Ep. 4 The Blahs

Elevate the Individual - Episode 4 Transcript

This is Lacey Jones. And this is episode four, the Blahs for the Lacey Jones Coaching podcast. I am so excited to be talking about the Blahs today. Kind of a funny word, but when you hear it, you just kind of know you most likely have experienced if you're human, right? You probably have experienced times where you have just felt blah in life, right? So I want to dive into that. And as we dive in, I kind of want to go over some of my goals for the summer that we've had for our family and for myself. I really have wanted to be a little bit more adventurous with my kids, more so than I have in the past. And part of the reason for building my own coaching practice versus working a corporate job has been to build in more flexibility for our summer schedule while the kids are home and in my space, that kind of thing. So this summer, we've tried to commit to and plan for activities that take us outdoors. And we just got home from a mom and kid camping trip just an overnighter with some of our friends. And thankfully, my kids have some wonderful, amazing friends, and they just so happen to have even more amazing mothers. And so, side note, if you happen to meet a mom of a teenager, I need you to give them a hug. I need you to tell them that they are awesome and that their kid is going to be okay. And maybe if you're super awesome, you can throw a favorite snack at them while you're at it. And if you are a mom of a teenager or a preteen or even like a young adult, I want you to know that you are awesome. Your kid is going to be okay. You are going to be okay. I need you to keep being you, keep learning, keep growing, and take a nap if you need to, right? But do not give up. Okay? So back to this mom and kid adventure. At one point, we had taken the kids down to the lake where we were staying so that they could swim and paddle around in the canoes and kayaks. And they eventually found their way to this rope swing, and they were all pretty excited to go on it. And the rope swing, it really isn't a swing. It's a rope, right? So it's suspended between two poles over this deep water. There's a couple of knots in it to make it easier to grip onto. And in order to ride on the rope swing, one person has to be in the water and has to kind of fling it up to the person who wants to ride on the rope. And they're standing on a platform waiting to jump. And it kind of takes several attempts to fling that rope up there, but the kid finally catches it and gets ready to jump off the platform. And this platform is just kind of a wood platform with a couple of steps going up to where you're going to jump off from. And it's not that high above ground level when you walk onto it from the dirt path, but once you're on it, it's a totally different feeling when you're standing there and you're looking down at the water, right? It kind of drops off into the water and it's just a completely different view from my comfort zone, which so happens to be on that dirt path 10ft away from the platform in the shade of a tree. But for the kid who has already conquered the initial fear of jumping off that platform with rope in hand, they don't really require much nudging from their friends to jump. But those who haven't ever jumped, they quickly lose their enthusiasm and they jog over to that swing. They hop up on the platform and then I'm like, okay, no. And they're going to have to conquer their fears, really, to make this happen while their friends are in the water just goading them to jump. Now, one particular child was so excited to jump, but once he got on that platform, it was a totally different story. His friends tried everything to encourage him, to cheer him on, and he was just taking his time to gather his courage and nothing was helping. Peer pressure was not working. And it wasn't until someone finally said, okay, on the count of 3123, that he finally jumped, right? And he swung out and he flailed into the water and he popped back up and he wanted to do it all over again. Well, how many times in life are we like this? We get all excited to do something, we pump ourselves up on our way to do the thing. And from our initial perspective, it looks relatively easy, or at least pretty doable. But then once we step up to that platform, reality quickly shows us a very different perspective and we come face to face with all the challenges we've had to overcome to complete the task. And all of our insecurities, right? And our fears just come swirling right at us. Well, sometimes while standing there on that platform, we don't jump. And we decide that the fear and the challenge of the unknown isn't worth conquering. And we turn to other activities that kind of buffer us away from having to feel those strong emotions, right? But they also buffer us and hold us back and keep us away from completing that challenge. And rather than facing the unknowns and processing the fear, sometimes we just kind of stuff down those emotions and we seek other activities and we layer on more emotions, right? And then the thoughts of failure come in, and sometimes we can feel ashamed for wanting to try something. And maybe if we've been public about it and then failing, well, when those emotions creep in and we don't want to feel those emotions and those new layer of emotions, we can continue to seek and consume other activities that mask the emotions, but they don't actually take them away. So we now have this situation where we've consumed and consumed and consumed and we repressed and suppressed emotions that really need to be released. And we've kind of set ourselves back to a place where we don't know how to regroup and move towards our goals again. And it can kind of just leave us with this feeling of blah, right? Have you ever had a case of the Blas or spent a full week feeling like each new day was a Monday and in this case, Monday would be not your favorite day? I know some people believe they've done the thought work right to make Monday this the most amazing day. But Monday kind of has this joke about it, right? That right. Got a case of the blahs or a case of the Mondays? Well, let me just tell you, you are in good company. And today my goal is to help you process those blahs and to move through them and start working towards your goals once again. So I'm going to pose a series of questions as we move through this podcast today. And you might want pen and paper to write them down. I know I've encouraged you to be listening to or not excuse me, not listening to something. I want you to be listening to this podcast