How To Own Your Confident & Powerful YES for Alienated Parents Ep. 125

you are listening to the Beyond The High Road podcast with Shelby Milford episode number 125 stay tuned welcome to be on the high road a podcast dedicated to Healing your heart and life following the grief of alienation I'm your host Shelby mford a twice certified life coach specializing in post-traumatic growth if you're experiencing the effects of alienation and you're ready to heal then this show is my love letter to you stay tuned hey y'all I am coming in hot today in more than one sense of the word I just got done with a workout so I'm actually literally hot and then also I have a topic that I plan to do last week but last week didn't work out if you heard

that one I moved it to this week and this week now it applies so much more than it did last week so I've got more of a personal sake behind this one well I always do but you know what I'm say saying it's more true for me right now let's get into it all right so we're talking today if you didn't read the title of this about your powerful yes having possessing using feeling powerful for all the things that you want to say yes to in life and saying no to the things that maybe you really truly want to say no to but never do never have the guts and the courage to say no I mean these days in the last I don't know 10 15 years or so it's so much more common to hear about people learning how to say

no in their lives saying no setting boundaries drawing limits for other people or limits for yourself there's a lot of no talk in the world right with regard to self-respect and we also as alienated parents you might feel like you're hearing no a lot right or you are having to say no a lot or maybe even you feel like you're the bad cop parent and you're having to say no in that way that's why today I want to focus on the yes having possessing a powerful yes feeling empowered when you want to say yes it's really just about self- advocacy and true connection right fostering true connection between you and whoever you're in relationship with and that even could mean just yourself

do you ever find yourself agreeing to do things that you really don't want to do like you'll say yes even though in your heart or heart you want to say no like the word yes is a reflex for you as alienated parents we often find ourselves stuck between a rock and a hard place that's how we feel anyway right thinking that we have no choices many of us have been on the defensive for so long that we've learned how to make do with unacceptable amounts of resources with unacceptable amount of time spent care spent thought put into what we want and then nurturing those things right if you're like me where you feel more most comfortable doing things for yourself then often times what

happens is because we're so focused on other people and wanting to please them and also wanting to do everything for ourselves like not wanting to rely on anybody else for help the US part of things ends up getting very rushed and not as well thought out because we're spending so much time appeasing the outside the other people right for a few reasons which I'm going to outline in just a minute but we end up leaving scraps for ourselves we don't have the time we end up getting you know worn out drained by doing for other people we don't realize at the time that we're doing that though because we feel like in our minds we're doing this because we love them because they're so important

to us or because they asked and we don't want to say no right that kind of thing but you end up doing and I do it too them a disservice and you a disservice so not only are we getting the bare minimum giving ourselves the bare minimum in our own life with our own goals and aspirations and daily day-to-day like upkeep for ourselves like that bare minimum self-care we also then are giving of ourselves in all the areas in a disingenuine way I guess and so then it causes all of this stress and upheaval on the inside and also coming from something like alienation and maybe you are trying to rebuild your life again but you're so busy on the outside wanting to help with everybody else

because in the moment when you said yes you thought it was like realistic or it seemed like the right thing to do or maybe you were feeling like less worthy but now you're doing all the things for them and then you end up saying stuff because you've allocated all your time and energy to these other people saving no time for you so the reasons we say yes to everyone else but not to ourselves I'm sure you heard them before and probably from me too as people pleasing is number one that we want them to accept us to think that we're nice and good and wonderful people people pleasing is actually always self-centered even though right in the words it sounds like we're doing all the

things for others but it's selfish because we want them to think of us in a specific way we want them to not think bad about us and so we people please instead but it comes off so mobile like I just want them to be happy and I just want them blah blah blah but really Underneath It All Is many times anyway I can't say always but is a lack of self-worth or and a lack of Integrity so another reason that we say yes when we don't really want to when we mean no is because we feel pressured or obligated right because we've already said yes before I can think of a lot of times where this has been true for me where I've already said yes and done something with or for some person before and so I

feel like now that I've already said yes and we've done that very thing before like back when I did go out drinking with my friends when I stopped and they would ask me to go to happy hour I felt bad and many times I did end up going anyway though I didn't want to drink because I knew that it wasn't where I wanted to go with myself like that's not where I wanted to spend my time I didn't like my relationship with alcohol but because they asked and I didn't want to spend the energy to have the conversation with them I just wanted them to be happy with me and I felt obligated because that's how we always did it that was the tone of our relationship I ended up catering to what

