These are my personal opinions always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and well -being.
So I have a chat bot you know AI we have these chat bots we can talk to these chatbots and I created one for specifically for my content because I wanted to be able to read through my old content or read the transcriptions of my content and figure out what I talked about for the last 11 years.
Because it's been a long time, not only the last 11 years with the overwhelmed brain, podcast, and blog, but also Love and Abuse.
The LoveandAbuse .com, my other podcast. I've been doing that since 2019.
Also, Healed Beating, my program Healed Beating, my workbook, the Mean Workbook, and I have all this stuff that I've written probably well over a million words.
I mean literally I think I've written maybe over two million words because I've been doing this a long time and I'm always creating creating creating.
I just want to put it out there and I'm one reason I want to do that is because there was a point in time back in 2012 2013 where I decided that it was important that I get this out of my brain.
I get what I know out of my brain.
Not because I think I'm great and the world should know, but because I've helped people.
I was coaching before I did the podcast. I've been doing this a long time and I've helped a lot of people and a lot of people have benefited and their lives have changed, so I didn't want to keep this in myself and die with it.
I wanted to put it out there so others could learn and grow and heal and evolve.
I used to say that on my show all the time.
I put it out there so others would have this knowledge to take with them if it helped.
And maybe they can take this knowledge that I have and again I'm not saying that it's perfect or it works for everyone all the time.
I just know stuff that works and I share what works.
At least what has worked for and the people I've worked with.
So it is my hope that someone will benefit or someone will share this with somebody else and they'll benefit.
And that's part one of why I do this, part two, is because I did want to change my life, my path, my career, my direction.
I was doing all kinds of things before this, mostly in technology jobs and I worked for other people and I've never had like an entrepreneurial mindset to go out and do something on my own.
Never. So, starting a coaching business and then starting a podcast, all brand new to me.
And, uh, I just kept going and I, I just kept going.
In fact, um, the reason I kept going, one of the reasons I kept going, one of my motivations was something I read in a book, Was it thinking Grow Rich?
The grow rich part hasn't happened yet.
I'm still working on that but I'm thinking a lot One of the things in the book is I don't think it says it in the book I've talked about this before but I think what I got from that book I think that's the right book, but I think what I got from that book was you keep going forward until you're exhausted or dead That was what I gained from that book.
I don't think it says it in that book.
I don't think those words exist in there, but that's something I learned that has driven me forward I keep progressing I keep moving forward until I'm exhausted or dead.
Of course I'm not going to die I'm not going to let myself die I don't to die so that means that I'll get exhausted and decide that it's not working.
I'm not going in the right direction so i'm going to stop and pivot.
I'm going to stop and change direction and that is what has kept me going even through the toughest times so in business for example I wrote an e -book a long time ago 2014 and it was hard I was saying no to so many other things just to finish this e -book that I finally got done I'm gonna finish until I'm exhausted or dead I Finally finished it and I put it out there and no one bought it There's only a few people did buy it, but I thought it was gonna make some money.
I thought it was going to be a good replacement for the income I was making before but after I put it out there I realized that no one's buying it and I didn't know anything about marketing and the cover of the book was terrible and the writing was good I got you know some good reviews you can find it on Amazon.
I don't recommend you look for it because everything I knew then you've heard in this show so you don't really need to buy I mean I have a book out there actually it's a real book that really condenses everything that I talk about in this show that's that's good I did that in 2017 and I'm pretty proud of that a lot of good reviews there but my two ebooks before that I thought they would make a lot of money and they didn't and that's okay I just put it out there I accomplished something and I felt good about it but again it was very early when I started this show and just getting started in my
entrepreneurial adventures I guess and so why did I say that I think I said that oh yeah because I keep going until I'm exhausted or dead and that has kept me going now again it's not because I want to die or I think I'm going to die it's just something that has motivated me throughout the years and the reason I'm Sharing that with you in case it helps is again from that book, Thinking Grow Rich. The lesson that I learned was you work hard as hell to complete your task.
You work hard as hell to get through even emotional healing or physical healing.
You work hard as hell and you keep working at it and you keep doing it until you know, until you've exhausted every resource, every avenue, so and this is my reason, so that I can look back and say I tried everything.
That is what I do, that's my philosophy.
I tried everything.
I tried to make it work, it didn't work, so what that does, which is funny because this is another e -book I wrote is it clears my path to happiness because I tried it.
I tried making something work it didn't and I accepted that it didn't.
It was not a failure it was a learning opportunity and I took advantage of that because learning that lesson and taking it with me has only made me stronger smarter wiser throughout the years and has given me the tools I need to grow what I have created today.
This is the longest quote job I've ever had in my life.
I've never lasted more than four years at anything.
And then something in that book told me that I needed to continue at something until I was exhausted or dead.
