Episode 118: When You Wish Things Were Different

Episode Summary

Our brains offer up all kinds of ways to argue with circumstances we don’t like. “This should be different.” “It was supposed to be different. “I had a completely different idea of how this was going to go, and this is not it.” It feels like these circumstances cause us so much pain. But they don’t. Only our thoughts about the circumstances in our life can cause us pain.

So… What if you just stopped arguing with how things are? What if you went all in on your present reality? Saying ‘yes’ doesn’t change your circumstance… but saying ‘no’ doesn’t, either. Saying no changes your experience of the circumstance by creating more pain.

When you wish life was different, or other people were different, or you were different, you’re rejecting the way your life already is. And when you can say yes to your life regardless of the circumstance, and stop rejecting what is, you can make adjustments to the way you want to think and feel, which changes the experience of your life.

Episode Tools and Questions

Our brains offer up all kinds of ways to argue with circumstances we don’t like. “This should be different.” “It was supposed to be different. “I had a completely different idea of how this was going to go, and this is not it.” It feels like these circumstances cause us so much pain. But they don’t. Only our thoughts about the circumstances in our life can cause us pain.

So… What if you just stopped arguing with how things are? What if you went all in on your present reality? Saying ‘yes’ doesn’t change your circumstance… but saying ‘no’ doesn’t, either. Saying no changes your experience of the circumstance by creating more pain.

When you wish life was different, or other people were different, or you were different, you’re rejecting the way your life already is. And when you can say yes to your life regardless of the circumstance, and stop rejecting what is, you can make adjustments to the way you want to think and feel, which changes the experience of your life.

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the 100% Awesome podcast with April Price, you might not know it, but every result in your life is 100% because of the thought you think. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome!

Hello, podcast universe! Welcome to Episode 118 of the 100% awesome podcast! I'm April Price and welcome to August. Can you believe it? We have made it. I don't know if it's still going to be happening as this episode comes out, but as I'm recording, we have been watching the Olympics the last week or so. And to me there is just like nothing like it, right? I love the Olympics, I love the wins, I love the joy, I love the the heartache, I love the human experience of the Olympics! And I I love watching other humans, like, do hard, impossible things. I love other humans, like desire something, want something for themselves, set goals for themselves and then go after them, and I love watching them have that experience!

And I think it's really interesting because like as humans, we all want things, right? And we all of us, we set goals in our lives, and we think like we really want to go after something, we really want something. And as we start towards our goals, we often think that it's going to feel like it does for those Olympians, like at the finish line, right? Like we notice as we start in on a goal, we just sort of notice that, like, hey, I'm not feeling amazing. Like all the people that I see setting goals, they're like feeling amazing, right? But it's because we're observing everybody at the end, we're observing everybody at the finish line. And like most of the journey, most of the goal doesn't look like that, right? Mostly it feels like not wanting to do whatever we're supposed to do that day. I think mostly it feels discouraging, and like we have so far to go and we have so much work to do, right? And for the most part, it feels like we kind of have to, like, drag our brain through the experience, right? It always just feels like, why is this so hard? Why does it feel like I have to drag myself through it? It should be exciting when I see other people achieving their goals, it looks really exciting, right?

And just that's just the nature of life, whatever it is you are working on and your brain kind of offers you like, this isn't that much fun, this doesn't feel like I thought it would when I started. And like your brain, is like fighting with you every day saying, I don't want this, I don't want to do this, it's hard, I don't know why we started this. When it says I'm scared, and maybe this is not for us, right? Like that is part of the process, not wanting to do the daily grind is part of what is required to reach our goals. And I just want you to know that, like, nothing has gone wrong here, it's not because you don't really want the thing, and it's not because, like, those other people are having a totally different experience achieving their goals. Like it's just like excitement and motivation and dedication 100% of the time. It is not, right? People who achieve their goals have just learned that, like what their brain says on a daily basis doesn't matter, right? They keep where they're going in mind, and feeling motivated, and inspired, or like you're winning, and succeeding all the time is just not how they need to feel on a daily basis, and it's not required for them to feel that way in order to get to work. And that's just a really good reminder for all of us.

