190. Managing What Others Think

Are you feeling a little bit of pressure every morning when you wake up and feel like, oh, how is 2025 going to be any different? Do you feel maybe like your life is like a groundhog’s day and no matter how many good intentions you have, you’re still doing the same old. I hear you.

You need some relief. I’m so glad you’re at this podcast because that’s the purpose of this episode to give you relief. So let yourself receive the things I’m sharing today unless you receive it and allow it to percolate in your brain. You’re not gonna make any permanent changes.

You’re not going to have that kind of life that you really want today. We’re going to be talking about four different strategies to create relief in your life. it’s going to surprise you because I never thought of it this way before. just like a kaleidoscope, when you move it around, different configurations.

These ideas and ways of thinking are going to make a difference. I’m going to share an example of how one of my clients was able to use these tools to help her create a different life than she has before. And so we had this little challenge for two weeks where I had Marco Polo support.

So Marco Polo is a video app. And you could just report during the week. What was going on for you? It was just before Christmas and her husband was gone for a week. She had lists of all the things that she wanted to get done because he wasn’t there she realized after Trying to manage all these different lists that she was spending so much time on creating all these lists that it was taking away time for her to be actually doing the things she wanted to do She started to laugh and she was able to report to us.

This is one of my strategies of avoiding things, and she was able to find so much relief in finally being honest with herself and saying, you know what? I’m causing myself more trouble. No wonder I have some of this anxiety that’s hanging around. 

No wonder I’m putting all this pressure on myself because I’m creating a lot more pressure for myself and I’m not actually getting the relief that I want. I love that you’re here and I love that I can share this with you and I’m really curious of what’s going to change in your life because of this podcast. I want you to set your intention right now by saying, when I’m listening to this podcast, I’m going to open up my brain to receive something that will help me.

And I can promise you when you just allow, that’s why I said relief and how to receive it, you’re now giving your brain permission to receive the wisdom and then trust that the wisdom you take in, that’s what’s needed. So just like with trauma, and I talk about trauma, like there’s the small T trauma, the big T trauma, everyone has different variations.

Recently I was coaching myself and thinking about a situation in my life. I needed answers. If I was going to move forward, I needed a resolution. It was a turning point for me.

It was fascinating when I was coaching myself on this one situation. My brain went back to that situation where I said I have to create some sort of resolution here Or else I can’t move forward my brain was saying don’t worry Dara You have had many times in your life where you felt this crossroads and you have always been able to figure it out we can have these moments where we can get this wisdom from our potentially, like those traumatic kind of events.

where you can learn from and grow Okay. We all need relief because we all are putting a lot of pressure on ourselves. When it comes to weight loss, we think we can’t feel good about ourselves unless we look a certain way. A lot of us will go into our sewing rooms and see the hundreds and thousands of dollars spent on fabric and start feeling a lot of guilt and shame like, Oh, I’ve spent so much money and now I’m just going to keep buying more fabric.

I don’t even like this fabric anymore. And I spent so much money on it. Okay. So this happens, not just with weight loss, it happens with all sorts of areas. The problem is if we are feeling a lot of pressure and we’re avoiding, resisting or reacting to it, we’re just increasing the pressure. The more that we can just accept, Oh, this is the time and right now that I’m feeling a lot of pressure.

then we’re able to look at it and see what we can do differently. All right, so the first concept I wanted to talk about was back in 1519, Hernan Cortes was an explorer and he got to Mexico. It was a really rough journey. He was worried that his sailors were going to just take off in the boat because it was tough.

on the land. so he literally burned the boats. That is something I have thought a lot about when it comes to making a difference in the way you’re living. a lot of my clients, myself included, have had to literally burn down so much of what we thought was our reality.

So think about our relationships. When I was growing up, I was modeled, this is what a marriage looks like. And I was also shown by my mother’s reaction to things. A good husband should do this or act a certain way. And it’s very interesting because I have been able to separate myself from what my mom thought was a good marriage.

And now I get to decide for myself what the criteria is for a good husband. When I catch myself thinking, Oh, he’s doing it all wrong, or, Oh, I’m not a good wife because this is how my husband’s acting. I realized, Oh, wait a minute. That’s not true. And it’s so helpful for me to say, “Oh, actually. I just have to decide.” 

So I also got to decide about weight loss. I don’t have to have a six pack or look a certain way for me to believe that I’m a good enough person. I want to encourage you to decide what are some of the things that you need to just burn and you’re never going to go back there.

Second one, let the pendulum swing. So I’ve been really wanting to share this with you because it was such a fascinating coaching call. So I have a client who she, unfortunately. Her husband died of cancer even before he retired. They had this whole bucket list of all these things they wanted to do when he retired.

And it was cut short because of cancer and he died. It’s been such a dramatic life change. I’ve been working with her for four years, and this year she decided that she was not going to decorate for Christmas. She also decided that she wasn’t going to make a big turkey dinner or any traditional dinner.

