Thriving All the Time Even Through Uncertainty

How to Thrive During Uncertain Times by embracing this beautiful changing journey called life with Sheri Kaye Hoff

Transcript

[00:16] Speaker A: Hello. Hello.

[00:17] Speaker B: This is Sheri from the Sheri K Hoff show, where we focus on living joyfully and successfully in your life and business. You can find us@sherikayehoff.com that's sherikayehoff.com.

[00:42] Speaker A: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Sheri K Hop Show, Sheri here. And today we're going to talk about thriving all the time, no matter what is going on in your life, especially during uncertain times. So we're going to talk about embracing uncertainty with grace and resilience. And that's really my prayer pretty much every day, is how can I make this as beautiful and graceful as possible? And I'll talk about some of those examples as we get more into the show here today. But life is full of unexpected twists and turns. So sometimes it feels like it sailing and other times it feels like you're in the middle of a hurricane. But the beautiful truth is that every single challenge gives us the opportunity to grow and transform. And especially if you're facing something really difficult, there's this thing called post traumatic growth, and that's when you know, something traumatic happens and you come out on the other side better than you ever were before. And those are things that happened to me after my brother died when I was a teenager, when I faced my own near death experience nine years ago, and when I just recently faced two major surgeries last year that were a surprise to me and they were six months apart and very, very painful to recover from. But the kind of person that I am is that I take whatever is going on and I make the absolute best possible outcome from the situation, but also when I'm going, it's not just that, oh, I think, oh, I'm going to be so much better when I get through this, when I'm in the middle of it, that's when I'm finding joy in the smallest things, in the smallest moments, finding ways to be at inner peace in the middle of a challenge. Because life is the journey. Life is not just the end result or the end outcome. And we can never predict what the end result or the end outcome is going to be for any given thing that we do. So we need to find ways to look at this crazy thing called life. And I use the word embrace a lot, but just really, I mean it. Embrace it, hug it, pull it to you and say, I'm going to do everything I can. I'm going to make the best of this. Every time something happens that scares me or shocks me, instead of hiding in a little hole and shrinking down, it makes me almost defiant where I feel like, okay, I'm doing my entire bucket list this year, you know, because I realize how precious life is and how those, we never know how many moments we're going to have. So I want to have the best possible moments in my life, and I want you to have the best possible moments in your life, and I want you to, and myself to spend as little time as possible wallowing. Okay, we have feelings of, I'm not saying pretend things don't exist, but I'm saying watch how much time you spend in those places. So let's look at uncertainty. So we all experience it. We know that whether it's things outside in the bigger world, global warming, war, violence, you know, those kinds of big, major, unpredictable things, and then there's also personal challenges and then just unforeseen circumstances, a surprise kind of presents itself to you. So if we take a step towards it and look at it as a chance to learn, grow, and discover our inner strength, it gives us a little different take on it. So just this very fact of recognizing that uncertainty is a natural part of life helps us shift our perspective. And I'm a big proponent of this idea that your perspective creates your reality. How you see the world, how you see things, affects what you perceive as real. And so we can shift our perspective and change our entire lives. So instead of looking at these uncertain times as a threat, we can begin to view them as opportunities or new beginnings. So embracing this idea of uncertainty lets us open up and look at things in ways that we may have never considered before. So we're going to embrace just the idea of uncertainty, and then we're going to look at resilience, and they kind of go together. But resilience is your ability to bounce back. It's your ability to make it through challenging things. And a lot of challenges are great things. I mean, climbing a mountain, going to the Olympics, finishing a book, finishing a house remodel project, those all have challenges in it, but they're good things, but we still face the challenge of it. So maybe turn around. How you view challenges, like, some are not as much fun and some are fun, but still make it a little bit tough. So when you look at this thought of, I'm a resilient person, and I want you to think about the most resilient person that you know and what mediates yourself and what characteristics does that person have? Like I said, they bounce back, they keep going, they keep succeeding, they keep trying again. They seem to find a joy in life, in the face of anything, really. I remember talking to my kids, you know, when you're just starting out, I've been married for 30 years. I have adult children. But when you're just starting, starting out, a lot of people, me included, really struggled financially. And there were times when I was scared out of my mind. And I remember talking to one of my daughters about this, and she said, you know, I never knew mom. I just always thought we were rich. I thought that everything was perfectly fine, and it was because I didn't have that stress, you know, trickle out and fall all over them. Okay. You know, if I. If I wanted to feel abundant, I went to the library and checked out as many books as I wanted. You know, these are when times were really tough, but I found ways to feel abundant and have my kids feel abundant no matter what was going on. So it's, again, your perspective. Okay. So how can