How To Break Bad Habits

Can people change? Yes, according to neuroplasticity. This episode looks at how to use spiritual tools for changing habits and behaviors that no longer serve us. Are you trying for a change of habit? Wondering how to break a habit you’ve been struggling with? How do we cultivate an environment of loving acceptance for ourselves no matter where we are in the cycle of breaking habits? We’ll share what it looks like in real time when we’re working to unlearn outdated patterns. Come join the fun!

Transcript

Thanks for joining us here on Pretty Spiritual where we're attempting the unthinkable about how to navigate this messy,

Beautiful,

Imperfect life with spiritual tools,

Principles,

And our own personal stories.

So we're not experts,

We're not religious,

We're definitely silly.

We're honest,

Real,

And willing to share.

So join us as we connect,

Bond,

And grow together.

Yay,

We're back.

I'm so excited to be back.

Missed you.

We missed you.

This is Annie,

And today we are going to talk about how to shift outdated or harmful patterns of behavior and thinking.

I'm so curious about how we can use spiritual tools to recognize patterns that have just been buried so deep into our subconscious that we do them without thinking of them.

Those things that are just ingrained in and seem like fact,

Even though maybe there's another way to do it.

Who knows?

Maybe.

This topic's been up for me because I have been really working on shifting some patterns of thinking and behaving from this really fixed mindset of like,

I either win or lose,

I'm either all good or all bad,

And it's really polarized.

I got a hold of this book by Dr.

Carol Dweck,

And it's called The Growth Mindset,

And I got so excited,

And I started talking to these girls about it all the time because I figured out how to solve my life.

It's really great.

I'm joking about this desire I have to always be immediately fixed,

But that also is this fixed mindset of either I'm broken or I'm fixed,

I'm good or I'm bad.

This book is all about noticing the ways that I have this fixed mindset and then how it can shift to a growth mindset.

Instead of this really polarized,

It's all or nothing.

I have these inherent traits and skills of intelligence and talent,

And that's it.

I'm either good at something or I'm not versus the growth mindset,

Which is this belief,

And there's a lot of science to back it up,

That our brains are constantly able to grow and change as long as we try in positive ways,

Like the Punisher voice of,

I'm going to be different.

I suck now,

But I'm going to be different,

Isn't actually going to work.

On the other hand is the resilient,

Open,

Able to adapt and evolve growth mindset that believes intelligence and capabilities are changeable and ever-improveable.

As I read it,

I started to notice that I'm,

Contrary to what I think,

I'm not all of one or the other.

I think I have a growth mindset in areas like relationships and spiritual growth.

Spiritual growth,

I'm always like,

Wow,

I have no idea what else is out there,

And I'm going to try and I'm going to grow and I'm going to learn more because it's something I came to so new.

But then there's other stuff like my writing career,

For example,

Where it's this really fixed fear-based mindset.

Sounds like it's hopeless,

I'll never get there,

I'm dumb,

It's useless,

Just give up,

And a collapse occurs.

With a very cheerful lead in,

In today's episode,

We're sharing about the patterns we see in our lives that we may have considered fixed,

Right?

Like I'm like this,

I'm always going to be like this,

It's just the way it is,

Versus maybe how we can use different spiritual tools.

And they're not all based on this growth mindset.

That was just what got my mind thinking about this topic of how can we use spiritual tools to change,

But in a way that's positive and loving as opposed to that kind of punisher.

We were talking about this in the car ride over,

Which is I have to love all of myself.

I have to cultivate this environment that's at least loving for all that is here.

I have to,

Without that peace before that,

I'm just going to sit in hatred and disgust and how I must change.

Inpatience.

Oh,

Not good enough.

On that note,

Pony,

These wise words,

Will you share with us what patterns you're seeing in your life and what you're working around?

Okay.

Hey everyone,

Lindsay Pony Ryan here.

Hey Pony.

Hi Pony.

Hi everybody.

Well,

Annie,

Thank you so much for this topic.

So there were many times in my life where it was really clear to others that I needed to change or that there could be some shifts in my behaviors and I couldn't see them.

So I'm a big believer in being able to become aware of our patterns that are not serving us anymore and to change them.

It hasn't been easy.

It definitely hasn't been quickly,

But it has been possible.

Let me start the list of unconscious habitual mental patterns.

I've had some success with shifting my sedentary behavior,

Overeating,

Projecting my feelings onto others.

