YOUR EXCUSES ARE A ROADMAP TO WINNING — HERE’S THE FORMULA #Chapter1 #26

Your Excuses are a Roadmap to Winning.  Why?  Because blame and excuses show us where and how to unblock and unlock our potential! 

View all LINKS and supporting content mentioned in this episode HERE: https://imaquarius.com/excuses-are-like-booty-holes-nobody-likes-them-and-they-all-stink/

This Episode of the Overcome Depression Podcast is for you If You Want To:
-Stop making excuses...and start moving forward in your life.
-Improve your relationships with others...and yourslef!
-Change the chemical processes in your body that cause you to take impulsive actions or make poor decisions.
-Create excuses to succeed!
-Forgive ex spouses
-Heal from abandonment and create a beautiful life post-divorce
-Prevent others' bad karma from becoming our bad karma

Chapters

• 0:00 Unlocking the Power of Commitment & Progress Tracking
• 1:12 Why Focusing on Progress Over Perfection Fuels Success
• 6:26 The Transformative Power of Forgiveness & Emotional Release
• 11:36 Creating Your Reality: Taking Full Responsibility for Your Life
• 14:53 Practical Tools for Letting Go, Healing, and Practicing Gratitude
• 28:14 Empowering Closure & Reflection – Outro with Uplifting Music

Transcript

0:00

True commitment is continuing to follow through long after the excitement is long gone. Something I will encourage you to do in this program is to monitor, in a sense, or just note three wins for the week and one thing you want to do better. The reason this is so important is because people who tend to suffer from anxiety and depression and other mental disorders have a hard time seeing their own progress. They tend to get so caught up in the suffering they're experiencing right now that they fail to see the progress they've made. Benjamin Hardy articulates this very well, that basically we have a tendency to look at how far we have to go and how much we're doing wrong right now and the gap just seems so wide. How will we ever get there? we fail to see the gains. So please, if you haven't already, go download the workbook and do those weekly assessments. Set an alarm on your phone if you need to, but really do please focus on your gains, your progress through this time, through this program. It's going to take some time, but if you're going to keep doing it, it's important to be able to notice that it's actually working. A lot of people tend to disregard progress. They even notice unless they write it down and keep a record. The workbook also contains a lot of the suggestions I make on this podcast, challenges that you can either accept or not. And this is based, again, if you haven't watched my number eight introduction video, this is really important to pick and choose things that you believe you can actually do, that you're ready for, and that you're fully committed to. And again, a lot of us get really excited when we start a program or we start something, and then when life gets heavy or or we get busy, we don't prioritize those things that will help us the most. And so downloading the workbook, putting it by your bed, really making a concerted effort daily to just kind of connect with the things that I'm encouraging you to commit to, then you choosing the things that you are ready to commit to. Not everything, please, just a few. One every month is perfect. And then really focusing on that one thing. And then the next month, choosing another. In apast video, I actually encouraged you to give up some of your cleaning products in favor of a homemade natural recipe that I came up with that works amazing. Now, if you decided to take on that challenge, does that mean that you can never, ever, ever, ever use a spray ever again? Not necessarily. I'm encouraging you to make that part of your new life and to use that exclusively. However, there are times when I am on vacation, in a hotel, they're using chemicals. They offer chemicals in the room sometimes too. And if I forgot my shampoo, I'm probably gonna use theirs. Maybe not, it depends. Maybe I go out and buy something I like better. The point is we are making consistent efforts in a good direction and promising ourselves that we are going to do, I would say 95% to 90% on a particular item. It could be 80% if that's what you feel you can commit to and that's fine too. But I have noticed for example I was preparing myself for my sister's wedding and this particular sister I had who was in her wedding gown she was also helping her bridesmaids get ready and I was one of the bridesmaids and she did my hair and she did my hair with hairspray. Now what's interesting is hairspray has a lot of endocrine disruptors; most hairsprays do-- that interfere with hormones, mood, and so forth. And it took me a while to figure out over the next few days that my mood on that particular day was not as good as it normally would be. And I was confused. Why am I, why was I so grouchy and so tired? And I realized it was the hairspray. And so as you implement some of the things in this program and you take them seriously, you will start to notice what affects you and what doesn't. And you won't know unless you commit to