you build your resilience? So a big part of this is emotional intelligence. So this is recognizing when your reactions are getting a little out of control, recognizing when you feel stressed, recognizing when you're happy, recognizing your emotions and saying, hey, I'm a human, I feel emotions. Emotions are great. They point us to information, like what we think about things. If we feel good, why are we feeling good? If we feel bad, why are we feeling bad? So we're not trying to get rid of emotions, but we don't want the emotional reaction to control your life. You want to be able to recognize, hey, this is an emotion I'm having. It's kind of like when my mom would say, and it would drive me nuts when I was a little kid, but she would say, I love you, but I don't love the behavior. So it's kind of along those, those lines. So. So when you use self awareness and emotional intelligence, it helps you get through whatever it is that you're going through. So if you're going through a financial situation, you can have some perspective. The emotional intelligence helps you see that, okay, I've been through something like this before. I made it through this is what I did. I know I can make it through now. I can know that there tons of possibilities open to me. And then, of course, your relationships that you have with people are going to help you thrive no matter what and build that resilience. So take a look around you and look at your relationships and really appreciate the great ones, the people who are there for you no matter what. And the people who maybe aren't so great and realize that in uncertain times, maybe you don't go to that person for help or support or advice. So surround yourself with those positive people and don't forget about your habits that you do. Like, one thing I notice, and again, this comes from emotional intelligence, but I notice if I'm feeling a lot of stress, my journaling habit might start to diminish, which then that's a normal valve for me to release stress. And so when I start doing that less, then I start feeling more and more stress. So I know that even if it's the last thing I want to do on a day, if I get up and I write in my journal, I'm pretty much going to have a way better day than if I didn't write in my journal. So that's one of my habits. You maybe have several of your own that, you know, help you stay on that path. So the first thing that we're tempted to do when we're feeling stressed is to throw away all those good habits and just sit there and go, oh, I'm so stressed. I'm so stressed. But instead, lean into those things. Those healthy habits that you build when you're feeling great are the ones that are going to carry you through when you're struggling a little bit or facing uncertainty and build some mindfulness into your day. So mindfulness and meditation, sometimes people say, don't want to hear that anymore. Don't tell me to be mindful, don't tell me to meditate, because it's so simple that people don't want to believe it and do it. But one of the most difficult situations I ever experienced is when I, our neighbor's daughter died. It's a young girl, 18 years old. And I was so grief stricken. And this was twelve years ago now, so it was a while ago, but I can remember just keeping on coming back to my breath and saying, okay, just breathe, just breathe. And is there anything I can appreciate in this small micro moment? I took my life down to, like, the sound of the fan, the ceiling fan above my head. And that's how I got through the shock of that situation. And so mindfulness does work. There's an exercise of looking around and when you feel you're most chaotic and saying, what do I see? What do I feel? What do I hear? What do I touch? And as you bring yourself into awareness through your senses, then you become fully present in the moment, which starts diminishing that stress. Okay, so another thing on my notes here that I wanted to talk to you about today is time management. And I don't look at time management as the same as a lot of people do. My goal is not to see how much I can organize my time so I can pack even more into my day. So I look at it more as energy management. I manage my calendar, I manage my life so that I have the energy to do the things I'm most excited about and that I have the energy to just live life the way that I want to live it. So sometimes this looks like me blocking out wide open spaces, maybe a three hour space in the afternoon where I have nothing written down. I don't even have anything fun planned. It's just open so I can do whatever I want, if I want to read, if I want to go for a walk, if I want to shop, if I want to take a nap. I do this because it's energy management. So instead of looking at productivity, and I'm also a huge fan of productivity, I've always been, I feel like, oh, I'm having a great day if I'm productive, but we want to be productive, but also managing our energy and having, like I said, the energy to do the things that we really want to do instead of energy flowing in, energy and time flowing into things that we don't really care that much about or don't enhance the quality of our lives. All right, so the next thing here in my notes is talking about a growth mindset. Hmm. So I'll give you an example of what a growth mindset is not. And it's something that I did and said, which was really funny because I think I'm all about growth mindset 100% of the time. But I was coming down from the mountains with a girlfriend, and we're driving in heavy traffic. I mean, it was bumper to bumper, lane to lane, and I needed to get over to the other lane to be able to make it to my exit. And, I mean, this was like miles of not being able to move over. And I made a comment to my friend, I'm never going to make it over there. And she just started laughing and she said, of course you're going to make it over there. And then I started laughing, too. Of course I was going to make it over there. But this, all of a sudden, this all or nothing of, you know, this is impossible, just kind of overtook my brain for a couple seconds. So that is the