Episode 27 - Your Vision

Jun 17, 201912 min read

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | RSS

Episode 27 Overview

This week we are talking about how to dis-overwhelm yourself (yes, I made that up). I'll teach you the few simple steps to clarify your vision for the most difficult areas of your life and how to pursue achieve it, including the surprising reason we often lose track of our vision.

Transcript:

00:00 Episode 27 your vision.

00:15 Welcome to the First Year married Podcast, where we get real about building the marriage of your dreams. I'm marriage coach Kayla Levin and I take newly married and engaged women from anxious and insecure to confident and connected, through practical tips, real life inspiration, and more than a little self-awareness along the way.

00:37 Welcome back. So this week we're going to be talking about any area of your life where you've been feeling overwhelmed, unfocused, behind the ball, just totally not with it, not performing, not up to par, whatever you want to say. I'll be giving my own example and I'm going to be giving you some tips for how to move forward with that.

01:00 Here's my new word, you're ready for my new word, it's dis-overwhelm or un-overwhelm. I think I like this dis-overwhelm, it sounds more active. So here's my question for you, have you lost your vision in an attempt to dis-overwhelm yourself? I'm asking this because I found myself doing it. It was really fascinating. I have been having really crazy, unstructured, nonproductive, zoned out, stressed out mornings. And I asked myself this question, "Well, if I know that I'm failing at mornings," because apparently there's a report card somewhere that someone's filling out and I have an F for mornings because that's what my brain told me. "So if I'm failing at morning," the subject called the morning, "then what would an A look like?" Right? Like what do I consider succeeding? What is passing?

01:56 And I didn't have an answer. And that was so fascinating to me because the reason I didn't have an answer is because I thought that if I didn't pay attention to what it should look like, I would feel less upset about how badly I was failing. Right. I wasn't feeling because there was no objective standard.

02:20 I talked last week about grading rubrics. So maybe I'm just getting a little bit too teachery for all of you. But if there's no standard you can't really be failing, so what I did was instead of thinking about what it is I really wanted it to look like, and this was a totally non not conscious process, right? I just removed the standard from existence. Okay? Which in theory I think I probably, my brain probably thought that would be really effective. But what it ended up doing was I still didn't like my mornings. Right. We were still rushing. I was still not feeling focused or clearheaded or on top of things or whatever, even after coffee.

02:59 Yeah. And now I also didn't even know where I could go. Okay. I didn't even know what to fix, because I was just so removed from the standard. And I just think this is really fascinating and now I'm going to be looking for it all over my life. And I thought I would share this with you, so that you guys can look for it all over your life too. Because here's the thing, we do have visions, right? And sometimes all we have is knowing that we're not there and that's okay, because that just might be where you need to start. And I'm going to help you with the rest. So isn't that perfect? You found the right podcast.

03:38 Okay. I'm going to give you a couple steps because I like steps. They feel very concrete and doable for me. I want to give you some steps about what you can do about this dis-overwhelming problem. This removing of the vision. Okay, so the first thing is of course, you're going to have to pick an area. So you want to pick an area of your life or a time of day, like for me it was mornings, where you feel the most overwhelmed or off track. You don't have to pick the right one, don't have a big vision about this exercise. Okay, this is an exercise.

04:09 Once you learn how to do the exercise, then you can go and apply it in a lot of places. So it might even be easier for you to pick one that's not the biggest. Just pick an area where it's just not working for you. Right? Is it dinner? Getting dinner on the table? Is it talking to your boss? Is it dealing with the commute? Whatever it is, you want to pick an area where you're just feeling overwhelmed, off track, like you're not making it. You know you don't have an A in this area, right, if you have your inner report card also.

04:38 And the first step, is we have to really focus in on what the vision is. And one thing I want to encourage you is to consider that you can picture your vision non-linguistically. You don't have to just do everything with words. So I would even say start without a journal, start without writing. If you want to write down some key words, it would be great, but you might want to go somewhere else first. You might want to come back to that. The first step is I want you to just take some time to visualize, okay? What would it look like? What do I see? The five senses work really, really well here. So, if I'm looking at my mornings, what do I see?

05:17 I am looking at my kids' faces. I see breakfast getting on the table before I start working on the lunches or maybe the lunch is already done. I've just given up on that vision, that's not happening. But the breakfast are being made and I'm talking to my kids. That's what I see. Okay? And the kitchen is not a complete disaster. What am I hearing? So when I thought to that, I was like, "You know what, I'm hearing music," there's music playing because that helps everyone wake up in a good mood and it just gets us moving and it's nice for there to be some music in the background, so we're listening to music. And what am I smell? Or just go through your senses, okay.