abstaining long enough to see that it's working or abstain long enough to when you try it that you realize that, holy cow, wow, that really affects me a lot. And different people are less and more sensitive to different things. So again, you utilizing this program, picking and choosing what works for you is going to be extremely important. No two people are alike. No two people react the same to any one thing. But I will say that anything that is not in alignment with nature affects us somehow in a way that's probably not beneficial. And to just keep that in mind that just because it doesn't make you astronomically sick doesn't mean that it's not harming that that it's not causing stress to your body in some way, shape or form. Some of the goals that I ask you to commit to may be really big, others smaller, and you can adjust them as you see fit. Make your own version of these commitments. And if you ever feel like you fell off the bandwagon or you fall behind or you stop watching for a while or listening or doing your workbook, cool. Start again. It's okay. I'm still here for you. And I hope that you just, that you never give up. Keep trying. I want you to be successful. I want you to kick depression and anxiety now and forever. With that said, want to talk a little bit about the excuses that we make to ourselves and to others that get in the way of our progress. I don't honestly know anyone who likes excuses, certainly don't like hearing excuses, and I will say while anxiety and depression and other mental disorders make it very difficult to make the right choice sometimes, it can It can feel like a ticking time bomb that no matter, at least that's how I felt, no matter how good I did for how long, it seemed like there always came a point where I would lose it, where I'd get angry and say something hurtful and just not act my best self. And it hurt me and it hurt others. And it was very hard. I think what's damaging is when we blame the disorder, when we say, well, I'm depressed, so you should just put up with it. Or I have anxiety. Or, this is just how I am. And these are not appropriate excuses. I don't think there's any appropriate excuses, honestly, if you ever want to progress in life at all. Excuses are pretty much annoying. They don't help anything. However, saying something along the lines of, wow, that did not go very well. I am so sorry. I really struggle with depression or anxiety or whatever this is and I want to do better and I'm consistently trying, please don't give up on me. I am really trying to get better so that I don't continue to hurt you anymore or do these things that are not appropriate and I know they're not appropriate and I know it's not okay. It's very hard when I get into that space to make that choice but I can do better. That is acknowledging the hardship without making an excuse. excuses are basically an invitation for the current behavior to stay. And if you think of it in terms of spirituality or the spirits around us, I often think of my body as a temple or my mind as a sacred space. And if I allow things or basically things that are not mine, that I do not want there into my space, and I allow them to stay by continuing to accept the behavior, I am treating Outside forces like that I that are not welcome in my space that are basically intruders as a welcome to guest and I want to treat these as an unwanted intruder You cannot stay you must leave you are not welcome here and whenever that unwelcome behavior manifests in me I can acknowledge that that is not the me I want to be that is not me anymore, and I am asking that process that trigger, that response, that behavior to leave immediately. And then imagine like I've talked about in previous videos, how you will do it better, how you would have done it if you could go back and not just say, well, I'll do it differently this time. No, you actually go back and you go through it in your mind every step of the way, how you would have done it perfectly, how others around you would have responded perfectly, how if they didn't respond perfectly, how you would have responded perfectly. And you can go through several practices in your mind and this can disinvite behaviors and traits and energies that you do not want anywhere near you or around you or in your home or around your people. In other words, let go of people, situations, and behaviors that are not serving you. The idea that this is who you are is a lie. Stop clinging to it. This is not your identity. This is not who you are. When blank, when this happened, you say it in your mind, I used to blank, do this trigger. Now I respond differently, fill in the blank. And that's part of chapter one. If you haven't watched that video yet, these kinds of tools and exercises can help us. If you've ever heard of breaking the habit of being yourself, Dr. Joe Dispenza explains this in scientific terms that are phenomenal. It really helps you understand why it's so hard for us to change sometimes. And he basically talks about how our current behavior is a chemical process that when we try to change that chemical process or change our behavior, it will fight, tear, tooth and