Jan 11, 2022
Ar you searching to learn how to love your life again after infertility and IVF treatments have ended? It's something I hear so commonly from my clients, “I want to love my life again”. I know it sounds so innocent, and it sounds so helpful and healing and navigating infertility and the months and the years we've focused on having a baby can really pull us away from enjoying our life. I'm absolutely not here to tell anyone differently, because it seems as though we put our life on hold to have a baby. And this happiness meter within us just stops at our first cycle and then we get lost in the process of using cycles and retrievals and transfers and bloodwork and test results as the litmus test for our worth. It's what we form our opinion of ourselves off of and when our treatment ends, we have just this scorecard that we've used to gauge the love we have for ourselves and the love we have for our bodies. When we finish our treatments, and we’ve ended up failing fertility treatments, we've kept this as our definer for who we are and what we're worth, and how we're thinking and feeling about ourselves. We just assume that having that baby is what would give us the golden ticket to loving our lives, but it really isn't. It may seem like a useful thought to have and one that seems so true. You'll know if it's useful to you by identifying how are you feeling right now?
How are you thinking about your life?
How are you feeling about your life?
If it's not the optimal way that you want to feel, you'll know it's because of the thoughts that you are choosing, but the great news is you have the ability to choose different reasons for why you love your life. This is something I probably work on most with my clients in the beginning, is deciding that having a baby after IVF is not your golden ticket to happiness. And it certainly can't be the one thing that you use to determine if you're going to love yourself or not. By no means am I discounting the disappointment in the sadness that comes along with the inability to achieve your goal of motherhood, but you are choosing to give away the ability to love the woman you are, the strength you show each day and the 100 (actually probably 1000s) of things you've accomplished and achieved, all based on this one outcome in your life. There is absolutely a period of time we need to just grieve the loss of being a mom and the concept of being a mom and the life that we thought we would have. In my opinion, I believe it's healthy to have that grieving period, but there is an opportunity to move past that grief;we just aren't taught how. That brings me to the one question I get most from my clients and the folks that have reached out to me to identify a plan for themselves to start loving their life again is;
How can I possibly feel better?
How can I possibly love my life?
My answer is so simple, and it's 2 words: Decide to! That is it.
The amazing gift we have as humans is to choose the thoughts we want or don't want to have. It seems so basic and people hear me say “decide to” and they're kind of like, huh??? Yes, it's truly an option you have. It really is that easy and that accessible to you. We just rarely encounter people that tell us about it. Unless you're working with a life coach, we just truly don't think that we have a choice in the matter that you don't have a child and you live the rest of your life without a child and you're just doom and gloom, we have this thought in our mind that that's what our life is supposed to be like, when we fail fertility treatments. And when I started working with a coach, I was like, what? I can actually love my life after IVF I can really love a life without a child?? Yes! Yes, my love. You absolutely can. It all starts with noticing the thoughts we have in our mind. That is the core of my basis of my coaching practice and the methodology I have taught and I've been taught is causal coaching, that the thoughts we think, cause the feelings that we have. So that is the 101 in my teaching and the work I do with my clients. My clients get so good at becoming aware of the thoughts that they're having. We commonly start out in the beginning, identifying our thoughts when we're doing paper thinking or journaling. If you're new to my podcasts, paper thinking is my synonym for journaling. Once you've captured what your thoughts are, you then can get to work on deciding how those thoughts are serving you. Do they feel good when you repeat them? Your body will let you know. Understanding where you feel things in your body is such an overlooked response we have, and a nudge and a notion that we have within ourselves. That's something else that I work on a lot with my clients.
If you identify a thought, and you stand in front of a mirror, and repeat that thought to you, how are you feeling when you say it? Is there a tightness in your throat? I know for me, sometimes I'll have this feeling in my chest, like I just can't get a deep full breath. And I'm kind of talking, but my voice doesn't sound strong, it just sounds maybe a little bit weak and not purposeful. So you'll get to know by how your body feels when you repeat these thoughts to yourself.
How are you feeling? When you hear that thought? What feelings come up for you? Sometimes your thoughts are really, really sneaky little suckers. They roll through us and we just think it is what it is. It's just how we think. It's what people who don't have kids think; anyone who's been through what we have been through would absolutely think the same way that we do, but it is not true. Because I exist. I have gone from that shift of looking in the mirror and feeling like my life was gonna suck forever, because I wasn't able to have a child. But I have done so much work on myself.
It's my life's purpose to offer that to you and to the clients that I work with. We have our stories of infertility, and we have our stories of childlessness. But we decided that we didn't want to feel lost or helpless anymore. It all started with noticing what thoughts we were thinking.
Next week, I am going to help you start to identify the difference between a thought and a circumstance. If you don't know the difference, you're not alone. I had no clue myself. And a lot of times we have thoughts that we just think are facts. They're just things that happen in our life and things we go through. In next week's episode I am going to teach you something that is going to just rock your world!!!
You are going to look at your paper thinking for the week and I am going to teach you the difference between a thought and a circumstance. If you have no clue what I'm talking about, I can't wait for you to join next week. So do your paper thinking this week, just start to get curious what's coming up for you. Do not censor it, do not judge it. Never judge your paper thinking it is truly a mirror into your soul. You can write down whatever it is you're thinking and feeling, and the things that are going on for you and not have judgment. You will make so much progress and can absolutely learn to love your life again.
Before you leave me I have a huge favor to ask of you. Whether you are listening to this podcast on Apple or Spotify or Amazon, whatever you're listening to it on, would you do me the biggest favor? Would you please rate my podcast? And leave me a comment? Let me know what you think of the podcast. You know, everything these days is on algorithms and searches and all that stuff. So the more feedback people give and interact with my podcasts, so regardless, if you're listening on Apple or Spotify, or Amazon, the more interaction I have from listeners will help others find the podcast and if you found this podcast helpful to you, or a friend has recommended it, please just help me out with a feedback. I'd really appreciate it.
Have an awesome week. Never stop believing that you can discover your meaning. I can't wait to hear what you come up with in your paper thinking for this week. Have a great one. Bye