Hey, my friend, what's up, and welcome back to another episode of Do Life Big. I am so excited to have you here today. Today's episode is going to be a real good one. We're going to be talking all about how sometimes we can unintentionally sabotage our own happiness, and it's just something of human nature, and how we can actually break ourselves out of this cycle. Because let's just be honest, if we're sabotaging our own happiness, it doesn't make us feel good. We're filled with tons of anxiety and stress and overwhelm and frustration. And so we want to be able to work through this.
So, today's podcast episode is going to be all about that. So obviously, listen, the goal isn't to obviously be happy all of the time because we're just only human. And we're all going to experience those higher highs and the low lows and everything in between, right? But sometimes we can do this sneaky little thing where we can over-exaggerate the little things. And when we do this, it just robs us of our joy and fulfillment. And really, just being able to experience that happiness that we all deserve, right? And we exaggerate in a massive way in order to feel a certain type of emotion. That's really why we do it. We do it unintentionally. It's all subconsciously. But it could either be because we're looking for some kind of connection. Or maybe we want someone to have empathy towards us, or sympathy, or whatever it is. But it's a subconscious way for us to feel a certain feeling.
And sometimes, like making this little teeny, tiny little thing into this massive problem. Or we wake up right in the morning, and something inconvenient happens; some kind of curveball is thrown your way. And now we have it in our mind that, you know what, today is gonna suck today is going to be a bad day, I can just tell by the way that it happened just from that one teeny tiny little thing that happened. I'll give you a good example here. It's kind of like, you know, imagine that you're, you know, you wake up in the morning, completely. Without your alarm going off, it just didn't go off for some reason that did not go off. And you'd like to get up extra early in the morning. So that way, you can get everything ready for the kids for school or whatever it is that you want to do. And you get to do your thing, get ready for the day.
And maybe you want to have your cup of coffee, and you just want your morning to start off that way. Because you like to have this routine, and you don't like to be rushed, and you don't want to feel rushed. But now, all of a sudden, your alarm didn't go off. And you just all of a sudden wake up on your own. And you look over, and you look at your clock, or you look at your watch or your phone, and you're like crap, like we have to be out the door with the kids in like 20 minutes, right? So now you're running around the house like a chicken with your head cut off right you like fly out of bed 100 miles an hour, you're running into the kitchen, you're, you know, going into the kitchen, getting all the lunches packed up and filling up all the water bottles for school, you're blending your shake that you take with you out the door every single morning. And now, because you're in such a freakin rush, you spill your shake, it literally goes all over the place, goes all over your clothes. So then you have to run back to your closet, put on new clothes and in the meantime, your husband comes around the corner, and you know he didn't even do anything wrong, but he's just looking at you, and you don't like the way he's looking at you. So you immediately just kind of snap at him and give him an attitude for no apparent reason. He's just like a big a-hole right now; he's not doing anything wrong. You finally get everything ready. You're all packed up. You have your new outfit on you have a new shake blended. You get all the kids into the car, you strap all the kids in, you get the little one into the into the car seat, and you're finally out the driveway, only to be stuck behind the slow whist driver in the world. And you're like, are you kidding me? Lady, like, come the freak on like, push the pedal on the gas like I've got to drop the kids off at school like we are late here, right? And now, because of this crazy 10 to 50 in a minute chaotic start to your morning, you have made the decision that today is going to be horrible, it is going to be a bad day, everything about it is going to suck. And you know how that works, right? Because whatever you look for, you're going to find. So then, now you start noticing all these other little things that are going wrong throughout your day. And now you can feel that your mood is off, right? You're anxious, you're annoyed, you're frustrated, you're all wound up. And it's kind of coming across now to the other people that you're talking to and hanging out with throughout your day, whether it's at work, or you know, it's with your business, or whatever it is, and they can feel it. And they can hear the tone in your voice, right? Have you ever had one of those mornings or one of those days?
And listen, these things I want to tell you, they're gonna happen. 1,000%. So if you're someone who has had this happen, or something similar happen, where you've turned this tiny little thing into, like, the whole day is going to be horrible. Listen, you're only human. We all do it. But you're sometimes going to make those bad five minutes turn into something a little more, okay, fine. Or you're going to make that one conversation that someone had with you that you might, you know, blow it up into something way more than necessary. All these things it's all human nature. We've all done it. But it's something that we can work on. It's something that we can catch. It's something that we can become more aware of. And we can get better at this. And when it starts to become a bigger problem is when we start having this affect us for like months on end, or like for a year, you know, you start saying things like, you know, well, I'm just in a shitty season right now, or this is just a shitty year. And it just ends up becoming the way that you live and think very frequently. So I'm not talking about the person who, like, once in a while, this happens, right? I'm talking about. This is like our routine way of thinking for you. Like you've almost like adopted this as like your identity. This is like who you are. This is how you are. And this is just the way that I live. And you've just got to be really, really careful with how you label yourself. Because as soon as you start labeling yourself, your brain will automatically start to look around for evidence to back that belief up about yourself.
So, for example, if you're constantly always saying like, I'm just too busy, I'm just too stressed. I'm just an anxious person. I'm just a worrywart, like whatever it is you're saying about yourself, like I'm just clumsy, or I just can't learn new things, whatever it is, it's becoming a part of your identity. And your brain will constantly scan things to back up that belief now that you have about yourself. And when we do this, we're unintentionally getting ourselves completely overwhelmed and stressed out, right? We don't like to feel this way. We don't want to feel this way. So this is all about now choosing our thoughts really carefully, like really being aware of what thoughts were letting enter our mind which thoughts we're going to actually pay attention to being really aware because, at the end of the day, it's your thoughts that create the results in your life around you.
