Welcome to the Smooth Stones Podcast, episode 1 94. Adjusting to big changes. Uh, I have. Been seeing a theme in my coaching lately, and anytime I see a theme, I think I need to get this on the podcast so I can help all the people that aren’t working with me. But I do have one special thing to tell you about before we dive in, and that is.

I want you to come work with me. I am offering holiday single sessions. You can have one session, you can have as many sessions as you need, but I am normally what I do is a three month package, and sometimes I know that can be a lot. Maybe you just have this one thing you need to work through, especially with the holidays coming up.

And so I wanna help you, and I’m doing that by offering single sessions. They are gonna be $40. You just sign up, let me know that you wanna come and think about what you’re struggling with and where you’re stuck. And I will take care of everything else. You get my mind, my experience. My coaching and grief skills, which I gotta say I’m really good at this.

I have coached a lot of people around holiday things, and especially grief in the holidays, loss in the holidays, and also just the holidays bring up so much. We’ve got, you know, a lot of family togetherness or maybe we don’t, there’s a lot of big expectations. There’s a lot of big feelings, and I don’t think this is a time where you need to just suffer and kind of like, put your head down and make it through until like mid-January, because that’s a lot of life. . And you deserve to thrive and live your life, even if it’s hard. . We’re not gonna be afraid of the hard, but . I just don’t want you to sit there thinking I just have to white knuckle it until mid-January.

You don’t need to do that, come and talk to me. All you need to do is send me an email, Amy, at Smooth Stones Coaching. It’s plural, smooth Stones um.com, and yeah, let’s chat. Or you can hit me up on Instagram, either at amy dot Smooth Stones Coaching, but this is gonna be good. I’m gonna be doing this as many sessions as I can with the schedule that I have, which my schedule is pretty full.

So if you want in on this, talk to me now so we can get you on the schedule. Okay. Let’s talk about adjusting to big changes. Now, like I said, I have seen this theme in a lot of clients I’ve been coaching where they are really, really struggling with some really big changes. So I wanted to start by talking about a really small change that recently happened to most of us, and that is, daylight savings or going to standard time? I don’t honestly don’t remember. I think we’re going back to standard time, right? but we switch twice a year. One hour, and we change our clocks back. We spring forward, whatever it is, and. It really, really messes us up. They always do it on like a Saturday night and I always go to church and it’s just funny ’cause you’re gonna have people that are an hour early and people that are an hour late.

Like I think mostly now that we have phones, uh, it helps us. But I remember way back when we did not have phones that auto adjusted to the time. You could really be an hour late to something or maybe if you just like were hanging out on Sunday and didn’t do anything. You might be late to work on Monday or way early to work.

What happens is our body, like our whole circadian rhythm feels thrown off by this one hour shift. We don’t know what time it is. We’re like, it’s dark, it’s cold. It feels like it’s nine o’clock at night. Like I’m ready to put my pajamas on and I will look at my watch and it’s like 4:34 PM It is incredible how off it feels, just when we have this small shift in time.

So I want you to think for yourself, what is it like for you if you have living kids? This can be really hard watching them because they don’t understand. Right. They also have a really hard time adjusting. They’re like this, my body does not say it’s bedtime. My body does not say it’s nap time. My body does not want to get up.

And it can be really, really hard with kids and it can take weeks and weeks and weeks to get used to this one hour shift. But the thing is about daylight savings is we’re kind of all in it together. Uh, we kind of all just send out the memes and the jokes and we all just complain about it. And we all wish the government would do something and just change and get rid of it, or maybe not, but we just complain about it for a while and then we get used to it , and then we move on.

Now I wanna talk about jet lag. Have you ever traveled internationally? my dad lives in Europe, so even as a kid I was spending time, it was like about an eight hour time difference. And I’ve never traveled like to Australia, to Asia, any. Anyways, whichever direction you go. Some people say, oh, it’s easier going east to west or west to east.

