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You're listening to the confidence podcast, your favorite coaching podcast oozing with motivation, inspiration, and confidence to help you boldly take action on your dreams. I'm your host, Trish Blackwell, internationally recognized Confidence Coach, Best Selling Author and founder of the College of Confidence, the most encouraging place on the internet. I teach go getters in life, how to take your thoughts captive, how to step out of the shadows of self doubt, and how to courageously step into their purpose. With competence. It's time to pump our competence muscles and train our thoughts, y'all. Let's get started. Hey, there, it's Trish Blackwell, and you're listening to the confidence podcast. This is episode 565. And my hope is that this episode is going to give you the tools, the wisdom, the insight, the know how the right questions, to be able to tell the fine line between fact and fiction in your thoughts. In this episode, we're going to talk about exactly how to know the difference between which thoughts you should believe and which ones you should change which ones are optional, which ones are real, because if you want to decrease your stress levels and enjoy your life more, if you want to believe in yourself and actually have a healthy positive relationship with yourself so that you can get beyond the self created drama that's getting in the way of you living out your purpose of being the best mom that you can be of being the best business owner of being courageous of, of going in launching that that that nonprofit that you've always dreamed of. You'll realize that a lot of our thoughts are creating optional drama. And that optional drama is blocking us from a way to move forward. We're gonna talk about how to de dramatize your thinking. We're in the College of competence in my coaching program, we call this D dramatization. And we're going to walk through that and determine which ones you are able to change and which ones you need to be more proactive about, and how to neutralize those. These tips this week, are going to give you some mental peace and some power back in your narrative. So when we're talking this week, about optional drama, and honestly how it's making your life harder than it needs to be the fact versus fiction question that we all need to be asking ourselves every single day. And then really the core takeaway is how to feel less stressed and more drama free in your life, in your life, in your decisions, in your relationships, in your thoughts about yourself in your body, in your thoughts about your capacity, we over aggrandized things, we overthink things we create our own misery or own stress. The level to which we experience stress in our life is entirely up to you, your stress level and your insecurity level. And your experience of life is entirely self created, which feels like what that can't be true. But, but it is, it is absolutely crazy how powerful your mind is. And I My prayer is that this episode helps you tap into it just a little bit more. Very quickly before we read the review of the week. Or announcement of the week is this I have one open coaching spot. If you want private coaching, one on one coaching, it is a next level experience with me. Go to my my my website, Trish blackwell.com/coaching. As I said, I have one client spot open and we don't typically have these open. And it's six months to creating massive change whatever it is, you're ready to change. If you're a high performer who knows you're made for more, who's feeling stuck, who's got you've got some things that you're like, I have so much going for me but it doesn't feel like that and my self doubt and my self sabotage or my self criticism is keeping me from accessing that next level of leadership of impact of finances. This is for you. This is for you go to Trish blackwell.com forward slash coaching. There is an application you need to put in and then what the process would be. After you put your application in you and I would hop on Zoom. Explore your goals, explore your hurdles and decide if you are right if we're if I'm the right fit for you as your coach that's going to take you to the next level. So our review of the week Maria Kench. Sister, thank you for this. Thank you for this just kind of beautiful review. She said this absolutely amazing podcast. I've been a listener of the confidence podcast since July of 2019. I've purchased your books insecurity, detox and straighten your crown. I also took part in your crit change workshop over the summer and the deliberate daily design workshop. I would like to start off by saying all caps Thank you Trish. You are truly an inspiring Have a vibrant, amazing, wonderful woman, your words of wisdom are just awesome you coach in a way that's simple to follow. Since I've been listening to your podcast, I've had to focus on training my thoughts. I actually got myself a tattoo at first on my left wrist that says joy. And a few months later, I got the word gratitude on my right wrist, to remind myself daily, how important joy and gratitude are every day. Thank you for your words of wisdom. And for all that you do. You have been awesome. And I'm so grateful to be able to learn from you. Thank you Trish, Maria. I thank you, thank you for doing the work. Thank you for B for carrying the work forward. And I am inspired by your tattoos. I absolutely love it. You know, and many of you know this. I have two tattoos, one to draw out a visa, which is French for joy of living that is on my right