Are you making your life more difficult than it needs to be? This episode dives into six critical ways our thoughts and behaviors can hold us back from living our best lives. Host Sara explores the impact of blaming others, failing to accept reality, and clinging to imagined expectations, all of which can lead to unnecessary stress and dissatisfaction.

Through personal anecdotes and practical advice, Sara encourages listeners to recognise these patterns and empowers them to shift their mindset towards positivity and acceptance. Join her as she shares insights on how to break free from self-sabotaging habits and embrace a more fulfilling life.

Sometimes we really are our own worst enemies!

Join me and let's banish some of these right now!

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Rediscovering oneself after years of prioritising others is a challenging yet transformative journey, beautifully articulated in this engaging episode. Sara, your thoughtful host, opens the discussion by reflecting on how many find themselves at a crossroads, where newfound freedom brings both excitement and confusion. The core message revolves around self-empowerment and the necessity of redefining one’s identity, particularly after a substantial period of self-neglect. By examining the reasons behind our feelings and the narratives we create, Sara sets the stage for a deeper exploration of six common ways we complicate our lives.

One of the central themes is the tendency to blame external circumstances for our unhappiness. Sara offers insight into how this habit not only diminishes our sense of agency but also keeps us trapped in a cycle of negativity. By sharing her own experiences of overcoming victim mentality, she encourages listeners to shift their perspectives and take ownership of their emotions and reactions. This pivotal change in mindset is positioned as the first step toward reclaiming control and fostering a more positive outlook on life.

As the episode unfolds, Sara explores the importance of acceptance in the face of life’s challenges. Through relatable anecdotes, she underscores how resisting reality can lead to unnecessary stress and emotional turmoil. By learning to accept situations as they are, rather than how we wish they would be, individuals can create space for healing and growth. The conversation also touches on the concept of imagined expectations and how they often lead to disappointment. Sara’s practical advice encourages listeners to let go of these constructs and focus on the present moment, fostering resilience and joy. This episode is a treasure trove of insights, offering listeners the tools they need to navigate their journeys of self-discovery and empowerment with grace and intention.

In this episode, I'm going to be taking you through six ways. You might be making your life more difficult than it needs to be. Let's get started.

Are you finding that after decades of pouring yourself into everyone and everything else around you, you can now put yourself first, only to realize that you've lost sight of who you are and what you want?

And you can't even remember what it was like to be able to focus just on if life has evolved and changed and you feel it's time to step into a new identity and redefine your everyday purpose so that you can make the most of this new freedom and the opportunity it brings, then you're in the right place. Now is not the time to be settling for less, drifting aimlessly and waiting for someone to need you.

Now is your time to start over and rise into your next exciting chapter. If this sounds good, hit subscribe and let's make shift happen. I'm Sarah, your coach, mentor, and host. I see you. I've been you. I've got you.

Welcome to start over and rise. Hey, gorgeous. How are you doing? Ever find yourself feeling like life is wading through treacle?

You get to that place where you think everything is going wrong, you start to question, why me? Why is this happening to me? It's so easy to go into victim mode with everything just feeling out of control. And you're directionless.

And let's face it, it's miserable. You get fed up, stressed out. Procrastinating has just become the norm. And even worse, if you're ruminating, you can just feel really low.

Add in a dash of self sabotage and, well, let's just say you're not having any fun. You're certainly not slaying life, and you're definitely not moving forward towards your goals. We've all done it. We've all been there.

And I'm gonna say, yeah, I've had more than my fair share of this, and I haven't done myself any favors by being like that. It just sucks, doesn't it? It sucks big time. But here's the thing.

A lot of the time, if we're honest with ourselves, we are actually our own worst enemies. We and our thoughts are often the biggest part of the problem. It's what holds us back.

We're making our lives more difficult simply by allowing and entertaining the way we think. So, before I go any further, I know I've said this is six, right? Because I want to sort of give a bit of a caveat.

