Start in the Middle

Navigating Through Life's Chaos: Breaking Free and Rediscovering Passion

• Kristi Ballard Falany • Episode 106

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Ever found yourself caught in a whirlwind of chaos?  This episode unpacks the role chaos plays in our lives, often distorting our perception and making it difficult to accept change and growth. But there's power in vulnerability and connection, and these can be our anchors in the storm, offering healing and a fresh viewpoint.

Chaos can be more than just a momentary whirlwind. For some, it's a constant storm, a trauma response that leads to self-sabotage and a perpetual state of high alert. The seeds of this cycle are often planted in childhood, continuing to disrupt peace and clarity in adulthood. We delve into this pattern, discussing how to break free, how to support friends without being swept into their drama, and how to empower your adult children to stand strong independently.

Lastly, we turn the spotlight on you - the passionate woman within who is ready to break free from chaos. As a life coach, I share my own transformation journey, highlighting how a coach can reignite passion and enthusiasm. If you're eager to end the cycle of chaos, foster inner peace, and rediscover your passion, you won't want to miss this episode. We're here to share our stories, explore different perspectives, and arm ourselves with the tools to navigate through life's chaos.

Connect with me at: Kristi Falany Coaching.com

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Kristi:

Hi, I am Kristy Ballard Falany. I am a certified life coach who found herself at 42, freshly divorced kids off to college and having never dated in my adult life. I was starting in the middle. If you haven't yet hit start on your middle time in life, let's do it together. Let the journey begin.

Kristi:

Hello, hello, my friends, you are listening to Start in the Middle with me, kristy Fellini, and I'm having a pretty good day today, and you know this topic has been on my heart for a while, I would say over the last couple of weeks, you know, just different circumstances that have gone on that really just have wanted, have been calling for me to bring up this topic and have been calling for me to share in a way that I've never shared before, and so I had a great meeting today with a really good group of holistic and natural healers here in the coastal bend area, and we are all coming together, you know, to help each other not only grow within our small community of helping each other grow within ourselves, but also helping each other grow our individual businesses by helping others find healing, not only here in the coastal bend. But for me, given that I, you know, work straight from my home office, I have the ability to have such a wider reach. And so and this is exactly what I love this podcast for this week, towards the end, I mentioned to you that I want this podcast to be golden nuggets. I want this podcast to be little sprinkles of inspiration for you, little light bulb moments where you kind of say, whoa, that resonated with me. That is something that I struggle with as well, and so I hope that by you receiving those little light bulb moments, those little sprinkles of inspiration, that it will inspire you to reach out and get the help that you need in healing in those areas, to get the help that you need to see a different perspective.

Kristi:

Because my favorite song, before I jump on a call with someone, before I really get into my creation mode, is the song named Relate, and it's for King and Country who put this song out. But it talks about how you know I don't know what it's like to be you, you don't know what it's like to be me, but by the grace of God, we'll see each other's hearts and we can relate to each other. Okay, because we are all human beings, we do share a lot of similarities, we do share a lot of struggles, but when I'm able to share my story with someone else and they're able to say, oh yeah, that is something that I struggle with too, or that's something that's heavy on my heart, they're able to see it from a different perspective. All right, and so that's what I encourage for you during this time. So the topic that, like I said, it's been on my heart for a while to want to share this, and it's really just been a matter of sitting down and thinking about how I want to share this. Okay, but I do believe that it is so, so important, because I believe that many of us live with chaos in our lives, and what I mean by chaos is we have developed a pattern of having some sort of chaos going on in our lives that we no longer know how to live without it. Or maybe that's how you grew up, that's how you were conditioned, and you don't know what it feels like to live without it, okay. So, again, I've never shared this story before. I'm hoping that you will allow me to be vulnerable here, but when I thought about chaos, I thought about a time when I really felt like I was in chaos, and the funny part about it is that, now that I'm able to look back on it, I am able to see that I can't bow in a situation where there's chaos without it, where I caused a lot of that chaos. Okay, I caused a lot of it. Things weren't working out because of the way that the circumstance was going, and so that caused a lot of the chaos for me too. So this goes back to when my son was just getting out of junior high and was about to go to high school.

Kristi:

Okay, and my son, even here in South Texas, grew up playing hockey and a lot of people perked their eyes up, perked their ears up, thinking what they had hockey, or they have hockey down in Corpus Christi, texas. And yeah, we did, we still do. But during that time was when hockey was really at its peak here in South Texas. He started playing when he was six years old. Okay, never skated before, I mean, when he was little little, he started getting on skates a little bit. But once he hit that six-year-old range, he started playing hockey and he developed pretty quickly, you know, as he stuck with it and that was, you know, his sport of choice. He also loved baseball, but he loved hockey more, okay, and so he developed as a hockey player, his skills developed pretty quickly, and so there became a time when he kind of outgrew the skill level here in Texas. Okay.

