Episode 40: Minding Your Own Business

Hello podcast universe! Welcome to episode 40 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. I'm April Price and I'm so happy to be here today. How are you all? Can you believe we've been together for 40 episodes. I'm so grateful for all of you who joined me here every week and then pass the podcast on to others, and a big shout out to all my 11 year old listeners out there. I had two separate people this week tell me how much their eleven year old son loves the podcast. And can I just say how freaking awesome that is, like no matter what my brain or anybody else says the 11 year olds out there have my back, so thank you guys!

This week I was listening to a coaching call with some other coaches that the life coach school offers to its certified coaches, and I was reminded of how much courage it takes to sign up to get coached. We are scared right. We recognize that we have all these problems and we think we've made a mess of things and we're scared to believe that something else is possible for us. We're scared to talk about it to someone else and we're kind of scared that that will make it real in a way. And we feel a sense of shame maybe because we think that we should know better and we shouldn't need help. And how will changing my thoughts really change anything, my life is a mess, no pretty thoughts are going to fix that right? I just need to do better and try harder.

I just want you to know that I remember feeling all of that, as you know the first coach I hired was a health coach and I still remember laying in bed looking at her Instagram post and her offer to help, and I was so scared to respond like I wanted someone to help me.

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But I was scared to email her and admit that I needed help. I was scared to fail again. I was scared to invest in myself when I was clearly hopeless. I was scared about what she would think of me, and I was scared to face myself, and the possibility that I was fundamentally broken. I will always be eternally grateful that in that moment I got over my own fear and gave myself a chance. Perhaps as you have heard me make an offer on the podcast for free coaching session you've had a desire to try coaching and maybe you've had many of these same fears in signing up. Maybe you've even gone to the website and clicked on the links but then backed out when it was time to schedule a session. I get it. I so get it, but I also want to tell you that fear is a liar, as my sister says, things can be different. You can change, you can find peace and love, you can free yourself of the tyranny of the bully in your own brain and it's easier than you think.

Sign up for a free session, I promise I will take good care of you. I'll show you a way out. I will always be grateful for that April that got over her fear and took the first step in believing something else. I am living the life I'm living now a life that I didn't know was possible because of that one act of courage and I am just so glad. So, gather your 30 seconds of courage and sign up! It just might change your life.

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Okay, today on the podcast I want to talk about what other people think. So once we learn about the connection between our thoughts and our feelings, we start to think that it would be really awesome if everybody understood this connection. So you live in a world with all these other people and they have feelings and you have feelings. And we're all just living here on the planet with all these feelings and our feelings cause us all, all the people in our lives, and ourselves to behave in a certain way. And until recently you might have just been blissfully going through your life feeling and acting and not knowing that all of that was a result of your thinking.

Now suddenly, you listen to this podcast or other podcasts and you start to get some awareness. Oh, wait a minute, other people aren't creating my feelings. The things that happened in my life aren't creating my feelings, I am creating my feelings. When I think this I feel this, and then I do these things and this is amazing. Suddenly, you see just how much agency and power you have to feel and act like you want to.

But, as we start to get a handle on this, we start to notice that everybody else around us are all still under the impression that their feelings are created by everything around them. And by what's happening in their lives, and their feelings are created by other people, and some of them think that their feelings are created by you. This is the problem because you know that their feelings are created by their thoughts, but they don't know it. They think as you once did, that their feelings are created by you by what you do and what you say. And all these other things that are happening in their life and you're like "April it is so awesome to know that I'm in charge of my feelings, but now I need everybody else in my life to know it to, I need them to know that they're in charge of their feelings and take responsibility for them!" So how do we fix this? How do we fix them?

The very good news that I have for you is that we don't, we don't fix them. We don't have to fix them, and this is such good news! We don't have to have them take responsibility for their feelings in order for us not to take responsibility for them either. In other words, they can go ahead and give us credit for their feelings but we don't have to accept the credit. We can just let them feel what they feel and not need to change that at all. We can just let them be mean, sad, angry, irritable, and self-centered, and we don't have to change that or make them be different to feel okay. No matter what happens, no matter what they say, no matter what they feel, no matter what they do, you still get to feel what you want. How they feel is actually none of your business, your business is always how you feel, and by that I mean how you feel about them and how you feel about you.

