Ep #82: Why You Don’t Have to Wait

Welcome to More Than Mindset, the only podcast that bridges the gap between spirituality and success. Go beyond the mind with clarity and confidence coach, Kim Guillory, and learn how to integrate your passion to serve with your skills and experience to create a business you love. Let’s get started.

Hey, guys, welcome back to the show. Listen here, I have a favor. We need some prayers out here in Louisiana. I’ve got to tell you guys, it’s a nightmare. We still have a lot of folks who are out of utilities and homes. It’s a mess, it’s hot, it’s muggy. Now we have love bugs and mosquitoes. It feels like playing Hunger Games where they turn up the heat, they turn it down. It’s like, “Let’s see if they can handle the dogs. Let’s see if they can handle more bugs, more heat.”

It seriously feels like that. It is so humid and grotesque and all of the things. I’m going to ask you just to send some prayers our way. Ask for grace and mercy and hope. You’ll hear what my show is about today, and I think it’s a big part of this is there is so much human suffering. This year is the year of hell, hell – that’s just what it feels like. All right, so let’s get started.

So, today I want to talk about why you don’t have to wait. All right? So, let’s talk about, first of all, why do we wait for something terrible to happen before we make decisions rather than giving our permission to just change our mind? We don’t need that final straw to break the camel’s back.

We can actually draw a line in the sand now. We don’t have to wait until tragedy hits, or a diagnosis is given in order to begin making changes. We can just decide and start now. So, that’s what today’s show is all about.

Here’s the thing, we already know what isn’t working, but we don’t have the courage to take action or we don’t give ourself permission until we’re backed in a corner. So, I want to take some time and really inquire here. I’m going to ask a few questions and just let you ponder on this. What do you think makes us wait until it’s so terrible that we can’t wait any longer? Why do you think we settle, we negotiate, and we sit in conflict for so long?

I am seriously asking these questions even for myself. I love to contemplate. I love inquiring and finding out where are these beliefs coming from? Why does my brain believe that? What’s happening here?

I can look back at my own experience and see where I have done this so many times in different areas of my life, in my business, with weight loss, relationships. Even being brave enough to raise my prices after 20 years’ experience in the business. I just kept charging the same thing until it began to cost me money to keep the service. Is that insane?

Guys, we do this all the time. It’s like we don’t have the courage and permission to make our own damn decisions. We’ve hurt ourself trying not to hurt someone else, or that’s what we perceive that we’re doing. It’s such a trap. It’s dishonest, and it’s scary. I get it, but we have to see that we are being dishonest even with ourself. It’s not true to them, it’s not true to us.

We have guilt because we were conditioned to believe that we are responsible for others; for the way they feel, like we owe them, we should suffer, to be Godly, or whatever the reason is in your head. We’ve all heard something different. Maybe it’s, “If I do that, they won’t like me. If I say no, they’ll turn everyone against me.” What are these threats that your mind keeps running that’s preventing you from giving yourself permission?

This is why change is so hard. We lack in coping and communication skills. We are emotionally immature. We don’t know how to handle the fear and the shame. It controls us because we don’t have the self-worth and the confidence to be independent. What if you don’t have to wait? What if you can have permission right now?

This has been a big deal for me for years. I’ve been trying to figure this out for myself and to understand human suffering in general. I wanted to know why a mother would leave her babies, why a brother would take his own life, why a husband would beat his wife. I wanted to know why life felt so hard and sad. I wanted to understand why others were happy and I just had to find out.

So, I basically spent my entire life searching for answers. I wanted to know why some people always felt alone, different, hopeless. I wanted to understand why success was only available for certain people. I wanted to know how God decided this. Seriously, those were my questions. So, what makes it fair? How do I get in that line? How do I live in that neighborhood? How are you choosing this?

It felt very much like – this was because I was such a victim, right? Like, being this little mouse trapped in this little box and it was like God was just looking down and laughing just like, “Yeah, figure it out. Yep, good luck.”

That’s what it felt like. Now, I wonder if people had the understanding, like if they understood what I know now would they stay in broken marriages? Would they have done the thing they did? Would they have taken the same actions? Would they have continued to live in regret?

So, I’m going to assume that some of you haven’t experienced extreme sadness and dark nights of the mind or dark nights of the soul. That you possibly may not understand this episode at all and I give you permission to go if you don’t, but for those who do, I hope it’s helpful because I’m going to dive in kind of deep right here.

I’ll tell you what got all of this started. On my Facebook News Feed this week there was a birthday post of this sweet teenage who we lost by suicide. It was a friend of mine. She worked with me. I was a friend of her mother’s and it’s really sad, right? So, it was her birthday and so she has a post up and right after was this beautiful 30-year-old mom who was also a veterinarian that died by suicide one year ago to the day. A couple of posts down a lonesome mother of a 20-year-old son who died by suicide last year. You guys have probably heard me talk about him.

