Hey, Hey Welcome Back!
Have you ever been caught in a maze of perceptions, especially when embarking on a fertility journey? The paths may seem convoluted, but guess what? Our perceptions shape these paths. Today's episode examines how our individual and partner's views and experiences can significantly influence our fertility journey.
I share about emailing with a potential client who was intensely anxious about starting fertility treatments, frozen in the fear of what if it didn't work. This fear, a product of her perceptions, prevented her from taking the next step. Not just in this scenario, our own perceptions, the thoughts that rush in our minds, and even our partner's views can dramatically impact our experience of the fertility journey. But it's important to remember perceptions are not always facts. They can be challenged, reshaped, and realigned with our goals.
I give you six journal prompts to really consider. I even share additional prompts I used about my faith.
Navigating your fertility journey does not have to be what you are experiencing with your five senses. By journaling, we can better understand our perceptions, ultimately leading to a more joyful and empowering fertility journey. As I wrap up, remember your perception is creating your reality. So, let's take charge of it!
In Love and Gratitude
Jessica xxx
Email - jessica@thefertilitymind.com
Website - https://www.thefertilitymind.com
Amazon Store - https://www.amazon.com/author/thefertilitymind
Hey, Hey Welcome Back!
Have you ever been caught in a maze of perceptions, especially when embarking on a fertility journey? The paths may seem convoluted, but guess what? Our perceptions shape these paths. Today's episode examines how our individual and partner's views and experiences can significantly influence our fertility journey.
I share about emailing with a potential client who was intensely anxious about starting fertility treatments, frozen in the fear of what if it didn't work. This fear, a product of her perceptions, prevented her from taking the next step. Not just in this scenario, our own perceptions, the thoughts that rush in our minds, and even our partner's views can dramatically impact our experience of the fertility journey. But it's important to remember perceptions are not always facts. They can be challenged, reshaped, and realigned with our goals.
I give you six journal prompts to really consider. I even share additional prompts I used about my faith.
Navigating your fertility journey does not have to be what you are experiencing with your five senses. By journaling, we can better understand our perceptions, ultimately leading to a more joyful and empowering fertility journey. As I wrap up, remember your perception is creating your reality. So, let's take charge of it!
In Love and Gratitude
Jessica xxx
Email - jessica@thefertilitymind.com
Website - https://www.thefertilitymind.com
Amazon Store - https://www.amazon.com/author/thefertilitymind
Welcome to the Fertility Mind podcast. I am your host, jessica Friesen, a certified fertility mindset coach, a sound healer and an international best-selling author. My mission for this podcast is to give you weekly episodes where you hear my own success with IVF and how mindset and manifestation changed it all for me. You will also hear from my guests who share their success stories in the fertility world. I want you to know that you are not alone, even when things feel tough and when things feel like they aren't going your way. The tools and techniques you will get in this podcast, I know, can change everything for you too. So thanks for being here with me today and let's dive in. Hello and welcome back.
Speaker 1:Today I want to talk to you about perception and why I truly believe and know that perception is everything. So when I'm talking about perception, when you live in your five senses every single day, you are creating your environment and you are creating your perception. For example, if you look into your bank account and you see a certain amount of money, that is your perceived truth of the amount of money. In any given second, that money could change, but you look at that and you will make decisions based off the money that you have in your bank account. That is the same thing that you will do with any type of perception. So if you wanted to apply for a job and you think you could get it that is your perception you'll take actions towards applying for that job in hopes of getting that job. If you don't perceive that you could get that job, you won't apply for it. So you based off of your perception, you will make actions and decisions based off of what you perceive that you can do.
Speaker 1:We are not trained or taught to think from the end or to connect to goals or desires or dreams. There can be a lot of emotional impacts tied up in connecting to the end, especially when it comes to fertility. There can be a lot of emotions when you think of am I greedy, am I silly for wanting this? Maybe I'm not meant to have this? All of the above. We are not trained or taught to connect with our desires or our goals or dreams. I can't tell you how many people I talk to where you know what they're really comfortable in their job, they like their job, they have a comfortable lifestyle and they're like I have more than enough, especially when you are aware of different economic situations or different parts and different things that are going on in the world and I'm staying away from politics, but this is your perception. Everyone's different perception of success is different. Sometimes, success is tied up in the certain amount of money that you make. Sometimes your perception of success can be by how many clients you have or the accomplishments or degrees that you have.