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Let me give you a little example that I hope will illustrate this, so I have a few clients who have a mother in law right? Many of you have a mother in law, many of you are a mother in law. So many of my clients have a mother in law that wants them to act in a certain way, their mother in law wants them to come to dinner on Sundays, or to call once a week, or maybe to take them to lunch, or to let their kids eat sugar, for just a few examples.

And my clients don't want to come to dinner every Sunday, or call once a week, or take their mother in law to lunch, or let their kids eat sugar, and then they talk to me and they're like "April she's always making me feel bad for not doing what she wants. She gets mad, or hurt, or disappointed, and then she says mean things, or makes comments to other people, or gets visibly upset when I don't do these things, and I just want to tell her that her feelings are coming from her thoughts. And when I do or don't do things I can't make her mad, or annoyed, or upset, or hurt, and disappointed. She's making herself mad, or annoyed, or upset, or hurt, or disappointed. So how do I tell her that right? How do I fix her or change her?"

Notice how in our desire to have our mother in law not be mad, or annoyed, or upset, or hurt, or disappointed, we become mad, and annoyed, and upset, or disappointed, we think that if she didn't get upset, then we wouldn't get upset. But do you see how ironic that is? We want to go tell her that we don't cause her feelings, but we only want to do that because we think she is causing our unpleasant feelings. Do you see what we do as humans, and we do this not just with mother in laws right?

We do it with parents, or husbands, or friends, or children, or neighbors, or the people we go to church with. We want them to take responsibility for how they're feeling, but the irony is that in that moment we aren't taking responsibility for how we're feeling right? right? When we want them to be different and feel differently it's only because we think they're making us feel bad, and they don't have that power. So when I talk to my client whose mother in law wants her to let her kids eat sugar she said "She gets really annoyed that I won't let my kids eat sugar. And then she makes all these rude comments to my husband about how unfair it is for the kids, and for her because she can't give them the treats that she wants. And this just makes me so mad right??"

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So I asked her "Why does it make you mad that your mother in law gets annoyed??" And she said "Well it's because she makes me feel like I'm doing it wrong or that she's always judging me and that hurts my feelings." And so what I pointed out to my client and what I want to point out to you, is that her mother in law can't make her feel hurt. She can't hurt her feelings. She can't make her feel like she's doing it wrong or make her feel misjudged.

Only my client can make those feelings inside of her when she thinks thoughts that create those feelings. So what I asked my client is "What if you were just okay with your mother in law being annoyed? What if she could get annoyed and not like your sugar policy and it didn't hurt at all. It didn't mean anything about the job you were doing. It didn't mean that she thought that her son made a mistake in marrying you. What if she could just be annoyed because she thinks you're ridiculous for not letting your kids have sugar, and that was totally fine right? Like what if you were okay with her thinking that? The most amazing part is she can. She has a right to think what she wants, but so do you. She can think thoughts that make her annoyed but you don't have to. What if she could have her opinion, and you could just think "she can totally disagree with the way I parent and I can still love her." What if she's allowed to be annoyed and you don't have to be?

We only want people to feel different and act different so that we don't have to feel bad. But what I'm telling you is that because you get to choose your feelings with your thoughts, you don't ever have to feel bad. Unless you choose to. Now, I can hear you. I know right? You're saying April it would just be so much easier if she would just change and not be judgmental if she would just not think these things about me. I want you to know that that is so much harder. It is so much harder to wait for other people to change. It is so much harder to want people to think differently because, they don't change. They don't think differently and when they don't you have to feel terrible the whole time while you're waiting for them to change their opinion.

What I'm offering you is a way to feel better right now immediately without waiting for a single person to change what they think or act differently, simply by controlling what you think about them and what you think about you.

So in this case, when my client is upset and mad at her mother in law it's because she's thinking two things, one she's thinking thoughts about her mother in law, and two she's thinking thoughts about herself. So in this case, as she thinks about her mother in law, she thinks mother in law shouldn't disagree with parenting decisions and they shouldn't judge us. And simultaneously she's having thoughts about herself in which she's questioning her own ability and worth as a mother. She's having unproductive thoughts about her mother in law and herself and this is producing the feeling of hurt.

Remember, our job is always to control what we think about others and what we think about us. So instead if she thinks mother in laws can totally have different opinions and mother in laws are humans and have brains that make judgments, and she can simultaneously think, I love my decision not to feed my kids sugar and I feel good about that then, she can just let her mother not be upset and she doesn't have to be. She doesn't have to be upset that her mother in law is annoyed.

