The Loving Truth

Moving Beyond Confusion

• Sharon Pope • Episode 172

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All progress begins from telling yourself the truth.

It’s easy to fall into confusion when faced with tough decisions, especially in relationships.

But sometimes, the confusion we feel isn’t real.

We pretend not to know the answers because we fear the work it will take to face them.

It’s much easier to stay in the comfortable discomfort of not knowing, even when deep down, we do.

The truth is, our brains don’t like uncertainty, and they’ll try to keep us stuck in fear.

However, when you’re willing to face the truth about what you’re avoiding, you can begin creating real change

It starts with being honest with yourself, so you can move forward with clarity and confidence.

Struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you’re serious about finding that answer?

Book a Truth & Clarity Session with a member of my team. We’ll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there’s a fit for you and I to work together so you can make - and execute - the RIGHT decision for YOU and your marriage.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Loving Truth Podcast, where it's all about finding clarity, confidence, and peace in the face of marriage challenges. And now your host, relationship expert, and certified Master Life Coach, Sharon Pope.

SPEAKER_02:

Hello, loves. This is Sharon Pope, and this is The Loving Truth. So today I want to talk about how to move out of the place of confusion so that you can get to the solution. So first let's just talk about the concept of confusion. Look, certainly there are times in our lives where there's a challenge that is being presented to us that we don't fully understand. And so we're genuinely confused. But I think that sometimes we pretend to be confused and we pretend to deny the answers that we know internally within us because we just don't want to work that hard. We just don't want to think about it. We don't want to dive that deep. Or we don't really like the answer that we think lies there. And so we don't really want to look over there. I mean, it's just a bit of lazy thinking to always be like, I don't know. I don't know what the problem is. I don't know why he thinks that way. I don't know why I do what I do. Like, yeah, you do. On some level, you do know, but it's sort of a shortcut, or I call it the easy button, to just say, I don't know. I don't know why I'm stuck. What will you do in your marriage? Will you stay and make it better or are you going to end it? I don't know. Are you going to have that difficult conversation with your spouse? I don't know. Are you going to open your heart again to your spouse? I don't know. Are you going to move through this, you know, divorce process peacefully? I don't know. Like there's a lot of times where our initial answer is, I don't know, because we want the easy button, right? We all get a little lazy in our thinking sometimes. Right? So I just want you to be able to notice it so that you can sort of call yourself out on it. Now, our brains don't like the unknown. So when we don't know the answer to something, that feels really scary, right? Our brains like things that are known, that are familiar, that that familiarity feels comfortable. Even if it's something that we don't like, even if it's a horrible outcome, if it's known, it feels more comfortable to us than the unknown. So our brains don't like the unknown, and it sends very fearful messages to us all day long. This is the primitive part of your brain, the brainstem that where fight or flight lives, and it's going to send you the 28 reasons why you should be very afraid right now and you should do nothing. You should just kick back and watch some Netflix or scroll on social media instead of dealing with this challenge, whatever the challenge is. Because it helps us to feel safe. And the thing is, if you're not willing to be uncomfortable in order to create change, you're going to have to move through some discomfort. If you're never willing to move through that discomfort and you only want to listen to that brainstem part of your mind that wants to keep you safe and comfortable, then all you'll do is just keep creating and recreating the exact same version of your life over and over again. And I know that that's not why you, I know it's not what you