So blaming others,

That was my classic go-to,

Couldn't even see it,

But did it all the time.

It was very comforting.

Victim mentality.

Amen.

It's my favorite.

A secret one is learned helplessness.

I don't even know enough about it,

But I've gotten the language that I'm like,

I know there's more there and maybe one day I'll be willing to look at that.

So I'm just going to slide that one in.

It's on the back burner.

I quit smoking,

Which is a miracle,

And another one is that I've had some shift in is incessant critical self-talk.

That's part of the piece about really loving myself before I can even begin to grow is like even with all of these pieces and these things that aren't serving me anymore,

I have to actively cultivate the environment where love and acceptance and tolerance can be here for everything that is here.

But regulating my emotional intensity and tone of voice,

These were my absolute not going to change,

Not going to look at.

It was really like kind of deep and dark and painful to even think about it.

This is a big obstacle for me with myself and certainly in my relationship with others.

Honestly,

My aggressive nature and my inability to regulate my emotions have hurt so many others around me.

For years,

I chalked it up to if you can't love me at my worst,

You can't have me at my best,

Cop out.

Real easy then,

Right?

Come on.

Today,

I want to live in integrity and intimacy with myself.

Intimacy with myself is uncomfortable.

Someone said one time,

Intimacy means into me you see.

I like thinking about that with myself,

What this takes to have this intimate partnership with myself.

That's a big piece of this.

Behavior shifts and changing is I have to be really willing to look deep inside myself and really be accepting and loving of everything that is here without judgment.

Before I could not do that and I was just so disgusted and I hated,

I honestly hated myself so much for who I would see myself in the future as needing to be that I just lived in self-hatred and punishment.

I couldn't see that and others would see it.

The tone of voice thing is really this,

That's how I talk to myself.

I'm just explaining what this is like and what this feels like,

What this looks like for me right now and this intimacy that I have to have with myself to really recognize that these behaviors are not serving me anymore.

I need to accept them as they were and are and I need to make a decision to change.

Intentions are usually followed by another intention,

But when we make a decision,

It's usually followed with action.

I did not start out with a long list of things I needed to change.

I started with observation of self and what seemed most pressing or not serving me at the time of what needed to be dealt with first.

Looking at my emotional intensity,

Seeing that often I'm overrun with emotion and then just making excuses for it saying I'm a passionate person.

In come the excuses or the blame.

I'm fiery.

I'm exuberant with aggression and hatred and anger directed at you for some reason,

Probably seems pretty confusing.

Oh yeah,

I'm oblivious to it and blaming you at the same time.

This is a little look into myself and I'm really here with it and really loving that piece of me that maybe I don't understand or know very well,

But I'm getting hip to it.

When I look at the woman I want to be,

When I tell myself I can be and behave truly how I want to be in the world and I look at what it is,

When it's not matching up to who I am now,

That's where I can see that there could be some tools used to move towards growth.

Shifting patterns requires I am a confidant to myself.

I can see clearly I'm getting emotional as I move closer in with myself because it's like,

Wow,

This big huge life that I have been pushing away or too afraid to touch or scared of is all right here.

I just go and I meet that and I comfort my fear.

I say,

It's okay that this is scary and you're afraid.

I move closer towards my fear so that I can see what's really here,

See clearly what's serving me or hindering my growth of who and where I want to be.

Sometimes I can't see clearly and trusted friends or partners or therapists have been able to shed some light on areas that may need attention.

I trust that that all made sense right now.

It totally did.

That's great.

We're also,

We're having a weepy tender day over here.

When Lindsay and Annie showed up,

I was laying on the floor weeping without pants on.

I now have pants on,

But not too much else has changed.

Here we are.

Thank you,

Pony.

It's so helpful.

It's so helpful to hear your story.

For people who are listening,

We're so curious about your story too.

What does it look like when you practice these things or what are you thinking about when you hear us sharing our stories?

Just to share that we tell these really personal,

Specific to our lives examples because this is how we learn from each other.

Simply by putting it out into the universe,

It'll spark other people's ways of thinking and then they'll share back with us and we can create a community around it.

Basically I'm saying we want to hear from you.

It's really easy to do at www.

Prettyspiritualpodcast.

Com.

There has been so much work put in by Ella for our website.

It's gorgeous.

It looks so pretty.