nail to drag us back. into where we are comfortable so that we can continue to live in those chemical processes, which is sounds crazy, but that's what happens. It's what we do. It's almost like we are addicted to a behavior or addicted to an emotion, even if we don't want that emotion. The same goes for drugs. I can't think of, I'm guessing that most people who are addicted to drugs wish they weren't addicted to drugs, wish that chemical process, that craving wasn't there. But it has this ability to pull us back into old behaviors and patterns and keeping that in mind as you remove yourself from this, realizing that this is my body trying to protect me somehow. And I'm going to send it a message that that is the old me that served me in the past in some way possibly. It's not serving me anymore. So create excuses to succeed. Why are you doing this? What will your future look like when you overcome depression? How will you feel? What will you do? Who will you help? Another rather dark and dismal enemy of change is blame, which in itself is an excuse. And I want to tell you a story. I was married a second time to a man who ultimately abandoned me. He stopped responding. He eventually came home. And when he did, he told me that he had made a decision to leave. and was nothing I could do to change his mind. It was extremely devastating because I loved this man very much and I wanted him to stay. looking back now, I can understand why he felt like he needed to do that and I honor his decision. But at the time, it crushed me. Now I could have spent years blaming him for my problems, being angry, feeling like it was my fault or I must have done something horrible or no one will love me ever again. Those tons of things that we tell ourselves when we're abandoned. When we feel abandoned or I was in a dark little space for a while. Something about that experience though, I had made lot of progress up to that point. So I knew that despite how hopeless I felt in that moment, that I was going to get through with it, that things were going to change, that they were going to get better. And so I told myself, I am going to give you three months. I was talking to myself. I will give you three months to mourn this. And I want you to get as much healing as you possibly can. And after three months is done, you're moving on. You're going to plan bigger and better things, and you're going to make an amazing, beautiful life. And even though it was hard for me to believe at the time, I gave myself three months to heal. And after that, I decided, okay, it's time to move on. And I used that three months as a time to grow, develop, to forgive. And I use it as an opportunity because when things of that nature, things that horrific happen to us, it is literally an opportunity. It tends to open us up and trigger things in us that have been hiding for a long time that maybe need to be addressed or asking to be addressed. And those really cruddy situations can allow us the opportunity to do that. Now, the wrong thing to do would be to stuff it in, suck it up and move on or use that time to... to wallow in pity and the mud and some of that certainly did happen but I would also work very hard to reframe those thoughts to push forward to tell myself you're better than this. Just because this happened doesn't mean that you have to believe all the lies the darkness wants you to believe. You are better than this. You can do this. And yes it was a fight. Sometimes I'd wake up at three in the morning and I couldn't sleep. And so I would get up and go on eight mile runs and just run, run, run. just, it was kind of my way of wanting to run away from this situation, but I couldn't, but I could at least get some of that energy out and process while I was running. And I will say now that I am very happy in an amazing marriage. I have so many blessings, so many things in my life that bring me joy. Children, goats in my backyard. have about half an acre that we've been developing and planning and fixed up this house. It's been absolutely a beautiful life so far and I am looking forward to the rest of it. Regardless of what comes, the things that happen to us that... or that we feel like are happening to us, are for us. And so if you look at it in that light, it can give you a sense of empowerment and adventure. Like this is something too, that is going to challenge me that I am going to overcome like a video game. And maybe that sounds a little cheesy, but literally thinking of my life like a video game has given me some level of playfulness and hope and childlike trust that I couldn't have had otherwise. So, When we blame others, again, it really keeps us in this state of being chained down to their choices. Karma is real. And I'm going to say that again, that karma is absolutely real. You letting go, you forgiving someone does not let them off the hook. If they did something that hurt you, if they did something that was harmful, that was unkind, that caused damage in some way. They will pay for those sins. We all do. I have done things that have hurt people. Things that I terribly regret. Things that I've done that have caused pain for myself