Humans Leading

Rewriting the Stories We Tell Ourselves

• Dr. Jillian Bybee • Season 2 • Episode 4

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Does your brain like to make up stories that are keeping you stuck?

These stories (aka limiting beliefs or unhelpful beliefs) can be the source of significant stress in your life and often keep you from making the changes you wish to make.

In this episode, Dr. Bybee shares a personal story about how this was showing up for her recently and how listening to a Humans Leading episode from Season 1 helped her. 

She's also bringing back that powerful conversation with mindset trainer and psychotherapist Caroline Ferguson to help you learn to hear the self-talk that quietly drives stress, burnout, and reactivity in your own life. 

You'll learn how to spot the hidden stories behind our emotions and use simple tools to respond with more calm, clarity, and choice. 

If you'd like some support to go deeper in this work, Dr. Bybee will be holding a free stress management workshop on May 27th from 7-8pm eastern time called “Transform Your Day: 3 Simple Strategies for Stress Management.” 

In the workshop, you'll learn to identify limiting beliefs you have around self-care and stress management and begin to transform them. These beliefs can cause us so much stress and keep us stuck, as Dr. Bybee has seen in her own life. 

By writing different, more helpful stories for ourselves, we can put ourselves on the path to a less-stressed, more satisfying life. If that sounds helpful for you, you can register by going to jillianbybeemd.com or here. 

Where to find Caroline:



Join me for more over on social media:


If you’re ready to kickstart your journey (or your team's journey) to a less stressed life, I’m ready to help you! You can get in touch about 1:1 coaching or inviting me to facilitate a workshop for your group, get in touch via my website. 

Welcome And The Podcast Promise

SPEAKER_00

Hello, and welcome to Humans Leading, a podcast for overwhelmed people looking to live less stressed, more satisfying lives. I'm Dr. Jillian Bibe, a pediatric critical care medicine physician, mom, certified stress management coach, and wellness trainer who uses my personal experience with burnout recovery to help others do the same. This podcast is for anyone who is feeling frustrated or overwhelmed with their current way of living and looking for practical ways to make an impact in their lives today. If you're looking to feel less stressed, less stuck, and more fulfilled in your life, this is your podcast. I'm glad you're here. Hello and welcome to Humans Leading, a podcast for women looking to live less stressed, more satisfying lives. We're here today for episode four of season two, which is kind of hard to believe since at one point I wasn't sure that there would be a season two. But I'm so glad that I kept going because I've loved hearing how the episodes from this season are resonating for you as listeners. And even more importantly, how you're starting to take what you've heard here on the podcast and make positive changes in your own life. I've heard from several women who felt like the last episode has really unlocked something for them in terms of getting started with stress management. In this episode, we talked about strategies to use in your busy life. So if you're feeling stressed and looking for a place to start, I would definitely give that one a try. You know, it's so important for me that what I share here makes your journey with living a less stressed, more satisfying life easier. I really feel like part of why I'm on the planet is to take the things I've learned from my burnout recovery to help you, and also to break down that mountain of information that's out there into practical, digestible tools that you can use. And as a busy woman juggling a lot of roles, I understand a lot of the barriers you're experiencing because I'm experiencing them too. I think sometimes people can get the wrong idea that because I'm a coach and a wellness trainer, giving speeches and facilitating workshops, that I must somehow have it all figured out. But I want to assure you, that's just not true. I might be a few steps ahead of you on the path, but I'm still right there with you on the path, doing the process alongside you. And that's where today's episode comes in. Recently, I've been making some changes in my work life after spending a lot of time knowing that I needed to make these changes. I wanted to free up some time and space for myself, and it's felt really uncomfortable to consider these changes. But now that I've gotten there, it's been way more uncomfortable now that I've started implementing the changes. As I've been going through the process, I realize that some of what's been holding me back has been the same old little stories and limiting beliefs that often crop up for me. These stories often involve what being a good doctor looks like, what being a good woman looks like, what success means, and some particularly tricky stories about productivity and worthiness. To help myself navigate this, I decided to re-listen to a conversation that I had with Caroline Ferguson on the first season of the podcast, and it was so helpful for me, I thought I'd bring it back for this season. Caroline was an experienced mindset trainer and speaker. After many years working in business communication, she pivoted her career to become a trained psychotherapist. Although she found therapy rewarding, she realized that helping her clients with their mindset and limiting beliefs was her true passion. She facilitates workshops, coaches, and writes a substack newsletter called Something More, where she shows her clients how to overcome the limiting beliefs, emotions, and habits that are stopping them from using their gifts to make a bigger impact. In our conversation, Caroline shares her PACES tool that she uses with clients to help them get at the core of their limiting beliefs. It was really helpful for me, and I think it will help you too as you navigate your own stories. Before we dig in, if you're listening to this episode around the time that it was first released, I want to mention that I'll be holding a free stress management workshop on May 27th from 7 to 8 p.m. Eastern Time called Transform Your Day: Three Simple Strategies for Stress Management. In this workshop, we'll start to go a little deeper on limiting beliefs so you can start to identify your own stories and learn how to unpack them. These beliefs can cause us so much stress and keep us stuck as I've seen in my own life, but by writing different, more helpful stories for ourselves, we can really start to make the changes we want to and live the lives we want to be living. We can also significantly decrease the amount of stress that our brains cause us. If that sounds interesting to you, you can register her by going to gillianbibeymd.com or through the link in the show notes. And I'll also be sure to link all of Caroline's contact information, including her sub tech, because I know you'll want to connect with her once you've listened. And with that, here's our conversation. Caroline, it's so nice to talk to you again. I'm really excited for this chat.

