There is a new and better way to improve your emotional health. If you feel stuck. If you feel like you are at the mercy of your medication or life’s circumstances… there’s a better way. I’m sharing that with you today.
You are loved.
You are magic.
Thank you for being here.
Here’s a link to my free video course: HER NEXT STEP (joy beyond medication and therapy)
interested in SHIFT? Want a free call with EMYLEE? Grab a spot for a free call here
Find more information and Free resources HERE:
https://hernextstep.limitlessfemalecoaching.com/landing-page-her-next-step
Have a question about the program or something you want answered on the podcast? Come chat with me on instagram!
@Limitlessfemale
There is a new and better way to improve your emotional health. If you feel stuck. If you feel like you are at the mercy of your medication or life’s circumstances… there’s a better way. I’m sharing that with you today.
You are loved.
You are magic.
Thank you for being here.
Here’s a link to my free video course: HER NEXT STEP (joy beyond medication and therapy)
interested in SHIFT? Want a free call with EMYLEE? Grab a spot for a free call here
Find more information and Free resources HERE:
https://hernextstep.limitlessfemalecoaching.com/landing-page-her-next-step
Have a question about the program or something you want answered on the podcast? Come chat with me on instagram!
@Limitlessfemale
Hi, I'm Emily with the Limitless Female Podcast. You are listening to episode 129, the New and Better Way to Boost your Mood for Good Woman. Welcome. If you're a mama who is feeling all the feels of motherhood the ups and downs of hormones and maybe even depression then you are in the right place. Limitless Female is your confident inner voice, helping you master your move and create the epic life that calls you. My goal is to show you just how enough you are, so you can show up limitless in your life. Let's get started. Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1:You guys, I feel so grateful Seriously so much gratitude every time I get to get on with you. That means I've had a great day, that means I have found a way to feel good enough to not feel anxious, to not be struggling, that I can come and hang out here with you guys. Especially grateful for all the positive reviews. I love emails that tell me that I'm helping you, that you love a certain thing in a podcast or that you want to hear something. Those things motivate me. They get me so excited, especially for the tools that I teach you when I am coaching you. It changes me. It is consistently training me to be better to think about things differently. It is changing the way my brain works. I'm just so grateful for all of your guys' effort with the podcast that has allowed me to create programs to help you. So keep listening if you like it, leave a review, share it with friends and family.
Speaker 1:But today I want to talk about a new and better way. A new and better way to boost our mood. Because aren't we all just looking for that boost? I mean, isn't that why caffeine is so popular, like right? Isn't that why we love a good Dr Pepper at that three o'clock slump? Because we're looking for some energy and I know that energy for a lot of us equals a mood boost. So I want to talk about a new and better way, and it's not just better than caffeine, it's even better than that. So first we got to talk about the old way. Okay, we're going to talk about the old way that we used to try to improve our mood or that you might be still using. You might not know. There's a better way and I'm going to share that with you.
Speaker 1:I'm also going to explain to you why, when we try this new method, when we approach our mood and our mental health and depression and anything we're struggling with at a root cause level. We get long-term results. We get actual changes. We don't keep running into the same stuck points, the same triggers, and it is life-changing. It makes things feel simple and easy and approachable. We know how to approach a problem. That has been the most mind-blowing thing to me is every time my husband and I run into a problem. These tools have truly helped me to find a beginning to the problem, to find a solution, which in some problems they seem so huge that it's like where do we even begin? And sometimes we feel like we have so many problems or so many things going on in our lives we can't begin. What problem do we solve?
Speaker 1:First, I want you guys to know I am in the weeds with you. I get it. I have a crazy life. I have kids who deal with all kinds of things. My husband has a job, we have expenses, we have a home, all the things that you guys struggle with. I have been there for a lot of them, not all of them, but I definitely understand you. You are heard, you are loved. I understand you.
