Stop Rehearsing Conversations in Your Head

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Today is a juicy topic and that is....

Stop Rehearsing Conversations in Your Head 

Bring your journal and a pen and get ready to do some exercises.

Now, let's get down to business.

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Until next time my friends...

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey family, welcome back to Carolyn Cares, where we talk about compassion, community, and commerce in real life in a way that's honest, grounded, and necessary. If you've been looking for a space where you can grow, reflect, and feel understood, you're in the right place. Go ahead and follow, like and share this channel with someone who needs it. And if you want to go deeper, we now have exclusive content through memberships and partnerships where we have more personal conversations, guided sessions, and real-time support. Well, we have a doozy of a topic today that we're going to focus on. And we hope you stay around for the whole episode so that we can go deeper and discuss the topic of our episode, you ready? Is entitled Stop Rehearsing Conversations in Your Head? Let me say it again. Stop rehearsing conversations in your head. How many conversations have you had that never actually happened? Let me say that again. How many conversations have you had that never actually happened? What does this look like? It's overthinking, it's anxiety loops, and it's emotional exhaustion. Let's let's talk about the first one: overthinking. Some of us overthink. We think too much about what's happening, about what's about to take place, and it hasn't taken place at all. We overthink, we overprocess, we think about okay, what could what's going to happen supposedly in our minds when it hasn't occurred at all. It hasn't occurred yet, but we overthink and we overprocess, and that's where the anxiety begins to settle. So you begin to form anxiety in your mind because you're thinking way ahead, you're overthinking it, you're overprocessing it, and you're thinking the worst case scenario. Okay, well, they may not like it. You don't know whether they're gonna like it, you don't know whether the situation is going to be favorable or not. It hasn't happened. And we, you know, have these conversations in our mind, we create anxiety, and it begins to affect our bodies and our minds because of that. So then you you start to experience emotional exhaustion. You are thinking about what's happening when it has not even occurred. You are thinking again, the worst case scenario of something that has not taken place. Why do we do that? Because we try to control outcomes. Why? It may be that you don't want to let go, the letting go of control. You don't want to loosen the reins of control that you may have about a situation or a circumstance that you don't have control over. You can't control how people are going to react, how people are going to respond, how people, you know, what they may say, what they may do, what they may think. You can't control any of that. I remember years ago, a former pastor of mine used to say, you have to learn how to divorce yourself from the opinions of others. And I wholeheartedly agree with that. You have to learn how to divorce yourself from the opinions of others. He also said, your opinion or someone else's opinion of you is none of your business. Let me say that again. Someone else's opinion of you is none of your business. It's none of your business what people have to, you know, say about you or what they think about you. You're not going to change what they what they say or think about you, even if you try hard. Yeah, people are going to still have their opinions of you, what right, wrong, or indifferent. So whether you do things right, whether you do things wrong, whether you're indifferent, people are going to always have an opinion about you. It may not always be to your satisfaction, but who cares? Who gives a who what somebody has to think or say about you? So we do that because we're trying to control outcomes, but also there's the fear of conflict. Some of us don't want to deal with conflict at all. We don't like when there's an adverse situation, when there's a negative response, when there's a negative feedback or reply. We don't like dealing with that. Why? Because we're people pleasers. We like everyone to like us. We like to be, you know, known as that, you know, that very happy-go-lucky, you know, type of individual. And we don't want anyone to disagree with us. So you have the fear of conflict. So the shift is that you don't need to prepare for everything. You need to trust yourself in the moment. So you're not going to be prepared for every situation that comes along in life. Some things are just going to happen, and you're going to have to be ready to respond at a moment's notice. You are not going to have everything written down. You're not going to have it memorized. You're not going to have it, you know, carefully worded out. Some things you're just going to have to play by ear, and you're going to have to be ready to respond again at a moment's notice. That's the fear of, that's what I could consider the fear of perfection. You want everything to be perfect, and it won't. And that's the that's the beauty of life, because there are times where you're not going to have everything. It's not going to be scripted. You're not going to have a script to answer from in order to deal with situations or people. You're not going to have a script, a carefully scripted plan. You're just going to have to respond when that time happens and when it occurs. When you have emergencies, no one plans for emergencies to happen. No one plans for a car accident. You know, no one plans for, you know, someone being attacked or someone experiencing a medical