they wanted in the moment like they inant gratification which is on them that's fine they can go do what they want to do but I don't have to join in to my own detriment right so that's one way that we do it but we can also do it now this is like a little bit more much more personal I did this with sex it's because maybe I said yes to it once before with somebody that I wasn't in a relationship with and then I felt like obligated to say Yes again because we'd already done it anyway that was definitely for me a self worth thing got me in places I didn't really want to be in many times in my past and I think all of it contributes to how we landed with the person that would Ali need our

children for us you know so it's always helpful to recognize where it is that you stopped listening to yourself in order to to cater to somebody else's needs now it doesn't have to be in a way that then you start resenting them just getting curious about like where is it that I have chosen somebody else over me and do I want to continue doing that we're going to get into that in a minute though another reason we say yes when we really want to say no is because we want to avoid conflict I don't know anybody that is being alienated from their kid that hasn't done this we want to be able to see our kids we we think and they are most of the time using our kids as

collateral so that we will do the things that they want so they feel in control right so we decide to play their game and we say yes we say yes to all the things or maybe some of the things and it gets us into trouble in the end but in the meantime like in the on the Forefront sometimes it'll save you so you're like I don't want to feel a pain now so maybe I'll just wait till the end and it won't be as bad but it usually is twice as bad but the fact that we want to avoid conflict is something that you can really look at because what about the conflict don't you like what about it makes it uncomfortable for you and what about their actions need to mean Conflict for you they can get upset but

it doesn't mean that there is conflict because conflict would mean that two people are resisting but if you're not resisting and you're saying an emphatic yes because you want to do that that's one thing but if you're saying yes when you mean no you'll create a extra friction and that will actually cause conflict we say yes when we mean no or say yes without thinking about it because we fear rejection again we've all done it I think we worry about the consequences of no similar to avoiding conflict we worry about the punishment that we'll get as a result of standing up for what we know to be true for us at our own cost and another reason that we say yes when we really need know is you

just have a habit of overc committing say yes before you actually think about everything that's entailed with that yes the habit of overc committing like if you on autopilot say yes to things to whatever the things are and those things can either be with yourself or they can be with any sort of relationship work romantic friendships familial whatever if you're saying yes before you able to even use your pre frontal to think then that indicates that you're getting a reward from it that's the only reason it would be a habit is because you somehow your body has assessed all that happens when you do say yes and it likes the result for instance for about six months

there just ended maybe three weeks ago I every night was eating at least a half a pint of ice cream salted caramel truffle gelato actually every night every night without fail for six months it may have been longer now guys I don't really love ice cream but every so often I go on these ice cream kicks this one happened to last for a really long time so what I started to notice when I was already ready to like Drop The Habit Let It Go I would go to the store and in the back of my mind I'd be like you should get ice cream tonight no we said we're going to stop and at some point in there I started entertaining more The Habit brains dialogue than I did my prefrontal

cortex and we know that with habit when you're already entered into the reward Little Triangle it numbs your prefrontal I went from reasoning thinking straight to Crazy habit thinking need ice cream must have ice cream now straight into autopilot every time I went to the store I had already pred decided weeks before we're not doing ice cream every night anymore at all really right now I I wanted to let go of that because I mean we all know why anyway we can do this with all the things notice if you do have a habit that you're trying to get rid of notice when you start dumbing yourself down and turning off all reasoning it's it I can almost like feel the click over to autopilot it's crazy

so anyway we can overcommit that way have a habit of doing it then can also do it with other people and this gets us into trouble too if you were chronic people please her and you just say yes to all the people then you probably are walk walking around pretty resentful lowkey resentful at the world right because you feel like you do everything for everybody and then you're left with nothing you have no time no energy no resources no money no whatever it is you because you couldn't make the money because you're too Bussy helping somebody else or doing something else or whatever I know that this is speaking to a lot of you guys right now coming from trauma this is what we do when we are