If you go under the contact page,

There's a really easy button to click that says,

Say hi.

We'd love to hear from you.

So Ella,

Why don't you share with us what's happening with you?

Thank you,

Annie.

And thank you,

Lindsay.

What a great topic and there's so much here.

The thing that I think of first with the topic of like habits and habit energy is this concept of karma,

Which when I first learned about it in religious studies classes,

I thought was really,

It sounded really hokey and I was really skeptical about it.

But luckily the traditions that I belong to and speak to my heart are ones that don't,

They don't say like,

Listen up,

Here's how it is.

You better believe they say this has been our experience.

Go test it out against your own.

Don't take our word for it.

See what it's like for you.

When I started looking at my own experiences with karma,

The first one that was really apparent to me was intergenerational trauma around the Holocaust,

Just really light stuff.

And I just started to see that there was something to this karma thing.

Like it maybe it wasn't a complete crock of.

So I started studying karma in myself.

The really interesting stuff is that modern neuroscience is actually proving these,

The tenets of Buddhism and Hinduism that talk about karma.

Like a really common one we hear about is neurons that fire together,

Wire together.

And what that means in my understanding is that the more you think down a certain track,

The more you set yourself up to think down that track.

So you're creating these like grooves inside of your brain and the deeper they get,

The more habitual they are.

The more times you go down them,

The more times you set yourself up to go down them.

And there was a teacher,

A Zen teacher who was describing karma as,

I don't know why this image has always stuck with me,

But if you think of like an hourglass that has bright green liquid in it,

In my,

I don't know if she said that in my imaginings,

It's always like neon green.

You look at a behavior pattern.

When you do that behavior pattern,

It's like a drop of liquid falls into one side.

And when you do the opposite of that behavior pattern,

It's like a drop falls into the other side.

And in order to burn out habit energy,

You need to do the opposite action one more time than you did the habitual,

Maybe harmful action.

Even though that was really overwhelming because when I heard this teaching,

It was when I was starting to look at my disordered food behaviors and I was like,

Oh my God,

But I've done those behaviors so many times.

It made me feel a little bit hopeless,

But it was like,

At least there's a path forward and I'm starting to believe that it could work.

And so fast forward to today,

The biggest pattern I work on on a daily basis,

And this has been the case for years,

Is victimhood and self-pity.

I can really learn a lot about myself by exploring those habits of mind and body and speech.

And I also want to acknowledge that this pattern has already shifted and changed for me in ways that seemed unthinkable when I first started practicing.

So it has been my own experience that this spiritual path works and so I'm willing to keep doing it.

And for me to actively shift this pattern,

I practice believing that the world is a friendly place,

That it's conspiring for my benefit.

And then I feel enough space for this authentic gratitude that having this chronic illness,

Having Lyme disease includes the perfect causes and conditions for exposing these really deep seated patterns of victimhood and recognition that I probably wouldn't have grown in the ways that I have without that kind of motivation.

And for me at the end of the day,

It's like it's already hard enough for all of us.

We're already suffering enough.

So why not out of love for ourselves and self-esteem,

Try to lighten the load we carry each day and why not do the work that will enable us to be free from undermining our own experience?

And I'll talk more about what that looks like for me when we get to the tool party part of the episode.

Thank you,

Ella.

I am so happy that you brought up neurons that fire together,

Wire together,

And reading about shifting thinking patterns.

This concept or this science of neuroplasticity keeps coming up of as we shift in practice of doing new ways of behaving and thinking,

Our brains change.

And how exciting.

So cool.

And I love that you acknowledge the change that you have had and Lindsay,

You did too.

And I think that's why we're all here and all doing this because over the years,

I personally have seen so much change in my behavior and the way that I see the world and the way that I see myself.

And it's easy for me to sometimes get stuck and think the change isn't enough.

And that's where my patience gets to come in,

Which is a part of my tool,

Spoiler alert.

So the pattern that I'm working on right now,

Lindsay sent me this tool from a woman called the Holistic Psychologist.

She's on Instagram.

She has this free tool.

You can download it.

It's a future self journal.

It's a really cool tool.

I've been writing in it every day because I had decided I know what was wrong with me and I identified the problem and I was going to write about it every day and I was going to solve my problem,

Which is great.

And it's a wonderful exercise.

But specifically it was like,

I don't think that I'm performing in my writing career how I should be.

