Bloom Your Mind

Ep 99: What Do You Find When You Dump Out Your Purse?

• Marie McDonald

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Have you ever dumped out your purse only to discover the most random stuff lurking in there? Maybe an expired coupon for ramen, or an even a single almond.

To imagine that single almond… is comedic genius. I too, have had that single almond dump out of my own purse!

It's so REAL.

And… the stuff in there only gets weirder and weirder the longer we wait between cleanings, and the very same is true for our brains.

Dumping out the contents of our minds once a month, or once a quarter is going to be a big mess to clean up, but when we do it on the regular, it becomes an interesting discovery in what we find inside our mental "purse.”

It's a form of self-care that is regenerative, because we keep facing the “stuff” in there, cleaning it out, sifting through what what we want to keep, and what to toss.

And it’s in this ongoing process, we stay in integrity with ourselves and how we want to show up in the world.

What you'll learn in this episode:

  • Examples of regenerative ideans and what they add to your life
  • Regularly "dumping out" mental clutter to focus on thoughts that serve us 
  • How thoughts can become self-fulfilling prophecies
  • Examples of negative thoughts and how to swap them out with good ones
  • How to view setbacks as opportunities

Mentioned in this episode: 

How to connect with Marie:

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We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want, and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald.

Let's get into it.

Hi everyone, welcome to episode number 99 of the Bloom Your Mind podcast. One skip away from the big 100. 

Today is a Tuesday and I had the most wonderful day and I want to tell you about it. I woke up early to go to the maker's market that I started at my children's school to sell my daughter's pumpkin bread and the chai lattes I've been making. 

I'm doing this for my daughter to raise money for a gift that she doesn't even know about yet. It's a surprise gift. I'm going to have a scavenger hunt this week on her birthday so she finds out what it is and she's raising money to go with this gift that she doesn't know what it is. And we made this maker fair at the school. 

I started it like a month and a half ago and now every Tuesday morning we get up early, we bring our stuff there. We get to have this wonderful, like farmer's market experience with the rest of this community and it's the best morning. 

This morning my husband came and hung out with me and we have all these people in the community that stop by our table and chat with us, that buy the bread that you know I go and look at what they have and it was just beautiful community building morning and I always just feel so good after it. And then right after that I came home, started coaching and I had a Bloom Room Q&A. 

So the actual first session for bloom room starts next week on Tuesday, and it is the last week of October. It's starting on like Tuesday the 28th or something. So today was a Q&A for people that are still like almost ready to come join us but not quite sure, and for people that already joined in the group, and so the people that joined in the group were talking about what they were looking for from the bloom room. 

People called in from Costa Rica, from Turkey, from California. There's one writing a musical album. There's one living on a boat and wanting to use the bloom room to figure out balance and fulfillment and calm as she lives her life on these rocking waves with her family. There's one that's building their business into passive income so that they can start or sort of engage in this nonprofit that they just started to support mental wellness in the world. 

So, I swear, just the first 20 minutes of this group I had all the chills, all the feels that slow down, zoom in, stop the press, feeling where you just know. I just knew I am here doing what I am built to do. 

Coaching these beauties is just my favorite thing. Being here to support individuals turning their ideas into real things, it's just my favorite. Then I recorded some content for them after the bloom room and then tonight, after kid pickup and doc visits, it's time for yoga at my house, which is another group that I started. 

So the thing that was significant about today is that I had three experiences with groups that were so fulfilling for me the maker's market, the bloom room and the yoga class. 

The yoga class is a private yoga class if you haven't heard me talk about it before on the podcast that we do every other week, where my favorite teacher, who doesn't teach in studios anymore, comes to my house and teaches a small group of people it's so fun studios anymore comes to my house and teaches a small group of people. 

It's so fun and I just asked her to do this and invited her to, because I miss her classes and I love her. It's like a 90 minute class, but all three of these things were ideas that I made real. 

Here I am with a fourth recording, a podcast, four things that were ideas that I turned into real things, and if we go back to those three community points right, the first one's the maker's market. The second one is the bloom room. The third is the yoga class. Now, all three of them are reciprocal experiences. 

I put energy into starting them. They are bringing more of what I want and what I love into my life, are bringing more of what I want and what I love into my life. 

They're giving that energy back to me More people that I love, more community, more laughter, more movement, more friends, more coaching, more empowerment, more ideas turning into real things in the world, and it was so neat to look back on today and think that none of these things would exist if I hadn't taken the steps to turn them into real things, and how none of them feel like that big a deal, because I'm so in the flow of turning my ideas into real things and it feels so good. 

The coolest thing, though, to reflect on looking back at today, was that they take on a life of their own. The maker's market it would still happen if I don't go. That thing would run for sure it will run if I don't go. The yoga class the teacher runs it. I don't run it, I do nothing. I show up. 

All three of them are serving others. They are creating community that serves others. The maker's market serves small businesses. The yoga class serves the people that love this teacher and serves the teacher herself. The bloom room serves all my people that are in it. But I don't have to keep running all of them except the bloom room. Don't worry, I won't drop that ball. 

