Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Feeling stuck? Break free from anxiety, depression, and the patterns that hold you back. Join me as I share my recovery journey, along with practical coaching tools to help you grow stronger, feel capable, and create a life you love.
Hello, my gorgeous friends. It is a beautiful July day here in Utah. It's gorgeous. It's a little bit overcast, so we're getting a little break from the sun, which I'm loving, and it's almost time for the kids to go back to school. In about four weeks they're going to be heading back, and I'm excited about that.
So I wanted to talk today a little bit about an experience I've been going through. I have been feeling just off lately for about the past six weeks. The kids have been home from school. There's less structure in the house, and I am on a perimenopause rollercoaster, like, let me tell you a perimenopause rollercoaster, I'm getting.
Little sleep, lots of mood swings, tons of irritability. Some days I feel energized and good, and other days my mood is all over the place. I am tired. It's low, and my fibromyalgia is incredibly painful. Somehow the hormones seem to make that a little bit worse. So I have been on a search to try and help myself feel better, and for the past six weeks I have been trying some different supplements I got some labs checked.
We looked at vitamin D, vitamin B, my thyroid, different things, some different hormones. We did some diet tweaks, um, all the way off sugar, all the way off gluten and even needed to cut out dairy and still just feeling pretty terrible, not feeling great,
And last week I was listening to a podcast and my coach that I was listening to was talking about mental strength and standing in your own power. And it dawned on me in that moment that I was completely out of my power. I was seeing myself as a victim.
I don't know, a victim of the kids being home and the victim of perimenopause. I don't know. But I was definitely having a victim mentality and I was way, way, way outta my power. And the second, the second, I realized that I was able to step back into my power, back into my mental strength. And I have felt amazing ever since.
I didn't need. If the supplements, I didn't need to change my diet. I just needed to step back into my own power and my own mental strength. Now the funny thing is, is I believe in the last podcast I was talking to you about this exact same thing, where sometimes in the past I would have these hormone fluctuations.
I would blame my, you know, crying and my mood swings on my hormones. And then I would sit and I would do, um, a thought detox or thought download, and I would find the thoughts that was causing all of my feelings and it would flip it around for me. So it is really funny to me that I went through this same cycle again.
Even though I had just been talking about it. I'm like, oh my gosh. I did the exact same thing that I talked about in the previous podcast, but it felt bigger. It just felt so different to me to be, having bigger moon swings with perimenopause. Like one moment you're fine, and one moment you're crying.
You're like, I don't know what happened. I can't find a thought that caused that. This is crazy. But it was the exact same thing. It's just recognizing what's going on in my brain, and that is what helps me out. That's what brings me back into my power, back into my mental strength. Okay, so I decided I wanted to do a podcast and really anchor this idea of what it means to be in your power and how to get it back and how to notice when you're out of it.
So let's talk about first what it means to be in your power. Being in your power means that you feel mentally strong.
Let me, let me back up just a little bit. It's kind of a phrase, a weird phrase. Maybe it's a coachy phrase to say, to be in your power. I coach my clients on this a lot and help them see when they're out of their power, when they're in their power. So it's just a phrase I love to use that helps me bring myself back to my own mental strength.
And all it means when you're in your power is that you are mentally strong. You are recognizing your mental strength, you are recognizing your mental fortitude. You are recognizing your capability. Capability just means your power or your ability to do things, and you are in full belief that you are able to handle hard things and you're able to face the friction of life.
We face the friction of life instead of running from it. That's what it means to be in your power. Now, mental strength is a muscle. Sometimes we think, well, I don't have mental strength. I've never had mental strength, but it's just a muscle. And the more we flex it, the more we're gonna build it.
So it's just like weights at the gym. The more we lift the weights, the more mental strength we get. The heavier we lift the weights, the more strength we build. Same thing with your mental strength. The more you do with your mental strength, the more you challenge the mental strength, the more you're gonna build it.
And I bet if you could look back at your life right now, you could find 50 examples of when you were mentally tough, mentally strong. Okay. Like maybe it was during an exercise routine when you pushed yourself past your capacity. Maybe your friend talked you into doing a cold plunge.
I don't know. Some of you were into that. I used to love that. Maybe, um, you've pushed through a long project, like go back and think about those times when you've had that mental strength. I even think back to like grade school. My teacher used to do this thing at the end of day when we were just kind of bored in elementary and we were waiting for the, the belt to ring.
And she would have us stick our legs out in front of us on a chair and see how long we could hold our legs out straight. Like, who can go the longest? Can you go 10 seconds? Can you go 20 seconds? Can you go 30 seconds? And I was like, the kid that wanted to hold it the, the very, very longest. And I remember I held it for like three or four minutes and when I stood up, my legs were completely numb and I fell on my face, right?