hip, because I said every time that I pee, I want to remind myself that joy is choice. Joy is a choice. And then also my my cross on my forearm of my left arm is across with the word freedom because it reminds me of that, that I have been set free. Right? And I am free indeed. And that that freedom it's and I felt so imprisoned by my own thoughts, my own habits, my own, my own struggles, my own sin. I just, I'm passionate about helping others experience freedom. I also I mean, one of the core charities that I support is also the a 21 campaign, which is anti human trafficking, I just freedom if so, we've experienced not being free, you know, the value of freedom. So, Maria, I'm all about making sure that I don't forget what I know, I need to be reminded of and I'm so glad that you took that action, as well. Now for a quick break from our sponsor, this episode is sponsored by better help give online therapy, a try@betterhelp.com. Forward slash confidence pod and get on your way to being your best self. Do you ever find that? Just as you're trying to fall asleep, your brain suddenly won't stop talking? Do your thoughts start racing right before bed or other inopportune moments, I used to think that having a racing mind was normal, I thought that I would always feel overwhelmed and burdened with anxiety. And it turns out one of the ways to make those racing thoughts go away, is to talk through them. Therapy gives you a place to do that so you can get out of your negative thought cycles, and find some mental and emotional peace. It's helpful for learning positive coping skills, and how to set boundaries, it empowers you to be the best version of yourself. It isn't just for those who've experienced major trauma. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online. Designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire and you get matched with a licensed therapist. And you can switch therapists at anytime for no additional charge. Get a break from your thoughts with better help visit betterhelp.com/confidence pod today to get 10% off your first month that's better help h e l p.com/confidence. Pod. So what is optional drama? What are they here optional drama are thoughts that we create that is creating unnecessary aka optional drama in our minds. So these refer to thoughts that may be unnecessary and non productive, but they still create unnecessary stress conflict and here's the thing, self inflicted emotional turmoil. Often the stress we experience the drama The overthinking the this the creation of narratives and stories that we tell ourselves that people are thinking about us or about something that we did. It is all fictional. It's optional. And the thoughts can contribute to a sense of stress and drama in your life making you feel like your life is more complicated or situation is more complicated than it needs to be. Here's a couple scenarios. You can have optional drama, when you assume the worst intentions of intentions and someone so thoughts like they didn't invite me to vent. They must be purposely excluding me or she didn't say hi. She didn't wave back. She must not like me. Or she didn't respond to my message immediately. She must be mad at me. That's optional drama. Like what about the fact that or they didn't text me back yet? They're intentionally not texting me. I don't know about you, but my text message stream gets pretty messy and I do forget to reply to people,

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but it's never intentional. We assume the worst Okay, so other creating conspiracy theories. How about this? I'm sure they're all talking about me behind my back. I'm sure all my co workers don't like me. I'm sure they think I'm blank. Or there, there must be some sort of hidden agenda here because they're being so nice. Or even the thought maybe you have a thought error or the belief is if it's too good to be true. How about this? blowing things out of proportion? If I make one mistake at work, I'll probably get fired. I ate an extra cookie last night. What's the point? I'll never stick to this diet. I'll never lose weight. I knew my brain blew things out of proportion all the time. Um, my workout wasn't perfect. My thing wasn't perfect. I'm falling apart. I have no discipline. Yeah, that was what I would do. I have an extra glass of wine. I have no discipline. I'm a terrible human like woods. Okay, first off, know that it's, it's sort of this like, it's very sloppy sentence. And sloppy story. It's a fictionalized story that we're making and blowing things out of proportion. Or he disagreed with my idea. He probably hates everything. So just remember, when you offer your brain something, the reticular activating system, which is part of our brain that is so amazing. This is the thing in your brain that helps you recognize things when you know when you buy a new car, and you like you fall in love with a specific type of car. And you really don't see it a lot. And then you really start studying it and looking for it. You buy your car, and all of a sudden you feel like every neighbor and friend and person, you know, now has that car. So you don't see yellow Jeeps on the road. And now all you can see are yellow Jeeps. Well, that's the reticular activating system in process. This is also why the brain if you say I can't do anything, right? It then it goes and finds evidence to support Yeah, and you did this wrong. And this didn't go well. And you need to fold that laundry and you're so when you tell your brain what to focus on, it finds more evidence. So if you