130. When Your Energy Shifts, You’re Allowed to Pivot

This episode is a little shorter, a little messier, and very real. I sat down ready to record one thing, and my energy said absolutely not. So instead of forcing it, I pivoted...and what came out was three lessons I think a lot of overwhelmed, high-achieving SLPs need to hear right now. If you’ve ever felt discouraged because you know better but still struggle, this one’s for you.

What You’ll Learn

• How to recognize your energy in the moment when to honor it
• Why making progress doesn’t mean you’ll never struggle again (and why that doesn’t mean you’re failing)
• Why “regression” isn’t really regression--it’s human
• How your brain looks for evidence to confirm whatever story you’re telling yourself
• A simple mindset shift to stop spiraling when your inner critic gets loud

If This Resonates…

If this episode hit home -- especially if you’re thinking “I know all this, so why do I still struggle?” -- I’d love to talk with you. That’s exactly the kind of loop I help clients untangle in coaching.

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You don’t need more willpower. You need support that actually works with your brain.

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Learn more about Theresa Harp Coaching here.

Transcript

 Hey podcast listeners, welcome back to the show. This is one of the final episodes of the calendar year. It's gonna be short, it might be a little bit scattered, but I'm gonna do my best to bring this into a narrow focus so that you get some value out of it. Alright, so here we go. I, first of all, am. Using a new microphone today.

Testing out a new mic. Uh, so this sound quality may not be the best, I don't know, but I'm going with it because take messy action. Done is better than perfect. This will be a short episode and it's not gonna be a huge deal as long as you can actually have some audio. Like if there's audio, if the audio is not working at all, we have a problem.

But I will of course check that. Um. Before I, before I post this or publish this episode, but I guess my disclaimer is if it's crappy audio, please come back another episode. I promise it will be better. All right. Now here is the topic that I had planned to talk about with you all today, which was related to the sort of the power and the magic of belief of believing in your ability.

To hit a goal, to make a change to, you know, show up differently. And I had this, you know, whole podcast outlined both in my head and on paper. And when it came time to record it, which is now, I have to be totally transparent and honest and authentic. I don't have to be, but I'm choosing to be. I don't feel that way right now.

Like I am just not in that head space. I am not in the place that I was when I outlined that episode and when I was so excited to share it, to record it and share it with all of you and. I had a choice, I could do it anyway and sort of try and get myself into that mentality and, and or just go through the motions, tap into what I had outlined and record it and release it, or I could pivot.

And that's what I'm doing. I'm pivoting and. In doing so, I have identified three sort of key lessons or messages that I want to share with you. Okay. So in this case, again. I had planned to talk about one thing, which was something I was really, at the time, had been really excited and motivated to talk about, and I still will at some point record that episode, but I'm not today.

That day is not today. And here are the three lessons that I am pulling from this. Okay? And I'm gonna share them with you, and I want you to think about how they apply to you, how they can be valuable for you. Number one is. Recognizing what your energy is in the moment

and honoring that, like you have the choice to follow that energy. It may not always be the best choice, so to speak, right? Uh, but there is agency there. There is. You do have an option, you just might not like what those options are. So now for me, like for example, I, we, I talk about this a lot with my coaching clients, especially those who have a DHD.

We talk about following your sort of natural energy and rhythms and, and trying to plan your day or spend your time according to those. Energetic rhythms, right? So if you wake up and you tend to feel very creative in the morning, then let's see what we can do to put your more creative activities, creative tasks in the early part of your day, rather than waiting till the end of the day.

Maybe you don't have a whole lot of creative energy at the end of the day, and if you've kind of. Save those tasks to get done. At the end, when you don't, you're not in that head space. You're not in that zone, you're not in that mindset. It is like swimming upstream. Right? So when you can follow that rhythm, follow it.

That is my. Approach overall. Okay. Now, like I said, you might not always have that option, although I do think that we have that option more often than we are willing to acknowledge. It's just that we sometimes don't want to deal with the consequences. Right? Um, like for example, if you tend to be in a very.

You know, more like firing on all cylinders early in the day. That might be the time of day to write a report might be easier for you. You're thinking clearly your writing is more organized, so the ear, you know, early in the day might be the time to do that. But I. You know, you, that might mean that you can't do something else for somebody or with somebody, and you might tell yourself, well, I can't write the report now because if I do that, then I won't be able to drop my kids off at school today, or I won't be able to, I don't know, fill in the blanks, right?

Well, what I would encourage you to look at is like how true is that? You could potentially, like, maybe that's true. Maybe then you couldn't do that thing, but know that that choice is still there, right? It just might not be a good one. So follow. Notice what your natural energy rhythms are and follow them when you can.

