Transform Your Life - Just Count Me In
Just Count Me In is a podcast designed to help us navigate and flow with our lives through conscious awareness. When we live with less resistance and more receptivity it is easier to express who we came here to be and enjoy life. We are all walking each other home.
Transform Your Life - Just Count Me In
#2: Embracing Challenges to Unleash Inner Strength
What if the very challenges you perceive as obstacles are actually the stepping stones to your greatest achievements? Join us on "Just Count Me In" as we uncover the transformative journey of a remarkable 17-year-old dance team captain who redefined criticism as a catalyst for growth. Her story is not just about handling a moody coach but about discovering the empowering practice of compassion and self-reflection. By acknowledging that external negativity can reflect internal struggles, she managed to turn adversity into an opportunity to uplift herself and her teammates through the practices of mindfulness. Her journey offers a lesson in shifting our focus to what we truly desire, using positive language to transform our mindset and approach toward life’s hurdles.
Learn how embracing personal energy and leadership can be a game changer in overcoming life's obstacles. This episode is a testament to the power of shifting from resistance to receptivity, with our young guest exemplifying how recognizing inner strength and choosing emotions like joy can combat negativity. Influenced by inspirational figures like Wayne Dyer, the discussion underscores the importance of self-reliance and learning from every experience, whether positive or negative. Prepare to be inspired by the idea that life's most challenging moments are not against us, but rather for us, urging us to grow into more resilient and compassionate leaders.
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Welcome to Just Count Me In a podcast about coming home to yourself and finding your expression, figuring out who exactly you came here to be also known as living your best life. I'm Sari Stone and I'll be your host, hey. So thank you so much again for joining today. Today's episode is about making this shift from things happening to me to things happening for me, and I got pretty inspired from a coaching session that I just did this morning with one of my very, very favorite clients 17-year-old young woman, beautiful, beautiful girl, very inspirational, got a lot of leadership, but the quiet type, like that quiet goddess type, energy, not the loudest person in the room, but definitely a high vibe person and very beautiful. And she happens to be captain of her palms team and I know what this can be like secondhand because my daughter was captain of her team, so I know what goes with that. She has a couple of coaches. One of the coaches is a really good influence and sets a very good example for them, tries to think of a lot of things, be proactive and is very organized. The other coach has some lessons to learn and, although she is pretty inconsistent with her praise and the criticism flows freely, she is definitely subject to a lot of mood swings, which is bringing the team down and comes in just with a very negative, a lot of negative energy that my client can feel, and then the rest of the people on the team. These are young, impressionable girls and they all pick up on this because they're looking to her for leadership.
Speaker 1:So my student just decided that she was going to stop looking at this in a way that it was happening to her and we were going to just take a look at how it was happening for her before today's competition, which is a pretty big deal. Today's competition, which is a pretty big deal. Luckily, she's in a position where she's captain. So I asked her to just write down what exactly was going on that she didn't like and what she felt was being a negative influence and an energy drain on the team, how it was impacting them. And then we flipped it. And in another column she decided to write how this could possibly flipped it. And in another column she decided to write how this could possibly, in a perfect world, be happening for her to learn something or to share something with her team. And these are the things that she decided.
Speaker 1:She decided that when the coach was being overly critical, that it was just giving her an opportunity to explore the ways that she is still fighting people-pleasing because the coach was being overly critical of them and trying to people-please the parents get a lot of approval from some parents and that what's inside of this coach must obviously be a lot of self-criticism. I mean, what you squeeze mustard, you're going to get mustard. So if you're around somebody who is super critical, hypercritical of themselves or of you, you could only imagine what is going on inside of them. You're getting usually the tip of the iceberg. So in that respect she realized that it was happening for her so that she could increase her capacity to be compassionate towards somebody else and also draw attention to that. As far as the teammates that she was speaking to this morning, to just try to hold a little bit of a space of compassion and explain to them usually what somebody says is indicative of what's going on on the inside she also had to look at the situations.
Speaker 1:Usually my motto is when somebody inspires me, I study them. I definitely study them. And when somebody triggers me, I study me, not them. I study what happened and why did this trigger me and how can I think about this differently, and so she said that it probably triggered her because we've worked a lot with putting other people's feelings before her own, putting other people's opinions before her own, and with competitive dancing. That's a place where it shows up a lot. But also academically she's a very high achieving student, but also there's always that space of comparison and perfectionism. So she had the opportunity to think about that.
