Welcome to the Up and Not Crying podcast. This is your inaugural episode, episode number one, and I am your host, Beth Repp. I am an MD ophthalmologist and a certified life coach. In this podcast, we are gonna talk about all sorts of real-life tips and tricks, self-improvement tools to make your real life better. Um, you can think of this as engineering your mindset, your mood, and your schedule. In today's introductory episode, we're gonna talk about an appetizer tray of life coaching tools. So this is just to whet your appetite for what is to come. We're gonna talk about the separation between circumstances and your response. Um, and I'm gonna talk about that mostly in terms of something called the self-coaching model. So that will be appetizer number one. Episi- appetizer number two is gonna be talking about the circle of control, and appetizer number three is talking about fully accepting what is, dropping the resistance to what is in life. Okay, so let's just get right to it. Let's start with topic number one. So this is, uh, a very ancient idea. The first writings about this idea date back over 2,000 years ago to one of the stoic philosophers, uh, Epictetus. Epictetus was a Greek philosopher who was born a slave. Um, he, uh, is quoted as saying, and I'm sure this is misquoted, but you can get the gist of it. He's quoted as saying,"We cannot control the things that happen to us, but we can control our reactions to them." Another thing that he said,"It is our attitude toward events, not events themselves, which we can control. Nothing is by its own nature calamitous. Even death is terrible only if we fear it." Uh, there are similar quotes attributed to, uh, various people throughout history. Um, I love the Viktor Frankl quote,"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our free- and our freedom." Um, a silly, more modern character who describes something similar is Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. He says,"The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem." So let's just talk through that a little bit more deeply, and I'm gonna use Brooke Castillo's self-coaching model. So Brooke Castillo founded something called The Life Coach School, um, and she took these ideas and kinda distilled them into a really useful model. Um, and we're gonna really delve into that into future episodes, um, but I'm gonna briefly go through it here. So fr- everything that happens in your life can be separated into five categories. So the first category is the circumstances of the events in your life, okay? So that is the f- the bare bones facts of what is happening. This is what everyone in a court of law would agree on. So there are no emotions, there are no descriptors, there is no drama in the circumstances, in the circumstance line of our model. This is just the facts of what is happening. The next category, the next line is thoughts. So something happens in our life, and we all tend to just think things are happening to us. However, we have a thought about the facts occurring in our lives. And each of us have a slightly different thought. Some of us have wildly different thoughts about the same facts going on. So we each have a thought about those circumstances. That thought leads to or, uh, occurs simultaneous with a feeling in our body. Okay? So the thoughts we have about the circumstance can be conscious or subconscious. Most often they're subcon- conscious. We're not even aware that we are having this, this thought reaction to something happening. So we have these subconscious or conscious thoughts that co-occur or precede a feeling in our body. And a feeling in our body is something that we can... It's an emotion. It's something that we can locate in our bodies. So it's a single-word emotion. Think anger. And, uh, as we kind of delve into this in future podcasts, we're gonna talk more and more about identifying it and feeling it, but an emotion, a feeling, is something you can locate in your body. So when I feel anger, I feel my abdomen clench. I feel my jaw clench. I can locate in my body jaw, abdomen clenching. I identify this emotion as anger. The next category in this five-category self-coaching model is actions. So we have circumstances that occur in our lives. These are the facts of things that are happening around us. We then have a thought about that. We then have a feeling that occurs in our bodies. These thoughts and feelings that we have about the circumstances leads us either to take action or not to take action. So we either do things or we do not do certain things. We say things. We don't say things. You get the idea. It leads to a series of actions in our lives. Over time, these actions lead to an overall result in our life. So you can think, um, uh, the most tidy way to think of results are a very, um, um, clean, uh, number or, um, observation. So something like our weight, the amount of money in our bank account, the- Uh, the house that we live in, the career that we have, the person that we're married to, the number of children we have, whether or not we go on a vacation each year. You know, these are, like, uh, very objective, um, results in our lives. So you- let's go through that model one more time. So we've got circumstances that occur in our lives. These are the facts of things happening around us, okay? Then we have a thought about them. We have a feeling that either goes along with that thought or comes right after it. The thoughts and feelings we have lead to actions in our re- in our lives. Those actions lead to an overall result in our life. So we're gonna delve into all this much more in the future, but I want to just get you thinking about this in a way where this week when you're driving, when you're interacting with people, when you're at work, you start to recognize that there is a space between what is happening around you, what is happening in the news, what's happening