Welcome to episode two of Up and Not Crying. This is your host, Beth Repp. I am an MD and certified life coach. In this podcast, you will learn self-improvement and coaching tools to engineer your mindset, your mood, and your schedule. We're gonna make your real life feel better. In this episode, we're gonna go through real-life examples of the self-coaching model I'm gonna go through three models with you so that you can kind of learn how this works and get into the groove of, uh, figuring out how to use it in your own life. Before we get to that, though, people have been asking me why the name, why the name Up and Not Crying? I will tell you. In the self-improvement space, there usually are kind of a few different personality types. So the first personality type I kind of envision is the enlightened Buddha, you know, someone with this very ethereal presence who is able to sit on a park bench for hours, um, criss-cross applesauce and just ponder life. Ain't nobody got the time for that. The second personality type is a very polished, professional, kind of businessy person who's gonna just tell you how they have it all figured out, that's also not me. I am sitting here unbathed in a hooded sweatshirt. the third, personality type is the academic researcher, who I love But is also not me so all three of those, all three of those, types have produced amazing, great work in this space, and I use all of them. I rely on all of them to give me the information to give to you. But when coming up with the tone and the name for this podcast, I didn't wanna pretend to be anybody but who I am. So I am just a normal human being trying to work, parent, do the laundry, make sure everyone in my home is bathed on a semi-regular basis, and, you know, figure out how to deal with my middle-aged lady mustache. I mean, I am all of you. So I wanted to set the tone in a way that felt real and practical. I thought,"What would a Midwestern grandma say?" What would one of my very real Midwestern grandmas, what would they have said? So I was thinking about it and I couldn't come up with anything and then I Googled it, you know, what would a Midwestern grandma say, um, about, you know, um, t- not taking life too seriously or improving your life or whatever and I couldn't come up with anything. So then I Googled, what would a German grandma say? I couldn't come up with anything there. And then I Googled, what would a Norwegian grandma say? And I landed on it. Okay, so let me read this to you."Up and not crying is a humorous, honest, and somewhat stoic Norwegian expression used as a response to'How are you?' It signals that someone is functioning and surviving,'I'm up and not crying,' even if they are not exactly fine, reflecting a realistic, non-competitive approach to life. The phrase implies you are awake, out of bed, and not in emotional distress, at least yet, holding it together on a tough day." Isn't that perfect? So when anybody asks you how you are, you can say,"I'm up and not crying. So far so good." Speaking of embracing our unique voices, did anybody hear Eric Church's UNC commencement speech this last week? It is worth Googling the whole thing. It was amazing. He nailed it, totally nailed it. And I just wanna read you a little excerpt from it. He says,"You were made uniquely, wonderfully, distinctly. There's a sound only you can make, a voice that has never existed before you and will never exist again, a contribution only you can bring, a way of seeing that belongs to only you. The world does not need another cover song. It needs an original." Excellent. So let's get into the meat of today's episode. We are gonna walk through three self-coaching models. Let's go through just a reminder what the self-coaching model is. This is the five categories that you can divide anything that happens in your life into. The first category is circumstances. The circumstance is what is happening around you in your life. The facts, of the situation. This is what everyone in a court of law would agree is happening. The next category is your thought. We have a thought about these things. We come up with a big story about it. You can ask yourself,"What am I making this mean?" to try to uncover your thoughts The next category is feelings. Your thought about something leads to or co-occurs with a feeling in your body. This is a one-word emotion that produces some type of bodily sensation, so you can identify where in your body you're feeling it. You're feeling anxiety, anger, frustration, joy, excitement. The next category is action. So when we have a feeling in our body, this leads us to do or not do things, the actions in our life. A series of actions in our life leads to an overall result in our life. Again, this is circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, results. C-T-F-A-R. C-T-F-A-R. Circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, results So let's just start to, figure out how to make a model. Okay, so if you're very new to this and you're not even sure what you're thinking, you're not sure what's going on in that brain of yours, you think you're just kinda walking around and things are happening to you you can start to uncover your thoughts by thinking,"What would I say to my very best friend about this situation if it was completely unfiltered? If I just had all my verbal vomit coming out about this whole situation or