Hey, Hey, Welcome Back!
Navigating the holiday season while on a fertility journey can be challenging. As your host, Jessica Friesen, a certified fertility mindset coach, I've walked this path and can attest to the emotional triggers that can arise during family celebrations and conversations. I invite you to join this insightful discussion where I address these complexities head-on, exploring the coexistence of hope and fear while offering coping strategies. Prepare to find a renewed sense of self through self-care, setting boundaries, and cultivating an expectant energy.
Self-care takes center stage in this conversation. I'll share how I initially viewed self-care as selfish and how my perspective entirely changed over time. I'll guide you through exercises to prioritize activities that fill your heart with joy, and we'll also explore how setting boundaries can protect your energy and emotional health during family gatherings. Together, we'll celebrate finding joy in the journey rather than waiting for a particular milestone.
Let's end with the empowering idea of choosing our feelings, a concept that might seem elusive, especially when facing fertility struggles. We'll delve into the transformative power of visualizing positive outcomes and setting our emotional 'weather' for the day. As part of this empowering journey, I invite you to join the 10-day challenge, where we'll plan out how we want to feel each day. Remember, even when things feel tough, you're not alone on this journey. Tune in, and let's navigate this together, one step at a time.
In Love, light 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!
Navigating the holiday season while on a fertility journey can be challenging. As your host, Jessica Friesen, a certified fertility mindset coach, I've walked this path and can attest to the emotional triggers that can arise during family celebrations and conversations. I invite you to join this insightful discussion where I address these complexities head-on, exploring the coexistence of hope and fear while offering coping strategies. Prepare to find a renewed sense of self through self-care, setting boundaries, and cultivating an expectant energy.
Self-care takes center stage in this conversation. I'll share how I initially viewed self-care as selfish and how my perspective entirely changed over time. I'll guide you through exercises to prioritize activities that fill your heart with joy, and we'll also explore how setting boundaries can protect your energy and emotional health during family gatherings. Together, we'll celebrate finding joy in the journey rather than waiting for a particular milestone.
Let's end with the empowering idea of choosing our feelings, a concept that might seem elusive, especially when facing fertility struggles. We'll delve into the transformative power of visualizing positive outcomes and setting our emotional 'weather' for the day. As part of this empowering journey, I invite you to join the 10-day challenge, where we'll plan out how we want to feel each day. Remember, even when things feel tough, you're not alone on this journey. Tune in, and let's navigate this together, one step at a time.
In Love, light 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. Today. I want to give you some tools and techniques to start using right now to get you ready for the holidays.
Speaker 1:Speaking from experience, I know the holidays can be tough for a lot of people, but it can be even tougher when you're on a fertility journey and you're attending celebrations with family or friends that are expecting or already have young children, and just the conversations. That can be not very tactful, and I know I truly believe this is. My belief is that when people say things, they're not saying it with a nasty intent, but words can really hurt and it like no matter where you are in your fertility journey. You have those feelings and there's emotional triggers everywhere. For me, when I was on my fertility journeys and it was around the holidays, triggers for me were when the stories started changing over for Christmas, because Christmas for me, growing up, was like a magical time. I didn't grow up in a household that had a lot of money, so when there was presence from Santa under the tree and it was like an easy bake oven or it was something that you asked for, that you did not think that you were going to get like, that was so magical. And we had big family celebrations with my aunts and uncles and cousins on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and they were always so fun until they weren't. Because as I got older and I was surrounded with family members that were getting married and growing their family and having those experiences, I know how tough it can be and you know triggers of going into the store and thinking of the duality.
Speaker 1:You're excited, depending on what your family celebrations are and things, but you're excited for you know, maybe it's good food, maybe it's a certain tradition or whatever it is you're excited about, but you also have that longing, that yearning and that gut wrenching feeling in your tummy. And then you know the chatter starts within your head of is this ever going to happen for me? And as much as you can feel genuine excitedness when you see nieces or nephews or your friends kids, it still just gives you that instant feeling of like this is not where I want to be. Yes, it's nice to be around family and friends and yes, it's nice to feel the holiday cheer, but really inside you aren't where you want to be. And even if you are in a spot in your journey where you're gearing up, thinking I'm, you know we're about to start our IVF for the very first time, or fertility treatments, wherever you are, you can be filled with so much hope. But yet there's also that lingering fear of but what if this doesn't work? What if I'm spending all of this money and it doesn't work at all? And you know you're trying to be excited at Christmas.
