Episode #32 Transcript
How to Tune into the GOOD of this Moment (Even if Your Brain is Saying “It’s Crap”)
INTRO: This is the Decision Masters Podcast. I'm Kirsten Parker, the Decision Coach for Overthinkers. When you feel good about your decisions, life feels good. You get to be present in your days and excited about where you're going. I'm gonna help you build your decision mastery. So it's easy to know what you want, navigate uncertainty and handle any feelings that happen. Whether you're in the middle of some overthinking angst right now or you simply love feeling in charge of your choices, you're in the right place. Clear confident, decisions are right around the corner. Let's get into it.
KIRSTEN: Well, if it isn't just the almost end of 2022, whaaaat? Buddy, hi. Listen, I try to strike a balance between talking to you real time, like we're chatting face to face in the present moment, and being mindful that I myself have binged many a podcast long after they were recorded. I want these episodes to be helpful and feel relevant for as long as they can. So today I want to offer you a tool you can use any time. I f you're listening real time, i t’s the end of the year. New Year's is around the corner, and this is a time when your brain might have a lot of cranky stuff to say about 2022. A bout what didn't go well, about where you're behind, about what you failed at, about things you're genuinely disappointed or frustrated or grieving, or angry or sad about.
But also, if you're not listening real time, our brains don't reserve those little nuggets just for the holidays. You might just be in a funk. Sometimes I get in modes of thinking where my brain is focused on everything that's going wrong constantly, to the point where it’s like, When did everyone in my head have a meeting without me ? When was it decided that this is all we're gonna focus on? So regardless, whichever spot you're in, I want you to have a fully equipped tool belt. And the tool of being able to tune into the good of the present moment is an invaluable one.
And a couple episodes ago in my interview with the wonderful Sarah Paasch, I mentioned that a big reason I got into coaching in the first place is that I wanna help people not do what I did. I spent many years of my life so focused on the “not good” of the moment—where I wasn't yet, what I wasn't good enough at, what was hard or crappy about right now—that I feel like I missed out on that time in hindsight, like I wasn't present for it.
For me, the height of that was probably the three years of grad school and the couple that followed, although there've been many a chapter like this. But that was when I think I felt the most out of control of my decisions, even though I was like, getting a master's degree and moving to New York and working off Broadway. I was making decisions, but I didn't feel like my feet were under me.
I really didn't feel intentional and clear with my life choices. Raise your hand (or raise an eyebrow if you're driving) if you can relate, if you can look back at your dissertation, or that time when your kids were tiny, or all the other things my clients have shared. When it's like the theme of this chapter in your life ends up being generalized down to like, “meh.” Or, “the worst.”
And as much as we wanna validate our feelings, we don't want to over-indulge them. I'm not gonna tell you your residency wasn't hard, or those years at the startup weren't terrible, or that time in building your artistic career wasn't insane. I'm not gonna tell you that that's not what happened, that’s not how you felt.
But I'm pretty confident that that's not all that time was. And I also have a feeling that you don't feel great about the way that story gets told in your mind. This is how I feel about, you know, that five year period in grad school and beyond, and about lots of other stuff in my life. Some of the nuance gets lost of the whole of your experience when you're so deeply focused on the negative.
And, while we're not trying to do toxic positivity or emotional bypassing, sometimes you want a way to read your story in another light. You wanna be able to see your present moment for more than just what your brain or your emotions are focused on. Because when you can see more of what's true right now, you can experience more of it, you can remember more of it, you can be impacted by more of it. And you can feel more in charge of the story you ultimately write.
So that's what we're doing today. We're talking about this tool so that you don't end up with these huge chunks of your life where you end up with this crappy story that you didn't ask for in the first place.
And that interview with Sarah that I mentioned is actually the inspiration for today's episode, because we touched on this tool in our chat. It's called negative visualization, and I want you to know about it for times like these, and it is super dupes simple. What you do is you imagine what you will miss about right now when you're no longer in this moment, or what you would miss about this present reality if for some reason you lost access to it.
I've used this tool so often when my brain just insists that things are terrible and everything is on fire, et cetera. There was a time in my business when I only had a few clients. I wasn't making that much money. I wasn't as confident as I wanted to be in what I did, and I constantly compared myself to people who were further along. (I know you have no idea what I'm talking about.)
And I was just negating any value that the present moment had, any work I'd done to get there, anything good that I could possibly experience, because my brain was making it so important. Where I wasn't, what I had not accomplished. But thankfully, I heard a podcast (wink) that encouraged me to think about all of the different challenges I would have when I was “further along.” When I was down the road running my multimillion dollar business, I would have different stuff I was dealing with and doing every day; I would have different problems.