There are many ways we can be making things worse. Trust me. And there are so many. But for today, rather than go through 175 ways, I've picked six that just involve how we think.

And I want to show you, I want to talk through it, and I want to show you how quickly you can switch out of this into a much better place. A place where you can, you know, be happier, feel more calm. As ever, I invite you, listen up.

Take on board what resonates with you the most, what you might find useful and drop the rest. This isn't about me telling you exactly how it is.

This is me sharing these six things and how, I'll be honest, these six, and being mindful of these, being conscious of these have changed me the most in the last four to five years, some of them longer than that. But what happens sometimes is we forget, you know, we get involved in things and we forget this stuff. And that's what this episode is about.

None of this is rocket science, but this might be exactly what you need to hear right now. So these are the ones that have taken me from being highly stressed, miserable, burnt out, to a much calmer, happier.

And I love being in the driving seat.

I love being in the driving seat of my life and taking that responsibility and being able to bring myself back into the here and now and focus on that and where I'm going next. So let's dive straight on in. None of these are in any particular order, by the way, but this is one you can stop right now.

Blaming others, blaming situations and circumstances. Now, when you get conscious about what you hear in your head and also what comes out of your mouth, here's a bit of a heads up.

You might find that when you start really tuning into this and noticing just how much you might be doing this, it's very possible that you're going to start to feel properly uncomfortable. I've done this on and off for way, way too long. There have been periods in my life where I was just the victim of everything around me.

And it's often difficult to even know that you're doing it, but listen out for it. You know, it only takes you to notice it once and then go, oh, hang on a second, I was just doing that. And you'll suddenly see where youre a.

Where you're going with it, or it might be that you hear yourself saying it to someone else. So here are a couple of things to listen out for.

Really good examples are when you might be saying everything would have been fine if whoever hadn't done whatever, or if whatever hadn't happened, I wouldn't have been in this position, or I wouldn't be having to make the decision if so and so hadn't done so and so. Okay? Now, blaming achieves nothing. Actually, I'm going to add to that. It achieves absolutely nothing.

There is never anything good to come out of blaming, whether it's a person, a situation, or a circumstance. All it does is it makes you feel bad. And even if you say, you know what, it actually makes me feel better. It's only for a very short amount of time.

It makes you feel bad, and it gives your power away. It basically is kryptonite. It's like kryptonite to you. Think about it.

If you're blaming and being angry and miserable as a result of it, it doesn't affect anyone else other than ourselves.

So when you hear yourself doing it, I advise, I'm suggesting very strongly that you stop, catch yourself doing and ask, what is this actually doing for me? And I ask clients this sometimes, and, you know, what's thinking like this actually achieving you? And often the answer is, well, you know what?

It makes me feel a bit better. It can be a venting, a way of venting pent up emotion. But my next favorite question after that is usually, and how is that working out for you?

And I've had various reactions to this from suddenly, like, being silent and then bursting out laughing, saying, oh, my God, it's doing nothing. It's really powerful to recognize that you're doing this because it really, really never works. I challenge you. Try it out for yourself.

So start getting conscious, recognize it, and then empower yourself by dropping the blade and start thinking about, what is your, what can you actually do next? You know, what is your part in this? It's all about looking at controlling the controllables and leaving the rest behind.

Now, for me, blaming is very much a trigger. You know, when I feel, it's usually I hear myself, especially if I'm saying it out to someone else.

And the next thing for me is like, whoa, there, stop. You know, take back your power. Things don't just happen to us, they happen for us.

And if it's happened, it's already done, and no amount of blame is gonna change it. It just floods us with negativity, negative emotions like anger and resentment. So acknowledge it, feel it.

Go through that process of actually, what is it? Why are you blaming someone else? What is the pain here? Where is it? Heal it, and then move on. Which leads me beautifully onto the second.

But before we go, there just have a think. What do you have going on in your life where you are consistently laying blame?