But even that one, that group, comes up with love and support and coaching and questions for each other that I never could come up with. They really make it into something for each other, that community. That's way bigger than what I could do already. 

Today, they were sharing about how one has a virtual assistant and now everybody wants one because they were talking about how it makes their life so much easier. So, they're sharing these little things about their lives and this very first little connection. I love it. Amazing when you can create something, put it out there and then it runs itself and you just get to experience it. 

So three and the podcast too is a fourth example of ideas that I made real that are regenerative, putting energy into the world. That energy blooms the world in some way, makes the world a better place in some way, by creating a market for small businesses and for community building, by creating a room, a group coaching program where people can turn ideas to create a better world into real things and lean into the community support.

A podcast that you're experiencing, a yoga class that they get to experience. That adds to health and wellness and community. But all four of them come back to me in positive energy that actually exceeds the energy that I put into them, either because it's more, it's greater energy, like the yoga class, where the amount of that it took me to do that is so little and the amount that I get from it is so much, or like the maker's market. 

I put a lot of time and energy into that, but the amount of joy that I get back, the amount of community and connection and love and fun with my daughter, is more valuable to me than the time and energy that goes into making things. Same with the bloom room and the podcast. 

So just a little pitch for making your ideas real, and just the idea, the seed that I'm planting, that sometimes making them real doesn't mean you have to tend them over time. So today what we're talking about is dumping out your purse. 

So one of my bloom room people said today she was talking about like what her days are like and she was like you know how my days are? They're like this Do you ever just take out your purse or your bag and dump it upside down and all the stuff comes falling out of it and there's like an almond in there and a hair tie and a bunch of other stuff. That's what my days are like every day. Oh my gosh, I was cracking up y'all. I was dying. 

Picturing the almond, the, the single almond. That's like so real, like for sure there's been a single almond. I mean multiple times I've had a. I've had a single almond dump out of my purse when I cleaned it out. It's so real. But also, that's like comedic genius to me. 

And almond, and I'm picturing it right, right, like this dumping out of the purse and next to the almond is like a receipt that's all soggy that you really needed to keep and file away but you can't read it anymore, or like a coupon that you needed to use by a certain date that you really was going to save you a lot of money, and your car keys and a bobby pin and maybe your favorite ChapStick, but like the cap is off and there's tiny rocks ground into it. 

I really visualized it the purse man. It's intense, but really that dump out the purse process is like the worst. It's so gross, especially if you haven't done it in a while, but if you do it all the time, every day even, it's kind of delightful. You have this vessel that you keep clean. You're only putting the things into it that you want. 

That day I take my little red wallet that my mom brought me from Italy, my glasses, my reading glasses, my sunglasses the ones I want for that day my mints or my tinted Chapstick with the lid on and everything, my headphones, maybe even a book that I actually want to read or something I actually want to get done that I'll be able to pull out of my purse in the waiting room, having just what I want in there, to prepare me to be exactly who I want to be that day. 

Insofar as a purse can, right, but you know what can do an even better job when we treat it like that, is our brains. You knew I was going there, didn't you? Dumping them out every once in a while is going to be a big old mess to clean up, but that's what we've got to do. 

We've got to dump them out and look at what's in there, toss some of it, keep the things we most want, put some new stuff in there. That's exactly what we need for that day and it's just like a purse. 

If we clean out our brain every day, if we look at the thoughts in our minds, it's that big of a difference In having the things that we need, in not feeling like a mess, in not overreacting or underreacting or having to dig around in there to look for what we want and find out we don't even have it with us, we left it at home. 

It's the same, because, remember, our brains can't tell the difference between a fact and a thought. That literally means that our thoughts are real things, because our brain is the filter for perception. Are you with me? I mean that is unreal, right, if our brain can't tell the difference between the floor is cement and they don't like me. Those are as factual as each other, which is how the brain works. A thought and fact. The brain cheats them exactly the same. 

And our brain when we have a thought, it goes to work doing two things filling our body with the emotion that matches the thought and proving the thought true. So if our brain is using this confirmation bias to find evidence for the thought everywhere we look, now that I know the floor is concrete, I am going to find evidence, for I'm going to look at the floor, I'm going to notice the floor, I'm going to notice how it feels. 

I am going to walk around with this, knowing If I know people don't like me, I'm going to take interpret every expression on their face as evidence that they don't like me. I'm going to interpret every behavior of theirs as an omission of my presence. They don't want me there anyways. 

Our brain will go to work, proving whatever our thoughts are to be true, which then creates the world that we're living in. That is why our thoughts are real things. 

It's just like a math equation, remember in like junior high, you know you have to have the same things X equals Y, be equal on both sides of the equal sign. So many math equations, right, we're that. So many math problems. 

We're making them equal, because that always has to be true. They're equal, that's. It's the same with our thoughts. It's just the same. When we have a thought in our mind, our brain equates that to reality. We think the thought, our brain goes to work proving it and making it true. 

So if it's not what we want, we have to do the work to stop thinking it, because it's that dependable, like a math equation, that's always the same on both sides. It's that dependable that every thought we have, our system, our brain, our body is going to go to work making it real, proving it. 