Speaker 1:I want to share with you guys a new and better way, and I hope that's what this podcast is giving you just a completely different way to approach loving the way you feel on a daily basis and not just like praying that tomorrow you'll feel better, but actually having the tools to create that. There are tools on this earth for you. I want to give them to you. So let's talk first about the old way. We can't talk about a better way to boost our mood without understanding your current default settings. You know, like when you get a new iPhone I know I've used this analogy before, but it's such a good one because I love a good iPhone I will never do an Android because I am not that patient. I don't have time to go learn it and make it customized, etc. Even my daughter changes my screensaver and it's like a two-second thing on my phone. I just don't have time. I don't do that. So the default settings on my iPhone are awesome. The Messages app is baked in the Gmail app is baked in the Apple Music app. There already, all I have to do is choose English and I'm set. Default settings are there for me.
Speaker 1:We love our brains default settings. We love our brains default settings because it's like our autonomonic nervous system. It keeps us breathing, but also your brain has default settings and it keeps you alive. It's what drives you to eat, it's what drives you to seek after pleasure and procreate. It's all these amazing things, but it's all about survival. Your default settings are only about survival. They're not about thriving, they're about survival. So if you feel like you're simply surviving, you might be forgetting to adjust those default settings. Those brain default settings are number one, to seek pleasure, number two to avoid pain and number three, to save energy At all costs. Your brain is going to offer you thoughts that align with that kind of a goal Life saving measures. But the old way I want to talk to you guys about, the old way we talk about life and emotional health, that kind of aligns with this.
Speaker 1:It came from our default settings and it is number one that our circumstances created our feelings. We know this is true because if you guys have ever had someone come to you and talk to you about what's hard in their life, you probably heard them say you know, my husband is driving me nuts, or like my job is wearing me out, okay, or my body weight is just creating so much depression for me, okay. If you can hear in that it's this outside circumstance that's outside of myself is creating this feeling for me. Okay. Now our default settings recognize feeling as danger because a long time ago, our primitive brain, that's where our default settings came from. So if we sensed fear, it often correlated with actual physical danger, okay, which meant we either needed to run from the tiger, fight or flight or freeze. That is our response to emotions.
Speaker 1:Now, because our brain on default says emotions mean danger. So if we traditionally think circumstances create feelings and feelings are dangerous, then we are going to avoid feelings at all costs. And we do this with both positive and what some would call negative emotions. We have put them in these categories as good emotions and bad emotions, okay, and we avoid them at all costs because emotion is dangerous. Now, nowadays, you guys, fear does not necessarily mean physical danger. It might.
Speaker 1:If you're in a car and you look over and someone's swerving across three lanes, you're gonna slam on your brakes, you're gonna feel fear and your body's going to respond very quickly, right, we like that response, but generally fear is just a feeling and does not actually indicate danger. It's not dangerous to have people have opinions of you. It's not dangerous to try something and not get it the first time. It's not dangerous to not know how to do something and step forward anyway. None of those things are actually dangerous or going to affect your long-term survival, and so it's really hard to thrive and reach goals and stop a habit when your brain is constantly telling you that you're in danger if this causes any kind of a feeling, any kind of challenging or new or unfamiliar feeling. Okay, so this is our default setting Now, because this is the way that we talk about feelings in the world, it's really challenging to change our default settings, because when somebody talks to us about something challenging in our life, they're going to say they're gonna empathize and they're gonna say, man, that sucks, like, that is crappy, no one should talk like that and we need friends like that. But if we only have friends like that, if we don't have somebody in our life or something or counseling or therapy or coaching or someone who understands that's not actually how feelings are created and number two, that feelings aren't actually dangerous then we're constantly gonna reinforce this idea that things, circumstances, create feelings. Okay, and feelings are dangerous. This is the old way Now.
Speaker 1:Typically, the way that we have treated this is with five different things okay. Medication, positive thinking, focusing on emotions, only doing more like just getting to work, taking action and trying to achieve results. Now I have to give a disclaimer that I personally do take medication and I'm so grateful for it. At some point in my life and at different times, it has been the thing that has gotten me to a place where then I could take further action to feel better or then I could actually advocate for myself. Okay, and I am not a doctor, this is not medical advice, this is just my personal experience and my research.