Speaker 1:So I want to talk to you about your assumptions about you and your perception of you and your assumptions you make every single day that create your perception, and I want to really tie this into your fertility journey. I want you to think about your perception of your fertility journey. Go back to the very first moment when you and your partner decided you wanted to create your family. What was your perception? Was it going to be easy? Was it going to be exciting? Think of that perception. And when you live in your 3D environment and your five senses and month after month after month goes by and you're not getting pregnant, or maybe you've experienced grief or loss or emotional impacts along the way, maybe you're hearing chatter from the inside of you, which is your self-image. Maybe you're hearing chatter from your partner, family, friends, you know, and, especially when you're on a fertility journey, people around you give you great advice. I'm saying that sarcastically because you will hear all of the things of why it doesn't work or just relax Not going to go into all of those things, but we've all heard them and you think, thank you, I wish I could just relax. What is your perception of money? How do you feel when you pay for fertility treatments? How do you make decisions? If your perceived reality is one thing, you are going to make decisions based off of that.
Speaker 1:I had a client email me a couple weeks ago when we've been emailing back and forth I apologize, I shouldn't call her client. This is just someone that has sent me an email and she said to me I can't pay for your services. For the last couple years my husband and I have saved up enough for we believe of what we know the cost to be for one round of IVF. She asked a lot of advice because she said to me I am so terrified to spend this money and start the fertility treatments and then have to stop if it doesn't work. And then she said right now it's easier for me to try naturally and keep hoping and wanting because at least there's hope. She said. I can't handle shattered hope of starting and then just having it end and being completely crushed. So we've been emailing back and forth and that's what created this episode of perception. I asked her to journal a lot of things and I will share those towards the end of the episode of the questions I asked her to journal so she could understand her perception. I also wanted her to understand her husband's perception, which brings me into a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1:I attended a virtual event by Bob Proctor. It was called Paradigm Shift and he held up a book and he was talking about perception and someone on the stage asked them both. They called on a person in the audience and they said okay, describe your book. And on Bob Proctor's side there was gold writing On the person in the audience. On their side it was completely blank. So when the person in the audience said it's black, it's blank, and Bob Proctor said my book is black, but it also has gold writing, who is right and who is wrong? Neither one. It's your perception of the situation. They're both looking at the same book, but there's two sides of the book. One person was looking at something completely blank. One person was looking at the side that had writing. This is your perception. This is you living in your five senses. What you see is what you believe to be true.
Speaker 1:Again, I'll repeat we are not taught to think from the end. So how can you do end result thinking and do those actions from the end and bring them into now? So one of the things I emailed with this lady is I said to her you know what? Could you go into a baby store and could you pick out your car seat? And I said if you don't feel comfortable going in, you know, in the moment of acting as if that you are pregnant, you're picking out your car seat you can very much go in and say you know, I'm an aunt, I'm a friend, I just wanted to get more information on a car seat because I wanted to buy this for my friend.
Speaker 1:This is called gathering the evidence. You are gathering the evidence, you're picking out the car seat, you're getting all the knowledge because this is what you want to buy when baby's here. But these are actions from the end result because typically, when you're on a fertility journey, these are things you wouldn't do, because that's what you'll do once you find out you're pregnant or once you're a certain stage in your pregnancy you can. If you don't feel comfortable going into stores, you can research online. If you're not a huge visualized person, then create a vision board so that you can see the car seat or the stroller or the baby clothes or your nursery. You can physically see it and then you can use that what you're seeing in front of you, and then maybe you can walk to your nursery room and hold this vision board in front of the door and start to now see the things that you want. So I wanna share something with you. This is something that I did, and I shared this in my email Is that at my eight week appointment in my first pregnancy with my twins, this was our fourth transfer.
Speaker 1:We had just found out that morning that we were pregnant with twins and on our way home I had this like intuitive hit. I didn't call it an intuitive hit back then to my husband I was like, oh, let's stop at this baby store. I had been searching for the absolute perfect double stroller and I thought I just wanna go in and see the prices, because every store prices range. And I just said I wanna actually see it and feel it and like know that this is it? Because the baby store that we went to actually has car seats and strollers and everything, and I also wanted to make sure that it would hold the car seats in this stroller. So when I was because I knew I was having twins and this was all part of my visualization was I wanted to have the perfect double stroller and I bought it that day. This was something different. I was acting in faith, something that my husband followed me with. But because I was changing my perception around money, I was changing my perception around everything. I was able to buy things differently, in faith, versus buying things in fear or having limiting beliefs.