are blowing things out of proportion, and you say, well, they disagree with my idea, they really don't like anything like your brain is gonna probably find examples of other times that they didn't like your idea. But you're forgetting a negating to tell the full story. The full story is there were things they did like, and there was somebody that said, Hey, that was a great idea. Well, let's use that let's implement, or you forgot that they gave you credit for the program that's now been rolled out. Other ways. There's so many ways we do optional drama. I got this great list here. Okay, playing the victim. Oh, because I used to be like a professional victim, a self proclaimed and I didn't think of it that way. But I was raising my hand. I was a volunteer victim in my own life. I can't I was me. I can't believe I have this deep, deep struggle. What was me? I just can't figure out my body image Woe is me. I just have to work extra hard to get where I need to go. Or how about thoughts like this, nothing ever goes my way. Life is always unfair to me. People are always taking advantage of my kindness. It's crazy how self pity creates drama. Today is really hard I have so much to do. That is an optional drama thought. It's just not a helpful it's not that maybe today is hard. We're not going to not we're not going to deny the reality. But saying it in that way telling the story that way just isn't helpful. So there's so many ways we can sell the same story. We want to strip the fact from the fiction, we want to de dramatize the drama and look at it when you say things and go. Gosh, when I say that I have layered into it. I've injected into it some optional drama, some victimization, drama, about this exaggerating small issues. This minor insert and minor inconvenience ruined my day. Or if she doesn't like my posts, I mean, she's no longer my friend. Why are they not commenting on my posts? Why are they looking at somebody else's stuff and not mine? It's like we all were creating a whole story in our head, and it's destroy. Here's the deal. Optional drama distracts you from your actual life. It creates issues that are not there. And it steals joy from you. jumping to conclusions is another expression of optional drama. Things statements like this, they canceled our plans. They probably don't want to spend time with me. Or seems like everyone else got invited. I guess they don't really like me. Listen, I have organized things with groups of people. And I have often intentionally forgotten to invite someone because I thought they were on the group list. Or I thought I had invited them and I didn't so we have to allow room to go there. There is space to say sometimes people make mistakes sometimes you are not intentionally not invited. Sometimes you are but sometimes you aren't. We just wanted to have the brain tell the full story. Or another way maybe is Hey, he didn't acknowledge my greeting. He must be angry with me. They didn't say hello back. They must not like me. jumping to conclusions about what your spouse is thinking or not thinking. How about this optional drama talk about drama, gossip, and gossip is even listening. If you are listening to gossip you are participating is one of the most toxic things we can do in our minds and in our lives. And in the lives of others. There is no upside to gossip. But gossip and speculating things like I heard that she did this, this something that made this this really embarrassing thing, let me tell you about it. Or I think there's something going on between them. I saw them talking, or I heard, I mean, guys, there's just, there is no upside. And it sets in your brain, it sets your brain up to like, and to be drawn to drama, drama is interesting. But it's distracting. You can also create your own optional drama by assuming everyone is paying attention to you. Your when you assume that everyone's attention is on you. Which is really getting stuck and caring what people think. It could be they're all whispering, I'm sure they're discussing my mistake. Or maybe you walk into a room and you think everybody gets a little quieter. Shoot, they don't like me what? Or you do something embarrassing, and you assume everyone knows. Or you are afraid to launch your business because of something some you don't want to post on social media or tell people what you're really passionate about, or write that book. Because what if that one person in middle school used to be friends with you're not friends with anymore? What if they make fun of you? Listen, they don't care about you anymore. This is the most free thing. Hey, and if you're still struggling with caring what people think and you haven't yet taking my free masterclass how to stop caring what people think please do that today. So pause this episode, go to the website, open up your browser, go to Trish blackwell.com/stop caring, you'll get instant access, it's a 20. Or maybe it's 30 minute, instant access masterclass, where I'm gonna walk you through how to let go of some of that. Another way we create drama is making everything about us. And that's so it's embarrassing as an adult, to acknowledge where we're so focused. But things like I can't believe they planned a day, an event on a day on busy, they must not care about my schedule, or even saying things like nobody cares about me and how much how hard I work. Or she got a promotion, I've been working harder and longer here, they must not value my efforts. Sometimes, I think we have to give ourselves space to go, there's a probability, there's a very strong