That takes a lot of mental strength. But man, I was proud of myself because I beat everybody in that class. So I just want you to think about the times when you've had a lot of mental strength or even just a little bit of mental strength, and think about how it felt like. When we use our mental toughness, our mental fortitude, we feel proud.
We feel energized. We can feel exhausted, but in the best way, I even notice, like when I'm using it, I sit up taller, I walk a little faster, my posture's a little bit better, I'm more energized, I'm more excited. That is being in your power, just recognizing that you're mentally strong, you are capable, you're able to handle the hard things in life, and you're able to face the friction in life and not run from it.
So I wanna give you an example. Let's say you have a task that you don't wanna do, okay. Maybe you've gotta turn in a report at work, or you've gotta follow through on something that you promised you would do. Or maybe there's a service project that you need to do and you've just decided you don't wanna do it anymore.
Or like me, maybe you need to bathe your giant to German Shepherds and you don't like doing that. So when you are out of your power, it's going to sound like. I don't want to, I'm like, oh, I don't want to, I'm too tired. Why me? I already have too much to do or I can't focus. Those are all thoughts that we have when we're out of our power.
Those thoughts make the task big and you small. I'm too tired. I have too much to do already. I can't focus. It's too much. It makes the task big in you. Small. It takes you out of your power because it makes the circumstance the thing that you need to do big and powerful and overwhelming, and it leaves you feeling weak and frail.
It's too hard. I can't do it. You give all of your power to the thing you need to do. Making it bigger and more painful than it actually is, and you end up seeing yourself as less powerful than that thing, it leaves you feeling like a victim. Now, let's say you need to do that task and you're in your power.
When you're in your power, you see yourself as more powerful and capable and strong than the job you need to get done or the circumstance you're dealing with. It puts you in charge and it makes the difficult things you need to do so much easier.
I'm not saying they're super easy or they're just like a cinch all the time, like sometimes those things are really hard, but it really does put you in charge and it makes it so much easier when you're in your power. You have thoughts like, I got this. I got this. This isn't a big deal. I, I can totally do this.
Like, I can paint the dogs, I can paint the, the German Shepherds. They're actually really cute when they're all clean and, and fresh, I can do anything for two hours. That's one of my favorite thoughts. I could do this all day long. I can do anything for two hours. I can do this all day long. I can handle anything.
Like I'm tough. I'm mentally tough. I'm mentally strong. I can do anything. That's being in your power. And notice how that makes you bigger than the thing you need to get done than the task makes you bigger than the circumstance that you're in.
So let's talk about what it looks like to be in your power. I give you a little example there, but I wanna dive deeper into it and give you, um, some concrete things to really look for. Okay? So when you are in your power, you are mentally strong. We've talked a lot about that we are mentally strong. Like I can do hard things.
I like challenges. I could take cold showers, right? That's mentally strong. I could take cold showers. I went on a cold shower kick for like a year and a half and it took so much mental strength, but it built my mental fortitude like crazy. I loved it. And the only reason why I stopped is 'cause I struggle with, um, rayons within my fingers and my toes.
So I couldn't take cold showers anymore. But just doing that act every single day, turning the handle all the way to right, it just built my mental strength. Okay. When you are in your power, you are emotionally responsible. You take responsibility for your emotional life, for the way that you feel, and you take responsibility for what you want, and you show up for what you want. Emotional responsibility is key to accessing everything that we want in life, and when we're in our power, it's so much easier to access that emotional responsibility. We follow through on what we wanna do. You show up for the things that you wanna do, you get 'em done.
Think about it when you were feeling mentally strong, when you were feeling powerful. It is so much easier to show up for the things that you wanna do. You show up for that exercise class you show up for, the way that you wanna eat. You show up for the way that you wanna live your life. You show up for the way that you want to,, be a partner, be a mom, be a dad.
It's so much easier to show up and follow through when we are in our power. The next thing is that life flows. When we're in our power, life just flows. Like it feels so much easier. It feels so much more enjoyable when we meet a challenge. It feels exciting rather than full of dread, , when we're seeing ourself as capable and mentally strong, challenges are exciting.
Also we get really future focused. Notice when you're in your power, we tend to focus more on the future. We might focus on the present right here, but we focus also on the future. We become more goal oriented. I wanna do this, I wanna go on that trip, I wanna get that promotion.
I wanna be healthy and exercise more. I wanna teach my kids how to have good nutrition. We tend to be more future focused, more goal oriented, and more driven to getting those things that we want.
