Welcome to episode five of Up and Not Crying. This is your host, Beth Repp, a physician and certified life coach. Up and Not Crying is a fun translation of a Norwegian phrase that you would give in response to someone asking you, "Hey, how are you today?" You could say, "I'm up and not crying." It's a very honest, realistic display of how you really are. In this podcast, you will learn self-improvement and coaching tools to engineer your mindset, your mood, and your schedule. We make your real life feel better. In this episode, episode five, we're gonna talk about what to change to make a situation feel better. Should I change my mindset or my thoughts about my circumstances or situation, or should I change the circumstances or situation itself? So let's go back to episodes one and two, where we talked about the Self-Coaching Model. The Self-Coaching Model was originally described by Brooke Castillo. Now the, concepts which she organized beautifully into the Coaching Model have been described for millennia before this, but the Self-Coaching Model really is attributed to Brooke, where she organizes things into circumstances. These are the facts that occur in our lives. We then have a thought about those circumstances that leads to or occurs with a feeling in our bodies. Those thoughts and feelings lead us to do, say, or not do or not say certain things. Those are our actions. And over time, a collection of actions in our lives leads to an overall result in our life. So we have C-T-F-A-R, circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, results. So today, we're really just focusing on those first two, the circumstance or the thought. Which one do I change to make things a little bit better? I often find myself questioning when I'm thinking about something difficult or there's this kind of area of irritation or fatigue or suffering in my life. What do I change here? Should I change my mindset and my thoughts about the situation? Which can be shockingly powerful. I promise you, it's amazingly powerful to do that. Or should I actually change the circumstance itself? Spoiler alert, there's no wrong answer here. You can do either. You can do both. You can do neither. I've done all of the above, and you're gonna just keep figuring this out as you go. I don't have a one-size-fits-all answer for you here. But I am gonna go through, five things to consider when trying to figure out what to change. Usually before people are aware of this type of work or before they've done any type of therapy, before they've thought about any type of thought change the go-to thing that we all do is change our circumstances, and I'm sure each one of us has done this. When you get frustrated with a situation in your life, the immediate thing you do is change your job, change the person you're dating, date a few different people, move to a new location, change your appearance. There's all sorts of things you can do to immediately or quickly change your circumstance to try to feel better. And sometimes that's exactly what you need to do. That's not wrong. But there are other times where perhaps being a little more thoughtful and adjusting how you're thinking or how you're approaching the situation might be the better thing to do So let's walk through five things to consider when deciding how to relieve your suffering, your irritation, your frustration, your sadness, your stress regarding a particular problem point in your life. Number one, ask yourself, "Can this circumstance be changed?" There are some circumstances that are absolutely unchangeable. Death, the death of a loved one. Some medical conditions, like an amputation. A natural disaster, say a tornado came through and wiped out your house. There is nothing we can do to change those circumstances. And I know this sounds, really obvious and silly to even say, but many of us remain in this really subconscious resistance pattern against the fact that these things happen. You're almost, beating up against them, still trying to change them, still living in denial or un- unable to accept that it happened. But also not knowing how to think about it differently. So, you're constantly saying, "I can't believe this happened. This was never supposed to have happened. That, didn't really happen, did it? If I could only go back in time and make sure it didn't happen." And this is so normal, and understandable, and what everybody does. But at some point, you have to ask yourself, "Is there anything about this that I can change?" And if the answer is no, there is absolutely nothing I can do to change it, we have to start to adjust our thoughts in order to relieve our own suffering. If you don't start to adjust your mindset or your thoughts, and you don't have to, but you will not feel any differently about it, okay? Changing our thoughts does not mean that we are happy about what happened or that we condone things that happened. There are many ways that we can start to subtly shift in order to just give ourselves a little bit of grace and a little less suffering. So perhaps one thing you could think when it comes to the death of a loved one, just an unimaginable thing, you can start to think repeatedly, "I will honor their memory. I will honor their memory." And perhaps that gives you just a little bit less suffering and relieves you of this constant, "This should never have happened. How did this happen?" So in review, number one, can this circumstance be changed? Is there anything I can do to change the circumstance? If that's a hard no, then in that setting, we have to change our thoughts if we want to have relief of our own suffering Number two, am I safe? Okay, so really be honest with yourself. Am I safe in this circumstance? Am I in an abusive relationship? Do I live in a dangerous neighborhood? Am I in an abusive or toxic work environment? If the answer to that is, is yes, I'm in an abusive situation and that I am unsafe, then you have to change your circumstance. You cannot think your way out of an abusive relationship. You have to change your circumstances here. So really be honest with yourself. Am I safe? If you are not safe, we've gotta change the circumstance. You have to leave the relationship, leave the job, move from that dangerous neighborhood, protect your children, get to a safe place Number three, have I looked at my own contribution to creating the current circumstance that I find myself in? It can be really easy to jumping straight to blaming external events and circumstances and wanting to change all those things. Many times, however, after you've changed