SPEAKER_01

Jillian, I'm excited about it too. I'm so pleased that you've invited me onto your podcast. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00

Could you tell us a little bit about yourself? Maybe introduce yourself to the listeners, a bit about what you do.

SPEAKER_01

Sure. I am Caroline Ferguson. I am speaking to you from Scotland, uh Rainy Scotland today. Um I'm a mindset trainer and a psychotherapist, and I work with purposeful people who really want to get out of their own way so that they can go off and be their something more, as I refer to it. You know, that's something more that we all feel we have in us to be or to do. And uh, you know, I help people to get rid of all the stuff that gets in the way of their of them becoming uh something more. So it's some work I've been doing now for about 10 years or so, after a uh a midlife swerve in terms of my career, moving from business communications to psychotherapy and then to coaching. So it's been an incredible journey and uh very much still on it and really enjoying it.

SPEAKER_00

Great. Thank you for sharing that. And um I think this will be a really wonderful conversation. I know there are about a million things that we could talk about today, but I also know based on our last conversation, we were chatting that one of your favorite topics to speak about and write about is self-awareness. So I was wondering if you mind speaking a little bit about what we talked about before, uh about the gap between people who think they're self-aware and then the number of people who actually are self-aware.

The Self-Awareness Gap Explained

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. Self-awareness, I bang on about this a lot. I think it is the number one life skill. And there are all kinds of reasons for that. But the primary reason is self-awareness is about knowing ourselves deeply and really being able to hear what's going on in our self-talk. And if we can't hear it, we can't fix it. And I used to think that I was very self-aware. I already said, you know, I was probably the most self-aware person in the room. Uh, and I learned when I was training to be a therapist that not only is that not the case, but despite the fact that I think it is the most useful life skill that we can learn, only about 15% of humans are naturally self-aware. So it is about, as I said, knowing ourselves in in depth. So it's about knowing ours, who we are, what we stand for, what our values are, not the values we were dragged up with or that we've brought along with us, but ours, intrinsically ours. And that takes a little while for us to find out. Um, it's also about, as I said, being able to hear the stories that they tell ourselves. We, each of us has about 20 to 70,000 thoughts a day. And even at the lower end, that is one every three seconds all day and all night. You know, it's just relentless, this stream of verbal that comes out of our unconscious mind. And most of it is unconscious, and it is just this soundtrack to our day, and most of it we just don't hear it at all. So we're really not aware of the stories that we're telling ourselves, you know, the themes that are running through that soundtrack. And self-awareness, being self-aware, means that you can tune in and listen to what I call your inner radius and work out when you are doing it to yourself, when you are getting in your own way. Um, and when I was, I think the story I told you was when I was doing a talk for a corporate uh an organization. And well, I do this quite often. I always ask people to put their hand up if they think that they're they're self-aware. And in a corporate environment, people at a mindset training session are very self-conscious and they're they're really concerned about what other people might think of them. So they're all looking around to see who's putting their hand up. And I say, okay, well, why don't you just close your eyes? Now I'd like you to put your hand up if you think you're self-aware. And probably 90% of people in the room put their hand up. At that point, I ask them all to open their eyes and take a good look around. And they all look a bit sheepish and you know, bring their hand up. And then I tell them that actually, statistically, only 15 people in that room of 100 people is naturally self-aware. And they're all very confused about that. And so the question is if I'm not self-aware and I think I am, what am I? And I say to them, you're either self-conscious or you're self-focused. And then there's a big silence, and then there's lots of panic and lots of nodding and lots of shaking heads, and people are all over the place today. But basically, you know, I was one of those people that was incredibly self-conscious and self-focused. So I thought about myself a lot, and I thought a hell of a lot about what other people thought about me. None of it probably true. What I didn't think about was what was going on inside my own head. I really didn't understand. I couldn't hear the stories, and it wasn't until I trained as a psychotherapist that I learned how to develop that self-awareness. And I learned what a gift it is to be able to teach yourself, to tune in and to listen and to know yourself well, to understand your strengths, to understand your vulnerabilities, to understand what fires you up and to understand what you need to avoid, what depletes you. And all of that comes as part of being self-aware. And as I say, thank goodness it's a skill that we can learn from somebody who knows what they're doing, because it is such a valuable life skill.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. And I laughed at that story when you told it because it's so relatable for me. I think I've also been one of those people who would have raised their hands in the past. And, you know, I had my eyes open to the fact that perhaps I had some room to grow, just like all of us do. But as we're thinking about how we can start to build our own self-awareness so that we're driving our own lives and not being driven by all of these thoughts and feelings that we have, how do we start to do that?