Speaker 1:But we have to question the efficacy of medication. Now, this doesn't mean you don't try it at all, and it also doesn't mean that if you've tried it for 10 days, you know it doesn't work, right. That's why we get to manage our mind and really figure out what are the actual facts. Does nothing work for me, or have I just not given it a fair shot? Do I just not understand it? But I think sometimes, when we pay attention to how much depression has gone up and also medication use has gone up, you know it begs the question is this really effective? Are we really improving our emotional health with medication alone? Okay? Is it really working with the masses, okay, or are we just continuing to try the same thing? Maybe it needs to be used with conjunction to other things, maybe not at all for you, right, but that's up to you. But I just want you guys to question the efficacy, like how well is it actually working?
Speaker 1:I'm reading a book called the Awakened Brain by PhD Lisa Miller. In her book she talks about the efficacy of SSRIs and she says that while they improve the symptoms of low mood, they don't treat the root cause of distress that it's failing to heal us. She also goes on to say that, despite the fact that only half of treated patients see a disappearance of symptoms within a year of seeking treatment, more and more people are medicated for mental illness. She states that one in 10 Americans age middle school to adult are on medication for depression, and this rate is even higher for middle-aged women. She says 23%, so almost a quarter of women age 40 to 59 are on antidepressants. Now, while that is surprising and overwhelming, what was crazier to me is that two thirds of people on antidepressants do not actually meet the criteria for a mental health disorder. This is obviously from her study, her research and that book, the Awakened Brain, but I just thought that was fascinating.
Speaker 1:She talked about how, in the DSM-5, which is the statistic manual of mental disorders, that when two qualified practitioners diagnose somebody with similar symptoms or the same person in separate circumstances, they will get different diagnoses 70% of the time when it comes to depression. So that has always been something that bothered me is that it's such a subjective way to diagnose depression and then when we go about it with medication that's not really targeted, it's not targeted to you specifically and we're only treating the symptom and not the root cause. That bothered me, especially the fact that we don't talk about that a lot. We think that we're treating our depression when actually we're just covering the symptoms until the root cause shifts or becomes stronger and all of a sudden our symptoms are stronger than the medication and we have to try something else. So I am really interested, like Lisa Miller, in treating the root cause and while there are several or many, the one that I can help you with is the way your brain interprets the world, and I feel like this has a huge impact on situational depression.
Speaker 1:Personally, I experienced chronic depression and the model and these tools and coaching has massively improved my mood and allowed me to advocate for myself in many of the physiological root causes that affect my mood, but also in situational depression, because, obviously, if it's situational, it's because of the way we feel when we experience that circumstance. Now, if we don't understand the new way, then we just think we have to feel a certain way when that circumstance comes up. How can you not feel overwhelmed when your child is struggling? How can you not feel defeated when you are in debt with $80,000? How can you not feel sad when you have a loss in the family, right? So, if you think that circumstance is create your feelings, it is often a very hopeless place, which is why I think situational depression is so prevalent and why I think we really need to hit the root cause, especially since, from this research, it doesn't look like it's being as effective.
Speaker 1:So this is just. I'm just offering you information. Like I said again, I'm not a doctor, but these facts, these things have really enticed me to be like okay, we need to look at mental and emotional health in a new way. We need to be treating it at the root level. We need to be figuring out what's happening in our body, what's happening in our gut. What about inflammation? What about external chemicals in our life, like, let's figure out what is the root cause of depression, individually per person, but all along the way, we can treat everyone's thoughts. It doesn't matter if your root causes inflammation. I promise you a huge chunk of how you feel anybody, whether you have depression or not is because of the way you are thinking. Okay Now, because we just talked about thinking, I want to go on to the next way that we choose to approach our mood, which is positive thinking. Okay, that's not what this is. That is also the old way.
Speaker 1:Positive thinking is when we just slap a positive thought onto what we consider to be a negative circumstance. Okay, still kind of stuck right, because it's really that feeling of holding a beach ball underwater and the pressure building because you can only think of positive thought about something that's bad for so long. Right, it's challenging to keep doing that. It's like when it becomes too much, it's like no, no, no, I can't do this, I can't think positively about this. This is just too, this is too big, this is too sad, this is too hard. You know, this circumstance is definitely too negative to think something positive about and if you've ever thought a positive thought about what you consider to be just a negative situation, you will continue to be triggered over and over and over. That's how you know that you are just using positive thinking rather than looking at the circumstance and choosing your thinking intentionally, which I'm going to talk about later. But that is the new way, right?
