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The "So Now What?" Podcast


I am a Fertility Survivor.  The kind you enter into treatments hoping you will never be... childless.  After several rounds of IUI and IVF, at some of the leading Fertility Centers, I was told I was no longer a candidate for fertility treatment.  It left me asking myself...

So now what?

For the years that followed, I tried to put myself back together and tell myself I would be OK, but I wasn't.  I was shattered - I felt alone and failed by the whole process and especially, my body.  I yearned for others that felt the pain I felt and someone that could help me navigate a life without a child. 

I didn't find it, so I decide to create it.  

Fast forward to today. I am still childless, but my beliefs about my life have changed.  I decided that I can create meaning and purpose in my life even though I am not a mother.  I've learned to love myself and the body I felt failed me as a woman.

If you've been on this journey, hop on and join me as we create something we were not offered.  Let's create a sisterhood for the bravest women I know.  We brush ourselves off and don't let terms like: Failed, Unexplained, Miscarriage, Not-viable or Advanced Maternal Age define us anymore.  

 

Jan 25, 2022

Why is it so hard to think ‘Positively”?

When we start to become aware of the thoughts/stories we have vs the facts, it can be easy to judge yourself.  To be embarrassed that you are thinking the thoughts you are thinking about things that are facts.  When you realize that you don’t have to think about a circumstance the way you always have or were raised or conditioned to, there's a sense of liberation.  For me a sense of rebirth.

Even knowing what I know now about thought work, I don’t know that I would have been able to be as deliberate about my thoughts in the midst of my treatment. I know there are coaches out there that do work with women while preparing for and going through treatments, I am sure they do amazing work, but I have gotten to the point in my journey that I am able to look back at all that I endured physically and emotionally and can be so grateful to my past because of what I have learned about myself through that experience.  I realize now that I can truly love and honor my past.  Without my past I couldn’t be here now. I am so proud of who I was then even though I never recognized it.

 

I found myself being judgmental of my mind for thoughts I used to think about myself and my body’s inability to conceive and produce a child; the things I believed that were causing me to feel lacking and helpless.  There’s a few early episodes in the So Now What podcast where I share very personal recollections of thoughts I had about my worthiness because I could not be a mom.  People will be like, I had no clue you thought those things or were feeling that way.  I always thought you had this amazing life. You never talked about having infertility so I just assumed you and Jack were living this awesome life and traveling and free.  It's amazing how we people perceive on thing and we are thinking and feeling the total opposite.  Are we broken and downers because we have these crappy thoughts about our circumstances and facts in our lives?

 

Your brain has evolved to survive. Its main job for the past thousands and thousands of years has been to look for danger, avoid it, and survive. 

 

Think of us crossing a street.  Living in Chicago,I don't know that I would ever run out into traffic without taking caution, but take someone that isnt used to an urban environment …not everyone would be as aware or have a mind that says, Lana you should really not cross the street until the Walk sign is lit up, so I pause at an intersection and observe the traffic 

 

All this to say, we condition our minds and bodies to think and respond according to repition and past experiences.

Neural pathways are created in our brain based on habits and behavior.   

 

Most often you may notice that when you are presented with an opportunity or experience that is out of our norm, we hesitate.  When it comes time to make a conscious, deliberate choice, our thoughts commonly go to the negative; into survival mode. 

Have you noticed that? 

 

The brain's like, 

This will never work. 

What if you aren’t successful?

Your body is broken.

You look fat. 

You're probably not going to make it. 

You are disorganized. 

 

All the negative things that your brain automatically does is because your brain is functioning properly. Your brain is programmed for negativity because it's programmed to look for what's wrong, look for danger, look for things that could kill us, and interpret most things as things that can kill us.

 So we end up running around with a lot of stress, and a lot of frustration, and a lot of fear, and a whole lot of doubt around what we are capable of.

Our brain wants us to do that because it wants to keep us alive. 

It wants us to be afraid of things outside. 

It wants us to doubt our abilities, so we don't go out and put ourselves at risk. 

 

But what that ends up doing is creating a lot of negative thinking here as the way we're encountering our circumstances. 

 

If you can imagine,  circumstances back in the way, old, caveman days we used to be much more dangerous. We needed that survival thinking all of the time, just to keep ourselves nourished, and in a pack, and alive. 

But here we are all these years later.

 

We’ve got homes with locks and alarm systems, Ring cameras to see if there is a stranger at our doors, AC. We've got transportation. We operate, in comparison, in a pretty safe environment. We get food delivered with Uber eats, doordash. We can jump in the car and go get food whenever we want. We have grocery stores. 

But our brain is still looking for danger. 

 

But you don’t need to be as cautious.  The neural pathways set in our brain spark so many thoughts that keep us from living and feeling fulness in our lives.  The good news is, you can modify that whenever you are ready.  It all starts out by noticing our thinking. 

Not to change it. 

This is where I want you to look at one of your journal prompts in the guide to Loving your life again, 

Read through your paper thinking . Spend a few minutes with your response to that prompt and just notice that certain thoughts and stories are optional and that the facts of our story are neutral so you can become aware of how powerful you really are.

 

You will start to see the effect of your thinking on their feelings, actions, and results. 

 

And once you get good at identifying your facts from your stories, you can decide, "Do I want to keep thinking this? " 

How does this thought make me feel”?

Does this thought inspire me to take action that will propel to a place or a goal I am looking to achieve?

 

our thoughts are so automatic, they don't feel like choices. In my coaching practice, I give my clients the option to send me their paper thinking if they wish.  What we have found useful is to underline all the facts and circle all the thoughts/stories.

It’s a great way to visually see the difference in the ratio between the two.  

As we become better aware of the two, oftentimes during the situation, during the circumstance you will see that you can pause and ask yourself, "Wait a minute, I'm having a thought right now." And your awareness, all of a sudden, becomes present-moment instead of just being after the fact. 

 

The more attention we give to our thoughts you will see how you can start being preventative. You can start anticipating situations, and planning your thinking, and being much more deliberate ahead of time..

 

We want to turn everything to rainbows and daisies and never encounter a down day. We have been taught  that we're supposed to be happy, that we're supposed to feel good most of the time, but that just isn’t reality.   But the gratifying opportunity I have as a coach is that I teach my clients how to become aware of their mind and aware of how much power you have when you are aware of what you're thinking and how it's affecting how you are feeling each day.  Though that awareness you will see a direct correlation through the results you are seeing in your life. And through this practice you will have the ability to love yourself and create a future that you love because you have the freedom and skill of choosing deliberately.  I venture to believe that through that you will live each day with a greater and more positive outlook.

 

If you have yet to, download The Guide to Loving Your Life again.  It’s available on my website, totally free, no strings attached at Stitchcoaching.com.

 

Have a beautiful week and remember it is never too late to discover your meaning.