Speaker 1:So when I went up and I was asking the woman like what car seats go really well with this Cause, I hadn't got to the point of the car seats, but I just said which one works best with this stroller? Because this is the stroller that I wanted. I said it had to be a double stroller. And she goes are you pregnant with twins? And I said yes, and she goes oh, my goodness, congratulations, how far along are you? I said I'm eight weeks and she goes oh, honey. She said, sweetie, you know what? Wait till you're a little bit further along, and the funny thing is is that in that morning in the appointment, yes, we found out that they were having twins, but they also cautioned that you could have a vanishing twin. That was back in 2014. I don't know if that is still a medical condition or not, but that was something that they really talked about of a vanishing twin.
Speaker 1:So it was funny, because when I was, you know, asking the woman all these questions about this and like she was showing me car seats, that and how they click in and how you can either buy like a universal adapter thing to put them in the stroller, or XYZ that's a whole another tangent. But we got to I decided right then and there, no, this was it, this was the absolute stroller that I was going to get. And she said do you wanna buy an extended 90 day warranty? And I said what do I need a warranty for? And she said you know what? Maybe we'll change it as a return. And she said and I'm gonna throw this in for free? And I said okay, why? And she said well, she said you're very early in your pregnancy, sweetie. And I just said, no, it's okay, and I could feel the chatter starting inside of me, but I went no, I am purchasing this because I know this is the stroller that I wanted and it was the last one that they had. She told me it sells out fast because you can use it as a double stroller for different children as well. Like you can use it for like an infant car seat and just like a regular stroller seat. Like you can use it for multiple children. It doesn't have to be a twin stroller, but it was a double stroller.
Speaker 1:And you know, my husband and I talked the whole way home because he had a lot of chatter going on and because I hadn't really started studying universal laws or anything. I had just started learning about gratitude and law of attraction. I didn't know what I was doing. The way I know what I was doing now, looking back and be like, oh, I held faith, I did this, I did that. But I was just so connected because every day I was looking at my vision board, and buying that stroller made it so much more real for me. That's why I really encourage my clients to go into the baby stores or create a vision board or to really just take actions from the end result of things that you can do now?
Speaker 1:Why don't you go online and shop for maternity clothes? You don't have to buy them, but start picking out fun clothes that will make you feel confident and sexy as your body changes throughout your pregnancy. You can connect with those feelings, but this is all part of your perception and I wanna talk about perception because, as you're starting to open up your awareness and understand where your thoughts are, are you vibrating at a low frequency, a neutral frequency or a higher sorry, I shouldn't say frequency vibrations? So think about your everyday life, when you're living in your five senses, when you wake up to the moment you go to bed, do you have? You know, you're kind of up and down, good, oh, okay, oh, that wasn't so great, like most people are. Are you aware of where your thoughts are going? Do you hear news or absorb news and just be like, okay, yeah, that's how it is? Are you operating daily on a lower vibration? Are you neutral or are you higher? So when you're thinking about the end result, you're gonna start operating at a higher vibration because you're starting to connect to your goals, your desires and dreams and you're bringing that to you now.
Speaker 1:What can you do right now and I share this because I think it's so important. I want you to think about your perceptions, your partner's perceptions, and I want you to think about your fertility journey together. Are you both perceiving the journey the same? Is one partner more excited than the other? Is one partner holding the faith for both of you? I want you to start thinking about the chatter.
Speaker 1:So here's kind of an example. We're gonna give you an office type situation. If you walked into your office at work and you saw two coworkers talking, they looked up quickly and then they just kept talking. Where does your thoughts go? Do you just continue on like, oh, they're having a conversation, do you go join the conversation? Or do you just kind of like, oh, and you go into your office or your desk or whatever and put your head down, get to work, but then throughout the day, I thought you, the thought pops up like did I do something? Did I forget something? Was I late?
Speaker 1:And you start reviewing all the conversations that you've had with someone. Did you offend someone? If you're there, this is part of your perceived perception and these are part of where your assumptions lie. You assumed that maybe they were talking about you. You assumed that you did something wrong and Assumptions gets me into a whole nother podcast episode of where our assumptions lie. But these are all part of your perceptions and how you make decisions. If you think you can do something, you will start to take actions towards it because that's your perception. You think you can do it. If you don't think you can do it, then you won't take actions towards it. So how does that rely to your? How does that connect to your fertility journey? If you think that you can go forward, you will.