And by doing this exercise,

I had determined I would change my neuroplasticity,

Enhance my performance and become the writer that I'm destined to be.

Such a good plan.

I know.

So simple.

It's been interesting because yesterday I had a few setbacks with a project that I'm working on and my house of cards crumbled and I had a chance to see how delicate my plan for changing,

How delicate the structure that it was built on was because it didn't allow for this space of who I am right now.

Let's just focus on this potential future Annie.

I've got some tools that I have recently discovered with the help of my spiritual friendlies.

And the other pattern that's just come up is I,

Speaking of sharing our personal stories,

I've touched on this before,

But I have been going to acupuncture over the last year because I for 12 years have had really bad jaw pain.

I just clench my face all the time and it has been through all kind of iterations of expensive dental work and all kinds of solutions that I've tried to come up with.

And I've done acupuncture at other points.

Anyways,

I found this healer that I feel very good with and it's such a slow process of like building up my body,

Addressing things that I don't think are the problem to loosen what's happening in my face.

And we finally found this kind of key and I got some looseness in my jaw.

And this was three weeks ago and I was like,

Yes,

We totally solved the puzzle.

And so I left so excited because I knew next week I would be like,

We're going to do a bigger gauge needle and we're going to do it deeper and I'm going to fix this immediately.

So I go in the next week and I had had some looseness on the right side of my face that I hadn't had in over a decade and I'm so excited.

And I told him how it worked and he said,

Okay,

But I want to be really clear that because of the way that your nervous system is and the things that you and I have talked about that you've been through and the trauma that's come up as we've worked,

This needs to be a really slow process.

So if you have any kind of tension around these needles and these points,

I really want you to tell me this needs to be really slow.

And I said,

Yeah,

Yeah,

No problem.

Tell the doctor how to do their job.

So he put them in and it was so uncomfortable.

Like it was very painful,

But I knew that if I could just grin and bear it,

That it would get me where I wanted and I would have,

You know,

I was like,

You just muscle through.

You're just going to power through.

I'm going to solve the problem.

So I laid there for an hour,

Like really uncomfortable.

And in vain that following week,

I had the worst job pain that I've had in so long.

Like I wanted to rip the jawbone out of my face.

So I saw him on Monday and I told him and he's like,

Annie,

I don't want to hurt you.

And I said,

I know it was my fault.

And he's like,

No,

No,

No.

He said,

But I was part of the process.

And he said,

And I think that what I'm seeing is a pattern of your behavior.

And it has so much to do with how over these years,

These experiences,

You put them in your body and you just say,

It's fine.

I'm going to deal with it.

There's no problem here.

And you just muscle through and you grin and bear it.

And he said that.

And I just started crying because it was really simple and obvious,

But I hadn't ever realized like traumatic and emotional experiences that have happened in my life,

My inability to just have some room and be like,

I need to be really gentle with this.

I have to be delicate.

This requires time and patience and love.

Instead of saying,

No,

I'm going to power through it.

I'm going to get this done.

I know how to punish yourself.

I'm going to punish myself into being all cruel.

And it was just blew my mind because I thought I'm so focused on this pattern that I think is the problem.

And then there's this super core basic elemental way I have of not being kind or helpful to myself that like directly undermines all this work I've been doing.

So it's just really fascinating.

The stuff comes up.

So that was what's happening in my patterns.

Why don't we talk about some spiritual tools?

Let's get in there.

Oh yes,

I need a good tool.

Ella.

Oh,

Thank you,

Annie,

For sharing all of that.

I relate so deeply in my own struggle with my body and pain and expectations and treatments and solutions and doctors.

So the tool that helps me in the midst of all of this stuff is faith.

And I want to say that the idea of faith by itself when I was first kind of starting out on a spiritual path was like sickening to me.

It felt like something that other people wanted me to believe in.

It was like a hokey mind trick to get away from my experience or something like that.

But like I said,

The spiritual traditions that really work for me are ones where I'm encouraged to test suggestions against my own experience.

So I took the 16 Bodhisattva precepts when I lived at this Zen monastery.

And when it was time for that ceremony,

I had been extremely depressed.

I was like really in the thick of my eating disorder,

Feeling super hopeless,

Lacking in faith.

And when you take the precepts in Soto Zen,

You sow this kind of Zen bib because after ordination you tend to drool a lot more.

Just kidding.

Oh my God.