The second lesson here that's coming out of this experience. Is that it's okay if you have made progress in your life in an area that you're working on. It's okay if you have made progress and yet you still struggle. It is okay to air quotes here, hit a goal, and then. Again, air quotes fall back and regress, and what I would offer is that it's.

Not even regression, like we think so much about goals that we wanna hit, you know, CH patterns that we wanna change, healthier habits that we wanna create, and then we think that once we've been successful at it a few times, that we just get to stay there without effort and it is not true. We also think that we'll stay there.

We'll never go back and if we go back, then something has gone wrong or maybe we never, we never actually achieved it to begin with. Right. So for me, I could very easily use this scenario against myself. I had planned to an to do an episode about something and. I was not in that headspace, and it wasn't even that I wasn't in that headspace.

I was in a negative headspace. Like my brain is just in a negative overall trending negative right now, like negative spiral. A lot of, um, you know, shame, spiraling, a lot of anxious thoughts. A lot of. You know, limiting, limiting beliefs or li they're not even beliefs but like just negative self-talk stuff that's just popping up.

That is stuff that is thing. They are things that I have worked on, that I am working on, that I am working through. And where I am at in this moment right now in this mood is not an indication. It doesn't negate all the progress that I have made. Along the way, it doesn't mean that I thought I was past this and I'm not right.

I thought I was better at being able to kind of coach myself through these thoughts and you know, I thought that I could work through the negative self-talk and get myself on board. And if I could do that, then I would just do it and record the episode that I had planned on, but. What I wanna offer is that that's not necessarily true.

Like I, there is, I can just allow for my, my mind to be where it's at. And that can be true, right? Like I could be negative right now. Overall feeling negative, feeling down and still. Know that I have made tremendous strides in my personal and professional life, in my way of thinking, in my way of showing up.

All of that, like both can be true, and I could, if I wanted to, truly, I could coach myself through this in this moment, right? I could have, before I got on here, I could have coached myself into the place that I needed to be to record that episode. And probably record a pretty killer episode, by the way, but I didn't want to like, I just didn't want to, and that's okay.

That's okay. So the lesson here is that if you make changes in your life, and then there are moments. Instances where you regress, that is okay. It doesn't take away from the progress you've made. Success is not linear and it is not this destination that you arrive at and you stay at forever and ever.

Amen. Like that is not how it works. So if you are telling yourself that. You are never going to be satisfied. You're always gonna feel like you're failing because you're just setting yourself up for failure, for disappointment. It's not realistic. Okay. And then the third lesson that I wanna offer here.

This is kind of a, a segue as I'm wrapping up, uh, from this last, from lesson number two. Lesson number three here is our brains will pay attention to what we are looking for. And I'm not gonna go into like the neuroscience behind this and the evidence-based research that supports it and all of that because this is a quick, easy breezy episode.

Well, not really easy breezy, but it's meant to be a short, little authentic episode, but. I know that our brain will notice what we are looking for. If you are looking for evidence that you are a crappy SLP who can't meet deadlines, all you're gonna find is evidence that you're a crappy SLP who doesn't meet deadlines.

Okay, and by the way, you are not a crappy SLP and you can meet deadlines. You do meet deadlines, but your brain is only going to notice the stories that you are telling yourself. It's like when you decide that you're gonna buy a new car and all of a sudden you see that car that make and model all over the road, and it's like, oh my gosh, everybody's, everybody's driving a Tesla now.

Right? Everybody drives them. Well, yeah, maybe, and maybe a Tesla's a bad example 'cause it's a relatively newer, newer car. But you get the idea, right? Like if all, if you're gonna, if you decide you're gonna buy a Honda Accord, do they still exist? Do they still make those? Right? You decide you're gonna buy a Honda Accord and now on the road all you see are Hondas.

All you see are Honda Accords. Well, I'm willing to bet that it's not like all of a sudden an overnight, everybody bought a Honda Accord. It's just, that's what you're noticing, because that's where your brain is at. That's what, that's the mindset. That's the place where your mind is. So it's going to be looking for and noticing those things that doesn't necessarily mean that it's true.

Okay, so I have no idea if any of that made sense. It was completely off the cuff, completely unscripted if you hung in there with me. Thank you. Hope it helped. And I think we've still got one more episode that's gonna air before the end of the year. Uh, so maybe it will be the one about magic and belief and all of that, and maybe not.

I don't know. We'll see. But that is it for this episode. I hope it was helpful, and I will talk with you all soon. All right, bye.