You're laying blame on someone else's doorstep or a situation or a circumstance rather than actually dealing with that particular issue. Have a little think about it. I'm sure there's something that's just come to mind.

There usually is, and it's great to find it because then you can do something about it. Okay, so number two, acceptance. Accept where you are or what's happening now. Accept the reality of your situation.

This is one of the most liberating things you can do. And I've struggled with this.

When I think how much I have fought, you know, resisted to actually accept and get real about a particular situation or maybe the way someone's treating you, you'll know what it is for you. Okay? But it's also one of the hardest. Let's take an example here. When you get delays on a journey, we can, you know, we can go mental, can't we?

So say, for example, you're on the motorway, you're stuck in traffic, no one's moving. We might start to, you know, previous one, we might start to blame those that are with us.

You might start saying, if we just left earlier, we would have missed this, implying it's their fault or if they would put on more trains, we wouldn't have this problem. If you're waiting for a train, we can very quickly spiral out of control, get angry and stressed out because things aren't going our way.

But it's really not good. Just like blaming, not accepting what is actually happening. Say in this case that we're going to be late and just dealing with it.

We stay in a stressed out state for way too long. And when we're stressed out, we can't think clearly.

We're, you know, raising that cortisol and flooding our system with it, and it's just not good for us. So being late on a journey is a small example, but it's one that we all know, right? We've all been there.

These are great to practice on the smaller events.

Once you get good at accepting things the way they are and you've exercised that way of thinking for, you know, then when the big stuff comes along, when the big situations come along, you are much more equipped to deal with it. So when you're running late, don't let yourself get into a tizzy. Just think to yourself, okay, what can I do?

I'm accepting that I am going to be late. So what's the best thing to do.

And it might be that you make a phone call, tell the person that you're going to be late, the one that you're meeting, or if you're not, if it doesn't involve anyone else, you can just say to yourself, okay, so here I am in the car. Now this is happening. What can I do? It might be that you listen to an audiobook or maybe some. Make some hand free.

I'm just saying that phone calls, you know, look at what you can do to make the most of this. And I'm going to add this, make the most of this temporary situation in that particular example. So I call it getting real.

So, some other examples, the, you know, think for you where this is most relevant, but when the anger, the resentment, the self punishment that I have put myself through 20 odd years ago, this is a good example, is when I got made redundant. Seriously. It was the first time, actually, it's the first and only time it's happened to me.

But there were a whole raft of but there was a whole raft of emotions, and it was only when I actually accepted the situation that all the great stuff started to appear. So just taking you through this was, I was like, okay, let's look at the exact situation I'm in.

And one of the reasons why all of the emotions came up was because I felt that my safety, my security was a massive issue here for me. So what I did was, okay, let's accept this situation. Let's look at the payout that I was offered. Let's look at my expenditure that's coming up.

And, you know, I was able to look at how long did I actually have before things were going to become a problem. Because when you, when you do that, when you alleviate the situation, when you put the calm into it and go.

Actually, by accepting what's happened, I was able to work out all of the figures and I was able to see how long I actually had to get a new job.

That relieved so much pressure that clearly it allowed me to really look at what my options were and start to change it from a negative place to a positive place.

So not only did I find out how long I had, but I was also able to give myself the time to process, to go through those emotions that were coming up for me and, you know, little things like getting real about what had actually happened and why it had happened. Being made redundant makes it feels so personal, but it never really is.

It's just a job role that you're doing, and it's never as personal as it can feel. And this stuff helped me be okay with talking about it. I was able to drop the imaginary shame. I say imaginary. I did. I felt shame over it.

But really, there was no need to feel ashamed. There was no need to feel lots of negative aspects to it.

Those were just old wounds coming up and going, hello, this is happening to you because you're not good enough, but actually it isn't. The position I was working in was becoming redundant. It was no longer needed. There was a restructure.

And so once I was able to get through those negative emotions, I was able to open up to new things. It gave me a strong base to work from, to move on from there. And so that allowed me to come back into control. So what do you have right now?