Speaker 1:Then she also was looking at the negativity and the energy, and the coach always used language such as don't be this and don't be negative, don't be anxious, instead of phrasing it in the positive, don't be anxious instead of phrasing it in the positive. So this gave my student an opportunity to see that when we say don't be something right away, if I say don't think about that red truck, I'm looking at my husband's red truck out the window. Don't think about that red truck right away. What are you going to picture? You're going to picture a red truck. It's his work truck, by the way, and you can't miss this thing. It's like fire engine red, fire engine red, but anyway. So it triggers your mind. Your mind doesn't know the difference whether you're saying don't or whether you just are focusing on it, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:So she has the opportunity to share that knowledge with the other girls on the team and she's experimenting with them with raising her energy. She knows how to go in and scan her body we do this most sessions and raise her vibrational frequency, and she knows how to do this several different ways, the ways that work for her, and also through meditation and guided imagery, and she wanted to share that. She's been looking for an opportunity to share that with the people on the team and hasn't found one yet. So this is perfect because she pulls them in for a moment, just a moment, to reflect, in a moment, to pull in and get connected. She calls it a connection moment before team and some of them put their hands on their hearts, some of them put their hands together, some of them just stand in stillness together, and she tries to connect them with their personal power and grounding force and inspiration from whatever they believe in, whether it's God or divine energy or just all one type energy or just their own energy, before they go out on the field Today, she was going to tell them that their task is to, after they get connected, to raise their frequency, do what that takes and then be the most positive people in the whole stadium and the stadium is going to be packed today.
Speaker 1:Competition is huge. This is a huge competition, huge game, and she challenged them to see how many people they could touch with projecting their energy and their light out into the audience and how they could feel the up leveling, the uplifting of the people around them. And I think that's great because we all love a little challenge. She was just full of so many good ideas. She started out a little bit nervous about this situation and I could tell she was sad because things have not been going well with this coach and and this is a pretty big thing today and we decided to just take it and shift her from resistance to receptivity, and that's also been a shift that I work on is resisting things a little bit less and seeing what, what can I receive in this moment and what can I be open to and what are the possibilities of this moment, instead of fighting it all the time and using my energy to fight it. So she actually was able to turn this whole experience around and remind them again about their personal power and their vibrational frequencies. So I think that's pretty phenomenal for seniors in high school. I wish I had been doing it then.
Speaker 1:She also had a problem with the poor leadership that this coach was exemplifying, and she did. She decided that this was a chance for her to notice how much she liked to step into her own power. And I mean, it's true, if somebody's doing an exemplary job and they're doing it all and they're someone that you look up to, that's amazing and you can think what do I love about this person? How can I study them? How can I incorporate a little bit more of that into the way I vibe with certain situations? How can I integrate it and incorporate it with my authentic self?
Speaker 1:In this case, she didn't realize that she had such leadership and such voice within her. I do, I see it and I know her parents see it and obviously the teachers see it, but she didn't particularly see that because she's quiet and one thing has nothing to do with the other. We all know that the strongest person in the room is the one with the highest energy, not necessarily the loudest voice, and I think Kathy Heller says that quite often. So she has recognized this as an opportunity to step into her power and she's kind of calling it out to the girls on the team to look at it as an opportunity where they can practice self-reliance. Maybe they're not getting the praise, maybe they're not getting the compliments, maybe they're not getting the positive reinforcement from this one coach, but here's an opportunity to practice being your own inner cheerleader and giving them to yourself. And we know that successful people have their own little internal cheerleaders going on, and what we say to ourselves is so much more important than what anybody else says to us. And what we say to ourselves is more frequent than anyone else's conversation to us. We hardly ever stop in there. So this is just another benefit that she got from it.
Speaker 1:She also was concerned because this person is unhappy a lot and when she walks in the room they can all feel. You know, everybody seems to be taking the temperature of everyone in the room and I understand that. And the kids right away get on edge and start screwing up, basically because they get nervous when she's unhappy, that she's going to be picky and that they're going to make mistakes, and then they're focused on the mistakes and then they happen. So, instead of the unhappy feeling, she has been encouraging the teammates to practice feeling joy, to make joy more familiar than walking on eggshells than walking on eggshells, and this has been going on for about two months now and she has been asking them to just get the feeling of joy and it's something I shared with her from my coaching in the Abundance Collective and it works really well.