those circumstances, and we have all done this, you can find yourself right back in the same type of situation again. Let me give you a couple of examples. So this first one is kind of fun and silly, and maybe one that other people can relate to. A few years ago, my husband and I bought our first home together, which was a smaller, older kind of starter home, and we lived there for five years. Our daughter was, born when we were in that house, and it had a detached garage. You came in from the garage, into the kitchen, and there was just this drop zone where, you know, bike helmets were dropped, backpacks, work bags, everything, on a mobile counter. This kitchen was small and just had a really small amount of counter space, and then we moved in this IKEA counter, and that was the drop zone. One day I was taking a pan of cookies out of the oven, and I turned around to set it down, and there was no place to set it. All the minimal counter space we had was taken, and I just was like, "Okay, that's it. We need to start looking for a different house, and we need more space." So we find a different house. We move into a bigger house, which has a bigger kitchen. We love our house. But within a year or two, I look around and I'm like, "Oh, my Lord, my kitchen is super cluttered again." Okay? Now, my nine-year-old is not driving to Target and buying excess stuff. My husband can live with a can of beans and a camp mat the rest of his life. He's a total minimalist. So, like, what's the common denominator here? Turns out it wasn't the kitchen that was the problem. It was Beth and her tendency to overbuy and overshop little things and overbuy groceries and clutter up the kitchen. Okay, so I didn't look carefully enough at my own contribution to that situation. Now, am I glad we bought the house? Absolutely. Do I love the school district we're in? There were other reasons we moved. But it was a funny thing to realize a year or two after we moved into this house that, Oh, my patterns were partly to blame here. It wasn't just the size of the house. A second example of this, in coaching myself and in other physicians, physicians often find themselves in a situation where they just have an overwhelming amount of work. I'm not at all going to blame the physician for this. There's just so much that contributes to this. But you have to ask yourself, "Is there anything I am doing to contribute to this situation?" You can find yourself in this job where there's just an overwhelming amount of work, you're stressed, you're burned out, and you think, "I need a different job. A different job will solve it." Okay? But if you are someone who has never learned how to set boundaries, who has never put the brakes on your own people-pleasing, who is a constant, overachiever and workaholic and overworker, if you're not looking at those patterns that are leading to that overwhelming amount of work and that burnout, you're gonna switch jobs, and at first it's gonna feel great because you're not gonna have this huge patient volume that you've built up in the previous job. At first it's gonna feel great, and you're gonna go home on time, and you're not gonna have this overwhelmingly huge inbox to answer. But if you've not changed your patterns and You still have zero boundaries, and you're people-pleasing and overworking, within a year or two that job is gonna feel exactly the same. So we have to look at our own behaviors that are contributing to the circumstance. And if there's anything about our own behaviors, then we really have to adjust our thoughts. We have to start thinking, "Okay, what do I need to think in order to start setting boundaries? What do I need to think in order to start saying no? What do I need to think in order to start buying less groceries each time I go to the grocery store?" I'm sure you have heard the phrase, "Wherever you go, there you are," and that's what this means. You can switch your circumstance. You can live in a new location. You can start a new job. But your own patterns, your thoughts, your tendencies are going to follow you, and soon your circumstance will look remarkably like the previous one if you are finding that you may just have played a part in creating this situation, use this as a great self-improvement project. Really focus on your circle of control here, your own thoughts, your feelings, your communication patterns, your actions. Bring your best self into this situation, into this current circumstance, and just see what happens. And if it's not changing, even with you changing, then it might be time to think about changing the circumstance or the situation Number four, does this circumstance or situation align with my essential self? Now, let's just go through a couple definitions here. This is something that Martha Beck describes. Martha describes that we all have two components to our personalities or our selves. There's our essential self and our social self. The essential self is who you were when you were six or eight years old. What made you tick? What makes you tick now? What do you gravitate towards? What makes you smile or laugh? What are you good at? What would you think about when you're not working or having to take care of your responsibilities? What would you read? What would you watch? The social self is who you are after the world molded you. So what we all do or who we all become to be more in line with society's expectations you need a good balance of these. You can't be all one and not the other. If we were all just purely our essential selves with no social self, none of us would eat with silverware, none of us would stop at a traffic light, a lot more of us would be in prison but if we were all just our social selves and no essential selves, we'd all be depressed shells of humans so you need the essential self to be truly you and to spark joy. You need your social self in order to live in harmony with other human beings on this planet. So if you cannot find anything within your current job, or the place that you're living, or the person that you're living with that aligns with your essential, true, joyful self, then perhaps it's time to change those circumstances If there is something in your circumstances that does resonate with you, focus on that, so maybe you're in a really rural, blue-collar, hardworking town, but they have an art night once a month. Go do that if that aligns with you. Really do that. Get involved maybe you have this really corporate job, but there is an employee outreach volunteer program. Do that. Go maximize those opportunities within