Episode 56: Transcript

You are listening to episode 56 of the Path to Motherhood podcast.

Welcome to the Path to Motherhood podcast.

I'm your host and fertility life coach, Sarah Randell.

Join us each week as we walk through navigating your trying to conceive journey.

My mission is to share the skills of managing your mind, processing emotions and living a full life to create a more authentic path to motherhood.

(upbeat music) Hello, hello.

Welcome back for another week of the Path to Motherhood podcast.

I'm super excited for today's episode.

The last couple of weeks, episodes have just been what I think is gonna be really impactful for all of you guys.

And I'm super excited to hear how it goes for you all as you apply the concepts of the last few weeks.

So that's what we'll be diving into today.

But a little update for you guys, what am I up to.

Oh, I'm actually traveling this coming week.

So while you guys are listening to these episodes, I will be in New Orleans.

I have a place I've never been to before.

I'm going to a conference, which I'm super excited about.

And yeah, I don't know, it's gonna be weird.

I haven't traveled by myself in a long time.

My old job is previously before coaching.

I did some of that, but I just haven't had the need to since then.

So yeah, I'm excited for this trip, excited to get out of my comfort zone a little bit and do something a little bit different.

So that's what I'm up to.

That's what's coming up.

Maybe I'll post some pictures of New Orleans while I'm there.

But like I said, today we're gonna do kind of the final episode in this three-part series of how to build your confidence, how to create your baby belief plan, and then today how to kind of solidify that plan.

And so today what we're gonna be talking about is something I call thought ladders.

And they can be so, so helpful.

and way more impactful than like the classic affirmation that we all think about putting on a post-it note and putting on our mirror.

And this technique, super helpful for your baby belief plan.

But believe me when I say I have used this technique that we're gonna talk about today for so many areas of life, right.

Like this is something that has helped me evolve my relationship with food, my relationship with money, my relationship with my partner.

Like it is such a useful tool to have in your toolbox.

So we'll talk about it and how we're going to apply it, but just to recap over the last few weeks, we've been talking about how important it is to have some confidence going into your cycles.

Can be really easy to feel very doubtful, very down and have really limited confidence.

And I want to emphasize just as we close out this third part of this series, that while it's really important to have possibility, It's not that you can't have doubt.

I don't think I've ever said that before.

It's not something I will ever say because I believe it is expected that we're gonna have doubt, we're gonna have fear, especially when we've been dealt a diagnosis like infertility or pregnancy loss.

But to have belief in possibility is so important.

And that's what really, really focusing on is how can we have that belief.

And I recently was talking with a client just a couple days ago, and we were talking about how important Not only is it to have belief in possibility, but almost making sure that belief in possibility doesn't have too many expectations.

So what do I mean by that.

If you are thinking, "Hey, it's definitely possible this next cycle, but if this next cycle doesn't work, it's all over.

" That's a lot of pressure on one cycle, right.

Maybe instead, I believe in the possibility that we're going to get pregnant soon, that we're going to have a healthy baby soon.

It just relieves a lot of pressure off yourself that this next one cycle has to be the one that works.

And I find that that can be really helpful.

That was very impactful in my own journey to be able to relinquish some of that control over it being the next possible cycle.

Then last week we talked about the baby belief plan and that try out of the three areas we talked about belief in yourself, belief in your team, belief in your process, and how important it is to have belief in those three areas.

We really talked about how you take stock of where you are in those three areas and where you want to be in those three areas.

And that's where we're going to spend our time today.

I shared with you guys last week, but I just want to mention it again.

I created a workbook to walk with you alongside these episodes that I'm actually super proud of, the BabyBelieve Plan Workbook.

book and it has all of these steps that we're talking about listed out for you to apply them and start working on them to analyze where you are in these different areas to decide where you'd like to be and then today to start applying this thought creation plan.

So that's what we're going to do.

We're going to talk about thought creation today.

But before we do that, I do need to mention one thing and that one thing is there are times where thought creation is not the right answer.

What do I mean by that.

