I was like what is what has changed to make me be okay with that why was it my first one of my First Reactions my first reaction was to actually sit in front of my laptop and pull out my notes and write a very long letter that I would never send to my daughter talking about all my feelings right I needed to get that out of my brain so that was the first thing I did was to write it all out my second reaction was to pick up my phone and make a post share this with I decided to share it on Tik Tok in hopes

that it would reach other parents who were going through this and now here I am recording this episode for you guys it could be very easy for me to take the stance of I I don't want to show my true motherdaughter relationship status to those who are listening my listeners because they could listen to this and think oh we see she's not making any strides she's doing all of this in her work but she's not repairing her relationship with her daughter so we don't want to follow that I could people could actually take that stance and that's okay I just I've decided a while ago that's okay I'm not going to be for everybody not everybody's GNA like me I'm okay with that I'm [ __ ] I'm sure

that not everybody's going to like me but that doesn't mean that what I have to share isn't valuable and so that's what I think the difference is between then and now it's like I think I'm so clear on my mission and my why that the other step doesn't bother me like everybody fears being judged but I don't that doesn't drive me anymore and it doesn't pull me off my path where before I would have been horrified I would have shuddered at the thought of putting myself out there getting vulnerable with whoever happen to scroll by my Instagram re or Tik Tok and see this mom that must have done something wrong to be in this position where her daughter doesn't want

to have a relationship with her anymore you know what I'm saying and so today I'm 100% willing to sacrifice and to chance that there are going to be people that think that there are going to be people that judge there are going to be people that I am not for right I am not their cup of tea that is okay because my main mission my goal is to help parents who are like me parents who are struggling and grieving the lack of communication and the lack of active memory making with their children who they love so dearly devoted parents who would give anything to spend five minutes in a room with her kid just to feel connected a part of and considered by their children those are the parents

that I want to connect with parents that feel like they are stuck and can't get over their own negative thinking because of the loss they're experiencing with their kids but they desperately want to create something bigger with their lives those are the parents that I want to help so anybody else can just scroll on by my desire to show other parents how to rewrite their past in their mind rewrite their own Narrative of theirselves their lives and upgrade their story about what is possible for them is so much greater than saving some face you may not know exactly what your mission is right now today in this moment you guys have heard my whole spiel about knowing what you want not

knowing what you want and the constant debate that I had put myself through or that I was in about what my calling was what I wanted to be when I grew up following alienation when I couldn't call myself an active mom anymore you guys are probably sick of hearing me talk about that so I'm not going to go into that but back when I didn't know the first thing that had to happen is that I made a decision to go all in on me to go all in on finding out and in order to find out I couldn't sit and think about it and contemplate in my head constantly I was like all right I'm going to try something and so I went back to school and I did one thing and then I did another thing and led to

where I'm sitting today but it couldn't happen living up in my brain I had to just trust that I would eventually get somewhere and it was definitely going to be different than where I was sitting at the time and that spot the perspective I had from the place of misery was not good anywhere would have been better so if you're stuck in that place where you're like I just don't know what I want to do I don't know what my purpose is where to even begin just take a step just try one thing and that one thing will lead to another thing so long as you keep moving I remember back whenever right before 2020 happened and that was back when I was doing audible book after audible book I where I lived

you guys know I lived in the house in the hill it was like a 40 minute 45 minute at least trip to go in to go to the grocery store and so I had to do something in the car and it was audible as what it was and so somehow I stumbled upon one of a book by Mel Robbins who she helped me out in such a time of need because I wasn't doing anything I was in a lot of passive action meaning I was doing a lot of consuming I was listening to audible books I was reading stuff I was trying to to figure out cerebrally what my next move was going to be I didn't have the money to like I in my brain the way that I thought back then is I I can't even afford to breathe so how am I going to go try things out

how am I going to do that I don't have the money that to try anything but Mel Robbins it may have been her 54321 book that one or it might have been another one of hers but she was like just try something just do anything something is better than nothing she really actually helped me back in that time I don't give her as much credit because I don't follow her as closely in today's world but she honestly she very well could have saved my life she taught me a very simple way of how to get myself moving when I didn't want to move anymore yeah it was the blastoff thing 54 321 blast off so anyway get yourself moving do something if you're in the place where you don't know and you're