Speaker 1:But you really feel these different things around holiday seasons, and I'm not just talking about big holiday seasons like Christmas, but again, it depends on your family traditions. It depends on family celebrations. Do you have big birthday celebrations? Do you have? You know, do you celebrate Thanksgiving? Because you know Canadian and the American Thanksgiving are very different times. But being around family and friends when you're supposed to be in this joyous time, when you're really struggling, can be really hard.
Speaker 1:So my DMs have been going crazy the last couple weeks and I thought I want to bring this to the podcast. I want to spread you love and joy and gratitude. I want to give you things that you can do, to start practicing now that can get you in a place, when you start your holiday celebrations, that you can be, and one of the the DMs that I got with someone said I don't have a lot of big family celebrations, but is it okay to cancel Christmas in my house? Because I'm just absolutely devastated and I just thought, my goodness, like I really just want to help anyone that I can that is willing to hear what it is that I'm trying to say, because you know what this? It does not seem fair, it does not seem like. It honestly seems beyond cool. Why, why? Why do we have to experience these things? And how do you get into a place when you are surrounded by people who are getting pregnant without even trying, when you know everything that you've done in your power right now to get pregnant and to grow your family or start your family, and this is where you are.
Speaker 1:So, speaking from someone that's had experience, I've gone through many Christmases, you know, in both ways. I want to relate to everyone here. So I've had Christmases before I had my twins where I saw people pregnant family members, friends and the holidays felt a little harder and no matter much, no matter how much I tried to hide behind my smile and try and really act happy, it still felt tough. And people that I follow, people that are in my network, they talk about Christmas hope and Christmas magic and how they have a Christmas ornament that has their Christmas wish inside of it to have either grow their family or to have a family, and every year that they hang that ornament on their tree it's just a constant reminder that their hope is dwindling because what they want is not here in physical form.
Speaker 1:So I can also contest to my secondary journey where I knew I wasn't done. I knew I wanted to have more children and there was a lot of things going on in my life, including finances, that were stopping us from growing our family and that was really hard. I would go into stores when the store started changing over and I would see stockings and I would start to just feel so like my stomach would just drop and it'd be like when I hang my stockings, I want to see my baby's name on there, I want to see mom, dad, and this and that trigger was still there for me when I was on my secondary fertility journey. So I've experienced it from both ends and I would say honestly, depending on where I was, some Christmases were easier, some Christmases were harder.
Speaker 1:And in full transparency, going through a secondary fertility journey, I struggled a bit more in certain aspects, but I also had mindset tools that I dove into, and now I have even more mindset tools that I want to share with you, because there was a lot of chatter that started going like you have so much to be grateful for right now. Focus on that gratitude. Do not focus on the things that you want that you don't have right now. And again, there was the instant chatter. I spent a lot of time beating myself up. I spent a lot of time in duality, being excited for holidays but also feeling this gut wrenching lack that was inside. I spent a lot of time beating myself up saying like I have so much to be grateful for. How am I not feeling gratitude for everything I have? How is this not enough? Are you greedy? What is wrong with you? I won't go into all the details of the conversations I had with myself in my head, of all the negative self-talk that went on, so let's get into the nitty gritty. What are things that you can do right now?
Speaker 1:I never believed in self-care. For a very long time. I always thought self-care was very selfish. As a treat, once a year on my birthday, I would get a manicure and a pedicure, like getting my nails done, getting things like that. Those were never on the top priority and they don't have to be for you either. But what is something that you love? What are experiences that just allow you to feel in a state of ease versus in a state of dis-ease or a state of a lower vibration that is not serving you.