Maybe you sat down and you looked at your baby belief plan and you recognize I have complete lack of confidence in my team.

They have made some big mistakes in medical decision making in the recent past and I really have lost trust for them.

And rather than going about the work of rebuilding my trust for them, I feel what would be best for me is to pick a new team.

If that's the case, absolutely do that.

Another example, maybe you have been doing like IUIs after IUI, after IUI, after IUI, and you're starting to believe that that is not the right process for you.

If that's the case, maybe the decision is not, "Hey, I need to think myself into believing IVUI is perfect and is the best thing for me.

And maybe the decision is actually, I need to reassess which process is the best for me and make that change.

So those are just two examples of times where this baby belief plan can actually help you make decisions.

It can actually help you recognize times where it's time to make different decisions.

And And that can be really helpful too.

So don't feel like when we talk today about thought creation, you have to just think your way positive.

That's not the goal here.

If you're in a situation that does not feel appropriate, make a change.

That is totally fine.

But if you're in a situation where you do feel like it's the right decision for you, but you feel like you could improve upon your beliefs about that decision, then that's what we're working on today.

So a big area this comes up, of course, is our belief in ourself, our body, our abilities.

Another one would be, maybe you do have some nuances about your team you don't love.

Like I totally do.

I don't love the IVF as expensive as it is.

I don't love that I have to talk with the finance department and it's kind of annoying and frustrating to deal with them.

I don't love that I have to deal with the communication errors that happen from time to time.

love every single process or experience with my team.

But I also believe in my team.

And so if I spent all my energy and all my mindset focused on all the negatives about my team, that would not be beneficial.

So that would be an example of, Hey, yes, I acknowledge there's some frustrations here and I can like voice my opinions about those.

I can speak up about those advocate for myself and just accept it's not going to perfect all the time, but I also want to go to work focusing on spending the main part of my brain power, focusing on my belief in my team, my belief that my provider is there to help me be successful and how important that is.

And so that's what we're going to talk about today.

So hopefully that gives you guys kind of like some explanation of some next steps after you've done the analysis part of your baby belief plan of what would be appropriate to put in a thought ladder and what doesn't need to go in a thought ladder.

So what I'm talking about today, like I said, is thought creation.

And one of the tools that I love to use for thought creation is a thought ladder.

And the reason that this is is because we can identify thoughts that we're believing about a situation now and thoughts that we would like to believe and they can be so far apart.

There can be such a big gap between those thoughts.

It can feel impossible to get there.

So like I mentioned affirmation.

For example, something that's somewhat related but not exactly infertility related.

Maybe my thought is I hate my body.

I'm not happy with how it looks.

I'm not happy with my weight, something like that.

I hate my body.

And maybe my goal, right, body confidence, is to get to this place where I love my body.

Well, I could take a post-it note and I could write, "I love my body.

" I could post it on the mirror and I could read it every day.

I could put it on the background of my phone.

But if I just absolutely don't believe that, if that feels so untrue for me, it doesn't matter how many times I read it, it doesn't matter how many times I say it, that is too far of a jump.

It doesn't feel doable to my brain and therefore it just kind of goes unheard.

And I can imagine that a lot of you have experienced examples of this.

It could be around body, it could be around, maybe your money spending habits, for example.

Maybe you are not a very good spender and you would love to believe that you are a great intentional thoughtful spender.

Well, if you have been putting things on credit cards and impulse shopping your whole life, it's going to be really hard to believe the thought, "I'm an intentional spender.

" So these are just examples of where thought creation can be so beneficial because we can't just make these leaps all the time.

Sometimes things happen in life that let us make leaps, but a lot of times we have to help ourselves get there.

And I think it can be a lot more loving and realistic for ourselves when we do that, if we allow ourselves to almost baby step our way there.

And so that is what the thought ladder is all about.

When it comes to the thought ladder, what I have you do is I have you write down at the bottom of the ladder, what is my current thought.

I gave you guys some examples.

I hate my body.

I'm bad with money, something like that.

