72. You always have a choice

Do you ever feel powerless and resentful in your relationships?

Believing you have to feel miserable and frustrated until they change?

Or do you have arguments that seem to go on forever, spiralling out of control, and creating more and more disconnection?

Learning that the way we feel and show up in our relationships is ALWAYS a choice - is one of the most empowering things we can do.

And in this episode, I discuss 8 key choices we make regularly in our relationships - and which ones will serve you, and which won't.

Mentioned in this episode:

• MYRMD waitlist 

Transcript

Hey everyone! How’s everyone doing? I hope you’re all having amazing weeks! I have had a cough now for almost 2 weeks that will just not go away, so if my voice sounds a bit strange - that’s why! I’m stocked up on throat sweets, which I remember referring to in one of my coaching sessions and an American client of mine found it really funny - because apparently in America they don’t call them throat sweets. So if you’re listening and you’re from America - I’d love to know what you call the sweets you suck to soothe a sore throat. Come tell me, I’m very intrigued.

Anyone - in today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about choices and how acknowledging our choice in every situation is one of the fastest ways to feel empowered. Sound exciting? I thought so too! So let’s dive in.

So, first things first - we have choice in every situation. Choice over what we think - how we interpret the events happening around us and how we feel. Choice over how we show up to handle those situations, and choice over who we are.

Yet so often - we tell ourselves we have no choice. We tell ourselves we have no choice but to feel resentful or miserable if someone doesn’t behave the way we want. We tell ourselves we had no choice but to blunt and withdrawn with our partner because THEY forgot something that was important to us. We tell ourselves we have no choice but to stay in relationships we don’t want to be in, because there’s no other good people out there.

We fight for our powerlessness all of the time. And I see this all the time on Instagram - people wanting to blame other people for how they show up in their relationships and the choices they make. It’s their exes fault they can’t trust anyone now - because of how they treated them in the past. It’s their current partner’s fault they feel so unattractive - because they don’t give them enough compliments. And of course - I’m not suggesting that we live in a vacuum. Other people’s behaviour exists and are very real circumstances in our lives for us to deal with.

So I’m not talking about denying the facts of the world around us or other people’s behaviour. What I’m talking about here is owning and acknowledging the choices you DO have in every circumstance - the things you do have control over.

And the first and I’d say one of the most important choices we have - is how we choose to think. Because when someone is behaving in a certain way - your brain is going to offer you a default thought - an automatic thought in response to that behaviour. And that thought isn’t random, and it’s not a reflection of truth. It’s the thought that makes sense to your brain - based on its own preconceived ideas, beliefs, biases, memories, and fears. 

So let’s look at an example from one of my 1:1 clients. Her partner told her that he didn’t want to go to a gig with her. That was the circumstance she was dealing with. And her brain automatically, without her intentionally choosing it, went to the thoughts ‘If he loved me, he’d come with me.’ and ‘he doesn’t care about spending time with me.’ And these thoughts felt so so painful for her. 

But she actually had a choice here. She had a choice whether to believe that automatic, default interpretation - and take it at face value, no questions asked - or she could see that thought as an optional sentence her brain had defaulted to, and re-assess the situation. And choose intentionally. She had a choice to question that thought and choose a new way to think about it on purpose. Something I teach you how to do on a much deeper level in my group coaching programme - Master Your Relationship Mind Drama - which I’ll mention more of at the end.

We also have a choice to create connection or create more disconnection. And I see my clients, both 1:1 and in my group coaching programme, create so much unnecessary disconnection. Because they maybe get into a disagreement with their partner - maybe their partner behaves in a way they don’t like - and they choose to try to punish them. To go silent, to withdraw. To reply bluntly to messages. 

And when they make this choice - they’re choosing disconnection. They choose to put a bigger wedge between themselves and their partner. And I want to pivot for a second and talk about why none of this feels like a choice. And the reason it doesn’t feel like a choice is because it’s unconscious to you. Your responses and reactions are being driven by your primitive brain and unconscious beliefs and thought patterns - that you may even be aware of, but that just run on autopilot.