SPEAKER_01

How do we start to learn to become self-aware?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

Find The Story Behind The Feeling

PACES And Common Mindset Traps

SPEAKER_01

We practice tuning in. So I use the metaphor of this radio, you know, and it's a radio that is playing all day and all night. When we wake up in the middle of the night, the first thing is we have a thought. It's I'm awake, or we're worrying about something that's happened during the day, or if we have, you know, more generalized anxiety or worry about anything at all, or we might wonder what the time is. There's basically stories playing out there. There's never silence. I mean, I do understand that some people don't have this constant monologue going on for them. I think they actually do, it's just at a deeper level, sort of level that they haven't learned how to tune into. So what I suggest to people is stop at various times and just have a think what's going through in my head right now. And initially, you'll be waiting. You'll be waiting for what's going on in your head. As you do this more, you'll be thinking, uh, am I supposed to have a thought right now? Uh, do other people have thoughts right now? You know, maybe I'm abnormal. All this stuff will be going on. Those are all thoughts. Those are all things that we're broadcasting on our inner radio. The key times to practice is when we feel emotionally out of equilibrium, out of balance emotionally in a not good way. So those that's the best time to practice. So when we feel any of those uncomfortable emotions like you know, worry or concern or anxiety or fear or jealousy or shame or hurt or anger, you know, any of those uncomfortable emotions, that's the time to tune in and think, okay. And the question that I advise people to ask is what I call the world's most important question. And that question is, what's the story I'm telling myself that's leading me to feel like this? And it's an incredible question for several reasons. Because it interrupts what's going on, interrupts that emotion that we're feeling, that discomfort. It gets us to focus on the thoughts and the beliefs and the stories that we have that are driving that emotion. Because we respond to things that happen, of course we do. You know, when a situation comes up, um, say somebody is rude to us or somebody is late, and we we we have a story about that. We might feel that person is disrespecting me, or that dog is being a nuisance, or you know, if we feel ashamed, I wonder if that person thinks badly of me. You know, and it's to find try and root out the stories that we are telling ourselves that are leading us to have that particular emotion. And that is an incredibly useful question to ask whenever you're in a situation where you feel uncomfortable. Because what it does is it comes in on a story you're telling yourself that might be unhelpful, that might not help you to perform at your best in that particular situation, that might not help you to get a better outcome for that situation. I mean, this is not new. Epictetus is a stoic philosopher, and he said this 2,000 years ago. He said it's not the event that disturbs us so much as our view of the event. It's our opinion, our story about the event. And that's as true now as it was 2,000 years ago. It's an incredibly useful thing to remember. But yes, stuff happens in the world and it disturbs us. It it worries us, it angers us, it shames us. But what shames us more, what makes us more angry, what makes us more anxious is our story that we are telling ourselves about that thing. We make it ten times worse for ourselves because we hold on to some sort of toxic story, some belief that is making us feel wound up, is making us feel stressed. So it's incredibly useful to be able to tune in to that inner radio and hear what the story is. And the more we practice doing that, especially when we feel, as I say, out of emotional balance in some way, the more we practice doing that, the better we get at being able to go directly to a story. And those stories tend to have them. We have our own favorite themes, patterns in terms of the way we think. And I have a tool that I teach my mindset training clients called PACES, P-A-C-E-S. And that's an acronym that stands for the five main ways in which we wind ourselves up, and we all have our favorites. And it stands for P is for perfectionism, A in PACES is for approval addiction, the C is about need for certainty, E is about a need for ease and safety and security, and the S is all about sovereignty, that's all about control. And what I do is I teach my mindset training clients to go through those so they can be saying to themselves, what's the story I'm telling myself? And if they can't come to it easily, if it's not coming to the music, they can go through their paces. They can say, Is it because I want to do this really well and I think I'm gonna fail? That's about perfectionism. Is it because I'm prioritizing this person's needs and they're not responding to me in a grateful way? You know, that's about people pleasing me and prove my side. Is this because I don't know how to do this and I need certainty around how to do this? Is it because I feel out of my comfort zone and there is no ease around this? Is it because this person is telling me what to do and breaching my subroutine I don't like? So we can go through those as a sort of shorthand to help us get to the story we're telling ourselves that is causing us to feel uncomfortable in some way. So the more we practice doing that, tuning in, looking inwards, the better we're gonna get at understanding what our stories are, what our patterns, what our key favorites in terms of how we wind ourselves up are. So it's just really about that's sorry, that's a rather long response, but it's about practice. Tune into your inner radio and just practice doing that above that. Practice doing it when you're happy too. You know, find out what your happy stories are, what your excited stories are, what your stories and anticipation are. But the ones that are going to help you are the stories that disturb you.

