What's the Best That Could Happen?

Hello,

Hello.

My name is Jessica Amos.

I'm a mindfulness teacher,

A life coach,

And the founder of Stay With Yourself,

Which is the practice of being who you are,

Where you are,

Honoring yourself in each moment.

Today,

I am very excited to be talking with you about where we put our attention when it comes to good things and bad things and wrong things and right things.

And this topic is a topic that came up with my therapist several years ago as I was huffing into her office and sitting down on the couch as I would do every week with her.

And I came in one day,

And I just had all this stuff going on in my head as I always do,

Where I was just,

This could go wrong and that could go wrong.

And what if this bad thing happens?

And what if that bad things happen?

And I need to make a decision around this,

Or I had a conversation with that person around that.

And the hyper spin out of the overthinking and the wanting to do exactly the right thing and have everything go right.

And what if things go bad and wrong?

And just the mental spin out that we can often do inside of ourselves.

And as someone who has struggled for most of my life with chronic anxiety,

It makes sense why this happens for me and then why it also activates my anxiety and how these two can really feed each other.

So maybe some of you relate to that,

But I found it really interesting as I'm sitting in my therapist's office and I go in week after week,

And that's part of why we go to therapy is to process things and to talk about things and to work through things.

She just goes,

Okay,

I have a challenge for you.

And I love a challenge and I hate a challenge at the same time,

But I love her and she's one of the best people I've ever worked with,

My therapist.

So I was like,

Okay,

What is your challenge?

And she goes,

For every minute that you spend thinking about how wrong or bad things could go,

All the terrible outcomes,

I want you to spend an equal amount of time,

An equal number of minutes thinking about what if things went good?

What could best outcomes be?

What if things went good?

And I was like,

I don't know how I feel about that.

That is very uncomfortable for me.

And so she workshopped it with me right there in our therapy session.

Okay,

Let's talk about something that you're thinking about how bad or wrong it could go.

For me,

It might be like a visit with my mother.

Which is like a very real example in my life,

A visit with my mother.

Oh no,

These are all the things that could go wrong.

My mom could say this,

This could happen,

That could happen,

Any number of things like that.

She goes,

Okay,

Now what if you imagined that things went well?

What if your mom said something nice or kind?

What if it went better than you thought it could go?

And that was really a stretch for me at the time.

Like really a big push for me mentally and emotionally because it's like,

Well,

I know my mother,

There's no way that's ever gonna happen,

Right?

And I had already decided in my mind what was gonna happen,

How it was gonna happen.

And then I'm trying to prepare myself for the blow,

For the fallout,

For the way it's gonna go bad and wrong.

And all she was doing,

My therapist,

All she was really doing was just challenging me to maybe open up to a new way.

And so I started practicing that.

And I will say,

I still am not always good at remembering to do this practice,

But as I started to practice and started giving just myself a little time,

A little extra room to imagine that like,

Actually,

What if it doesn't go badly?

What if it goes well?

What if it's even just goes neutrally?

What if it gets to be different than what I've experienced before?

What I found was my whole energy and my whole mindset changed.

So in the example of like having a visit with my mother,

As I began to practice thinking that maybe it's not gonna go bad.

Maybe it doesn't have to feel painful and difficult.

Maybe this doesn't have to be this anxiety-ridden situation of this,

That,

And the other.

Gosh,

What if it felt good?

What if I felt good?

What if no matter how my mother responded or was behaving,

I could still feel good about it,

Right?

And I'm secure in me.

And it started to really shift things for me around,

Again,

I have no control over the future and other people.

I can't future tell what's going to happen,

But it helped me start to stand on new ground within myself to start just asking,

What if things went well?

What if I actually felt good?

What if I wasn't anxious and I actually felt at peace in this situation?

And it helped me to start to expand into things,

Into greater possibilities,

Greater possibilities for myself.

And I really didn't have anything to lose from it because it's like,

Of course,

I could always go back to just doing it the old way and always being,

Expecting the worst.

So I'm not really losing anything by just trying a new way.

I can always go back to the old way anytime,

Right?

So let's just maybe try a new way.

Let's go in there and explore and see what happens.

And I did find that,

And I continue to find that it's actually very,

Very helpful and it helps put me in a space before I even get to that future point that I am projecting into,

I'm actually bringing myself into a more peaceful and centered and aligned space before I get there.

It doesn't mean situations aren't situations,

But that's my question to you today.

And what I wanna put out to you as you move forward into your group shares,

Maybe starting with some awareness around,

Are you the sort of person that's kind of always maybe trying to anticipate things going bad or wrong and how you're gonna respond to the fallout of life?

And how could you maybe start to prepare for things to go good?

And how does that feel in your system to allow in the sense of maybe things could go good.

Maybe things could actually line up.

Maybe it could be right.

And what would it feel like to give equal attention?

If you're gonna give attention to the negative and what could go bad,

How could it feel to start to give some attention to what could actually go right?

And maybe even better than expected.

Or even like,

What if it was just neutral and it wasn't super emotionally charged or electric?

And this can be applied to anything.

I'm maybe talking about my mother.

Might not be mother for you.

It might be something else,

You know,

Work,

Job,

Circumstance,

Relationship to self,

Even the way you talk to yourself.

What if you decided to give a little bit of a different attention and start to find some balance in there?

Until next time,

May you stay with yourself today and always.

Bye.