Ep 83. You’re Doing So Much Better Than You Think You Are

I am Kym Showers, and this is Reinvented After 40, episode number 83: You’re Doing So Much Better Than You Think You Are.

Hey, friends. Welcome to Reinvented After 40, a podcast for all you women in the second half of life who are ready to take responsibility for your own well-being and create a life you love living.

I’m your host, Kym Showers, and after spending the first 40 years of my life people-pleasing and following all the rules, I was exhausted and ready for a change. I reinvented myself. I stopped outsourcing my happiness. And I’ve been brave enough to live a different kind of life.

I’ll be here each week to help you do the same thing. It’s going to be fun. Let’s go.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. I have the giggles. I had to do that intro three times before I got it right. I kept saying the wrong title to this episode. Okay, so you are doing so much better than you think you are, I promise you, 100% you are and I am too. I am doing so much better than I think I am. And this is a very good thought to think and to believe on a regular basis.

And so this actually, these words, this little sentence is on the side of a Kleenex box of mine that’s in my bathroom. And every time I walk in my bathroom which is like what, 100 times a day. It’s the first thing I think. It’s the first thing I see when I walk in my bathroom. It’s in purple. It’s on the side of this box of Kleenex of mine and it says in purple with hearts and little flowers around it, ‘You are doing so much better than you think you are’. Now, I don’t know what this is in context to, maybe if you have a cold and you’re needing these Kleenex and they’re just putting this on the side of the box.

But I can’t tell you how much this has affected me this month. I think I’ve had that box in my bathroom for a few weeks now. It’s actually empty. And I was just going to throw it away. I thought, oh, no, this is my next podcast episode because this is so true you guys for all of us, because of the way our brains are wired to default to negativity about us, about the world, about everybody. So actually we are doing so much better than our brain wants us to believe we are.

And when we think like this, another one of my very favorite thoughts that I use all of the time is actually a thought that I think now on default because I’ve practiced it intentionally now for a few years. This isn’t a problem. And the reason that this is my go to thought is because my brain is always trying to drum up problems, always trying to convince me that this next thing that we’re thinking about could be a problem and is a problem and we need to be troubled by it.

And so my go to thought because I keep intentionally thinking thoughts that are going to be more useful for me. This is what we’re trying to do in our life in the second half of life, we’re trying to retrain our brain. We’re working on intentionally retraining our brain, we’re setting goals for ourselves. And if we’re thinking thoughts like this isn’t a problem then things that we would normally in our past get stuck in. And we would spin out in and we’d find ourself in a funk and not actually having days, productive days and days when we’re in a good mood and days when we feel like we’re thriving.

All of those things that we’re working towards and working on intentionally. When we let our brain convince us that we’re not doing very well. That’s what our brain likes us to think about ourselves which is kind of intense. If we’re always being mean to ourself in our head which I know a lot of women in the second half of life do.

We’re just very mean to ourselves in our head, the way that we talk in our mind to ourselves like you’re not enough. You’ll never do it. You’re not smart enough. You’re too fat. You’re too thin. You should be further ahead. You don’t have enough money. You should have started a long time ago. You’ve made so many mistakes. Do you see, these are a lot of common thoughts that subconsciously, unconsciously or consciously our brain delivers to us on repeat over and over and over. That’s just us being mean or ourselves.

We would never say those things to the people we love out loud. I hope we wouldn’t anyways. And I just want you to know, I want you to realize and get some awareness around some of these thoughts that are not true, are not useful for you. They are hindering you. they are in your way. And that’s why I want you to pick up this thought and start believing it and practicing it, writing it on little post-it’s on your mirror or writing it on your Kleenex boxes, writing it on post-it’s and putting it on your steering wheel, wherever you are the most, wherever you need reminders, put it on your phone. Set an alarm on your phone.

Talk to yourself constantly with the idea that you, my friend, are doing so much better than you think you are. This will help us get motivated. What if it’s true? If I’m thinking it, my thoughts create things in my life, my thoughts are creating my reality and so are your thoughts. Thoughts become things in our life. So what if we believe we’re doing so much better than we think we are? That’s something we would say to our kids like, “Oh, honey, it’s not so bad. You’re doing so much better than you think you are.” Everything always works out.