this person or this episode at work or whatever, what would I say?" And in your big story that you're telling your friend, there would be a few facts, a couple facts, but actually very few. Most of it would be a story, and in that story you can start to uncover what your thoughts are about it and what your feelings are. So you can say,"I was so annoyed, blah, blah, blah. This person said this you can just go through this whole big story. You can do this mentally, but I would highly encourage you when you're first starting to do this, write it down. So write down, in your messiest handwriting or in your quickest typing just write down this whole big story, and then go back through and highlight or circle the facts. You are gonna be surprised by how few facts there are within this story. And then go through and circle the feelings that you see in there. I was frustrated. I was annoyed. I was so excited go through and identify what is the thought between the fact and the feeling that's happening there. And you're gonna find it in your story. Often a thought is preceded by the words,"I just feel like." I just feel like he never listens. I just feel like they never listen to me when I talk at work. That is a thought. The feeling that would come after that thought is a feeling of frustration, a feeling of being defeated. Um, different feelings can come from that thought, but when you say,"I just feel like," and it's followed by a big story, that is a thought. So that's one way you can identify your thoughts. So after that, after you've written down your story and kind of started to identify what are the facts, what are my thoughts, what feeling am I having, then you can start to see how that led you to either act or not act in certain ways. This first model is a real-life example of, my fitness progress, shall we say. At my beloved gym, I love my gym very much, we weigh in weekly on something called an InBody scanner. This is a scale that gives you more detail about your body composition. So it gives you your percentage of body fat and your percentage of body muscle. And sometimes when I weigh in on this thing, I think,"Where in the world did those numbers come from?" So I, can, think of a very specific day where this happened, where I felt like I had been doing everything right the week before, you know, eating more protein and more fiber and getting all my cardio in and blah, blah, blah. And I stepped on that scale, and my percentage of body fat had gone up and my percentage of muscle had gone down. So the results, the InBody results are just numbers. They are simply numbers. These are neutral numbers. There is no meaning associated with those numbers until we give it meaning, until we make a big story out of it. So I see these numbers, and I start to make a big story out of it, which is,"Why does any of this matter? Why do I do this? Why do I go to the gym and do my cardio and eat this certain way and all of this when it doesn't matter anyways? These numbers aren't going the direction I want them to go." So I immediately go and start to do my, uh, resistance training session, and as I'm thinking this,"What's the point of this anyway?" My feeling is a feeling of defeat. I'm feeling defeated. And my action in that moment is I'm actually struggling to lift my usual amount of weight. I'm feeling kind of short of breath. I'm feeling like a tiny weakling, okay? And in this moment, I am actively going through and starting to watch my own thoughts and feelings, so I'm identifying what's going on here. And I just stopped that train, and then I started to really think new thoughts. And when you switch a thought, when you're, when you're aware of this and you switch a thought, it has to be to an equally believable thought. So we're keeping the circumstances the same. So in this workout, I'm doing this. The numbers have not changed. My percentage of body fat is still up, and my percentage of muscle is down. Those numbers are the same. But I start to think the thought,"I absolutely love this gym," and that is absolutely true. So it's an equally believable thought. I love this gym. I love the people here. I love coming here. It gives my week structure. It's a great community for me. I love the way it makes me feel. I love to start my day like this. I love not having to worry if my clothes are gonna fit. I love feeling active and being able to do things with my nine-year-old daughter. I love this gym. I love, uh, the feeling I get from working out. I love eating well. I love sleeping well. I love all of it. So suddenly the feeling in my body has changed, so I'm feeling motivated. And the action I'm now taking is lifting these weights is no big deal. I can lift these weights, and I'm going back to my normal, usual weightlifting routine. Now, you can see if over a series of time I am consistently living in this space of it doesn't matter anyways, and I'm feeling defeated, and I'm struggling to pick up a weight, my result in my life is gonna be very different than if I have a feeling I love this gym, I love feeling great, I love not worrying if my jeans are gonna fit, and I feel motivated, and I lift weights. I'm gonna have a very different result in my life. Okay? So the key is if your thought is not serving you, and you want to start working on changing your thought about the same circumstance, it has to be to an equally believable