In fact, she decided she was going to order Chinese, people to come and have Chinese and if they want, great, if not, no big deal. She decided that she had three presents she bought and wrapped them, but everything else was just money. I said to her, this is the perfect opportunity for you to collect data.

And when I talk about the pendulum swinging in our society. We can go from super strict disciplinarian school systems to what the child wants to do. They can do it. And it’s just so loosey goosey. And so there’s that huge swing. And I said, Why not just let yourself see what Christmas looks like without any decorations or any of that. What I recommended to her, and what I would recommend to you, is let’s collect data. So, what did you like about Christmas, where you decorated nothing?

Like you did not decorate at all. What did you like about the things that you did? And then what were the things that you missed? And when you can take that data and you can really look at it, now you can create for next year. Oh, we’re gonna try this next. Oh, I’m gonna look at this next. Oh, I hadn’t thought of this thing, so maybe she wanted to maybe next year.

My mom would always make French meat pie called tourtiere and mushroom soup. When she was newly married, my parents lived in Eastern Canada, right in Ottawa, which is across the river is Quebec. My mom thought it would be nice to have some French traditions in our family.

Which was lovely. And every Christmas Eve, she made delicious tortillas and she made this homemade mushroom soup that she got from a lady that she had a strong connection with, and she wanted to do that for us. And then I realized. I don’t have to make tortillas. In fact, I’m, I don’t want to make tortillas.

For a while we would go for Christmas Eve to my dad’s. So I didn’t actually have to decide on what I would make for Christmas Eve because we went there. And then we moved to the island and weren’t close by. So I have to decide, what do I want to make for Christmas Eve?

Before that, we lived in Ontario and I would go to my sister’s house for Christmas Eve. So I would just eat whatever she served. Quite often she would make mushroom soup and other things. It was fun to just say, what do I want for my kids? I had a roommate that went to Wendy’s, and I thought I could just do that, or I could do something else.

So we decided on beef sandwiches. I beef dip sandwiches because I, my heritage of being from Alberta, I thought it’d be good to have beef. And then there was a delicious salad that my dad would serve at his house. And I thought I would take that. And then my sister always made her famous square bar dessert.

So question everything and answer it in your way and just own it. The fourth thing that I want to recommend is to create a new baseline and evaluate. If you keep thinking in order to be a good mom or in order to be a good grandma or in order to be a good human, I need to fill in the blanks.

Just start questioning it.

That was a very important part of keeping to a budget on my husband’s salary. And now I actually love shopping. I love that I’m a person that is a thrift store shopper. I love keeping clothes out of the landfill. Obviously I buy things from stores, most of my shoes, like different things, underclothing, socks.

But there’s definitely a lot of things that I feel really good about shopping because I want to be that kind of person to the earth. Also recycling old quilts and making beautiful quilts, coats and all sorts of things. That feels really good to me. So I want you to just create a new baseline. So say this is the kind of person I want to be.

So you can take the thrift store. This is how many clothes I want in my closet. Even though you can buy a package of hangers and say, if I have 50 hangers, I have 50 things. If I have a hundred hangers, I have 50, a hundred articles of clothing. And if I want to buy something new, I have to get rid of something. This is the most beautiful thing. In order for you to allow yourself to have relief, you need to come in with your own wisdom. And be engaged and active in the whole process. one of the reasons why diets are such a nightmare. is because you have left your own personality, life experiences, unique body, maybe a lot of body shame or whatever that is.

if you’re not bringing that into the equation, it’s going to be a disaster. So I really want you to look at your relationship with yourself. Now I teach weight loss backwards. I teach you to quit thinking about losing weight. We’re not going to do that right now. What we’re going to do is just embrace our current body.

So if you weigh 250 pounds, let’s get some clothes that fit us. Let’s get a bra that fits us. Let’s stop being so mean. And let’s start getting curious about why do you weigh 250 pounds when really you are more on the healthy side, like to not have diabetes and to have more movement and have more freedom to be like 150.

Okay. So we’re going to still dress you properly and wear clothes that fit you. And we’re going to get curious about why that’s going to give you so much power. then when you let go of all those expectations, weight loss starts to happen naturally because you’re not being such a jerk to yourself.

You’re not berating yourself and you’re not feeling like a jerk. You’re a lot more open to seeing what’s going on. If that sounds more your style, I invite you to look into my lifetime membership. It is 20 pounds, money back guarantee, 20 pounds down in 90 days. There are three coaching calls a week.

I created a speedy system of consuming the content. instead of the 12 full modules with all of that, I have, I, I shortened them to the five core modules. So in less than two and a half hours, you can get the whole gist of the membership.

I have the 90-day workbook, which is daily three to five minute videos. Two and a half hours of content that gives you the big picture. Plus those daily videos, 20 pounds down in 90 days, money back guarantee. There is zero risk. If you want to ask me questions, you can DM me, email me or make a 20-minute free coaching call. I can answer any of your questions and then we can make a decision if this is the right fit. No pressure. All right. Take care everyone. Bye.