Again, I I don't think that's in the book at all, but that's the interpretation I got.
And I decided to try it.
And what that has done is help me resolve things.
Help me stop things that aren't working.
It helped me continue things that I didn't know would work or not.
It has helped me fail a lot of things.
Again, not necessarily failure, learning opportunities, I'm gonna use that because it's very short to say.
Shorter to say fail.
I failed at all these things, I failed at relationships, so that I could take those lessons with me because I can look back and say I tried everything.
I tried this, I tried this, I tried this, and now I can take all those lessons with me.
I mean, this is personal growth, one on one.
This is easy stuff we all learned.
The faster you fail, the more you learn, and the more likely you'll succeed in the future.
So I can look back and say, I did it, I tried it, it didn't work, I'm moving on.
You know how great that works for relationships?
I had a business partner once.
I did it, I tried it, it didn't work, I'm moving on.
It's not going to work for me so I'm gonna move on by myself and I had to have a hard conversation with this person and he took it well.
but I had to try. I had to put myself out there in probably some uncomfortable positions, not just with that but with other things too.
So I put myself in these positions where I had to find out if I was going to fail or succeed.
And a bigger zoomed out lesson in there, or philosophy, however you want to look at it, is that the more you live your life as doing something, trying every avenue, exhausting every avenue and moving forward, whether you fail or succeed, is that failure doesn't feel so bad after a while because you realize how important of a tool it becomes.
Failing at something gives you wisdom.
It gives you the knowledge to make sure that you have a greater chance of success later.
This is most important, at least it was for me in my romantic relationships.
I failed Five, six, I've failed several important, very good relationships with wonderful people, and I did not want those relationships to end, but they had to.
They had to end. Sometimes something has to end so that you can look at it and say, oh, that's what happened.
That's what I did wrong.
That's what I didn't see before.
that's something that could not have possibly lasted because of XYZ you know those things existed in that relationship so it would have been impossible for that to last and if it did last neither one of us would have been as happy or happy at all and so I look back at my past relationships and as wonderful of those people were I was a mess.
I had problems I had issues I They made their lives very challenging.
And because of that, they had to end.
They had to end so that I would learn.
It puts them in a terrible position because they didn't deserve that, my behaviors, but they had to learn too.
They had to go through a lesson like me.
They had to go through relationship challenges.
We went through them together It wasn't like every day.
I was a Basterd and do everything terrible all the time, but they had challenges with me I had challenges with them, but I don't think about it that way because I take responsibility for What happened whether that was my immature or?
Hurtful behaviors that I did in the past or even my inability to see the problems and bring them up address them while we were together.
I still had to go through those lessons.
We both did all, you know, my relationships.
My partner and I had to go through these lessons so that they would move on to a better, healthier relationship, hopefully, if they took those lessons with them and that I would move on and be a healthier person, be a healthier partner having learned my lessons.
Now it took me a long time to learn those lessons, but I did learn them and I had to fail many times in order to learn them.
But I wasn't going to stop until I learned my lesson, until I learned how to be a good person, how to be a healthy person or healthier.
How to show up in the world as the best version of myself.
I had to learn that and I had to fail a lot.
And each failure was a learning opportunity, and as heartbreaking as it was, and as depressed as I got a few times in my life, and even when I was younger, I felt suicidal.
I had these thoughts that came into my mind, and they went away quickly.
But having those thoughts, things like that, come up in your mind while you're going through some very dark stuff is scary and, you know, you think about it later and you think, oh my god, I could have made decisions that made everyone's lives change and I never wanted to do that but the thoughts came into my mind and they always came in at dark times.
Which is why I'm always a proponent.
I always encourage people, never listen to your thoughts during the dark times.
The dark times your thoughts say dark things sometimes there's not much positive affirmation during the dark times for some people and then when you do something like say oh you know everything's gonna be alright you don't believe yourself so it's important not to take to heart your inner dialogue during dark times it's important not to because those dark times they get lighter nothing is persistent.
It eventually gets lighter and I know you know don't tell me I know, there are people out there where it has been dark and it has stayed dark.
I get it I know that and that's so tough because some things happen to people that make it dark what feels like permanently.
That's why it's so important that you never stop moving forward, moving toward those lighter times, finding the light, doing everything you can to feel that inside of you, see it in others, see it in other places, in other activities, you find it wherever you can, because sometimes you just don't have it.
You can't see it, you don't have it, and you don't believe it exists.
it does. I've been through a lot of dark times and every time, this is the truth, every time I believed that I would never be happy again every single time.
I knew it, for a fact.
I'll never find someone like that again.
I'll never be happy.
I'll never have a job like that.
I'll never have that kind of money again.
we always believe ourselves most in those dark times.
We always say something that we believe with certainty that it will never be the same or it will always be this way.