thought. You cannot just say, a fun, positive thought that does not feel true to you. It won't work. Okay, let's move on to model number two. Model number two is about a patient interaction I just had last week. I have been out of training and practicing medicine for, 15 years, so fully done with training and out on my own for 15 years as an ophthalmologist. So last week I see this patient. It's the very first time I've ever met him, and he came in for a cataract surgery evaluation. And, as soon as I walked in the room, he started telling me a very big story about how he doesn't trust doctors, he's been through a lot of health concerns, and the doctors always get it wrong, and he always ends up just managing his own medications, and he feels better, and what do they know anyways? And this is a very long story about every organ system except his eye, so most of it is irrelevant to what I need to know. And my thought in real time is I just kinda sat there honestly kind of amused, and my thought was,"Okay, Beth, just collect the relevant data and make your professional medical recommendation. Collect the data, give your recommendation." So my feeling with this thought, just get the data, make your recommendation, my feeling is I'm focused. I'm feeling focused. And my action was to just kinda jump in there and start asking very clear, concise questions, do my examination, and then give my efficient recommendation. And the result was we both felt great about it. He signed up for surgery. We'll see what is to come of that. This just happened last week. But I thought about this later, and I thought my reaction would have been very different 10 years ago, okay? So 10 years ago, before kind of learning all of these tools, if I had walked in the room and I had never met this person before, and the first several minutes of the exam was someone telling me how much they distrust and dislike doctors, and what do we know anyways, um, my thoughts would've been something like,"This is offensive. He's never met me, and he's criticizing me. He's criticizing doctors. How can he criticize me when I've never even met him?" Okay? And I would've felt defensive. I would've been feeling defensive and frustrated. My actions would have been different. I would have, I'm sure, spoken to him differently, left the room feeling very differently. I maybe wouldn't have signed him up for surgery. My encounter with him would have gone very differently, mainly because of how I would have spoken and, And addressed him. So I can see how this stuff works over time, because in that moment last week when I met this gentleman, I was not actively trying to manage my mind. I was not trying to actively change my thoughts. It just came naturally to me to think,"Okay, just get the relevant data and make your opinion and just be unemotional." And I started to realize, like, it's just been such progress that I have been able to make over time when these moments that could have been or could be inflammatory arise. When you're used to kind of managing and changing and altering your thoughts and altering your emotions to lead to less suffering in your own person and in your own day, less stress and less drama in your own day, it starts to just become a very natural thing. You start to just naturally sprinkle fairy dust on your own day to have less drama. Now, that is not to say that we're gonna let people get away with just behaving badly. There are certainly things that patients can say or do that would cross my personal boundaries. I'm not gonna allow them to treat me in a very disrespectful way. However, in this case, I felt like,"Okay, I'm just gonna let him get all this off of his chest. I'm not gonna let it bother me. I'm not gonna take it personally, and we're just gonna move on. Let's just be efficient, give my professional recommendation, and we'll move on." So you can see over time, when you use this repeatedly, it can just lead to a whole lot less drama in your life. Okay. Now, let's move on to, model number three. In this model, I want to work backwards. Okay, so you can use a model when you're asking yourself,"How, how... Why do I have this result in my life? Why? Why is this always happening? Why do I always do this? Why is this happening?" So one thing I continue to work through is the fight of the clutter in my house. Feels like I'll go through my house, and I will take, loads of things to Goodwill. And then, you know, a year later, I'm dealing with clutter again And so, so the result is clutter. The result in my life is clutter, and if we work backwards, what are the things that I am personally doing or not doing that lead to clutter? And there are a few. So one is maybe not being as proactive in real time about sorting through anything that's coming into the house. But one of the actions that I definitely do is over shop for small items, for items to make sure that the house runs smoothly. Oftentimes, the feeling that I am having that leads to this is a feeling of being overwhelmed or anxious. And the thought that is leading to that feeling in my body of feeling overwhelmed or anxious is I need to make sure everything's perfect. I need to make sure everything is in line and in order and I've got everything prepared and ready and perfect. And that is in response usually to the circumstance line of whatever is on my to-do list or whatever project I have