Bloom Your Mind

Ep 135: When it's Happening For You

• Marie McDonald

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I was with a group of friends, when one of them approached me and said “Your daughter just said something that blew my mind. She said that you told her that when she has a crush on someone, it’s just for her.” 

“Yes,” I said, “I sure did tell her that- don’t you agree?”

“Well I’ve never thought of it like this. She said that you told her that she can just have the feeling of a crush on someone, and she doesn’t have to tell the person, because it’s actually none of their business! And that when she felt the feeling of a crush on someone she doesn’t ever have to tell them or anyone else, she doesn’t ever have to act on it in any way, and it doesn't mean anything about her or the other person except that some part of her really likes some part of them…so there’s never a problem with having a crush, it’s always a positive thing!”  

“You told her that her crush on them is not FOR them. It’s for HER.” 

She looked at me with wide eyes, and the other adults standing around us started saying how much they loved this idea. 

“And”, she said, “I just thought about how much I wish someone had explained it to me like that when I was younger, and how different my experience of my own life would have been back then if I thought my crushes were for me. And how that would be true of other things too. That if I knew they were happening for me, it would all be different.” 

And the adults standing around us all nodded in agreement, and shared their own stories. 

Our crushes are not the only thing happening for us. Every single other feeling we have about someone else is really and truly just for us too. And each thing that happens in our life is only for us, when we see it that way. 

In today’s episode you’re learn: 

  • One way to speed the process of accepting life’s challenges and seeing the end value in them right away 
  • A single sentence to help ground you in the perspective that all your feelings are truly just for you, and to help you let go of holding others accountable for them
  • Why unconditional love is always available and better for our health on multiple levels 
  • The single thing that’s necessary in order to turn negative feelings around and convert them to love 
  • A tool that can be used for two separate uses, that helps every time

Mentioned on this episode: 

  • The practice 
  • Boundaries baby 
  • Ram Das 

How to connect with Marie:

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
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!

Speaker 1:

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. Hello, everybody and welcome to episode 135 of the Bloom your Mind podcast. As you listen to this, I am on the road.

Speaker 1:

I know because I recorded this pretty far in advance a couple weeks in advance of releasing it because I'm going on a two-week road trip with my children just me and my kids in an electric car for a long trip all the way up California, all the way up to Washington, through Oregon, to Washington, then around Oregon and then over to Montana and to Yellowstone and back home. I love it, it's so much fun. I got books on Yellowstone National Park, on Oregon, and then I got like a roadmap book and got my kids each journals and they have been drawing maps and looking up sightseeing things that they're interested in and I've been having them do math by figuring out how many miles we have on a single charge in our car and where we're going to have to stop and then planning out places to stop to charge the car. That will be cool places to eat or places where we want to see things. So it's been really fun to plan it all and we'll see what happens on the road. Will it all go according to plan? Who knows? We're staying with a bunch of friends all over Oregon and in Montana friends everywhere, going to weddings, doing all kinds of fun stuff, and my husband's going to fly and meet us for like three days out of the two weeks. So I will have stories for you, I'm sure, when I'm back, but that's where I am right now as you're listening to this. But that's where I am right now as you're listening to this.

Speaker 1:

And I wanted to record this podcast on a tool that I use all the time. It's really a sentence. It's a thought framing sentence that I use for two different things. So it's like, if you think of a tool that has multiple uses, this is one of those. I use it in two very distinct and different ways and it is really incredible and helpful. And the sentence is it's happening for you. And the first I want to tell a little story to describe the first of the two ways that I use this and my clients love this tool. We use it all the time.

Speaker 1:

So first, I was hanging out with a group of people and it was a bunch of adults, and my daughter, who's almost 13, really tends to get along well with adults and adults love her. They're like I love talking to your daughter, I want to be friends with her. I'm like, I get it. Me too, I love being friends with her.

Speaker 1:

And one of these women came up to me and said I was talking to your daughter and your daughter told me the most amazing thing. And I said what was it? She said she told me that you taught her that the feeling of having a crush on someone is just for her and for nobody else. And it blew my mind and I was like oh yeah, well, we talk about this, you know, as an idea, this idea of crushing. She said yeah, well, she said that you told her. And we're sitting here in a group of adults and she's bringing this up. She says, marie, she said that you told her that she can just have that feeling of having a crush on someone, her, that she can just have that feeling of having a crush on someone and she doesn't have to tell the other person because it's actually none of their business. And I said, yeah, that's right, it's none of their business unless she wants it to be. It's none of anybody's business, unless we want it to be their business. She said yeah. And then she said that when she felt a crush on someone that she wished, if she wished didn't have a crush on that person, that you said, well, if you don't have to tell them ever and you never have to tell anyone else and you don't have to act on it in any way, and it doesn't mean anything about you or them, except that some part of you like some part of them, then is there really a problem, because that crush that we have on somebody else is not for them, it's for us. If she has a crush on someone, it's not for that person, it's for her, it's hers, it's hers for her to enjoy and it's nobody else's business unless she wants it to be somebody else's business. And the woman was just like blown, her mind was blown. I was like, well, yeah, don't you feel the same way? And she said, well, I just thought about how much I wish someone had explained it to me like that when I was younger and how different my experience of my life would have been back then if I thought my crushes were for me and if someone told me that's nobody else's business, it's happening for you, you get to have it. And she said you know? Somebody else in the circle said yeah, and that if you thought of crushes like that, you'd think of other things like that. And the other adults were like nodding their heads and saying my life would have been different too If I thought that other things were happening for me. I would be be focused on them differently instead of thinking I had to share things or meet expectations. And it was a really cool conversation and I remember describing this feeling, this, this idea, to my daughter and she was like, oh, thank God. She was like, so relieved and I really believe this Like I love the feeling of crushing on someone.

Speaker 1:

It's actually like one of my favorite feelings and I I asked my daughter what does that feeling feel like in your body? And I asked myself what does that feel like in my body? And my body it's excitement and glitter and glow and buzz and electricity and hope and warmth and fun. It's excitement and glitter and glow and buzz and electricity and hope and warmth and fun. It's like the best feeling, crushing on someone.

Speaker 1:

But what's amazing is that when I have a crush on someone. The person that I have a crush on doesn't get to feel any of that. Only I do. They don't get to feel the glitter or glow or buzz or electricity or hope and warmth and fun of my crush on them. I feel that. So if I have a crush on someone, it's for me. I get to ride that like fun glitter wave, like catching a wave. I get to ride it for as long as it's there. It's the best. I get to enjoy the glitter, buzz and the butterflies and the electricity, and it's for me, it's happening best. I get to enjoy the glitter, buzz and the butterflies and the electricity, and it's for me, it's happening for me. And I have had so many crushes on people in my life. I love crushing and now I have one on my husband, even after 15 years, and I pull it up into my body as often as I can, because now I know how to pull up that feeling of crushing on someone on purpose, on him, on myself. Like that feeling and I think now of crushing on people as like I can crush on my kids too Like just that feeling of like being so excited about the existence of a person you know, and I love that feeling, I love having friend crushes, I love all of it.

Speaker 1:

But this phrase it's happening for me applies to all the other feelings in our life too. So when we're feeling resentment or anger we're feeling angry at someone or anger with someone we often feel hesitant to let go of those more bitter feelings because the person doesn't deserve it. It's because something they've said or done. From our perspective, it's like we have to hold them accountable by feeling anger or resentment or frustration with them. But in reality, that bitter resentment and anger are happening for us, not them. We are the ones who experience all of that in our body. They never do, and so like do we want it? We're like holding onto it because they didn't, you know, rectify the situation or repair or whatever, but like that just means we stay in the happy state, physically and psychologically longer Ourselves. They're not even impacted by that. Really, whatever they think and feel creates what they get to experience, not us, right? So that's something that we can decide to change too, and just like we can turn up the dial on that feeling of having a crush on crushing on someone, we can also turn down the dial on that feeling of having a crush on crushing on someone. We can also turn down the dial on a feeling that's causing us harm.

Speaker 1:

I use this tool all the time, like radio dials, like volume knobs we can turn the volume up on a feeling and we can turn the volume down on a feeling. I do it with people all the time when we're coaching and doing subconscious work specifically, and then we can look at our thoughts, use the practice listen to that episode If you haven't yet the episode called the practice to metabolize our feelings and shift them. We can use one of so many tools that are available Many of them that I have shared on this podcast to shift a feeling state, because we are the only one that ever actually experiences it and that can be our biggest motivation to let go of things, to let go of whatever we're harboring towards someone else, and the key to doing that is to set boundaries, boundaries that represent our authentic yeses and our authentic no's and you can again listen to the episode the Beauty of a Hard no or the Freedom of a Hard no Boundaries saying no opens us up to feel love. I have seen it time and time and time and time again, hundreds, hundreds of times with my clients and experienced it over and over and over with myself.