SPEAKER_00

I love that so much, and I don't mind that it was a long answer. I think it's great, and a lot of people will resonate with that. I also think that a lot of people, like you said, are completely unaware that they have this fiction writer in their heads that takes the situation and then layers on the other thoughts, and really that we're doing more harm to ourselves, like you said, just by writing a story about it. And people are unaware of that. So I'm sure that tool is very helpful. I happen to work with a lot of people who, like I used to be, are not either able to or interested in tuning into their own feelings and emotions. So as far as becoming more self-aware and being able to tune in to feeling your feelings, how do people who usually live in their heads start to do that?

SPEAKER_01

Well, that's a really good question. And also to refer to, as you mentioned, people around you at work who are not really interested in developing their self-awareness. They just want to inflict themselves on us as they are. Yes. And one one of the good things about developing our own self-awareness and hearing our own stories is that we get much better at working out what's going on for other people as well. We get much better at reading other people because we're thinking, ah, okay, well, they've reacted in this emotional way. Quite possibly, I know this person likes to do things well and doesn't like to fail. So quite possibly what's going on for them at the moment is that there's some fear in there that they think they're about to fail, or we might do something badly, or I'm breaching their value of perfection here. So it just gets easier for us to work out what's going on for other people. And when that happens, we can communicate more effectively with them. We can think about the outcome that we would like from them, or from that conversation, or from that interaction, and we can monitor and steer our own behavior to get closer to that outcome, even if we can't control what they're doing. So that's a that's a kind of an assigned to there. And just to go back to your question, could you just paraphrase that for me again? Because I went wildly off of the tangent there.

SPEAKER_00

No problem. How do we start to recognize the feelings that we're feeling and then to identify a way to deal with them, like you're saying?