Another one that I have used often is I'm overwhelmed.

When I'm feeling really overwhelmed, that can be, it can feel very uncomfortable.

It can feel almost paralyzing.

So that can be my current thought.

And then what I want you to do next is I want you to list at the top of the ladder your goal thought.

So maybe that is I love my body.

Maybe that is I am very intentional with my money spending.

Maybe that is I am focused and clear on next steps.

Those feel way different than the original thoughts.

Feeling focused and clear feels totally different than feeling overwhelmed.

So at the bottom of your ladder, you're going to list what your current thought is.

No judgment, no frustration for where you are totally reasonable to have that thought.

And then at the top, you're you're going to write the goal thought.

And then the nice thing here is we have all these steps in between the two.

We're not expected to just jump to the top thought because that would be really, really difficult to do.

So instead, what we're going to try to identify is just one next layer and a thought that brings it slightly, maybe more neutral.

So if our negative thought is I'm overwhelmed, maybe I can remind myself, but everything is okay.

Or maybe if I'm thinking I'm bad with money, I can remind myself, but I know how to learn new skills.

Or maybe I am thinking I hate my body, but I can identify it's potentially possible that I'm just being really hard on myself and I'm not acknowledging things that are really great about my body.

These are not your goal thoughts.

These are not all the way at the top of the ladder, but they're slightly more comfortable thoughts to be thinking.

And what's really cool about doing this is that you want these thoughts that you write down on the next rung to be somewhat believable to you.

What I always say is your current thought is the one that feels like habit.

It's the one you think most often just because it comes out most often, but the next rung on your ladder should be one that's pretty believable.

You have to remind yourself about it.

You have to bring it up.

You have to focus on it, but it feels pretty believable.

And so what we do in this process is that's our affirmation.

That's our next step.

We take that just slightly nuanced approach to our thought.

The everything is okay.

I can learn how to manage my money and we focus on that.

We remind ourselves of that thought.

This is where we do put it on our mirror.

We add it to our background of our phone.

We think about it when we open our planner.

Whatever is our reminder and we focus on that new thought.

Have you guys ever gotten a new car and then you all of a sudden seem to be seeing that car absolutely everywhere.

That is what we want here.

You start thinking about this new thought and now what this does is it pushes your brain to be on the lookout for all the places that this thought is true.

So maybe your brain starts to look for, "Hey, I did learn how to do that with money," or, "Hey, this really is okay.

This is working out or hey I can see how I'm overthinking this a little bit with my thoughts about my body.

And so over time you start to build more belief for the new thought.

And for some people this thought creation this believing of this next thought could happen in a few days.

For other thoughts it may take a couple weeks for it to become more of a habit.

It may even take a couple months for it to become more of a habit.

And that is totally okay because what you're doing is you're getting slightly closer to the goal thought.

So what I have on the worksheet for you guys is I have the picture of the ladder, you have where you list your current thought, you have where you list your goal thought, and then you have a couple rungs between there that help you get from point A to point B.

And what you do is you take the time to identify a couple thoughts that slowly build to your goal thought.

Sometimes I feel I can do this very easily from the beginning.

Like I can just list out like sick thoughts from bottom to top.

This is my goal thought.

This is my current thought.

And here's five stops in the middle to get me there.

That can be really simple.

Other times I struggle to do that.

And that is totally okay.

If that's the case, I always say just think of the next best thought.

Think that for a while, practice that one for a while, and then over time you'll start to identify what the next one is.

Whichever works for you is totally fine.

I gave you a couple of these diagrams in the workbook for you to list out some.

I really don't recommend focusing on more than two to three different thought letters on one at once, just because that gives you some time to focus specifically on those thought letters, but this can be really, really, really useful.

So I thought what I would do is I would give you an example of a couple different versions of some thought letters.

The one that I personally have experienced before is like I said, the overwhelmed one.

So I'm overwhelmed to then going to remind myself everything is okay.

then giving myself the permission of you can set priorities, then giving myself permission of, and I can start tackling those priorities.