stuck in that place of confusion and like you're just thinking about options but you haven't yet done anything so then you just Tire yourself out by thinking of all the pros and cons of each thing and you're telling yourself that you're being Mindful and thoughtful and wanting to do it right this time or whatever it is that you're telling yourself if you've been stuck in in action for any period of time longer than a couple days start trying things you can find the free things to try but start doing more than you are consuming I mean listen to my podcast still but but then go do I'm kidding mostly but yeah get yourself moving just try one thing and then if that doesn't work

that's okay it's not the end all be you go to the next thing and you go to the next thing I my try was very expensive the first thing I went and tried to do and it was not the answer I mean it kind of was it led me down the right path but it was a $5,000 oopsie and went to the wrong coaching school not the wrong coaching school but just not the one that that I would have picked in the end but I never would have known that if I didn't go make that mistake you don't have to go make a $5,000 mistake I'm just saying that I think we look at mistakes wrong these days we think that the stakes are so high and we don't we only have a certain amount of money to go invest in ourselves but this

is where I think it's so important to go all in on yourself and trust that whatever decision you make even if it's not the right one that because you made that choice you will make something happen just after that that will enable the next decision right the next mistake but just you have to trust in your ability to cultivate and create whatever it is you need without knowing without the lights on okay I wouldn't say go throw caution to the wind and always do that and just go spend all your money and then go to the next thing don't please don't misunderstand me that that's not what I'm trying to say here for sure always I think being strategic about how we not only spend our money

but our time I think that's very important but if you're in that stuck place and you're not sure what to do you've got to try something and so don't worry so much about what could go wrong but instead look for the way things could go right the way that you're going to make them right and then you can turn that into a learning experience if you decide that you need to try something else and try something else and this goes into actually with you guys with my mission with this business that I am running you guys have heard me talk about that whole outer body experience the whole spiritual experience where I was running up on the hill that miraculous 10 miles and I envisioned

what my website would look like and bl I had that vision and I knew that I wanted to help other parents like me because I didn't want us all to feel the extreme isolation that we felt before right but I didn't know how I was going to get there I didn't up until right before I started this podcast a year and change ago a year and a half ago I had no idea I never thought I would have done this right ear in a million years and I love it now like I don't know who I would be without it kind of thing like oh yeah of course I do that I couldn't imagine life without it but before I set out to do any of this work I didn't know the how when we're going into new experiences

there's no way that we can guarantee how things are going to turn out and there's no way that you would know every single step that happens along the way a B and C are going to get you success and the other ones are not no you can't know you have to make the mistakes in order to get to the end result right for y'all like I don't know how I'm ultimately going to be helping you guys I know that I will help you guys that is my mission right is to help other parents like me and you to not feel so alone and to heal and move past the trauma that they experience coming from something like alienation that is my mission how I help you guys could change up quite frequently who knows right now I'm in

another hole shedding a layer and then reorganizing and figuring out another way to help you guys and I'm going to keep trying and I will fail and then something will work and then something will work and N that didn't work let's go back to step and then you know what I'm saying like there is no guaranteed path it's all trial and error but I'm not going to let the fails or the things that don't work the bad programs I've written I have done I can't even tell you how many absolutely horrible live events that I've done so many like epically terrible live events that I've held because of my own nerves and because I was judging myself during them and all the things right but that's okay I

needed to have those bad live events happen epically bad live events happen in order to get to the me today those things will were all part of the plan I'm not going to let one fail or 900 fails deter me from my ultimate Mission which is to help parents like you and me I'm comparing it to my business right now but you can use this for anything that you're doing in life it does not have to be you don't have to be working on your business at all you can apply this to this is where I was wanted to get to is what your passion is what your purpose is in life when we as parents like you and I come to the realization that we are not needed I'm using that term loosely because we are always

needed by our children but the we have been rejected it's completely understandable that we would be like oh [ __ ] now what now what the loves of our lives are not in our everyday lives anymore where are we needed how are we going to feel purposeful how are we going to feel valued all of those questions that we I guarantee if you're listening to this podcast that we all have on sometimes a very regular basis right this is the difference between today Shelby and even two years ago Shelby is that today I have that answer I know that I want to serve you guys but I don't always know how I'm going to serve you guys I just know that I will I will do that right and I am committed to