Name Emotions And Rewrite The Script

SPEAKER_01

Brilliant question. Feelings, uh, again, yet again, it's about practice. So what I suggest people do is they name them. So when you feel uncomfortable, even if you don't know what it is you're feeling, take a pause. There is massive power in a pause. We don't have to react to everything. We can step back and take 10 seconds and just quieten ourselves down. And what happens then is when we ask that well's most important question, what's the story I'm telling myself that is leading me to feel like this? Feel like this is a great kind of key point there, which is what is this? What does this feel like? And when you ask yourself a question, you take yourself out of that kind of primitive part of your brain that is wrapped up in this vortex of emotion, and you engage your prefrontal cortex, your executive functioning center, what I call your dragon mindset. And we're talking about the wise oriental dragon here, not the Game of Thrones firebreating war beast. Um, so your basically your dragon mindset is your wise, adult, creative, solution focused self. And you can access that part of you simply by asking yourself questions. And a key question here is what do I feel? What is going on for me here? And give names to those feelings. So it's I feel really agitated now. Is that because I'm worried about something? Is that anxiety? Or is that because I'm angry about something, or is it a bit of both? Or is it because there's shame in that? So start asking yourself questions and get to know those emotions. And if you practice that, just tune in. Ask yourself those questions whenever you feel emotionally what I call wound up, so stressed in any way, out of emotional balance. Just take that pause, take a couple of deep breaths, remove yourself from the situation if you need to, just ask to be excused for a moment or two, and then just go inward, consult your inner radio there, and say, right, what is this I'm feeling? Am I scared? Am I ashamed? Am I worried? Am I angry? Am I feeling that somebody has has you know breached my values? What's going on for me? And and give names to your emotions. Get to know them and label them. Because the thing is that the emotion is not the primary thing. Emotions are mostly consequences, and they're consequences of those stories. So when people say to me, How do I manage my anger? we don't start off with the anger. We start off with the stories that are creating the anger. Because if you if you start looking into those stories, which might be like, How dare you, it might be this person is breaking my board. The theme of anger is that someone is breaking your rules. You know, you can start to find out that actually you have a thing which is about trying to control what other people are doing or trying to control situations. And when you can't control them, when people go against you or situations go against you, you become angry because your story is this must not happen. Or this must happen and it's not happening. And so what we do is rather than directly addressing the emotion, we use the emotion as a red flag to say, aha, something's going on here. I need to tune in and ask myself the world's most important question, which is what's the story? I'm telling myself about the situation that is leading me to feel like this. And then we truly take responsibility for our emotions. And when we, you mentioned having this writer in your head, the storyteller, we also have a big blue pencil. You know, we have the editorial pencil. And once we can hear the story, we can take that blue pencil and we can challenge that story and we can change it and rewrite it in our heads. And that transforms the emotion that comes out of it. Because if somebody is saying, you must do what I say, you have to do what I say, and they're not doing what we want them to do. We're going to get angry with them, we're going to think they're a bad person, we're going to make judgments about them, we're going to feel inadequate because they're not obeying us. All of them are stories and we're they're not true. You know, they're just an opinion, they're just a point of view that we happen to have at that moment in time that we're winding ourselves up about it. So the thing to do is not necessarily to address the anger, although we can do by just taking a step back by you know using the power of the pause and a couple of deep breaths to engage our parasympathetic nervous system and get us out of that, you know, that vortex. But really, it's that inward looking and the questioning of ourselves is going to really empower us to change our behavior in that situation so we can think, okay, if this person isn't doing what I've asked them to do, what will be a better outcome here and how can I make that happen? And being angry with them is not going to make that happen. So a better outcome would be, okay, let's find out what's going on for them, for example. Let's find out what's going on there, let's find out how what they might need in order to do what we'd like them to do. Let's find out what resources they might need. Let's find out whether there's something going on for them. And then you can work together to get the outcome you want. Sometimes. Sometimes you're not going to get the outcome you want because we cannot console other people. All we can try and do is influence them through the way that we communicate. But we're going to communicate so much better if we are not angry, if we're not in a place where we are controlled by our anger.

SPEAKER_00

I think all of that is so important and just strikes a chord with me thinking back about my younger self and the person who wanted to be right, wanted to control. And anytime I couldn't exert that, especially when I was starting my job in medicine was really hard. And other people would push the button in me, and I would see it as, you know, their problem. But clearly it was just signifying something in me that eventually I took the opportunity to look at for myself. And when those things come up, it's really the anger, as you said, is it's not just about the anger, it's a it's a signal to us that there's something else there, that you know, a story we've made up or a value we have, or something is being transgressed. And so perhaps it is of value or something that we need to work on. But as you said, reacting from a place of choice rather than really just launching into a fight or a tirade or trying to force is so much more helpful, I think, in the workplace and in life in general.