at work, what's happening, uh, in traffic, what's happening in your relationships. There is a space between what is happening and how you react or don't react, okay? So, um, become aware of the bare bones facts in any of these circumstances, and then just start to separate your response from it. Start to ask yourself,"What am I thinking when this happens? What, what really is going on in my head when these things happen?" And start to slowly peel back the onion on your thoughts and your feelings surrounding the facts. This will overall lead to a lot less drama in your life over time if you can start to recognize that you are not the events that are happening in your life. Okay, that was appetizer number one. Appetizer number two we are moving on to is the circle of control. So I want you to picture a concentric ring of three circles, so th- there's an inner small circle, um, a circle that surrounds that inner circle, and one more circle that surrounds the second one. So you've got a concentric set of three rings. The inner circle is your circle of control. This is the only things that you can control in your life, and the only things that you can control in your life are related to you. So the only thing that I, Beth Repp, can control in my life are my thoughts, my feelings, my actions. So anything related to me only. I can control my mindset, my decisions, my attitude. I can control what I say or don't say, what I do or don't do, what time I show up for work, my work ethic, what I eat during the day, my goals, the boundaries I set, my schedule, my sleep hygiene, my response to things. I can control all of those things, and only I can control all of those things. I cannot blame anyone else for any of those things. I cannot blame anyone else for my choices, for what I say or don't say, for what time I show up for work, for my response to things. I am fully in control of that, and only I am fully in control of that. The next circle in this concentric ring is your circle of influence. Okay? So this is where you can influence outcomes, but you cannot control them. The circle of influence includes other people's thoughts, what other people think about you, what other people think about politics, what other people think about things related to work, what other people do, what they-- how they act at work, or how they act, uh, at your family functions. Um, I can influence my reputation. I cannot control my reputation. And I wanna talk about that one for a quick second here because you would think that that's something related to me, I. However, a reputation is dependent on how other people perceive you, how other people review and perceive you. We cannot control that. We can influence it, but we cannot control other people's opinions. Within the circle of influence also is our health. So again, we can control what we eat, how much we sleep. We can, uh, s- manage our stress, we can take our medications, we can see the doctor. But we do not have total control over our health. We only have influence over our health. The circle of influence also contains our relationships. So what I can control is how I show up in my relationships, whether or not I fully listen, fully engage, treat that other person with respect, connect, but I cannot control how they are gonna perceive me or how they are gonna want to show up in the relationship. I only have control over 50% of any relationship. I can influence my relationships, but I cannot fully control them. Let's go out to one ring further. This is the circle of concern. In this circle, we have zero control over the outcome. This includes news, the weather, flights, flight delays, traffic, road construction, sporting outcomes, how strangers or celebrities conduct their lives, the things they say on Facebook, the economy, and other adult humans' health. Okay? So I have no control on a day-to-day basis over the news cycle, over the weather, whether my flight is gonna be on time, traffic jams. I have no control over any of this, and a lot of us, including me, spend a lot of time stewing in that outer circle, like what other people are doing, what other people are saying at work, what other people are saying on Facebook, whether or not the team is gonna win, you know, the, um, annoying road construction on the way to work. We get a lot invested into stewing and stewing about all of this stuff, politics, international politics, and we don't have any control over it. So when you find yourself stewing and stewing in that outer circle called the circle of concern, bring it back to the middle. Say,"What can I actually control in this situation? What can I do?" So if there- if you identify that there is road construction, that first day might be an eye-opener. You might learn some things. The next day you're gonna say,"Okay, I learned from yesterday, yesterday that it's gonna take this much extra time. How can I control myself? I can take a different way to work. I can leave earlier." But I can only control what I can control, and getting angry or frustrated about it every day is doing nothing but causing me suffering. If I'm spending a whole lot of time in stress or stewing about our current political situation- Ask yourself, ask myself,"What can I do about this situation?" Rather than just have angst and stress and frustration. I can donate, I can write letters, I can run for office if I so choose, I can talk to people who are in office. Um, there are many different things that I can personally do that are much more proactive and cause a sense of peace in my body than just stewing and being frustrated about the current situation. Okay, so that's the circle of control. The inner circle is the circle of control. Only I can control that. The next circle is the circle of influence. I can influence these outcomes, but I cannot control them. The outer circle, the circle of concern, I cannot control at all. So when I