And then getting finally to that goal thought of I'm capable and focused and I can get through this.

That just evolves over time of applying those thoughts.

You can imagine when I'm thinking I'm overwhelmed, I'm not showing up as my best self.

I'm not perfectly writing things out in my calendar.

I'm not making all my appointments and I'm not getting everything done on my to-do list.

And I'm really showing up overwhelmed.

And then as I slowly slide farther and farther up that ladder, I am filling out my calendar.

I am prioritizing things.

I am getting things done.

It's not perfect.

There's things I'm having to decide we're going to hold for later, but I'm focused and I'm making clear decisions.

So you begin showing up differently when you believe these new thoughts.

And that is what is so, so cool about this process.

So for an example from the workbook that's specific to infertility, one of the areas that I find most women need some work in is trust with their body, right.

When you've gone through an infertility journey, a pregnancy loss journey, you start to lose trust with yourself, lose trust with your body, and just lose that confidence.

And we've talked about how important that is.

So for example, I have in the workbook as the current thought, I don't trust my body to carry a baby to term.

And the goal thought being, this could be my body's time to shine and carry to term.

Well, that feels so different than I don't trust my body to carry to term.

So obviously, Obviously we're not going to be able to jump right there.

What I identified as my next rung, my next focus thought was my body has been through so much and it is still going.

And that I feels really good of like a, hey, I'm acknowledging all that I've been through.

And wow, I can't believe I'm still moving forward.

And I would go to work believing that thought before I went any further.

And then the next one I have is my body is capable of so many things in this life.

This is one of my favorite things to do with every client, with everyone I work with in Infertility Space, is reminding yourself of all the amazing things your body does do.

Because when we start to beat ourselves up because our reproductive system doesn't seem to be functioning properly, it's as if we're totally broken and we forget all the amazing features that our body does do for us on a daily basis.

The next thought I have on my list is my body is resilient.

You can see here I'm now starting to build some belief in the ability for my body to do things it wasn't able in the past.

And then from there I have the thought it is possible for my body to carry a baby to turn.

I don't know it for sure, but I'm believing in the possibility.

And you can see here how we're building these thoughts, we're building ourselves up to get to a place where we finally do get to get to this place that we believe this could be my body's time to shine.

And that feels doable to believe that.

That's the goal.

So what I want you guys to do is I want you guys to list yours out.

You guys identified your three different areas.

You kind of thought about of these three areas, which one needs the most work.

I would focus there first with your thought ladder.

if there's decision changes that need to be made focus there first, but then if there's just thought creation changes that need to be made, this is where the thought ladder comes into play.

Maybe you're doubting your ability to emotionally handle another setback.

Your current thought is, "I would not survive another setback.

" Maybe your goal thought is, "I'm resilient and I can get through whatever the next steps are.

" Well, how are you going to build yourself up to that thought.

What thought ladder steps are going to get you there.

That's what we do with this.

And so, what I would love to hear from you guys is what thoughts are you working on.

What current thoughts are you working on creating into goal thoughts and how is it going.

Message me.

Let me know.

Send me an email.

I would love, love, love to hear from you.

worksheet for you to do this process is in the show notes, click the link.

It will take you to my website where you can download this worksheet for free and do all of these steps and go to work working on this.

And I would love to hear from you to hear how it's going.

And I also am always 100% happy to help you with this process.

So if you're ready to have some support and do this with someone on your team, click the link to apply for a free consult call and we will talk about what coaching together would look like.

I hope you guys have enjoyed this little couple week series and take a lot from this and I will talk to you guys next week.

Hey there Inspired Mama, if you enjoyed this show I want to invite you to leave a review in your podcast player.

This helps to share the message with so many more women just like you.

Also, if you know of another hopeful mama on her path to motherhood, please share this episode with her.

I would love to get this into the ears of anyone who needs to hear it.

If you are ready to step this work up and not only learn these tools but to apply them to your unique story, head to the link in the show notes to apply for a free consult call.

honored to help you.

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