want, otherwise you wouldn't be listening to me. So this idea of I don't know. When you find yourself saying that, I want you to reach a little bit further. I want you to just kind of pump the brakes a little bit and at least tell yourself the truth. Like be willing to go there for 60 seconds, two minutes, and go, no, really? Why do I do that? Why do I avoid the difficult conversation? Why don't I reach for my husband? Why am I pretending that things are okay when I know they're not? Spend a few minutes there and go, really, what why do I do that? Or why don't I do that? Because as soon as you can tell yourself the truth, now you can start making more conscious choices. So for instance, why don't I have that difficult conversation? Well, if the answer is because I'm afraid that he's just going to get defensive, we're going to end up in another argument. And that's going to make me feel even more hopeless about the marriage because we can't work through hard things, and I don't feel validated or understood by the one person who's supposed to love me. So therefore, I'm just not going to have the conversation. That's an answer. But now we can deal with that answer and go, okay, how can we help support you so that you can have that conversation and give it the best possibility of not getting to a place where your partner's being defensive and invalidating your experience? Right. And what are the help, what is what's the conversation? How should that flow? And what are the boundaries that you need to set so that you can start being heard and so that you can change the dynamic between the two of you so that future conversations can go a little better. Right? Or why am I pretending that things are okay when I know that they're not? You know what? Because it's easier to pretend than it is to deal with the challenges. Okay, if that's the truth, now we can deal with the truth. Right? Because now the conversation becomes okay, so do you want to stay where you are? Is staying in this comfortable discomfort more important to you than the long-term goal of having a loving, connected relationship that you really want for yourself? Which one do you desire more? Because you can't have both. You can't have that loving, connected relationship and remain in your comfort zone when you're in a place of struggle in your marriage. Those two things don't, you can't get there from there. And so now we can start dealing with the desire of what you want and overcoming the fear of the unknown and start equipping you with tools to help you overcome that fear. So that's the power of just being able to tell yourself the truth about why you're making the choices that you're making. Because all progress begins from telling yourself the truth. Here we are in the loving truth, you telling yourself the truth about why you do what you do or why you don't do what you're not doing, that maybe you should be doing. And it's good, it's a good lesson for all of us to be able to remember. You know, even something is as simple as like, well, you know you should work out, or you know you should eat right, like, why don't you? And what if the answer is something that is empowering to you? Instead of like, well, I just don't have time to work out or it's too expensive to eat right or whatever, instead of making it about something that feels outside of your control, if you make it something that is within your control, well, now you can change it. So for instance, if you if you ask me, for instance, uh, here's something that I'm dealing with right now where I used to work out about five days a week because I had these classes that I would go to and now I'm trying to work out at home. So there's no one, there's no class to be there at a specific time. And what I'm finding is that I'm working out about three days a week. Interesting, right? Because I have the same sort of things that you do, where it's like, if no one's holding me accountable, sometimes these things don't happen. And so if you ask me, like, why aren't you working out five days a week? Well, clearly I'm making other things a bigger priority than my workout right now. Like, at least that is an empowering story that I'm telling myself of I have other priorities right now. I have some important things that I'm working on, and that's taking precedent. Or if it's like I'm making these other things that aren't important a priority over my health.