possibility that this is not about me. And then the final category of ways that I see that we create optional drama, is holding on to grudges over minor issues. She didn't give me a baby present for my babies, I'm not gonna go to her baby shower, or I wasn't invited to her baby shower, I'm not going to get her a gift even though I was thinking about it. Or he criticized me my presentation, I don't trust his opinion anymore. He's after me. Because one of the most freeing life giving ways you can, you can just de dramatize your life is to just make a decision to stop holding grudges. You can simply believe in not holding grudges, because it doesn't, doesn't do anything but hurt you. So the question I wanted to give you today is I want to invite you want to say I'm the boss of my brain. And then Fact or Fiction is this fact versus fiction. I want you to ask yourself, am I telling myself a story here? And what is fact? And what is fiction? We want to strip it and go what are the facts, your stress level and your insecurity level and your experience of life is entirely up to you know, you can ask this fact or fiction question. And it's so simple. And if you aren't sure, and sometimes things feel really intense. Open get a sheet of paper, open your journal, right? Write the question on top of the page. It's a fact or fiction is this fact or is this fiction? The other day I was feeling? Honestly, my husband and I had this kind of three week, three weeks of an opposite schedule where it was like tag teaming. And then we had a child in the ER with 105 degree fever and there was just a lot of moving pieces. And then somebody else was sick. And then there was travel. It was just it was just like a season. And I started feeling disconnected. And I started taking offense right? Look, I started holding a little grudges micro grudges against against my husband. And then I realized wait, this is I'm creating drama that's not here. Because I wrote down Fact or Fiction. And in my journal, even even though at the moment I was creating some self created frustration.

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I wrote down the fact is, I have a husband who's committed to a life giving marriage. The minute I wrote that down as a fact. I have a husband who's interested in being a good husband. I have a husband who sometimes doesn't understand me and sometimes does and knows we just put the facts is that all of a sudden all the hurt all of some of the the optional drama that my brain He was greeting because I was feeling a little victime. And a little sad a little sorry for myself, all of it disappeared. When I wrote one sentence, I have a husband who loves to be married, and who's willing to have hard conversations, and willing to the dude to do the dance of, of, of, of days where the time schedule is just tough for any, any, any family, any couple. And once you write the facts, and you look at the facts, now you can move forward. And it changed. Everything changed how I felt, it changed how connected I felt to him, it changed the atmosphere of the home. And so when you're when it's factor fiction, it doesn't have to be about a thought you're thinking about yourself, it can be thought you're thinking about somebody else. But I just I challenge you this week everyday to ask yourself when you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, or like, this is super, super important. I have so much to do. Factor fiction. Nothing's that important. Chances are I'll get a lot of this done today. Even just saying it changes the energy from which you're going to show up. So how can we show up with us neutrality so that we can start seeing and being honest and not don't listen, don't judge your brain. If you're in the fiction all the time. Don't be criticism, criticism. Don't be critical. Don't indulge in criticism. When you're telling yourself stories, when you're telling yourself stories that nobody cares. Nobody like all of the holding grudges, assuming people's attention is on you. Jumping to conclusion, exaggerating smallest, use the optional drama, whatever it is self critical voice about your body, fear and exaggeration and catastrophe catastrophizing something, Hey, your brains just being a brain, it's our job to boss the brain and say, Hey, brain, factor fiction. Okay. In the same way, when my son comes home from kindergarten and tells me some tall tales, I go acre. Did that really happen? Or did you make some of this up? You're going to do the same to your brain? Hey, is this really what happened? Is this really what's happening? What's fact? What's fiction? How can I neutralize this? How can I bring the drama level down? How can I because what's so beautiful about this guy's especially for those you put pressure on yourself? For me, this changed everything. It takes the pressure off of me, it helps me know which thoughts to believe in which ones to ignore. Another way to know hey, does this is this factor fiction? Is this optional or not? is to ask yourself does this thought take me to a destination I want to go? One of the things we coach on in the college competence that every thought takes you somewhere it's a thought, a train, a train of thought, and every train has a placard on the front of it, that tells you the ultimate destination. Now, in any public scenario, you are at a train station and it is your job, but not somebody else's, to look at the train before you get on it. Because trains share the same tracks when they're coming through a station. So there's a lot of trains coming through. Just