Do you have a situation that you are really struggling to accept right now? Because feel the emotions again. Feel it, heal it, and then you can move on.

Once you accept what's really going on, you're able to open yourself up to new opportunities, new positive ways of thinking, way more powerful. And that actually leads me on beautifully to the next one, which is holding on to imagined expectations.

So these are the things where you find yourself, something happens, and you find yourself thinking about all the what should have beens, what might have beens, and the what was supposed to have been happening. Now, this one is quite sneaky. It's really sneaky, actually.

But when you catch yourself thinking like this, I promise, the minute you address it, you can catapult yourself forward so positively and be way more happy and productive. So this also happens more often than we think. When you start to become conscious of it again, you will notice just how often you're doing this.

And that actually, this is something that is making your life more difficult than it needs to be. It's when I. It often comes up when we're disappointed with something.

So you had something fixed, a fixed idea in your head as to how it was going to play out. So on a small scale, because, you know, I like to start with small, and then we'll go on to the bigger things, but practicing with the small things.

I can remember coming up to my 18th birthday, I was having a party at home, and I had seen a dress in. Oh, my goodness, I can even remember what store it was. It was river island, right? They've been around a long time, let me tell you. And I would.

It was a lot of money for me at that time. I was a student. I had a part time job. You know, there was about 810 hours a week, I think something like that.

And it felt it was, it was an expensive dress. I really wanted it.

So I'd worked out how much I could save on a weekly basis, but I remember every time I was in town, I would have a little look at it when it came out of the window. I remember rushing into the shop to make sure it was still there. And for some reason I didn't allow myself to try it on.

So after about six weeks, I was like, right, I've got the money, I'm going to get the dress. And off I went. Now, I picked up the dress, I went in, I tried it on. Oh, my gosh, the disappointment. I don't know what happened, but it didn't fit.

I tried. Somehow I found myself between sizes and it looked awful on me. It just did not suit me. And I don't know why I hadn't tried it on before.

I really don't know. But I was gutted. I found myself properly stroppy and I was in no mind space.

You know, I was just in this terrible place and there was no space for me to go. Okay, you know, I need to go and find something else. I just went home. That's all I did. I went home and I was upset about it for way, way too long.

Now, I found this quote, and it says, you know, it's unknown, but it's brilliant. What will mess up the most is the picture in your head of how it's supposed to be. How powerful is that? It's so, so true.

So that's a small example how that thinking of what it was going to be like in my head, I tried it on, it didn't meet the expectation I had, and I hadn't allowed myself to be flexible in, in any way, in any shape or form.

So I want to add in here that if visualization is something that you do, I just want to remind you here that I am such a fan of visualization, but I do think that there's a level of flexibility we also have to build into it in terms of the small details. Now, a lesson I learned from this later on in life was when I wanted to choose my next car some years ago now.

And I had, in my head, I really fancied convertible Mercedes. And I kept thinking, yeah, and I was visualizing it and I thought, oh, great.

Visualization is with things like this, with material things is go try it on. Right? I didn't try the dress on because that would have been a different outcome. This time I thought, I will. So I booked a test drive. I hated it.

I really, really was so disappointed with the whole experience. And Mercedes, if anybody from Mercedes is listening, I do apologize. But for me, it just. Right. I didn't like the driving position.

I didn't like how it felt. There were lots of things. And so I thought, right, I better start visualizing about a different car. And I went about it in a different way.

The whole visualizing a new car was the relative thing. But I hadn't tried out enough things. I hadn't exercised the next bit, the next, you know, detail on it.

And so this time it didn't feel a huge disappointment. It felt a minor disappointment, and I was able to move on. So when it comes to the bigger things, let's list those.

Divorce, loss of a loved one, redundancy, breakdown of a business, moving to another country, you know, all of those big things.