Speaker 1:The more I study and the more I'm really diving into spirituality, I'm really learning a lot more things, but self-care was something that I started adapting. What can I do to mentally prepare myself if I know I'm going to an event or I know I'm going to a gathering. Not everyone has the same opinions as you or the same feelings like. We all have our own things going on within our life and that doesn't mean everyone has to resonate with what we're saying or feeling or starting to dive into because it's not in their awareness or it's just something that they don't want to believe in or I don't want to go on that whole tangent. But self-care, so find yourself. There's so many free things online that you can do, like a 30 day self-care challenge and start today. Other things that you can do right now is it make sure that you prioritize reading or having a bath or doing exercises or having a glass of wine at night, if that's something that relaxes you and it's not hindering where you are in your fertility journey. Just think of things that you can do on a daily basis.
Speaker 1:Is it meditation and what I adapted that I felt that really tipped the scales for me a week before every day, for a week before my family gathering or wherever it was that I was going, where I knew not everyone believed in mindset or manifestation. They weren't into anything that I would really talk about. I would start playing scenarios in my head. What is the best case scenario? What is the worst case scenario? And then you take that worst case scenario and you flip it around. How can you protect yourself if there's conversations that you don't want to have?
Speaker 1:I'm saying this because some people are very open about their fertility journey with their family and friends. Some people are very closed off and that's why I'm mentioning this as one of the things is, if you are not in a place to want to be able to talk about where you are, or maybe you're keeping this one a secret because you're so excited but you don't want to have people's vibrations or people's words or opinions that are going to start attaching to you that you might start feeling or believing or questioning. What are things that you can instantly do that could get you out of a conversation or a topic that you don't want to talk about with your fertility journey and that is very unique to you. But here's an example. If someone was just saying, oh, how is your journey going right now? How can I help you? You can easily just say you know what? I am in a really good place, me and my partner in a really good place, but we like to keep this really intimate to us right now, because we've got some decisions to make and however you want to make it light and airy, or you can even just simply say you know what. We're not really talking about that right now. Can we talk about something else, however? You know how to judge your family or your friends and how you can have that conversation.
Speaker 1:But the reason I say that because that is part of self care, that is part of not putting yourself in situations where you can lower your vibration and that takes you out of joy over the holidays, because in most common practice, once you have more of a conversation that you do not want to be part of, either you don't feel good for the rest of the evening because you're reevaluating what you might have said that might have offended, or just you engaged in a conversation you didn't want to be in and it left you feeling that lower vibrational feeling again. If you get yourself out of that, then you can keep yourself more in joy. So have those things like the worst case scenario of people just asking you questions you don't want to answer. If you are not in those situations for the whole week going up, be excited to see your family or your friends or whatever celebration, maybe it's a work Christmas party, but get yourself into a high vibration. What do you want to see for that night? And I want you to spend time connecting with that feeling so that you become in an expectant feeling, versus going in saying you know what, I'm just going to try and enjoy the night and you know what, I'm just going to try and have fun. Because the statement itself you've labeled I'm going to try, which leaves interpretation for you're open to the fact you may not have fun If you go in with an expectant energy.
Speaker 1:You're putting yourself in a higher vibration. You're getting excited for the event, you're getting excited for the celebration. You're getting excited, you're raising your vibration and you're thinking about it and you're expecting what you want to see, or that feeling or the conversations. So I'm not saying, expect certain conversations or things, but expect yourself to have a really wonderful night, expect yourself to be free spirited, expect yourself to just be open to having fun. Because here's the honesty, guys, when you are on your fertility journey, so many people don't believe that they are allowed to find fun right now, because it's once I get pregnant or once I hit a certain milestone in my pregnancy, or once my baby is earth side, then I can start having fun. You are always holding off joy when you do that. Have fun because, no matter what, every day is a gift. Every day is your moment to be living your best life. Every day is a new start.
