Soaring Over Stress, Episode Eleven ~ Let Them

The podcast episode discusses various topics related to trusting ourselves and dealing with difficult people in relationships and the workplace. The host shares her experience of reading a self-help book on trusting oneself and provides some insights from the book. She also talks about her own strategies for navigating workplace issues, including staying focused on her job, setting boundaries with coworkers, and being authentic. She concludes by sharing a quote about letting go of people who are not ready to love and appreciate you. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to Soaring Over Stress, an SOS for navigating stress and anxiety in the workplace and beyond. I'm your host, Amy Rae, and today we're going to talk about a whole myriad of different topics regarding trusting ourselves, how to deal with people, whether that be in relationship or in the workplace, who don't see us or choose to gossip about us, backstab us, give us a cold shoulder, etc., etc. I have a few different resources that I want to share with you today, and I hope that this episode can be as helpful to you as it has been to me. So, let's get to it. I recently started getting some self-help books at the library. I felt like I could do a little bit more in helping myself really understand my own reasonings and triggers and why I respond the way I do to certain things. And so, one of those books I had taken out was called Trusting Yourself by M.J. Ryan. Within the first three pages, I knew that this was a book that I needed to read. I want to read some of the beginning pages to you, not pages, but page and a half, if that, and just share with you a little bit of the author's thoughts on why we should trust ourselves and why more often than not, we don't. Everywhere I turn, I hear people are overwhelmed. Married or single, with kids or not, working or not, people are struggling to keep their heads above water. We're overwhelmed by our to-do list. We're overwhelmed by all the information coming at us. We're overwhelmed by how fast everything is moving and how fast we must run to keep up. We try to simplify. We try to get more organized. We try not to sweat the small stuff. We try to meditate or do yoga, but nothing seems that much help. There are good reasons for feeling this way. Daily life is more demanding and less spacious than it once was. We're flooded with information and choices. We are all doing too much and having fewer options, and have fewer options than we might think. When I ask people about feeling overwhelmed, the word that I most often hear is, inadequate or helpless. That's because when we have trouble keeping up, we're sure that it's our fault. Thinking this way only adds to our sense of overwhelm because on top of all that we have to do, we now have to carry the belief that there is something about us that makes us unable to cope. We don't trust our capacity to deal with life as it comes at us, so we're perpetually in a state of fear and worry. Or, we try to control life through perfectionism and freak out when we or others make mistakes. We have seemed to have lost the sense of ourselves as reliable sources of the wisdom we need to navigate through our lives. Instead, we see only our problems. Each and every one of us can catalog in detail the what's and why's and the ways that we are screwed up, flawed, and broken. I have low self-esteem, so I can't say no. I'm a procrastinator, so I don't get anything done. I'm an introvert. I'm a control freak. Of course we don't trust ourselves. Why should we when all we recognize about ourselves is what's wrong with us?" I can certainly say that I have been doing that and continue to do that in my life. I shouldn't say continue. I'm trying to make concerted efforts not only to change the way I deal with others, but to change the way that I deal with myself, first and foremost. I've had a lot of issues at work, and to be completely frank with you, I don't know if they're actual issues or if I'm just trauma responding to people around me. Nevertheless, I've come up with a few things to navigate my own way of thinking that I'm hoping will help you as well. Not sure which to share first, my little tricks to dealing with it or these other two that I want to share, so if these are sort of out of order, please forgive me. There's a tattoo movement that's gone viral as of recent, and it's the words, two simple words, let them. Maybe you've heard of it. Maybe you haven't. Maybe you've heard or seen the tattoo, but you're not quite sure where it came from or the poem that's attached to it, and so I'm going to read the poem that goes with it now. Just let them. If they want to choose something or someone over you, let them. If they want to go weeks without talking to you, let them. If they're okay with never seeing you again, let them. If they're okay with always putting themselves first, let them. If they are showing you who they are and not what you perceived them to be, let them. If they want to follow the crowd, let them. If they want to judge you and misunderstand you, let them. If they act like they can live without you, well God by all means, let them. If they want to walk out of your life and