It’s easier going home than it is going to the place. We know that jet lag is a pretty big change and that it’s pretty hard to adjust to, and that our body is gonna take time. Now, people have all kinds of hacks for this. All these ways. Like, do you sleep on the plane? Do you not sleep on the plane?

Do you drink some weird thing or eat some weird thing? Take some sort of medication. I don’t know. There’s lots of ways that people have tried to adjust to jet lag faster. but I think we give ourselves a lot of understanding when we’re jet lagged is that we know that it’s probably gonna be difficult, it’s gonna take a while.

And so we’re pretty kind to ourselves on jet lag. And jet lag is a big adjustment. And some of us just know, like we’re just gonna be probably tired our whole trip. Like we went to Switzerland. A couple years ago, and we were only able to plan out like 10 days. We were traveling and then we were only in Switzerland like a week, and we just kind of knew like, we’re just gonna be tired most of the time.

We’re probably not gonna fully adjust. You know, we didn’t have a month to stay there and adjust and all of that. We just were working this trip in when we could to visit, um, my family that I have in Switzerland. So we just did it. And we just knew. And so you’re just like, yeah, I’m, I’m gonna be tired. I might have a hard time falling asleep.

Um, I might get up early, early, early. That’s how it works for us when we travel that direction. But we’re pretty kind to ourself. But the things I’ve seen people, now bringing it back to you, I want you to think about yourself. I want you to think about yourself and your relationship with time change your relationship with jet lag.

I know Taylor Swift said jet lag is a choice, but for most of us. Which actually I agree with. ’cause that’s what I’m saying, if you just choose that, it’s like, yeah, I’m gonna be tired, but I’m still gonna show up, like I’m still gonna do what I need to do. It is a choice, right? So the things I’ve seen people really struggling with adjusting to is like moving to a new place, having a new baby, being pregnant, obviously having a loss, having multiple, like another loss, new job, new relationship status, new like phase or season of life. There’s just like so many things that change in our life. I can’t even, so I want you to just think for you, what is a big change that you have experienced recently that maybe you need a little bit of help with? Because I don’t think there’s anybody who hasn’t.

Even if you, you know, haven’t moved, haven’t you know everything’s the same. I think one of the biggest adjustments I had after Lauren died was the sameness, because I thought I was gonna have five daughters. I thought I was gonna have a new baby. I thought I was gonna be up all night with a crying baby, and instead I was up crying myself.

Instead, I had an empty nursery. Instead, I was returning diapers to Walmart and having to fight with the manager, so they would refund me. And that’s a change, right? That lack of change, I think sometimes is a big adjustment because we thought things were gonna go a certain way and they didn’t. So we have to adjust to that.

So even though our brain was projecting forward, we were just imagining something. That became really real for us. And so we have to adjust. I think I talked to you a while back about that we had moved, we had sold our house last, last year. It feels like a blur still. I still feel like I’m adjusting to it, but we sold our house and we thought we had kind of a plan in place and like a short term solution of where we’re gonna stay and then like getting to our new job situation, new location. It didn’t, so we ended up staying in the temporary location a long, long time, like an entire school year. That was not our plan. That was way different than what we thought. So it wasn’t a bad thing, it just was a different thing. It was just something we had to adjust to and kind of had to adjust to all along the way.

Because we had a lot of uncertainty. So if you’re in a limbo place like that, like we were, that’s also like you’re kind of making adjustments all the time and you keep making plans and then they change. You make plans and you get different information, you get plans and you have to wait. That’s like a whole lot of adjustments.

So this advice is really gonna be helpful for you. Um, so you. Get to define what a big change is. ’cause I call this episode adjusting to big changes. You just get to decide what’s big for you. It could be that you cut bangs or I’ve seen some people recently ’cause bobs are back in and I’ve seen some people getting the cute bob and then wondering if that.

Was a great idea, but it’s definitely an adjustment. So we’re never gonna judge. We don’t judge what other people think is big. We don’t judge what we think is big. You just get to decide what is a big adjustment for you. So what I want you to watch for as you’re going through these adjustments is minimizing your experience.

