Life is always going to be full of hard things. Learning how to pick the hard thing that is still hard is also a gift.
Hi, Cadre. Happy Friday. It is cold here in my car. My fingers are cold. Happy spring.
Shannon: I'm a person who lives with anxiety. I live with cptsd, and I'm the parent of a child with autism. My series is called How I Learned. It's all the things that I learned as a person in my last eight to ten years of therapy. I just want to share it with you.
This week I learned that I got to pick between two choices. Life is always going to be full of hard things. Our bodies talk to us and they tell us what we need to know. Learning how to pick the hard thing that is still hard is also a gift.
Hi, Cadre. Happy Friday. It is cold here in my car. My fingers are cold. Happy Friday. Happy spring. It is Shannon here from Cadre Friday. I don't know what day it is. It's April something and I am happy to see you all. So for those of you who I have not met before, my name is Shannon. I am not a clinician. I am not a mental health professional. I'm a human who. Who actually is part of the Cadre team. I'm a person who lives with anxiety. I live with cptsd, and I'm the parent of a child with autism.
I'm trying to warm up my fingers and very Molly Shannon, Saturday Night lifestyle. And so I come on Cadre to tell my story as someone who wants you to feel less alone in your life, as a human who is trying to just make it and live to live through it. And so today. So my series is called How I Learned. I think it's called How I Learned to Stop Living in Survival Mode. And essentially, it's all the things that I learned as a person in my last eight to ten years of therapy. And I just want to share it with you.
So it's what I do every day to start to actually love myself and try to get through this world. So today, what I want to talk about is a lesson of picking. The. The getting to pick choice in the hard thing that you choose to do in life. And so how that equates to stop living in survival mode is that life is always going to be full of hard things, right? And so this week for me, my lesson came in that I had something happen that I didn't really want to happen. I had a decision come into my life this week where I got to pick a path forward with a relationship, and I had a choice where, you know, something was in front of me.
And so for many of us in life, you guys will understand this. You'll be rolling along in life and you'll be in a relationship or you'll be in a life situation and something in the universe or something in that relationship will happen. And in your guts or in your soul, you'll start to notice something in it, in that situation or in that relationship that sort of nudges at you. That's a piece of information that gives you information about it that you may or may not want to know that's going to point you in a direction.
It might be a direction you want to go in, it might be a direction you don't want to go in. And so for me, this week I have a relationship in my life that I was very excited about and have been very excited about. And I got some new information about it. And as I was walking my dog on a beautiful evening, I became more and more aware of this piece of information. And I felt it in my stomach and I felt it in my body, and I got to be aware that I was being presented a choice. And yes, Carrie, intuition.
That is exactly right. And so as. As we learn in therapy and as we learn, I have learned over time, our bodies talk to us and they tell us what we need to know. And so one of the things about living in survival mode, something that I did pre therapy and pre all of the work that I've done, is that I would just shove that away and I would just drive full force towards the thing that I wanted to be true no matter what. And I put blinders on, right? And I would will myself towards the outcome that I really wanted to happen.
Because, by God, I can force it there because I am type A person and I am a driver. And if I focus really hard and if I work really hard and if I, you know, manage it into submission, I will get to the outcome that I want. But the truth is, is that as I have learned, that's not the case. And the truth is, is I have very little power. What I have power over is myself. So this week I learned that I got to pick. I get to pick between two choices. I get to pick between the hard truth of the reality of what's happening in life in this situation, or I get to pick between the hard truth of that I only get to control me.
So I get to face. I get to face something, right? I have to face something. And so for me, this week, I chose the truth that was bubbling up in my body and I truth the intuition carry, as you're calling it, which is if. Exactly, right? And I was like, hey, I know this thing to be true in my body, and I'm feeling it. And so my truth and my choice in this moment is going to be the right thing, which is to say the thing that I know to be true of my body out loud. And I know that that's probably if I believe in my intuition and I believe in my body and I believe in all those things, it's probably going to take me down the path that I really don't want because that's probably what's going to happen.
And it did. And the truth is that that's actually probably the right path, right? Because that's the truth. And my body knew it and I followed it. Do I love that path? I do not love it. There's some disappointment in that path, but it's also the right path. I know it's the right path because my body tells me so. Because it's just the true path and all the things right in the past. I also know that I would not have gone down that path. The beauty of that path is that I just saved time. I saved kindness to myself.
I honestly also was kinder to that person. I gave them the space and. And care to honor where they're at. Which, frankly, is their truth. Right? So I say all this to say that the gift of learning how to pick the hard thing, that's true, right? Learning how to pick the hard thing, that is still hard. It's not any less hard and. But that's more true. It's going to get you out of survival mode. It's going to get you to a better place. Faster is actually getting you into a better place, right? It's getting you into a place that's not fight or flight.
It's getting into a place of alignment and integrity with yourself. And although it feels still like a bad choice or, or a worse choice or a crappy choice, it is actually the right choice in my experience. And so that's what I wanted to share this week. And I hope that's resonant with you. And I hope that as you go out into the world this week, you're able to sort of listen to yourself, listen to your body. I know that even if that choice you make feels like it sucks in that moment, rest in the knowledge that it is the right choice.
And that listening inside and honoring whatever it is that you hear is the right choice. And it's going to get you where you need to go. So thank you for joining us, Carrie. It was awesome to see you. I hope you all have the best weekend ever. I hope you get to enjoy the spring that is upon us. And I'm so glad you're part of Cadre Sphere. Thank you for being part of our community. You make it better with your presence and we will see you here again soon in the Cadre Sphere. Bye, guys. Have a great weekend.