And we can't do that.
We can't trust those words during the dark times because we're very pessimistic.
You can't just trust what comes out of your mind during the dark times, unless the inner dialogue that you're having is taking you forward in some way.
Hey, you know what, you feel like crap, let's go see a movie.
That's a tiny step forward. It may not make you happy, or maybe it will take you away for a couple hours, but it's something.
And sometimes we need something to keep moving forward. So a lot has come out of me reading that book and, of course, I've been studying communication and psychology for at least 10 years before that.
So I had all this stuff in my brain.
Applying that was when I started coaching.
I opened my own practice and then I started this podcast and I continued coaching and I kept going forward. I kept moving forward. And every few years there'd be a leap.
There'd be some sort of leap that I would take because something would happen.
And when it happened, it gave me a life lesson that was so valuable that I had no choice but to take a leap.
One of my valuable lessons was honoring my personal boundaries for the first time with my boss when I worked for someone.
And I was always afraid that if I said anything that honored myself, the words that I really wanted to say, that I would risk getting fired or yelled at or not being liked, but mostly getting fired.
I was so afraid of getting fired.
But one day I decided to speak up, and then that led to me getting a promotion.
It was the strangest thing.
And time and time again, every time I tested what I believed, what would be a big failure, and what would lead to something miserable for me, every single time it went the opposite direction.
Facing my stepfather after years of not seeing him, he shows up at my mom's house, knocks on the door, and I had already practiced honoring my personal boundaries, and if you don't know the story, he's an abusive alcoholic, and I never wanted to see him again, and my mom and him got divorced, and he shows up one day at her house, and she doesn't want anything to do with him.
and I was always afraid of him so here I am answering the door and holy crap there he is and in milliseconds I had to decide am I going to turn into the small child that lets him do whatever he wants you know that little little boy that I will always was around him even when I was full -grown or am I going to stand in my values and honor myself and say sorry can't come in.
Wow, that was so scary because I knew or at least I believed by saying that I would get hurt he would hit me or something and um that's exactly what I did.
I actually said sorry you can't come in and that was it and I waited.
I waited for him to throw a punch at me and he didn't and I thought in my mind what though?
What's happening here because I was always afraid of this moment of standing up to him I never wanted to do it I was always afraid of this moment and he didn't do it he just shrugged his shoulders and said okay and walked away again I was flabbergasted I could not figure out what just happened and so that helped me, that caused me to take a huge leap that was the opposite of what I believe would happen because again I thought that it would be very dangerous to honor myself, to stand in my values, to stand my ground in what I really, how I really wanted to show up in life.
And so that was one of those moments that I really believed would turn into something miserable and it turned into something wonderful for me.
Maybe not for him but for me I grew tremendously.
I gained courage. I gained the wisdom to know that I could do this and survive it.
Another huge leap in my life was stopping behavior that I believed would make people like me.
I had to stop that.
The old people pleaser in me wanted to be liked.
I wanted to be accepted, I wanted to be loved, I wanted to be part of something bigger, a bigger family of friends and people that I love.
The day I decided that it was okay to say no when I meant no, and yes when I meant yes, and to sometimes disappoint people.
The day I decided to do that and continue to do that.
My life got so much easier.
That was another huge leap.
My life got so much easier when I wasn't worried about what people thought about me, how people felt about me.
I just gave it up. It's not like I didn't care but I didn't let it bother me anymore.
And not letting it bother me changed my life because I was always concerned about it.
I always wanted to make sure that everyone was okay and everyone was happy and no one was mad at me.
I just let them be.
And I think that comes from wanting to control other people's thoughts and feelings.
Like when you're a people pleaser you want to...
it's not so much control, but you want them to feel good about you.
But for me I did feel like there was a certain amount of control and influence and manipulation that I did to make them feel good about me I think a lot of people pleasers do this they do certain things to make sure that they are seen in a certain light so that people feel good about them or people don't see them as the bad guy I never wanted to be seen as the bad guy and so one day I decided okay I'm not going to do that anymore I'm just gonna be I'm gonna honor myself gonna be myself.
And I'm gonna speak my mind.
You know, I'm not gonna put anybody down or be a jerk.
I'm just going to be honest. Hey, do you want to work over the weekend?
I don't. Will you? Hmm...
Let me think about it.
And then give them an honest answer.
But if I really didn't want to do it, I'm gonna say no. And, of course, before that, I was always thinking, well, I don't want to get fired, and I want to get that raise so I better do everything they say and I better do all this extra stuff.
No I work hard enough.
I earn my pay. I earn over my pay so I'm gonna say what's on my mind.
I'm gonna speak the truth and that again gave me a huge leap forward in my life and and the progress that I made in life.