Speaker 1:So many years ago I was sitting in a coffee shop with a woman and she was asking lots of questions about my fertility journey. I was an open book. It was before I was a fertility mindset coach and she looked at me and she said I couldn't do what you did. And I said that's okay and she was sharing a bit of her journey. She wasn't in a fertility clinic by any means and she had received crushing news and she had had a few miscarriages. And she looked at me and she said I can't do this anymore. She said I would love to have a baby, but I can't go through another loss. I can't go through the pain of this anymore. And I just sat with her and I felt her emotions and I just comforted her and I just said you have to make the decision that feels the honest, best truth for you, and she has created a beautiful life, but that was her ultimate decision. I hold no judgment, because here's the thing that I want to share with you.
Speaker 1:Grief is entangled in every part of your fertility journey. Grief can come in many forms. It can come in the form of maybe you're grieving that you have to know be in a fertility clinic, that you couldn't get pregnant naturally. You are grieving a failed transfer or a miscarriage However you define those terms. Maybe you are grieving the finances that you have to spend just to have a baby and you think about where all that money could have been spent if you got pregnant naturally. Maybe you even have had a successful pregnancy, but you're grieving that you have embryos still frozen in a fertility clinic and you don't know what to do with them.
Speaker 1:Grief comes in many forms and in many different ways, and that's only just touching on some of the topics of grief. You can also grieve that you made the final decision to not continue on with a fertility journey. So I'm sharing that because that is also part of a perception. If you feel like you cannot do this, you won't take actions towards it. I want you to think about that for a minute. This is all part of your perceptions. When you look at your bank account, in that quick snippet of a moment or second in time, that becomes your truth. This is what your bank account tells you.
Speaker 1:If you hear news from a doctor or you've been given a diagnosis, that now becomes your perception. You now have to work within the parameters of this diagnosis. But that's what I'm here for when I say you're not your diagnosis. How can you take actions from the end result and how can you spend time living in gratitude, finding joy in your journey right now to change your perception of your everyday life? And be in gratitude, be in love, be in joy, being in your imagination, connecting to what it is that you want, visualizing, feeling, all the feelings. That's how the universe can work with you to give you all the things that you desire.
Speaker 1:But when you were in your perceived world that nothing is working, it didn't happen in your timeframe. Your biological clock is ticking. Your relationship with your partner is becoming strained. Your intimacy now feels like a chore instead of this moment of connecting. This is your perception. This is where I want you to understand. When you change your perception, you change your world. Bob Proctor was known for telling people you have a perception problem. When you tell him things aren't working because of this and this, he said you have a perception problem. Change your perception, your world changes.
Speaker 1:When I first heard that years and years ago, I thought I don't really understand this. Now I really understand this. I started to understand me. I started to understand my thinking. I started to understand my limiting beliefs. I started to understand because I perceived I could do something, I took actions and if I perceived that I couldn't, I wouldn't.
Speaker 1:So this brings me into questions, things that I started asking myself on my secondary fertility journey, once I really started understanding or had an awareness of universal laws and a bigger idea of what the law of attraction was because that's only one of the universal laws and I was really understanding gratitude and my vibrations and my frequencies and things like that. So I asked myself do I have a faith? Do I have a faith in my body that it can carry a second, it can go through a second pregnancy? Do I have a faith that I am worthy enough to do this, as I'm bringing my family through a secondary fertility journey. Do I have a faith in fertility medicine? Do I have a faith in my doctor? And, more than anything, do I have an all-knowing faith in myself that I will have my second pregnancy, my third child? Mine was all around my faith in me, because there was a lot of that negative chatter going on of you're greedy for wanting to extend your family more. You already have three stepdaughters. You already have healthy twins. Stop being greedy. That was the dominant thought in my head for a while and I chose to keep choosing my thoughts away from it.
Speaker 1:But these are the questions that I want you to ask yourself, especially when you're perception. You're just starting to learn about your perception. What are you afraid of? So let me repeat that again what are you afraid of? The second question what stories or memories really bother you? What stories or memories really bother you? Third question what have you not forgiven yourself for? What have you not forgiven yourself for Number four? What have you not forgiven someone else for? What have you not forgiven someone else for Number five? Is there anything you feel ashamed of? Is there anything you feel ashamed of? Or about Number six. What do you wish you could change? What do you wish you could change? So I want you to journal those questions tonight, every day for two weeks. So I'm saying that because if you do those every day for two weeks, you know what. The first couple days you might be writing the exact same answers, but then all of a sudden, there's going to be a point where you start to get deeper. This is all part of understanding your perception, where you are vibrating every day, where you hold limiting beliefs, where you are feeling, where you're making choices out of I can't tell you how many clients, and I've done this the same. So please understand. There's no judgment.
