I spent 3 hours Saturday morning trying to figure out how to get my new email delivery platform to “talk to” my website.

Some small things I was able to figure out, but by the end of the 3 hours I was literally in tears telling Sully that I feel so stupid and that it shouldn’t be this difficult for a smart woman to figure out how to do this.

I went upstairs, ugly cried in my bathroom for a few minutes, put my workout clothes on and hopped on the elliptical for 25 minutes to get the frustrated energy moving through my body and to clear my mind.

Women are conditioned to think we just need to keep doing more, being more, and THEN someone will notice, show up for us, change, or suddenly be different than they have for X number of months or years.

If we show them how hard we’re working, if we grind ourselves to the bone within a millimeter of losing our damn minds, or beg and plead louder or in a different way, THEN things will change and be better. 

We need to stop expecting “turtles to fly,” and take our power back.

When people talk to me about coaching together, they’re not terribly concerned about how the sausage is made.

They want to know if they’re going to feel better, if their life can be different, and if they can get unstuck.

The answers are yes, yes, and yes.

If you believe your thoughts are irrelevant to how your life looks and feels. 

If you believe paying attention to and tweaking your thoughts is hogwash, poppycock, malarkey, balderdash, hooey, baloney, or horsefeather; try the following experiment. 

Recall a time recently when you felt overwhelmed by a decision. 

Like you totally had the deer in the headlights look on your face when thinking or talking about the situation. 

Recovering ultra-independent woman here!

I used to hate feeling vulnerable and needing to ask anyone for anything.

It made me so uncomfortable. 

Like crawl-out-of-my-skin-uncomfortable.

I was afraid of hearing, “No,” because of all the things I made the “no” mean about me.

And I felt like I should be able to take care of everything without any help. Thank you patriarchy for contributing to women feeling this way. 

I loved reading the, “Sunday funnies,” as we called comic strips in our house!

Every time the Fargo Forum arrived on our porch steps, I’d run out so I could be the first to read them. And look at the Target and Kmart promo flyers, LOL.

Garfield was my favorite but I’d read most of them to get some good laughs to start my day before I hopped on my bike or went to a friend’s house to play Atari.

We knew what they were thinking because of the thought bubble over their head. 

It would save us a lot of suffering if we had thought bubbles that were visible only to us.

What are you tired of doing or “putting up with?”

Could be the build up of crap on your dining table or guest room.

Maybe it’s your pattern of looking outside yourself for your worth, validation, and general sense of ok-ness.

Anyone else say to themselves or your BFF that you want more help or to have a more clear calendar but you don’t ask and keep saying yes to shit that fills your days?

Our brains love to complicate things in order to “protect” us from change which it sees as a potential threat to our survival.

Even something “positive” is seen as a threat if it’s different from how we’ve been doing things.

This is why it’s important to pay attention to our thoughts!

Especially the thoughts that seem “true” and like you’re just “reporting the weather outside.”

Those little suckers can be the most damaging to our joy and determine whether we’re thriving in life or just surviving.

This is one of my favorite topics because within it are the seeds of taking your power and agency back where you gave it away and not adding to your suffering.

Clean pain is the pain we feel when we lose a job we enjoyed, we’re called to come in for further testing after a biopsy, when a friend moves away, or someone hurts our feelings.

It’s the instinctual, “Ouch, I’m scared, this hurts like a mofo, or what do I do now?”

In Buddhists traditions this is called the first arrow.

These things can’t be avoided.

They’re the “price of admission” for being a human.

I’m a life coach who helps you discover solutions to the things that wake you up at 3am, and that run in the background of your brain during the day.

Things like:

* Near constant worry about yourself or others

* Wanting to move past an old regret

* Figuring out how to make friends as an adult

* The pattern of putting yourself last

* Hypervigilance to things happening in your life

Sometimes I work with coaching clients for years, helping them untangle and understand how they got where they are and support them in getting where they’d rather be.

