DrBCoach.com

Hello there. This is Bethanie Hansen, I'm here with you on the Mindset for Life podcast. And we're going to talk today about proven systems.

Proven systems are things that we know work. There are certain kinds of proven systems that we have out there in the world. And one of those things just might be about the way we manage our thinking or the way we manage our brain. Now, that's something we don't talk very much about in daily life. But here on the Mindset for Life podcast, we talk about it all the time.

And I want to liken a weight loss system to the way that we can develop a system for managing our thinking and have a healthy relationship with ourselves and with other people.

Now, this podcast is for you, if you love, serve, and teach others, you want things to keep getting better. You want encouragement, and just one little idea today to get stronger in your life, your relationships, and your work. And I just want you to know that I do coaching, I help people take control of their situation, and have power to do what they need to do. One group I coach often is tech leaders and executives in that industry. And for these folks, I'm often a confidence coach. And for educators, especially online educators, I am a wellbeing coach, and I share tips and strategies to manage that kind of work.

Now if you want a little encouragement, today, we're going to talk about proven systems. And I hope you'll find this reassuring and encouraging. Now, the metaphor for proven systems is my diet plan. And I am almost 50 years old. But in the last seven years, I've finally cracked the code of how to lose weight for myself. Now, my system will not work for everybody. But it definitely works for me. And the one thing I can promise you is that when you create a system and follow it regularly and rigidly, you can believe it will work and it likely will work for you.

So, I'm going to tell you about my system just a little bit. And it's kind of this metaphor for how we can use a system to manage our thinking. And by the way, in coaching other people, a lot of times it comes down to thinking.

It's something like an automatic assumption or a perception that we have, that other people don't have, that comes up in our mind that creates all this frustration. We think people are doing something mean to us, or maybe they're trying to hurt us or out to get us or they just don't like us. And a lot of times that just hinges on some little assumption that somebody has that was unspoken. And later, we may or may not figure out.

So, in my experience, my weight loss plan has been a proven system for me. Now it started out seven years ago, almost like this urgent feeling. I was an overweight adult for most of my over, over-20-year-old life. I got married when I was 24. And I was probably 185 pounds at that time. And for my body type and my frame, that was already overweight.

But eventually, over many years, I ended up weighing about 249 pounds. I just gained weight over time. I had a couple of children. And I looked around me at my genetic group, my family members, and thought, well, I have no choice. I thought, you know, my assumption was I have a destiny to be overweight because all my relatives are, and there's just nothing we can do.

And I didn't understand very much at the time, how much that line of thinking actually created more problems for me. True, there are genetic predispositions to, like, crave certain foods or eat in certain ways or benefit or not benefit from exercise and things like that.

And we can't neglect the significance of how much surrounding ourselves with people who think all the same ways influences us. So, if I'm going to hang out with all my relatives, and we're all going to be eating goodies or bread or things like that, that tends to really add to my weight problem.

Read the Transcript:

This is episode number 119: Why does it seem so hard?

Welcome to the Mindset for Life Podcast. This is Bethanie, your coach, from DrBCoach.Com--coaching with power, purpose and practical tools to help you show up with confidence.

Welcome to the podcast today. I'm Bethanie Hansen, and I'm here to talk with you about why life, or work, or both are so hard. Sometimes everything just seems really hard, right? It can feel like the whole world is against you. Like just as things start to go your way something happens. And now there's this new challenge. And it's like challenge after challenge.

Sometimes it's just the people in life, like they are resistant or difficult or not really doing what we want them to be doing. And sometimes it's just the opportunity, like, there's not enough opportunity to do what I really want to do. Or maybe I'd like to have a new experience. And I just can't figure out what that is.

And I'd like to describe that in a little more detail. Today's episode is all about being stuck, what it feels like. The experience of being stuck, why it's so draining and difficult, and some hope and reassurance that there is a way out of being stuck.

No one can change all of their external circumstances or the people around them, but we can focus on ourselves and the experience we're actually having and the way we're feeling from day to day. And when we're doing that, pretty soon, everything changes, we have the power to do it. I know it might not seem that way right now. But trust me, it's possible. And if you stay with me throughout this podcast, and throughout this series, you're gonna find a way.

So let's get started by talking about that feeling of just being stuck. And of course, this podcast is for you, if you love serve, and teach others, if you want things to keep getting better. If you want encouragement, just one little idea today to get stronger in your life, your relationships, your work. I help people take control of their situations, and I have power to do what I need to do. And so can you.

[I am a] confidence coach for tech leaders and executives, that's what I am. And I'm also a wellbeing coach for teachers. I love doing these things because it makes a difference in the lives of others. But it also makes a difference in my life. And it wouldn't be of any value to anyone else unless I was doing my best to just live it myself. So I'm on this journey to day to day, doing the best I can to be the best version of myself, just as you may be doing.