So if we want to take out the parts, the thoughts that we don't want to become real things in our life, it requires us to dump out the purse. We got to dump out the contents of our brain onto paper or a voice memo or a Google doc, and then we got to look at them. 

The way that we do this is we dump everything out by writing, writing, writing, stream of conscious and just talking. If it's a voice memo, whatever you want, just get it out of your head and then look at it and when you read it and you see all the contents of your mind, all the thoughts that are written there, just like your purse, don't go judging it right. 

That only makes it worse. If we're walking around feeling terrible about the fact that we didn't clean out our purse. If we're walking around feeling terrible about the fact that we didn't clean out our purse, it's just doubling up on the problem. So we're just going to dump it out. 

Dump out the contents of our brain and look at it. If every one of those thoughts were going to become true, if they're all prophecies, which is how the brain works which would you keep and which ones would you swap out for something a little bit more helpful? Dump out the purse y'all every single day. 

All right, I'm going to give you some examples. Let's say I have a big list of thoughts and I underline some of them that are definitely not helpful. Let's say we do a thought download and one of the thoughts is I'm a mess. If we think the thought I'm a mess, we'll experience a feeling like probably like shame, and then we'll go to work finding all the ways that we're a mess, what we don't do when we're feeling shame and we're finding all of the evidence that we're a mess. 

Which makes us feel more shame and makes us hide is we don't get real clear and logistical about prioritizing how to make it better. So if we see that thought I'm a mess and we know it's going to prove itself out, if we keep thinking that we're going to feel shame and we're going to act like more of a mess, we're going to create more of a mess. It happens every time, I see it all the time of a mess. It happens every time. I see it all the time. 

We could swap that thought out for just one step at a time. This is where I learn to prioritize myself, just because it's a little messy. Now, that's how I learn to clean up a mess one step at a time. We swap out the thought, just like cleaning the purse. 

Second thought I hear a lot of people say my kid is behind. When we think a thought like that and we feel that dread my child is behind in some way we start to see all the evidence that they're behind. We treat them like they're behind. They begin to think that they're behind. They get anxious, they become behind. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

We can swap out that thought because we don't want to do that. We can swap out that thought by thinking my child is exactly where they need to be. School is fake stress, and I get to teach them the difference right now between real stress primordial real stress and fake stress that we humans make up. If I'm not afraid of the feelings that I get when I think about school, I'll teach them that they don't have to be either. They're exactly where they need to be. 

All right, let's do two more. If somewhere on there one that I see a lot is they're judging me, someone will have the thought that others around them are judging them, which causes anxiety, and they see evidence everywhere that they're being judged and they even get angry at other people for judging them, even though sometimes it's not even happening. This happens to all of us. 

Our brains are fact-finding machines. They are going to find evidence of whatever that thought is. So we can swap out that thought of they're judging me, for if they're my people, I'm just going to go and have a good time. If they're my people, they'll love being around me. And then you know, we win some, we lose some and our people find us Okay. 

And one last thought this is a failure, I failed, it didn't go how I wanted. Let's say, we find the thought when we dump out the purse and dump out our brains, we find the thought that we failed, we'll feel disappointment. This happens for me all the time. It happens for my clients. 

All the time when something didn't go the way that we planned, we have to pause and think. This is the thought that helps me every day, y'all, or all the time, anyways, I don't know if it's every single day, but a lot of the time I think how is this perfect for me? When I ask my brain that question, every time it finds it out. And I think this is one of the reasons that I'm very resilient, because I constantly ask myself okay, how's this new situation perfect for me? 

When I launched the bloom room, I said this a couple of times. I was going to do like a huge launch with mastermind classes or workshop, free workshops to give people taste of the bloom room a month-long launch and I had some physical health issues that really took me down and I was not able to spend the amount of time working. 

I had to go to a lot of doctor's appointments. Because of that, I did a mini launch, this tiny launch, when I asked myself how is this perfect for me? It truly, truly was. I have a big group still in the program, but it's allowing me to have this original founding group that's getting a ton of individualized attention. 

There's like 10 to 15 of them and the group will grow from there, but I am in no hurry now. I'm actually loving the size of it and I'm going to do a lot of individualized attention and I'm having a great time. 

It's actually exactly, in retrospect, what I should have designed for from the beginning. In retrospect, what I should have designed for from the beginning and always that is possible to swap out the idea this failed, this didn't work, and swap it out for figuring out how is this perfect for me now? 

And if we really can't see it, then we just ask the question if this is perfect for me, how could that be true? Suspending disbelief just for fun? How could it be true that this circumstance is actually perfect for me? 

Those are four examples of thought swaps for common thoughts that I hear. 

Dump out your purse, y'all. Dump it out, check out what's in it, clean it out and then you can flaunt it and wear it exactly where you want to go. All right, that's what I've got for you this week and I will see you in episode 100. 

If you like what you’re hearing on the podcast, you've got to come and join us in the Bloom Room. This is a year-round membership where we take all of these concepts, and we apply them to real life. In a community where we have each other's backs, and we bring out the best in each other. We're all there to make our ideas real, one idea at a time. 

I'll see you in the Bloom Room.