Hi. I’m Candice Toone and I’m a certified life coach. Even so, my thoughts don’t always serve me. You may have heard that awareness of how your thinking creates your results is the best news ever. It wasn’t for me. Not at first anyway. In the beginning, all I felt was a continuous shame shower which left me dead set against admitting that I didn’t already know what I didn’t know.
Instead, I listened to coaching calls or courses pretty much around the clock and patted myself on the back when I was able to anticipate the coach’s responses to the people being coached. I stuck with the strategy of smiling and scribbling notes and nodding along. Then, when I wasn’t able to easily apply what I was learning to every situation I was living, my confidence plummeted. I spent a lot of time wondering what the heck had happened. I understood coaching principles. Why couldn’t I
Right out of college, I worked as a direct care counselor in residential treatment with teenage girls who weren’t thriving at home. Their parents sent them to Utah hoping that these “difficult” girls would develop better social skills, more effective coping methods and generally become more pleasant contributors in their families. I loved that job. Loved those girls. Even when they were refusing to do their chores, complaining about roommates or threatening to run away. They were my girls and I loved them. None of their mistakes or shortcomings made me love them any less. I couldn’t NOT love them. I just did.
My most important job function was joining. Basically, that meant I was supposed to get to know these girls. Find out what sparked their interests, what they worried about and what made them laugh. I was supposed to let each girl talk about herself and then join her in activities she enjoyed and discussions she led.
The therapists on staff emphasized joining because they knew that unless these girls felt safe, accepted and cared for – behavior and attitude changes weren’t likely. Change is scary for everyone and these girls, who were far away from home, would only give change a shot if they experienced a secure base to stand on as they reached to stretch themselves. They needed to know that someone would be there to catch them should they fall. That someone was meant to be me and my colleagues. We had our girls’ backs as they figured out the challenge of being a human.
My mentor, Brooke Castillo, advises that pursuing a big goal or making a big change will bring up all the ugly. She maintains it’s that way for everyone. She also says that whether you are working to improve yourself or working to hide from yourself, your energy will be used up either way. And either road is paved with discomfort – the discomfort that comes with stretching and growing OR the discomfort of never achieving your dreams. Her matter-of-fact challenge inspired me to invest my energy in improving myself rather than just spending energy to maintain the status quo.
Then I didn’t put in the work.
My inability to implement perfect, universal application of the coaching tools I was learning meant I was less. I was ashamed of myself at first and, to be honest, for a while. Shame pushed me away from continued application. I didn’t like the pain associated with trying and failing.
So I didn’t.
But I couldn’t turn off the self-reflection process I’d learned. Inaction became tiresome and within a week or so morphed into curiosity. I asked myself what would be so bad about embracing the discomfort of working on my brain? I’d definitely do it for my kids, for my parents, my husband – probably even my friends and neighbors. I’d do discomfort for them. In fact, I was already doing discomfort every day as I picked up scattered toys and wiped whiskers out of the sink. Why wouldn’t I do this discomfort for me?
I really wasn’t sure at first, but I kept redirecting my mind to openness and exploration. Then, undercooked chicken and a poorly stained front door snapped it all into startling clarity. Neither of those mishaps happened to me, but they changed my brain none the less. I stopped cold in my home office and zoned in on my coach, Jody Moore, as she coached a woman who was upset that her husband had said the chicken dinner she’d made for the missionaries was undercooked. I felt myself unraveling right alongside this woman I didn’t know. Her thoughts were mine and Jody called it all ridiculous.
Huh?
Jody reflected that this woman believed the undercooked chicken meant something about her worth. Of course it did. The woman and I both agreed that a good wife would have done better with the dinner. Jody pushed back that the undercooked chicken had nothing to do with the woman’s value. I was intrigued, but skeptical. Jody pointed out that this woman was upset because she viewed her husband’s comment as pushing her down the “worthiness continuum”, then went on to say that there’s no such thing. She encouraged the woman to drop that story all together.
What?
I sat frozen while the next woman came on to describe how her husband made critical comments about the way she’d stained the front door. She, too, believed that her failure to sand the door first meant something about her worth. Again, Jody tossed that thought right out. She invited the woman to try on the belief that her method was just as good as her husband’s. Either would get the door looking beautiful and she could choose to give her own strategy the most weight if she wanted. Jody offered that this lady could also choose to believe that her husband was genuinely trying to be helpful. At this point, I realized I was giving the computer side eye. How could any of that be true?
My brain spun out thinking I could actually believe something that sounded so sublime. Deep in my core, it felt right to believe that my value wasn’t negotiable. It was comforting to consider that my way might be the right way and that anyone who had a different strategy might only be offering up help, not criticism.
Even so, the hesitation to push forward with working on my brain remained. Why?
Here’s what I came up with:
I wasn’t joining with me. I started to notice myself deferring to others in lots of little ways. Hubs
My failure to join with me indicates that I believed I wasn’t really that important. My lack luster effort in my coaching space seemed to say my brain didn’t matter all that much.
So, of course, I wasn’t motivated to try something difficult. I was mean to myself already – can you imagine what I might say should I try and fail?
The undercooked chicken call of 2017 provided the catalyst for my renewed journey toward self-love. As Jody might say, I’d found my work to do: Practicing believing that I am worth the effort it’ll take to struggle through the misery of honest self-reflection to see what’s on the other side. Not just because I’ll be a better wife or mom in the end but because I’m a person who deserves the joy of growing to be my best self.
So I’m committing to join with me like I did with my girls. To be safe place for me to explore and reflect and adjust as needed. All in on love for me. No strings attached.
I’m know now that believing I’m less than in any way isn’t useful. At all. It’s strange to consider that my value doesn’t change if I take a nap or don’t volunteer with the PTA.
But I like where that mind is headed.
I’m trying on the idea that I’m worth the effort it’ll take to explore my brain. I can handle the pain of examining and extracting thoughts that don’t serve me. I’m strong and I’m worth it and I will no longer let me tell myself any different.
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