feeling bad about our lives or about whatever's happened we want to buffer away our emotions and not sit with that discomfort you know we I've talked about this probably every time that we have an episode is that we want to get out of the discomfort of and the agony the grief of being without our children it's easy to start saying yes and getting caught up in other things other people's lives and sometimes even what that is is getting caught up with the case too right like if you're still in active litigation for your kiddo right getting so caught up in the case that you end up overdoing overthinking over communicating like calling all the people and doing all this busy work that

never adds up to anything like it was time wasted really because you weren't well thought out instead you were just saying yes I just need to keep doing I need to keep doing I need to keep doing because that will create the end result of getting your kid back we think in our minds that if we just keep saying yes doing more tasks T will result better than doing less tasks but really we're fearful of sitting with the emotion we don't want to sit still so we just keep busy and what that ends up doing y'all if you haven't already figured that out is you Tire yourself out completely and you're never really working smart you're just working hard you're putting yourself to work like a dog I don't

think any of our dogs work these days but you know what I'm saying you're putting in all this Blood Sweat and Tears and not efficient effective as effective it's coming from chaotic thinking when it comes down to it when we're talking about other people we say yes to outside things because we're scared to say yes in our own lives right we're scared to sit with any discomfort we have going on and then once processed processing really looking at the whole picture allowing for the discomfort assessing and deciding what we want to say yes too you'll end up feeling less chaotic on the inside and also becoming more productive but we say yes to others instead because it feels useful it feels

like okay well at least we're doing something because that sense of urgency won't go away ever since our kids have been gone it took a long time for that to go away from me I had that back when I still had her all the time in fact most of the time like she be good were dads for the night in that sense of urgency would just be swirling in my belly the whole time she was gone like that I needed to be doing something like I didn't know what to do with myself when she wasn't there and so I felt this anxiety and then once she went over to her dad and she was gone it really kicked in and it was on high gear for a long time but I let it go on for longer per I perpetuated that I guess because I

was trying to verb it away do do do do do say yes to everything outside say yes to busying myself with the case and that sense of urgency set in even more because my work wasn't working you know funny not funny at all it was terrible just miserable also saying yes to myself felt selfish even delusional this one hits home for me a lot still to this day I still find myself questioning or curving my desires for myself especially like when I'm around other people mostly my family like my mother or father I will find myself editing what comes out of my mouth when I'm talking to either one of them about what I want to do with myself or like any goal that I have it's almost

like I need to let them know that I understand that this goal probably won't come to fruition that I won't be able to make it happen but at least I'm giving it a shot like in my mind the way that I present it to them is that look I already know you don't have to tell me I know probably I won't be able to achieve this but I'm thinking about going after it which is so disempowering I know why it's there I mean I feel sad for myself when I'm saying this out loud and I know that a lot of you guys probably feel this too depending on what your family life was like growing up and I'm not saying I had a horrible family life and I think I've expressed this to you guys before I had

a fine it was it was okay but I also had a lot of heartbreak too like I think every single one of us have in our own ways you know but this lack of selfworth and knowing that I could achieve something never I never got that you know from my parents and I know they didn't mean to do that but they did anyway so putting it out there to them that I'm aware that they don't think that I can and that I have to take that that into consideration before wasting my time on my own life my own damn life it seems in the moment when I've done it it seems like self-protective I guess or like I just need them to know like I know what you're thinking I need to tell them that I'm aware of it before I

continue my sentence which ends up putting a cap on me keeps me feeling confined like that those things that I want aren't possible and I know and I believe otherwise but it it's so funny how when we're around like the longest relationships that we've held in our lives for me it's my parents so funny how we revert back to Childhood you know anyway so how can you say yes own your yes with no apology and like even recognize your yes how do you move from the fear of failure or any of the things like people pleasing or obligation that I talked about just a little bit ago and move into an empowered place of advocacy for yourself the answer most of the time y'all is just to decide it's just decide

that this is my time this is my year we're still early early in 2025 make 2025 or whatever year that you're listening to this your year I don't care if it's December make this your new beginning this year no matter what else is going on no matter what's going on like with your kids with the court case or with your job or your relationship or whatever else all the chaos can be going on all the places and you don't have to be the one that's putting out all the fires you don't have to busy yourself out all the places at least not before you tend to you so instead decide that you are going to consider yourself first that you are going to start making decisions based on self-respect love and