And I know life isn't easy all the time. In fact, at the time of this recording, I just had one of the toughest weeks of my recent life, just really struggling through some things happening. And so I want you to know [that] I'm with you in the feeling of struggle and really feeling stuck. Sometimes we have to weather that.

Sometimes, we have to do things to get out of that path and into another one. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about being stuck.

What is Being Stuck?

A stuck situation is where we have a lot of negative emotions. And negative emotions, as we all know, are not pleasant. We're experiencing other people or circumstances as having more power over our happiness than we do. And when we're feeling stuck like this, we believe that other people, or the things happening with our work or our life, actually have the ability to cause the troubling feelings in us that we cannot do anything about.

So perhaps we're angry, and we feel like it's someone else's fault.

We're depressed. And it seems like it's because of someone else's behavior.

We're just discouraged. And we think it's because of our work situation.

No matter how we try, it feels like these things are outside of us and beyond us. Now, because we feel like it's outside our control, we often think there's just nothing we can do ...

This season’s theme song is “Training Day,” by Infraction. Used with Permission.

This season’s theme song is “Training Day,” by Infraction. Used with Permission.

This season’s theme song is “Training Day,” by Infraction. Used with Permission.

This season’s theme song is “Training Day,” by Infraction. Used with Permission.

#110: Slow Down.

This is our last episode of season 2! We've enjoyed the inspiring, upbeat music of Danny Gokey as our theme song this year. Our license gave us one year of podcasts on which we were able to enjoy this special theme song. I hope you have loved it as much as I did!

For today's episode, we're looking at just slowing down. Enjoy the listen!

New Day, performed by Danny Gokey, (P) 2021 Danny Gokey, under exclusive license to Capitol Christian Music Group, Inc., was written by Ethan Hulse, Coby Wedgeworth, and Danny Gokey. Copyright © 2019 Better Than I Found It (BMI) (adm. at CapitolCMGPublishing.com) All rights reserved. Used by permission; and EGH Music Publishing (BMI) / Be Essential Songs (BMI) / Colby Wedgeworth Music (ASCAP) / Fair Trade Music Publishing (ASCAP) / (admin at EssentialMusicPublishing.com). All rights reserved. Used by permission.

This is episode number 108. It's all in your head.

Welcome to the mindset for life podcast, I'm so glad you're here talking about mindset. Things that we think. And the way that our brain controls literally everything we do. There's so much out there that tells us that our thoughts about something create the future. Whatever we're thinking we are capable of doing, or what is possible for us, becomes our reality. Ultimately.

Now, if you think about it, that really does have a lot of truth. I'm going to give you just a little bit of an example from my own life. And this will have to do with my trumpet playing in band. I don't know if I've mentioned this here on the podcast, but I chose to graduate high school one year early. So, I completed high school with all the necessary credits,  a little summer school in there, and some zero period classes. And because of meeting the requirements in a shorter time, I just, I was a freshman, a sophomore, and then a senior, and I graduated. And when I went to college, my high school band director told me that I was missing an entire year of performance experience.

So he was cautioning me. He was a little worried for me that when I went to college, and I wanted to play music (I was going to be a music major), that I would be behind. Less developed than my peers. And I would really struggle. And he was right.

I got there, and I really did need a little bit more musical maturity. So I was in the lowest band, the lowest jazz band, the last chair in the ensemble. And I started to develop this thinking about myself that maybe I just wasn't good enough in music generally. And perhaps I should just not be doing that. And by the second year of college, I actually dropped out of the music degree and decided not to major in music, and I turned my efforts to a different subject matter.

Now, that's kind of a funny story. Because in the end, I did end up turning back to music. I did graduate, I became a band director and a music teacher. And I went on to get a doctoral degree in music later. I had a 21 year career in music. And I've been pretty successful as a musician and a music teacher. Even though that's the case, there was an experience I had in there that kind of builds off of that first experience, where I went to college thinking, Oh, I'm behind, I'm less-than. I might not measure up, maybe I should quit.

So this other experience was that eventually, when I returned to major in music as a trumpet player, I had to take trumpet lessons. And I would watch these other people who I highly respected--other students in the music degree--and I would see them performing with the Philharmonic at the university, or with the Wind Symphony, or taking solos in the Synthesis jazz band, which at Brigham Young University is a really high, well-performing jazz band. I would watch all of these things happening.

And I would think to myself, "I would really love to be that person one day, I would love to have a chair in one of those ensembles, first of all, but I'd like it to be first chair. I would like to play the fun parts that have the melodies to them. And I want to be really good at playing those screaming high notes." And one day, it just dawned on me that I was never going to get the opportunity to do any of that until I was already qualified as if I was in those ensembles.

And at that moment, I just realized I had better start putting in the effort, as if I was first chair in this synthesis jazz band, or putting in the effort, as if I was first chair in the Wind Symphony. And I started practicing literally three and a half hours a day. And I would space that out. So it did not exhaust me and did not destroy my emboucher, which is the setting of your lips on the trumpet mouthpiece. And I would go in the practice room for the hour that I had scheduled.