I think when we experience this, this loss, okay, where something did have a projection into the future, personally, I think we need to take ourselves there and grieve. Grieve the loss of what might have been, rather than say, just stop thinking about the future. It's just grieve the loss of what it was. Do it.

But of course, I think you should put some boundaries in place. That's what I've done. For me, it's like sometimes we need to go. I suppressed way too many feelings in the past for them to just reappear.

When something similar comes along and unbox and let it flood everything, it's not healthy. So for me, holding on to imagined expectations, when you feel a disappointment, see it for what it is.

You can't really be disappointed over something that isn't going to happen. Isn't it better to quickly grieve and be massively saddened?

You know, if anybody's lost anybody close to you, you can't help but feel robbed of your future. But I think it's a healthy thing to grieve it and then bring yourself back into the present moment.

And this thinking helped me with my grief, with dealing with losing my mum last year. I was devastated. I felt robbed. She's never going to know. She's never going to be that great grandmother. She wasn't very old.

She very, you know, really could have been a great grandmother. All of those things that, you know, it was monumental to me because I allowed myself to grieve, to feel all of those stages, the anger and so on.

But rather than staying in that place, I came to the conclusion that none of this is going to bring her back. You know, I found that. Let's look at those three, the three others, the two others before us, the blaming, the not accepting.

I found that really keeping myself in that place was not actually going to help me. It wasn't going to bring her back. And to actually accept the situation that whatever I did from now on was going to be done without her.

The Christmas, the birthdays, they were difficult. The first ones were difficult.

But I also decided to fully be present during those times so that for the rest of us that were there, we also could enjoy that moving forward. And that's what happened. We shared in the great memories that we had and focused on the here and now rather than what we weren't going to be having.

So powerful feeling it, holding on to it. When you get that disappointment, don't let it manifest, you know, don't let it destroy you.

I feel bad because if you're in that space right now, you're going to be listening to me thinking, what the hell are you talking about? This is hell. And it is. But holding on to what might have been is as painful.

I think you do that for as long as you need to, but be mindful that it's not actually helping you grieve it, heal it, and move on. It doesn't mean. One of the things I did do was I documented so much, you know, all the effect that she had. The. I journaled.

It took me a while to do it, but I journaled about, you know, all the good stuff that I had experienced as a result of having her in my life. I, you know, we always talk about her. We talk about her all the time. And that helps, you know, bring up those memories. And I often cry. I often.

When I feel the emotion, I just let it happen. I do not suppress it. And that has helped me massively. So, yeah, holding on to imagined futures that are just not going to happen. Same in divorce.

You know, you kind of do. You have to grieve all the things that you thought you were heading towards.

But when we accept it, when we take away the blame as well, those three combined together are really, really powerful. Okay, number four. Oh, my goodness. This one. I can get so good at this catastrophizing.

So this is thinking into the future and focusing on the worst that can happen.

Now, going back to the example of redundancy in the space of a few hours of getting that news, I had gone to a place where I was losing my home and ending up on the streets, dragging a sleeping bag around with a bit of cardboard for my bed alone. And with nothing. I mean, what the actual. Right? But we've all done it. I hear this a great deal.

When it comes to dating or thinking about an event that you've been invited to, you know, someone asks you out for a drink and rather than just think, yeah, why not? You know, and focus on the, do I want to or not go out for a drink?

And that being it, you can allow yourself to go through all the reasons why going on this drink could potentially end up in, you know, emotional pain, another divorce, you know, you can just kind of, like, really let yourself get really unhappy and put all of these silly imagined circumstances into place. So.

So I have a new theory on this, and I'm not going to say, listen, stop yourself doing this if that's something that is going to work for you, if you find yourself, you know, oh, woe is me, and this is going to happen, and then that is going to happen, and it gets worse and worse and worse. If by just saying to you, you know what, stop this, and you think that will work, then do it.

But for me, I have come to the conclusion that I have a really active imagination and my brain loves doing this. So again, I allow myself to go to this place because many of these thoughts are just overriding and overwhelming.

