PROJECTING NEGATIVES

EP #15

 

“Do I need a life coach?” You’re listening to Episode 15, with Rhiannon Bush

 

Welcome to the Do I need a life coach? Podcast. We’re here to discuss the ins- and outs- of the life coaching industry and give you tools to use, to see for yourself. I’m your host, Rhiannon Bush. Mother, management consultant and a passionate, certified life coach.

 

Well hello my friends. I was recently in Melbourne on my cousins hens weekend

 

And it was such a great time. I am so lucky to have a family of a really powerful, strong, wise women. And it’s so nice to get together, to laugh and joke and break bread and reconnect. I remember all the tie when I first had kids people said “it takes a village “, And because of the way our society is these days, we don’t have that village. Instead, we raise our kids fairly independently from one another. So to go away on this hens weekend, for the first time I realised how beautiful it is to have generations of wisdom and knowledge In one place to discuss life, and life events, and the meaning of life. All those really important questions. So I feel incredibly lucky and grateful to have such incredible women in my family both young and old, to surround myself with and to love. Very lucky indeed.

 

One of the things that has been very evident To me recently, both with clients I’ve been working with, friends I’ve been talking to, colleagues in the workplace I’ve also been speaking with, is fear around our Current climate and the world we’re heading into. I don’t mean just economically with interest rates arising and talks of possible for sessions, but I also mean environmentally. I’m currently reading a book by Gina Rushton called the most important job in the world. I am taking a long time to read this book, as I find it very full on, and very confronting, and very serious. And I can get quite serious about things as it is, so sometimes instead I need some like comic relief at the end of my day, instead of something that innocence is quite fear mongering.

 

Much to the disgrace of my parents, I don’t watch the news. I think it’s very important to be informed about what’s going on in the world, but watching the news is something I don’t do. Every time I hear the news, all I hear is negativity and Drama and to use that word again, see mongering, and I don’t think news stays informative. I feel like watching the news, it has elements of heightened drama and it also reports on stories that while sad and tragic, happen very frequently or there is nothing that can be done about it after the fact. They lack educational purposes, it’s simply a story that is being reported. For instance, Damien got home the other day and told me about a news article about people who were crashed in a car by fallen tree. Is that absolutely tragic, yes. Could anything have been done about it, no. What is the benefit of everybody knowing that story? I fail to see it. I think there are stories that are important to know because they educate you on what’s going on in the world and social reform, or political reform, or macro factors where one influences the other influences the other. I see the validity in that. I do not see the validity in instilling fear in people and creating negative thoughts that prevent people from living their life the way that they would have, had they not been put in the state of fear from watching the news.

Anyway, this is why I read books like the most important job in the world, instead of watching the news.

 

Did I want to talk to you about anticipating negatives. Because I do notice it is something that people can get in a habit of doing and until they realise that it’s a habit, it’s very difficult to change and quite socially acceptable. People seem to bond over the bad that could be, or situation that might happen, instead of projecting positives or remaining neutral And worrying about it at the time and when it comes about.

 

I was coaching a client recently who has just found herself in a new relationship. And for the first few months things are going really well, and then she started to get a bit paranoid. She started to anticipate well ahead of time and with absolutely no justification or reasoning, what she would do if he found somebody else, or he broke up with her. And it changed so fast, where she went from being super happy and in the moment in the relationship and it was new and it was fun and then all of a sudden she starting to worry about all of the things that firstly, haven’t happened, secondly, he’s given her no indication or reasons to be concerned, and the relationship hasn’t even really kicked up a gear. Now in this coaching session, we started to address herself need to self-sabotage, her need for control, commitment issues, etc etc But it was amazing to me listening to her talk and it was if she had written the story of their entire relationship to the point where she needed to end it all walk away.

 

It was the same when I was travelling a few months back and there was this fear around the accommodation that was booked. The question was what if it doesn’t have, what if it’s this… And then we got there and it was perfect. We spent a good hour speculating on how bad things were going to be if it hadn’t met these requirements that we wanted, because somebody else booked it, When it was absolutely perfect. And I really took that and went “what a waste of my time and energy”. So much energy and drama around something that wasn’t even a thing.

 

I really do wonder if we do this because we have expectations set by social media friends, society that there is a stand that needs to be met and if we don’t manage that expectation with ourselves then we end up dramatising and filling in the blanks of what should awkward be whether there is any truth to the matter or not.

 

Do you do this? Is this something that you notice yourself doing? Or maybe now you’ve listened to me talk about this maybe it’s something you can look at yourself and just ask yourself the question, do you project negatives.

 

I was incredibly sick with Gastro recently. A few weeks back I was in bed for four days unable to move, unable after my sick children, because I was down an out with Gastro. For anyone with kids in daycare, you’ll know that we get Gastro very frequently, because kids seem to spread it through themselves like wildfire. Anyway, whenever I’m very sick I tend to think about the Holocaust. I’ve just finished reading The Happiest Man on Earth. And it was such an incredible read, and it’s probably one of the only war stories I’ve been able to read, because I feel very Sensitive towards the Holocaust, I can’t quite believe it happened, and reading it and watching it is something I really struggle with. I’ve toured Auswitz and Birkeneau and Sachsenhausen. Always had quite a fascination with how that all came about, but each time I’m sick I think about the people that were in the camps, and the cruelty that they were exposed to, and I questioned how they had the mental fortitude to get through it. Like Eddie Jaku. To me, he’s an absolute hero. I can’t fathom how he went through what he did and survived. And with that attitude. Although knowing what I know, it was because of his attitude, maybe, that set him in good stead to survive. So the happiest man on Earth is a really really beautiful read for anyone who is looking for a good book recommendation.