leave, hold the door open and let them. Let them lose you. You were never theirs because you were always your own, so let them. Let them show you who they truly are, not tell you. Let them prove how worthy they are of your time. Let them make the necessary steps to be a part of your life. Let them earn your forgiveness. Let them call you to talk about ordinary things. Let them take you out on a Thursday. Let them talk about anything and everything just because it's you that they are talking to. Let them have a safe place in you. Let them see the heart in you that didn't harden by author Casey Phillips. And I thought that was really good. You know, I was worrying a lot about a month ago with some issues I was having with co-workers. I felt like I was getting shade from one and then the one became six and then the six felt like the entire place. I was really struggling with it to be honest with you. You're going to get your name slung through mud if you stand up to things. That's all I can say. So that's what I believe was happening. In any event, I came up with, I don't know what you want to call it, just a way of kind of dealing with it. And I called it step one, two, and three. And so my step one, two, and three went like this. Step one is stay in your lane. Like when we drive on the highway, we need to stay in our lane and if we need to cross over a lane, a different lane to continue on our journey, we use our blinker, we wait our turn, things like that. So I started to think about approaching work and specifically co-workers as staying in my lane. I go there to do what I was hired to do, what I am paid to do, which is to teach the children. And if I need to cross over lanes, i.e. come in contact with my co-workers, I say hello, I be polite, et cetera, et cetera. But I don't offer more than that. Reason being, I tend to open up myself too much, too fast to everybody and it comes back to bite me in the ass. And it's just a better idea to stay in my lane and focus on the job at hand, the mission, so to speak, the journey, the destination that I'm getting to, which is teaching the children. That is what I'm there to do and so that's what I need to focus on. Step one, stay in my lane. Step two, shut the door. This kind of ties into what I was just saying, but I don't have to welcome everybody into my personal space. I don't have to let them know what's going on in my personal life. I don't have to be open with people that I feel aren't trustworthy. This is a very good philosophy to follow, especially if you come from trauma. A lot of times trauma victims tend to overshare and then it comes back to be a problem for us in the future. So you just shut the door. We don't need to talk about that here. We don't need to share that with co-workers. We continue on our journey. Step two, shut the door. And the final stage is speak legalese. I don't know how much I can speak legalese at work and I know that my personality is going to pop out. It's going to. It's very hard for me to attempt to be something that I'm not, which is inauthentic. I'm one of the most authentic people you'll ever meet. If I'm not authentic with you, it's because you've shown me that you're not safe. So these are some really good ideas, philosophy, thoughts, etc. to think about when you're at work. You need to learn to trust yourself. We're always second guessing. When the issues were happening with me at work and one co-worker wasn't talking to me, which then became six and then became the whole place, or at least it felt like that, I started to think, you know, I'm a worthless person, things that I knew intellectually were not true. And it was just triggering that old shit in me. And I was going to an anxious place and worrying about it. If you've ever been there, you know that you show up for work and you do your best or you are there trying to be the person that you've always, excuse me, that you've intended to be. Don't worry about what other people say to you. Another thing that I want to share with you is from the actor Anthony Hopkins. Maybe you've read this. Maybe you've seen this. Maybe you have not. So I thought this was really good. I saw this the other day, and I thought, you know, this should be added to the podcast today. And so his words are the following. Let go of people who are not ready to love you. This is the hardest thing you'll ever have to do in your life. And it will also be the most important. Stop having difficult conversations with people who don't want to change. Stop showing up for people who are not interested in your presence. That's a big one, isn't it? I know your instinct is to do everything possible to gain the appreciation of those around you. But it's an impulse that steals your time, energy, mental, and physical health. When you start fighting for a life with joy, interest, and commitment, not everyone will be ready to follow you to that place. It doesn't mean you have to change who you are. It means you have to let go of people who aren't ready to be with you. If you are excluded, insulted, forgotten, and ignored by the people you gave your time to, you're not doing yourself a favor by continuing to offer them your energy and your life. Amen. That's what I'm talking about