I was like,

What?

Fascinating.

Just wanted to make sure you were listening.

It's called a Raka suit.

And I thought it was really funny to call it a rocket suit because I was like jetting off to the spiritual heavens.

Enlighten me.

Anyway,

So I sowed this thing.

It's like a long process to sow it.

And there's a piece of blank silk on the back,

A piece of white silk.

And you give it to your teacher and they in calligraphy draw your Buddhist name that they're giving you.

And so we were having the ceremony and there were three of us who were getting ordained.

And I got to see that the first part of my name was Great Faith.

And I was pissed.

I was like,

This woman doesn't know me at all.

She clearly has not been paying attention to what my experience is like who I am.

And yeah,

I kind of like had the good sense to hold my contempt in for like a couple of days after the ceremony.

And then I remember that we sat down together and hopefully in a more polite way than I actually remember it,

I was like WTF.

And what she said in response is something that I returned to in some way pretty much every day since.

And it's something that I have been relying on heavily just this morning of that the Buddhist principle of faith means believing that our own experience is valid.

And so like Lindsay was talking about being a confidant for herself,

That's the kind of faith that I'm talking about.

It's not some faith in a grand or far away godly ideal.

It's just the moment to moment willingness to trust that the experience I'm having in this body and mind deserves my attention and it deserves my compassion.

And when I'm at really low points like I was earlier today,

I come back to faith.

And for me,

There's a lot of there's a lot of suffering with the like victimhood mentality of wanting someone to fix my pain.

And so that's the kind of old pattern is feeling uncomfortable and being in pain or anguish and wanting to make it someone else's problem and responsibility.

And so that's the pattern that I'm working to change.

And the the action that I take that's the opposite is I be that person for myself.

Like not Han says it that is so tender and he says,

Hello,

My pain,

I know you are there and I will take care of you.

So instead of just falling into blame or self pity or victimhood,

I can use the tool of trusting that my own experience is valid.

After having practiced this for a few years,

I'm really amazed by this kind of fierce,

Loving kindness that and tenderness that emerges as a result of witnessing and being with my pain and my own experience.

Like I said,

Victimhood in my experience comes from a place where I want someone else to take responsibility for witnessing my pain and caring for my pain.

And when I show up with faith and take responsibility for acknowledging witnessing and comforting that pain within myself,

Naturally the pattern of victimhood starts to be diminished.

Thank you,

Ella.

Pony,

What about you?

Tell us about some tools you're working with.

Firstly,

I want to talk about understanding process.

Seems reasonable.

Yeah,

Let's hear it.

That's all I'm going to say about it.

And good luck to you.

But I'm totally serious.

Done.

There you go.

I just let that sink in.

If you're anything like me,

I did not understand process at all.

I was supposed to be better two weeks ago.

I hate myself now for not being better and I'm just going to live here and I'm going to torture others around me.

And I'm also very blind to this,

Like I've been saying.

Changing patterns is hard.

There are many steps involved and patience is the first tool required in my experience.

What I want to talk about right now is the stages of change model.

There are five stages of change.

The first stage of that is pre-contemplation.

This is the stage where I never considered my tone of voice,

Also known as scream talking by some of my friends.

You almost just spewed when you said that.

Hashtag scream talking.

I'm trying to change all it's going to take a while.

Bear with me.

My passionate personality,

My high intensity emotional state.

This was nothing I would ever think about.

Often this is the stage where friends,

Family or doctors have mentioned something to us and we react negatively as a reflex.

So this is the pre-contemplation stage.

We're not really able or here or available or we're unconscious of this behavior pattern that's going on.

In the contemplation phase,

We can move into that if we can react more openly to these messages we might find value in them.

So into the contemplation stage,

This is where we begin to think about actively changing a behavior.

This stage can last a moment to an entire lifetime.

We can just think on it.

The key in this stage is to recognize the value of change you're contemplating,

How that's valuable,

How I really want that,

How when I meet myself I see that this behavior isn't serving me or it's hurting others.

That's oftentimes what helps me to get into the motivation stage.

When I think of becoming a loving,

Tolerant,

Kind human that is non-reactive with my tone of voice or emotion,

It fuels my fire to keep trying and implementing new habits.

So this is where the determination stage comes in and it's where we begin preparing ourselves mentally and physically for action because then that's the action stage that comes next.

