Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about having goals in personal development– such as kicking an addiction, digging into why we keep making the same mistakes in relationships, or healing from childhood trauma.
And on social media, I’ve seen the topic come up around becoming the person you wish you’d had to lean on in your past, and/or becoming the person you wish you could have been when something hard happened in your life.
In this minisode, I explore that more and hope that it helps you move the needle in your own journey!
Also, ICYMI, How to Stop Feeling Like Shit has been updated and is being RE-RELEASED this month! 🎉🎉🎉We have some amazing bonuses and giveaways planned, so head over HERE to pre-order and grab those! I’d be honored if you were one of the FIRST to purchase this new updated version, which will ship on or around December 27th.
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT
You're listening to Make Some Noise Podcast minisode number 492.
Welcome to Make Some Noise Podcast, your guide for strategies, tools and insight to empower yourself. I'm your host, Andrea Owen and global speaker, entrepreneur, life coach since 2007, and author of three books that have been translated into 18 languages and are available in 22 countries. Each week, I'll bring you a guest or a lesson that will help you maximize unshakable confidence, master resilience and make some noise in your life. You ready? Let's go.
Hey, everyone, welcome to another minisode over here on the podcast. I hope you're well, if you're in the US, I hope you had a good holiday break, whether you celebrate it or not. You probably had some time off, you might have spent some time with your family or your friends and I hope that you at least got an opportunity to rest and have some quality time with people that you care about.
And I want to talk to you today about kind of this might be good for those of you listening who struggle with goals in terms of your personal development, I understand that it can feel so daunting and overwhelming, not even when you first get into it. I think there's like, you know, kind of different groups of people. There are some people who get into it with some kind of specific goal in mind. They want to heal their childhood trauma, or they want to kick their addiction. And, you know, it's sort of obvious what the thing is, quote, unquote, that they are going for, going towards, moving towards.
And then there are people who don't really care that they don't have a goal. And I mean, that's kind of where I am, like it started out that I had a goal, you know, sort of to heal my broken heart, and also figure out why I kept choosing the same partners that I was choosing. And then I just sort of got not really overwhelmed, but just like enthralled, I guess you could say, about what the possibilities were in personal development. Like oh, I could look at this and I could do this modality. And of course, I work in the field so I'm exposed to a lot of different things. But I’m fine with not knowing kind of where I'm going, just sort of like I'm on this path. And it's great. As far as I take breaks from it and sometimes I go, you know, full throttle, and it's fine. It's fine, that it's just kind of like whatever I discover is great, fantastic.
But then there is also a group of people that I feel like, prefer to have a direction that they're going and feel a little lost if they don't know. And those are really the people that I'm talking to today. And I do think, don't turn this off if you're one of the first two groups that I mentioned. I do think that this would be helpful for you. But, you know, when I was thinking of this topic, I was thinking of this group of people who are like, I don't know what I should work on next. I don't feel like I have any kind of addictions or any kind of specific traumas, you know, big T traumas, but I want to work on something. And what it is, is I keep seeing this one particular topic on TikTok. And that's one of the things I love about TikTok is that…and it can it can kind of be a beast, but they really get to know who you are and what your interests are, what your special interests are. Which can be great. I feel like even if you're not even talking about those specific things, just if you're thinking about them, they really understand and see how much time are you spending on this particular topic? Okay, we're going to show you more of that. And lately, that topic…and it's been a while that I've been hearing about this and thinking about it, is the notion of becoming the person that you wish you had in your past.
So it might be the person that you wish you had when you were a child, whether that was a caregiver, or a role model that you never got, or when it was when you were an adult maybe it's the friend that you never had. Either way doesn't matter, but this this kind of concept of that being your goal. So for instance, disclaimer, this is not to blame and shame my parents, they did the best they could, but as a child, I felt like, because I didn't know it at the time, I didn't know any different, but I didn't feel like I had someone who was a soft place to land, for lack of a better expression. And what I mean by that is someone who made me feel just safe for expressing all of my emotions, someone who never made me feel wrong for whatever I was feeling somebody who I could come and talk to about really difficult thing, someone who I could come to and show all of my ugly parts my you know, what I deem as ugly, scared, terrified, ashamed, regretful remorseful, those type of sides of myself. Because I didn't realize this until I was much older. And, you know, the topic of gentle parenting has come up and I see that topic and I see examples of and I'm like, that's mostly how I parent. I was not parented that way. So and I, please believe me when I tell you, I'm not perfect at this all the time.