Then, a sad mom of a 20-year-old son that was lost by suicide last week. Now, I’m not making this up. All of this was on my News Feed. They’re all in my community. They are my neighbors, they are my real-life friends, and this really got me cranked up. Not because I think I need to save anyone, but because I believe they are showing us something. They are showing us what they can’t tell us or what they couldn’t tell us or didn’t feel safe in sharing.

Suicide is thrown in this basket of mental illness. So, I guess, if you’re talking about thoughts then sure, it’s mental. But I don’t believe that it’s just a chemical imbalance in the brain kind of issue. I believe it’s a thought error, the belief error, and that error activates an emotional response.

So, we know our thoughts create our results. We can all agree to that. We hear this all the time, change your thoughts, change your life, but our feelings are what’s driving our actions. So, here’s how it works. Here’s the thoughts. “This is too much. I can’t handle it. It’ll never get better. The world is better off without me. I’m so tired of this. I don’t see a way out. I just want it to end.”

Those thoughts create the feeling of like hopelessness, or helplessness, alone, sad, defeated. Then, the action or the act that they take is to exit, to leave, to eject, to end the unbearable feelings and sufferings. We know what the results are. Listen, some people choose to numb out from emotions with food, alcohol, shopping, gambling, whatever’s available. Some people lash out and avoid, some people shut down, some people were oppressed and suppressed.

You can take this same information and you could put it with just people in general, maybe even yourself living in a situation that you don’t want to be in whether it’s a relationship or a job or whatever the thing is that you are afraid to change. It’s the same thoughts, right? “I can’t handle it. It’s too much.” Then, we feel hopeless and then we stay, and we continue to suck it up and bear it. It’s kind of all the same thing, I just happen to be using this because it was on my News Feed.

So, others resort to end it permanently. This is how suicide happens. This is how divorce happens or affairs happens. This is also how sickness in the body happens from staying in relationships and jobs beyond the outdates contracts. In other words, they’re basically dying to themselves, to their inner knowing, to their dreams because they just kind of stifle and die. They kill off that dream within themselves and then they’re just basically this body suit in this relationship just with bitterness and regret and resentment and that creates illness and disease in the body. It creates chronic pain in the body.

So, the only difference is we check out temporarily or we check out permanently and it’s decided, according to mental ideas, examples that we’ve seen, experiences that we’ve had, beliefs, and coping skills. Like, what’s our ability to cope with a life in general? What have we been taught? Should we stay? Should we feel bad? Are we responsible for their feelings? We can’t tell anyone because we’re ashamed. They may pick on us, they may reject us or laugh at us. All of that stuff is part of our beliefs.

So, the thing is we’re all in need of some sort of emotional healing, mostly because we didn’t know how to handle things in the past. But emotional healing is not a linear process. It’s not logical. It’s not intellectual. You can’t comprehend it from a mental space, just as you can’t comprehend suicide from a mental space, it gets hard to understand, right?

I personally don’t believe that suicide is selfish. Kind of the same thing about affairs, I’m sorry, I just choose not to judge. I believe there’s more to the story. I believe the person didn’t know where else to go, they weren’t emotionally capable, or they didn’t have the communication skills to express, and so they did what they could to get out of the intense suffering.

So, you imagine someone who’s in a marriage who doesn’t want to be there, doesn’t have the nerve to tell the wife, tell the kids, or maybe it’s her, whatever, and so it’s easier to have the affair, right? It’s easier to go on a binge or go and do something else because the discomfort from having a mature conversation, for all of these, for everyone, for all of us is so intense, right? So, we choose these other actions.

That’s it. That’s all that’s happening. I see it all as very neutral and maybe you don’t and maybe this is not okay with you, but maybe you could just open your mind a little bit to consider that this could be true. There’s more to it than medical, mental, physical aspects. It’s more than mindset. It’s more than, “Hey, take some pills and you’ll be happy.” It’s more than medication. Whatever they choose to do, whatever the out is they’re not feeling it, so of course, they’re not going to get the healing.

Until we understand, expose, and educate on the root cause we will continue to see suicide and sadness and people in positions that they don’t want to be in. I think we’re going to see those rates increase. Until we are willing to have open and mature conversations without judgment and shame people won’t get what they need because if they don’t have permission to change their mind, to change their marriage partners, to change their careers, their jobs, if there’s someone that’s always hammering them about what they should or shouldn’t think or do, you see how that makes it so much more intense?

Most of us lack in mental management and emotional regulation. We lack in even spiritual understanding. We weren’t taught about coping skills growing up. It wasn’t safe to share what we were feeling and thinking because people would judge, label, or even try to fix us like, “Oh, you shouldn’t think that way. Oh, you shouldn’t feel like that,” right? But the problem is we do. Life fucking sucks sometimes and it isn’t safe for us to say that. We’re taught to bypass, to suppress, to deny, to suck it up.