Speaker 1:It's choosing an emotion that you want to feel, just as though you would choose your color of socks or color of underwear or color that you're going to wear that day. Whatever you're feeling good about wearing that day, or your jewelry, and practicing getting that feeling into your body. You can think about it coming from another time in your life when you felt joy, or if joy was a flavor, if was a color. I look at my little picture frame and I look at my grandkids and my kids on that and I see so much joy in their little faces. I can always connect to that and by getting them to practice to make joy familiar, if they tune into the joy channel, which is what she tells them she just says to them go to J, go to joy. They light right up now at this point. So even when they might be in a climate where the clouds are out in the coaching weather station, they are not conforming to that.
Speaker 1:So I mean, there's a teacher in everything, absolutely everything, and we learn as much from people that we like and experiences that we like as those who we don't like, basically. So I think this is an important lesson for her to be learning and sharing with these girls and my gosh, you guys, what an opportunity. And each of them will encounter so many other people in their lives. So I think this is just an example of how we can make that shift ourselves, how we can make that shift and how we can move from feeling victimized to realizing that things are happening. For me in some way. Now, some things happen that we don't like. Granted, I've had things happen, and if I sit with it and just feel bad about it and, as my coach would say, have a pity party, she says invite her in for a cup of tea, but don't let her spend the night. That was my coach, sally's slogan. So I did definitely feel the feeling. I had a right to feel the way I was feeling, but I found that the less I wallowed in it, the quicker I was able to see that there might possibly be something in here that I can use to make myself a better person or a stronger person.
Speaker 1:I know Wayne Dyer was quoted by saying all of his foster homes that he stayed in helped teach. I think it was eight different foster homes. Growing up, some people would not have made it further than that. Instead, he realized that this was one of the things he came in to learn was self-reliance. This was one of my big lessons was to learn self-reliance. I grew up with a sick family, very sick family member, and there were things, there were needs I had that didn't get met when I was a child because her needs were more emergent at the time. And I understand that now and I did I'm way more self reliant than a lot of people and my motto is there's always a way and I'll figure it out. I can always do it if I dig in deep enough. I don't think I would have been like this, I would not have been this confident had that not happened.
Speaker 1:So the big shift is from being resistant to what's happening to being receptive and using that energy. Using that energy like in martial arts to flow with it for long enough that you can get through it and figure out what it is that you need, say. Key takeaways for me from this lesson, in this coaching session from this beautiful young woman, is that things are happening, as Michael Beckwith says, not to me but for me, some of which are by me manifesting and creating, but most importantly through me, like I get to the point where I am just flowing this beautiful energy through me. Okay, another thing is a lot of times there are just growth opportunities and things happen that we just do not like. My yoga teacher used to say it's another AFGO, and I'll say another freaking growth opportunity, because I don't want to curse, that's not what she said, but she would just say, sari, it's just another AFGO, but it is actually just another growth opportunity when you think about it. Okay, the other things are that I would like to keep in mind is my lessons are always about me.
Speaker 1:I can go on and on and spend a whole session with a client. If they want to talk about somebody else, I'll tell them okay. So you know we can talk about them the whole time. Or you can send them to me and I'll fix them, because obviously they're your whole problem and we end up laughing about it. Or we can figure out what you can do about this particular situation, because your power is in your personal power and that's in the moment that you're in. That's in the story that you're telling yourself about what happened.
Speaker 1:So we never, ever, can get our way out of a situation by pointing the finger. That's just a cycle that keeps going and going and going, and when we outsource our power, we're at a big disadvantage for living our lives to their fullest. So I think it takes a shift in thinking and it definitely takes a shift in being, and it's a hard journey, one that I felt was really, really worth it. So if you can think of a time or a situation that happened to you that caused a major shift, or maybe a minor shift, maybe it was a delay and you got stuck online and you ended up having a conversation with somebody that you wouldn't have had you just never know. But if you can start looking at life, that things are actually happening for me and there is some kind of opportunity in this situation, much as I love it or don't love it, I think you might be flowing with your life a little bit more.
Speaker 1:So if you do know anyone who can benefit in any way from listening to this podcast or this particular episode, please, please, share it with them and I'd love it if you join me on Instagram. I'm new at all this. I'd love for you to start this journey with me and be a part of the Just Count Me In Facebook community. Remember to remember that we're all in this together. I will see you next time. Thank you for joining. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you liked this episode, please let me know. Stop by at social media, on Instagram or my Facebook page Just count me in and please leave a comment. If there's anybody that you think could benefit from this episode, please forward it to them and I look forward to seeing you next time. We're all in this together.