It’s like, have you ever moved house and then found yourself driving back to your old address? You know consciously you don’t live there anymore but your unconscious brain is so used to that pattern that it takes you there anyway. That’s what it’s like with our automatic thoughts, feelings and responses - it’s the same thing.

So in these moments - you likely don’t feel like you’re consciously choosing these things. But just because it’s a choice you’re making subconsciously, doesn’t mean that it’s not a choice you can bring into your conscious awareness and change. And how we bring these choices into our awareness is through reflection - noticing our behaviour and understanding the thoughts and feelings driving them. I also teach a lot about processing our emotions - because our emotions can feel so big and overpowering that all the rational thinking in the world often flies out the window the minute we’re triggered.

So we have to learn to first pause and take a breath. Notice where we’re feeling the emotions - and instead of automatically responding to them, like we’re programmed to do, sit and process them fully. Allow them to rise, peak, and dissipate within us - so that we can then bring our rational thinking brain back online to make a more intentional choice. I talk more about this technique in episode 5 so definitely go and check that out if you haven’t already.

But coming back to the choice to create disconnection. I completely halved the time of disagreements and arguments with my partner when making this one simple choice. When ever we were in an argument - my brain would go into protest, victim, resentful mode. I’d be stood in another room, my head full with a barrage of thoughts about her - negative thoughts - thinking how wrong she was, how ridiculous she was being, how misunderstood I was and how this was all so unfair. And I’d feel the urge to slam doors, or huff, maybe make a passive aggressive comment when I walked back into the room. Maybe tell her how ridiculous she was. 

That would be my default choice. But instead, I started to ask myself this question - ‘What is my goal here?’ That one question reminded me that my goal was always to connect with her. And it reminded me in that moment, that no amount of bitching about her in my head, slamming doors, huffing, or withdrawing from her was going to help me achieve that end goal. That connection.

Because in these moments - you always have a choice. You can choose to act distant and withdraw, and tell yourself ‘Well I’m not going to try and makeup if they’re not going to try’ and ‘Why am I always the one that has to extend the olive branch’ - or you can choose to connect. You can choose to stop fighting the person, and choose to listen, to understand, to take a breath and centre yourself before you respond. To ask them for a hug and tell them that you love them - even though things are tense in that moment. 

Which leads me to another choice we have. The choice to be judgemental or be curious. Which is the second choice I make during these disagreements. I can choose to continue bitching about her in my head and fluffing my own ego and telling myself how completely right I am and how completely wrong she is - or I can choose to be curious. 

Curious about what the other person is thinking right now. What thoughts might be driving their feelings? Where might this be coming from for them? What might their experience be like in this moment? And we can’t be judgemental and curious at the same time. It’s impossible. We can’t be bitching about someone in our head, while also being totally curious and open to understanding them. 

So remember that choice in your next argument. Are you going to choose judgement? And create more disconnection? Or are you going to choose to be curious about the other person’s experience and open the doors to more connection? When I do this in arguments, I usually have a minute or so of the judgement and then I catch myself and make the choice to shift into curiosity and compassion. And then I go to my partner and I’m so much softer and open. I’m not tense and defensive. I’m ready to listen. 

I don’t interrupt her. I don’t tell her she’s wrong. I open up to understanding why she feels that way, without blaming or shaming her OR blaming and shaming myself. Which nicely leads me to another choice we always have in our relationships. And that’s the choice to beat ourselves up or show ourselves compassion.

When someone offers you criticism, or feedback, when your partner says they’re mad at you, when you’ve messed something up or done something you regret - you can choose to berate yourself over and over. To ask yourself dead-end questions like, ‘Why am I like this?!’ ‘What’s wrong with me?!’ And make the feedback or mistake mean something terrible and permanent like ‘I always mess everything up’, ‘I’ll never be any good at this’, ‘I’m a terrible partner’, ‘I’m not loveable’, ‘There’s something wrong with me.’

Or you can choose to show yourself, and your past self if you’re thinking about a mistake from the past, compassion. You can choose to see yourself as an imperfect, flawed human, and be compassionate towards the thoughts and feelings that drove you in those moments. You can choose to be compassionate towards the past version of you that didn’t know any better. Even if that past version was you from 10 minutes ago in the height of an anxiety spiral - in that moment she was doing the best she could, and you can offer her compassion and understanding.