opposite of growth mindset. That's what we would call a fixed mindset. You know, I see that I haven't been able to make it over, so I'm never going to be able to make it over. I see that I struggled with this subject in school, so I'm never going to learn this subject. You know, I. Those kinds of thoughts are point the difference between fixed and growth mindset. And so people are way happier if they embrace a growth mindset. And this growth mindset is going to help you get through uncertain times, because instead of looking at things like, well, this is the way I always did it, you're going to use your growth mindset to find a new way to approach the problem and find new solutions and find new ways of doing things and being innovative. So along the lines of the growth mindset, there's this thing called persistence. And I had this realization the other day that I've been in this business, in this coaching, podcasting, inspirational author space for 17 years. Holy cow. I could remember when I was so excited about seven years or three years. And when I look at 17 years and I look at all the people that I have seen come and go in this space and all the evolutions that I've had as a person, one of the most, one of the common things, the thread for me is persistence, is keeping on going, keeping on learning, keeping on evolving, keeping on growing as a person. But it's being persistent because of a dream that I had 17 years ago, to be able to inspire and touch as many people as possible, to help them live happy, successful, joy filled, fulfilled lives. That's what I wanted to do 17 years ago, and that's what I'm still doing today. And have I done it differently over the last 17 years? Yes. I've grown and changed and shifted and, you know, had to be adaptable and flexible and all those wonderful things. So you might want to take a look and see how your persistence muscles are doing. All right, so we're talking a lot about mindset, but it comes down to action, right? Nothing happens until we actually take some action. So if we're facing a problem we never faced before, or maybe it's even, maybe it is a recurring problem, you want to do your due diligence to take a look at the options. So you want to do your research, look at the alternatives, stay flexible, but then you want to act, try something. Don't get stuck in the research mode and think, okay, if I just learn more, if I just know more, then I'm going to make this perfect decision, because there isn't a perfect decision, no perfect decisions out there. So try something. Take some action. If you get excited about an action, take it. And we talked about being adaptable. So being adaptable is this idea of being able to change and realizing that nothing ever stays the same. We're always changing. Everything around you is always changing. I just had this discussion with my husband because we did a couple of huge remodeling projects, and I made the comment to him, I said, you know, the second something is done, it's not done because as soon as it's done, it's decaying. Now, that sounds kind of negative, but you know what I mean? Like, the paint start, the minute it's painted, it starts to fade. Not a lot for maybe several years, but that's the nature of things. And if we fight against that and if we try to think of life as, oh, I'm just going to get this done and that's it, and I'm going to be done and done with it forever. No. So if we keep that flexible attitude that things are always changing, it's easier to kind of go with the flow. And another simple example of this is my refrigerator has been acting up and making really weird sounds, and it's been going on for a while and different repairs have tried to address it. And it's not an old refrigerator, like three or four years old. And I realized how stressed the noise was making me. And I work from home. And then I thought, you know what? I'm going to try something different. Because, I mean, we are working on hopefully getting it repaired or just replacing it completely is. I said, you know, I'm one with the noise. I'm one with the noise because I couldn't do anything about it. Everything I could do, I did. And then I just said, I'm one with the noise, and my stress started going away. I do this when I fly, too, because sometimes in turbulence, I get really nauseous. And instead of thinking, oh, I'm so nauseous, I'm so nauseous, this is awful. I say, I'm one with the airplane, I'm one with the turbulence. And all of a sudden I feel instead of holding myself against something rigidly, I feel like I'm kind of flowing and I don't get as sick. So maybe try that. So you're going to do your research, embrace change. Love the fact that things are changing, then you're going to take some action. Okay? Take that action. Text me, email me tomorrow. Tell me what action you took. And through all of these steps, what you're doing is you're building a culture for your life of continuous improvement. So you're going to surround yourself with positivity and stay committed to your growth. And you are embedded in a culture of learning, a culture of continuous improvement. Make that your mantra. So uncertainty isn't something to fear, but it's a beautiful part of our lives. It helps us build resilience. We learn how to manage stress. We grow, we make decisions. We become stronger and more courageous. So love the journey, cherish each moment and keep moving forward with hope, grace, love, beauty, and joy. So I just want to thank you for joining me today. I hope you found this episode helpful and share it with someone who might need a little extra encouragement. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Check out the website@sherrykhoff.com and I'll see you on the next episode. Take care everyone. Bye bye.

[23:14] Speaker B: Visit sherrykhoff.com. that's sherikayehoff.com for more podcast episodes. Or you can say, Alexa play the Sheri Kay Hoff show. This podcast is syndicated globally and you can listen anywhere where you're listening to your other podcasts. Some examples are Apple, Google, Podlink, podcast addict, Spotify, and many more.