I’m so excited for today. I love this subject. I hope you love it too. We’re gonna talk about the things we can control and one of those things is you can write a review for this podcast. It only takes a couple of minutes, maybe one minute if you’re a fast typer on your phone.

But if you are on Apple Podcast especially, and I think Spotify also has reviews, uh, possible, but I would love it if you would just pause this. Go over, give me five stars, write a review, write about your favorite episode, write what you’ve learned, how it’s helped you. It means so much to me and it helps people understand that this is the Best Baby Loss podcast out there.

Um, that is always my goal. Like no competition. There are so many good podcasts and we are all. Pals, uh, but I, I just want people to know that the Smooth Stones podcast is where they need to be to find hope after loss and to find all the tools they need to live an awesome life, even without all their babies in their arms.

So, will you do that for me, please? Go ahead and pause it, or you can do it at the end. Just do it. I promise. It only takes a second when you actually. Now what you’re gonna get outta this episode is really a sense of peace and a sense of direction if you’re feeling like life is a little bit out of control.

Now, this episode was inspired by a lot of things going on in the news this week, um, as I record early 2023. And probably anytime you’re listening, but here’s just a few things in the headlines this week. There is unrest, we’ll just call it general unrest. All around the world, there’s like a lot of different countries doing a lot of different things.

A lot of people are doing different things and it seems pretty scary out there. There is some wild weather. There’s been natural disasters, there’s been flooding, there’s been earthquakes. Uh, there has been just a lot in the news lately. We’ve got really high interest rates that might go higher. We’ve got like a lot of stuff with real estate and borrowing money and yeah, that’s just a whole thing right now.

We’ve got politic. We’ve got like legal proceedings, we’ve got stuff going down in all over the world, but especially in the United States, it seems a little volatile right now. There’s a lot of layoffs. So as I record, the layoffs right now are in the tech sector, so there are just like thousands and thousands and thousands of people being laid off of really good jobs.

Sometimes with a simple email. I was reading an article about. I also saw an article about plastics and all these things that are affecting our children and like stunting their growth. And I actually, this is one that I, I did not read the whole thing. I saw the headline in a little bit, but yeah, that’s just like a smidge of the news and I don’t even, I’m not a huge, like I highly recommend.

Inputting a lot of stuff if this kind of thing worries you. So I, I don’t think we should be like, oblivious to what’s happening in the world, but I also don’t believe that we should be like on a 24 hour always checking the news. So what I want to help you with today is to think about your life. Like what are the things that feel out of control?

What feels scary? What have you been worried about? What is going on in your world? Like a lot of these things that are in the news, they, they’re like macro, but if you look micro, this is affecting people. This is affecting families. This is affecting, um, individuals. It’s really important that we understand that whatever’s going on in our lives, we never diminish it or tell ourselves we shouldn’t be upset because like there was some big earthquake where thousands of people died in this country across the ocean.

And of course our heart goes out to them. We do everything we can to help. We, um, pray for them if that’s all we can do, but, Just because like the sky is falling outside of us doesn’t mean it’s not a big deal if like your kid’s getting bullied at school or, um, you know, you are the one who lost your job or your family member or whatever it is, so, It feels really out of control a lot of times, and this is not comfortable, our brain doesn’t like not knowing what’s coming next.

It likes to be able to kind of extrapolate and, and guess what’s gonna happen cuz then it feels safe and secure. But sometimes we just don’t know what’s gonna happen. And then the opposite thing happens where our brain starts going wild with. This could happen and this could happen. In the worst case scenario, we go down the rabbit hole and we do get into all the news and the, and like that.

We should really be worried about, this is really important for us to be worried. So the world tells us that, and our brain tells us that, that it’s really important. It’s really useful to be obsessing about things we cannot control. If this is you, first of all, give yourself a hug, like literally put your arms around yourself right now.

Take a deep breath. And say, I love you. Thank you brain, for doing what you’re supposed to do. I appreciate you. But here’s the deal. I’m gonna give you a few tips today on how to take care of the things that you actually can control, especially when things feel really out of control. So I’m gonna start with what I was touching on a minute ago, which is you can control what you input into your brain now.

We have our phones with us all the time. They are full of other people’s lives, other people’s opinions, other people’s comments, the news, the tos, the like totally false information that goes around and scares people. Um, off the top of my head, I always think about like, even when I was a kid, it was like there’s needles in the theater seats and there’s needles under the gas pump handles, and there’s like always people that are trying to.

Traffic, you know, follow, steal children. And, and I’m not saying that those things haven’t ever happened, that they won’t happen. That we don’t wanna be safe. I’m not making fun of anybody who like has felt that experience. Like I say, go with your gut. If you feel like these people were following you, trying to do something sketchy, like for sure, um, get help.

And I validate you. It really these things, you notice how much these things get shared, like these scary, scary things. Uh, they get shared, just they go viral. They are everywhere and everybody’s talking about it, and we’re all, now we’re all worried about it. Like, now this is another thing I have to worry about, especially as lost parents.