and other people. I have to forgive myself for those things and I hope they can forgive me. But literally when we... Don't forgive. We are tying ourselves to the karma of the person who hurts us. It will take us down with them. And I can't emphasize this enough. If you think that you're somehow assisting in their karma by trying to make them suffer, by punishing them, by teaching them or doing something to them that you think they deserve, that is not your job. Now, setting boundaries, totally different thing. There are certainly things that need to be addressed. There are certainly things that need to go to court. There are certainly things that need to be said. But things that are out of your control need to be let go. Let the universe handle it. If you don't believe in God, let the universe handle it. Not your job. and I'm saying this to Christians, but it is a true principle that the scriptures tell us to judge not that we will not be judged. I really honestly think that is alongside honesty, one of the greatest commandments there is. Judging it holds us back. It casts blame even on a situation where if we just objectively look at what we can do and what is out of our control and we move forward and we choose to learn rather than judge any situation, we are free. That commandment was not to let people off the hook or just not care. It matters. It matters to you. It matters to the universe. It matters to God. What happens to you matters. But again, if you cannot forgive and let go, their karma will become your karma. And you don't want that. I don't want that. And if you struggle to let it go, I will be teaching other tools that will help and assist you in being able to let go of those things that are, that you're using as an excuse for your current behavior, whether it was who your mom was, your DNA, how you were treated as a child, how you were treated as an adult, things that happened in your life. I do want to teach you a process today that can help with letting go and forgiveness that was taught to me by my friend Aubrey Svedin. I'm sorry. I'm not saying that right. Aubrey Svedin. Thank you. And she is an amazing coach. I can link her information in the description of this podcast as well. But she taught... And I believe she got this from somewhere else. I don't remember where she got it from. But it's a forgiveness process that can help us process through things that we're struggling to let go of or forgive, either ourselves or other people, situations, and allow us to build new neural pathways. because basically, when we feel a certain way, there's certain people that we might be struggling to forgive. And we're like, I don't know how we're going to forgive them. There's been people in my life that I have questioned. I don't know how I'm going to forgive them. And we develop these neural pathways that are like these highway fast tracks in our minds that don't let us go any other direction. And so this is a tool that can help us to create new neural pathways and basically put a block or a do not enter blockade on the other ones that we don't want to go down anymore. So the process goes somewhat like this. It's called the forgiveness technique. And the way that I remember it is.... It's the acronym U -H -D -P. I think of and then Dude Perfect because I couldn't think of anything else. If that works for you, cool. Or you can make up something better and tell me what your acronym is in this description that you came up with that's way better than mine, I'm sure. But first you want to think of the thing or the person or the situation that you want to forgive. And when you feel the emotions of that.... Because you don't want to just think of it, but you actually want to feel the emotions that come with that situation or the person or event that you need to forgive or that you want to forgive. And you kind of sit in that until you feel all those feelings. Okay? And for some people that can be kind of scary. So if you don't feel like you're ready for this, maybe wait and do it with a therapist who can lead you through it. Because I don't want... this to open up things that you're not prepared to tackle on your own. So keep that in mind. But if you feel like this is something you can do, hone in on that feeling in that event or that person. And when you're ready, you want to move on to the letter U, which is a time in your life when you felt unconditional love. It could have been when you were feeling really excited about a someone that you liked, or it could be when you saw your baby for the first time, or a time when you felt compassion and empathy for someone and just unconditionally loved them. And once you are able to hone in on that event and the feelings associated with that event, you want to kind of sit there for, I don't know, a good 20 seconds would probably be ideal. If you don't have that much time, want to rush through it, okay, well give it at least five, okay? After you feel that out, then you're going to go to the next step, which is H, which is hope. And I want you to think of a time when you felt hope and all of the feelings that you felt when you felt that hope. And you're