Responsive Living And The Emotional Ladder

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. And you know, we're creatures of habit because habits are efficient, you know, they're an efficient use of our mental and our physical energy. Problem with habit is that, you know, a neural pathway, and you will know this being a physician, but a neural pathway in the brain, that's what a habit is, effectively, it's a chain of neurons that have kind of cemented themselves together because it's more efficient for us to operate in that way when we do something over and over again. So if we have a repeated emotion or a thought or a behavior, you know, there in there's a there's a neural pathway in our brains, and it is like a concrete highway in there. So we have to consciously focus on creating a new pathway that's more helpful for us, because we will default to the to the anger, you know, whatever our our emotion of choice is. You know, we'll we will default straight to that. It's a reactivity. And what we want to do, instead of having that knee-jerk reaction to to those triggers, you know, the pacers triggers that are our favorites, instead of having a knee-jerk reaction automatically zooming down into anger or shame or whatever it is, we want to be able to pause and respond. So it's about being responsive rather than reactive. And being responsive, it really helps if we are self-aware. Because then we can find out what our tendency is, we can know what's going on with us in that moment, and we can choose a different path, we can choose to do something differently. So, you know, it's uh being able to tune into our inner radio helps us, it empowers us to choose a more helpful way and to be much more practical and solution-focused in terms of the outcomes of our interactions with other people. And there's one other tool here to mention that is really helpful. And it's a metaphor that I use about the emotional ladder. And the thing is that the higher we climb up our emotional ladder, the more wound up, the more stressed, the more angry, the more hurt, the more guilty, you know, the more envious, whatever we are, the higher up we go on our emotional ladder, the less rational, the less solution focused we can be, because we are in that vortex of emotion. And the other thing is if you think about a ladder, it's really precarious up there. There's nothing to hold on to when you get up to the top of the ladder. So you you are you're being buffeted up there by the storm of your own emotion, and there's nothing to hold on to. And you're just yelling into the void. You can't communicate effectively, you cannot be practical. Um, you can't look for good outcomes and solutions when you're at the top of your emotional ladder. And if you are trying to communicate with somebody else who is also at the top of their emotional ladder, God help you both. Right. You are never going to be eye to eye on anything because you're both trying to screen out your own point of view there. So when you realize that you are getting caught up in emotion, uh and you you're hearing the stories you're telling yourself, but they're keeping you at the top of your ladder, you have one job. And that one job is to climb down your ladder to a place where you are more secure and where also you are not caught up in that vortex of emotion. And once you are back on solid ground, and that's the pause and the reflect to think, you know, okay, what would be a better outcome here, and how do I make that happen? Your next job is to get the other person, help them down their ladder. And that's by pausing and breathing and treating them like a human being. You know, it's uh right, okay, we got off on the wrong foot here. Can we just have a little breather and maybe go for a walk together and then talk about? I'd like to hear your point of view and I'd like to tell you mine. Would you be prepared to do that with me? And then you're helping someone else back to a point where they're no longer precarious, where they're no longer, you know, caught up in their vortex. So that metaphor of the ladder, I think, can be really helpful for us when we're up there in that storm and we don't know how to help ourselves. You know, we have one job, it's to bring ourselves down the ladder. And the way that we do that is by asking ourselves questions, by tuning into our inner radio, by asking ourselves, what's the story I'm telling myself that's got me right up here with nothing to hold on to. So that's another, another one that uh says might want to try.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I really love that. And I think it, you know, the visual is so powerful, especially imagining two people at the top of a ladder sort of blowing around in their own emotional storms. I think I can see that in my workplace a lot of times. I with a lot of practice, I've gotten better at seeing it when I'm doing it, to say, okay, whoa, hold on a minute, just take a big breath. Or maybe my favorite trick is we have water and ice dispensers throughout our space. And so often I just say, I'm going to go get some water. Um, and I think the cool thing is that drinking cold water is actually one of the things that can also calm down your nervous system. And it's one of those things that I think people underestimate the power of of just a pause and uh ice water. And then you're like, oh, it's not what I was making it. It's not as big of a deal. So now I can move forward in a way that is less up that ladder, like you were describing.