4:02
And then, I just have one more thought about the Olympics that I just want to insert here. Like, obviously this is like I think about it all the time because I just, you know, like I said, the Olympics are amazing. But I was talking to one of my clients and she said, like, I'm watching the Olympics, and like at the end of the race, they're just like on the ground. Like they can't breathe, they can't walk, they like try to interview them, and they can't even, like, get to their knees, like, they are so exhausted. They are just like on the ground, all they can do is lay there. And my client said, like, I don't think I've ever put that much effort into anything, right? And we kind of laughed together. But I have been thinking about that a lot about the effort required, right? And I think that as we watch something like the Olympics, the physical effort involved is so obvious to us, right? And you can see it, you can visualize it, you can understand that. But what I have come to find is that any of us who are working towards our goals, those Olympic athletes included, what I know for sure is that the mental effort required is a hundred times, a thousand times, more intense and heavy than the physical effort, right?

And that mental effort that it takes to keep believing, and keep working, and stay in it when your brain doesn't want to. That is where the real work, and the real effort is. And we can't even see that, right? We have no visual representation for that. And so, we sort of don't really recognize that it's happening. We sort of think that, well, maybe the mental part is easy for them, but I promise you, it is not, it is difficult for every one of us who is going after a goal. And just because you can't see it in others doesn't mean it's not happening.

It's just been a really good reminder to me that, like I've been asking myself, like when I want to give up, and when I want to quit, like I've just been asking myself, like, how much mental effort am I really putting in here, right? Like, when it's hard, am I leaving it all out there? Am I running, like, mentally, right? Am I running to the end where I have no strength left, and I'm using up all my mental energy to get what I want, right? And where I can't even like, like walk, or speak from the effort of believing so hard. It's just like a really interesting perspective to think about. And we just we sort of have an idea that it's going to be easy, that believing should be easy, that loving should be easy, that all these things we want should be easy, and it's all nonsense, okay? It all takes effort.

Sometimes the big things that you're working on, the big things you're working to believe are the difficult people in your life that you're working to love, that's going to take all your effort. It's going to take all your mental effort to choose. But that doesn't mean that you're doing it wrong, okay? There is no such thing as like this should be easy to believe, okay? Because believing is real concerted and sometimes like painful effort. And we all have to make it in order to to believe the things we want about our lives, okay? And if I may, I want to suggest that that's why it's so important to have a coach. When you get tired, and exhausted, and it's hard like you have a coach there telling you where your work is showing, where you're not making progress, and where you can change things to make more progress. Showing where changing your thought, or your perspective in some way can make it easier, and cheering you on the whole way, okay?

I don't know if you noticed, like watching the Olympics, but those coaches are feeling as much joy and celebration as the athletes. They're like jumping around with them, right? Their clients victories are theirs. So, get a coach, have somebody on your side as you go through the hard things to keep you going, to help encourage you to help you, like, see that it's worth the effort. Somebody that's cheering you on, right? Get a coach, put in the effort, change your life. You can do it, and it is such an awesome experience.

8:15
As you know, my August coaching group just started yesterday, but it is not too late to join me. I have a couple of spots that are still open, and I'm not going to be opening another group until the end of the year. So, go right now, get on a call with me, and do that at my website aprilpricecoaching.com and come win! Come join that coaching group, and win at all the parts of your life that you want to get a coach to help you. You should not be able to do it on your own, okay? It's rough, it takes a lot of effort, and it's nice to have a coach on your side, okay? Let's get to the episode today.

