Two Roads to Feeling Better: Action and Connection

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Today, come with me to look at two approaches to feeling better. We'll look at the benefits of both and how to utilize them in your life. 

Take Aways

• We are taught and trained to take action.
• Taking action often looks like accomplishing tasks, fulfilling responsibilities, or goal setting and achievement.
• The immediate benefit for taking action is relief. You have a goal. You have steps to get there. Cue relief.
• Sometimes taking action after action leads to burn out.
• Having a mix of connection and action can limit burn out and help us feel better faster.
• We want to connect with who we are. An amazing creation. The person we've been since birth. She's beautiful and highly valuable as she is.
• The immediate benefit for connecting you YOU is naturally feel better in that moment. Peace comes. A sense of everything being okay comes.
• Just take a few minutes, sitting with your eyes closed, pondering the wonder of you, as you are, as a creation.
• Decision making will come more easily.
• Results that you want will flow to you.
• It's hard to describe.
• Solving a problem becomes less insistent. 
• You become less desperate.
• Taking actions and feeling connection both lead to feeling better. 
• Which one do you do a lot of? 
• Which one could you practice a little bit more?
• This episode on YouTube is here.

Want to feel better? I'd love to help. Book a 30 minute call with me (Heidi) here. 

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Music 

• Music- Island Breeze by Surf House Productions |...

Transcript

Episode 91: Two Roads to Feeling Better: Action and Connection

[00:00:00] Hello, this is the Living Well with PMDD podcast. I'm your host, Heidi Bradford, certified life coach, mom of five and PMDD Survivor. Happy to have you here. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered health advice.

Good morning or good afternoon. It's so, good to have you here today. Whether you are listening on a podcast as you're driving somewhere or if you're watching this, either way you'll be happy that we are separated by, I'm in space because I am still fighting a cold sore throat thing that our family has had for a month and a half. Anyway, so I do apologize i'm coughing some of this, uh, [00:01:00] podcast, but I'm actually gonna put in a cough drop right now, so I won't really cough through the whole thing.

I also wanna say Happy Valentine's Day. It's that time of year and I hope you can feel loved. Maybe show some love to others that are around you. Okay.

Today we're gonna talk about two approaches or two roads to feeling better, and one road is the road of taking action. The other road is feeling connection.

Both of these approaches are right, but a combination of these approaches seems to be the very best.

This first approach, taking action is really cool and I do like it. I just [00:02:00] wanna put that out there. This is one that we're taught and we're trained in. And I think that's because it's easy to teach everybody a way to take action. So we have a problem and we are taught, or at least this is kinda the outline for taking action and in my head.

We define the problem, figure out what it is, we define a solution, or decide on a result we're happy with. Then we create a plan, and that's often setting a goal, right? Or, um, maybe that plan is around a certain goal. Then we follow the plan. We observe what happened? Did we make it, did we not make it? We make changes and we repeat. This is really effective. Like in general, just making small [00:03:00] changes, taking small actions. It's all over the place and I think that's why we see so much of it is because it's easy to understand and we can take it in and kind of run with it.

But if we only approach life in this manner, we can get burned out. We can suddenly realize we're trying for these things that don't actually really matter anymore. Right? If we set a plan in motion to get a certain promotion. Then somewhere along the way you realize, why does that really matter? Is that what I really want?

Then there's kind of change that needs to happen or can happen, but sometimes you just feel stuck and like, ah, I've already put this plan into motion and I don't know what else to do. In a way, this action methodology. We can become like coders in our life where we have an idea [00:04:00] or a certain result we wanna get and we believe by putting in certain inputs, we will create this thing that we really want.

When it doesn't turn out right, we just go back and we just change the input. Well, we just aren't built that way. It's really good to insert actions and particularly small habits or routines or have a rhythm in our life, um, around different things. But there is more that's available to you too.

I love taking actions. The feeling better part of taking action comes in two parts, it comes immediately. You immediately feel some relief once you have the plan, once you've defined the problem and the solution and you have a way to get there, it's like, oh, [00:05:00] wonderful.

That's one piece of it. And then the other benefit of taking action is that there are long-term results. If you want to do something that's more long term, you can put actions into place and get close to, if not actually achieving that thing by following the steps you've set.

This really doesn't work sometimes and it can be for so many different reasons. Maybe we're dealing with grief or loss and it's just hard to take actions. It could be because we're not working the system. We've set steps and a plan into place, but we're just not following the plan. We're not actually doing it.

Or sometimes the plan doesn't work. We follow all the steps. We don't end up where we thought we were going to end up. And then trying to resolve [00:06:00] that sometimes requires more than just shifting and taking more action. You can do that and a lot of people do, and they just never slow down to see, "okay, where am I headed and is this getting me there and do I wanna go there?

But take action. It's great. It's a wonderful road to feeling better, to achieving goals and, getting more of what you want into your life.

Now let's look at connection and how it can benefit us and maybe where they fit together. There's just less teaching and less training about connection.