that mission mine I had the healing and reinvention program for over just over a year now if I'm being completely honest it is not swed like I wanted it to and I thought that this would be the way but it's not the way and that's okay I'm not going to take pick up my toys and go home just means that I'm not providing value in the way that y'all value it so I will go and I will figure out a way to provide value that y'all value I will just keep trying and that's okay my my my desire my mission to provide the help to you guys is there and it will remain I am committed to that and so that just means I need to try different ways it doesn't need to I don't doesn't need to make me butt hurt

that this way didn't work I don't feel like ultimately I've failed and this Mission sucks I also don't feel like what I have to say isn't valuable I don't feel that like that at all like I know that how I can help people is very Val Val stand behind that a million per and so I just have to figure out how and and all these little fails up until the time that I find one way and then the next way and then the next way I have to look at these as learning experiences until I find the thing that resonates with y'all I guess basically what I'm saying is just because things aren't working and you tried one way and the door shut on you and you try a different way and maybe something else shut it

doesn't mean that it's it's the wrong Mission if you've had something that you've wanted to do for a while now and it hasn't worked out maybe you haven't gotten creative enough yet maybe you aren't committed to it enough and that's okay too you decide come up with what your now mission is and it's okay if you decide to amend that mission as you learn more as more information comes in with each trial error trial error you want you'll know when you find the one that you want to go all in on and commit for the Long Haul but until then just trial and error go all in on yourself because you're worth it you are 100% worth it see what you can create for yourself the last thing that I wanted to

say about this waiting for passion waiting for motivation both of those things I think are sometimes misunderstood in my mind anyway about how they come to us I think how often and I still to this day find myself doing this but I'll wait for the motivation to come in my mind I'm like I'm just waiting for the motivation to do that thing I'm just trying to get myself motivated just trying to get myself motivated to get walk over there and get my cup of coffee I'm trying to get the motivation to write this chapter but motivation almost always doesn't come before you do the thing motivation comes as a result of doing the thing and and getting building up some momentum okay it doesn't happen until

your creative juices start flowing you start breaking a sweat if you're doing something physical then motivation comes it's usually because your brain juices have gotten flowing because of an idea or something somebody said and then you have motivation you don't have to wait to drum up motivation in order to go do the thing motivation follows it's like the Caboose also the same thing with passion we think think that we need to have passion to be fulfilling our purpose to be producing anything worth meaning whatever I think it's overrated but I also think that passion doesn't come when you're clunky and new at something so if you are trying something new out there you're not going to have

passion most of the time think about the things that you're passionate about not like when you're talking about being passionate and angry in a relationship things the things that you really truly like with me I'm very passionate about about all things mental health following trauma post-traumatic growth right that but that didn't happen overnight I didn't just have passion first what I had was curiosity desperation first then curiosity then I needed to learn stuff right at the time maybe I was passionate about getting myself out of the position I was in I would still call that being it was desperation passion came once I started getting good at doing what I was doing

and that I am still leagues away from where I want to be but that's not really my point right now my point is that passion doesn't come in the beginning so just remember that that you don't need to have passion in order to put something out there in the world or uh make meaning for your life okay whatever that is and again it does not have to be I'm using my the way that I serve you guys and my trial error with that for just for the example but this could be about anything that's going on in your life so just go all in on you and then once if you do know your mission then you go all in on that mission just like I'm going all in on my mission and on you if you're trying things out and

you've got that fear of judgment the fear of people laughing or saying oh what were they thinking who do they think they are trying to do that I get you I was there I was there and that's the difference between two years ago today reading the letter that my my ex wrote to me or to the the supervisor the difference between that Shelby and today shall be is that it's okay if other people don't value me it's okay that he doesn't value me I know that already right it's even okay that currently my daughter doesn't value me it's okay and maybe she does I don't know but it's okay because I value me and I know that what I have to offer is valuable it is infinitely valuable right but only to

