Mamas, how are we doing out there? It has been just. A crazy year and past few weeks, and I wanted to talk a little bit about what’s going on right now, and then we’re gonna dive into our topic, which I picked on purpose because I think it applies so much to what’s happening with the anti-racism and Black Lives matter.

Movement right now, which I know it’s a movement that’s been going on for a really long time, and I totally acknowledge that. But it has been just a huge wave as far as. Dialogue and opening up and really people being able to speak and hopefully be heard. And I am really grateful that I’ve had some amazing friends and mentors, um, of all different colors who have already started me down the path of anti-racism because I think I would’ve ar put myself in the category before of like, I’m not racist, I am.

A really nice person and I grew up in Canada and I, you know, we all have our backstory of why we’re not racist and I think being able to stop being defensive and just move forward and looking at what biases I might have, um, and already starting down with this work has really helped me through this situation.

But, My general superpower, which is I think why I make a really good life coach is really listening. I am not the one in the group to need to speak out, but so I have been listening, I’ve been learning. I am committed to learning more. Um, I’m excited to start a little, I’m not sure what it’s called, but it’s.

It’s a little five week course where we’re gonna dive into race and anti-racism. Um, I’m really, really excited about it. It’s by Lucrecia Berry from Brownish City. I’m excited and I’m hopeful for change, and I hope that you guys out there listening are feeling. Hopeful, um, but also a lot of us are feeling really uncomfortable, and that’s okay.

And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today because my topic is discomfort is a currency of growth. As we’ve talked about a lot of times on this podcast, we have this motivational triad, which basically means our brain is wired. From the beginning to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and really conserve energy.

And so why would we want to break out of that kind of cave woman motivational triad? And that’s a question you have to ask yourself. Whatever your goals are, no matter what kind of person you wanna be, whatever you wanna accomplish. Why do you wanna break out of that motivational triad? And I think even though that’s part of us, the other part of us really is this desire to grow and to create, and to contribute and to make a difference.

And I think it’s a beautiful, beautiful part of being a human. And especially my angel moms out there. I know that. This is a big part of you. Um, whether it was before your loss or since your loss. I just feel like it’s a huge, beautiful part of being human is it’s really a pull and it really is powerful.

And so we have to recognize these two parts of us and. Know that it is totally normal to not wanna get out of our comfort zone. It is totally normal to want to just stay safe and quiet and warm and all of those things and know that we have created neural pathways. Say if we’re talking about anti-racism, maybe we’ve created a neural pathway already that says, I’m not a racist.

This doesn’t concern me. Um, but that really doesn’t inspire change. And when we. Stick in those places that we’ve been for a really long time. We stay with those beliefs. We’re gonna be stuck. We’re not gonna grow. But when we try to forge new neural pathways, that’s gonna be uncomfortable, right? And it’s gonna take effort.

But I promise you that it’s so, so worth it. And this is really why we need to be uncomfortable on purpose because. Our successes are really going to be related to our ability to handle being uncomfortable. And I’m gonna say that one more time because I love it so much, and I really want you to think about your goals in your life and how this applies to you.

Our success is going to be related to our ability to handle being uncomfortable. So if we talk about racism, Right now, um, it can be uncomfortable on both sides. It’s uncomfortable, right? Like the people who are speaking up, they are exhausted, right? They’re telling us like, we’ve been telling you this forever.

You haven’t listened to us, but this is a moment and we wanna keep talking. And it’s not easy. It is really not easy. And. I am so there with you and support you for speaking out because again, as grievers, we know this, we know it is so hard to speak out when your heart has already been broken, but we gotta keep doing it.

And then for the, those of us who maybe haven’t dived into this work, um, as extensively who have been able to sit back and not really have it affect our lives. It’s gonna be uncomfortable to dive into this and to really, really change what we’re doing, especially when our identity has always been most likely.

I am a nice person. I’m not racist, so what are you talking about? But just listening, learning, growing. Is definitely an uncomfortable, uncomfortable process, but are you here for it? And I am. I have a little example, it’s my Instagram feed I noticed and I looked through it and I noticed that, of course it’s half quotes that are green and then it’s half pictures of usually of me, or I choose stock photos sometimes and.

The only real, um, people I have on there are my podcast covers. And so I looked through and I was like, huh, most of my podcast covers are pretty white, and I wonder if I. Did I do that unconsciously? Did I purposely do that and not really notice it? Um, or is there something when you look up pictures where maybe there weren’t a lot of people of color on those pictures?

So I did a little research and I went to the website that I use for photos, and I typed in woman smiling. I think that’s what I usually do. Um, I usually try to find just kinda a picture that goes with the mood of whatever the topic of the podcast is. And I did that and I counted the first 50 women smiling pictures.