your circumstance that you're not finding a lot of essential self-alignment in- And maximize those little bits of pieces that really spark joy in you. Okay? So if you don't wanna change your entire circumstance, or if that's not possible right now, find something within your circumstance that lights you up and maximize it Okay, number five. Does this circumstance or situation align with my values? Number four was, does this align with my essential self? Number five is, does this align with my values? It's worth stopping and really thinking through, "What are my values?" And if you've never thought about this, you can Google list of values. Brene Brown has a great one on her website. You can look through this list of words and circle three that resonate with you. You can do this for your values at home, your values at work, your values in parenting, whatever category you want. I'm just gonna go through some words on Brene's list of values. Accountability, balance, commitment, creativity, freedom, health, humility, nature, time, truth, safety, well-being, job security, environment. All of these things are different values, and that list you're gonna look at and circle three that resonate with you. And then ask yourself, "Does the current situation that I'm in that's not giving me a lot of peace at the moment," whatever situation that is, the work situation, the location where you live, your relationship, "does this particular situation line up with my values?" If it does not, if there is nothing in there that aligns with your values, again, it's probably time to think about changing that circumstance. But it might be worth just reviewing. Let's take our job, for example. Go back and review what drew you to that job, what drew you to this career. Why did you move to this location to take this job in the first place? Do you remember? Can you identify those idealistic values and reconnect to those? If you can say, "Okay, this is why I did this. I did this because this job allowed me to live in an area with a great school district. This job allowed me to have more time with my family. This job allowed me a higher income and better benefits because my child needs more healthcare. If you can reconnect with those values and why you took that job or why you started in this career in the first place- it's gonna help you hover above all the BS of your job. You're gonna start to ignore all the gossip. You won't be as annoyed by every little email that comes through. You're gonna say to yourself, job security, benefits, I get to help people. Whatever your values are, just repeat over and over those three things when you're dealing with the small, annoying things One of my jobs was being a comprehensive ophthalmologist on Whidbey Island, a little island, outside of Seattle. When my husband was doing a two-year fellowship in Seattle, I worked on Whidbey Island, which was a whole lot of fun. And I worked with an anesthesiologist who was at the end of his career, and we were kinda reflecting on his career one day and he said, "You know, it's been a great job. I worked in this small community with a lot of variety, so we had some exciting days at work. I got to help people, and I got to work indoors." And I kinda laughed at that last one, and he's like, "No, really, my job very easily could have been a job in construction. I very easily could have been a guy that worked outside my whole life." And he said, "You know, I just see some people over time that have become less healthy because of their jobs, and I'm just really grateful that I got to work inside in less of a manual labor position all my life." Now, I'm not saying that's right for everybody, but the way that he framed his job just really made me smile. So he said, "There's a lot of variety, got to help people, I worked indoors." That helped him avoid the annoyance of, is insurance gonna cover this? We need you to do this email, course to make sure that you're, gonna get your state license renewal this year, whatever. You know all the little annoyances that go into your day-to-day work that can add up over time to just be frustrating. If you can align with those primary values that drove you to this career or this job in the first place, you can hover above the BS. But if you are finding that now, for whatever reason, this job, this career, does not align with any of your current values, then it's time to think about something new. Start to align yourself more with what's really important to you. Okay, so to review here, should I change my thoughts about a situation, or should I change the situation itself in order to feel better? Let's review the five different things to consider when making this choice. So first of all, can I even change the circumstance? If this is a circumstance that is unchangeable, you must work on your thoughts if you want to feel better. Number two, am I safe? If you are not safe, you must change your circumstances. You must move. You must leave the abusive spouse. You must leave the abusive workplace. Number three, have I looked at my own contributing behaviors? You have to look at these first, and if you are contributing in any way to the circumstance you find yourself, it is really worth spending some time on your own thoughts, feelings, and actions first before you change the circumstance. You may find that you don't need to change the circumstance once you have worked on yourself. Number four, does this align with my essential, pure, joyful self? Or is there a part of this that aligns with my essential, joyful self? If no, if there's none of this that aligns with your essential self, it's time to change your circumstances. Number five, does this align with my values? Can I reconnect with the values that drove me to get into this circumstance or situation in the first place? If I can reconnect, then by thinking more about those values, by really focusing on those values, bringing them to the forefront, it gives me less suffering 'cause I'm able to hover above the annoyances, if there's nothing within my current circumstances or current situation that does align with my current values, then it's time to change the circumstance. Okay, friends, until 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, B-E-T-H-R-E-P-P.com, hello@bethrepp.com, or Beth Repp Coaching on Facebook. And finally, the disclaimer. The content presented in this podcast is for your general information only. Reliance on the information provided here is done at your own risk. All right, everybody, have a great week, and we will see you next week for episode six.