We, we already have like a brain that’s on high alert and so if you’re, now you’re worrying about all these extra things, it’s exhausting. And what I teach you here, it’s Smooth Stones coaching, is you need to take care of your energy so you can control what you input. You can just go off the news entirely.

You can go off social media entirely. Most people aren’t gonna do that. Most people don’t wanna do that. But can you do a little bit of an audit? Like are your sources, um, Working for you? Do you like the way they present? What’s happening? How often do you wanna check the news? Do you want to watch the news?

Do you wanna check it online? I like to check it online just because then I get to choose, like, if there’s a really a story that, like for me it’s like child abuse or, um, some of these things I just don’t even want, like, I don’t wanna put that in my brain cuz it just breaks my heart. So choose like, how do I want to get my dose of the news?

How many times do I wanna check it? All of those things, right? And if you’re in a habit and you notice like the urge to check the news, is there, um, that’s something we can work on in coaching. That’s something I help my clients with is just like really understanding urges, how to answer them, how to deal with it, how to maybe be on your phone a little bit less.

And then same with social media. Maybe you’re in support groups. They’re not supportive anymore. They’re a little bit of a drain. You’re allowed to let go. You’re allowed to evolve out of certain groups. You’re allowed to pause notifications. Um, who are the people that you’re following? Who are the people that you’re interacting with online?

Are they uplifting you? Are they bringing goodness into your life? You get to decide that. And I think it’s important, uh, something to do, especially as we’re like going into a new season in spring and like do that spring cleaning of your phone, of your social media, of your apps. Like maybe put your, your news apps on your third screen or hide it somewhere, you know, so it’s not like right there in your face.

So we can control what we input. Uh, another thing we can control is how we take care of our nervous system. We talk about that here. I’m gonna be talking about it more soon. Our nervous system gets activated by certain things and we need to take care of it. Now, I am actually not a proponent of avoid.

Those things that activate us, cuz sometimes we can’t, sometimes we need to go back to the doctor. Sometimes. Um, we need to go through the baby aisle to get to what we want, you know, to get a gallon of milk or whatever it is. I think we just need to learn to take care of our nervous system, which means noticing when we’re activated, finding some tools to help us calm down, whether it’s tapping or grounding ourselves or deep breathing.

Or putting on some music that takes our, you know, just gets us in a different energy, but we can control. How we take care of our nervous system, and it’s not gonna always be perfect, but when these big, scary things are all around us, or things pop up in our lives, if we know that we’ve got it covered, we’re gonna be able to calm down.

We’re gonna be able to handle that. It’s so much less scary. Another thing we can control is our relationship with ourselves. So our relationship is just our thoughts about another person. In this case, it’s our thoughts about ourselves. So how are you speaking to yourself? What do you think about yourself?

What do you think is good about you? What do you think is maybe like quote unquote bad about you? Um, what is that internal dialogue that you have that is something that you can control in the sense that. If we have patterns, we’ve, things we’ve been saying to ourselves for a really long time, a lot of times they’re the, our brain is gonna offer that.

But we can learn through self coaching, through coaching with me to stop that inner critic. Just tell her to shh. It’s okay. Like we’re not gonna talk about ourselves that way anymore. And same with our grief. If you are judging your grief, if you are saying, Ugh, why can’t you just get over this? Like, You just had a six week miscarriage, you shouldn’t be this sad.

A year later. That’s not kind, that’s not helpful. You can control your relationship with your grief and your grieving, um, just by really noticing what’s happening. So first we have to be aware. We gotta say, oh, what’s happening? Then we gotta give ourselves some love, and then we gotta just say, Hey, I’m not gonna do that anymore.

Thank you brain for offering me these thoughts. I’m gonna go a different way. And that leads into. We can control our emotions and our thoughts. That is the best news. That is what I’m here to tell you every week. If you’re new here and you’re just like jumping in the middle, go back to the beginning. I feel like it’s episode five.

It’s pretty early on. We have how to coach yourself, how to feel your feelings. All the basics of self-coaching are so important. Our thoughts create our feeling. That means if we’re paying attention to our thoughts, we can create any feeling that we want, and that is magic. I don’t ever want you to use that against yourself.

If you’re like, oh, like I can’t do it. I’m not doing it right, like my life is still hard. Life is still gonna be hard. Friends. We’re still humans with human brains who are always on the lookout for problems, but you can control your emotions by controlling. And guiding yourself. Maybe controlling isn’t the best word, but just choosing better thoughts, choosing thoughts that help you, choosing thoughts that help you get the results you want.

Um, so, so important and so in your control, you just have to learn how. That’s what I do. Come and talk to me. Go on the show notes, sign up for a connection. Call. Come and get coaching. Come and learn all of these. It’s the best. What you’re hearing on the podcast is awesome, and I hope it’s so helpful. But coaching with me is a whole other level.