So what I found is if I allow myself to go there and dream up all the sort of things, all the worst case scenarios, you know, let things get really, really bad, but stop it after a certain amount of time. So I let myself do it. I even find the fun in it. You know, just how far can I go with this?

I write it down, I get it all out, and then, and only then do I ask myself, hang on a minute, how likely is this? What evidence do I have that this could actually happen?

So, for example, with, you know, going back to the redundancy and the homeless on the street scenario, yes, it was the first time that I'd been made redundant. But, hey, hang on a minute. I had a good history of getting through great interviews and always getting jobs relatively easily.

I'd always gone for things that I really wanted. I always put passion and did lots of research and, you know, conducted myself well in the interviews. So why would it be different now?

Why, having been made redundant, did I forget about all of that? You know, why would it be that I was ending up on the street? It wasn't really likely. And aside from the fact that, you know, I also.

So beside that, I also have plenty of friends and family, I had plenty of time to find another job because I'd accepted it because I'd accepted it and looked at everything, all of those factors. I had lots of support and lots of time around me. So then I was able to think about how things might go positively. Wait a minute.

I could get a better job. I could get one that pays me more, maybe has better opportunities, maybe something completely new and exciting. And that was exactly what happened.

I ended up working for a publishing house in Dubai on some really, really exciting projects.

So by stopping yourself, you know, in motion with catastrophizing or allowing yourself to do it for a certain amount of time really allows you for some powerful thinking and it can actually make you feel more safe and secure. Because if you go to the worst case scenario and then look for the evidence, how this isn't actually. This isn't done, this is not happening for real.

So let's focus on the positives so you can see how all of these are beginning to come together. It's much more fun to be like this. So how about you? You know, what are you catastrophizing over at the moment?

Is it better to allow yourself to really go there? What's the worst case scenario? Really go to town? How bad can you make it? Okay, and then look for the evidence.

What do you have that tells you this is actually going to be happening? Most of the time it's nothing. Look at all the situations where you have come out better off than you were before and focus on those.

Remember, what you think about isn't necessarily true. And you are the one, the very essence of you. You are the one that is in charge of those thoughts. It's good stuff, right?

Number sticking with old habits that are no longer serving you. Now I am going to bring in here people pleasing because I class this as a habit that is no longer serving me.

I used to wear people pleasing as a bad badge of honour, but when I got into it, when I really started to look at it as oranges and why I did it, it was something that was not only making my life more difficult as the decades went by and I did it more and more, but it was heading towards actually destroying my life. People pleasing had become a default habit for me. Now, this is big claims here.

These are big things that I'm saying, but it is actually something is illustrating and point really well.

Like most people pleasers, it's a trait that we develop in childhood, you know, in order when we're kids, you know, there's this instinct in us for survival. So we look to our carers, our parents to remain.

You know, we know they're the people that are going to keep us safe, and so we do things that keep them happy. That's how it all starts to evolve.

So, for example, if you came from a background where children were seen and not heard as an example, then you just got used to turning yourself down. You know, that was something very much for me. It's sort of like keeping myself small so as not to make other people uncomfortable.

Whether it was a case of survival from abusive parents or something like that, that I've just said, you know, in terms of keeping yourself small, it has long term effects. You start to get into a habit of doing this, keeping yourself small. And as time goes by, it gets bigger and bigger.

So what's happening here is what worked for us as children and gets embedded.

And unless we question our motives for behaving in a certain way or for doing things that we do out of habit or because, you know, you might say, well, I've always done it like that, we end up being resentful, having a confused sense of who we are. And often it can lead to low self esteem.

I mean, if you're always putting other people first, you know, what you're doing is you're not only showing other people how you're expecting to be treated, right or considered, or more to the point, not being considered, but you begin to believe subconsciously that everyone else around you is way more important than you are. And that's wrong, right? That is so, so wrong. On the other end of the scale, let me give you this as another example.

