Dec 28, 2022
thank you for listening to the podcast today, and if you landed on this podcast and something attracted you to it, listen to that little voice in your brain.
That is telling you that you want more from your story and that you want more from your life than to just chalk life up to being average and mediocre because you weren't able to have the family you always dreamed of. If this is your first time listening to the podcast, I wanna tell you, I come here every week.
because there are not enough people out there telling those of us with infertility who are childless that life can be better for you. There is this universal belief that those of us who couldn't have children live a life that feels empty, feels like it's average maybe at 80%, and we always have the missing piece of the puzzle.
I decided that that wasn't going to be my truth, and I went on a journey to better for myself. I wanted that person back that I used to be. I'm so glad that you're here and I want you to believe that this is possible for you too. I am no special snowflake, and there is just so much that we can achieve after going through this journey and having it not turn out with the children we always dreamed that we would have.
And one of the biggest ways I'm gonna talk about today, and it is understanding the story that you tell yourself and tell the world about you. And when I say tell the world, it doesn't mean that you have to be out there verbalizing what you went through, but what you believe about yourself and how you interpret your beliefs creates the story that you put out in the world cognitively about yourself.
How we. pay attention to that is by looking at your past and looking at your journey through fertility treatments and how do you want to use that story because that story is yours and nobody can change it or touch it but you, and you also get to decide what you're going to make your past mean about your life, and you decide whether you're going to be the hero or the victim of that story.
You don't need to change one thing that happened in your past to have your story change. You could just. Decide that this painful story that seems like we are chained to about your past does not have to have any correlation to the future. That story is completely optional, and you have the power to change that story.
I mean, this was the best news when I learned this from my coach. I was floored and I was kind of like, why? How did I not know this? Like how, how did I get this far into life after my fertility treatments failed and. Not figure out that I could change my story. So this is your day to decide that you could believe that your past has made you strong, and you can believe that it has made you capable and made you worthy.
And you can start mining today, this very day for that evidence, and you will find. and then you can retell your story in a way that ultimately serves you and it gives you thoughts that build feelings of positivity and feelings of strength and feelings that have you feel like you're thriving again, and you can be energized and feel energized again, and you don't have to take.
Part of your past with infertility and your infertility journey into your brain anymore if you don't want to, and if you find that you're thinking about your past and asking yourself why that's normal. It's normal to feel like we always have to question our past because nobody tells us that that does not have to be the way that we move into the future because you get to decide what you bring into your future, and you get to decide what you want to leave behind from your past, and you can release it forever.
That doesn't mean that you have to act like it didn't happen, but it means that you can lose the story that has you feeling like a victim. You can lose the story that has you feeling like you'll never have what the people around you have and that you'll never have fulfillment, and you'll never have joy. It's just a story that is causing you pain and the story that you're telling yourself about it can change and you can be the author of your new story and you may not be able to change how many rounds of I V F you went through, how many miscarriages you had, how many things that you tried that didn't work, but you get to change what that means about you now, and there is no work that has bigger influence on. then changing my story and what I made my infertility journey mean about me and how I want to focus on how I will move forward.
I'm gonna highly encourage that you do this practice, and I want you to sum up your past in one sentence. So it's been a minute since we've done some paper thinking. So get those journals out, ladies. And decide how do you want your past to define you? And sum it up in one sentence. And my sentence was, it made me the strong woman I am today.
Okay, so now you try it. What do you wanna believe? Without changing anything, how will you define your. , there are many thoughts that you have now that come from thoughts that you were taught in your past. So we've talked about how we acquire our belief system and the beliefs that we've had. We've, we talked about that some weeks back, and oftentimes it's just adopted beliefs that we've acquired from others.
Maybe our parents, maybe from our religion, maybe from teachers, friends. So all the thoughts that we have about our past are taught in some way, shape, or form. And these are not thoughts that you've consciously decided to think, but they're thoughts that just somehow become programmed at a very young age that women who don't have children die old alone in a nursing home.