So, let’s just maybe start here. Let’s just be real about it now rather than at the burial site, or the funeral home, or after 30 years in a lifeless relationship, or even a lifetime of poverty. Believing that you have to stay poor. That money is not available for you. Why don’t we just start to get real about it now? Like, this is not fair, this does not feel good, I’m really pissed off about it and then we feel that and then we can get to the other side of it and we can make the changes.

Like, hey, sometimes I just want to die because I can’t bear the pain or humans are assholes and my feelings get hurt. Some of the shit that they say and do pisses me off. Life is too hard. I feel alone and isolated. I’m sick of everything going wrong. I’m sick of not being supported. Those things that we’re not allowed to say are just brewing in our bodies, whatever it is.

How about we just say it and feel it so we can move the heck on? Permission to change your mind, to call it quits, and to carry on. How about we create a safe space for creative expression, individual uniqueness, freedom and liberation? Safely feeling all of the shit that life throws at us or a safe place to end relationships correctly, honestly.

What if these souls had visions and dreams bigger than the world could handle? Bigger than their environment could handle? What if their hearts couldn’t handle one more crack? Their gut couldn’t defend one more punch. What if they felt free and safe to express that? What? Just putting this out there like what if?

What if we were more open to really listen to what was going on? When we stop shaming sadness, despair, loneliness, disappointment, when we stop trying to be happy all of the time or pretend, when we stop avoiding the human condition and the array of emotions then we can begin to heal and support our brothers and sisters in healing.

Let’s start with honoring the memory and messages that, first of all, these courageous souls that I read about on my Facebook page, what are they leaving us with? They are saying we need to do better. Life is fucking hard. We don’t know how to handle all of this shit. We don’t know what else to do. We don’t see another way out. The world is better off without us. It’s not safe to share my pain, is not safe to share my feelings, we’ve just run out of hope.

Those are the messages and there’s so many of us who are just living a dead life still alive. Some just choose the out, some choose to stay. So, are we listening? I wonder how much potential is not realized. How many dreams and visions and will never materialize and what grand things people would be doing if they were able to give the world all that their heart desired if they weren’t stuck in positions that they don’t want to be in, but they don’t have the courage to get out of, how would it be different?

They are leaving us lessons to evolve and do better as a human species. We all are. We do this for each other. If we are willing to listen, to accept, and to allow mistakes, to forgive and love each other, how would it be different? How would the human experience be different?

So, I’m going to keep talking and sharing and teaching tools and supporting those who want to be heard and safely held. It matters to me and to the generation that follows me. I’m committed to breaking generational patterns and these old limiting beliefs and I will not stop doing my part.

I have my 12^th grandbaby on the way, and I will do my part for them to have better coping skills, to have options, to have opportunities to know something different. I’m committed to that and that’s what I have for you this week, guys.

If you haven’t heard yet, enrollment is open for Self Healing Masters. Self Healing Masters is an approach, it’s actually a self-healing approach for mental, emotional, and spiritual growth. It’s about learning communication skills, healing relationships, mending our money stories, loving and accepting ourselves, and our desires, our dreams, our differences, discovering our sacred soul essence and living a satisfying and fulfilling life of purpose and passion.

Self Healing Masters is about creating and contributing, connecting and expressing. It’s about deep, meaningful relationships. It is a community where we will share and grow and evolve, learn from each other. I think the most important thing for me, what is just what I’ve learned through my own childhood, my own 30 years of marriage and 5 children and grandbabies and all of the differences between us and our personalities and being in business and working with thousands of women over the last 25 years and seeing so many people in relationships that were already over.

But because there was conditioning, because whether it was religion or society or family that just – like, you can’t change your mind. It’s almost like, I remember hearing one of my clients one time say that the younger generation was taking the easy way out by getting a divorce and I’m like, “Have you ever been in the position about to get a divorce?” It is not easy at all. It’s a tough decision. It’s way easier to just shut off your feelings, be quiet, go hide in a corner, and just hang out until it’s all over. Seriously.

So, this has been in my heart for a very long time. That probably happened, oh my gosh, it’s over 10 years ago because I remember the person we were talking about when it happened and it’s been a long time, she’s got lots of babies since then. So, this has been on my heart for a very long time, I’m really excited about offering it. It is a one-time investment and the reason I did that is because it is a continually growing process. You’re going to want to be here for life and you go through the modules, you repeat them year after year and new stuff comes up and new things happen.

I see this in coaching, scarcity comes in even with timing because it’s like, “Oh, my six months is up,” or, “My year’s up and I didn’t get what I wanted. It got really busy. I didn’t get to go watch the videos. I didn’t get to go to the calls.” That’s the kind of stuff that’s happened in the past and so I wanted to come up with a new solution, something different that I thought would work long-term for all of us where we would be all invested in this community and continue to grow and evolve.

As new people come in then they can become the mentors, the leaders, I have a beautiful vision for it. So, I hope you’ll join us. We’ll have the link in the show notes and that’s all I’ve got for you this week. Don’t forget to keep praying for us. I’m just asking you very kindly to keep Louisiana in your prayers. Until next week.

Thanks for listening to this episode of More Than Mindset.