And yes, most of them were white women and there were 11 that were of. People of different colors. And then of those 11, it was probably five or six that were of black women. And so I have that information and I, I’m really trying to look at myself and, and can I get uncomfortable and ask, you know, am I picking that on purpose?

Was I purposely choosing people that look like me? And do I think that’s a problem? And do I wanna change that? Now if I want to change that, Of course other thoughts will come up that I think a lot of other white people are worrying about now, which is, okay, so if I pick a podcast cover that is a black woman or more diverse women, is it gonna look like I’m just doing that, you know, as a token or as a something to appease people or whatever.

And I don’t have a huge platform and I. Feel like it’s a pretty inclusive place. But I did notice, um, that about my feed. And so what I need to do is do that work and say, what am I willing to do? What is this uncomfortable? Where am I coming from? And I think that’s really important as we do this work is where am I coming from?

What is my motivation? What are the thoughts that are driving this? What are the emotion that is driving this? And for me, The best emotion I can use to drive is love, and that’s what I feel when I hear people who are hurting. Uh, my first response is just to comfort them, to reach out, to do what I can to support them.

And so if I can support them by picking a podcast cover that. Is a little more inclusive and being more intentional about that, then I can feel good about that. And even if somebody comes back and says something, um, or notices or has an opinion about it, that’s really okay with me because I know that IMM doing it with love and that I want, even though I teach you guys, and I believe that other people’s thoughts create their emotions.

I also know that we do have an influence over the people that interact with us, and so if I can be more diverse on purpose to make sure people know that they are welcome here, then I am totally willing to do that. And so I want you to look in your life, what are you willing to do and what can you do?

With your own goals to really get uncomfortable and do it on purpose. And of course with grief, this is so, so important. We want to get uncomfortable on purpose because when we try to avoid grief, it always just sticks around. It always just waits for us. So, Grief is a huge teacher for us. It’s teaching us how to be uncomfortable on purpose so that we can use it in other situations like global pandemics and real unrest in the world and, and all kinds of things that are gonna come in front of us.

My teacher, Brooke, she calls. This part where it’s really, really uncomfortable, the river of misery. And I’ve thought a lot about it, and maybe I’m gonna come up with a different name for it, but we’re gonna talk about the river of misery for a second. And what this is, is we’re on one side of the river and we want to get to the other side.

Like we want to get to a goal and we want to do something really important to us. And. The thing is you have to dive into that river and you have to swim through it, and sometimes you’re gonna be in there for a while, but there comes a point where staying on the other side, Is not an option anymore. We just know that it’s time to move forward and we gotta get our feet wet and we gotta get in there and we gotta swim hard.

Another really, really important part to understand about being uncomfortable on purpose is that we don’t want to be happy about everything, right? This is really kind of a, I was just listening to a speaker and she was talking about toxic positivity, and I don’t like, Labeling things maybe that way, but it’s this idea that we’ve talked about a lot is that we should be happy all the time.

And then when we’re not happy, we think something’s gone wrong and we don’t have to be happy about everything. We do not have to put a positive spin on it. When you see a man being murdered on video, um, by someone who’s supposed to be. Fair and protecting them and upholding the law. We don’t want to be happy about that.

We want to grieve that when our baby dies. We want to be uncomfortable with that. We don’t wanna think it’s not a big deal. Right. And a lot of people do. That’s that’s what we want to just yell to all the people. Like this is a big deal and I deserve to grieve. And so understanding that. Life is not always gonna be easy, and the goal is to be human and to have the full human experience.

That is what we’re here for. And are you all in for that? Especially right now? Again, 2020 has been one of our greatest teachers, our greatest opportunity to really apply this. And I hope that you are, and I know it’s been hard. I mean, I hear you. I hear you in what you’re telling me. And it’s okay that it’s been hard, and it’s okay to let it be hard, but let’s let it be hard on purpose.

Let’s use those emotions to move us forward and be uncomfortable on purpose instead of just being victims of the circumstances of this year. Because when we try to avoid those emotions, Those are the ones that are the same emotions. We need to work towards the results that we want. A really quick example is in a relationship, maybe we all have relationships.

I’m sure we all have at least one relationship that that could be improved upon. But let’s talk about marriage. Now, sometimes in marriage there is an issue going on and maybe the wife has an issue that she. She feels like there’s something going on with her and her husband, but she’s unwilling to talk to him, so she really hides her feelings and she avoids bringing it up.

Because she’s worried about what he’s gonna think and how he’s gonna react and what’s gonna happen. Um, so she just does a lot of cleaning. Maybe she’s eating her feelings. She’s, she’s acting in a way that isn’t really in integrity with herself, and she thinks that she’s keeping the peace, but really she’s just scared and the relationship is always going to suffer.