Sometimes I work with a client for a challenging season with their aging parents or kids. 

Maybe you want to explore finding a different job or career.

Maybe you feel like a shell of who you were before kids came along (nothing against the kids) and have no idea what you like or want anymore.

Maybe it’s because you’re the oldest of your siblings.

Maybe it’s because no one else in your family of origin was going to get things done.

Maybe it’s because you were socialized as a woman.

Maybe it’s because conflict and tension is REALLY uncomfortable.

Maybe it’s because shit was chaotic and unpredictable when you were a kid and you had to be “ready for anything.”

It’s probably a mix of the above.

Whatever the reasons, this reaction has you jumping in to fix every dang problem, issue, conflict, or foul mood that your spidey senses detect.

We’ve got a problem.

And it’s really fucking with our heads and hearts.

Big time!

It dictates how we see ourselves.

It dictates how we think about ourselves, feel, act, and show up in our lives.

The problem is, our definitions.

But I pinky promise it will get easier with practice because with each practice you’re giving your brain proof and evidence that you’ll survive.

This is exactly how we rewire our brains! Little kitten steps in the direction you want to go!

And it doesn’t mean we suddenly start acting like assholes to everyone. There is a big space on the spectrum of I can be kind to you AND to me.

Let’s say you live in an apartment complex that has 4 buildings.

There’re no assigned parking spaces but a guy who lives in another building usually parks in front of the building you live in.

You think he should park in front of the building they live in.

This really gets under your skin.

You left notes on their car stating he should park in front of their building.

He keeps parking in front of your building.

Then you take it a step further and park your car so close to his door he can’t get in it on the driver side.

He calls the police.

I used to be that girl.

For years.

I dated the first guy that gave me attention.

And I stayed with him for 5 years through treating me with minimal consideration, microscopic amounts of respect, 3 rounds of infidelity, and 1 STD.

I thought it would get better.

I thought I could change him.

I thought, “If I just do X, Y, and Z, then he would change, see my worth, and the relationship would be good.”

Our nervous systems are like thermostats.

We each have a unique range for what we have capacity and tolerance for.

This range is created during childhood to keep us safe because that’s all our primitive brains care about. 

Whether you grew up in a chaotic home with substance abuse, your family looked like the Cleavers, was somewhere in between. Your nervous system is normal and it just wants you to be safe and survive.

My range used to be pretty small and very sensitive. It didn’t take much to activate it and all of a sudden I was in fight or flight trying to prepare for whatever came next. 

You’re cruising along, practicing being 1% more compassionate with yourself, deciding when you’re going to take your 3 weekly walks, ordering a few more veggies in your Instacart, looking at your calendar to give your new friend coffee date options…

And then you call yourself stupid, don’t put your shoes on, let the veggies spoil in the fridge, and don’t send your friend the dates you’re available.

Then the shame, blame, and the self-flagellation starts…

“What’s wrong with me?”

“Why can’t I follow through with a simple fucking change?”

There were a few different elementary schools that fed into our middle school and the one I went to was in the lowest income part of Fargo. 

I never thought less of anyone I went to school with but I sure had money thoughts about me and my family.

And those thoughts have been in the background of my mind for decades creating my financial results.

Some were conscious thoughts and others were unconscious that I didn’t realize until years later.

Whether you experienced a one-time scary experience like a car accident or were exposed to frequent fights or outbursts from your parents, your nervous system may be “stuck” in fight or flight and be keeping you hypervigilant long after the event ended.

Our nervous systems do this because they think they have to in order to keep you alive and that’s all they give a crap about, your perceived safety and potential threats. 

And it doesn’t matter if you tell yourself 29,037 times that, “It’s over, you’re fine, you’re not going to get into an accident every time you’re in a car, mom and dad are dead.”

If you’re not tending to the root fear of your nervous system then you’re basically just putting a Smurfs bandaid on a gushing wound.