Number four,

Just as Annie was describing in the journaling,

I do a morning future self-journelling and then I do a nighttime credit debit sheet where I can see how the day unfolded and plan accordingly.

I'm armed with all this information about myself and with my experience of what my intention was for the day,

How I was hopeful to be,

What I'm looking at,

And then how'd I do at the end of the night?

How'd I do?

Of course,

I just want to put a little plug in here too for the piece of,

And this has taken me years because I would just put my intentions out there and then my credits and debits,

They'd all be debits and I'd be like,

God,

You suck.

Are you ever going to be better than me?

And I just lived there.

That's where I lived.

And so this new piece that has come into light because of meditation and doing loving kindness for myself to cultivate this environment of like,

What is here?

I can be here with what is here.

I can love what is here.

I can love the many faceted diamond that I am because some sides are rough.

I'm not all one thing or the other.

I'm not just this gorgeous diamond that's just sparkling,

But I'm also not just this complete rough side that needs all this work.

I am a combination.

I am a balance.

The last part is the maintenance.

This is the continuing phase of integrating and sustaining the new habit pattern.

I haven't made it to the maintenance portion yet I'm currently working on,

But for the few I mentioned earlier,

I continue with the habit of being self-aware.

While we were talking,

I just was thinking another way of this is listen,

Learn,

Love.

So listen to self,

Learn about yourself,

And then love yourself exactly where you are.

That's where I really need to listen for these because it's about narratives and identifying with my mind of I'm stupid.

I'm not enough.

These were just some of the narratives that I heard that we were talking about here and especially that mentality of nothing is enough.

I'm not enough.

What I'm doing isn't enough.

Identify when I learn about myself,

When I get to know myself,

And then when I love even that being there,

Then maybe I can bring in a mantra of there's plenty of time.

That's been a big one for me because whenever I think I'm focusing on the future or I'm looking at the past,

I tell myself right here,

Right now,

There's plenty of time here.

So that I can calm my nervous system and behave as what my ideals are.

So maintenance,

This is a big,

There's lots of pieces to this,

Continuing to be self-aware,

Knowing the decisions I've made for myself that they hold value.

Whenever it's hard or I'm losing steam,

I think of my future self.

Is this serving my current self or my future self?

The person I see myself becoming who I ideally wholeheartedly see myself as.

If I am acting on my current impulses,

Wants,

Desires,

Cravings,

It's usually not fostering or nurturing my deeper sense of self and my goals that I have.

Thank you,

Pony.

Love you so much.

It's so helpful to have a clear way for my brain to structure thinking about stuff that is so hard and confusing when I'm in the middle of it because the things that I shared about,

It feels like I'm swimming in a mud puddle,

But then to have someone share,

It's a normal process and here's the stages.

It makes the experience feel less cloudy.

Thinking about the tools that I'm using and how it relates to your structure.

The thing that I shared about my work,

I was in pre-contemplation for a long time because I was like,

Well,

I'm just bad at this.

I'm like,

Oh,

You know,

There's an opportunity to change.

I'd like to do it.

And then I started talking with you girls about it and started thinking about it.

And then,

So that's the determination part.

And then the action came in starting to do this future self journaling that Lindsay and I have talked about.

We can put the resource up on our website.

All of those pieces are great.

The ingredient that I was missing is what you were talking about with the acceptance,

The acceptance for who I am now.

And for me,

The acceptance can't come without humility.

My tool for that part is just humility to be who I am right now because I,

Like you were talking about,

I had no tolerance for it.

I'm like,

Not up to snuff,

But I'm going to fix it.

Here's how.

And then it will be snuff.

Maybe that's not the right way to say it.

It'll be snuffed.

So how do I cultivate the humility to be exactly who I am right now?

And then on the other side,

When I think about what's preventing me from having the humility,

It's like this arrogance and this pride that I know what the best version of me is.

And it's really,

I was talking with Lindsay about this on the car ride over and of course crying,

Because today's the cry day.

We love to cry.

Got to have a cry day.

And I was talking about self-determined objectives and I had decided this is the best version of Annie.

Here's how I'm going to get there.

If there's a best version,

There's a worst version and I'm currently it.

You know,

I mean,

Cheeky saying that,

But there's some truth in there.

And there's this arrogance that I know the best way to be me.

And where is there room for this spiritual connection in that or this kind of like loving guidance from,

From inside,

From outside,

From something.