Right. So are we willing to get uncomfortable and maybe have a conversation or make a change in a relationship so that you can move that forward and not stay stuck in that? ’cause we’re uncomfortable either way. Like let’s be uncomfortable in a way that’s gonna move us forward. That’s really what we want to do.

So a lot of times what we’re trying to avoid are like failure, insecurity, anxiety, um, there’s a lot of different situations with a lot of different emotions, but I want you to think for yourself, what is the emotion that you avoid the most? What emotion are you most? Scared of. And also if you have a goal or something you wanna do, um, whether it’s something really simple or something really huge, what emotion are you letting stop you from getting that thing that you really, really want?

Because if we can learn to do this, and as individuals, like everything we do here in coaching, it’s individual. If we can each do this work, what kind of change can we make in the world? And I had an example recently. Uh, we know that there’s been this me Too movement, right? And we have. Women coming out and being super vulnerable and talking about their experiences and holding people accountable for what happened to them.

And it’s really scary, especially when you’ve been victimized, to have to come forward and talk about stuff and know that you’re gonna be ridiculed, you know that people aren’t gonna believe you. It’s, it’s very scary and it’s a very vulnerable thing to do. But I think about my daughter. She recently got a job at the local burger place.

Um, just a summer job, and I had to have that talk with her about. Staying in a well lit area and not parking her car behind the restaurant and making sure there was always two of them. And watching out for maybe guys that start to come in more regularly at the end of her shift. That sort of thing. And I thought about the world we live in and what it’s like for me, um, what it’s like for her now.

And I think about her daughters. Can we do enough to end violence against women and sexual violence against women, to the point where maybe she won’t have to have that conversation with her daughter. And it’s not gonna be easy to get there, and it’s not going to be quick. It’s gonna take time and it’s gonna take a lot of effort and.

I’m really grateful for the people who have been able to speak up and try to change the world for all of us, and not just our daughters, but our sons. And this goes back to these moms who are grieving their black sons, who they don’t feel safe and they have these same kind of conversations with them and can we do the uncomfortable work now so that maybe they don’t have to deal with that.

Kind of issue in their lives or the lives of their children. So yeah, it’s, it’s scary to speak out, but it’s also scary to be silent, right? And we know that, again, with our grief, with our babies, right? Holding that all in, it’s not really comfortable either, but, When we’re able to share our stories, to talk about our babies, to grieve, to connect with people, to be honest, that’s a kind of uncomfortable that really moves you forward.

So look at yourself and decide what you want to do and what you’re willing to get uncomfortable for. A great quote that I was just listening to was, Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know, right? So what this means is if you’ve got something that’s uncomfortable in your life that’s bugging you and or like this desire to move forward, this desire to do something that’s scary to you, that’s there for a reason, and when you can find that reason and when you can push yourself.

To resolve that or to move towards it, to lean into it, that’s when you’re gonna learn. And if you don’t learn it, the universe is just gonna keep presenting you with opportunities to get the message. And yeah, this year has been a great, great teacher. There’s a lot of stuff. We as a people on this earth obviously need to learn.

I had another little example, a little lighter example of these two kinds of uncomfortable. So if you guys watch the office, you know Pam, and if you haven’t watched the office, you gotta go watch. Um, the episode’s called Beach Day, I think. And there’s a point where Pam, who is a receptionist, she’s. There’s been all this up and down with Jim and she really, really likes him, but it’s, they’re not together at the time, and I.

They go to the beach and they set up this fire walk and it’s supposed to be kind of a team building office. You know, just super awkward, weird day at the beach with all of their coworkers. And they do the fire walk and she wants to do it, but they, they tell her she can’t. She’s just there to take notes and she’s just the secretary.

And Pam in her life has always kind of been the nice one and kind of put up with a lot. And there’s this moment where she decides she’s gonna do it and everybody else is around, um, a different fire and she’s in the background and she decides she’s gonna do this fire walk. She decides that the uncomfortableness of it being awkward with Jim, her coworker, who she’s basically in love with, but.

It’s not working out right now, and she decides that she’s sick of it. Like she’s sick of being quiet and being silent and not talking. And so she does this fire walk and she comes over to the group and she kind of spills her guts in front of everybody. It’s a really beautiful moment for sweet little Pam, and she really bears her heart and.

That moment really moves forward. Her relationship, her confidence, like she lets Jim know how she feels and, and it really moves her forward. And it’s a beautiful, beautiful little moment. So if you’ve seen it, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, well you just gotta watch all the seasons of the office, but.