Must Stories And The Hidden Or Else

SPEAKER_01

And sometimes it is that big of a deal. But then what we're doing is we're giving ourselves the opportunity to think, right, this is a big deal. How do I communicate this? How do I, you know, what is it that I want to achieve out of this? And how do I communicate the importance of it without sending that person straight back up the ladder and without sending myself straight up the ladder? Because sometimes those stories that we're telling ourselves, they are really vitally important sometimes. Sometimes they're not. But you know, sometimes they are, and I don't want to downplay that. Stories are always wrong, because they're not always wrong, but sometimes the way in which we structure those stories is wrong. And the most wrong is the is the imperative, is the must, when we are insisting that something must or must not happen. Because, you know, let's face it, we might be holding on to that, you know, you must treat me well, or I mustn't fail at this, or I have to know how to do the all the steps in the right order. Because the thing is that when we have a must, we have an or else when we have some classes, and it's subliminal, you know, it's it's unconscious. So uh you must like me, or else it means that it's really bad and I can't bear it, and it means I'm inadequate and you're not a very nice person. And all those or else just come tumbling in. We have no control over that. So when just have a think that whenever you have you're insisting on something that has to happen or not happen, there are loads of bad or else. And actually, as an aside, that's how as adults we maintain lesar, because or else I'm not good enough, or else I'm inadequate, or else some rubbish is a really recent and common or else that comes when we attach our value to something we think has to happen or not happen. So, you know, whatever sent us up the ladder, if if, for example, you're at work and you've got so much already on your plate, and your boss comes along and throws something else at you and says that it needs to be done tomorrow. And I've been in that scenario lots of times, and I know that you know, probably a lot of people listening will have been in that scenario too. And we just feel as if our heads are going to explode and we're you know, straight up the top of the ladder. And what we need to do in that instance is just to pause and give ourselves breath, you know, have that sip of water and think, right, what's a story I'm telling myself that needing to need to feel so stressed, my head might explode here. It's this person should not overload me with yet more work when I'm already overloaded. So, you know, your your imperative is this person mustn't be so inconsiderate as to throw yet more work at me and insist that I have to do more work when I'm already overloaded. This person must not, you know, give me more work. And that that's about sovereignty in PACE's the last one, is about sovereignty, which is about control. You know, this person must not do that to me. And uh what we really want that person to do, the outcome we want is preferably for them not to throw that work at us. But if they are going to do it, then we need to come to an arrangement with them where we say to them, okay, well, which of these other projects would you like me to lay down? Would you like me to put aside and involve them in that discussion so that they're educated, they're informed about actually what's going on for you and that you're making that decision together. So we can't have that conversation, that constructive conversation, if we're at the top of our ladder. So, you know, we need to be able to go in there and say to ourselves, right, I recognize that I'm going up my ladder here. What's the story I'm telling myself that's leading me to feel like this? And it will always, for the big emotions, there will always be musts or mustn't. This person must do that. I have to know about this. This must not happen. You know, I must not fail. You must uh not ignore me. There's always going to be something. And then when we have those musts, we have or else's. And it's the or else's that create all of those consequences for us in terms of or else I'm inadequate, or else I'm not good enough, or else you're a bad person, or else the world is a dangerous place, or else I can't bear it, or else it's really bad. It's the end of the world, awful. Yeah. So the stories that we are listening out for the most when we are saying what's the story I'm telling myself is okay, am I saying has to happen or not happen here, but is really winding me up.

SPEAKER_00

I love that. What story am I telling myself about what must happen? I think that's such a great thing to think about. Um, and I love this or else because certainly that's the unspoken part a lot of time, like you're saying, and making those things visible and really getting in there is how we start to be less reactive to our lives, frankly.