the people that find it valuable my people and same with you so when I got over myself and I don't mean that rudely but when I got over myself and stopped worrying about all trying to please and uh appeal to all the people and I still have a lot of work to do on this even when it comes to wanting to appeal to my own darling daughter it's okay I know that me trying to mold myself to fit some version of me that's not me that's that's somebody else wants of me isn't going to turn out well me trying to please everybody is not going to work it's only going to cause me to burn out and stay in a cyclone of inaction sitting smack in the middle of that doing nothing thinking about all the

things I'm not and how can I be the person that they like or they like or they like or they like doesn't work the bottom line of all this is when you accept you then the rest of the stuff Falls in place but honestly if somebody would have given me that answer back you know a few years ago I would have been like okay there's nothing actionable about saying you need to learn how to accept yourself what it is is the action of getting up and trying things it's trying one thing and then trying another and then trying another and learning to redefine Who You Are by what you want not because somebody else wants it from you or for you but because it's what you want like redate yourself again

right record yourself and then commit to going all in on yourself no matter how messy it might be in the process that's the beautiful stuff you guys the messiness the failing the falling and getting up and somebody made a reference the other day about it's such a like an obvious like duh reference but it made so much sense maybe it was maybe it was Brooke she was talking about like a baby they have to fall and get up and you hear this comparison I'm sure I've heard it a million times in my life but this last time I heard it really resonated and maybe it was the way that she explained it but she's like you know a baby in order to walk they have to go through a process of falling and getting

up over and over again when they start started walking they didn't have the strength to actually take one step and then the other in consecutive steps they they fall and then they have to pull themselves up and then they have to fall and then they have to pull themselves up to build the endurance the falling and getting up caused the core muscles to engage in the way that they are needed in order to walk in order to run that is all part of it if we were all able to just get up and run like zebras you know with everything every task that we wanted to excel at in our lives we would all be in much different places and we would not be I would not be talking to you through this podcast

right now there would be no variety or any challenge or of course then reward in our lives if everything came easy there would be no lessons there would be no would just we would all be boring we would all be excellent at everything and Incredibly bored anyway the falls and the getting up and learning from the last fall and then trying again and then the steps and then the falling and getting up it's all part of it they're not setbacks anytime you run into a wall and you're like oh it's oh it must just mean that I'm not supposed to do this for for this can't be the mission no stay on your path stay on the path keep trying different ways it doesn't mean that

you're not supposed to do it I hear and what's coming to me right now is like if you ever listen to Abraham Hicks she talks about taking the path of lease resistance and I'm not refuting that is that the right word I'm not arguing with that but I also think that there's a difference between being in resistance to reality and bettering yourself in order to create your life ahead you cannot create something new for yourself I don't care what we're talking about here you cannot learn something new and not have resistance or else it wouldn't be be learning you know what I'm saying so the path of least resistance I get it but it's separate from what we're talking about today I think that

everything is needs to be considered together in order to cope up with your own Philosophy for how you want to live the resistance has to be there in order to get to new heights learn from the mistakes doesn't mean just because you've made mistakes and just because you've Fallen just because you've hit a a wall a dead end so you think doesn't mean that you're supposed to quit now it just means you have to get creative it just means that you have to look at your thinking and decide how it is that you are going to make this happen if this is what you're committed to okay all right now I think I've beat a dead horse I'm GNA go just because if it if you're in the situation where I'm in which

probably all of you are but where your kids have told you they don't want to have any contact with you right now or whatever they've said to you and you're questioning what it is your purposes in life they're not the only ones I know I mean I love my daughter like with every part of my being right but their opinion is not why we're here on this world we have to create value that we value before anybody else will ever even consider valuing nothing is forever nothing is forever and your kids if you are in the place where if you're feeling down if you're feeling sad if you're feeling like your life is lacking meaning I get it but you create the meaning it's not meaningful your life

isn't meaningful because somebody else says it is it's meaningful because of the story that you have about your life and if you don't like the current story then go out there and change it start trying [ __ ] okay go all in on you all right you guys have a lovely week thanks so much for listening today guys I'm honored that you chose to share perod of time with me if you like what you've been hearing and you want more come join me in the new monthly membership where we take the concepts that you hear about here and using a logical framework you learn to apply them to your specific situations upgrading your thoughts and your life even while experiencing the grief of

alienation for more information go to beyondthe High road.com see you soon