Speaker 1:Another way that you know we treat emotional health where there's a better way is that we currently, sometimes we just focus on the emotions. Okay, we just talk about how we're feeling, we just focus on feeling better. We just talk about the negative emotions and we try to get them off of our chest and express them, hoping that once we've expressed them, we can move on. But there there's missing pieces. There it doesn't work. It's not long term and it doesn't stop those emotions from coming up again. It just is really like coping tools. It's the ability to express yourself really does minimize a negative emotion, but it doesn't stop it from coming up over and over and over again when the same situation happens to you.
Speaker 1:Okay, the next way that most of us approach this idea that circumstance create our feelings and feelings aren't bad is that we try to take action, to hustle, to do more, to show up anyway, have you guys heard people say that I feel like that's like bro marketing. Like, if I see a program on Facebook being sold, that's like you know, just hustle. Like, just just do it. Or like, uh, you know a different coaching strategy telling you, like you know, just get up, just you know, mind over mattress. Or like they're, they're good thoughts, right, they're better than the alternative, but they're not the best.
Speaker 1:Okay, showing up in opposition to how you feel feels crappy. Okay, because this is the only place I use words like crap. I don't say those words in my real life. So, once you guys know you get the wild side of me. Okay, this is like you guys get the raw cool. This is the coolest side of me, okay. So, if you thought I was cool before, okay, this is where it gets really cool. But no, you know, when we take action, despite our emotions, so we don't we don't have an emotion that's like driving us. Instead, we're like I feel really terrible about myself, but I'm just going to go show up anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a time and a place for that, but it's not a long-term solution, which is what we're talking about here. All these other ways they might work, but they're short-term or they're coping mechanisms Okay. So again, that's like holding a beach ball underwater. How long can you keep you know on your food plan? Or can you not yell at your kids when all the while you're feeling extremely frustrated? Or with food, you're feeling extremely deprived. You can only do it so long and then you're like I don't wanna feel like this any longer, deprived, and you're going to go binge eat. Or I don't wanna feel frustrated any longer. I need to release this emotion. I'm going to yell.
Speaker 1:So again, it's a short-term solution and the final one that I think we do is that we try to create results first. So if we think our circumstances create our feelings and again, we don't wanna feel negative emotion, we wanna feel positive emotion. It's kind of like the action one, but it's not just taking action to take action, and even the action doesn't make us feel good. We're like, even though I got up and I went for a run, I'm still unhappy. But as soon as I lose the weight right, as soon as I get the results I want, then I know that I'll finally feel like it works and that it's worth it to work out daily, and then I'll finally feel better about myself, or once I have a clean house, I can finally feel organized and peaceful in my home. Like I said, none of these things are terrible.
Speaker 1:Cleaning your home to help get some like declutter your brain, it's a good strategy, it's a coping mechanism, but it's not long-term, because might you run into a situation where you can't keep your home clean? Isn't it true that laundry never is done Right like? Isn't it true that the dishes will never be done all the way? And so this is what I hear from my moms that I coach is that it feels like it's never ending, because it isn't y'all. That's true. The dishes will always need to get cleaned right.
Speaker 1:So I don't just want you to think a positive thought. I don't want you to think that when the dishes are done, you can finally feel better because some things will never be done, okay. I also don't want you to think that when I achieve this goal, I'll finally feel good about myself, because it's just not the case. If you think that circumstances create your feelings and you change the circumstance right and you complete a goal, circumstances don't create your feelings. So, even though you've created your, you've changed your results and you've now completed your goal and you've worked out every day and you've lost the weight, your brain will come with you and it will choose the same thought it was thinking before, which is you're not enough until you X, y, z. You're just not enough without something else. Okay. So, even though you've lost the weight, your brain would be like, yeah, but look at this other thing that you haven't completed in your life. Okay. So these are all short-term strategies. They're the old way of boosting your mood. They're not long-term strategies and while they're okay, there's a better way. Y'all, there's a better way, and I'm talking about raising your happiness.