And if you haven't grabbed my free guide that I put together, it's completely free. You can go to Kathireuter.com/thinkthisnotthat. I'll put it in the show notes down below. So you can click the link down there and grab it. But it will give you 19 of the most common limiting beliefs or negative ways of thinking, specific things that you can think and what to think instead, a more empowering positive belief that you can think instead. That's what we want to focus on. We just have to think better thoughts. So yes, we do this, but it's not necessary. Because it's not helping us in any way when we do this kind of like when you get stressed out thinking about something that's going to happen in the future that you know, is actually going to be stressful when actually happens. Have you ever had that happen? I don't know about you, but I don't want to have double stress.
Why put myself through or why put yourself through feeling stress right now for the thing that's going to happen in three months from now when you know, when that time comes, you're gonna be stressed anyways, just wait. And let the stress happen if it's going to happen when actually happens, instead of having like a double whammy, right? But we do this sometimes as like a coping mechanism. It's, you know, a way for people to either feel empathy toward us or have sympathy or to make a connection, whatever it is. And so this is another really great learning experience.
I try to look at everything in life as a learning experience, like what can I learn from this? How can this be useful for me? How can this help me become a better person or grow more? You know, opened my eyes to an area of my life that I need to clearly need to work on this, right? And so this is another great learning experience where you can stop, and you can think deeper about, hey, you know, why am I actually doing this right now? Like, what's really behind this? Is it because I need help and I'm afraid to ask for help because I think asking for help is a sign of weakness? What is going on here? And you can learn more about yourself, and you can grow. And you can always improve and get better doesn't matter who you are. I don't care how much personal development you listen to, or how many podcasts you listen to, your how many books that you read. You can always improve, and you can always get better. And maybe as you're listening right now, you might be like, “shit, I do this all the time, right?” Listen, no worries, you're only human. I do it, too. We all do it. But you might also be thinking, you know, I don't really want to do this anymore. Because when I do it, I don't like the way that it makes me feel. And I'm also saying to. I don't want you to take this the wrong way. This whole episode, I'm not saying that you're never allowed or supposed to be stressed, or you're never allowed or supposed to be overwhelmed or ever get angry or ever get annoyed. There's a big difference between letting yourself feel the emotions of just life and your day-to-day life that are only natural since we're human, there's a big difference between that, and then letting it take over your day to day life frequently to the point where it's affecting your quality of life. That's what I'm talking about.
So if you're in a season of busy, or waiting or frustration, or whatever the label is that you've given yourself, you know, also remember that you shouldn't wish away those days because everything that you have right now was once something that you wished for or prayed for, and you will get through it, you will get through this busy season or this season of waiting or frustration or whatever it is. And what you're going to learn about yourself by actually going through these days is going to make you so proud. And it's going to help you grow. And you'll be able to look back on this time, and you will remember it. So just remind yourself that when you get caught in these cycles, that you're not doing yourself any good. You're only robbing yourself of the joy and the fulfillment and the happiness that you are so deserving of. I don't want that for you. And I don't want that for me. So we need to do something differently to change this. Because if we just keep doing what we've always done, hoping to get a different result. Well, that's just the definition of insanity, right? So we need to do something different here. And listen, I am also not saying I want to throw this in there. I'm also not saying that there won't be like big deal life stressful things are horrible things that will happen, there definitely will be. I'm talking more about creating a mountain out of a molehill here and doing that routinely. We don't want to live that way. And when you can catch yourself doing this when you catch yourself in the middle of doing it. What I want you to do and encourage you to do, and I do this to myself, too, is something I always practice. If I could feel myself in the moment, it's just going bigger than it should. It's getting way blown out of proportion here. Stop for a second and just ask yourself, you know, is it really that bad, though? Is it really that bad? Is it really that annoying? Or is it just a mild annoyance? You know, do I really suck at this? Like, do I really, really, really suck at this? Or am I just struggling a bit? Because I'm new at this, right? And maybe you just did this this morning? You know, so you're like, Oh, crap. But the next time that this happens, try stopping and asking yourself that question. Is it really that bad? Is it really that big of a deal? Is this really going to matter? In a week from now? Tomorrow? Right? Ask yourself that question. And then what I want you to do is I want you to look around at all the good things that have happened today so far.
So instead of getting trapped in that mindset of today's just gonna suck, today is just going to be a bad day, which is putting your brain on high alert to pay attention to anything else that is going to happen today to cause you to have a bad day, it's going to cause you to pay attention to it and notice it so it can back it up that I'm going to have a bad day, we're going to retrain our brain and we're going to trick our brain and we're going to literally start looking for the things that have gone well start to pay attention to those things, you know, start to say, Okay, who are the people that I have in my life right now who are there for me, no matter what the people who I am so grateful for to have in my life? What are the things that I have right now that I once prayed for, and force yourself to look for these positive things because whatever you look for, you're going to find, and gratitude will be the thing that anchors you when you're going in this downward spiral.
So, I hope that you enjoyed today's episode again. We're only human; we all do this. The goal here is to work through this together to constantly be trying to grow to constantly be better and do better. And that's what I'm here to help you do. So, I hope that today's episode was a great one for you. I think Let your amazing you know, I love you. Thanks for being here, and I will see you the next time. Bye.
