Episode 110
===
[00:00:00] You are listening to episode 110 of the peaceful mind podcast.
Welcome to the peaceful mind podcast, a place for creating the peace of mind. You need to be the best bomb you are created by God to be. If you wanna bring more balance, more joy and more peace to your motherhood, this is the place for you. I'm your host certified life coach at Catholic mom, Danielle Thienel In the name of the father of the son and of the holy spirit.
Let's get started.
Hi everyone. Raise your hand. If you worry a lot, raise your hand. If you would call yourself a mom who really worries about everything, do you find yourself? Always worrying about your life, about your [00:01:00] kids. Yeah. Well, today I wanna help you minimize that. So I've entitled it. How not to worry. And I'm gonna give you some tangible steps on really how to slow down worrying and not make it such a big part of your life.
But I also added in the title for very long in parentheses. Why I did this is because I want you to know that it is impossible and that it, you wouldn't be a human being if you stopped having the feeling of worry at all, because we are going to worry as moms, as human beings, worry is just gonna be part of.
But it is what I call an indulgent emotion. And I do know that worrying doesn't serve us. It really doesn't help us help our [00:02:00] children. It doesn't help us show up as a better parent, but I also want you to know that it is going to be part of our life. So today I want to help you learn how not to worry.
For very long, if you find yourself worrying. Okay. I want you to know that when you recognize that you're worrying about something. That we can minimize how long you stay in that worry. And that's a really good thing. It's a really good skill to have because it's never a problem. When we find ourselves feeling negatively about something, the problem comes when we act from it.
When we stay in that worry, it's not going yield you good results in your life. So I wanna bring more awareness on what to do when you find yourself worry. So I'm gonna start out to let you know that worry is going to visit your life. [00:03:00] It, we, we see that. I know that you've seen it already. That really, from the time we find out that we're even gonna have a baby, right.
We start we're happy, but then we start to worry if everything's gonna be okay. Yeah. And then we know that we can. We can hear our brains, offer us that there is something to worry about, right? When we hear the weather. And let's say you had a big party planned and then the brain offers you. Yes. But. The weather says it's gonna rain.
And then that would be terrible. And then we start trying to worry, like, okay, well what will happen? What do we need to do to take care of everything? And I just wanna know that you can hear it. You can hear it out, what your brain has to say. I just don't want you to allow it to stay very long, cuz I want you to then get into questioning.
Okay. Let's say that rain does come for the party. What do I wanna do [00:04:00] about it? So it has you going into like just taking tangible steps on how you can combat that worry and actually take control and do something about. And the other reasons why we don't wanna worry for very long is because it feels terrible.
Worry feels terrible. And I am trying to get the message out that when we feel better, we do better and it yields better results for our life. So I want the number one thing for you, moms out there is to be like always figuring out how you can feel. The goal is not to feel better all the time. It's literally to just feel a little bit better than you are in a certain negative instance and worry doesn't feel great.
I wanna also tell you that worry, pretends to be necessary. I have seen, we know this, that society, and even like, you know, kind of like in the [00:05:00] mom sort of circle were always kind of saying like, oh, I'm worried about this. Or I'm worried about my child, that this is gonna happen to them. And it, it sort of becomes this like badge of honor, right?
Like that's just what we moms do. Like, it's kind of like, you're not being. The best mom, if you're not worrying, cuz it's just what comes along with motherhood. And I wanna override that belief because I want you to know that it pretends to be a necessary part of our life, but we do it isn't, it isn't necessary.
We don't have to worry. It, it, it won't be beneficial to us, but we're gonna look to minimize it. And then when we are in a state of worry and taking the action of worrying. It blocks us off from problem solving, from whatever we're worrying about. Right? So we have our mind full of all these worry thoughts [00:06:00] instead of focusing on how we can actually solve whatever problem it is.
And then when we are having all of those worry thoughts and feeling worried and taking actions of worrying, we're spending our time worrying. We can't actually hear our own intuition and wisdom inside that when we access, then we could be moving forward and not, you know, worrying. At all. And so, but we can't hear that.
We can't hear our own wisdom and intuition. If our mind is too busy, thinking about what we're worrying. And that works the same thing for prayer, right? So if we go and seek answers through prayer, we need to be able to listen and hear what the spirit is telling us to do, or to have an answer in our mind and in our hearts.[00:07:00]
But if we, again are feeling worried, if our emotional health is all in a state of worry, And our mental mentality is also just thinking all these thoughts about how terrible this is and what's gonna happen. Then we can't hear our answers to the prayers. So if you find yourself worrying, what do we do?
This is what I wanna offer you. There are three steps that I want you to know that you can pivot away from worry when you take these three steps. So the first one is to understand that worry is a feeling. And all of our feelings are caused by our thoughts. They're also, you know, when we have a thought we've got, you know, chemicals that are released in our body, sometimes it's just neurobiologic stuff, which is the very [00:08:00] scientific side of really what happens in our brains.