admiration for you and also for the others in your life because when you say yes to you that also does others a service a great service by saying yes to you when you do say yes to them it makes your action and your decision that much sweeter that much more valued and valuable because you mean it have you ever been on the receiving end of a week yes and by week yes I mean everything I was talking about when we do it right when you were on the receiving end of that yes how does it feel for you can you recall a time when somebody said yes halfhazard Le or like said yes before they really thought about what's entailed with their commitment because they felt obligated think about like

when your kids have said yes to you because they just thought that they had to like not emphatically like okay VI asked them to take a picture with you and they're like oh you know how does that feel for you when oh okay it's terrible right a lot of us though because we're adults we may not about it but that's on the inside we just don't show that to them so on top of not really wanting to anding on the inside which does oftentimes show through we also add this other layer of this disingenuine like sure which is crazy what it does is when somebody says yes to us and they mean no or the opposite we're doing it we cut off the opportunity for connection because the second that we do something

that's against what we really want we stop the energy the vulnerability The Exchange a wall goes up and it's all very one-sided it doesn't seem one-sided because in the moment I'm doing this for them but if you don't actually want to be doing it or you're doing it because of all those things there's now a force field around you and you're doing it for protection and the same for them I deal with this also in like my consults for me and you can apply this for to whatever is going on in your life but for me I really want the people that I work with especially because most of them are coming to me for six month period some for three months some for six months but even three months is a

considerable amount of time to be working with somebody partnering with somebody and doing what I do right in this coaching relationship we're talking about very intimate vulnerable things most of the time right even in my business coaching clients I want them to say yes and agree to this commitment to themselves emphatically I don't want them to say yes because they think they have to or because somebody else told them to or because they're trying to people please me because they're trying to take care of me I can take care of myself I don't want anybody saying yes when they don't mean yes you know what I'm saying they I want them to know what they're signing up for it is a

commitment I'm just bringing this up because I think that this might help for you in your own life too like what are you signing yourself up for and are you looking at all that it entails and are you good with all that is it worth it for you that's what I and I tell my potential clients like after each consult I have with them I say listen you have three days and I'm giving you this three days because I want you to not sit on the fence it's not NE necessarily all of course there's some sales in it my biggest reason is because teetering in a maybe allowing that to sit and fester takes up energy in your mind and in your body and then it has you non-committal to where you're going

with your life but if you decide that your no is a no to me I'm not hurt in fact thank you I really truly ask for you guys to do it again use this for your own within 72 hours so that it's not lingering let your yes be your yes and a no be a no and move forward sometimes it's like no not now I will revisit this in three months with whatever it is that you have going on let's say for you it's like a self commitment thing where like you've got work right now and you've got still got your kids some semi- parttime or you have maybe stepchildren whatever there's a lot going on right now but you also really want to write this book it's really important to either decide yes

I'm going to do it and I'm going to allocate this amount of time for myself because this is the pain right now and the extra effort put out will be worth it when I'm done I'm just going to keep following through and I'm making that decision mindfully intentionally that's amazing right but also equally amazing is to have the courage to say I'm not ready to do this right now I have all of this on my plate I'm going to say no and I'm going to revisit this in three months and in three months time I will decide again but for now it's a no as opposed to I don't know it's really what I want to be doing but I'm not doing it you'll end up punishing yourself by saying well you didn't get that done why

do you keep not getting that done and you'll make it a like a limitation on you I just can't get it done but you really never made the decision whether to do it or not do it does that make sense so it's really helpful to like if you're going to say yes to something then bring it on like onboard it and have that plan into each and every one of you like include that in your rule sets for your days for your weeks what have you but when you have it on maybe your commitment level to it it if you try to do it it's just not going to be as successful you're going to find it a lot more frictional on the way I guess is what I'm saying all right so whether you're committing to yourself right or

you're committing to somebody else I know for me when I'm doing that or when I'm on the receiving end of it I feel much better about the exchange like with the coaching back to my consults right I feel much better about the exchange when the person on the other end has thought it through and is saying yes knows their reasons why they're saying yes and they like their reasons for doing so or they know their reasons for saying no and they also like those reasons for saying no they're not going to beat themselves up about the no moving forward that's the last thing I ever want from any of you I just it's okay either way for me because I want you to be in or I want

you to be out but being on the fence there you'll torture yourself it's wasted energy so for a powerful yes there are questions that you can ask you can ask the the other person if this is something that you're committing to outside of you or questions that you can ask yourself I really do encourage with things that you're taking on commitments with other people to other people that you ask the questions have the courage to ask them such a better start to the relationship and maybe you've been in the relationship for a long time that's a friend of yours or whatever it is but this is a new relationship that you'd start with this new commitment that you've been making to them you know what