So, today's episode was inspired by my little dog, Auggie, okay? Auggie has not had the best summer of his life, I will say that, okay? First of all, he doesn't really love summer anyway, because he's very limited in how much he can be outside, and he's kind of miserable. But this summer, because of the water damage in our house, we've been living like, for a little bit of time we lived in a hotel, and we've been living in this rental house, and Auggie just really doesn't like it. He really misses his house, his space, his yard, the things that he knows, right? Especially our couch, he has this particular place on the couch that he likes to sit, it's super comfortable for him. And they don't have one of those places for him, this couch has like kind of this like curvy hardtop, and he can't get comfortable on it, and he's really kind of miserable.

So instead, every day he goes and he sits in front of the front door, right? And all day long I hear him doing these little huff's, and he's like, *sigh.* Just like lays there and huff's because he's so miserable, and he so doesn't want to be where he is at, right? And his little doggy brain is arguing with reality like we are here, we are not going back to the other house, there is no other couch to sit on, right? And his little brain, his little doggy brain is arguing with that, and saying, hey, this is not right. I don't want to be here, right? It's rough on him. And the thing is Auggie is not alone, right? To some degree, we can all find ourselves at times arguing with what is. Arguing with our reality, saying like, hey, it's not supposed to be like this, right?

There are so many times in our lives when we are like Auggie and we wish things were different, and our brains really want to argue with our reality, right? And they say things like in some form, our brain is telling us, like it should be different. It was supposed to be different. Like I had another idea how things were supposed to go, how my life was supposed to go, and this is not it, right? It's supposed to be different. It should be different. And sometimes my brain even says, like, really obnoxious things, like, well, it could be different, okay? Like even if it shouldn't be, it could be, like it's possible that it could have gone another way. And it wants to argue for that other scenario right now. The only reason that our brains do this is because they think that the circumstances are creating the pain, right? That the circumstances are creating our discomfort and our pain, and that's why it wants to argue with it, right? It says, like, if we could change these circumstances, or if these circumstances were different, or if these circumstances were the way they were supposed to be, or the way they could be, then I wouldn't feel so bad. But of course, in these cases, we have attributed our pain, and our discomfort to the wrong thing we have attributed to the circumstances. But of course, our pain is always created by our interpretation of the circumstance, right? Our pain is created by our thoughts about what is happening, and never like the circumstances themselves, okay?

So, for one minute, I want you to do like a little thought experiment with me, okay? So, I want you to pick something that right now you wish was different, something that is causing you pain and your brain, thinks like definitely this should be different. Maybe it's a person, they should be different, they should be treating you differently, or something in your life that should be different, okay. And for one moment, I just want you to, like, pretend that you didn't want it to be different, okay? And I want you to imagine how differently you would feel if you didn't want that thing to be any different than it is. Like, if we just stopped arguing with how it is, right? Stop saying how it should be, how that other person should be, and instead we just totally were like all in on how it was. Notice how different that would feel. And as you do that thought experiment, you can see that, in fact, it is never the thing that is causing your pain is your thought that it should be different, that it's supposed to be different, that it could be different, that creates our pain.

13:40
And so, if we're willing to give up that thought that it should be different, we can get so much relief. And I find that sometimes like we don't want to give up the thought that it should be different because we think if we do, then it's just going to be the way that it is. Like, if I stop saying it should be different, then it's going to stay this way forever, right? But it is the way that it is, saying that it should be different isn't changing it. It is still the way it is. They are still the way they are. And arguing with it is only creating you pain, right? It's like Byron Katie always says, when you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time. Like arguing that it should be different, doesn't ever change anything, it just feels bad. You just lose 100% of the time, okay?

So, I was thinking about this because the other day I heard this really awesome speech by Lisa Clark, and she was talking about how in her life she's done a lot of improv. Like she's really good at improv, and she's been in a lot of troops in improv, and even been on television doing improv. And she explained how, like the foundational principle around improv is the idea of yes, and. Meaning that, like, whatever happens on stage, like whatever comes up, whatever somebody says, like in your mind, you want to get to the mental space where you're like saying yes to it. Like, yes, and. Whenever somebody comes and offers, like the successful people at improv are like, yes, yes, I approve of that, and now this, and it moves the scene forward, okay? She says that, like, no matter what another person says, or does in that scene, if you mentally accept what they have given you, and you say yes, and, here's how now I'm going to move this plot forward, then of course, like you can be really successful in improv, okay?