Kristi:

And so, being the parent of a kid who loves this particular sport, I loved to see him flourish in this particular sport. You know, I loved seeing him continue to develop his skills, continue to grow as a player, and you know, and the same with my husband. And so at that junior high time you know, he had played here in corpus his skill level moved him on to San Antonio and then we found him at this pivotal point, you know, in between junior high and high school. And so in the northern part of the country, where hockey is like, where hockey is, you know, an everyday thing, kids grow up playing. That you know there's a plethora of places to play hockey up north. And so we had this unique opportunity for him to play at the next level, but in a different city. And so this city was still in Texas. So it was. It was a pretty small community in comparison to say, like in Michigan, in Minnesota, in Colorado, you know where hockey is everywhere, but it was a city here in Texas where the community, hockey community was still a little bit smaller, bigger than what we saw here in Texas, but he had an opportunity where he could try out and make a team up in the Dallas area. And so, you know, we said, yeah, let's do it. You know, let's figure out a way to make this happen. And with me being a teacher, you know, here in Texas, of course I could get a job anywhere.

Kristi:

And so the chaos happened in the space of trying to force this to happen. Okay, and so what it looked like was me uprooting myself to move to another city. It looked like the possibility of him moving into a host family, so where he wouldn't live in our household anymore. And so, you know, those decisions were being tossed around. And then come to find out, you know, when that particular area, when they're board of directors, you know, discovered that hey, this kid doesn't even live in our city. They didn't want to allow him to play. You know, it was another kid coming in and potentially taking the spot from a local kid, and so they didn't want to allow him to play. And so there was all these bylaws in place and and, and you know, different rules around not letting a kid from out of town play and we were both very young parents. You know, we had our children very young and so we were in our mid 30s when this was going on. So definitely a different maturity level being young parents. But I just remember the amount of chaos that this particular situation caused.

Kristi:

You know the mental anguish of things not turning out the way that you thought they were. The parent anguish of who are you to hold my kid back, the mental energy and capacity that it took to decide okay, are you going to uproot the life that you've known in order to make this happen? Okay and so, and earlier this week I posted a reel on Instagram and it talked about how, when we find ourselves in chaos, this is the time that we tend to run back to God. Right, and this was a point in my life where there was a lot of that. You know, if, if something didn't go well, then I felt like I was running back to God. If there was a particular traumatic incident in life, I felt myself running back to God. Okay, so this was definitely before. I completely leaned into Proverbs 3.5, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

Kristi:

Okay, so this was a time in our lives where it just seemed like there was so much chaos, and so that's what I want to talk to you about today. Okay, because I am so much more mature now, you know, I mean being in your early 30s, mid 30s. It's quite a bit different, and there's such a huge span of life experience from that point to where I am here now, that I am about to be 51. There's so much personal growth that has gone on during that time, and so when we live in chaos, it means that we are not in alignment with what our life is supposed to look like, that we are not in alignment with who we are truly supposed to be. When we are trying to force things to happen, when we're trying to force things into fruition, we are not in alignment with the way that our life is supposed to play out.

Kristi:

Now. I personally believe that we are supposed to live the majority of our life with a sense of calm, with a sense of peace, with a sense of physical grounding within our bodies, and so when we are in constant chaos, we're not doing this okay, and chaos can look like a number of things happening in our lives, and what I mean by that is like when we are allowing circumstances to happen that have our brain on high alert, that have our body feeling like we are on high alert, when we are unsettled within our lives, when it feels like stuff is constantly being thrown at us and things feel chaotic in our lives. This is what I'm talking about when I'm talking about living in a form of chaos, and so what I want to tell you today is that this pattern needs to be broken. Okay, because when we're continuously allowing, or when we continuously feel like we need to be on high alert, it means that it is a pattern that we have grown accustomed to and, at the top of the hour remember I mentioned that this could be a pattern that has continued, maybe since you were a kid, maybe in the household that you were growing up things always seem to be chaotic and things always seem to be like you needed to be on point, you needed to be on guard, you needed to be on alert, and maybe that pattern has just continued throughout your life. And so I want to offer you that there is healing in breaking this pattern, because, again, I believe that we are meant to live the majority of our lives grounded in peace and clarity, okay.

Kristi:

So when you don't get the healing from this trauma response because this is a trauma response constantly living with your life in chaos is a trauma response. So when you don't get the healing from this response, this is what's going to happen your body's going to crave it. Okay. It doesn't know what to do with itself in times of when you are in peace or when things are quiet. So, if you have that pattern of constant chaos, your body's not going to know what to do with it, with that peace, like if you don't have some sort of chaos going on, your body's going to look for it, your brain is going to look for it. Your brain thinks we're supposed to be on alert. This is when the simplest of things will piss you off, like this is what it looks like.