And the stress that I used to feel was going away after all these leaps, because I used to feel stressed about being fired or being broken up with in a romantic relationship, or somebody not liking me.
When those stresses go away and you start being yourself, your life changes.
And then people are no longer interpreting you, They're no longer trying to figure you out they know who you are And one of the things that happened to me after taking this huge leap out of people pleasing and wanting to be liked and saying no when I meant yes when I stepped away from that and just started being more authentic more genuine I noticed that people respected me more They even admired me not everyone But some people admired me because I stood my ground.
I just said what was on my mind.
I told this story before, but one of the times I spoke up to my boss because I thought he was being a jerk to everyone.
And I answered his question that he was asking to everyone.
I said, so you'll stop yelling at us.
I will go through the whole story again, but he was going around the room asking the question and I answered that question that way and everyone just went silent but it was on my mind it was starting to tick me off that he was treating people like this and I said so you'll stop yelling at everyone I later on I didn't get fired but later on a few of my co -workers came up to me and said I'm I'm so glad you said that.
I'm so glad you spoke up because he was being a jerk.
And that day at that job, people started to admiring me a little bit and respecting me and knew that they could come to me if they had any issues like that.
I mean, that's stretching it a little bit, but they saw a part of me or a side of me that I hadn't shown before.
And it felt really good.
It felt really good to have stood up like that for myself But I didn't even realize I was standing up for other people as well So I'm sure they felt a little vindicated a little like they had um said those words themselves Like somebody said it for them, but it got it out of their system We walk around with all this stuff in our system, and we think oh man I should have said that or I wish somebody said something and that day I said something Like I said, I didn't get fired.
I had my boss talk to me later not the the head guy, the owner, that's why I said that to.
I said, Oh, so you'll stop yelling at us?
And he didn't get mad.
He didn't even bring it up later.
But my boss, my immediate supervisor said, you know, you probably should have said that.
I said, Yeah, you're probably right.
And then life went on.
I didn't stay there too much longer anyway, I left my own accord. But that was a huge leap for me.
That event and so many other events in life have changed my life for the better, have changed my direction, and I share all this with you in case there's something that you might need to do or might need to change about yourself or something you want to reflect upon in your life And as you ask yourself, am I getting the same results over and over again, and I don't like those results?
Maybe I should do something different.
Maybe I should take a chance, because it's either gonna be this way for eternity or I can actually make a difference.
And I can't promise you that every time you stand your ground, stand up for yourself, honor yourself, or whatever you think you need to do or feel like you need to do, I can't promise you that it'll be a great result.
I can promise you it'll be a learning experience but I can't promise you that you'll go leaps and bounds ahead of where you were, actually, I probably can.
If you do that, you're gonna learn so much. If you do something that you are uncomfortable with or have never tried before, there's risk and there's reward. There is a consequence and when you have consequence, you have a potpourri of what could happen.
You could have anything happen.
But I do know that if you're getting the same results over and over again, that by changing something, by doing something different, you will get different results.
You'll get data and you can analyze that data and say, ah, this worked, this worked, this didn't work.
this is the result I got.
There is risk. I'm giving you this disclaimer that whatever you try that's different there's risk.
To me the risk was always worth it, always.
Even if I knew I was gonna get fired, even if I knew my partner was gonna break up with me, even if I knew I was gonna lose my house and everything, which has happened.
I've lost things in bankruptcy I've lost things and I was homeless and it has happened but that wasn't because I took those risks it was because I didn't learn my lessons fast enough the risks I took were after that I figured hey I was at the bottom now we're left to go now so I'm just gonna take these risks and I kept doing that over and over again even as I built myself back up rebuilding my life I started taking these what I call risks but they really weren't they really weren't risks.
They were just normal, healthy, authentic things that we should all be able to do without worry, because that's who we are.
And I just didn't like hiding who I was anymore.
So I hope you got something from this episode of The Overwhelm Brain.
Thanks for listening.
I want to thank the patrons who give to this program every month.
I appreciate you. I am so grateful for all of you that take your time and energy and money and send it this way.
I don't know why. There's still people doing it.
I think that's their way of saying thank you.
And believe me, my heart is warmed.
Thank you so much. If you want to say thank you, like these patrons do, head over to MoreTOB .com and there's a way to do that over there.
And for a show on how to navigate the difficult relationship, I talked about it earlier, my other podcast is called Love and Abuse.
And you can find that over at Love and Abuse .com.
And we get into the weeds over there about controlling manipulative and emotionally abusive relationships and if you are the difficult one in the relationship and you want to change that about yourself join the program that is helping thousands of people heal over at healed being com and with that always keep your mind open because that's how you make the best decisions and be firm in your decisions and actions so that you can create the life you want always take steps to grow and evolve you You are powerful beyond measure, and above all, and this is something I absolutely know