while you're listening to the podcast. What I was trying to say there is I want you to be maybe doing something or an activity or creating something while you listen to kind of help cement what you're hearing. I find that that helps in our knowledge retention. But I do want you maybe to have a pen and paper so that you can write down some of the questions I'm going to pose throughout this podcast. So question number one, what are the blaws? Now, this is for you. How would you define them if you were describing them to someone else? Okay, so for me, when I try to define the blaws, it's more of a description of how I feel. I find myself like, slumping my shoulders and just releasing this defeated sigh and just moving really slow, feeling sluggish, kind of. If I had to put a color to it, I would put it like this grayish brown mucky color, right when you're trying to clean the paint trays and all the colors have mixed together. Well, if I had to put the Bloss on a continuum of emotions, hopelessness would be like on one end. I would say it'd be on the left hand side and excitement and energy would be on the far right. Well, the Blas, they'd be kind of in the middle and maybe moving more towards left of center between that hopelessness and excitement, just kind of where you're stuck in the mud so think about that one for yourself. What two emotions would you put on each end of the continuum? And then where would you put the blahs between those two emotions? And the interesting thing with emotions is that everyone experiences them in a slightly different way. So when I kind of gave my little bit of a description of the Blas, did it resonate with you? Or you're like, no, they're not murky brown. They're like beautiful orange, vibrant colors. I don't know. Maybe someone thinks that about the Blas, everyone's going to be different. But continuums as we describe emotions can be really helpful for me to organize my thoughts around those emotions and kind of that sliding scale that we experience between any two emotions. And I wanted to Google continuum to make sure that I was using it correctly that term. And according to Google, the definition of continuum is a continuous sequence in which adjacent elements are not perceptibly different from each other, although the two extremes are quite distinct. So if we are looking at a continuum of emotions, we can step side to side on that continuum with a slight amount of change and not notice a huge difference in our emotions and feelings. But as we progress towards one end or the other and a specific emotion through those several steps, we can really start to see a difference in the two opposing emotions. So that's one continuum I want you to kind of chew on and ponder on. Another one I want you to consider as we talk about the Blas, is the continuum of creation. On the far right side of this continuum, we have creation, and on the opposing end of the continuum, we have consumption. Now we live in a world that is all about consumption, right? Think about how much access you and your children have to information and entertainment with just your cell phone. You're probably listening to this podcast on your cell phone. I may or may not have met you. We may or may not live in the same city, same state. Who knows, right? We've had other people listen to the podcast that aren't even in the country, and yet they've heard me and they've consumed something I produced and created. So we have this we know this about our cell phones, right? It's just an amazing amount of information in the palm of our hand and connection to other people. Well, we can easily binge TV shows, right, and movies and podcasts and books and live streams of events on the other side of the world and hours of news channels and updates. I'm sure most of us have binged consumed some sort of media. But have you ever stopped to think about the world of creation that we live in? It has never been easier to start a new hobby, maybe to test out a new recipe, build a new entertainment center or start a new business, right? That's what I'm doing right now. I am creating the foundation of my business and oh boy, I have had access to resources and resources and resources, and I should do this and I should do that, and I should do that, right? I've had to put a filter on. I should be looking at this and this and this and just say there's just a lot of information out there. Well, if we have the desire to create, the resources are there. And one of my all time favorite quotes is by Dieter F. Ukdorf. Now, if I had a storefront, because I've thought about this before in my different adventures, if I had a storefront, this would be big message vinyl on the wall in our creative space. And it says, well, first I should tell you it's from his talk titled Happiness Your Heritage. Here's what he says the desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before. And at times it's really easy to identify the desire we have to create and what it is we want to create, much like it was for the kids who eagerly hustled their way to that rope swing platform, they knew what they wanted. But some days we get to the platform and our eagerness quickly fades on our desires to create. As I kind of mentioned before, even before we see what needs to be created, right? So this platform of creation and the different perspectives we have on it, when we tend to lose that eagerness, it can be really easy to slip our way down that creation continuum down to more and more consumption, until we completely stop creating and we find ourselves on the far left in a state of full consumption. Kind of that full overload where that's all we're doing. Now, I want you to think about how you feel when you're in a state of full creation versus a state of full on consumption. Do the blahs start to kick in or have you moved past that into a more maybe depressed state? Now, as I mentioned, depression and that sort of thing, we're not talking about clinical depression. We're just talking about moving past the blahs into a little bit more. So I want you to first consider creation mode. How do you feel when you are in creation mode? For me, I feel energized. You might be able to hear it in my voice as I create this podcast. I've got to sit and write this thing. I've got to put my thoughts on paper. I've got to make sense of them. I've got to figure out how to communicate them and have them make sense. Sometimes they do make sense, sometimes they don't. I've got to tweak it. I've got to rethink it, but it provides a little bit of energy for me and then also when I'm creating, I feel confident, I