Speaker 1:Set point. I did not coin this phrase, but I am obsessed with it. I want you guys to consider that your happiness is a temperature in your body. Let's say, currently your happiness is like a 70 degrees. Okay, and something good might happen. You might feel good for a little bit. You might go up to like a good 78 degrees, get a little warmer, okay, but your thermostat is set at 70 degrees, so that's like your default settings, and it's gonna pull you back down to 70 degrees, okay, I mean. The same goes for things that are hard. Right. You might experience something that's challenging and your temperature might drop to 60 degrees, but then your default settings will probably bring you back up to a 68 or a 70 again, because that's where your temperature is set at, that's what your default settings are familiar. Those are thoughts you're really well-practiced at thinking about. Survival, default settings and your temperature can be about those thoughts you're well-practiced at thinking that are all about survival. But you guys did you know?
Speaker 1:You can raise your happiness temperature, your happiness set point, and we do this because circumstances do not create your feelings.
Speaker 1:In fact, circumstances have no bearing on your feelings. It's just that we have thoughts. We make a circumstance mean something so quickly, so quickly that we don't recognize that there is a thought before every feeling. Anytime a situation happens, you make it mean something, you apply meaning to it which creates an emotion for you. Okay, and if you don't know that, it's because you haven't been looking for it, you haven't been paying attention, which is the first and biggest way to raise your happiness set point, which is awareness. What are you making it mean when someone says X, y, z? What are you making it mean? Because that literally creates a chemical reaction which creates a feeling in your body. Okay. So, understanding that circumstances don't create feelings but in fact, they're neutral. They don't have a bearing on your feelings, which means they don't have a bearing on your results.
Speaker 1:Okay, and the best thing I can tell you is that when we raise your happiness set point in my shift membership we work on five main areas that kind of are the opposite of those five ways that we used to try to approach mental health. Okay, which is number one, that facts are harmless. I'm literally going to give you awareness and show you how your husband's struggle at work or your husband's pornography addiction is not hurting you. Okay, this is an empowering thing, because you don't have to wait for him to change, for you to feel better or feel however you wanna feel. Whatever. That empowered emotion is okay. You don't have to live in a world where bad things or challenging things aren't happening outside of you, because facts are not harmless. You know that the facts are not affecting your feelings, and we know this y'all because. Number one if you don't know, something bad has happened, do you feel an emotion yet? No, you have to first know. Your brain has to first have a thought about it. Also, you might have noticed that other people have different feelings about the exact same fact. Okay. So we know that facts are harmless.
Speaker 1:The second thing we focus on when we're trying to raise our happiness set point is free thinking that thoughts are not facts, they are optional. So when you have a thought like if your husband is struggling with pornography and you have a thought like you know, this means he doesn't respect me, okay, or I'm stuck in this marriage, or whatever that thought is, that that thought is optional. You may choose to still think it, but what a powerful thing to know that that thought is not a fact. Right, if I know other people think about it in a different way, I want to know what they're thinking. Here's an example of free thinking.
Speaker 1:Y'all, sometimes, you know I don't morally I don't believe in sex before marriage, but I know what happens. I know it's a choice a lot of us make, either intentionally or not intentionally. Right, whether you consider it a sin or not, it is a choice that some of us will make because we are here to make choices. It's agency right, it's the most amazing gift we have. So sometimes I like to watch the way parents think about their kids when they always assume their kids would have sex before marriage, like it was never something they taught in their household. Okay, I like to watch the way because they're so peaceful when their kids tell them hey, mom, you know I was intimate with my boyfriend and I want to talk to you about it and the parents are so calm. And you know what I want to know. If there's free thinking, what is she thinking? That I might not be thinking if my child came to me and said that, right, because she doesn't seem like she's feeling fear, which probably wouldn't serve me. She doesn't seem like she's feeling anger, which I don't want to feel. She doesn't seem like she's feeling disappointed, which I don't want to feel disappointed. When my child chooses agency, makes a choice that they will learn and grow from, I don't want to feel disappointed because the truth is, I assume my kids will make choices, just like I did, and the real important part is what they think about that choice. What did they learn from it? Who did they become because of it? Because that's the point, okay. So free thinking is so powerful and just showing you what optional thoughts are or what you are currently thinking is massive.