find myself stewing out there, I bring it back to the center and ask myself,"What can I actually do in this situation?" Let's move on to our third appetizer. Let's talk about accepting what is. Accepting what is. Uh, this is, um, an idea that is talked about by many different people. Um, the, the people that I love to read about or hear talk about it are Byron Katie, she has a book called Loving What Is that goes into detail about this. Eckhart Tolle talks a lot about this in the book The Power of Now. And Mel Robbins, in her Let Them Theory book, is basically talking about this, accepting what is, accepting how people are, how the world is, and then asking yourself,"How am I gonna respond now? What am I gonna do about this?" So essentially what this is is dropping all resistance to what is happening in life. It does not mean that you condone the things that are happening. It does not mean that you condone other people's behavior or the events going on in the world. You just start to relax your shoulders and say,"Okay, this is how it is. This is what's happening in this moment. Now what? Now what am I going to do?" Instead of repeatedly saying, whether you know this or not- consciously or subconsciously, often we are saying in our heads, this shouldn't be happening. I can't believe this is happening. How is this possible that anyone is going along with this? How could anyone act like this? I can't believe she said that. She shouldn't be acting this way. He shouldn't get away with this at work. This isn't fair. He shouldn't. We're often saying that to ourselves, okay? But when you're in that mode of this shouldn't be happening, how is this happening? They shouldn't do this. We are in resistance of what is happening. When you drop the resistance, that does not mean you agree with what's happening or you agree with someone's behavior. It means that you very clear-eyed say, okay, this is what's happening. I fully see exactly what is happening. How this person is acting. And now I'm going to say, what am I going to do? How am I going to now act? What is that motivating me to do or not do? How am I going to change my behavior or the way I speak? A lot of times if you get a diagnosis or you're going through something with your health, the first thing people will say is, why is this happening to me? This shouldn't be happening. I shouldn't have to deal with this. I shouldn't have this, this diagnosis. However, if you start to drop the resistance, you can just see clear-eyed, okay, this is what it is. It's full acceptance. This is exactly what it is. This is exactly what's happening. That does not mean you don't do everything to fight it, everything to learn about it, everything that you can to get better. It simply means don't spend any of your energy frustrated about the fact that it's happening. Drop all that frustration, all that resistance, just see and accept clearly the facts, and then bring yourself back into that circle of control mode and say, now what? What next? What am I going to do? Okay, so let's just briefly review our appetizers. The first appetizer is the separation of our circumstances from our reactions to those circumstances. The separation of the facts of the things occurring around us from our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions that occur after those circumstances. Our second appetizer is the circle of control. This is where I can only control me. I can only control my thoughts, feelings, and actions, and only I can control me. I cannot blame anyone else for my thoughts, feelings, and actions. I can learn how I can influence things but not control them, release the control, and also completely release control of the outer circle, circle of concern. Release control over the big world items and take my focus back to what I can control. The third appetizer is learning to accept what is. Drop the resistance to what is actually happening and see clear-eyed the facts around us, how people act, what people say, what the diagnosis is, what the circumstance at work is, what the new protocol is. See it with clear eyes and then say,"Okay, how am I going to respond? What am I going to do next?" Those are our three appetizers. If you take one thing from this podcast today, if you get nothing else from this, the thing that I really want you to focus on this week is starting to recognize how you can separate, you can step back and start to watch your reaction. You can start to watch your thoughts and your feelings in response to the things happening around you, in response to people talking to you, in response to things occurring at work, in response to your interactions with patients, coworkers, family members. You can become the watcher of your own thoughts and your own feelings. You can separate yourself from the actual event, recognizing that the events around you are not just happening to you all the time. You are a very active participant in how you think- And how you feel and how you act in response to those things. So just recognizing that there is separation, and even if there, you can't even slide a sheet of paper between it right now, recognize that there's a potential space to be a separation, and that you can start to uncover,"What am I thinking in these circumstances? What, what's even going on in there?" And start to peel back the layer of the onion. All right, friends, that's all I've got for you this week. Between now and next week, stay upright, find the good, and if you can't find the good, at least make it funny. You can find me at bethrepp.com. You can email me at hello@bethrepp.com, and you can find me on Facebook or Instagram under Beth Repp Coaching. And finally, I have to give you this little disclaimer here. The content presented in this podcast is for general information only. Reliance on the information provided is done at your own risk. Until next week, everybody, thank you. Bye-bye.