Ep #31: How Worry Keeps Us Stuck

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen, episode number 31.

Welcome to Weight Loss for Successful Women, a podcast for women who are ready to break the diet cycle and end their struggle with weight for good. Here’s your host, Fortune 100 executive and Certified Life Coach, Shannan Christiansen.

Hello loves. Well, welcome back to the show. I am so excited that you ladies are here with me today. I am so excited for today’s show. Today is part five of the series I am doing on how to get through what is happening without losing yourself.

But as always, before we get into the show, I want to give a listener shout-out to Sonia. She wrote, “Excellent podcast. These topics truly turn on the lightbulb. Thank you.” Well, thank you so much, Sonia. I love this review. And I want to thank all the ladies who have taken the time to leave a review. I just really appreciate it. I love reading them.

So let’s get to today’s show. Every Easter, my mom would put on a big party. I mean, a big party. And cook for everyone. She would invite the entire family and some friends. And we would have what we would call the Brown Easter Races. And Brown is my maiden name.

So we would do the three-legged race, egg on a spoon, water balloon toss and so many different games. And of course, an Easter egg hunt. My family, they are a pretty competitive bunch, so every year, we would have a total blast. And of course, my mom was an amazing cook. So we had a ton of great food.

So I took over this tradition after my mom passed, and I continued the tradition and I loved it. It continued to morph every year and change, but Easter was always a big family gathering. Enter in 2020. This Easter was very different. No Easter races. I did not even cook my traditional dinner on Easter.

I did not see my grandbabies in person. Easter felt so different this year, and I am sure that it felt so different for many of you. As I record this podcast, Easter was this past Sunday. And I wanted to feel grateful and good about it, but honestly, loves, it felt weird, concerning, and I had a lot of worry about what would the future hold?

Was this the new normal? Mask, no in-person family events, working from home? I went to all the worst-case scenarios. Honestly loves, I have felt heavy this past week and I could not figure out why I was feeling so heavy. I would do my reflection work every day, and you know, try to put on the good face.

But honestly, I felt exhausted, even though I had more rest than I’ve had in many, many years. But then loves, I figured it out. I was in a constant state of worry. Worry about my day job, about my clients, about my family, about how things were changing, about how I did not have any control over any of it.

Worried about the news, worried about if everything was going to change, would I ever travel again? Would I ever go to a football game again? Could I get all the groceries I needed? Would my favorite small businesses survive this?

I had built so many worst-case scenarios in my head. Worry is an emotion that we feel. It is indulgent and from my experience, a waste of time. I was worried about all these things that have not happened yet. Things, that at the end of the day, I have no control over.

I just have control over how I adjust, how I think about them. I believe that I worry because I don’t want to feel the real feelings that I’m feeling like being sad about Easter, being fearful of the unknown. So I fill my head with worry about the future instead of feeling the feelings about what is happening right now.

I’ve watched my society ladies struggle with the same thoughts and worries. Loves, there is no normal and we are never promised anything but the moment we are in. Staying in a constant state of worry kept me from moving forward, kept me from acceptance of where I am, what is actually happening, what I actually control.

When I worry, I do nothing. I stay stuck. I am not my best self. To change this and move forward, I had to look at the truth of today. What has happened and then loves, come back to me and hear this. Decide on purpose what I want to think and believe about it.

Will there be new things that are created from this? Some things we will like and some things we will not. Things are always changing. In my lifetime, lots of things have changed and evolved. Some I like, some I don’t. We have had big life-changing things that have happened as a country since I’ve been alive.

This too is a moment in our history, and me worrying about the future does not change any of it. Worry is one of those emotions that just does not serve us because ladies, when we worry, we eat. We don’t make our plans and we’re standing in the kitchen, standing at the kitchen counter with a tub of ice cream, just eating to push down our feelings.

But there is a different way, loves. We can look at today, what has changed, what are the good things about it, what are the things we do not like, feel the sadness or fear, for the loss, and then move on. I don’t have to create mind chatter and worry about what will happen in three months or six months.

I can feel a feeling. I have never known for sure what was going to happen in the future, and I do not know today what will happen tomorrow. And loves, that has never changed.

So today’s transformational questions are worth your time, loves. Really sit down and answer these for yourself. Number one, how much of your time have you spent worrying about the future? Number two, how have you personally been impacted? What do you like about it and what don’t you like about it?

Number three, what are you sad, fearful, or angry about? Write it and then loves, feel the emotion of it. And now, number four, what do you want to decide on purpose to think about how you’ve been impacted? So good, loves. Next week I’m going to talk about something that prevents us from losing weight, and I can’t wait to talk about it, so bye for now, loves.

If you love this work and want to go deeper, take my free course. You can learn more about it at bflycoaching.com/free-course. Bye for now, loves.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Weight Loss for Successful Women. If you love what you heard today and want to learn more, come over to bflycoaching.com. That’s B – F – L – Y coaching dot com. See you next week!