emergency. Who plans that? Nobody plans that. So when it when it occurs, you have to be ready to respond at any given moment. And this is what I consider, this is where you have to, you have to demonstrate emotional intelligence. You can't freak out when something happens that you weren't planning to happen. I remember a time many years ago while school teaching, well, a school teacher, I remember I was driving, I left work and I was driving home. And I remember coming down the highway and I saw my rear view mirror an SGV that was going extremely fast. I mean, it was just weaving in and out of traffic. And I was saying to myself, that person is going to cause an accident if they're not careful. Well, lo and behold, while I was driving, they came in the front of me. They went past me. They were in the far, I'm sorry, they were in the far right lane, and they decided to get over. This was a three-lane traffic, three lanes of traffic. I was in the middle lane. So they were in the far right lane. They were trying to get over, they were trying to, they were trying to go over in the far left lane. They were in the far right lane. They were trying to get over into the far left lane, and they moved over so quickly that they clipped the back of another SUV. And in my rear view mirror, I could see that car turning like four or five times. The car flipped four or five times. And I'm like, oh my gosh. It was like, it it's it looked like uh something out of a movie. Well, I pulled over to the side, you know, got out of you know, harm's way. I pulled over to the side, I stopped my vehicle, myself and another gentleman. We ran over to the vehicle that had turned over four or five times. And it was a woman in the car. And when she had, when her her SUV overturned, you saw all of these papers just fly out of the vehicle. It was just flying across the vehicle. So myself and another individual, we were trying to grab as many papers as we could, you know, leaving this this uh truck as possible. I didn't know what those papers were, but eventually I would find out. So when we came to the woman, you know, she she was actually in a daze. She didn't have any any external injuries from what I could tell, but she was shaken up. I'll just put it that way. She was shaken up. And we someone had called the you know, called the the police, and they had brought the uh the fire fire department came and nothing happened to the vehicle. I mean, the vehicle was was was badly damaged. I can't recall what happened to the to the person that caused the accident. I don't know whether they stayed behind or whether it whether it was a hit and run. I can't remember because I was focused on the the woman whose car had flipped. And I'm saying all of this to say that day I was not prepared for any of this to happen. I just had to respond in a moment's notice, and I did it without freaking out. As a matter of fact, I learned as we were sitting on the sidewalk because she just needed an area just to sit down. I just sat down with her. She was a school teacher just like myself, and she had just left school. So when the when the driver of the other vehicle clipped the back of her vehicle, she had all of those papers that were flying out of her vehicle. Those were her students' papers. So all of her papers from school that she was supposed to go home and be grading, those lovely papers we we love grading, they were flying out of her window. So she was, you know, frantic because you know, she was concerned about those papers, you know, getting the papers to the you know kids. And we were telling her, ma'am, you just survived a very, you know, it could have been a deadly accident. Your car has flipped four or five times. And you are here, you know, to tell the story. So I stayed with her as long as I could. Her mom eventually, you know, arrived to the scene of the accident. And her mom, just by looking at the vehicle, her mom started, you know, freaking out, you know. And long story short, you know, she was the this young lady was was okay. She didn't have any any you know any internal injuries. It was just, you know, her car, again, just flipped four or five times, you know, and she was she was all right. She got she got a little, you know, a little bumps and bruises, but that was about it to the extent. So I'm saying all of this to say you're not going to be prepared for moments like that. You just have to respond, but respond emotionally intelligent. You can't be freaking out. So in my case, while I was watching this, I couldn't be freaking out trying to assist her because she's the one who was in the accident. I wasn't in the accident. I was a witness. I just happened to witness, you know, the accident taking place. I couldn't, you know, be the person freaking out. So again, you have to, you have to uh demonstrate emotional intelligence. When you're dealing with a situation like this, it didn't, I didn't have a script. I didn't have, you know, hey, three ways to respond, you know, when you know, when witnessing a car accident. I didn't have any of that. I just had to be ready for the moment. So again, you don't need to prepare for everything. You need to trust yourself in the moment. Let me say that again. You don't need to prepare for everything. You need to trust yourself in the moment. I know we have in these days and times because of because of the economy, because of, you know, things that we're hearing on the news, that we have a lot of preppers in our in our you know, country, in our nation who are prepared for everything. I mean, in the in the event of a nuclear war, they they have you know their food rations and they have all of these supplies and blah, blah, blah, and this and that. And as much as I admire preppers for having all of these, you know, particular items available in the case of, you know, shortage of