And she says you're not going to be successful if one of your fellow improv members, like, gives you an offering, like offers something on the stage, and you're like, no okay I can't work with that, absolutely not, it shouldn't be that way. That's not what you were supposed to say, right? If you argue what has been given, what's been offered by the other person you're working with in improv, like in fact, you're denying they're offering, okay? That's what she called it. And she said, like, it just doesn't move the plot forward, and everything kind of dies on stage in this really awkward moment, right? And then she said this is the part that I wanted to get to is she says, you know what's really magical in improv when it's like not just good, but like when it's really memorable and magic, is when somebody gives you like a truly awful offering on the stage. Like it's really difficult, like offering that you don't know what to do with it, and even the audience knows it. Like everybody around you knows this is a really bad offering. She says, when you can say yes, and in those moments, like it becomes something really, really great.

So, I wanted to read you what she said. This is what she said. She said, there will be some times when you get a bad offering, when you like the audience, have a particular expectation for something that just doesn't come. She said, there are a lot of reasons for that. This is to be expected, the real test in improv, right? The ones that separate the easily forgotten scenes from the memorable magical moments lies not in the offering, but in the yes, and moment that comes next. When the less than stellar offering gets picked up, polished, and held up as a treasure.

Okay, I love this so much, I recognize that you guys are not in an improv troupe, okay? You are living your lives, but in fact, it's just like one big improv. You don't know what's going to happen one moment to the next, and you're just like doing improv. Somebody gives you a line, somebody says something, and now you have to say something back. Now it's your turn, yes and, right? So, just notice what she said that I just want to repeat this one part. She says, The real test in improv, the one that separates the easily forgotten scenes from the memorable magical moments, lies not in the offering. Okay, it doesn't lie in the circumstance itself, it lies not in that offering, but in the yes, and moment that comes next. Like the magic in our lives doesn't happen because of the circumstances, it happens in the moment after that. In the yes, and moment after that.

18:37
She said again, when the less than stellar offering gets picked up, polished, and held up as a treasure. And what I want to offer all of you is that if you can say yes and more in your life, more when you think that things should be different, if you can say yes and more often it's going to change the experience of your life. It's not going to change the circumstance, it's not going to change the offering, but it's going to change you, it's going to change your experience of it, and that's what really matters.

So, just to give you an example of this, Lisa Clark's husband, his name is Chris Clark, he was diagnosed with ALS about six years ago. He died last year, and I talked about this at one point on the podcast. And this was one of those bad offerings she talked about, right? ALS was a terrible offering life handed her there on scene, right? She and her husband there on the stage of their life. They have a pretty good idea of how the play's going to go, how things are going to work out, like there's a lot of, like, happy moments ahead of them, right? And suddenly, life offers them this bad offering, right? Like they got that bad offering, and then what counted after that was the yes, and moments that came after the diagnosis. The yes and moments that came as her husband started to lose all of his function, and eventually his life, right? Yes, and moments that are still happening in her life, without her husband there. Standing around arguing that things should be different, that he shouldn't have gotten ALS, that it was supposed to be different, that it could be different, that one small change in his DNA or something else could have changed everything, and that it should have gone another way, doesn't move the scene forward. And it doesn't even change the circumstance.