Women that don't have children are sad. Women that don't have children are lonely. and so on, and so on and so on. So we're so used to thinking these thoughts that we don't even realize that they're there anymore, some of them are good and don't need to be changed, but there are a handful of thoughts that continuously circle in our minds that aren't serving us anymore, and we just don't realize that we have the ability. to change those thoughts. If you find yourself believing that women without children die old alone in a nursing home, that might not be helpful to you.
If you want to believe that you let your husband down because you couldn't provide him a child, that might not be helpful. Or maybe people who don't have kids don't fit in society. There's a handful of things that you might be believing and there's nothing wrong with you for believing them, you have just never considered they don't have to be true about you anymore, and maybe you adapted them from other people.
and they continuously ring true in your mind. And I want you to sit here and think about and write down what are some of the thoughts that you want to get rid of and what are some of the ones that you want to keep. So when you look at this list, it's important to know that even though these thoughts feel true, they are completely optional.
and even the good ones. Those are optional too. If we can choose any thoughts, we want to think, do we want to choose more that feel good to us or the ones that have us feeling stuck in our childlessness? Because your past does not need to equal your future, your past successes and failures. Don't predict the future successes and failures unless you wanna believe they.
and what you were taught when you were young feels true, but that's only because it's familiar to you. It's not because it is factually true.
Those of us with infertility, spend a lot of time arguing with our past without even realizing it. We believe that we should have had better luck. We believe that we don't fit in in conversations where people have kids and we don't.
We believe we're always the outsider. When you have these beliefs, they're not true. They are just things that we are adopting as our belief system. When you state the past in a factual way, you realize.
It is what it is. We have infertility. We did not have children. I was diagnosed with unexplained infertility. So every argument with your past. pretends it can win, but it never can. The past should be what the past was, and as hard as it might feel to accept that the longer we argue with the fact that we should have become moms or that we were deserving of motherhood, or that we would've been a better mom than our best friend, Susie, the more we argue with our past.
The longer we are gonna stay stuck and stay suffering and avoiding what it is that we can accomplish in our future.
When you're thinking about ways that you can consider changing your past, think about the story that you're telling and think about writing a letter to your past self and give your past self some advice, what would that advice be?
Tell the story of your. In two different ways. One where you always felt stuck and felt like an outsider because you couldn't become a mom, and one where you went on to grow and achieve and live a life that felt so fulfilling and felt so full even though you weren't a mom
and find a place in your life where. You don't have to have regret when you tell the story, and you don't have to be embarrassed and feel shameful because those feelings are not useful now. And you can change your future without feeling regret about your past and break down, break down your stories into facts only.
So if you're one of my Thrive members, you know that we talk about what a circumstances it is the facts of your story. That cannot be disputed. Anyone in a court of law would agree that those things happen to you. Those are the facts of your story. And then decide that the other things that aren't the facts are just colorful language that we tell ourselves we have to adopt as part of our story of infertility, but when we let those parts go and see that they're optional, that is where the most amazing magic happens for us. So what we're gonna do this week, is work on our past one day at a time. Do this work every single day and create a powerful practice for yourself.
And what we're gonna do is choose one significant believe that you want to change about your past and write it down. And then tell me what is the current. You have been telling yourself about this event. What are the facts of this event and what is the story you want to tell yourself about what this event means?
And from there, you can keep this event powerful and strengthening and decide what it is you want to take into your future and maybe what it is that you want to let go because the story that we create for ourselves and tell in our mind if we have never even written it.
It's really hard for us to believe it. And so when we continuously tell ourselves that our story is sad and that people feel sorry for us, and that we're the worst case scenario, then we will never have the opportunity to grow beyond that story. So this is some amazingly powerful work, and I hope that you find some opportunity to really believe that your story can feel good to you.
I love you and remember, it is never too late to discover your meeting. I'll talk to you next week.