When we think a thought or when a feeling comes into our body, sometimes it's driven by hormones that circulate in the body that create certain feelings. Right. But it is a sensation in the body. And in the most part, it is created by our thoughts. So when we have a thought. Oh, no, something's gonna go, you know, wrong with my child or my child is sick or something like that.
That thought of it triggers the sensation in the body, the vibration in the body. And in, in this instance, it may be that vibration of worrying. And so when we understand that it's a feeling. That we ourselves, most of the time have created. And then we also know that that feeling is what's gonna drive the actions we take.
We can get a little bit of, um, traction over it. We can say, [00:09:00] all right, well, do I want to keep thinking this way because it's optional. So one of the examples I wanna give you that happened, um, it's a couple months now, but I think it's a really. Um, way kind of to explain what I meant. So we had the, a trip planned.
Okay. And the trip required us to have a negative COVID test before we went on the plane as a family. So when I found this news out, it was about a week and a half before we were to leave. And so I. All of these thoughts that we had planned this trip and it was very expensive and it would be the, the last time we'd be able to go before we would travel out of the country with a, with all my family and my girls before they go off to school.
[00:10:00] And so for a week and a half, I literally. Okay. That would be terrible if we had a negative test because we wouldn't be able to go on this trip. So immediately I had the thoughts of this. Wouldn't be good. What would we do if one of us got it. And then this would be so much of a waste of money. And I literally was like, This, I, I just worried about all the different possibilities, but because I understand how not to worry or that worry for very long is not gonna help me.
And that it would cut me off from like problem solving and hearing my wisdom, or maybe getting some answers to prayers. I went to this first step. I was like, okay, this is a feeling that's caused by these thoughts. What else could I think. That brings me some relief or [00:11:00] some peace about it. Uh, so I pivoted after I understood and reminded myself that it was a feeling I pivoted to some thoughts, like God has got me that if it's in his will, that we go, then we will.
But if not, then there's another plan or that he makes good out of everyth. I also was like, what, what could I think about what I have control over until we go, like, we could make alternate plans of where we would land. I also was like, have we, you know, how are all the health we have we're healthy right now.
So it's possible that we won't have it. Then I just was like, I have a chance here to. About having to have a test before we go in any way possible, [00:12:00] which way do I want to feel? That takes me out of worrying about it and into more of peace and control about it. Now, what I wanna offer here is that I did find some good things that really made me feel.
Better about what was gonna happen, but also as the week went on and we got closer, I didn't make it a problem that my brain would say, yep. Well, it's possible. It could be negative too. I mean, it could be positive too, and it would, we'll have to shift some things around, but again, I recognize that it, that wasn't in my control and that I really didn't want to make.
Whole part of my life miserable up until the time we got the results, because notice how I would be miserable for the week and a half leading. And then if the results came back that we had a positive test, then I would be, could be miserable then [00:13:00] too. So I'd be feeling miserable twice. So I just made it definitely a focus to do whatever I could to notice when I was, my brain was offering me thoughts that caused me to worry, to pivot.
To other thoughts, knowing that this was just a feeling that I was creating myself. Okay. Step two of that. Can have you, when you find yourself in worry, like moving away from it and not staying there very long is to know why we worry in the first place. And the reason why we worry is because our brain tells us at the time that this is like the only option it tells us, like.
Emergency. This is what we need to do that the option is to worry our child isn't home and it's a little bit pass their curfew. I have to worry. Okay. We got a bill in the mail and I wasn't expecting it. It says the option to do is to worry. [00:14:00] So I wanna offer you that it's not the only option ever. That there are other things that are available to you.
Other ways to feel other thoughts to think when worry comes into your life. It, it, I also wanna say that why we worry is that it does feel useful to us, right? It feels like we're doing something about it. It feels like we, we have, uh, a chance to prevent something terrible from happening. And this just isn't true.
Worrying doesn't serve us in one way. And if, if I was going to have those negative tests worrying about it, wasn't going, I'm sorry. If we were gonna have those positive tests, if that was going to be what really happens for us, that their worrying wasn't [00:15:00] any kind of preventative. Worrying, wasn't gonna stop that from happening.
So know that our brain is gonna tell us that it's useful. It's the only option and that when we worry that we'll be able to prevent it, but really what's happening is we're just a feeling, a bunch of terrible emotions. Right. And that we're gonna have them twice if we worry now. And then the thing we're worrying about ends up becoming true.