I was focusing on my problems right now, but this was a really timely podcast because it asks, What are you gonna miss about being at this time of your business? And at that time I was driving my ass around Los Angeles meeting clients in person, cuz that's how much time I had and that's how many clients I had.
But that was actually really lovely for the most part. I spent more than I made, I think, spent more money on gas than I was charging for sessions. But that's okay. We do what we gotta do. But when I was working with more people, having session after session after session, working with people out of state, out of country, I wasn't gonna be able to do that.
I wasn't gonna be able to meet with clients for hours, and have coffee, and get to see their faces, and know them, and build those relationships like that. And tuning into how kind of delicious that was didn't solve the problem of not having more clients, but it did soften the edges of that problem, and it brought different things into focus. Things that I would otherwise miss out on if I didn't try to pay attention to them.
So I want you to do this, whatever situation you're in. If you're growing a business, writing a book, querying a book, editing a screenplay, doing your dissertation, leaving a job, if you're in the middle of a project, if you're raising a kid, if you're trying to move, if you're wanting to move, if you're wanting to reno your house. Or right now, we’re a couple days away from New Year's and if you're looking back on 2022 and you find yourself auto writing this crappy story about how you didn't do enough this year, or you're behind, or right now is total crap. Do this right now. Okay? There’s two parts. You're gonna do part one and then you're gonna do part two, and it's gonna be super fun.
First, I want you to imagine your future self. Okay? Imagine being a year out from now. Imagine being five years out. What are you going to miss about right now? What will you look back on with, perhaps, some nostalgia? What might you be so frustrated about right now that you're probably gonna giggle at when you get some distance from it?
My husband and I do this all the time because we currently live in Glendale, California, and we can't wait to move away. But we don't wanna hate every single day living here until we move, so we have to make ourselves think about what we're going to miss, what we do actively appreciate. Because that's the experience we wanna have of right now.
We don't wanna lie to ourselves and say we love it here, but we also don't just wanna accept the feeling of disgruntled and have that be the way we feel and have that be the story that writes itself until we move. That's not what we want. So that's what I want you to do first: imagine your future self. What are you gonna miss? Or what are you going to look back on with appreciation, nostalgia?
So next I want you to imagine your past self. This one gets me e-v-e-r-y time, especially if your brain is focusing on where you are not, where you failed, where you're “behind.” I want you to imagine showing your current life to yourself a year ago, what would they have to say? What would you five years ago think if they walked into your life right now, if you had like a ghost of Christmas—um, I guess it would be future experience, cuz that's when you get taken to your future and you get to see it?—stay with me! If you had a ghost of the, you know, past or future experience, and you got to look in on your life right now, what would past you think? What would they be so proud of, so impressed by, so stoked about, so grateful for, about your situation?
Remember, you're not using this tool against yourself, okay? I never ever want you to say, “Well, people have it worse, so I shouldn't feel the way I feel.” Bah! You're entitled to all your feelings. Humaning.
But if that's not all you wanna feel, because it doesn't accurately represent all of your authentic experience, it's time to look at your experience from these other angles, from your future, from your past. It's time to start letting additional emotions coexist with the crappy ones, because that's totally possible. You can feel more than one feeling at once. I know you. You're an excellent multitasker, and you're also just a human person.
And honestly, as much as we'd love to criticize ourselves into perfection and force ourselves into more fulfillment, like really muscle ourselves into being further along and getting more done, it just doesn't work that way. You have to give yourself a chance to be happy at all with how things are right now, with who you are right now, and you have to give yourself that chance over and over and over again along the way.
That's how you don't miss out on this whole time. That's how you don't end up with a crappy story you don't want that's not even true. That's how you let right now be imperfect. And you let yourself commit to keep growing and you still get to celebrate that you've made it this far, because you have. However you think you failed, however behind you think you are, however slow you think you're going, however crap you think things might be. You, my friend, have solved every single problem you needed to, to make it to today.
You have built a wonderful life around you. Of course it's imperfect. Of course we'll keep working to make it better. But don't deny yourself the gratitude you deserve to feel about everything that is truly good about right now, alright? Enjoy. Soak up the end of this year, however much you can, however much you want to, and remember to let a little bit of the good right now in. I hope you have fun using this tool, and keep it in your back pocket for the next year and years to come. Happy New Year. Talk soon.
OUTRO: Hey, wanna know the number one thing you need to kickstart your momentum right now? (Obviously.) I know! That's why I created the Momentum Quiz. Head to kirstenparker.com/quiz to find out your number one momentum killer and get your personalized action plan to boost your momentum and get back on track. That’s kirstenparker.com/quiz. Have fun!