We could argue all day long that it should have been different, and it doesn't change anything except our experience of it. I just think it's like such a powerful example to recognize, like, the difference that yes, and makes. The difference it makes is in you, in your experience of the offering. I've told you a lot of times about my good friends, Zach and Tessy Friedli, and the experiences that they had. A year into their marriage, Zach went blind, and then a year after that, their son, Dakota, had a terrible accident in which he had a traumatic brain injury, right? And, like that is the circumstance, that's an offering that you just never want to receive, right? You're on the stage of your life again, and here's this bad offering and you're just like, no, I reject that. I don't want that. That's not how it was supposed to go, right? But like Tessy and Zack found freedom, and peace by saying yes and. Yes, and. And they've, like, stepped into the miracle that is their life.

She talks about how for so long she prayed, and prayed, and prayed for a miracle that would change the offering, that would change the circumstance. She finally understood that the real miracle was the change in her. She said yes, and that was the miracle. And in so many ways, God was her partner in creating that miracle, in helping her say yes, and. So when you can say yes and again, it is not going to change the offering, it is not going to change the circumstance, but notice the saying no doesn't change it either. Saying no, like, I don't want this, it is not going to change the circumstance either, it changes your experience of it, okay? It increases your pain, so this is where we get to choose what we are going to create in our lives, if we are going to pick it up, and polish it, and hold it up as a treasure. Or if we are going to reject it, right? This takes incredible mental resilience to not go to the place where we are arguing with what is, but instead we say yes, and. The faster that we can get to yes, and, and stop rejecting, and arguing with what is, the faster we can make adjustments in how we want to think and feel. And that is going to change our experience of our life.

23:22
Okay, so I just want to talk about this really quickly in three ways today. So, I want to have you think about this sort of like how like, wishing it could be different, sort of shows up in three different ways in your life. And hopefully, as you look at this, you can consider saying yes and more often in any of these areas. So, the three ways of when we wish things were different are like when we want circumstances themselves to be different. When we want life, and the things that are happening in our life to be different. The next is when we want other people to be different. We want them to behave differently, we think they should treat us differently. We think they're supposed to be different, okay? That's the second area. And then, the third area that I want to talk about is like when we sort of think that we should be different, right? So, I want to talk about these three things when we think things should be different, when we think other people should be different, and when we think we should be different.

Okay, so first, when things should be different. So, the things in our life, those are the circumstances, right? That's like the ALS, and the traumatic brain injuries, the pandemics, and the fires, right? All of those things are totally outside of our control. I consider them to be God's business, and not necessarily because like God causes them, but they are part and parcel of living in a fallen world, which is his plan for us. His plan for us is to come to a world in which, like there is disease and there is disaster and things fall apart, right? And so, I consider that all of that to be part of his business, right? At least for sure it's none of mine, it's none of my business. I have zero control over any of that, I don't choose those things. But I like to think that they are for me. And the more I can get to yes, and like even the hard ones, then I can use them for me to create treasure in my life.

So, just to give you a really quick example, when I was pregnant with my children, I had very, very difficult pregnancies. I was sick, really sick for most of it. It was really miserable for me. It was really miserable for David. I would always go from, like, really being scared that I was going to die. Like I was so sick and throwing up so much I couldn't keep anything down, I really thought, like, I am going to die. And then it would transition to, like, being really scared that I wasn't going to die. I was like, really scared at the beginning that I was going to die. And then I would transition into like, oh my gosh, what if I don't die, and I just have to feel like this forever? I actually got to the place where, like, I wanted to die, and I was scared that I wasn't going to because I was so miserable, and I thought I would be there forever, right? And I was really, truly miserable.

So, when I was pregnant with my fourth child, my dad didn't like this offering. He didn't like the circumstance that I was in, right? He hated to see me suffering so much, and so he was like, let's try to change this. It shouldn't be this way. We should try to fix this. And so he, like, asked all of the family to pray, and fast that, like, this could be different that the circumstance could be changed, right? And a lot of us do this when we want our circumstances to be different, we want to petition God to change them, right? And so, we did this, and things didn't get any better, and didn't change for me. And then my dad was very faithful, said, okay let's do it again, we just need to really show the Lord that this is what we want, right? And so, we had a second fast, and again, I didn't feel any different. I was still very, very sick, right? And my dad, bless his heart, who still thought it shouldn't be this way, it doesn't have to be this way, it could be different, right?