I'm saying all right so the questions that you can ask before you say yes or no is how much time will this involve overall what's the deadline or end date of the commitment that's you can ask that to yourself obviously too if you're asking somebody else what is your desired outcome and what is my role in that how am I going to play a part in this in your mind what is it that you see for me it's your vision however you want to say that and of course same thing if it is for you then you want to really picture what your role is go or roles like all the hats you will wear in creating or attaining that goal all right so I talked about how much time will it be overall but also how many

occasions will you be how many hours will you be spending what are you if it's somebody else what is my daily weekly monthly whatever time that you would like me to aot to them right not that you need to follow that but just get an idea from their side what they've really envisioned for you talking about this on The Upfront you guys and I'm not done with the questions but talking about this on the upfront with them will often times feels like scary because we're like if we start questioning and maybe they think that we're doubting but in fact when you ask these kinds of questions it commands respect I know for me when potential clients come to me and they ask me questions it means that

they're taking it serious seriously and that's what I want like I I expect that but if you've come from usually like in childhood if you were taught not to question things Authority then this might come a little difficult for you have you ever been in a job where you just couldn't ask for a raise like you just couldn't bring yourself to do it because you didn't feel worthy asking questions is showing demonstrating how much you respect yourself which is I would think for any boss is desirable but also that you respect the position that you're in and the respect the value that you are bringing to the table okay what's the benefit or you and you could ask this you could say this to yourself

like what what benefit will I be receiving by doing this like why is it good for me to do this commitment but also ask them if it's an outward thing what is the benefit that they hope to be receiving by including me or by my decision to include myself in what will they be in their minds what do they think that I will provide what are the drawbacks or sacrifices that I would have to make by doing it right really thinking through these things because if you are like me and like any of the things that I was talking about earlier if you're this far into the episode then I assume that this does resonate with you and that often times I still do this I'm ADHD I don't

think about the time it takes or I grossly underestimate how much time all it tasks take this is one thing I'm working on I have to write it down and sometimes that still confuses me I don't Knowle learning disability for sure but whatever it is that you need to do to look at what sacrifices will I be making where am I giving time that I would otherwise be allocating to something else energy all the things right and then the last question is what if things don't go as planned what would you make that mean what would they make that mean what if the job doesn't get done by the deadline are you agreeing to stay on ask them if that doesn't get done by the deadline if there is a deadline what

happens then what if something that somebody throws a wrench into the works would the expectation be for me to stay on until the job is done or would it be like more of a contract thing where the deadline date is the date that you agreed to and after that they're on their own and ask this question to yourself too what if I don't get it done by that date not to deter you from going after the goal but know that upfront so that it doesn't take you by surprise and then you want to quit okay which we're going to go to in a minute consider the no y'all I've talked with you guys about this before like when talking about relationships even if you're in like happy like blissfully in love with

somebody or with even friendships that you have like so happy with that I think it's always important with goals commitments whatever you're saying yes to what it would be like to say no how would that feel for you to not do it and is it worth it to you if you're in a marriage this is a commitment this is something that you say yes to every single day you may not think that you do because you feel like a lot of times that you just have to or we're already here what's the point depending on how the relationship is right now with y'all how you're thinking about them but really truly the every day that you stay in that marriage you're actually saying you're choosing yes you're choosing to

stay in it so that choice it can be feel really empowering and considering the no can feel really really empowering and also can help you to renew a relationship if that's what you want to do but also renew your commitment okay so consider the no they'll just only go to the yes which is what I was talking about earlier with like the Habit yes yeah okay allow for evolution for evolvement meaning if you're not sure I do this a lot and I'll explain it in a minute but if you're not sure maybe you've never done this kind of thing before that you're being propositioned to do that sounded weird but you know what I'm saying do a trial do it for just a short period of time