Because if it matters to you, it matters. Like I said, even a haircut, when I was like in second grade, I decided to go really, really short. And if you’ve seen me, you can watch me on YouTube or Instagram. I’m there. My website, I have really straight, really thick hair, and so when I decided to cut my hair short.

It just stuck straight up. And I, well, what the children were saying was, you look like a boy. Um, it was devastating. I thought it would be cute. It was not cute. I still have those pictures and I can love that little version of myself. It was not cute. I don’t know how that hairdresser did that. She was kind of following what I said I wanted, but yeah, that was a lot.

That was big. I didn’t feel like myself. And people were ridiculing me now and people were pointing it out and I felt like everyone was looking at me and I like just wanted to grow. And you know, there was all sorts of of things. So it’s a big deal. Right? And if you are a parent to live in kids, I will say this too, this is always true.

Like if it’s big to them, it’s big. It’s real. A lot of times we minimize, we do that to children . It’s like it’s not that big a deal. You didn’t get the green cup you wanted, you know, whatever cup you wanted or whatever seat in the car you wanted. We’re like, it’s not a big deal. And in some ways maybe it’s not, but to them it does.

So I want you to treat yourself like you wish someone would just come and say, you know what, this matters. This is big. This is big to you. But how we minimize it is, so what I’ve seen recently, um, is kind of like, well, I moved and I had a, a new baby, and I’m just like really having a hard time finishing this course that I signed up for, or I’m having a really hard time achieving my goals, or I really wanted to, what else have I seen?

In general, I’ll never, like, everything’s confidential in coaching, but I’m just trying to think, um, some of the other ones. But it’s basically like, yeah, like I moved to a new country, I moved to a new state, and you know, maybe you’re having a hard time getting everything unpacked, getting everything organized.

Maybe you just recently had a loss and you’re like, yeah, I have no passion for my work anymore. Like, I don’t. I’m just dialing it in at my job. And what happens is we’ll say, well, I shouldn’t be this upset. Like I shouldn’t. We minimize it or we don’t. It’s like we don’t put two things together. We’re like, well, yeah, I had this huge big adjustment in my life, but like it’s weird that this thing over here is really, really hard. Why do we do that? Why do you do that to yourself?

Again? Who taught you that? Maybe like many of us had the experience when we were younger, where people told us. You don’t get to have feelings about that. You need to minimize your feelings. You need to shut down your feelings. And I’m not saying we allow kids or ourselves to like throw a tantrum over what color cup they get, but I am saying like a lot of the patterns that we have, a lot of the habits that we have, a lot of that like inner voice that we have just comes from how we were raised.

And a lot of us were raised. To not make a big deal out of things and to kind of, yeah, almost compartmentalize. Like it doesn’t matter. Say your parents are getting a divorce, but like you still need to get good grades. I mean, you still need to do school. That’s important. Like as if those things aren’t totally interconnected.

So if you find yourself doing this, number one, like be so kind. To yourself and understand like probably I’ve picked these beliefs up, I’ve picked these habits up, I’ve picked these patterns up throughout my life, and maybe you’ve been able to power through before. Maybe this has worked. That’s the thing.

A lot of the times, this works, right? We just shove it down. We just put it to the side. We just keep grinding. Then, we kinda get through it, it’s fine. Grief does something for us that where it just rips us wide open and a lot of those things don’t work anymore. So just be aware, be aware of what’s happening, and watch for minimizing the struggle.

And it’s okay to struggle. That’s how we get stronger. That’s how we grow our muscles. Our emotional muscles, our mental muscles, our spiritual muscles, right? Like it’s how we retrain our nervous system is by kind of going through some of the struggle, but being kind to ourself all the way along.

So I’ve got three ways that our brains lie to us that I see over and over, and I’m gonna tell you them, I’m gonna explain them, and then we’re gonna talk about how. Do we again, how do we unlearn this pattern? How do we shift this pattern? How do we be kinder to ourselves and give ourselves the space we need to adjust to big changes?