Speaker 1:So do you want to live it in a place of so consumed with your fertility journey and so consumed of where you are not that you can't find joy and just having a conversation with someone about, oh my goodness, I want to go on this trip? Allow yourself to dream with people, because I can honestly say from clients and from my own experience, especially when I was in financial things and people would talk about going on trips, I would be like I would love to go on a trip right now. I would love that, but all my money is tied up in fertility treatments, so that's not an option for me and I completely worked myself out of feeling excited for my family or friend or coworker or whatever and I just instantly pulled everything back to me and back to this lower vibration feeling. So I want to tell you, I want you to get to a place where you can be like, oh my gosh, how fun would that trip be right now. Daydreaming is fricking phenomenal. So imagine yourself go engage in this conversation and be like, oh my gosh, what if we just went to Hawaii right now, together? How fun would that be, even though you know that that's not happening because you're not going to Hawaii. Maybe you could, maybe that is an option for you. You're like screw it, I'm going to be spontaneous and I'm just going to go to Hawaii next week If that's something that you can financially do or something that you want to do. But just daydreaming with someone for a moment is a wonderful thing. Start talking about like oh my gosh, how amazing would it be just to put our feet in the sand, how amazing would it be to swim in the ocean or to suntan or not have to be at work for a whole week. You can think of the limitless possibilities that your mind can go to. So when you're at your family events or you're at your holidays, I want you to allow yourself to engage in conversations that are safe for you, and this is what I mean when I say set your boundaries for the whole week before, or even start today. Think of conversations that people your family and friends may want to have with you and if you're okay to engage in them, engage in them. If you're not, if you say no, that's not an okay thing. Just start to think of certain things that you can say to gear the conversation that can get you guys into a fun, positive conversation that doesn't leave either one of you kind of walking away feeling embarrassed or awkward or feeling like I just wish I didn't have that conversation, or making you feel like, hey, you know what, maybe I want to leave this function a little bit early, because I'm just so into the moment Of feeling all of the emotions of I am not where I want to be. So, number one, I want you to set your boundaries. Number two, I want you to engage in conversations. I want you to engage your imagination.
Speaker 1:And if you are surrounded by people that are expecting, or you are surrounded by people that have young children if family members or friends have young children, absolutely let yourself light up. How would you feel if these children were yours? And maybe even if you are an aunt or an uncle, how would you feel and how would you want someone around you that was struggling with infertility to treat your children or to treat you? Put yourself in other people's shoes too, to try and give yourself more perspective. But if you start to feel that like that yearning, if you start to feel that like lack when you look at these kids and be like you know what they genuinely light you up, but you just start to think like, when am I going to get that? Flip your perspective, one thing that I am really starting to grasp and understand and know when. This is now what I am putting into my coaching with my clients.
Speaker 1:Hope is such a beautiful thing and I have said that from the beginning. It is the first step. It is absolutely the first step. It's allowing your awareness to hope that these things can come in your life. But there is very much a difference between hope, faith and knowing. So faith is the next step, is where you have faith that one day you will become a parent, one day you will get to have your children or baby. You will get to have this, and the knowing state is absolutely knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, that this is going to happen. This state is very I don't want to say it's hard, but when you have all the chatter going on in the inside and you're going through your fertility treatments, you're going through your journey and every part of you around you is saying this isn't working, or right now is not your time, or XYZ. The knowing part is the hardest part. It's easier to stay in faith and it's easier to stay in hope than it is to stay in knowing.
Speaker 1:Because if you knew, if you like I've said this in other podcast episodes if you knew that on this time, in this date, you were going to get pregnant, or this was the day that your baby was going to be born via you or surrogacy, or, however, this is the day that you would get to hold your baby, you would live your life very differently. I truly believe that the grief would still exist as you go through the process, and it didn't work at that. You know IUI or that embryo transfer or things like that, but you would say you know what. I know that this isn't my time. I know you. I feel like you could move through grief with far more ease and grace than the ugly, nitty gritty part of grieving, where it is painful and it sucks and it's filled with so much uncertainty and so many questions. So I really want you to go to a place of faith at least, if you can't go to a place of knowing so when you see those kids or you see that you know two week old baby or four month, five month old baby, whatever age hold that baby with so much love and just have this feeling of like next Christmas or whenever my time is, I'm going to be passing my baby around to my family members or to my friends and I get to watch people's eyes light up at my baby and Google and go like you know what I mean like go all crazy of how sweet and how cute my little one is. I want you to tap into that feeling. I please understand. I know sometimes it feels way easier said than done, but if you start practicing that now, start practicing how you feel when you hold a baby. Start practicing when you hear little kids, like fighting or laughing or giggling or ripping open presents if you have celebrations, that open presents. Feel that feeling and tell yourself how you want to feel, to get into that expectant state. Tell yourself that I am now in a faith state or a knowing state versus a hopeful state, because when you start to do that, you can enjoy the holidays. I also want you to practice right now.