with shutting the door. Truth is, you ain't for everybody and everybody ain't for you. This is what makes it so special. When you find people you have friendships with, or a mutual love, you will know how precious it is because you have experienced what is not. There are billions of people on this planet, and many of them will find you at your level of interest and commitment. Maybe if you stop showing up, they won't look for you. Maybe if you stop trying, the relationship will end. Maybe if you stop texting, your phone will stay dark for weeks. It doesn't mean you ruined the relationship. It means the only thing sustaining it was the energy that you gave to it. That's not love. That's attachment. It's giving a chance to those who don't deserve it. You deserve so much more. The most valuable thing you have in your life is your time and your energy, as both are limited. The people and things you give your time and energy to will define your existence. When you realize this, you start to understand why you are so anxious when you spend time with people, activities, and spaces that don't suit you and shouldn't be near you. You'll start to realize that the most important thing that you can do for yourself and for everyone around you is to protect your energy more fiercely than anything else. Make your life a safe haven where only people compatible with you are allowed. You're not responsible for saving anyone. You are not responsible for convincing them to do better. It's not your job to exist for people to give them your life. Damn, that's deep. You deserve real friendships, true commitments, and a complete love with healthy and prosperous people. Decisions to distance yourself from toxic people will give you the love, esteem, happiness, and protection that you deserve. Well said, Anthony. Well, well said. So I want you to just think about that and all the different things that we tend to do in order to get people to quote-unquote like us, to accept us. You know, nobody wants to be on the outside. As human beings, we want to be part of community. It's why children who come from unhealthy families where there is no connection or where there is violence or abuse or drug addiction, where they're not having their needs met, they will go outside of that family into the darkest corners of alleys in the world, albeit through gangs and other things, trying to find connection. We want to be part of a family. And if we don't have family in family, sometimes we try to find it at work. The problem is when we give too much of ourselves. I have found that over the last month or so, since I have been doing my one, two, three, and not worrying about my co-workers, ironically, they're all being super nice to me again. I don't know why. I have my suspicions that I don't want to put in this podcast. Nevertheless, it's like one of them was being super nice to me again. And I'm like, no, it's too late. You already showed me who you are. Like Maya Angelou says, when somebody shows you themselves, believe them. Don't try to create another narrative of who they are. Yes, they can come to you, they can apologize, and then things can change. But that didn't happen. They just started acting nice to me, while at the same time lying to me. So what good is it? I'm not really sure. Learning to not worry so much about what other people think about me. Continue to invest in myself, learn to trust myself, learn to stay in my lane, shut the door, and speak legally. I need to protect my heart, and my energy, and my time. Like Anthony Hopkins said, I need to let them, like the poem and the tattoo speaks of. If people want to judge me, let them. If they want to gossip about me, let them. We cannot be running around this life, trying to get people to understand the truth of who we are, because then we're just trying to convince them something that they might not necessarily ever get to the conclusion of, so to speak, or get to grips of. I don't know if that makes sense. In any event, I think this episode was pretty short and sweet, but jam-packed with a lot of different things that you can do, and ways in which to navigate your life in a way in which you're not so dependent on other people's approval. That's how I want to live my life. I recently wrote a quote, a few years ago, that said, I am allowed to live my life without your consent. I can do things how I choose to do things, and I really don't care if you judge me. It's my life. It is my life, and you know what? I only get one shot at it. And so, with that being said, I ask each of my listeners to trust themselves, to remember that you can navigate your own life a lot better than you might think you can. You just need to believe it. You need to believe in yourself. I want you to remember that I see you, you matter, and your story counts. If you have any questions, thoughts, ideas, and comments, please feel free to leave it here at audio.com, underneath my podcast, or you can message me on my Facebook page, Eagle Exercises, or my website, eagleexercises.com. There's a WhatsApp connection there. Guys, I want to thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you for being here, and again, remember, I see you, you matter, and your story counts. God bless.