That moment. We don’t all have, we don’t all have a firewalk, but we do have a point in our lives where we decide, Hey, I’m willing to be uncomfortable on purpose, and it’s just too intolerable to stay in the uncomfortable that you’ve been in. So that’s when things are really gonna start to happen. For you and whatever this is.

I am not even kidding. It could be just saying something, um, speaking up. It could be any goal that you have, anything that you wanna change in your life, in your relationships, in your self, like a habit you wanna come up with. Like if we’re talking about, um, fitness, you know, it’s uncomfortable, it’s not easy.

It’s not easy to change habits, but are you willing to do it on purpose? And to finish up, I just wanted to talk about Susan David. She gave an amazing TED talk and it’s called the Gift and Power of Emotional Courage. And I’m gonna put a, a link in the show notes so you guys can go watch it. It’s like 15 minutes long.

Totally worth it. But she says, tough emotions are part of our contract for life. You don’t get a meaningful career or raise a family or leave the world a better place without stress and discomfort. Discomfort is a price of admission to a meaningful life, and that is beautiful. I mean, I love how she puts that.

It’s exactly what I believe and what I’m teaching you here, but she just puts it perfectly. Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life. And it’s true. I mean, we can just go about our day over and over and over and just stay where we are and be comfortable. But if we want to become something new, if we wanna become something better, we gotta get uncomfortable on purpose.

And if you’re here, then I know that there’s something that you want and. I would love to help you with it. So if you’ve got a goal and you’re not sure how to get there, totally sign up for a free session or email me or if you have a question like, I would love to address any questions you guys have on the podcast.

I am totally open to communication. Um, there’s a form on my website. You can email me anytime you want. Or follow me on Instagram. You can always dmm me too. So the last couple things that Susan David said are life’s beauty is inseparable from its fragility. And I love that too. It’s like, can you move forward?

Can you try having another baby knowing that you might not get a living baby? You know that it might be hard. Can you try another infertility treatment? Can you move. Ahead. In your grief, can you let go of some of your regrets and some of your shame and your blame that you’ve put on yourself? Can you stop hating your body?

Can you stop blaming other people for the pain in your life and recognize that you are in control of your life. You have all the power in your life, and it’s a lot easier to blame other people. It’s a lot easier to stay stuck, but at some point, You just have to recognize that you have all the power in your life.

And part of that is embracing the discomfort of it all and knowing that we really don’t have control. But becoming emotionally agile is another thing, um, Susan talks about, which just means we don’t see emotions as good or bad. We just see them as emotions and as part of the human existence. And they can exist together.

They can exist on a spectrum, and it’s okay to just experience them all. And that’s exactly what I want you guys to hear from me. Um, I know this, this episode went a little longer than usual. I. Really wanted to just chat with you today. Normally I have a huge, like I write it out word for word, but today I just wanted to talk to you and be real with you about being uncomfortable and this is my contribution right now, um, to the racial issues that we’re facing.

And for any of you listening, just again, no matter where you are, Just look at yourself and say, how can I get a little more uncomfortable with myself so that I can be the person I want to be so that I can truly be in integrity with myself and my values and what I say, and really listen and learn, and then, Be confident in yourself.

Again, you might mess up, you might do it wrong. You might say the wrong thing. You might have people have opinions about what you’re doing, but that’s all okay. You just gotta ask yourself, am I all in for this human life, for this experience, this one beautiful life that we all have and let’s all support each other.

And I really wanna send a lot of love out to you. I know there’s a lot of heavy hearts out there. I know there’s a lot going on, and I don’t know that it’s gonna get any easier anytime soon. So let’s get comfortable with discomfort. Let’s learn this lesson that the universe is giving to us right now, and let’s look forward with a lot of hope in.

All the humans around us that we can learn, we can grow, we can change, and we can be better. And one of the other things that Susan David said in her TED talk is talking about how when we don’t wanna feel these things, when we don’t wanna experience everything, she says, you have dead people’s goals. Like only dead people don’t feel all of these emotions and.

It was kind of as a joke, but as moms of Angels, we know all the things that our babies are missing out on, and I think that’s, Something that we want people to understand is that we want our kids to fall down and scrape their knee. We want them to get their heart broken. We want them to go through challenges and they can’t because they’re not here on this earth, but we.

Are, and so look at your goals. What are you trying to do? If you’re trying to avoid all the ups and downs of life? Are you really living and are you really trying to avoid things that we wish our children could experience? So just something to think about. I’ll leave it right there and I will see you next time.

Don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode. And if you love this episode, will you share it with someone who you think really needs it? And don’t forget to leave a rating and a review. I would love to hear from you about. What you enjoy about the podcast and it helps us get the podcast in front of other angel mamas who need it.

We’ll talk to you soon.