Speaker 1:You're giving yourself permission to have fun. So many people do not give themselves permission to have fun. How can you have fun when you're going through such a shit time? How can you have fun when everyone around you is going or has or is having what you want? You can. It is a choice. It is a choice and I know that can be hard to hear, but it is a choice Choose to allow yourself for this night only. You're not going to think about your fertility journey. You are just going to soak up, being with your family, being with your friends, being surrounded by coworkers, whatever your event or holiday celebrations are. Just allow yourself to be in love and joy and gratitude. And this is one thing that I want to talk about gratitude, because I'm teaching you right now about how to get into joy, but now I want you to get into gratitude.
Speaker 1:The hot topic is how the F do you feel gratitude when you don't have what you want? You can find gratitude in every area of your life, and there is a very again, there's a very big difference of knowing what gratitude is, what you think gratitude is in actually experience gratitude. So I want you to list a minimum of 20 things, of things that you're grateful for in life, and I don't mean don't write I'm grateful for my house, I'm grateful that I have heat, I'm grateful that I have clean air, I'm grateful that I live in this part of the country. I'm grateful, no, when I say I want you to write things that you're grateful for, I want you to write down things that have like experiences that you have truly felt so grateful for, big or small. They don't have to be big, grand things. So really think about those things. They will be very unique to you.
Speaker 1:But think about, for an example, something that I was incredibly grateful for. For my 30th birthday, my husband threw me a surprise party and I honestly assumed that it would just be family and close friends. My husband surprised me and invited some of my college friends and when they showed up and they surprised me, I was in tears and I was like, holy crap, you guys are here. I haven't seen you in two or three or four years. My God, thank you, thank you, thank you. And it was one of those moments where I was just so grateful to be with family and friends and just be. Maybe you're so grateful for your wedding. Maybe you're grateful for what a co-worker. You were really sick and a co-worker switched to shift with you, maybe, and you felt so grateful.
Speaker 1:I mean things that omit a higher frequency, not like, yes, you can be thankful for your house, you can be thankful that you have heat, you can be thankful that you have air conditioning if you have air conditioning, you can be thankful. But those are things that you experience every day coming home or walking into a warm house. But if you have never experienced the opposite of not being able to come in, like come into a house, you've lived on the streets then you would feel massive gratitude for your house, because you know the opposite of that I'm talking about. I really want you to find a gratitude, something that, like, has touched your heart so much. Maybe it was a gift, maybe it was a feeling that someone gave you. Think about things, and if you can't think of 20, that's okay. I encourage you to keep working on that list because things will remind you over time. It doesn't have to all be done in five minutes of just quickly writing it down. Take the week, take up until you do your holidays, but think of gratitude. Maybe it is that you are so incredibly grateful that you get to have family celebrations or that you have a family, that you are not an only child or you are not things I can only tell you, things that I'm incredibly grateful for and some of them I don't feel are always tactful for the podcast, because I know what you guys are going through, but there is so many things that I can truly say.