We feel strong and capable, which means we end up feeling energized and creative and clear. That's what happened to me once I stepped back into my power. So the last six weeks I felt weak and exhausted and, and tired and moody and. The second, the second I stepped back into my power simply by reminding myself of my mental strength, of my capability.
I started generating ideas for my clients, things that I wanna work on for my podcast. I started generating ideas for my newsletter, like my brain started spinning with so much creativity. I got a crazy amount of gardening done, and I had some of the best workouts I've had in two months.
And the only thing that changed was I stepped back into my power. That's it. I reminded myself of my own mental strength and my own capability.
Same body, same brain. Just new thoughts and everything switched for me so fast. That is the power of working with your mind, of managing your mind. And changing the way you think it is everything. So let's talk about what it looks like to be out of your power so you can really recognize this. Okay. When we're out of our power, we get into victim mentality. We get into victim thinking, I can't, I don't want to.
It's not fair. Like it is not fair. There's nothing I can do. I can't change. I'm too old. I'm too tired. This is the way I've always been. No one understands me. Those are all really great examples of victim thinking, and anytime we are in that victim mentality, we have given our power away to the circumstance that is there, the thing that we need to get done, and we become very, very small and start feeling weak.
Also, when we're out of our power, we get past focused. We start focusing on our past mistakes, all the things that we've done wrong, all the things that haven't gone well in our life, maybe all the things that have happened to us or other people have done to us. And we also might start focusing on past times when we felt better.
Like, oh, I just felt so much better six months ago. What's wrong with me? I don't even know what's going on.
One of the things that happens is we start feeling powerless to change it. The other thing that happens is we start to feel stuck. When we are out of our power, we feel stuck and we see that stuckness as a problem. Like, I shouldn't be stuck. Why am I stuck again? I shouldn't be stuck. And then we start repeating patterns.
Okay? We start repeating the same behavior over and over again. So anytime I am out of my power with my food. I start seeing myself as weak and the food is more powerful than me. And that happens by thinking that's like cravings are too intense. I can't handle them. The craving's, driving me nuts. If I don't have something, if I don't have that little bit of sugar, I'm gonna go crazy.
See how that makes the food so powerful and it makes me so it was small and I will repeat the same eating cycle over and over and over no matter what. I try when I'm out of my power., The instant I'm in my power, the instant I get back to my power, I'm like, sugar makes me feel terrible, causes depression and anxiety and inflammation.
I don't want that in my body, and it's so much easier for me to just say I'm not gonna have that. The other thing that happens when we're out of our power is we start getting into blame. We blame other people. We blame circumstances. We blame everything outside of us. Just like me blaming my body, my hormones, what I'm eating, the supplement's not working.
We get into blame. And that once again, keeps us weak and small because we're not taking responsibility for what's going on. And the way we get our power back is we take responsibility for everything. Because if we take responsibility for everything, that means we have the power to change it. We have the power to do something about it.
If everything outside of us is what's causing our emotions and our feelings, that takes all of our power away. I can't do anything about somebody else's thoughts or somebody else's feelings or, or a circumstance that I can't change. So my most powerful stance is to take responsibility for everything.
And that might feel like a really hard pill to swallow, but if you allow it, it will set you free. It will set you free because when you start taking responsibility and you start owning everything, and you start working with your mind. And you start working with yourself to change the way that you wanna change and create the way that you wanna think and the way that you wanna feel, that's where all your power is.
Now, when we're out of our power, everything just feels hard. We can recognize, like I'm in victim thinking, but it feels hard to get out of it. It feels hard to change. Even just simply getting outta bed or like doing simple tasks can just feel really hard. We have low energy.
It's difficult to get traction. Does that make sense? Can you think of times when you are really in your power and when you're outta your power and recognize that, and there might be some of you're like, who feel like you've never experienced being in your power before. But I, my guess is if you look for little moments, little tiny moments.
You'll find when you have been in your power, when you have been mentally strong and capable. And I want you to start looking for those moments. Start finding them in your past. Start watching them for them in your present, and then you can start creating them for your future.
'cause the more we can recognize that and feel that, the more you're gonna create it for yourself and you will recognize how amazing it feels, how much more you enjoy life.
Okay, so now let's talk about how to get back in your power. The way that you get back in your power is you have to bring yourself back to your capability. You've gotta bring yourself back to your capability. This is why I love coaching so much, because when you're with yourself and you're with your own brain, you are alone with your own brain.
And my coach is always so good about bringing me back to my mental strength, to my capability, to what I can do with my life. So if it's hard to bring it back yourself, get a friend, get a coach, get someone who can help you see that, you've gotta bring yourself back to your capability and your capability is just the power or ability to do something.
