“yeah but”

I am always trying to learn, to get better, to learn things about myself and implement new thoughts and ideas. I read a lot and listen to other coaches and podcasts and then think and journal to see how things come up for me. I live the homework :)

Just because I’m a coach doesn’t mean I am immune to struggle, or that I always can turn and burn a limiting belief, I definitely live within all the humanness there is.

There are a couple of goals that I have for one reason or another have not accomplished and tend to “re-goal” after trying it and walking away for one reason or another. So I’ve been thinking a lot about that and digging deep on why these couple of things have been so difficult for me to achieve.

In my journaling and tracking my thoughts, I am finding a pattern of “yeah but” thoughts that are barely recognizable and float just under the surface but that my brain seems to have on repeat, not loud enough to hear in the moment but that whispers things like,
”yeah but that’s really hard”, “yeah but you had a really hard day today”, “yeah but your work peeps brought in birthday cake”, yeah but you’ve tried this 100 times already and failed”, “yeah but it’s cold outside”, “yeah but that costs a lot of money”, “yeah but you had to work late", “yeah but you can just do it tomorrow”, “yeah but, that’s super uncomfortable”, “yeah but, you’re really not able to change that”, “yeah but that’s not fair”.

My brain is just doing brain stuff, running thoughts it’s heard through the processor on repeat. It doesn’t know it is having an adverse effect on your goals and desire to grow. It wants to keep you safe, it likes to put things in order to make things easy, so that you don’t have to work hard to do the tasks you need to do all day long.

Those thoughts running on repeat are the exact opposite thoughts you need to accomplish something you’ve never done before. It has to be ok to be uncomfortable because you literally have to walk away from where you are to get to the goal you want. It can’t matter that you tried and failed, you have to be ok with continuing to try until you get there. Failing is just data anyways.

So, I am going to attempt these goals again, with a different approach. I’m going to listen to the “yeah but” whispers to see what they are saying when I start to feel “quitty” or am feeling like failure is eminent. I want to hear them and do the thought work to either turn and burn it, or show myself some compassion, or challenge their validity… I am going to coach myself with the same curiosity and compassion as I would a client, and see what amazing progress I’ll make.

I challenge you to do the same, look at your thoughts with compassion, see if they are even true for you and then just take one more step toward the goal instead of stopping and creating even more negative thoughts about your ability to see something through.