like an interim like and ask to do a review like let's revisit this in 30 60 or 90 days let's start this let's see if we both like it we'll move from there I do this a lot I also coach kids alienated kids or kids acting out in some way and so because I usually talk to the mom or dad first obviously the kids don't come to me wanting coaching right one of the parents does and so I always tell them let's start with a shorter period of time and see how it works and then we'll revisit this after a month or after three months we'll see we do a little review see how things are going how the kiddo is responding I visit with the kid about this very thing and then we move from there that way

they're not setting their kid up for something that they don't like they're not committing to something financially that isn't going to be used it's going to be wasted right and then also for me it's a partnership it be it's much more of a partnership than it is a some obligation on both sides apply that to your own life I am so thirsty today all right like I said earlier just know and like all of your reasons for doing everything that you do all the time the really the definition in my mind of living unconsciously walking through life bouncing ricocheting off of things like I used to do is the opposite of this it's just saying yes because it's what you think you should do in the

moment flying by the seat of your pants just living in a really reactive State all the time and instead start saying yes because you mean it because it's something that you really want to do start living fully authentically you if you truly don't want to say yes and you want to say no then feel empowered with that no that way the only person and this is a good thing the only person that you can blame in your life for all the things that you commit to from now on and I mean little commitments like what you do with your day and your maybe even lunchtime period when you're saying yes and no because that's what you want to do then you only have you to look to to hold responsible which is so

empowering because then nobody else is responsible for keeping you happy or keeping you whatever it is that you're looking for you made the decisions because that's what you wanted to do you're not people pleasing you're not doing it silently like on the flly not even realizing it expecting them to return something all right so lastly I want to talk about really Having the courage to say yes to you saying yes because you mean it and because you're you value yourself and your life moving forward you're invested in the today you and also in the future you knowing that when you get up to the Future you look back and think past version of you today you for believing in that version of you

so much so hard listen you guys it's so important because so many things and I have this is where I come in hot because I noticed some this going on with me this week and last week really I have a business opportunity something kind of separate than this I mean I'll always be doing this what I do but an additional something else going on that I could be doing too and I found myself like I was super excited about it in the beginning and then doubt started to creep in and I started to look for all the reasons why it wouldn't work and then I had this sense of urgency about like I need to do it like right now because if not then it's going to go away like the opportunity is going to go away I

noticed all of this self created suffering on top right and then yesterday today I started to see what I was doing and I was like wait a second by me doubting and wanting to rush into it and do it now now now out of scarcity would have caused me to not show up in the way that I want to show up produce in the way that I want to produce the doubt started to eek in and then the floodgates open and it was pouring in and I found myself I was like going back and forth from it needs to happen now or it's never going to happen those were the only two options it was black or white like it needs to happen right now now now now now or never will happen at all and maybe it just never will and so

then I started to kind of give up on the opportunity even though it's right there for me I could snatch it and not be so rushy about it and have faith in my ability and my commitment me renewing my commitment throughout it to get the job done in the way that I would do it and want to do it right I was cutting safe off and believing more in doubt and as you can imagine that's not going to turn out well for me in the end if I continued to lean into that doubt if I didn't have both feet in and committing to the thing that I want to do so then it kind of reminded me of there's this Chinese I guess analogy about bamboo when planting a seed but I started to think about it even more you guys know

how much I love plants I've got these seeds in my kitchen drawer I'm sure this comparison has been done a million times over analogy with seeds being the same as ideas but I I have this thing of seeds they're in like this little bowl I started to think about how long they've been sitting there and they're all different kinds of seeds actually too there's some wild flowers and then I have got me lavender and then I have a couple trees and what have you some of them mixed up I'm not sure which is which but each one of those seeds consider those or think about those as different ideas and goals that you've had and most of the time especially coming from trauma we get into the

people pleasing and doubting ourselves and the further in the dark and in the drawer those seeds get pushed we start putting all of our wants and desires on the back burner until you don't even remember which seed is what things get like all Mucky and blurry about what it is that you wanted ever to begin with anyway the longer that those seeds sit not being tended to the likelihood of them germinating and turning into the trees or the flowers or whatever they are becomes less and less you have to say yes to those seeds those ideas if they're worth it to you in this analogy the yes would be water care it would mean putting each one of those seeds out in the ground somewhere digging a little