upcoming. Okay, so the circumstance is the to-do list and the projects that I'm working on. Then my thought about that to-do list or the project is I need to make sure everything is perfect. That thought of I need to make sure everything is perfect all the time leads to this feeling of overwhelm and anxiety. That feeling of overwhelm and anxiety leads me to over shop unnecessarily for anything that I think is related to that project or getting everything in line so that next week I can make sure I've got time for the project, make sure everything is taken care of for food prep and anything my daughter could possibly need, and any outfit we could possibly need, either for something related to the to-do list or for, to get that out of the way so that then later in my very optimistic mind, I'll have more time to work on what I actually need to work on. So doing this gives me the sense that I'm getting something done, that I'm making progress, that I'm, being productive. What it's really doing is allowing me to procrastinate, to avoid the things that I need to be doing, to avoid the discomfort of getting the work done that I need to get done. And it's just leading over time, as an end result, to clutter in my life. Next year, I'll be sorting through the clutter from previous procrastinating episodes of overbuying small things to avoid getting done the work that I just need to get done. Okay, so you can see how you can work backwards from something when you have a result in your life, which could be debt, it could be clutter, it could be a weight, a certain weight that you are at, it could be the status of a relationship. It could be any number of things that you can say, why does this keep happening? Why am I doing this? Why am I in this pattern? And work backwards by saying, what am I doing? What small action am I doing over time that leads to this? What am I doing? You work backwards from that to say, what feeling drives that action? What way am I feeling that's driving me to act in this certain way? And what thought is leading me to feel that way? So if we take that same to-do list, we can start to move forward in this model in a different way. So uncovering my pattern, allows me to start to switch things. I can start to have different thoughts approaching this and say,"I'm just gonna do the tiniest step on this project. One tiny step." And then I have a feeling of motivation. And then my action is to take a little bit of action on that project. And usually, if I get started on something, if I do a little bit, I end up doing way more than I even anticipated, and then the result is I'm making progress on my project, and I have less clutter coming into the house. Okay, guys, those are three different examples of real life in my life models. You can see how you can actually change your thoughts in real time once you start to recognize what you're thinking. A way to recognize what you're thinking is if you would say to your best friend,"I just feel like..." Anything that follows that phrase,"I just feel like," is usually the thought."No one listens to me. None of this matters anyways." Those are thoughts. Once you uncover that thought, you can start to say that thought over and over in your head and identify what feeling comes up in your body. When you say the thought over and over again,"Nobody listens to me," what feeling comes up in your body? Identify that feeling and then identify from that feeling what you do or do not do when you're feeling that feeling. So you can start to identify and change your thoughts in real time. You must change them to something that is equally believable to you. You can also use this model if you are frustrated by a result in your life or frustrated by things that you tend to do that you don't want to do. So just work backwards in that model. Put the result down first and work backwards. Why am I doing these things? Why, why, why, why, why? Keep working backwards over and over again. Okay, if you guys take one thing from this week's podcast, it would be that when we have a thought about a circumstance, that is not the only thought available to us. So we can change the thought in that same circumstance to an equally believable thought that leads to less suffering in our bodies. This takes practice. It takes a lot of practice to uncover at first what you're even thinking, and then it takes practice to switch that thought to an equally believable thought. When you're switching to an equally believable thought, you can come up with a list of them and try them on. Say do I believe this? Is this something that I can actually start to think on purpose and believe? And if it's not, move to a different thought. So you can identify your thoughts. You can change your thoughts to an equally believable thought that changes the feeling in your body, that changes how you act or do not act, which overall changes the results in your life. You can change your life using this. All right, everybody. Until next week, stay upright, find the good, and if you can't find the good, at least make it funny. The disclaimer, as you know, is everything presented in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes. You can use this information at your own risk. I am not your personal doctor, and I am not your personal coach. So please use the information at your own risk. Until next week, everybody. Thank you. Bye.