gonna sit there for a good 20 seconds or as long as you feel like you want to. After you feel like you have embraced this feeling, then you're going to go on to the next letter, which is D, which is the desire to forgive. Think of a time when you wanted to forgive someone. You were struggling to do it, but you wanted to. Could be yourself, could be someone else. Again, sit in that for a good 20 seconds. Really feel that out of wanting to forgive, wanting to let it go. Finally, the last letter, which is P, which is peace. I've encountered a few people who have a hard time finding a time when they felt peace. If this is you, you might have to do a little digging, a little soul searching, or try to create in your present. some peace, something you can hold onto that makes your heart and your whole body and your whole soul feel peaceful, where you just know that everything's gonna be okay. And again, hold onto that feeling and that memory for 20 seconds. And that is the process that is designed to create new neural pathways that will help you to let go and forgive. A hard truth for a lot of us to grasp or accept, and I had a hard time with this one for a long time, was the idea that we have created our reality. That we did this to ourselves. And you may be saying, what? That is preposterous. I did not choose to be abused. I did not choose for these people to treat me this way. I did not choose to be born the way that I am right now, with the genes that I have. And while that may be true, Things that happen to us as children tend to affect us as adults. But what affects us more is our vision of what the future can bring to us. Hope for the future. And every day that we choose to live in our past is a choice. And we will stay there as long as we stay there. You can start making choices that can get you out of these thought processes that can cause you to take power over your life. When you blame other things, other people for your circumstances, for whatever it is that's ailing you, you are giving too much power to them. You have incredible power to change your life, to access the power of the divine, to heal. Stop lying to yourself as if it's not there. Because it is. The past is a shadow. It has come and gone. Your future is full of possibility. This also may be hard for some people to embrace or grasp, but you can learn to be grateful for your past, all of it. And we will work through some of those things in other videos later on. But just, I want to throw that idea out there for you to mull over and consider in the meantime. I I know that's a hard one, but I believe that you can get to the point, like I have, of being grateful for all of the hard things that happened to you in your past. Seeing the silver lining, that it was for you, not done to you, literally for your greater good. Yes, that is the truth. I'm going to include some exercises and worksheets in the workbook around this concept as well. You will be asked to say what happened, something in your past that you feel like has affected you. the lies you chose to believe, then how is it affecting you now? And then what are you choosing now to do instead? Another mental exercise you can do is kind of meditation is to imagine, and you can close your eyes if you want. Please don't do that if you're in any dangerous places like your car or a workshop. But you can try literally holding out your hands, closing your eyes, and feeling, and I know we've done this kind of before, but feeling all of that burden in your hands, the heaviness of it, because things tend to keep coming up. So if you can feel what you're offering, You're offering to the light, you're offering to the Lord, you're offering to the universe. I don't want this anymore. You can envision what it looks like, the color, maybe there's more words associated with it if you're having trouble envisioning what emotions come up. And then imagine and feel all of these things just completely drop on the floor in front of you. You can hear them bang, shatter, break, spill. And then you can even ask, like to call my divine God or Jesus Christ, but you can say light or universe and ask, is there any more that I need to let go of today? Can you help me to see it? And envision if there's any more that shows up in the palms of your hands or your back or that you're carrying on your feet, shake it off, drop it on the ground. brush it off of your arms, your body, anything that you see. If you're having trouble getting it off, ask for divine help until you feel like it's all more or less gone on the floor. And when you feel like you are ready, you turn around and you walk towards the light and you leave all that baggage behind and you don't ever look back. I'm going to leave you with a quote by George Orwell. Whoever owns the past owns the future, but whoever owns the present owns the past. You can also see someone come with a broom or a cleaner or some sort of blowing mechanism, a leaf blower or vacuum and clean all this stuff up as you're walking away. That was a lot for today. I'm going to end this podcast and thank you again so much for coming, for spending this time with me today. See you next time.