Just like you can choose to stop judging and be curious and compassionate to your partner, you can choose to be curious and compassionate towards yourself. And a lot of people are afraid to do this, because they think if they’re compassionate to themselves they’ll let themselves off the hook for their flaws and never grow and change. But my friends, the opposite is true.

Really think about it. What good comes from the choice of shaming and judging yourself? Do you really bounce back, having learnt and understood yourself on a deeper level, ready to try again and improve next time? Or do you feel like quitting everything, hiding, and giving up? Shame and judgement is a choice that has no upside. And I’m yet to find a downside for being compassionate. Because being compassionate to yourself is actually a vital piece of the puzzle for creating lasting change. 

You also have a choice to trust or not to trust. And this one scares a lot of people. Because they’re so afraid to trust - just in case their partner cheats or betrays their trust in some way - and then they think they’d have to regret their choice to trust. But here’s my take on that. I don’t believe we should ever beat ourselves up for trusting someone.

I don’t think we should ever shame or judge ourselves for not psychically predicting that someone wasn’t going to do the things they told us they’d do. And if you think about it - when you’re in a relationship, you have no idea whether the person is going to be faithful or not, you can hazard a guess and take in the facts of their behaviour so far - but we actually never know what they’re going to do or not do. And so if you’re in a relationship where your partner is telling you they want a faithful, monogamous relationship and there’s no evidence to suggest that that isn’t the case - it would be kind of crazy to choose not to trust, JUST IN CASE it doesn’t turn out the way you like.

You can choose to not trust. And be paranoid, and assume the worst. And doubt them. And relentlessly question them. Or you can choose to trust them until given reason not to. You can choose to trust AND choose to be proud of that choice, because trusting is the kind of partner you want to be. Really think about that, no one is ever like - ‘Yeah the kind of partner I really want to be is distrustful and paranoid’ - no! We want to be trusting, we don’t want to assume the worst. And we get to choose to do that, and choose to have our own backs - even if we end up being wrong some of the time.

And that’s another important part of trust. It’s not just trusting the people in our lives - it’s trusting ourselves to be okay, even if someone betrays our trust. And that’s really the much more important part of trust. Like I said, we never know for sure how someone will behave - whether we trust them or not. But if we can trust OURSELVES to survive and be okay and not be horrible to ourselves, whatever the outcome is, we can actually relax and enjoy our relationships and let life and situations play out the way they’re supposed to.

You have a choice about what you make other people’s behaviour mean about you. It doesn’t feel like a choice does it? But it IS a choice. You can choose to make someone rejecting you, leaving you, not calling you back, being moody - mean something terrible about you as a person and your worth and value. But you can also choose to not make it mean anything about you at all.

You can choose to recognise that everyone’s behaviour is a reflection of their own mind and inner world - and that you don’t have control over how they see the world, how they see you, or how they choose to behave. You can choose to remind yourself that you are a unique, worthy and valuable human - and that doesn’t change when someone behaves in a way that you don’t like or when someone has negative thoughts about you.

You get to choose to still love and accept yourself and thinking highly of yourself and your decisions EVEN if someone else thinks the opposite about you or disagrees. 

We also have choice over the emotions that drive us. Again - we don’t feel like we do. Most of us are just walking around responding to the default thoughts our brain offers us, and being controlled by the default emotions those thoughts create. But did you know you get to choose to feel emotions on purpose? By choosing the way you think on purpose? CRAZY right?

You get to wake up in the morning and ask yourself, how do I want to feel today? Who do I want to be in my relationship today? What kind of partner do I want to be? What emotions do I want to feel towards my partner? And then you get to ask yourself, what thoughts would I need to be thinking to generate that feeling? How would I act if I was genuinely feeling that way? And then choose to go and be that person. 