Whatever you deem as big. The first one that I have just seen so much lately is. You should know what to do. This is your inner critic, your brain saying you should know what to do. Or you should have figured this out before, right? Like, we think we should know what to do when we go back to work after our baby died.

And people ask us, how things are going with the newborn. Why do we think we should know that? It’s so interesting, but anytime you have a should, that’s a red flag that we’re resisting reality in some way and we’re not being really kind to ourself. You should know what to do. So what I always talk about is.

We have the struggle. So let’s just say the, the adjustment is a struggle in and of itself. It’s bringing up uncertainty, it’s bringing up emotions. You’ve got a lot of things you’re working through. It’s taken a lot of energy to adjust, but then we add this other like pile of garbage and pain on top of it.

So you should know what to do is a lie. You should not know what to do. None of us know what to do. We think we might think we do. I see this a lot in recurrent losses. It’s like, well, I’ve been through loss before. I should just know. But you’ve never had as many losses as you have had now.

You’ve never been here. Or I should have figured this out before, like as if we have even. Again, develop the muscles We needed to deal with this situation today before, because we have not dealt with this before.

And you might’ve been through other things and you, like I said, you might’ve been able to hold space for multiple challenging things and still complete your goals and still be the mom you wanna be and still show up the way you want to in your relationship and whatever it is. But you can’t now, and you weren’t supposed to, like, you should not have figured this out.

How do we know that? Because you did not figure this out. Before you didn’t need to. Right. This is the time where we’re gonna be figuring it out, so let’s change that. You should know what to do to, like, I should not know what to do change. I should have figured this out before to, I am figuring this out now, or I haven’t figured this out yet, but I will.

Because one is just like criticizing yourself. Being kind of awful to yourself and you can’t change the past. So it’s basically like you’re beating yourself, causing pain in something that you cannot change, like it’s impossible to change. All we have is now, now we get to figure out what to do.

Now is the time we’re gonna learn. Now is the time. So number two, lie that our brain tells us and our inner critic likes to say is, you shouldn’t be having such a hard time with this. This is another version of like, you should have this figured out by now, but you shouldn’t be having such a hard time with this.

Have you ever said this to yourself? Especially when we’re in patterns, like I notice if we’re procrastinating a lot because we have some other big thing in our life and we’re like, I should be able to, like I said, I should be able to get straight A’s. I should be able to hit all my goals. I should still be able to like do X, Y, Z in my life.

That up to this point, has been easy. While I’m going through this big adjustment, I shouldn’t be having such a hard time with this. What you’re really doing here, besides letting that inner critic come in, is you’re pushing away emotions, right? What it’s saying is, I don’t wanna be having a hard time with this.

This feels terrible. This is really uncomfortable. I don’t like this. But instead, we blame ourselves. So of course, the way we fix this is the way we fix a lot of things. Allow our emotions. Allow your life to be what it is in this moment. Stop thinking about the past. Stop thinking about the future. Stop comparing.

Stop. Like all of it, all the noise. That’s the thing that’s so draining too, is like instead of kind of taking care of yourself, you’re hurting yourself. You’re spending all this energy fighting yourself. What I want you to do is just take a deep breath, {sigh}, relax your shoulders, relax your jaw, and just say, yeah.

I’m going through a big adjustment. It makes a lot of sense that this is hard. It makes a lot of sense that because I’m a human being that when one thing over here is hard, other things in my life are gonna be hard . And there’s even some of these things are, you can look up like Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, but basically our base need is like that.

Security and safety, like the basic food, shelter, all the things, right? When you don’t have that, a lot of the other things are hard, so it’s like, oh, I notice I’m getting really short with my partner, or I notice I’m getting short with my living kids, or I notice like I feel a certain way, right? It’s gonna be really hard to address that while your basic needs are in flux.