unknown:

Hmm.

SPEAKER_02:

Now I can deal with that. Now I can make some conscious choices about what I want to do with that. And that's how you can create some change in your life. Now, there's a concept that stems off of this that I think is an important one to talk about. And it's around this idea of psychological rumination, or what Martha Beck, my mentor Martha Beck, refers to as story fondling, which is when you are sort of telling and retelling the same story, the same reason why you're stuck, the same reason why you're not making progress, the same reason why you're not doing the difficult thing or getting outside your comfort zone or making decisions, any of those things. So she refers to it as story fondling. And here's what she means it's just a metaphor for what we do. And so right now I'm holding this little crystal. And um, the idea of story fondling is essentially like where you sort of hold on to the story. You might, you might pet it. You might like every time you tell it, you're sort of petting the story. You're sort of shining up the rock that you're carrying. You might put it over here on a pedestal and be like, oh, isn't it so pretty? Right? That's the idea of what we do with our stories. Of we take good care of them, we shine them up, we put them on a pedestal, we talk about them, right? And so that's the stuff, though, that keeps you stuck in the past. When you get into a place of story fondling. Now, I'm not suggesting that you should never tell your story. Like sometimes when I when we talk about these concepts, people automatically go to the extreme. They're like, oh, so I should just ignore reality and never acknowledge how I what's really happening. Like, nope, no one said that. Right? Think about sometimes it's really good to understand your past. You just don't want to get stuck there because then you stay stuck, right? As opposed to moving forward. So telling your story can be helpful. For instance, when you need, when you when you've, for instance, when when a a new client is working with me, and I need to understand how they got to where they are. So I need to hear their story. Do I need to hear their story on repeat? Nope, I need to hear it one time. For me to understand, for me to get it. Sometimes you telling your story is helpful to other people. Like it genuinely gives them hope or makes them feel less alone. If you're feeling lost and you're telling your story, it can help other people find their way to you that can help you. And certainly telling your story can shine a spotlight on cruelty or injustices in the world. Okay. So I don't want to suggest that you should never acknowledge the reality of what happened. I just don't want you to get stuck there. Tell the story. But then turn your attention towards the future, asking yourself, now what? Now what do I want to do with that? Because at some point, just telling and retelling the story becomes part of the problem. And it can really make you sink into a place of sadness or despair or anger. So what do you do instead? Let's talk about the moving into the solution. So I think of this in three parts. The first is anchoring yourself in a truth, a physical, simple, factual truth about this particular topic, making that connection with not just the story, but also what else is true. Because two things can be true at once. You're struggling, and you're gonna find your way through this struggle. You're not gonna allow yourself to stay stuck. So, for instance, I'm thinking of something right now that I'm dealing with in my business, and the details of it are not important. But there's a new challenge that I'm reaching for in my business, and it's really easy for me to sometimes story fondle to talk about how I got here and whose fault it is and why this thing isn't working that I the way that I think it should, or the way that I want it to. Like I can spend some time there, but it's not serving me anymore, and I know that. And so I have to anchor myself in something factual, which is like, you know what? I have done a lot of hard things in my life, and this new hard thing is just another one of those. It's just another hard thing that I need to come through. That feels a hundred percent true for me. So if you can take the struggle of whatever or the story of whatever you're struggling with and just anchor it in a factual truth. And it might even just be something as simple as right now, in this moment, I am safe. Right? Right now, in this moment, there's no bears chasing me, no one's yelling at me, no one's blaming me. I'm safe. I can probably come up with a a way to bring up this difficult topic in my marriage. There's probably I bet there's a solution through this. I bet there's a pathway forward, even if I can't see it yet. That can be the anchoring truth. So, first is come up with some simple factual um physical anchoring connection. Then look for evidence and don't stop until you find at least three pieces of evidence. So, for me, as it relates to this work challenge that I'm facing, the evidence that I reach for is you know what, Sharon, you have done what less than 2% of all business owners have ever been able to do. You've done some really big things in your business. And so there's plenty of evidence to support that you could do something new. You could, you could do this other new thing. Or I'm really smart and I'm talented and I'm tenacious as hell. And the third piece of evidence might be, and I keep my I keep my mindset a priority, and I get real focused on the solution. And I know when my stories are not are not serving me, and I'm unwilling to stay stuck. And so that is going to serve me very well. And so you look for evidence to support that existing anchoring statement so that you can move through whatever is next. And then the third piece is what's 10 feet in front of you? Right? You can get anywhere you want to go, only being able to see 10 feet in front of you, only being able to see that next step in front of you. Right? I can I can drive through the night and get hundreds of miles away, only being able to see 10 feet in front of me at a time because of the headlights on my car. And so, in that same way, you don't have to know what a year from now looks like or two years from now. You can't know that. But you can know what I can do today that helps me take a step forward towards the future that I want to create. What's one thing I could do? Right? In a business sense, it could be I'm gonna ask for the opportunity, or I'm gonna finish the podcast, whatever it is. Um, or I'm gonna have that conversation with my husband that I've been putting off. That could be the one thing that you're gonna do. All right. So I want you to really think about where are you indulging confusion? Where are you fondling your stories a little bit too much, to the point where it's keeping you stuck? And how can you move into the solution by coming up with an anchoring statement, three pieces of evidence, and then what's what's one step that just feels like 10 feet in front of you? Not the next big huge leap, just 10 feet in front of you. All right. I hope that that is super helpful for you in moving from confusion into the solution. Until next time, please take really good care.

SPEAKER_01:

If you're listening to this podcast because you're struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage, and you're serious about finding that answer, it's time to book a truth and clarity session with a member of my team. On the call, we'll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there's a fit for you and I to work together so you can make and execute the right decision for you and your marriage. Go to ClarityformyMarriage.com to fill out an application now. That's ClarityformyMarriage.com.