Speaker 1:The third area we focus on is clean emotion. Okay, experiencing emotion, those primary emotions like sadness, like love, like I've had a hard time thinking of another one. But most emotions we experience are because of suffering we create, because of the way we think about our feelings, like I shouldn't be feeling this way or I should feel better by now, or something has gone wrong in my life and we create these secondary emotions Like now I'm not just sad, now I'm frustrated that I'm still sad, right. Or I don't want to feel sad, so now I'm angry at the person that I'm putting blame on them. So really understanding how to stay in this clean emotion that moves us through, like grief, rather than a dirty pain and emotion which keeps us stuck. The fourth area is how to get moving. Okay, how to take action from an emotion that propels you and you stay there. Not action instead of your emotion, but create an emotion and then get moving. And then the last area is control over your life and your outcomes. It's huge.
Speaker 1:Now, why does this? What happens when you raise your happiness set point? When you learn these things, your brain changes. The default settings change because you have well-practiced, new, empowering thoughts that will serve you. So now, instead of your happiness temperature set at 70 degrees, your temperature raises to like 85. So, yes, you are going to experience the full range of emotions, except for your brain is constantly going to pull you back to this 85 degrees. Now, if you look around, you will see people all around you with different happiness set points. I know it.
Speaker 1:One time I knocked on a apartment door thinking it was my sister's apartment. It was not. It was terrifying. I've never seen somebody so angry with me. She had her towel on and robe. I understand. I got her out of the shower. I thought it was my sister, but she was like cursing at me and she was like what are you doing? Get off my porch and screaming and I was thinking I honestly just felt sad for her because how sad that she was already at a place emotionally where getting a knock on the door just propelled her into complete pranks, blind rage. Okay, she must have already been at like a 40 degree set point.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying and you'll see other people who are at a 90 degree set point and they experience really hard things and Yet they move through them. I see people like this in third world countries, people my husband taught on his mission in Argentina. I see this with you know people who are amazing, who are doing amazing things, who come from a really challenging background or childhood. They've learned this skill and they've raised their happiness set point and so things that might you know, we really challenging for us. They're challenging for them, but they pop right back into this really empowered, joyful, effective, loving state.
Speaker 1:Okay, so this is why Coaching is a long-term solution. And I'm not talking about long term like you got to be coached forever. No, I'm talking about we're gonna give you tools that are like maintenance tools. I'm talking about a hammer and a screwdriver that you have in your garage because you will always need Maintenance, you will always run into things, but you'll apply those tools and You'll just fix something up and you'll be right back at your happiness set point. You will still experience the full range of emotions. You'll still experience sadness and grief and heartache and joy and excitement and motivation and Overwhelming shame, I promise, because that's the full experience of being a human. But it will not be the low it is now. You will always be pulled right back up to that 85 and if you experience a win, you'll go up to like a 95. But when your body's like, oh, this feeling is uncomfortable and you go to sabotage your win, you'll need to sabotage it back to an 85, because that's where your brain, your default settings, are now set up. Okay, that is the long-term new way. Okay, it is understanding that your circumstances are followed by a thought. You make it mean something which creates your feelings, and feelings aren't dangerous, okay.
Speaker 1:So if you guys love this episode, which I love so much, it's so good. Leave a review, share it with a friend. I love Looking at emotional health in a new way, treating the root cause, giving you long-term solutions and tools. And, yeah, I'll leave a link in the description for a free class that I have. It's called joy, beyond medication and therapy. Her next step, basically, it's this it's I'm gonna give you long-term maintenance tools that go beyond maybe a tool you've already used, like medication or therapy.
Speaker 1:Right, we can. We never have too many tools. My, I know that's true for my husband. We just keep getting tools. His dad sends us tools. I love it, we love it. Okay, so you can't have too many tools. Okay, click the link. Get the free course. It's amazing, it's quick. It's like three really quick videos, but it's going to give you, you know, another deep dive into this and also some access to me. So I love you guys. Have a beautiful week and just know that you're loved. You matter. I'm glad you're here. All right, you guys talk next week. Bye, bye. If you have questions about anything you've learned here on the podcast or want help with something going on in your own life, hop on a free coaching call with me. In just 30 minutes You'll have real tools for your unique situation. Go to limitlessfemalecoachingcom. Forward slash work with me, or you can find a link in the show notes below. Spots are limited, so grab one before you miss it.