I had a client who continued to clean her own house because she always had. But once she realized that actually she could change, that that was not a habit she needed to carry on with for the rest of her life.

She gained so much time after getting a cleaner. But the very essence of it was she just, it just hadn't occurred to her that she could change it.

She was actively making her life more difficult by just keeping on that particular habit. Just keep doing it. So what do you keep doing? What do you keep doing that is making your life more difficult that actually you could change right now?

Interesting food for thought. Let's see what comes up for you. Okay, so number six, really, really simple.

Choosing to think negatively this seriously is one of the biggest things you can stop right now. And it isn't necessarily easy. You might have to keep going over it over and over again.

But eventually, just as it's become a habit to think negatively, this is one of the ones that you can really start to change. Now. It is a fact that what you focus on grows. Our brains basically are wired to give us what we look for. If you don't believe me, just try it.

The reticular activating system. I'm so glad I got that in one go. Ras is in our brains and it makes sure of this. It's the.

It's the part of the brain that shows you evidence of what you're thinking about.

So, for example, I can remember, you know, when I was trying to get pregnant, there were babies everywhere because my brain was focused on, I want to have a baby and so on. So guess what? It was just showing me evidence that there were babies everywhere, or it might have happened to you.

When you buy a new car, you buy a new car and like, all of a sudden they are everywhere. That particular make and model that you've just bought. So if we focus on the negative, that's exactly what we'll find more of.

So if you find yourself wandering around, I'm not good enough, and thinking in this way, that kind of thinking has you focusing on the fact that you're not good enough. So you are subconsciously looking for evidence that backs this up. It's the kind of thing that allows you, or enables you, sorry.

To focus on a negative comment that was made that backs that, you know, that just has you going, yeah, they've said that because I'm just not good enough.

When in actual fact, what your brain isn't doing is recording all of the good stuff that people have said, you've just missed it because you've been focusing on the negative.

If you focus on the positive, that comment would become a minor issue because you would have had all of the evidence of all of the good stuff that was going on. This makes your life miserable, focusing on the negative.

If you stub your toe when you get up and you say, oh, great, it's going to be a crap day now. Nothing is going to go well. I can see how this is going to play out.

Guess what happens if we flip it and we start our day by getting up, going, today is going to be a good, good day. If we focus on the good stuff, then see what happens. You will only see all of the good stuff.

So it takes a little bit of practice, but try it for yourself. And here is a really easy one. I used to do this with my kids when we were walking to school. It's a really easy one, and I do it every now and then.

I think of it and go, oh, yeah, I haven't done that for a while. Smile at everyone you see as you go about your day. Make it a point. Okay. Today I'm going to smile at everybody I see.

And you will find you will be amazed how many people smile back. Now, if you walk about with your, I'm gonna say it, your resting bitch face, and you walk about with that all day, just see what comes back to you.

I promise. You'll have people scowling at. You'll have people staring at you and it not in a nice way. So. So I do suggest you try the positive one first.

Try the one with smiling first and you won't want to do the other. But it is really true. The minute you focus more on the positive, you will instantly become a magnet.

The universe will show you all of those things and your brain will be primed to pick up the good, really easy one. You can change it right now and have some fun. You know me, I like to inject the joy and the fun into everything this is.

It is fun, you know, thinking positively and then gathering the evidence is way more fun than choosing the negative and gathering more evidence for that. So there we go. That's all I have for you today. What came up for you? What resonated with you the most?

What can you do to catch yourself on any of these?

Did you pick up on something else that, you know, you think actually, yeah, my thinking is going down in the wrong direction and actually I am making my life more difficult as a result. Life is what you make it and all that's left for me to say is many thanks for listening and I will see you next week. You take care. Bye.

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And finally, remember, in order to start over and rise to winter, you must first start over and rise within. It's cheesy, but I love it. Thanks so much for joining me. I'll see you soon. Take care, bye.