27:20
Said let's do it one more time. And at that point, I knew that this was God's will, this was his business, right? He put me in this body for whatever reason it reacted this way to pregnancy. And I knew that the only way through this was to go through it, in fact, and that like it was supposed to be this way. And so, I just said no, right? Like, no, I'm going to stop arguing that it should be different, and that it could be different. I'm going to say, yes, I'm going to accept that this is part of the plan, and that there are things that I can learn here, that I can learn in no other way. And so, I got to the place where I could just say yes and. And I also knew that through that I was not alone, okay? And that did change it for me. It didn't change the physical suffering, it was still excruciating, it was still difficult. I still, like, had all of the same symptoms, but it changed it for me in that it became sacred. I knew that it was part of the plan, I knew that there was a reason for it, even if I couldn't see it. And so, instead of just suffering for no reason, and thinking it should be different, it became sacred to me. And that changed the experience for me, right?

I look back at those difficult pregnancies, and I don't want them to be any different. I don't ever think they were supposed to be different, I consider them sacred, right? It's like what Lisa Clark said about like picking it up, polishing it, and holding it as a treasure. That's how I see it. And that's available to every one of us in difficult circumstances that are outside of our control, okay? Which is not to say whatever you're going through is not excruciatingly hard. It's not to say it shouldn't even be heavy, and painful. But it's just that we want to stop arguing with the part that it shouldn't be this way, because that's adding unnecessary pain, right? Of course, it should, it was none of our business, it was always going to be this way. And if you didn't want it to be any different, and you could say yes, and what would change for you?

Okay, the next thing that I want to talk about is other people, right? Like, oh, boy, we love this one, don't we like that? Other people should definitely be different than they are. They should definitely do it differently than they do it. They should treat us differently. They should say things differently. They should act differently. And like we have a lot of evidence for this, like we're like this is reasonable. This is how humans should behave, right? But I want to offer you that here, too, that this is none of your business either, okay? Of course, people should behave in the way they are because they get to choose. They are humans, and they have the right to choose, and if they were like I wanted them to be in the way that I think they should be, then they would not be choosing, okay? And that was not the plan ever. So, if we can stop arguing that they shouldn't do what they do, that they shouldn't treat us the way that they do, then we can just decide, and now what?

It's like I say yes to who they are, and how they show up, then I can ask myself, and what? Who do I want to be? How do I want to show up? What do I want to believe? How do I want to feel about them, right? Again, saying no to who they are, and what they've done doesn't change it, it's just useless arguing with reality. It changes us. Arguing with their choices creates pain for us, okay? I have someone in my life who thinks that they were mistreated, and they can make a decent argument for it, right? But when we say we're mistreated, we're saying that we shouldn't have been treated that way, right? We've been treated wrong in the way that we shouldn't have been. And that means that the other people in the story shouldn't have behaved or acted in the way that they did. But they did. They did behave that way, it is over, it is done, the people did act, they did behave. And when we say that they shouldn't have, then we're totally stuck, right? We are arguing to change the past, and no amount of arguing is ever going to make that happen, right?

So, if instead you believed that they treated you in the way that they did, like that is the reality, not that they shouldn't have, not that they should have, but just that they did. Yes, it is true. They treated me in this way. And now what? How do I want to feel? What do I want to do? So, many times we talk about letting things go, letting what other people have done, just letting it go, but maybe the first step really is saying, yes, that happened before. We can, like, release it. We have to just accept that it has happened instead of arguing that it shouldn't have. It is done, yes, and and now what? Now what do I want to think? What do I want to feel? What do I want to do? Who do I want to be?