 

One of the things we work on with our clients as a coach is thought awareness. And finding very simple ways to feel good. And because our thoughts are what create our feelings, if we can find thoughts that trigger good emotions within us, then we can set ourselves on an entirely new path moving forward and be able to change not only each individual moment that we live each day, but can you imagine how those little moments add up to an entire day, add up to an entire week, add up to an entire month, year, decade, lifetime. It is the little moments that matter, and it’s our reactions to those little moments. Have you ever had something bad happened at sets of your entire day. The expression you woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and because you’re grumpy you stop your toe, and you spill your coffee, and you run late, your energy attracts the negative to you. I’m starting to get into quantum land, which I’m not going to go into just yet, but it comes into our vibrational frequency and our ability to manifest what it is that we want. So our ability to control our state in every single moment counts. Because moment I will make up our day, our weeks, and months, are years. Ultimately our life. I think Eddie Jaku who is a perfect example of that.

 

So coming back to projecting negatives, if you’re the sort of person who anticipate things going wrong, or bad things happening, or you think of worst case scenarios without simultaneously weighing up the best case scenario to balance it, you may be projecting and then attracting negative things into your life that you don’t want to be there.

 

Just think about from moment when something bad happened to you recently, how you reacted. Did you make it mean a lot about you? About your worthiness? About your ability, or lack off? Was it personal? If you were to be a fly on the wall observing the correspondence or the event that happened, as the fly do you look at the situation and feel the same way about it? Or do you feel very differently about it? Can you see it for a different perspective?

 

 

The trick to beginning to stop yourself projecting negatives, is to actually become aware of the thoughts that you have each and every day. We have 60,000 thoughts every day, 93% of which are exactly the same as the previous day, so awareness is key. We can’t change what we are not aware of.

 

For some of you, you’ll be guided by the feeling. You feel fear or scarcity or frustration or anxiety and when you feel that I’m asking you to stop and identify what it is you’re thinking. What’s the thought? And if you want to take it a step further, is the thought of sentence? Or is the thought a picture? Something is happening inside your brain, that’s triggering the feeling of anxiety or stress or worry or concern. What’s the thought? Is it because you feel out of control? Is it something that’s unknown so your brain is going into drama mode to try and fill the gaps? If this is happening, is your brain is trying to regain some semblance of control or be able to anticipate it? Remember that your brain is doing everything I can to protect you, while expelling a little energy as you possibly can. So be gentle with yourself, be kind with yourself when you’re trying to do this exercise. Have love, compassion, curiosity, because your beautiful brain is just trying to look after you. This is an exploration exercise, not a judgement exercise.

 

Do you remember a time when looking at the future, you felt excited? You felt a sense of adventure? of spontaneity? Instead of it being something to fear, you relished in it?

 

If you were to go back to that time, what were the thoughts then? What sort are you having that enabled you to feel excited, thrilled, alive? If not, what changed between then and now? What changed those thoughts into something that conjures up fear and uncertainty, concern, anxiety?

 

If you’re listening to this rolling your eyes, thinking that instead your problem is that you’re bored, your neutral, there’s not much feeling at all where perhaps you would like their to be, you on the balance of probability, have too much certainty. Too much is the same. There’s not enough surprise, excitement, unknown‘s, spontaneity, differentiation from one day to the next, one moment to the next. So what something that would scare you? And I mean scare in a resourceful way - anyway that’s going to get you outside of your comfort zone, learning, growing, changing, in a way that you love, but excites you, that drives you closer where you want to be, to the person you want to be to the things you want to achieve and the feelings that you want to have. Not scare, in a way that traumatise you. That’s not what I meant.

 

Start by identifying the feelings that you want to feel on a daily basis. What feelings do you currently feel, A? I and in dreamland, what feelings do you want to feel every day. Even if you don’t get to feel them all day, what are feelings you want to feel more off? Maybe start by writing down five feelings you want to feel more often.

 

Then identify ways that you feel those things. What has happened in the past that has made you feel happy, excited, elated, alive, whatever it is you want to feel more off? And then how can you bring more of that into your life? What do you need to overcome to get there?

 

The more we can identify what it takes for us to feel the things we want to feel, the more action we can take to bring that into our lives. Because out moments make up our days, make up our months, make up our years and make up our lives.

 

Your life matters my friend. It’s here for you to live into it.

 

 

 

 

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Also, if there are any topics you’d like me to cover specifically about life coaching or the life coaching industry, visit rhiannonbush.com to contact me. Thanks for joining and I’ll see you in the next episode of Do I Need A Life Coach?!

 

 

Please note, this transcription may not be exact.