Speaker 1:I felt such gratitude for the weather when I was driving an hour plus to fertility treatments. I would honestly feel such gratitude that the weather was there that I was not stressed out, white knuckling, driving through snow and crazy conditions just to get to an appointment just for blood work or just for something else. I honestly felt gratitude because, again, my husband and I drove through the most intense winter storm months where we could not see anything. We didn't at points, we didn't even know if we were on the road and we were following a transport truck and we could barely even see the lights in front of him. We were close, we tried to stay as close as possible because we knew if that transport truck was going to start going off the road, so were we If we stayed close enough that we could see the lights. That's another story for another day After experiencing that every time I drove through nice driving conditions, I felt such gratitude for weather that I was driving to an appointment, or I felt gratitude when my husband could come to appointments with me.
Speaker 1:That was a true gratitude of I don't have to do this by myself. We can have conversations, we can do things. I mean something that genuinely made you feel like, wow, I am so blessed or I'm so grateful that I got to experience this. So I want you to write 20 things and take your time doing it. Don't feel like you just have to rush through it to check it off the to-do list. I want you to take time, because the more you connect with your gratitude and I mean really connect with gratitude you can start enjoying the holidays more. When I started feeling grateful for all the things, I could start to open myself up to a higher vibration, which obviously means you attract higher vibrational things to you. I found myself being able to find more joy and gratitude. When I went out, I found myself able to laugh more, and all of these things are raising your vibration. Now I want you to step into love.
Speaker 1:So how do you feel love when you feel broken? How do you feel love when your world seems like it's turning upside down and you are surrounded by all the things that you wish and desire but you don't have? Do you have a strong love for yourself? Do you have a strong love for your partner? Do you have a strong love for family or friends? What does it feel like when you are surrounded by people that you care about? Do you feel love? Do you feel resentment because of, maybe, past childhood traumas? Do you feel things? But how could you feel more love? You choose. You can choose to love someone for who they are, but not be in harmony with the things that they're saying and just be like I love you, but I don't necessarily resonate with the things that you're saying. You can just be like. Maybe they need to have different awarenesses or different experiences, but where they are right now, you can love someone. For where they are right now, you can connect with your partner. Find fun things to do right now, whether it is date nights like crazy, if your schedule allows it or your finances allow it but find something that you can do every day to connect with more love with yourself. That goes into the self care Again. Maybe it's just having that warm bath. Maybe it is doing a workout where you can burn out some pent up energy. Maybe it's connecting to the earth. Maybe it's just lighting a candle and having your room, you know, fill up with a beautiful scent that you love.
Speaker 1:I want you to start feeling love. I want you to start loving yourself. I want you to start doing some mirror work, and when I say mirror work, I want you to go, look at yourself in a mirror and start telling yourself you are love, you represent love. You would love to have a baby. You love yourself. You love your partner, you love your spouse, you love your animals. You love, you know, a certain room or decor in your house. You love these things. Start thinking about all the things that you love. Start thinking about how you can love yourself more, and part of that is, again, self care.
Speaker 1:I urge you, maybe detox from social media for a little while. Maybe allow yourself a certain amount of time of like. Maybe you're only gonna go on for 30 minutes a day and it's gonna be after work so that if you do happen to see something that could be a trigger for you, you have the rest of the evening to do something that can raise your vibration, whether it's your workout, a bath, you know, going for a walk with a friend, going out for dinner, whatever it is that you want to do. But I also want you to spend time really connecting with your partner and yourself. Do something daily that lights you up. Maybe it's treating yourself to a coffee on the way to work at your favorite coffee shop, maybe it is, you know, you don't want to have to pack your lunch for work, so maybe you order something in for lunch or for dinner. Just think of different things that you would love to do.
Speaker 1:I want you to start connecting with love in all forms. I want you to start connecting with how amazing your life can be if you made different decisions every day. If you are always the second you wake up to the second that you go to bed, you are always making choices. So what if you were always making choices out of a higher good or a higher vibration? You woke up late and you say to yourself I'm not going to let this derail my day. I'm going to stay in an expectant love, an expectant joy, an expectant gratitude this does not define my day and start making different choices and trust me, I know there is so many ideas that can pop up or limitations that will say, well, I can't do that because of this. So, like, excuse me, ways to connect with your partner. Go on Google, go on Pinterest, go on YouTube, like type in, like adventure, challenge, type in connecting with my partner, maybe it's reading a book together. The five love languages is a great book. I suggest a lot of people read it because you get to know how you guys can connect differently because, again, when you are vibrating at a higher vibration, you become a vibrational match to the things that you want and as the more you vibrate higher, the higher things are attracted to you.