hole and placing them gently covering them back up and pouring water and waiting if it's watered regularly if it's got the proper sunlight eventually it'll come up but because we can't see what's going on underground we'll go out and we'll look and nothing's there maybe we'll come back a couple days more nothing's there we let a weat go by and we come back and maybe it's dry cuz you forgot to water it one day and there's a bunch of weeds growing in its place and you start to lose hope and you're like what's going on here why won't my seed work was it a bad seed you start to doubt it and then you're like well maybe I should just check and so you dig away all the weeds and you start to dig down

and there's some roots and you realize that a whole root system has grown underneath the ground you just can't see it because the soil's over it by doing that you interrupt the growth nevertheless you cover the seed back up with soil and then finally up it pops through and we see the little green stem but then we've got AIDS or spider that come and they like to eat all the new leaves and so if we the caretakers of the plants or trees right don't tend to the pests things go to [ __ ] in a hurry for that plant is that it's most vulnerable being you know brand new same thing with ideas I know that I'm going all into this analogy but I think it's so and I know there's probably plenty of

other out analogies like that you just leave it to me to do the plant one for me it's a great visual especially when we're most vulnerable think about our situations of alienation when we're most vulnerable it feels like we're being pecked at challenged and kicked assaulted and all the things that the alienating parent does Court doesn't work out right and lawyers are expensive and all the things happen to us and we could lose faith and just say forget it forget all of this forget me trying to excel at life and that's what I did for a long time that's what many alienated parents do they're like [ __ ] it nothing works right many people give up like like give up give up and I don't want

that for you I don't want that for me I don't want that for anybody it's so important to have faith and stick with your yeses don't go digging up that seed and ruin that root system that it's working so hard to build for you it's building your foundation you just don't see it yet but it's happening it's all happening and if it's happening with you like especially when it comes to like self growth Personal Care Mental Health is concerned it's so common that you don't really see the rewards coming your way if you've got these lofty goals these big goals for yourself but you have to get the foundation right your core right before just trust and know that even though that you can't see the

huge changes in yourself and in the the impact that you're making keep going don't stop every time you doubt it's like digging up that seed again and ruining that root system every time you halt put the project on hold now if you're doing it mindfully it's thing but if you're doing it out of fear or lack of selfworth or direction right intentionality is that it intention each time you pull away say no to that plant say no to your idea you compromise the foundation that's already been built everything that you've already been working so hard for you have the choice right then and there to walk away and not water and not tend to it or you have the choice to say yes to it water it and

let it grow you can there there will be times where you do doubt yourself there will be times where you're not sure and you do need to reassess revisit is this worth it for me is this what I want in the end why am I wanting to quit now is it out of fear then think again you're not going to like your reason for quitting keep reassessing do it consciously so that you can continue to say yes to yourself and yes to your life and when you're able to say yes and keep that yes to yourself you earn the trust back with yourself and that ends up showing out in your life and your relationships and all the things and what you're able to produce moving forward they say that most people quit

just before the miracle happens or just before they see the fruits of their labor right so many people quit right before they're there because of the same thing that I'm talking about here all the roots are growing but they just don't see it they don't see the rewards coming yet they're like I'm trying so hard for this goal I'm trying trying trying and they lose faith and they give up and they walk away from this Foundation that had been built this hard earned well-laid Foundation they walk away from it just before it starts to happen you can apply the 8020 rule here so 80% of the progress happens in the last 20% of the time before you reach your goal so all of the fruits of your

labor are going to show up at the very end all the stuff before if you're only going to see little baby little rewards on your way up to the goal it's going to be very small limited it's going to feel like it's not working and then at that last 20% that's when you have to hold on because that's when 80% of your rewards show up so don't give up early on yourself or on your goals or whatever it is that you've committed to okay love yourself enough respect yourself enough and respect that those in your life enough to invest in you that's what I have for you guys today I hope it helps start saying yes with some power thought out well thought out that's the way to

go to Commitment you guys is really asking yourself all those questions and red deciding every day recommitting every day okay all right guys Facebook live at 12:15 Eastern Standard Time in the Facebook private Facebook group on Friday and that's all see you next week okay that's it now I gotta [ __ ] edit that thanks so much for listening today if you like what you're hearing and you'd like to hear more please make sure sure to click subscribe wherever you're listening or watching also for bite-sized clips and tips be sure to find me on Tik Tok or Instagram see you next week