All right, lastly, I want to talk for just a minute about when we think that we should be different. Okay, again, like, oh my goodness, you guys, we have so many rules for ourselves, don't we? Like, how many ways do you think you should be different? How many ways do you think you could be different, and therefore you should be? Like we just have so many thoughts about who we should and shouldn't be. And we are in a constant, constant argument with who we are right now. And it's just a really painful way to live. We are, in fact, like looking at ourselves as that bad offering. We're on stage with ourselves, and we're like, you are a terrible offering, I can't do anything with you, okay? I can't work with this, try again, right?

33:29
And we are just like stopping our forward progress in our life the same way that saying no to a bad offering in improv stops the scene. Like we just can't move anywhere from there when we're just rejecting what is inside of us. And I think this can be especially true when we know that our thoughts are creating our results. Like, then we're really mad at ourselves, and we tell ourselves, like, hey, you're creating this, would you stop it? You shouldn't be, right? And we use, like, the fact that we have agency against ourselves, and we say we shouldn't think, and feel, and act, the way that we do. And we're arguing with who we are, what we are, what we're doing, wishing all the time that we could be different. And I want you to know that you can be, but you cannot do it from a place of rejecting what is. We have to accept what is the offering in front of us. Yes, and even to us.

Okay, so I had an experience over the last couple of weeks that I wanted to share with you. So, recently, I have a mentor in my life who I love so much. She has done so much for me in my life. And recently I found myself getting increasingly jealous of her. And like every time I see something about her on Instagram, I could feel this jealousy inside of me, right? And I really, really hated this about myself. I was like, you shouldn't be jealous, you shouldn't have these bitter feelings, this is ridiculous. Like, you should be generous. I had all these thoughts about how I should be different, and as long as I kept those shameful thoughts about how I should be different, and I shouldn't be showing up this way, I couldn't change it. It was like I was saying no, and the scene just stopped, and there I was stuck in it, just mad at myself all the time.

But instead, if I could say yes, my brain has offered me thoughts that have created jealousy, and now what? And now what am I going to do with that? What am I going to choose now? Yes, and from that place, I can get change. I can choose differently. I can think differently. I could feel differently. But I first have to accept where I am. And this is true for each one of you. No matter what it is you want to change about yourself, no matter what it is you want to be different, it starts by saying yes and to what you are, and who you are, and putting your arm around yourself, accepting yourself, having compassion for it, then you can move forward. Who we are is never a problem, but saying that we should be different always is okay and never allows us to move forward, and create something else in our lives. We are so scared to accept the things about us that we think should be different, because we think like then it's going to stay that way. But the truth is, we cannot move ourselves forward the scene forward when we are rejecting what is.

Just as really good improv is created by saying yes and, so is your life saying yes and is how you move the scene forward, and it is how you move your life forward. Saying yes and doesn't like change the difficulty of the offering, it changes our experience of it. It makes it manageable, and it removes the unnecessary extra pain that is created when we are in resistance to what is, okay? Your life is a creation, the way you choose to see it, the way you choose to see the offerings in your life from circumstances, from other people, and even in your own self. The way you choose to see all of those offerings is what allows you to create magic in your life.

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So, whether you wish the circumstances were different, or other people were different, or you were different, you create so much unnecessary pain by believing that they should be, the key is knowing they shouldn't, right? The key is acceptance. The key is saying yes, and. And this is so different than resignation. Saying yes, and to what is, is deciding for yourself, it is choosing for yourself what happens next, right? This is moving the plot forward. What counts is what happens next, and this is the way you empower yourself and take 100% responsibility for what you are creating, right? Not dictated by anything outside of you. Yes, and is taking what is in deciding for yourself the experience that you want to have so that you can create treasure. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome. I love you for listening, and I'll see you next week.

Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today, if you want to take the things I've talked about and apply them in your life so that you can love your earth-life experience. Sign up for a free coaching session at aprilpricecoaching.com. This is where the real magic happens, and your life starts to change forever as your coach. I'll show you that believing your life is 100% awesome is totally available to every one of us. The way things are is not the way things have to stay. And that, my friends is 100% awesome!