Speaker 1:

When I just stopped showing up to things that don't feel good, I stopped spending time around people that don't make me feel amazing when I'm around them, then I feel all this love for them again and compassion. When we feel love for someone, we're the one who experiences it. It causes beautiful hormones to release in our bodies. It gives us all kinds of good psychological benefits health benefits, longevity benefits and it just feels amazing, right, the feeling of love. But that love is available for us instead of the anger or resentment. When we set boundaries hardcore boundaries, lots of them we got to find our authentic voice, listen to it and have it tell us what those boundaries are so we can set them. Boundaries open us up to be able to love people. I see it again and again.

Speaker 1:

So the first thing, the first way that this sentence is happening for you can serve us is by remembering that every single feeling, good or bad, is actually happening for you can serve us is by remembering that every single feeling, good or bad, is actually happening for you and nobody else. You can generate more of the ones you love. You can convert the ones that aren't serving you, but more than anything else, just remember you're the only one that your feelings impact. Now, the words you say, the actions you take based on those feelings, then impact other people. They get to decide how to think and feel about the actions you take. You don't control that, but definitely you can like, say things and do things and use body language to communicate in a way that feels good and feels bad for other people Right. But they're never going to feel your feelings. Your feelings are not their business, unless you want them to be. They're for you to enjoy and for you to do what you want Turn up, turn down, convert, do what you want with, or they just never know what you're actually feeling. We think people know what we're feeling and they don't, or they get it wrong a lot, or just because they just don't feel the experience that you're having inside. Only you do. Okay, that's the first one. You get it.

Speaker 1:

The second way that I love to use this concept of it's happening for you is when things are happening in my life, when things are happening in the lives of my clients that don't feel helpful, that feel hard when we're ready, and it doesn't feel gaslighting to us when we're not in the middle of trauma or pain or really processing hard emotion. It can be an incredible tool to say how is this happening for me? And the reason I love this is because every single thing that has happened in my own life, that I look back on the decades of my life, all of it happened for me in some way. It all, every single thing, built who I am today and I love who I am today. It built the life I have and I love my life. It built the skills that I have. It built the heart and the generosity and the vulnerability and the work ethic and the silliness that are who I am, you know. And so I can look back and I see for every single thing, no matter how terrible it felt at the time, I can see how it happened for me.

Speaker 1:

Now I teach this concept of nostalgia for now, of how we look back and we feel all this appreciation and gratitude and love and nostalgia for things after the fact. But we can actually bring that glowy, warm, like fuzzy, wonderful feeling of nostalgia into our moment that we're living right now. We can practice nostalgia for what we have right now, that longing for what we're actually experiencing, and it's a beautiful gratitude, like times a million hack, and the same applies here. We don't have to wait until years later to understand how something was happening for us. We can actually ask ourselves the question right now, which helps us get back into our prefrontal cortex and think creatively about problems. We can think how is this happening for me? Or we can finish the sentence this is the part when we can say, if I could just fast forward a year, what would future me say I learned from this? What would future me say I got from this that I can't necessarily see right now, and some examples of this are that I have experienced. Or when I had a big financial loss. I could say this is the part where I learned to make different decisions financially in terms of investment and savings. Or this is happening for me because it's creating way stronger communication between my husband and I around finances, with relationships.

Speaker 1:

I've had moments where it felt so terrible in the moment, but I could tell myself this is the part where I learn that I will not spend any more moments of my life or my precious energy or my beautiful love that is so available for people. I am really good at loving people and really good at seeing people and believing in them and I will not waste one more drop of that on someone who doesn't treat me with love and respect and those. That moment felt horrible, right. But then it really changed my life. Some of those moments of being around and with people that didn't deserve their actions were not deserving of the love and attention I was giving them when I had an injury that felt so difficult.

Speaker 1:

I've talked about it a lot on the podcast. It was happening for me because it was helping me learn that my body needed something different than I used to give it. I had to change how I was treating my body because I'd been doing it for too long, I'd been working it out too hard in a certain way and I needed to change With my business. I I oh my gosh learn this every day, all the time it's happening for me when something goes wrong, because I learn how to do it again. It's all iteration and knowing what doesn't work shows me what does.

Speaker 1:

So it's happening for you is what I offer to you today on today's episode, in two ways, because when you're having a crush on someone, that feeling is just for you, baby, nobody else, and every other feeling is happening for you too.

Speaker 1:

And secondly, it's a lens through which we can make sense of the wild, challenging parts of our life with a little bit more grace and kind of hack that transition into problem solving a little bit more easily. I was about to record this for you when I opened a book and saw this quote by Ram Dass. That said, when I opened a book and saw this quote by Ram Dass that said you can do it like it's a great weight on you or you can do it like it's part of the dance. That's what I've got for you today. 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.