05:52 And what am I feeling? Is it the feeling of walking in my robe because I haven't gotten dressed yet or do I feel that energy of I'm already dressed and I'm ready for my day. Okay, so go through your senses then if you want to, you've visualized it, you've gone through the senses. Also, how are you feeling emotionally right now? This is your vision, okay, so you don't have to be too realistic, how do you feel? So maybe you're feeling excited or you're feeling focused or you're feeling empowered. What feeling is going on for you right now in this area of your life?

06:24 And then if you want to take out a piece of paper and write down some of that, you can, just remember that not everything can be expressed in words, and that's okay. So the next thing we want to do is think ... We want to focus on that feeling piece. So what do I need to do to be feeling that way? So for me, I want to be feeling focused and happy in the morning.

06:47 Okay? So what do I have for that? What I have for that is that I do need to be getting to bed at a certain point. I need to start off my day with something that doesn't have any sugar in it. Okay? And I need to be dressed before my kids get out of bed. Or you know, I can't do that because my kids are really little. I don't know when they're going to get out of bed, but I need to be dressed before seven o'clock, so that when I'm moving into the kitchen, I'm already doing a dress, I don't have to go back to my room.

07:13 Okay, you're ready for step three. Step three is to try it. The reason I'm putting try it right now, is that for some people, this is a smashing success right off the bat. Okay? I've had clients where once we picture exactly what you're looking for, you just can go and do it.

07:29 It just happens, because now you know what you're trying to do and that itself is just so empowering and so motivating and so exciting and you just didn't have a vision. Okay? If it's something you've been struggling with for longer or you had it and then you lost it, something like that, then we're going to move on to step four, but for some of you, you can stop at step three, now you've got your vision clear. You know what you need. You got that all lined up, you're off to the market. Great. Congratulations.

07:53 For the rest of us, including me on my mornings, we're going to move on to step four. Step four is try again and repeat. Okay? I don't want you going back and changing your vision right now. I don't want you going back and changing what you need or going back and changing ... Unless there's something that came up that was so clearly evident, right, that you can just, it's a really easy fix, just add that one in and then you're good to go.

08:15 Let's try to stay out of the weeds right now. We're just going to stick to the trying it part. I want you to commit to trying a certain number of times, okay? So whatever trying means, maybe it's getting up at the right time with your alarm clock. Maybe it's going out to coffee with your coworker. Maybe it's driving to work without speeding. I don't know. Whatever the thing is that you're working on. Okay? You want to decide, it's going to be a certain number of times that you're going to try for it to happen according to this vision.

08:44 And for me it's because I didn't wake up on time, then I didn't do all the things that I imagined. I didn't turn on the music, I didn't get up on time. I didn't get dressed before I went out to the kitchen. All these different things, right? So fine. What would be very tempting for me, it would be either to say, "Okay, this totally just doesn't work." Or "Oh, I need to go back, I need to re-imagine this vision." What was actually happening? What was actually happening is that every time that I ran the morning, the way I've been running my mornings, I got that neural pathway really strong, right? Wake up, go get your coffee, wake up, go get your coffee, wake up, go get your coffee. Now I'm trying to do wake up, go get dressed. Okay? That is a different choice. That's going to be uncomfortable for a little while. Okay.

09:29 So the reason that I want you to commit to a certain number of times is because sometimes you just have to be uncomfortable for a little while so that you can reprogram yourself to try something new. And if you're saying, I'm just going to do this in discomfort 10 times, 20 times for a month, then you are creating a new option for yourself, and you're just, you're like, "Oh, I know that there's discomfort. I know I'm not going to want to do this. That's fine because I'm only doing it 30 times. I'm just going to do it uncomfortable." Okay? And that's why it's so cool to learn how to live with a negative emotion because you could just be uncomfortable and like, "That's cool. Fine, I'm uncomfortable. I'm going to go for that." Okay.

10:11 The next thing I want you to do is I want you to look at what emotions are holding you back. You're committed, you're doing this, you can also do these steps while you're committing. Okay? So while you're committing, I want you to ... These are the things I want you to noticing. So what emotions are holding you back? If I'm waking up and I'm thinking to myself and I'm feeling, I notice that I'm feeling really discouraged and annoyed. Okay? So I'm probably not going to go and have my happy music morning. Yeah.