We're just gonna have it twice. So. If we try to minimize or eliminate or get out of worry before the thing we're worrying about actually happens, then we can only feel it once. The third thing as I want you to do is we wanna remember the truths about worry one that worry just an emotion caused by our thoughts, that it's not an indication that something terrible will happen.[00:16:00]
It doesn't dictate that that is going to be the outcome, that the outcome will be terrible. And it's just created by something that might happen. That's it? That's all worry is it's your brain telling you something that might happen. And so when you find yourself worrying, remember that you are not in the present moment because in the present moment, Is where you have all your power worry lives in the future.
So if your mind is always in the future, then it's not in the present. And so you're not in your own place of power, you're actually giving it away to possibility in the future. But the present moment, what you're thinking about right now is what really has the impact. On your experience of your life. And I just want you to know when something comes into your life, that, that your [00:17:00] brain tells you, that you should be worrying about.
I just want you to combat that with this thought that you can handle it. And I want you to just pause right now and look at what is something that you did worry about and that. One, it probably turned out fine, but even if it was something tough, even if it was hard, even if it really tested you, you ended up handling it.
Yeah. Do you see how you, you could handle it? And that is something that you can think about and believe when you are faced with a circumstance that has you going into worry. And know that when we are a mom who worries about our kids, it doesn't make us more of a loving mom. It actually just takes us away from accessing that best part of us, that figures out how can we can [00:18:00] love our kids in the best way possible.
It just makes you less effective. It doesn't have you showing up as your best self. When we are earn a state of worrying about our life, our family, our children, and there's just never a time when worry is the fuel that you want to be driving your life, picture that your emotions and how you. Are the actual fuel.
Just think about like your, it being a car and that the gas you put in the car to make it go is the emotions that you choose by the thoughts you think. So if you choose a thought that creates you to feel worried, all of the actions you take are gonna be coming from that worry. It's gonna be coming from the negative emotion.
And instead we want emotions like determination and patience and [00:19:00] love and trust and faith. We want these driving our actions. So as a life coach, one of my main focuses is to help you build the skill of intentional thinking. So true peace and happiness that you're after it exists in the present moment.
So when we leave our brains unsupervised, which is what's happening when we're not conscious about what we're thinking, if we're thinking in a way that creates worry for us, it will have you ruminating in the past. Your worry will say, okay, you know, this kind of happened in the past. And so this is gonna happen now.
And then you worry about it. Or like I mentioned a little bit ago that it has you staying in the. Right worry lives in the future, but remember true peace and happiness exists only in the present moment. And there's nothing more [00:20:00] powerful as staying in the present moment. So to how not to worry or to not stay there very long, the number one focus is to be intentional about what you're thinking and feeling and choosing in that present moment.
What you want to feel about that. So to tell you. Our tests end up coming up negative. We ended up going on that trip and everything was fine, but I remember the week and a half when the worry thoughts came in. And because I had these three steps, because I knew that number one, worry is a feeling. And when I understand this, I know how to pivot from.
I know how to create a new thought and create a new feeling instead of worry. And when I know number two, why I worry, because that's just what the brain does. It tells us it's the only option. It, [00:21:00] it kind of, it tricks us into feeling like it's useful and preventative, because I know that I was onto myself.
So that week before we left, I was able to say, no, this isn't the other option. There are other thoughts and feelings I can have on, on the way until finding out the answer to the test. And then three, I remember the truth about worry that it's created by what might happen, and that's not what was happening now and that I can handle it.
And that it, it makes me more or less effective. And I wanna be an effective mom as we. You know, to find out what the results were. So, because I was able to rely on these truths that I'm giving you today. It allowed me to have some power and some type of enjoyment in that week and a half. And it ended up not having me feel negative emotion twice.
And in this case, it all worked out [00:22:00] fine. And most of the time it does. And if it is something that your brain's telling you, you should have worried about, know that we can just wait till the thing happens and then we can decide then what we wanna think and feel and do about it instead of worrying on the way.
All right, mama, I want you to become a person who worries less or. When you worry, you don't stay there very long because it doesn't help you. But I do hope that what I offered here today does help you. The next time you find yourself worrying about something. And don't forget that I'm always available for you.
If you want peace over something that you are worrying about in your life, come to a free peace strategy call with me, and we will have you leaving that. Call [00:23:00] with more relief and peace about this subject. And I can help walk you through these exact steps that I've offered here today and apply them directly to your life so that you can get out of worry and get back to being the mom.
You want to be go to daniellethienel.com and sign up. I will talk to you again next week. Thank you for tuning into today's episode of the peaceful mind podcast. Are you ready to take everything? I teach you here and put it to work for your own life to really learn how to have peace of mind, no matter what is happening around you.
If so, I'd love to have you as a client, as your coach. This is where you'll get personal and focused time on your own mind. Using life coaching tools, concepts, and proven life. Transforming wisdom all through a faith-filled lens to learn more about how we can work together. Come on over to daniellethienel.com
there you'll see how to sign up for a [00:24:00] free coaching consult and learn how to get started until next time please be with you always.
