Ep 135. Onward and Upward

I am Kym Showers and this is Reinvented After 40, episode number 135, Onward and Upward.

Welcome to the Reinvented After 40 podcast. I am your host, Kym Showers, and I’m a certified life coach for women in the second half of life. Each week I’ll bring you direct advice and inspiring, practical wisdom to help you live your very best life and create a future you’re absolutely obsessed with. It’s going to be fun, let’s get started.

Hello my friends out in podcast land. How are you today? Happy Thursday. Happy April. We are still at the bungalow. I think we’re going to be at the bungalow for at least another five weeks, I bet. And we’re having the time of our life because we decided we’re having the time of our life. And my favorite thought right now is onward and upward, I think it all the time. Any time that my brain wants to bring me down, wants to drum up some anxiety or drum up, they’re not doing it right or this is a problem. I’m like, “Oh, no, none of this is a problem.” This is wonderful. This is for me.

Everything is right on time, onward and upward. That’s the way I choose to think. We get to choose to think anything we want to think, my friend. I want you to become the watcher of you. Be the watcher of your thoughts. Be very aware of what your brain is feeding you on repeat every single day. Notice if you have thoughts that are not useful for you. So it doesn’t matter if they’re true or not, it only matters if they’re useful for you. This is how we know. If you are thinking useful thoughts, you are getting the results in your life that you actually want. That’s how we know.

We have two types of thoughts that we think all day long and we think 60,000 thoughts a day. Some of them are just the same thoughts over and over and over. But the thing that’s going to change your life the most is to be the watcher, become aware of why you’re getting the results you are. You’re going to follow that thread back to the thoughts that you’re thinking that are not useful and the thoughts that you are thinking that are useful. You want to be able to connect the thought with the result of your life.

So the thought, onward and upward for me is a very powerful, motivating, optimistic thought that gets me the results that I want. I never feel stuck because I know if I’m feeling stuck, it’s because I’m thinking a very un-useful thought. And most of those thoughts when you’re 63 years old, when you’re a woman at 63 years old, they’re just memorized, practiced thoughts on repeat.

So I’ve talked to you about this so many times because now that I’ve been coaching for so many years and I have so many women that are around my age that I coach, I notice this similarity with all of us. And it all kind of falls back into the thoughts that we think that are un-useful. That’s what keeps us from our dream life. So it kind of just breaks down to the simplicity of useful thoughts and un-useful thoughts. So I want you to just become aware of your thoughts.

I mean, if you’re a client of mine, I would like for you to write down, I’d like you to have a column of un-useful thoughts, and then I’d like you to have a column of useful thoughts. Write down in the column of un-useful thoughts the thoughts that you think that are giving you feelings that you do not like which are driving actions or inactions that are getting you results that you absolutely do not want. Those are un-useful thoughts. And then what we’re going to do with those un-useful thoughts is to stop thinking them.

It really is that simple. I’m not telling you it’s easy. I’m just telling you, it’s simple and it takes some determination. And then the useful thoughts, the thoughts that I teach you, the thoughts that I tell you week after week, those are useful thoughts. They’re not just pie in the sky thoughts. They’re very useful thoughts like onward and upward. What would you make that mean if you thought that thought on a regular basis every single day?

For me, I make that mean that I am the boss of whatever the situation is and I’m going to keep moving through it. I’m going to learn whatever lesson I need to learn. I’m going to keep my eye on the prize. I’m going to make sure I align everything in my day that aligns with my goal, with my highest self, my best self, the self that creates all of this goodness, not only in me and in my life and in the people that I love the most, but in the world.

So onward and upward is a very useful thought for me because it gives me so much productivity in my days, onward and upward. It puts me in a position to get what I want. It means that I have all the energy, I have all the know-how to be able to create exactly what I’m after. For me, it doesn’t even matter how long it takes. It just matters that I keep going, I keep pushing through, I keep taking action every single day. And I’ve gotten so good at that because I’ve been practicing it for at least seven years now.

Once I started understanding that my results are created by me, my life, every single thing about my life is created by me. Once I understood that, everything changed for me. So I really want you to understand that. I want you to understand that if you are in a very difficult situation right now, you created that. Somehow you created that with the way that you have lined your life up, with the way that you think about yourself and about your life. The way that you feel about yourself and about your life and the actions that you take or you don’t take every single day that landed you in this position.

And I’m not saying you did anything wrong. Life is full of hard stuff. And the hard stuff is, believe it or not, the good stuff. So for example, I used to get all of my validation from my friends, from people outside of me. So I collected friends and I had a whole different idea of friendship back then than I do now because I have changed my thoughts and feelings about myself. So I would find myself in, I would call it a tough position, a hard place full of pressure and heartbreak whenever a friendship or even family and friends, I kind of intermix all of that.