Speaker 1:I believe in miracles. I believe in so many things. I believe in Christmas magic, but I also believe that you are allowed to choose your thoughts for this day. Choose, or the days, if there's multiple events. I want you to get yourself in a place that you can start to feel love and joy and gratitude, and I also this is the last thing I want you to be able to have triggers for yourself that when you start to feel low, what can you do? Can you snap your finger? Do you wear elastics on your wrist or a bracelet that you can like just flick it for a second. What can you do to remind yourself? Okay, I am feeling this way. I don't need to right now. I wanna enjoy myself, I want to enjoy this event, I want to enjoy this and ultimately, I will say this.
Speaker 1:I will throw that out there, because someone did mention they wanted to cancel Christmas altogether and what I had said to them is I said, what would be the perfect scenario, what makes you want to cancel Christmas? What makes you want to stay at home and hide? What makes you want? And I asked her to journal all of these things. I asked her to journal so she could get crystal clear on what it is that she would absolutely love to do and why it has come to the conclusion, or the point of asking can I just cancel Christmas because I don't want to be around anyone because of everything that I'm going through? So, asking her what does she wanna feel versus how she's feeling, asking questions of could you maybe send out an email to your family members of? This is something I cannot talk about right now. I choose not to talk about. I would love to be at Christmas with you, but can we please not have these conversations. I got her journaling and asking, getting herself to ask questions so she can go into that expectant state, she can set her boundaries and she can ultimately decide, because I will not judge you.
Speaker 1:If you decide to cancel Christmas and you need to stay at home and you feel that that is the best and right decision for you, then that is the best and right decision for you in your space and in your emotions and what you're going through. So no, I will never say no, you can't do that. I will say journal these things, start to get crystal clear of what's going on inside and then make a decision based from that and then you have the ultimate decision of what feels right. And you understand you, I can't project my opinions or my things on you, because that's not fair. I am not in your shoes, I'm only in my shoes. So maybe have those triggers and if those triggers aren't working to get you out of the lower vibration, then maybe you do prepare yourself. Maybe you have, like you tap your nose a few times, a signal to your partner or whoever, that you know what if it's just too much, no matter what it is that you're trying to do, that you just it's time to go, so that you can have a bit of sanity. Then have a signal, have something that you know. Okay, you know what. It was nice that I got to be here, but I filled my cup to the point that I just I'm ready to go home now. I'm okay to go home now.
Speaker 1:So it's a lot of I shouldn't say it's a lot of it's journaling. I want you to journal the whole week. I want you to connect to your visualizations of your expectations. I want you to be able to enjoy the holidays where it does not feel so hard and for anyone that has that, year after year, they put a Christmas ornament or they put something out that reminds them that they don't have what it is that they want, I want you to journal. What is it that you would love? What is stopping you? What are your limitations? What are you afraid of? What would you do differently, now that time has passed, versus what you did when you made your decision? Ask yourself questions, get curious within yourself. Is this truly your decision? If it is, then how can you start finding joy? How can you start bringing more love into your life? How can you start feeling more gratitude? How can you start blessing and releasing these negative emotions, these lower vibrational emotions that are not serving you, so that you can keep going and connecting to your vibrational match and connecting to that frequency where everything exists. I want you to think about your beliefs. I want you to think about all the things I always talk about, but especially over the holidays, right now, when you can focus on love and joy and gratitude, you are in such a better place to go to those events or celebrations than when you just say you know what, I'll go, I'll see how it is, it's okay, if I need to leave, I'll leave.