Okay. We also can control our faith. Our faith can be shaken after a loss. Our faith can be shaken when the world seems to be falling down. And we wonder, why would a God who loves us let all these terrible things happen? Why does child abuse uh, exist? Why does sex trafficking exist? Why are people trying to like, kill each other and take over each other’s countries and like blow each other up?

Why doesn’t it just stop? And I, I’m telling you, I have my days where I just like, will you please just stop? Like, will all these people just stop, stop killing each other, stop fighting over like some land or, or beliefs or, you know, oil in the ground or whatever it is. But listen. You control your faith.

You control that relationship with the higher power, whatever you believe in. I believe in God and in Jesus Christ, and I get to control that. Right. I have had a lot of different experiences with my faith where I’ve had to really figure out what my foundation is and what I wanna do, and where I wanna be, and why I’m doing it.

Like what are my reasons? Why do I go to church every Sunday? Why do I bring my family even when it’s really, really hard? Why do I wanna connect with my parents in heaven and my savior, Jesus Christ? I get to control that and I get to build that relationship cuz it’s my belief that those higher beings, they love us, they understand how hard it is.

They’re not out to get us, they’re not trying to punish us, they’re not trying to, you know, point out all our flaws. They love us. And so you can control your faith even when it feels really, really shaky. I promise you, if you even keep that great of a mustard seed of hope in your faith, it will grow. All right, and the last thing that we have control over is our results.

If you’ve been here for a while, you know about the model. I’m gonna give you a quick rundown. We have our circumstances. Those are the things in our life that we cannot control. Those are the facts of our life. Then we have our thoughts, our feelings, our actions, and our results. We create our results with the way we’re thinking because if the way we’re thinking affects how we.

How we feel affects how we act, how we show up, the things we do, the things we don’t do, and those actions are what’s gonna create our result. So if we’re watching the news over and over all day, checking our phone, doing all the things, and having this thought like, We’re all gonna die, like global Warming’s gonna get us and like, you know, life is just so hard.

We’re gonna feel terrified. We’re gonna feel anxious, we’re gonna feel just awful. When we feel that way, we’re gonna keep checking our phone. We’re gonna be telling all the people right, that the sky is falling. We’re gonna be really worrying about it, spending so much energy on it, and all of those actions are gonna bring it back to result.

Where, yeah, we’re just making our lives worse. We are kind of ruining our own lives, right? In a way, we’re not living cuz we’re living in fear. Can you see how that happens? So if you want a different result, you gotta think about things differently. If you wanna believe like, hey, things are gonna be. That’s gonna change the way you feel.

That’s gonna change how you act in your daily life. That’s gonna change your result. And you know what? You’re gonna be okay. That’s gonna be your result cuz you trust yourself and you’re gonna keep moving forward instead of like throwing up your hands and feeling like what is the point? This world is like a sinking ship.

It’s so scary out there. I’m just gonna hide in my house. No, we are gonna live beautiful lives. If you are here listening to this podcast, I know that you want that. You want to have an amazing, awesome life that is full of all the feelings and all the ups and downs, and you wanna trust. You wanna trust that you’re gonna handle it.

And that is really what all of this is. When you can take care of what you’re putting into your mind, when you’re taking care of your nervous system, when you’re taking care of your relationship with yourself, when you’re taking care of your emotions and you’re being aware of your thoughts and how your attitude and, and your thoughts affect your life, you’re gonna get such better results when you add a little bit of faith.

Like I said, whatever you believe in, but you add some faith and some magic, we let a little magic in. Like you are unstoppable. You don’t need to control the world outside you. You don’t need to end all the bad things. You don’t need to run away from it. You don’t need to hide. You don’t need to spend like so much energy worrying.

Listen to me, life is. People are good. Everything is going to be okay. And if it’s not okay, right? I love, well, this is a saying, right? Everything’s gonna be okay in the end. And if it’s not okay, it’s not the end. I want you to know that I love you, that I believe in you, that I am here to help you. Reach out to me.

You can go on my website, you can email me, you can DM me on Instagram. I’m at Amy dot Smooth Zones Coaching. Or the best thing you can do is sign up for a connection call, come and talk to me. We will get on Zoom, we’re gonna talk about coaching and how much so. Investing in yourself for three months is gonna change your outlook on life because you are going to learn in a rock solid way how to control what you can control and how to let go of the rest.

And that is like the best thing ever. And once you learn it, you’re gonna look around and you’re gonna start wishing that the whole world knew this and you’re gonna wish that you had done this. So many people say that like, I wish I would have known, I would’ve spared myself so much pain you weren’t supposed to know before, but this is your time now.

So if you’re feeling called and drawn to, come and coach with me, let’s talk. I’ll take really good care of you. All right? Stay safe out there. It’s all gonna be okay. I’ll see you next. Are you tired of feeling like your baby step was somehow your fault? Go to Smooth Stones coaching.com and get my free mini course.

How to Stop Blaming Yourself After Loss.