We have some benefits of meditation and now we can listen to guided meditations and things, but this is a little bit of a lost art. I think connection is a little bit harder than [00:07:00] taking action.

Maybe that does depend on the person. I'm not sure. Stopping and pondering it takes some self-discipline. And especially in our world of distractions and other things to do, and there's always stuff to do, whether it's in entertainment or whether it's something productive. It takes self-discipline to stop. Then to keep your mind in one way.

Connection works naturally. It's natural to feel good before we even do good. We can do things and it does help us feel good, right? , We can naturally feel good and feel better by connecting to ourself.

This kind of gets hammered out of us, um, by deadlines, by the next thing that needs to get done by dings on our phone that are distracting us. [00:08:00] Or it can diminish over time. It's not something that just stays with us. If you experience depression or anxiety, those pull from that feeling of connection to ourself. That connection to ourself is to this who you are and who you have always been since birth.

We wanna remember who we are, our true identity. We want to connect with that and allow it to be enough. As we are at this very moment, that is how we are and we are incredible. I think of remembering that I am a daughter of a loving father in heaven. He has no ulterior motives for me except that I receive what I need [00:09:00] to be able to deal with my problems, to spread his love and. That's really it.

This connection does not have to be deep. It doesn't need to be detailed. This creation that is you, connect to that. That's what this is about.

I don't leave my house to get this feeling of connection to who I am. I do it in a chair in my house or sitting on my floor or sitting on my bed.

The amazing thing about connection is that you do receive immediate relief. You naturally feel better in that moment, that you let yourself feel your true identity. This creation. Instead of you taking action to receive things. When you have this connection, things [00:10:00] come to you.

It's almost magical. How it happens it's hard to describe. Unlike having a plan that has these different steps and then you see a result. Having that connection somehow puts you in a place to receive and to be able to have this result that already wants to come to you.

This does not have to take a long time. It can be a few minutes sitting in a chair, closing your eyes. Maybe you put your hand on your heart, remembering that you are here. Your worth is in you, in the creation of you, and all is well.

There's this misconception that if we feel good, we won't take [00:11:00] action.

We won't do the things we need to do because we already feel good. I need to be taking action so that I can feel good. I've experimented with this and it's just not true. When you feel good, when you can get to that place of I am whole, I am complete right here as I am. No matter what else is going on, yes, I know you have problems. Um, yes. Maybe you have a health challenge you just really can't shake, but be with yourself first. It doesn't lead to complacency, it leads to peace. And from a place of peace, we actually do take action. We want to help ourselves.

We wanna help other people. Instead of all these responsibilities feeling super heavy and like rocks in a backpack, they feel like [00:12:00] just a part of our life and a part of something that we are a part of. I've noticed that when the connection comes first, that decision making becomes easier.

That problems and finding a solution to a problem becomes less insistent. It's not insistent energy anymore. It is part of the whole. It's part of something that needs to get taken care of. The actions that I take from this place are less urgent. They're less, what's the word? Desperate. The planning I do is less, " this, this, this," "Heidi, you have to do this." Heidi, you have to do this, Heidi, you have to do this. And it's more like, "we need to get to this place. Let's do something, [00:13:00] but let's not do everything today." The plans are more thoughtful. They're less driven, less insistent, um, still very detailed. Your whole worth isn't set upon achieving this goal anymore.

You're already in a good place. It's a thing of beauty. It's just getting to live in a beautiful way.

This way connection builds a sense of trust.

Generally just with yourself. But if you, are a person of faith, then it often builds a better connection with God and your trust that he is taking care of you. That he is watching over you. That he is providing a path to a really good place, a place you want to be, and he's walking alongside you, not having abandoned you. Things also run [00:14:00] more smoothly when we add this connection piece in or are doing things from a place of connection.

In conclusion, I hope that this brought some peace and some further understanding about the place of taking actions and a place of connection and how they can both help in us feeling better. They both have short-term results, immediate results, and they both have long-term results.

Things that looking back we can appreciate having taken the time to take action and where it led us. And also we can look back and be thankful that we got to feel peace along that journey instead of only feeling peace for a moment when we achieved something and then [00:15:00] that piece is gone and we're chasing or we feel like we need to get to the next thing.

If having listened to this, you find, I think I am putting a lot of effort in planning and taking action. I'm not really doing any connection. Maybe try out some connection. If you feel like you're taking a lot of time for connection, then maybe pause and decide on one small action you're going to take. There's a little bit of, umph or relief that we feel just in acknowledging this little change that we're gonna make. For purposes of this episode, I haven't thought about how this works into the menstrual cycle, but there's definitely periods of time in your cycle that you need more connection and there's times where you can take [00:16:00] more action without it, uh, feeling like it's depleting you or like you have nothing more to give. I wanna actually revisit that sometime, so I'm just gonna make a note.

And we will talk to you next week.

Thanks so much for listening to the Living Well with PMDD podcast. To learn more about life coaching with me, visit my website Heidi, H-E-I-D-I, bradford coaching.com. Until next time, keep hoping, keep loving, and remember that you are not alone.