She is totally free to just love her mother in law as she is with her opinions, and love herself, as she is with her own opinions. Other people don't have to control their thoughts and feelings about us in order for us to feel good, we have no say in that. We only ever have to control our thoughts and feelings about them, and our thoughts and feelings about us in order for us to feel good. So what's really happening when we worry about what other people think and what other people feel, is that in a sense we are trying to leave our model in which we control our own thoughts and feelings, and we're trying to jump over and control the other person's model.

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We're trying to get in their model and change how they're thinking and feeling, and not only is this impossible because other people get to think and feel what they want but, more importantly we lose all our power over our own feelings when we go try to jump into somebody else's model. When we're trying to control how other people think and feel we can no longer control how we think and feel and, it has a tendency to turn us into people pleasers where we're taking action and doing things simply to control how other people feel about us. You know you are people pleasing when you're trying to change how someone else is feeling. And in this place we end up doing all these things in our lives just to make other people happy, and then we are miserable.

Whenever we leave our model and abdicate responsibility for our own feelings to go and try and manipulate someone else's model we always end up miserable right? We end up in resentment and this happens in big ways and in little ways. When we go to our mother in law's house for dinner so that she will be happy then, we end up being resentful that we're there and we resent her for even making the requests that we come. When we serve our kids so that they'll be grateful and appreciative. Then we end up like resenting them when they don't say thank you and notice what we did for them. We accept service assignments like at church or at school so that someone will think that we're good and then we resent having to do the service.

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This happened to me actually a few months ago, and at the risk of you judging me I'm going to share this story. So, I signed up to help clean the temple, and the sign ups for service in our congregation come around on a clipboard and they send the clipboard around and if you can help then you sign up and the clipboard came around and I didn't really want to sign up but I also didn't want to pass the clipboard on because then what would people think of me? They would maybe think that I was selfish or spoiled or maybe even wicked.

So, to make other people think that I love God and his house and therefore I'm a good person, I wrote my name on the list and, then I was mad. I was resentful, I was mad that I even had to clean the temple. I was mad that it's like always our turn. I resented the fact that we had to do it late at night at the end of a long week. I resented that it was cold, and I had to leave my warm house to go do service. I resented that when I got there to clean the presentation on how to clean the building took so long and it resented that even after we'd finished our work we had to wait for everyone else to finish on the shift before we could leave.

Listen, I love the temple and I love being there I love serving there but, when I do things to change how other people feel about me rather than considering what I want, I end up in resentment. When I signed up so that other people would think I was a good person, I ended up in resentment. That's what good people do!

Okay, so why do we care what other people think? Why does it bother us so much when other people judge us, or have a poor opinion of us or just when we think that they might be judging us? I think that part of us is because we are inherently tribal animals. Our survival once upon a time depended on being accepted and cared for by the group right? Like if you got kicked out of the group, death was pretty certain. So I think there's a certain amount of primal fear there that makes us anxious or upset when other people don't accept us or like us.

But I think another part of it is because we have a deep insecurity and deep suspicion that there is something wrong with us. We don't really like ourselves and so we use other people's affirmation of us to kind of overcome that insecurity. When they think badly of us it just confirms what we were terrified to admit right? That we are terrible, that we aren't worthy of love or admiration or appreciation, like I knew it! I'm terrible! But, then we give the other person all the credit for making us feel bad.

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So our brain whether because it wants to fit in and not die or because it's noticed all the things that are wrong with us, it puts a lot of stock in what other people think. It worries about what other people think and feel about us and, it's constantly on guard for evidence that other might not like us or approve of us or love us. But knowing that this is the default human condition, this is the default human programming, this gives us an opportunity to choose something else to not give in to that primal human fear but to choose on purpose what we want to think about others and what we want to think about ourselves and then letting everything else go. To truly let other people think and feel about us how they want to, and not need to control it or change it or believe it.

So I saw this quote on Instagram the other day and it said "Confidence is not they will like me. Confidence is I will be fine if they don't." That's it. Now, I want to be sure to say that this doesn't mean that we don't serve and we don't do what other people want sometimes and we don't accept requests from other people, but it does mean that we consider why we are doing it, the why matters. Am I doing it from love, or am I doing it from fear? fear? Love for them and love for me? me? Or fear of what they will think of me, or what they will feel or what I will think of me if they don't approve of me?

So, I want to illustrate this in a couple of different ways so you can see what I'm talking about. If we go back to the example of cleaning the temple, remember I felt resentment because of why I had signed up. I signed up because of what I thought other people would think. But if I had paused and thought about what I wanted and what I think, the results would have been so different. If I had thought instead of, what will other people think if I passed the clipboard on? If I had thought instead, do I want to do this?