Whenever, let’s just call it a relationship would ‘fall apart’ and it seemed like I was in this cycle of relationships falling apart periodically. And I thought it was, I was just not good at picking friends or I had done something wrong and I shouldn’t have done it. And trying to find reasons to feel ashamed of myself and reasons to blame the other person.

And then I got some awareness around the fact that I have had a pattern of the kind of people that I was attracted to and the kind of things that I kind of needed from them and how I became attached to that person or that relationship. And the meaning it gave me for me, the way that I thought about myself came from my relationships. So every time a relationship would fall apart, and let me tell you, healthy relationships, my friend, do not fall apart.

So all of the times my relationships would fall apart, it was because they were not healthy relationships because I didn’t have a healthy relationship with me. And all of that to say, I am so glad all of those relationships fell apart. Hindsight is 20/20. So if you’re in a hard place right now, I want to encourage you with this, a year from now, six months from now, two years from now, you’re going to look back on this hard place.

And I’m telling you, if you learn your lesson, you pay attention to your responsibility in this tough spot, why you’re feeling so bad, why the relationship fell apart or whatever the situation. Why you don’t like your job anymore or why you have money or you don’t have the money, whatever financial predicament that you’re in. I want you to see and notice that this is a pattern for you. An emotional adulthood is when you’re able to take full responsibility for the situation you’re in, learn the lesson, and then move forward with the thought, onward and upward. I get it. I got it. I get it.

I am so glad this happened even though it was so heartbreaking, so painful, so hard, just super, super pressured and hard. It’s because of all the things we make the situation mean about us, we’ve done something wrong and we shame ourselves. And then we blame someone else and we get stuck in that cycle, which is useless.

So I talked to you this week on my Instagram, follow me on Instagram @kymshowerslifecoach on Instagram. Because I put out something very useful, useful thoughts every single day for you that you can pick up, anything that resonates with you. I want you to pick up these useful thoughts that I give you on Instagram and these useful thoughts that I’m giving you on my podcast every week.

But I told you last week that whatever hard place you’re in, I want you to stay there until you get the lesson. Because I look at life like a school, I’m taking classes right now and I want to learn every single thing in this class that I’m in right now. I’m in a tough spot right now, too. I just want you to know that. And maybe one day I’ll tell you about it, but for now, just trust me, I am in a tough spot too. And the me ten years ago or even five years ago would have just wanted to get out of it and wanted to quit and wanted to be done with it, so that I could feel better.

That’s why we want to get out of the middle of a problem because we just want to feel better. But I’m telling you, my friend, the worst thing in life is negative feelings. When we’re devastated, when we’re heartbroken, when we’re just going through the worst time of our life, it’s all the feelings that we just need to get good at. We just need to learn how to feel them and not make ourselves wrong for being in this place. Just get curious about it instead, I see, I want to be an emotional adult here and see. First of all, I get curious about, I wonder why I’m here, what is the lesson?

I see the pattern. Maybe I’ve been here before. Maybe I’ve taken this class before. And I got out of it too quick without learning how to be here. Be here now. Feel the feelings. Figure out why I’m here and what I need to do to take the next step and the next step and the next step. We don’t want to get out of it. We want to learn from it. We want to grow our capacity to be strong and resilient and resourceful women. That’s what we want.

And the only way to be able to be that kind of a woman is to stay in the middle of a really tough, challenging situation. Without having to overdrink and numb ourselves and without having to overeat and numb ourselves or over-shop or complain or talk about other people and blame other people. Because we could find ourselves still here five years from now. What a pity, what a waste of a really good class to take.

So now I recognize that when I’m in a situation that feels hard and feels pressured. And my tendency to want to get out of it as quick as I can, I’m like, “Oh, no, girl, we’re staying here.” Now let’s just grow our capacity to do this thing, to figure it out and use our brain to take the next step, what’s the next right thing. I’m telling you, it changes you for the better. So I’m not telling you, you have to be happy when you’re in a hard situation. I just want you to be the watcher of it and recognize that it’s a feeling that you’re having a hard time tolerating.

And this is where coaching comes in so handy, you guys. I am telling you, it helps so much. I have so many clients that I am teaching this to right now, that I’m helping them see that all they’re wanting is to have a better feeling, so they want to get out of the class, they want to quit the class. But they’re never going to be able to learn the lesson and grow if they quit the class. We don’t grow if we’re numbing our feelings. We’re just going to get in a very bad habit of numbing our feelings.