Speaker 1:I want you to be able, if you have triggers, like I did when I used to see stockings going up, I used to start visualizing and I would see my son's name or my twin's name or whatever it is that I desired, on the stocking. I would literally stand there looking at the stockings for a couple minutes and I would take that stocking and I would say, okay, this is on my mantle, this is where we would hang our stockings and I could see mom, dad and baby or baby's names. Or, if you don't have your names picked out, just picture that little stocking that you know it's a younger stocking. It's a. You know what I mean. I want you to be able to take those emotional triggers and flip them and say but if I knew all this was coming, how would I act and feel? And if I still am not in the knowing, I'm not even in the faith, I'm still in the whole place. Say to yourself how do I want to feel versus how I'm feeling right now?
Speaker 1:Because, as simple and as mundane as that sounds, we really can start to choose our thoughts. We can choose to steer our conversations away from feeling what we're feeling on our fertility journey. We can choose to watch a movie that makes us laugh, so we're not sitting there wanting to cry. We can choose to read a book that allows us to escape our reality. We can choose to work out to release some endorphins. We can choose to connect with a friend. We can choose to sit in silence and meditate in journal. Whatever lights you up, whatever sets you on fire.
Speaker 1:I want you to try for one day. So I'm going to give you a 10 day challenge, but the goal is you're going to try for 24 hours for one day, and then you're going to do that again and you're going to do it again, and you're going to do it for 10 days. I want you to find a piece of paper. I want you to write morning, afternoon and evening, and on the other side, I want you to write Monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, sunday and the reason I'm making it a 10 day challenge instead of a seven day challenge, because I know, more often than not, the first couple of days you try it and then you're like I'll restart. I'll restart. So for 10 days, no matter how good or bad. Do not hold any judgment against yourself. This is just an experiment for you. I want you to write out how you want to feel that day. You know certain days might be more stressful, certain days might have more things that you have to do, so I want you to go and write down in the morning, afternoon and evening. So I want you to plan it out right now and then for the next 10 days, I want you to follow this.
Speaker 1:I want you to go to your chart and say okay, for morning, I've chosen to feel excited. So that means you're going to wake up. You're going to feel excited. However, your routine is for getting ready for your day. I want you to be in an excited state and then in the afternoon, what is the next feeling you want? And if you choose to feel excited all day long, that's okay. You choose. You choose your feelings. So these are also it's a way for you to have a marker You've spent your morning. If you did not spend your morning in excitedness, or you did for a little while, but then you know you got busy with work or you're at an appointment or whatever it is that brought you out of the excitedness you're now at the afternoon you get to check in again and choose your feeling.
Speaker 1:This is getting you to start to understand how you can choose your feelings and it is a marker how you can say okay, it's the morning, it's the afternoon, it's the evening. And I want you to notice that when you do this little challenge, you very much are setting and choosing how you want to feel. Notice how long you stay in that feeling, but also notice that you are starting to remind yourself hey, I said I was going to feel like this. I'm going to try this and you can start to see how you choose your thoughts and how you can bring yourself back and into that thought or how you allow yourself to fall out of that thought because of environment or circumstances, but you can also remind yourself hey right, how do I get back into that? I want to get back into that. I said I was going to do that for today, so I leave you with this.
Speaker 1:I am sending you so much love, so much light and the biggest but most gentle hug ever. I have experienced this and I know every single experience is so very different, but I know the longing, I know the making, I know these feelings. I don't want you to have to experience those over the holidays. I want you to give yourself love and grace. I want you to give yourself some boundaries. I want you to give yourself some things that you can do to remember to start raising your vibration.
Speaker 1:I want you to start prioritizing you and implementing self care right now because, ultimately, for you to have the things that you want to do have as well, you need to be in a higher vibrational state.
Speaker 1:You need to have those things in place and I want you to ultimately know that you are allowed to have fun and I know I'm getting softer in my voice because I want you to know that you are allowed to have fun. You have full permission. Some people need to hear that permission because they don't feel they're allowed to have fun. Every single one of you that is listening to this right now, please know that I am sending the most amount of love and intention out through this podcast, through me, to you, into your ears. You have far more power than you know. You have far more power than you give yourself credit for, but allow yourself to feel love, joy and gratitude. I love you. I am proud of you. Thank you for being here with me today. 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.