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Do I want to go to the house of the Lord and clean it for him? Do I want to sacrifice my sleep to serve God? The answer would have been yes, because the truth is I want to do those things. I want to serve God. I want to be in his house as often as I can, and I want to do things in my life that require me to sacrifice and give and control the natural man in me, so that I can be a higher version of me. And if I had really considered what I wanted, I would have signed up but, I would have done so out of love instead of fear. I would have felt joy, instead of resentment, I would have felt lucky, instead of put upon.

What matters is the why we are doing it. So, let me give you one more example. Every year David's company has this big fundraising gala, and everybody gets dressed up and they wear tuxedos and fancy dresses, and there's a dinner and dancing and there's a silent auction and a live auction and they're fundraising for various causes every year. And while some of you might think this sounds amazing, for me it is one of the worst nights of the year! There is almost nothing I hate more!

First of all you have to go shopping, which I hate. Or actually which I have thoughts about that create the feeling of hate inside of me. You have to shop and find a dress which is its own kind of torture. You have to go out at night, I am tired at night. I like my bed and a book and an old project runway episode at night. And you have to talk to other people that you don't know and you have to pretend like you care about what they're saying and are vastly fascinated with whatever it is they're talking about. You have to remember people that you have met other events and ask about their kids while your brain is saying do they even have kids, I can't remember?

None of this is my favorite, and none of it I'm good at, and so I usually think, I have to go. And then I resent David and his company the whole time I'm there. Which is just another layer of fun on top of all the other dread and hate. Come on you introverts out there know what I'm talking about right? Introverts unite! Anyway, last week as we were out at date night eating our pizza, David broached the subject about this Gold Ball and he's like "So... in a couple of weeks there's the Gold Ball." And he's dancing around it trying to ask me about coming, because he has lived with me for almost 25 years and, he knows what's coming, but I am at a place in my life where I finally know better. I know that I can go because I feel like I have to, and I can go because I want him to think he made the right decision marrying me, and I can go because I want all the people he works with to think I support him, and I can go just to make him happy. But I know that that will only lead to resentment.

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So, you might be asking, so you're not going right? So you don't go? You just do what you want? When your mother in law calls, or the relief society president calls. or the PTA president calls, or your husband wants to go to a movie and you don't want to go, you just don't do it? What I want to tell you, is that is an option. It's totally an option! I could just say no, and let David be disappointed. It's his model, if he's disappointed that's because of his thoughts, that is true. But, there is another option, instead of going out of fear, and instead of not going, there's a third option. I can choose to go out of love. So what does that look like? It means, considering the request the other person has made of you. David asked me to go to the ball. I can stop and think about what I want. What do I want to do? Do I want to support my husband, even when it's hard for me? Do I want to help him, and go to the event because I love him, and that's the kind of wife that I want to be? Do I want to sacrifice my preferences, on one night, to do what he has asked? Am I willing to be uncomfortable, and go out of love? love? If I can get to love, if I can do it from love, if I can say yes from love, and not resentment or obligation or fear of what others will think, then I say yes.

Even when it's not what I want to do, because I didn't just come to Earth to do what I wanted to do. I came to evolve and we grow and evolve when we sacrifice for others from love, not fear. So sometimes I ask myself to do things that are hard because I love someone, and they have made a request that I can choose to meet. I'm choosing to go out of love and that will make all the difference for me. When the people in your life make requests or have expectations, and you feel sort of obligated to meet them, stop and ask yourself why are you doing it?Are you doing it from love or fear?

If you recognize, oh it's just fear, then you have three options, you can go ahead and do it out of fear and feel some resentment it totally works, I lived a lot of my life like that. You can do it out of fear and you can feel resentment. You could not do it at all, or you can do it out of love and feel amazing! Ask yourself what you really want? I want to be the kind of wife that will do hard things for her husband. It doesn't mean that I do all the things every time, it means I'm choosing to do this thing out of love and I'm choosing to go shopping and I'm choosing to make small talk and sometimes to look dumb and smile and laugh at things that aren't funny to me, for him because I love him.

When we do things because we're worried about what other people will think or feel, it's kind of like doing it for the lesser law acting out of fear. The higher law is love, and ultimately this is what Christ did.