We want to be able to see it clearly, see what’s going on, be an emotional adult, take responsibility for it in the most powerful way, in the most upward and onward way. Let’s handle this. And my trick really is to pinpoint the feeling that I’m wanting. So I even asked a client that last week, I asked her, “Well, what is the feeling you’re wanting?” And relief is a feeling she’s wanting, why she wants to get out of it and quit on herself in the middle of it, relief, she wants freedom.

And I’m like, “Let’s just practice feeling relief and freedom now in the middle of it.” That’s where all of our power is. That’s where the onward and upward feeling is. The strength and the tenacity to be a woman of grit, to be a woman who knows how to handle life and be a woman that you can be proud of. I’m so proud of who I am. I love who I am and I love knowing that I’m going to figure this out. I have no doubt that I’m going to figure this out and I’m going to be so much better for it.

So I want you to know that you can too, my friend, there is nothing pretty much but the middle from here on out. We’re just going to find ourselves in the middle of things because of the choices we’ve made. And I promise you, it is a good place to be when you can just be able to create the feelings you want to feel and figure things out and get the results you want every single day, all on your own. That’s a really fun life. I mean I’m having a blast in my life right now.

And also I’m in the middle of something that is challenging for me, very challenging for me, where I would have had a hard time dealing with it a few years ago and I’m just not having a hard time dealing with it. I have a very determined attitude about it. And onward and upward is always a really good thought because I look at it like I’m moving through a course right now, a classroom, something I’m learning that I need to learn. And I don’t want to take this class again because we’re going to have to take it again if we don’t learn it now.

So if you’re drawn to people that aren’t aligning with your highest self, let’s just call it that. That relationship is going to fall apart at some point, I promise you. It is going to be an unhealthy relationship and you have to take responsibility for that and notice your patterns there. So let’s not get into relationships right now until we get to a vibration of self-confidence, of self-concept where we’re going to draw the right kind of people to us. We don’t want to be attached to people anymore.

Attachment isn’t a healthy relationship. You want to be attached to you. And then you want to be connected and have a really good connection with people who are vibing at your level, who do not need you. But where you guys are just a really good time together, you are not attached to each other and what’s it called? I want to say intertwined with each other, that becomes codependency. No, you don’t want any of that anymore.

And that’s really, truly all I ever knew because I didn’t have any awareness of, I was creating all of that and that there’s a different way of doing relationships and healthy relationships never fall apart. That’s what’s so cool about it. Because you get to decide what the relationship looks like, really truly. It’s what you think of the person, what you think of you, what you make it all mean. So you get to decide that, how you show up in the relationship and the kind of people that you really do want to hang out with. That is your decision.

And just remember, it’s okay to let people down. Just don’t betray yourself. Just don’t let yourself down. Don’t say yes when you mean no. Have your own back. Be confident. Be sure. Be driven. Stay in your own lane. Put your blinders on. Pay attention to the things you’re drawn to, and are those things and people good for you? Are they aligned with your highest self, with your dream goals, with your dream life? It is never too late to start over.

If this is resonating with you, I just want to really encourage you this morning, today, my friend, onward and upward. Let go of anything that’s in your way, anything that’s holding you back, even if it’s a person, let go of that person. I don’t force relationships at all, period. And I used to force all kinds of relationships in my life, because I was so afraid not to. If you are connecting with people out of fear, just be aware of that. Those are not going to be beneficial relationships for you.

If you are connecting people from your highest self and true love for yourself and for the person, that’s going to be a long lasting relationship. Even though all relationships aren’t meant to last, there are definitely seasons for relationships. But when you have a really solid good relationship with yourself, everything, all of your other relationships change and you’re not attracted to the same type of people anymore and that’s a good thing. That’s how you know, onward and upward, my friend. We’re just going to keep moving forward, eyes ahead, not in the rearview mirror.

Just knowing that our job here on Earth while we’re here is to progress, is to move forward, is self-empowerment and self-improvement. It is getting smarter, getting stronger, getting more tenacious, more self-confident. So that’s what we’re here to do. I am telling you, I have never been happier than I am right now at 63 even in the middle of hard things. There is so much goodness too. I have just learned how to manage my mind around all of it and accept it all and love it all. And that just keeps me moving onward and upward, and there is just not a better feeling.

I love my life so much and I want you to love your life so much too. Second half of life is the best half when you learn how to manage your thoughts, when you learn how to manage your emotions, when you show up to your life as the powerful woman that you have always longed to be. Be proud of yourself. Be proud of your journey. Be proud of your life. Onward and upward, my friend. I love you and I will talk to you next Thursday.

If you love this podcast, I invite you to come work with me. Go to kymshowerslifecoach.com, sign up for my next group and retreat, and let’s create your dream life together.