10:41 So what I want to do is I want to sort of step backwards and say, "Okay, if I'm feeling annoyed and discouraged, that there's a thought that's creating that." Okay. The emotion doesn't just appear out of nowhere, there is some thought that I'm probably not even noticing that is creating that emotion. So for me, it was there's nothing really exciting happening today. Yuck, right? That was kind of what was going on as soon as I woke up, there's really nothing to get up for so I just, so basically it's just annoying, right? It's just annoying that I have to feed these people and I have to get these people to school, it's like not exciting. It's just, it has to be done.

11:15 Of course, I'm feeling not encouraged and annoyed, of course. Right. But the thing is that my thoughts aren't true. It's not that nothing exciting was happening, it's that I was thinking that nothing exciting was happening. Lots of exciting things were happening. My Kid's going to school is exciting. That's exciting. There's a lot of exciting things happening. Okay. And here I'm recording two, possibly three podcasts today. That's exciting to me. I have a good ... It's just that my brain thinks that when I wake up, and so I wake up already having that feeling. Okay? So then I can go onto this next step of, okay, so if I wake up and I'm feeling annoyed and discouraged, and again, I'm giving you my example, but you're going to have to apply this over to yours.

11:58 If I'm waking up and feeling annoyed and discouraged and I can be like, "Oh, it's because I'm having a thought that nothing exciting is happening, but I'm totally wrong about that. So many exciting things are happening today. It's going to be a great day." Okay? Or whatever I want to think. Exciting things don't have to happen today, I'm going to get up anyway and I'm just going to be annoyed and I'm going to play music.

12:18 Right? So then the next one, which I think is really cool, which is what emotions do I want? Okay. So I started with the emotions I'm already having and the thoughts that are causing them, but what emotions do I want in my mornings. So I said, I want my morning to be happy, I want to feel grateful, I want to wake up and feel grateful while and going through my morning routine.

12:39 So then I have to think what thoughts create those emotions. Yeah. So for me grateful is great, because that's just soon super easy you just look at every single thing that you have and that you're doing and you're like, "Oh my gosh, I had enough money to buy milk this week and there was a grocery store and they just put milk in a bottle and you can just go and for a little bit of money that you don't even have to be holding, it can just be on a card that's linked like through outer space. All this stuff is here so I can have milk in my fridge to put in a bowl with some cereal for my kid. That's so cool." Can we just geek out on that for a second? That is so cool.

13:18 I just have to carry a plastic card to a store and they will give me a bottle of milk that came from a cow. Amazing. That's so cool. How can you be feeling unmotivated and annoyed with that? That's so cool. Right? So you could just go through every single thing in your morning, this is so neat. My kid overslept. Her body tells her that she didn't get enough sleep. That's so cool, because otherwise she just be up all the time. So here she is oversleeping and now I know as her mother that we need to move up her bedtime. There's so much information I'm getting just from her oversleeping, this is fabulous.

13:53 She doesn't want to put on her own socks. Okay. Now I'm getting really into this whole kid thing, so I'm going to stop, because a lot of you are newlyweds, you don't have kids yet. We can discuss this later in a couple of years. Right? Do you get the idea? Yeah. So my alarm clock woke me up. I have this electronic box that tells me when to wake up. So I'm not late for work every day. That is so cool. Okay. You can have that if you don't have kids.

14:15 Okay. So that for me, it's easy to generate gratitude, it's easy to find it. I just need to point my brain in the right direction. And then it's fun too, because then I can come up with ridiculous things like my card that talks to outer space so that I can have money to buy milk. Right? So much fun. So there you go. That's your exercise. That's your homework. This whole episode was basically homework for yourself. You're going to, we're going to dis-overwhelm ourselves this week. We're going to reconnect to our vision. Don't be scared of your vision. You think your vision is what's making you feel overwhelmed. It's not. Your vision actually helps you, because when we're just wading through the muck, we can't get anywhere good, we're just wading and the goal is just to get through it and that's not what we want.

14:59 You could take anything, you could take the most mundane part of your life and create a vision for what that would look like and you can have fun with it and you can be ridiculous because no one's going to come and judge it. There's no vision police that's going to come and check if your vision is appropriate. Doesn't have to be appropriate. I actually highly recommend not boring visions, just crazy, ridiculous visions. Go for it. Okay? It's much more motivating.

15:20 Then you're going to go through this exercise. You're going to visualize it. Use your five senses. Figure out what feelings that you need, right? What do you need physically to be able to feel that way? Give it some tries. Commit to doing it a certain number of times. Commit to being uncomfortable if that's what it is for a little while. Figure out what emotions are holding you back, if you're still stuck. What thoughts are creating those emotions? Then you're going to figure out what emotions that you want to be there and what thoughts would create those emotions for you. And then you're off to the races. Go have a fabulous vision full life. I'll see you here next week. Bye Bye.