Kristi:

Okay, when you don't have chaos going on and your body and your brain's looking for it. This is how easy it can be to bring up chaos in your life. Well, he left the toilet seat up again. That person just cut me off. They deserve to know that they're number one, or I'm going to show them how mad I am by giving them the stink eye right. So in other ways that it shows up is that it could look like boredom. So if you don't have chaos going on or you're not in alert over something, your body is gonna fill board, okay, and at this point Some buffering is gonna show up. And what I mean by buffering is it could look like I'm gonna eat those chips, and not just one, even though I'm not even hungry. Or it can show up as self sabotage, and what that looks like is those that mean girl voice that tends to come up in your brain telling you crap, like You're a bad mom because you're not bailing your kids out of whatever jam it is that they're in. Or if I was a better mom, they have turned out differently, and this is for sure. When self soothing, buffering activity happens, I don't feel good about me or my life, and I don't have to feel it if I drink a couple glasses of wine, or that super yummy bucket of ice cream just happens to be calling my name.

Kristi:

So here's the thing, friends you've got to break these patterns of chaos. You've got to break free from that mental drama that your brain wants to get you into when it gets bored, thinking, oh, we shouldn't be at peace. And you've also got to stop getting yourself into other people's drama. Now, I'm not saying don't be a good friend, because, yes, you can be a good friend and you can listen and you could hold space for someone. But once you start giving them advice, once you start believing their story, choosing sides, gossiping about the other people, you are investing your own brain, energy, and this is where you can cause yourself the chaos. All of these activities could lead you to crossing the line in creating your own chaos. Now, for my parents of adult children, you got to stop bailing them out every time they get into a jam. I'm from the belief of I'll help you once, but if you're going to do the activity again and get you into the same mess that you were already in and I bailed you out once before you didn't learn anything from it, and so now she's learning opportunity, because the thing about it is that they'll never learn how to stand on their own two feet if you're always willing to rescue them.

Kristi:

So those of you who have broken this cycle or you've done the healing work and now you purposefully choose to not live in chaos, you've probably noticed that it's pretty hard to have friends who do live in chaos. It's pretty hard to be with, and be invested in relationships with, the people who do continue this pattern of chaos. It's hard to be in those deep, meaningful relationships with people who continue to choose and create the chaos for themselves, because once you've broken this pattern yourself, it's hard for you to relate to them. It's hard for them to understand why you're no longer siding with them when you just listen and you decide to stay neutral because you are protecting your own peace. That is exactly why I shared my story with you today, because I've lived with chaos and, as you heard, it was chaos that I caused.

Kristi:

I found myself in a posture of that running back to God because things were tough, versus Choosing to not lean into my own understanding and deciding to listen to my inner being of where God had me in my life during that time, and so I've done the healing work that it takes to claim more of my inner peace, more of my calmness and clarity, and I want the same for you. I want the same for you. Now I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I'm no longer human, because absolutely I am, and sometimes I do find myself kind of leaning back into causing chaos for myself, but I also know how to snap myself back. And my first point of action Let me sit and talk to God about this and sometimes, in my intimate conversations with him, I like to tell him or I like to think about how the world would be different and what it might look like if we all took part in doing the work that it takes to heal our old wounds and we're able to transform how we show up, not only for ourselves, but how we show up with others. I'm talking in our families, in our communities and even worldwide. Even worldwide, and I want this for you.

Kristi:

I don't want you to continue in that pattern of things always have to be chaotic or something always has to be going wrong and not understanding that, yes, you can have that inner peace, and rewiring your brain to look for opportunities for inner peace, and understanding that when things are peaceful and your brain doesn't understand it, it just means that it has spent so much time in chaos that it doesn't really know what peace looks like. So if this is you, and if you are ready to do the work that it takes to stomp out the pattern of chaos in your life, I am ready to share with you everything that I have learned that has brought me to the point of wanting to create more inner peace for myself. The skills that I use to no longer use food or alcohol or being busy to distract my brain and to distract my body from the inner peace that it actually wants. I want to share all of this with you, so I encourage you to reach out to me, Kristi Falany coaching dot com. That's KRI STI F. As in Frank ALANY coaching dot com, there's a space for you to click on a discovery call. Let's just get on a call together. I'd love to hear your story and I will offer you any coaching wisdom that I have available to you to help you to create more inner peace for yourself.

Kristi:

This particular episode is dedicated to someone that I love. I hope that you will find a little bit of inspiration in my story, in the words that I have spoken, and just know that I love you. You guys have a great week. Who is your life coach? I would love the opportunity to work with you as you are rediscovering the woman you were meant to be. Visit Christy ballard Fellini dot com for more information on how we can work together to ignite that passionate, enthusiastic woman who may have been tucked away for some time. Let's start in the middle together.