Speaker 1:If you have a certain amount of embryos, or maybe you've already experienced some failed transfers, your perception is you're looking at your embryos, how many do you have left, how much money can you spend? And how many more transfers, how much more emotionally, can you go through? So maybe your first transfer was two embryos and then you start to think this was me. Maybe I should only transfer one, because now I'm starting to use up my embryos and that scares me the fear. I made a decision based off my perception that I didn't have enough embryos, because I didn't know how long I was going to be on this fertility journey, I didn't know how much more I could spend. And then here's the opposite If you only have so many embryos, but you only have a certain amount of money, sometimes you will transfer more embryos at the beginning so that you have a better chance, because maybe this is the one and only hope, or one and only transfer that you can do. So you're throwing it all in there. Or maybe you have a smaller amount of embryos, so the first one, you only transfer one, because you think, well, if this is successful, I get a healthy baby. And then you think, you know what, maybe it didn't work. And now you're going on and you're saying absolutely two this time, because I really want to guarantee that this one works.
Speaker 1:However you are, in whatever situation you are, you have a perceived perception and you're taking actions out of that perception. I want you to take actions out of faith. I want you to take actions out of the all knowing and taking actions from the end. I want you to understand your perception. So if you fall into this category, I want to ask you this question If you could have it all, if you knew without a shadow of a doubt that you were going to have your desired family, how many embryos would you truly desire to transfer? Do you want to transfer two at the beginning? Do you want to transfer one at the beginning? I know in the state sometimes you can transfer more than two embryos. I know here in Canada if there is an underlying medical condition or there is lower graded embryos, but you still choose to go ahead and transfer them. Sometimes they can transfer up to three. So I want you to look at the scope of this. Where is your perception and where are you making decisions out of? Because you're doing things based off of what you think that you can do and then guaranteeing next time you could still do something else.
Speaker 1:That's not acting out of faith and that's okay, because if you can't act out of faith right now, you want to build that ladder of belief and I don't want to encourage you to make a decision if you are going to have nonstop chatter in the background. When I say an all-knowing faith, I mean you have unwavering faith that this is happening for you, that you are going to carry a baby or however you choose to grow your family. When you hold that faith and, if you can hold that faith, take actions. The thing is is that if you take an action because someone told you to take an action, but you have limiting beliefs around it, you're very much contradicting yourself, and I want to bring that part up Because I'm not encouraging you do this for this. No, I want you to work within your parameters, but I want you to ask yourself the questions, because if you say this is my perception right now on my fertility journey, I'm making these decisions based off of this. If I was in my end result connected to all the feelings, would I change my decision differently? If the answer is yes, then change it to how you would change it differently. If the answer stays the same, then keep it the same.
Speaker 1:I'm just trying to get you to understand how people take actions out of a perception that they have. I want you to understand that you can take actions from the end result that cost you no money, but get you in that feeling, because feeling really is everything. And when you perceive things to be working for you or that life is finally happening for you instead of to you, when you can change your belief, when you can change the way you feel. Everything changes when you change your perception. You change your world. When you expand your awareness of your thoughts, your beliefs, your actions, your world changes.
Speaker 1:So I want you to take time journal these questions over the next two weeks, because I think it is so imperative for you to understand where you're operating and how you can start to change your perception of your world and start living a better life. Start finding more joy in your fertility journey. Start realizing that you have far more control when you use your mental faculties, which is gratitude, imagination, joy and feeling all the feelings and selecting your thoughts the way you want them to be and ignoring your five senses. Your five senses are not your reality. It is a created reality that you have chosen to create, whether you are aware of it or not, and whether you choose to create this reality or not.
Speaker 1:I am not talking about your fertility as your created reality, but I am talking about how you perceive your reality every single day, and once you change that, you can change your world. So I am sending you so much love and so much gratitude for being here with me today. Thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Love you. If you found this helpful or know anyone that needs to hear this, please share and don't forget to leave a review and subscribe. In love and gratitude, jessica.