But for the most part, when I feel like my head's going to explode, instead of losing my shit, I take a beat and say, okay, I think we're both, you know, I would say this to my child. Okay, I think we're both feeling stressed right now. Tell me what's going on for you? Or you seem like, you have a lot going on, you have some big feelings going on? Care to talk to me about it? Or what is that like for you going on? I make up that you have a lot of feelings. What is that like for you right now? How can I help? What do you think the problem is? What do you think the solution is? So it's more or less kind of coaching. So is this the sort of gentle parenting maybe that you never had and maybe you're seeing it on social media, or maybe in some of the self-help books that you're reading, and you're feeling some grief about not having that. And I do think that their, I don't want to step over that topic.
The grief that we feel, when we realize there could have been another way. That's a big deal. That's a really big deal. The grief that you feel when you realize that there are other people who were parented, or there are other romantic relationships that are different from what you got. And it might be what you wish that you had, and realizing that you can't go back in time and change things. There's real grief in that. And it's so frustrating to me, when I hear people say, well, there's nothing you can do about it. You just need to move on. And I think a lot of times, it's the people who have harmed us say that. You can't turn back time, you might as well just move on. Okay. It's true. We can't turn back time. We don't have time machines. We can't change things and at the same time, yeah, you can grieve it is absolutely fair. For you to have feelings of anger, sadness, resentfulness. Maybe even rage, depending on where your anger level is. But really tapping into that and allowing yourself to feel those feelings. And when you feel that you've adequately done that, yeah, I think it's, I think it can be really helpful and empowering and healing, truly, truly healing to look at your life right now and think to yourself, okay, how can I become the person that I actually needed?
And let's take a quick example of maybe. So I'll give you a personal example. Back in my 20s and even before that, like in my late teens, when I was in a relationship and relationships, romantic, where I had a pretty severe lack of boundaries, I could not speak up for myself in terms of saying that is not okay. I would say that is not okay. But where I where I stopped was and I will not put up with that anymore. I just kept saying that's not okay. That's not okay. And the person I was with would just keep doing the thing that was not okay. I didn't have the proper boundaries, or the proper way of communicating what it was that I asked she really needed I would just jump to anger and communicate very poorly. And I also don't think there was anyone in my life, even including my therapist at the time, who could properly…and this is to no fault of my friends at the time, or my therapist at the time. I didn't even know what was happening. And I don’t think anyone around me could have known this. But at the time, I look back and think, wouldn't it have been interesting… I'm not going to say wouldn't it have been great. Because who knows if I would have taken the advice or not. So I'm gonna say, wouldn't it have been interesting, if I would have had someone at the time to look at me and say, it doesn't matter how much history you have with this person, it doesn't matter how close you are to this person's family, it doesn't matter how enmeshed you are. What matters is how dysfunctional… And that, you know, and I guess, if we had a crystal ball, and then it's not going to get any better, if it hasn't gotten better in all these years, with all the counts, couples counseling, and all of the saying, here's what's not okay with me, here's what's not working, if it hasn't gotten better, it's not going to change, having children with this person is not going to change. Luckily, PS, I did not have children with that person. But if I again, it would have been interesting, I think, if I would have been told that. Would I have continued to be in the relationship? I have no idea.
But all that to say, it's empowering, as painful as all of that was, and sometimes as painful as it is to even still think about it, the person, the woman I am now, is the person who can go back and tell that young woman that. If someone came into my life who had an identical relationship… If it was my daughter, if she…that's not, that's a whole conversation, but she's only 13. But those fears up for another podcast. If I had a family member or child who was in a very similar or same relationship, I would be the person as hard as it would be, I would be the person I wished that I had had at the time. Who said all the right things, and had all the patience. Yeah, that's my goal is to be the parent, is to be the friend, is to be the partner that I wish that I had had or that I wish that I was at the time. And it's not to dwell on any kind of regret. It's just to focus on okay, here's, here's where the mistakes were that I made, here is where the blank spaces were that I needed, here's where kind of the emptiness felt. And that's what I want to fill in. Those are the blanks that I want to fill in.
So I hope that helps. And you know, even for those of you who just love a good challenge or worksheet, I hope that helps. And I am as always, I'm thinking of you as you do this work, and I hope that it's empowering, and that you can love yourself along the way. That's truly important.
And don't forget How To Stop Feeling Like Shit 2.0 is coming out December 27. Every release of How To Stop Feeling Like Shit. And that's it. AndreaOwen.com/HTSFLS. Hope to see you over there. We're doing drawings and giveaways and goodies and all kinds of fun things. Thank you for listening. I appreciate that you are here every week with these minisodes or with me and my guests. And remember, it's our life's journey to make ourselves better humans and our life's responsibility to make the world a better place. Bye for now.
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