If I'm just coming up with my self-determined objectives of this is what's going to make me good instead of having this pause and the humility to accept myself as just right,

Just now,

Because this is obviously the version of me that exists.

And just Lindsay had this wonderful suggestion on the car ride to that she's been doing for the last two weeks and I'm going to copy her,

Which is sitting in a meta meditation every day,

But just for herself and not in a selfish way,

But in a way that's acknowledging that I can't start putting meta and loving kindness out for everyone else until I fill this deficit of thinking that there's something wrong with the current me.

And so I'm going to practice that as my tool and with it cultivate this idea of humility of how do I just be this Annie who is challenged by organization and would like to have a bigger scope with some of the projects she's working on.

And right now that's not what's happening.

So my other tool,

Because I wanted to talk about this as far as acknowledging bodies is when I shared about the acupuncture and my physical emotional override,

When I don't know how to handle a challenging experience,

Especially pain,

This level of awareness is really new for me,

But noticing that I'm polarized around it and I'm either overly sensitive to my physical and emotional experience or I'm in complete harsh and punitive denial of it.

And I'll override it with caffeine and powering through.

And I want to say like Ella was sharing that there's been a lot of shifts around this.

So if this is something that you struggle with and you don't know how to listen to your body,

You can start with really,

Really slow stuff.

So when I started working with a somatic therapist five years ago,

I had no idea how to listen to my body's cues and I was just managing life through an eating disorder and caffeine.

It was a fail proof plan.

Yeah.

It's a great strategy.

You just power through and things are fine.

And I just have so conditioned to overriding my body cues that I didn't know when I was tired.

I didn't know how to say no to social engagements.

And so she just taught me really simple stuff.

Like she told me,

You have to take a nap every day.

You can only take one social engagement every day,

Even if you think you want to do something else.

And it took months for my body to kind of slow down and balance.

So I thought I was too smart for that,

But it turns out I was wrong.

And I learned how to slowly start to advocate for myself about knowing when I had to leave a social situation just because my energy was gone or depleted.

And it was like really basic rudimentary stuff of how to listen to my body.

And it's gotten so much better.

Like my ability to be in the world is so much greater than it was five years ago.

I don't engage with an eating disorder.

I often don't over caffeinate.

Oh,

You have often lucky you.

That's my number one.

But the experience with the acupuncture has taught me that this is still my go to when I'm scared or I'm overwhelmed or like really deep stuff that I don't have control over is up.

I have this pattern of override.

So just noticing it and making room for it right now,

I guess it's the edging over the pre-contemplation phase that Lindsay was talking about.

And I'm in the contemplation phase of like,

Oh,

This is this next level with this.

Where do I go from here?

And prayer and meditation can kind of help guide me.

Well,

That is the longest we've ever recorded.

We hope you're still with us.

Thank you so much,

Ladies,

For everything that you shared.

We want to hear from our listeners,

How can they get in touch with us?

You can reach us online at prettyspiritualpodcast.

Com on Gmail,

Prettyspiritualpodcast.

Gmail.

Com and all of those other social places where you.

.

.

Facebook,

Instagram.

We want to hear what patterns look like in your life and what tools that are working for you because we want to copy you and try them too.

We really need to copy you.

It's a spiritual feedback loop.

Yes.

Get it going.

So simple.

So what are we going to talk about next week?

Next week,

We're going to talk about our relationship to the experience.

Wow.

Cool.

Dun,

Dun,

Dun.

It's going to be something.

It's going to be real.

It'll be shorter than this.

So please join us.

Thank you.

We love you.

Bye.

Bye.

Reviews

Coming back to this one again. And probably again and again

This was wonderful, I really learned a lot!

Great chat and tools, hugs to you all for crying day! Much love sweet women 💜x

Thank you! As always I learned something new to help me to continue to grow and change, especially with my own eating disorder.

This was amazing, ladies. I just was looking for something to help with kicking habits and this past week I've decided myself that i want to quit smoking for the 10th time. I have been sick for over a week and it has been a blessing because i have no desire to cough up a lung by smoking. I started to beat myself up when i smoked half a cigarette 2 nights ago. PROCESS, PATIENCE, and TOLERANCE are the main words that stuck out from this episode. Oh and "IN-TO-ME-I-SEE" is so great

Absolutely loved this ladies.. thank you!

Wonderful girls thanks