because you're thinking that train is coming through. You don't have to get on it it is your job to look at that train. Look at that train of thought and look at it and go, does where does that train take me? Is that train going to take me somewhere helpful? Or something unhelpful? Is that train going to take me to the life that I want? Or hold me back in negativity, and it's up to you to choose? Which train of thought to get on? Now, by the way, I was just coaching this in the College of competence that they're going to be trains that you get on and then go, Oh, no wrong train, you can always get off my, when I was in my 20s, my friend Melissa and I, we were in France, and we were trying to go to Belgium and we had a Euro rail pass. And we were a little goofy and a little irresponsible, perfect combination in your 20s. And we got on the train to Belgium, and found ourselves in Germany and then promptly got off in Germany or the I think it was the stop right before Germany. We started hearing things in German. And we were like, oh, no, I mean, we were on this train for a hot minute guys. And then we got off. And then we waited for the next train that was going the opposite direction to get back on going the other way. So we don't beat ourselves up. If you get on the wrong train of thought and you find yourself at a destination. That is not where you wanted to go. Where the destination is drama, pressure, anxiety, insecurity, then you don't have to stay there. You don't have to keep riding the train. Just cuz you got on it, get off and turn around. And that's why coaching is so critical. That's why cleaning your thoughts is so critical breathing exercises, managing your mind journaling every day listening to podcasts like this. Having a community of other people who do the same thing, right. It's critical so how to feel less stressed in general. Know your thoughts, clean them daily. Observe them be curious. I really master the art of reframing your thoughts all day. day after day after day. Reframing is just answering your thoughts back answering and not letting the initial thought be the final thought. questioning your thoughts being curious curiosity leads to clarity and clarity to confidence. It's life changing. And then to affirm in yourself and build yourself up you speak words of life and truth of yourself and you haven't yet downloaded my 100 confidence. Affirmations do so it's absolutely free Trish blackwell.com/ 100 statements, it's 100 Confidence statements Trish blackwell.com, forward slash 100 statements that will give you 100 Things you can start speaking of yourself and affirming in yourself, then have clear objections and clear intentions know what you want. You will live less stressed if you stop getting distracted by all the noise. And sometimes we have to know what we don't want to know what we do want in your life. And that's what we call reverse integration. We're gonna be doing an episode on that very soon. But I just want to, I want to invite you today to be proud of yourself. Be proud of yourself for your curiosity. Be proud of yourself for your willingness to ask yourself, Dr. Fiction, and be proud enough to yourself to go hey, there's probably some optional drama going on in my mind. Let me dig in and find out where it's showing up and then talk back to it. And if you want to go deeper, you know where to go. Come join us in the College of confidence. It is 14 days money back guarantee if you don't if you don't feel more confident, 14 days more supported and 14 days more positive 14 days and you have cash in the past couple of years. Just let us know we give you your money back. That is how amazing I believe the community and the coaching support is in the College of Confidence. So get started at College of confidence.com now this episode resonated with you other episodes to check out our episode 383 How to Stay nice when you feel stressed. How to Stay nice when you feel stressed episode 296 How to Stop stressing yourself out when life is busy. And episode 549 self confidence and self kindness for the self critical person. You can find those all on my website or by typing and Trishblackwell.com/that Episode number so 383 to 96 549 I'll see you guys next week. I'll see you in the College of Confidence. And as always, you might be listening and driving please know if I have very in depth show notes. You can always find them at my website, slash the number of episode Trishblackwell.com/545. Okay, come say hi to me on Instagram. I'm Trish_Blackwell. Give me a shout out on Facebook, Trish Blackwell coaching. And do me a favor. share this episode with a friend today. share this episode with somebody else who you think you can encourage and will be encouraged by it. Together, we become better go out there Jay. Go be who God created you to be. Be you. Be free. If you loved today's episode of The confidence podcast, I invite you to check out the College of Confidence at www.collegeofconfidence.com. The COC is where your next step is. In the COC we cultivate confidence create courage and spark change. It takes everything we do here on the podcast to the next level and our members get crazy life changing results. I'm so confident that you will find that the COC is the most encouraging place on the internet and that it will so wildly exceed your expectations that it comes with a money back guarantee hate joining is completely risk free you owe it to your future self to take your growth to the next level by coaching with me in the COC. Join me today at www.collegeofconfidence.com