Self-Worth Patterns And Modern Anxiety

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. And you know, I had a client that came to me, well, most of my clients actually with women entrepreneurs, I work with a lot of women entrepreneurs, and the number one problem that they have is around self-worth. And uh our messages around self-worth, you know, they they come, our low self-worth comes from the messages originally that we absorb in childhood from the people around us or the situations that we're placed in. We maintain low self-worth as adults through what we think has to happen or not happen, and us attaching our value to what we think must happen or not happen. So we think someone must like us, or else it means that we're unlikable. We're, you know, we're inadequate in that way. Um, we must do really well, we must not fail, or else we're rubbing. Uh, I have to know how to do this, or else it means that I'm inadequate, you know, and I must do as well as other people, or it means I'm worse than them. So we attach our value to what we think has to happen or not happen. And that's just nonsense. You know, we have intrinsic value because we exist as humans, because we were born, because we live. We have intrinsic worth. And our value does not depend on somebody liking us or us doing something perfectly or us knowing how to do something, or somebody, you know, people telling us what to do or not. Our value doesn't have anything to do with any of that, but it's just an automatic or else that tumbles in. Um, and a lot of self-worth issues that I hear when people come and see me are attached to things that they think have to happen or not happen. And particularly with entrepreneurs, it tends to be around perfectionism and approval addiction and need for sovereignty. You know, those are the kind of the big threes. Although, since COVID, need for certainty and desire for ease have also really reared up in, I think, in the population at large, because there was no certainty. We were clueless in 2020 about how things were going to end or if we'd be around to see them ending. Um, and I think it's really triggered quite a lot of anxiety in the population around a desire for life to be safe and easy, and around us knowing what's going to happen and knowing that everything's going to turn out okay. So I really noticed a resurgence in those two forms of anxiety around certainty and around me that is, which I think I think they are linked. But you know, for most of the people that I see, approval addiction, perfectionism, and sovereignty, wanting to do things their way, are the big ones that that cause disturbance, the big ones that we have our must-based reliefs around.

Where To Find Caroline

SPEAKER_00

Well, I could talk about this forever, but I think our time's winding down. I just want to thank you so much for being willing to talk to a stranger that you met on Substack. And I was wondering if you could tell people where they can find you on Substack, because I think more people should come over and find out what's happening there.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, thank you. I uh I came to Substack at the end of last summer, and it's just been a joyful place. I mean, what uh I felt instantly at home, having resisted adopting a new platform. But I have a Substack which is called Something More, and that is uh shorthand for Born for Something More, which is that feeling that so many of us have that there is something else, something other that we're supposed to be doing, or someone we're supposed to be being. And I think it's about unfulfilled potential. And so something more is all about mindset, self-leadership, and exploring a life that matters and what that might look like for us. And I write a lot of articles, an article every week. And also for my paying subscribers, I also have a monthly group coaching session. So we get together, in fact, we're doing one on Wednesday around self-acceptance, and it's just a joyful process. So you can find me on Substack under Caroline Ferguson, and my Substack is called Something More. So please do come on in and uh you know, sample the articles from the archive and see how you get on. Lots of lots of mindset hints and tips and techniques and tools.

SPEAKER_00

Wonderful. As a reader and subscriber, I can echo that it's wonderful, and I'll be sure to link that in the notes for this episode so people could find you. But I just want to say thank you again.

SPEAKER_01

Well, thank you so much for inviting me. I really appreciate it.

Key Takeaways And Practical Reminders

What Coaching Means And How It Helps

How To Work With Jillian

SPEAKER_00

Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode as much as I did. I had so much fun talking about it, and I also had fun editing it because I felt like I learned a lot even as I was editing. So if you want to bookmark this one and keep it for later, I know that you'll get more even if you come back another time. I know that we covered a lot of ground in this episode, but here are a few of the takeaways. One, self-awareness is the ability to know ourselves deeply and is about being able to hear what's going on with our self-talk. Two, we have thousands of thoughts each day, and it's important to be able to tune into our inner radio so we can understand the messages that we are telling ourselves. Three, our thoughts and the stories we tell ourselves create our feelings. Four, when we are driven by our feelings, we react rather than being able to respond constructively. Five, Caroline's PACES tool can help us pinpoint the stories we are telling ourselves. Six, when in doubt, pause and breathe before responding. In this episode, Caroline briefly mentions coaching with her clients. I've had a lot of people who don't really know what coaches do, which includes what I do, so I figured I'd say a little bit about that now. I'm also planning a future episode and a newsletter over on Substack about it in the future. But for now, I'll briefly say that a coach is a partner who helps you get from where you currently are in your life to where you want to be. This can include helping you begin to identify the stories you've been telling yourself that are driving your life, as we talked about in this episode. My job as a coach in Caroline's too is to listen to people without judgment and to help them identify areas in their lives where they would like to be doing something differently. For example, many people I coach would like to learn how to put themselves on their own priority list in order for them to take better care of themselves and stop feeling so overwhelmed. If you're interested in this and you'd like to learn more about what I do or possibly talk about coaching with me, you can reach out to me via my website, gillianbibemd.com. I'll link that in the show notes, and I look forward to seeing you next time.

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Dr. Jillian Bybee

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