So. Hopefully you can take action to like get those things settled if you need to. But for a lot of us, it’s just in our mind, we don’t feel safe. We don’t feel like we have our basic needs covered because we’re in this adjustment period. So we need to just remind ourselves I’m adjusting, like it’s okay that I’m adjusting.

And it might be hard. And you might have to just work on that. Like instead of working on, how do I explain this? Um,

yeah. Instead of like maybe addressing the big change and criticizing yourself for like all the peripheral things that are now a struggle. Just let those peripheral things be what they are. Let how you’re showing up and how you’re feeling and all of that and all the messiness of it. Let it be what it is and understand that until we can kind of get adjusted to this big change, those might be hard.

And this isn’t in a giving up sort of way. It’s in a releasing, like there’s a huge difference. It’s not a like, oh my gosh, I just cannot handle this. I, I’m drowning, I’m whatever. It’s just, it’s more of acceptance that this is really uncomfortable. I have not got this figured out yet. And it’s gonna be hard and there’s gonna be a lot of emotions and I’m there, here for it.

Right. It’s kind of like grief. We say the only way out is through. The only way to adjust to something is to let yourself adjust to it, and you’re not letting yourself adjust to it when you’re spending a lot of time and energy wishing you didn’t have to adjust to it. Criticizing yourself for how you’re adjusting, like doing all these things to add extra pain to your life.

Okay, number three, the biggest lie. This is such a big lie because this one has the word never in it, and anytime we have always or never, those are other. Red flags that we need to really be clear on. Um, you will never figure this out is the biggest lie. You will figure this out, of course you will. Of.

And a lot of it’s just gonna happen with time. If we go back to jet lag, to daylight savings, if we just allow our body to adjust, if we just make those little changes, like we go to bed when the clock says and we get up and we maybe we exercise, it’s a one bonus about the fall is like. You can get up earlier.

You have a little bit more time in your day, right? It’s easier to get up earlier, um, because we’ve turned our clocks back. So you will never figure this out is not true. I know it feels really true when you’re in the middle of it, but you have to catch it and you have to tell yourself, no, that’s a lie. Of course I will.

Now that takes you working on your relationship with yourself. It takes you working on your relationship with your life and just understanding like our life is not meant to be predictable. It’s full of things we’re gonna have to adjust to, but we do not grow. We do not become the best version of ourselves if we have a life of ease.

There’s a quote I think I’ve quoted here before, but it’s kind of like a smooth sea. Never made a skilled sailor. You don’t want a snowplow life. Right, where it’s just always flat. Always even, there’s no obstacles. There’s nothing. Right. If we’re in a boat, if we’re sailing, there’s no wind, there’s no waves, there’s no rocks, there’s no, you know, we don’t have to navigate.

We just sit out there.

It’s, it’s not. What we really want. So you’ll never figure this out, is a lie. If you are having a hard time right now and you’re trying to adjust to something big, trust yourself to figure this out. Alright, so I am gonna wrap this up, but I’m gonna say, here’s a couple of tips besides the ones I’ve already given you.

Give yourself time. Be patient. Notice small wins . You gotta celebrate yourself. There’s not some magical point in the future where you’re gonna feel like, oh, I did it. And maybe there will be like, sometimes we get that. But it’s more sweet to just notice those small wins every day and be proud of yourself.

And then don’t believe everything you think like really notice when you’re fighting with the reality of your life, when you’re criticizing parts of you, instead of just loving yourself, you can do this. You can adjust to big changes. I would love to help you. That’s what I do as a coach, is I help you adjust.

’cause you don’t have to do it alone. That’s my bonus tip. Get support. Talk to someone, someone that you feel safe with, that you can be honest with, that you trust. It could be a family member, it could be a friend, it could be someone online, whatever it is. You not have to do this alone. You’re not the only person who’s been through this adjustment.

Like there are people that can help you. I would love to be one of those people. I’d love to be on your support team. Um, if you’d like to go in the show notes, send me an email. And we will talk to you next time.