feel smart, I feel capable. Occasionally, as question marks come in along the process, I may lose a little bit of confidence or wondering if I can do it. But for the most part, that creation mode is fun for me. I dig it. I love it. Now let's swing it the other way. As we tiptoe away from creation mode and into consumption mode, we may feel joy and pleasure and love and excitement. But when we start to move further and further away from creation for a longer period of time and progress towards consumption, we can start to feel sluggish and those blahs, they just start to kick in. So what we've done now is we've kind of overlapped these two continuums, and as we continue to consume and move away from creation, we open ourselves up for this feeling of blawness. I don't know if that's a word or not, but I'm going to say it, and I've never been grammatically correct, right? So it is what it is. And as we experience this blawnness and we begin to buffer with more and more consumption, so how do we transition out of this state of consumption and move towards creation again? Well, if you think back to that kid who was trying to jump off the platform with the rope swing, what got him to jump? I mentioned there was a really healthy dose of peer pressure, but that wasn't what really pushed him to jump. It was a deadline. One of his friends said, on the count of three, you jump. One, two, three, and he jumped. He knew he wanted to conquer the challenge, right? And a time frame was put into place and he honored the deadline. Well, what if you do the same in your creation process? So I want you to take a quick assessment of yourself on the creation continuum. Are you leaning more towards consumption, like, more so than you want to be? And if you are, what's one thing that you can create to start moving yourself one step closer to the creation end? And in what time frame will you complete that next step of creation? And how will you honor that deadline? Okay, just as a quick side note, I have really tried to get myself to show up more consistently in the content that I provide for my coaching business. This podcast is an exercise in that it's something I want to create. My deadline to have it published, available for everyone is Wednesday. Now, I'm going to tell you, it is my time. 08:00. It's on 08:12 p.m. My time on Wednesday evening. We've got appointments, right? We've been out of town camping. We came back. We've got doctor's appointments and orthodontist appointments and vision appointments for the kids today. We've had church activities. We have a family gathering. To be really transparent, I'm sitting in my in laws spare bedroom recording this podcast. Everyone else is outside having fun, having s'mores. Yada. Yada. Yada. Right? And I was speaking with my husband about this. I'm like, I want to go get this recorded. I want to honor that deadline. He's like, Why don't you just tell him, hey, this is the joy of owning your own business. You can choose when it's time to be with family. You can choose to post something a day late. And I say, yeah, I really can. That would be 100% okay. But I'm really playing with this concept of a deadline because I want to be more consistent in what I create and I really want to hold myself to it. So that's where I'm at. That's why this podcast is happening right now. Now, what thoughts might be keeping you stuck in any of these phases where maybe you're not creating? And are there any thoughts that come up for you about setting a time frame, about honoring that deadline? I just shared some of my thoughts about honoring the deadline that I am choosing right now and working with and testing out. So as you test those out, notice if you start feeling different emotions as you start to create, write down your thoughts along the way. Is anything changing for you? Now, I've mentioned before that one of the purposes for my coaching is to help mothers improve their own mental health so that they can then help their children to build and develop their mental health. And then those kids can go out into the world as mentally and emotionally healthy individuals and have a greater and more positive impact on society and then we all win. Yay. Right. Well, as you start to understand this continuum of creation and consumption and how it affects you, talk about it with your kids and those around you or the youth that you're responsible for. Encourage them to discover how they feel when they are consuming versus when they are creating. I think this is such a valuable lesson for teenagers right now. They have those phone, those stinky phones, right? I sound like an old person when I complain about the cell phones. And teenagers, they have it in the palm of their hands. They haven't really ever known a time, some teenagers maybe, but they haven't really known a time when they haven't had access to streaming, know internet. They haven't dealt with dial up Internet and instant messenger on Yahoo and waiting for your friend to hop on the other end of that. So talk to them about it. Talk to them about consuming and creating and do they see a difference? How do they feel when they're consuming? How do they feel when they're creating and offer ways that they can create in their life. Maybe they can develop a talent that they have or try out a new talent. Or maybe they can create order by organizing their closet and making their bed. Do they like cooking? Ask them how they feel when they take all of those ingredients and bake them into cookies versus how they feel when they take all those ingredients and consume them or consume an excessive amount of cookies. Now, something to keep in mind is that everyone will have their own definition of what is the right amount and what is excessive. We can seek outside input, but ultimately, it's up to us to decide what is best for ourselves, right? Not our neighbor, our sisters, our best friend, or our mom. This is a decision that we get to make for ourselves. So, my friend, what will you create today? And how will you set aside the time to create? How will you commit to that creation time? And how will you process the natural change in emotions that comes as you get closer to creating? When your perspective on the amount of time and mental energy and physical energy necessary to create those things changes, how are you going to use deadlines to move you forward on the continuum of creation? Now, remember, as our good friend Dieter has said, the desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before. Take the time to create. My friends, on the count of 3123, I'll see you next weekend.