If your partner is in a bad mood, you get to decide - how do I want to choose to feel about this? Do I want to choose to let their bad mood infect my mood? And mirror their behaviour? Be grumpy and withdrawn, and create an argument? Or do I want to choose to feel compassionate? Or calm? Or even neutral - if compassionate and calm seem too much of a reach. What if you could choose to feel neutral about their bad mood? What would you need to be believing about their bad mood to feel neutral about it? And what would you be doing if you felt that way? How would you treat them and how would you show up to your own day?

Of course - finding thoughts that feel believable is important. We can’t create emotion unless we genuinely believe the thought we’re thinking. Which is why trying and testing thoughts is so important. Imagine every thought is like an outfit. Try it on - see how it feels - and decide if it’s a good fit for you. And if it’s not, not to worry - try out another. Different sentences will create different emotional responses in your body. And you’ll know you believe a thought when it creates some kind of shift in the way you feel. If you think it and you feel even 10% less bad or 10% more towards the way you’d love to feel - great! Start with that. 

We have a choice to be the victim in the story or the hero. And this one may be triggering to some but stay with me. If someone is treating you in a way you don’t like - maybe your boss is asking for too much, or your partner isn’t pulling their weight around the house or with the kids - you can choose to remain the victim and feel powerless to them and to your life. Which is very tempting to do! I say this with so much compassion, because - me too! My human brain loves to be in victim mode.

Or we can choose to become the hero. We can choose to take back control of the narrative - decide how WE want to choose to show up to that situation, how we want to think and feel about it, and what we want the next chapter to be. Telling ourselves ‘I have no choice’ ‘I can’t do X because they won’t do Y.’ or ‘If only they’d just [whatever]’ keeps you in the choice of being a victim and feeling disempowered. 

I’ve mentioned this book before, it’s a great book - Feel the fear and do it anyway by Susan Jeffers - I highly recommend it if you haven’t already. But she talks about the pain to power chart. I think she calls it a chart. But it came into my mind as I was writing this - because that’s really what acknowledging our choices is all about. She talks about how in every situation we can visualise where we are on this pain to power chart and work to shift ourselves more towards power. Because when we aren’t choosing our power - when we aren’t recognising our choice in every situation - we are creating so much unnecessary pain.

So to summarise - let’s wrap this up in a neat little bow. It may not feel like a choice right now - the way you think, the way you feel, the way you act. And that’s okay. It’s because you’re responding to the default, automatic emotions created by your primitive brain and your unconscious default thought patterns. And the way you can start to bring this into conscious awareness is by pausing and noticing the thoughts and feelings driving you in every situation.

I teach my clients a tool called the Model which is what this is for - bringing us into awareness of what our thoughts are creating. But you can start today by simply pausing in any situation and asking yourself - what are the facts of this situation? And what thought and feeling am I having about it?

And finally - in every situation, struggle, or circumstance you’re facing - ask yourself: What choice do I have here? What IS under my control?

Can I choose to think about this in a different way? Can I choose to be less judgemental and more curious? Can I choose to seek connection instead of creating more disconnection? Can I choose to be compassionate to myself? Can I choose to trust my partner - and more importantly trust myself to handle whatever happens? Can I choose how I want to feel right now and who I want to be in response to this situation?

The answer is always yes - you can. You can always choose. So choose today my friends! Who do you want to be today and how do you want to feel? What kind of partner, friend, or co-worker do you want to be? And make it a choice that serves you and feels amazing!

Okay guys, that’s all I’ve got for you today! I hope it was useful. The next round of my group coaching is in May and when I open the doors, they’ll be a 10% discount available for the first 24 hours. So I’ll put the link for the waitlist in the information section of his episode and I highly recommend you go get yourself on the list. 

This is where you’re going to learn about all these tools and concepts on a much deeper level AND actually have my eyes on your brain to help you apply them to your own unique life, thoughts and relationships. So it’s going to be amazing! This current round is about half way through and I’m so proud of how far everyone has already come.

And, as always, If you’re loving this podcast, please could you do a little something for me? Could you give it a rating on whatever podcast it is you’re listening from? That would mean the absolute world to me and keep me reaching more and more people with this work! I hope you all have lovely weekends, and I will speak to you all next week - bye!