If you remember in The Garden of Gethsemane, he asked the Father three times if there was another way, if this could pass from him so that he didn't have to do it. What he had to do was hard. What he had to do was impossibly excruciating, and he could have felt like he just had too. He could have felt like 'If I don't do it no one else will. I'm the Savior, no one else is coming.' He could have resented us and our pain, and our sins, and our mistakes, and our mess. He could have resented the Father for putting all of this on him, and putting him in this situation in the first place and he could have chosen not to do it at all. But instead, he made the great and last sacrifice from love, not because it was what he wanted, but because he loved the Father and us enough to meet the request.

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It only worked because he did it from love. There's a part in the scriptures that says that "if we do it grudgingly it's like we didn't do it at all." And I believe that is true in this case. If Christ couldn't make a freewill offering from love it wouldn't have worked. Why we do what we do matters. And this applies to so many areas of our lives, not to just our interactions with other people. Do we obey the commandments out of fear or love? Do we exercise our bodies out of fear of what other people think or what we will think or, do we do it out of love for ourselves and and the joy of moving our bodies? Do we contribute at work and accept projects out of fear or love? Whenever we take action in our lives we want to know that is being produced by that feeling of love instead of fear.

Okay, so how do we do this? this? Here at the end I want to give you a few thoughts and questions to ask yourself, that can help us stay in our own models and decide how we want to think, and act, and feel, for ourselves, independent of how other people in our lives behave. So the first one is, every time you feel a feeling take credit for it. So other people can't make us feel anything, they can't make us feel guilty, or ashamed, or selfish, or unworthy, or misjudged, or annoyed.

Recognize that if I'm feeling a certain way it's not because I need the other person to be different, it's always because I'm thinking a thought. If I feel put out or resentful of my husband, it's not because he asked me to go to the gold ball it's because I'm thinking that I have to do something I don't want to do. I've created resentment with my thought, my husband didn't create it with his request, and it's the same for all the people in your life. Notice how you're feeling, and then take credit for it, because how you're feeling is created by a thought, not by their expectation, and not by their feelings or their thoughts.

Okay number two, ask yourself can I allow them to feel what they want to feel and if not why not? What do I make it mean about me if they're upset or mad or disappointed? disappointed? So I love reminding myself that the other people in my life have a right to their feelings. They have a right to be angry. They need to be angry. They want to be angry. They can be angry, but I don't have to be. They have a right to feel whatever they want and so do I. They get to choose, and I get to choose. Knowing this helps us stay in our model and concentrate our control where we have control on our thoughts and feelings. Can I allow them to just feel what they feel, and not make it mean anything about me?

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Okay number three, when other people have expectations or requests ask yourself what do I want to do? We ever ask ourselves that. What do I really want to do, and then ask yourself why, and be honest as you answer. Do I want to do this thing? And can I get to love to do it? If you're doing it from fear or to change how someone else is going to feel, I would stop and ask myself instead, if I can do it from love. And if not, you probably don't want to make that choice or you're going to end up in resentment. So, if somebody asks you to do something ask yourself what do I want to do? What I want to do, how do I want to show up, and ask myself why, why am I doing this? Am I doing it from love? Or am I doing it to change how they feel about me?

Okay, and the last one, ask yourself, what if my only motive was love? Now, I know that I've mentioned it before but this one question, what if my only motive was love, was posed by Russell Oscar Thorpe years ago and it is still so powerful to me. Would I do what I'm doing if my only motive was love? Am I doing it from fear of what others will think or to make someone else happy or am I doing it out of love, love for them, and love for me? And sometimes that means the answer will be no. Sometimes the most loving thing is saying no, and sometimes the hardest thing is saying no, but when we operate with love as our only motive, then we get to feel love regardless of how others feel or think or act.

Remember those four things. Every time you have a feeling take credit for it. Ask yourself can I allow that other person to just feel what they need to feel? Ask yourself what it is you really want to do? do? And ask yourself why you're doing it?

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And then finally what if my only motive was love, what I do here, if my only motive was love? love? Letting go of needing to control other people's feelings about us is so freeing, it allows you to show up authentically it allows you to feel love rather than fear and resentment. It allows you let other people have their experience, and still choose the one you want for yourself. Now it's not easy, your primitive, primal brain will encourage you to worry about what other people think of you, but it's your job to redirect your brain to what you actually have control over, your own thoughts and your own feelings.

Other people TOTALLY get to think and feel what they want and so do you!And that my friends is 100% Awesome! I love you for listening and I'll see you next week!