water, shortage of food, you know, in the case of a you know, a nuclear attack or some other, you know, attack, you're not going to be prepared for everything. You're not. So you may have everything in mind of what's going to happen, but you cannot prepare for an earthquake. An earthquake shatters everything. So all of those supplies that you were so you proudly demonstr uh displayed to all of your friends and family. An earthquake can shatter everything. You won't have time to get all of your supplies in the in the event of an earthquake or a tornado or some sort of natural disaster. You won't have time for that. You you can grab a few things, but you you won't have time for all of that. A tsunami, a tsunami knocks out everything. So again, all of those wonderful supplies that you have gathered and you have stored up, and you're showing, you know, the the storage, the uh storerooms that you have of all of your wonderful uh gadgets and emergency, emergency items. It will be it will mean nothing in the case of a tsunami or an earthquake if it's destroyed. So again, you cannot prepare for everything, but you but you can trust yourself in the moment to respond accordingly. I have some homework for you. And again, I'm a homework type of person as a former teacher here. I want you to catch one loop. And what do I mean the loop was going back to those anxiety loops, those loops where you are you are rehearsing in your mind what could possibly go wrong. I want you to catch one of those loops, jot it down in your journals. And again, I'm pro I'm a proponent of journals, buy some journals, get it, get us, get uh uh a number of journals to have on hand so you can jot down your life and your thoughts and your feelings, because again, you are actually you are creating a a journal of your life, of what's happening, you know, during the the current, you know, times and moments. And again, as you go back and look at it, you will see, you know, your thought processes and your and the brilliance and your thinking and you know how you handle situations. So again, you're gonna jot down one loop, one anxiety loop of something that has yet to happen or that you think will happen. Let me just, yeah, I need to add that. You think will happen. It may not happen. You're thinking it'll happen, but it may not occur, and replace it. You're gonna jot down one loop and then you're gonna replace it, I'll handle it when it happens. You're gonna replace it with I'll handle it when it happens. So if something that you believe may happen and you say, okay, I'll I'll handle it when it happens. You can't be prepared for everything. Life, life doesn't do that for us. We don't prepare, you don't, you know, as much as we like to say, hey, be prepared in the event that you you may die, you can't be prepared for everything. You don't know how you're gonna die. You don't know. Some people may, you know, they may be sick, but you don't know. No one knows exactly how they're gonna die, or or or let me just put it this way, when you're gonna die. We don't know. You could prepare as much as you can, but until you are in that moment or you're experiencing that moment, you don't know how you're going to respond. But I want to encourage you, demonstrate emotional intelligence when you do so. Because again, everything is not going to be written down on, you're not going to have a script, you're not going to know exactly what to say, but you'll be able to handle it when it comes and you won't freak out, and you won't cause other people around you to freak out because you have not, you know, you don't have that script on hand. Your script is missing. You know, some of the some of the most amazing uh people in this world have have, you know, who have become heroes or shiros, you know, in the time of an emergency weren't thinking about it at the time. They just stepped up to the plate and they just acted accordingly. They weren't thinking about it, whether it comes to saving somebody from a fire, you know, helping somebody who is, you know, drowning, you know, demonstrating courage, you know, when it comes to some sort of attack. These people were just minding their own business and something happened, life happened, and they stepped up to the plate. Be that kind of person. Be that kind of person that people will say, hey, I never thought that my c path would cross with this individual, but because it has, I'm so glad, I'm so glad we we, you know, we made contact with one another. In closing, I want to say in closing that peace doesn't come from overthinking, it comes from trusting yourself. And I want to also add, I would say not just trusting yourself, trusting God. I'm a believer in Jesus Christ, so I believe that it it comes more from just just trusting yourself, but trusting the God in you, that when something happens, you're gonna know how to respond when it happens and not be the what is that story? I don't I'm trying to remember it right now. It's a story that you would share with kids. I mean I'm trying to think of the story. Oh my goodness, it's it's escaping my my memory here. But yeah. Demonstrate emotional intelligence, handle something when it happens in the moment. Now, let me, I need to also throw this disclaimer in. This is not to say that you shouldn't be prepared. I am not saying that. I am not saying not to be prepared. But you can only be prepared for as much as you are aware of. There are some things you won't be prepared for. You will not have a clue, but you'll have, but you'll know when you're in that moment, okay, this has happened. I wasn't preparing for this. I just gotta, you know, respond accordingly. So thank you for joining us. I want to say thank you again. Thank you for liking, sharing, and subscribing to our channel, Carolyn Cares. And until next time, you guys have an amazing day. Bye bye.