That's what Google says, and I agree with that definition. The power or ability to do something. You've just gotta bring yourself back to that. So some ways you can do that on your own is I want you to just remind yourself of what you're capable of. Remind yourself of the times that you felt your mental strength, that you recognized your mental strength and what you accomplished when you had it.
Really good questions to journal on or ask yourself is, what am I capable of? What do I know that I can do? Like what do I know 100% that I'm really good at that I can do? Another great question is in what ways am I mentally strong? Notice how powerful those questions are.
They're bringing you to your capability. They're bringing you to your mental strength, and I promise you, when you ask yourself powerful questions, you will get powerful answers. Powerful questions are an amazing way to bring yourself back to your capability. What am I capable of?
What do I know I can do, and in what ways am I mentally strong? Now, if you are deeply out of your power, you might struggle to come up with answers. Your automatic brain might tell you you're not capable of anything. You've never been mentally strong. You've never been mentally tough.
You don't have mental fortitude, you can't get anything done. So we just wanna recognize sometimes that our automatic brain when we're out of our power is just very, very negative. And I like to just tell my brain, thank you, brain, thank you for your thoughts. But I really wanna give this a go. I really wanna look back at my past.
I really wanna look at my own abilities and see what I come up with with genuineness. Okay? And once again, if that's really challenging for you to find, then I want you to. Think about somebody who loves you and sees your strength and sees everything that you are capable of, and you could ask yourself, what would this person or what would so and so, like, what would Jane say I'm capable of?
Right? What would my best friend say that I'm capable of? What would my partner say that I'm capable of? What do they believe I can do?
In what ways do they see that I'm mentally strong and start to see yourself through their eyes, because they already know how capable you are. They already know how much power you have. Or you could even take it on a more spiritual level. I love to look at it through this lens, like, what would heaven father say I'm capable of?
What does he believe that I can do? In what ways does he already know that I'm mentally strong? That could be another beautiful way to look at it, if you wanna do that. Another way to bring yourself back into your power is to give yourself what I like to call a power up. Okay? I think of a power up as, um.
You know Mario, the video game. My kids love Mario. My son loved Mario since he was little, and he's always like jumping up and he punches little square and a mushroom comes out and then he gets stronger and taller and he can jump farther and run faster. That's a power up. So I like to think of powerful thoughts as power ups.
So I'm gonna give myself some powerups when I'm feeling out of my power. It might sound like. I can handle this, like I can totally handle this. I have handled so many things in my life. I definitely can handle this. I'm tough. I got this. I'm tough. I know how to get things done. I can work quickly. I'm mentally strong.
I'm so much stronger than I think I am. That's actually one of my favorite thoughts. I comes up on my phone, on my calendar every single day. I have a thought that pops up on my phone that says I'm stronger than I think. I'm more capable than I know, and I've had that on there for months, and I still love it because it's so easy to forget how strong you are, how powerful you are.
It's so easy to just start buying into your brain's belief that you're not good enough, that you can't do things, that you're tired to buy into other people's beliefs that you can't make your dreams happen. So I love to have that on my phone every single day. I see it. I'm stronger than I think. I'm more capable than I know.
So try playing around with these. See how they feel in your body. We only want to, choose a, a thought or a power up if it feels good in our body. If I say I can handle this, and then I feel terrible in my body, it's not the right thought. Okay? It's not the right thing. We wanna find something that feels really good, or at least feels possible.
You're trying on a new outfit and it's a little strange, but you kinda like it. Like, okay, that's all right. I can do this. So make sure you always check in with how it feels in your body. Now, if there's any of you out there that have never known what it feels like to be in your power, sometimes we grow up in an environment where, our power is really stripped from us when we're very young or we have experiences in life.
That we just don't wanna feel powerful. We're like powerful people are, are scary, they're not welcome, they're not good. I want you to just start small. Just try it on for 10 seconds at a time and just notice the little shifts and just notice how you feel in your body when you start to see yourself as powerful.
When you start to notice that you're capable and you're mentally tough, you're mentally strong, and I promise you, you are so much stronger. So much tougher. You have so much more fortitude than you ever dreamed of. Just play around with it a little bit. Okay? All right, that's what I've got for you today.
Take care of my beautiful friends, and I will see you next week.
Thanks so much for listening to the podcast. If you're stuck and ready for change, grab my free course. Get unstuck@beckygarnercoaching.com slash stuck. It goes straight to the heart of what's keeping you stuck and gives you real tools to shift you out of it. Once again, that's becky garner coaching.com/stuck.
If this episode helped you today, don't keep it to yourself. Follow the show, leave a review or share it with someone else. And remember, you're stronger than you think, and you're more powerful than you know, and I truly believe that. I'll see you