And you know that’s what I think on purpose, everything always works out. That’s 100% what I believe. So these are trained thoughts that we just start practicing and picking up on purpose that will serve us so well in moving forward. You know I don’t spend very much time in my past unless I’m going to tell a very sweet story about it, unless intentionally I’m looking at my past from a viewpoint of look at all the beautiful experiences that you’ve had in your past.

And this last weekend I got to get away with my brother and sister. My brother has a house in Palm Springs. He and his husband live in Germany, in Frankfurt, Germany and have badass jobs. I tell you about them all the time. They are so inspiring, oh my gosh. So my brother and brother-in-law also have a vacation home in Palm Springs. So they go back and forth from Germany to Palm Springs. And my brother was there for his birthday. My brother-in-law had already flown back to Germany for work.

And so my sister and I jumped in my car early Friday morning and it’s about a five/six hour drive to Palm Springs. And she was actually getting ready for a big trip to Belize. So we had literally 48/50 hours to jam in my car to Palm Springs which was so much fun for us because we just talked non-stop all the way there even though she just lives right around the corner from me. She has such a full life. She travels a lot. She travels every month. And then when she’s home, she’s an entrepreneur and she just has a badass full life here and is doing big things.

And so we’re not together very much, which is perfect and great and fine. And it’s so fun just to know that we’re here if we need each other, but we don’t see each other that much. So it was an extra special day treat to get to be together overnight. And I just treasure my time with my brother and sister. My brother, you know, is my Irish twin. He just turned 63 on March 25th, I turned 62 on March 5th. So we’re Irish twins, meaning that we were born in the same 12 months. So my first best friend, just a really close relationship with my brother.

And then I have my baby sister who’s nine years younger than me and she’s the one that lives around the corner from me. But when we are together we are just talking non-stop. I asked them when we went to dinner, I said, “Tell me your best memories about Grandma McCarthy’s house?” So I love asking questions like that and just starting conversations like that because we always have so many shared memories together which is so special because no one really gets you like your siblings.

My brother and my sister, they know me my whole life. We’ve known each other our whole lives. And of course we were raised together. So I have another sister who is just a year and a half younger than me and we are not close. I do not talk to her. So there were three of us born in a very short amount of time when my parents were just married. And before my mom even turned 20 she had three babies which is a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, I can’t even imagine. So my brother and I have always been super close and we’re very similar.

But my sister, my baby sister, so my brother is 10 years older than my baby sister, Jazzy. And I’m nine years older than she is. I feel like I was kind of her second mom. I’ve always kind of been a bossy mother hen. But she was raised a little different than the three of us because she came so much later than we did. So she kind of was raised as an only child, is kind of our baby too. So by the time she was 10, we were already out of the house. So the older kids were already out of the house. So she was raised a little bit different.

So her experiences are a little bit different than when my brother and I talk about our growing up experiences. I think my parents had settled down a little bit by the time my baby sister came along, which is also very normal. But when we talk about our past it always serves us. It’s always sweet and funny and fun, even the bizarre things. I don’t know, there was some trauma in my growing up. And I don’t know if I’ve talked to you about it, but I know that I’ve mentioned some things about my mom and how she had some mental illness and she was very much not mature emotionally.

And so it caused a lot of problems in our home when we were growing up. And so I have some trauma still from that. But when I’m with my brother and sister it’s just always very funny. We tell our stories and we just crack up and we laugh until we cry. And it’s just so much fun to be with them because no one gets me like them. I will drop anything to be with my brother and my sister. That’s how important they are to me as well as my husband, my kids, my grandbabies.

And then you know along with that I had these 13 cousins that I was raised with at my Grandma McCarthy’s house. And that’s what my brother and sister and I talked about so much is my Grandma McCarthy would keep us on Friday nights, let us spend the night with my grandma and grandpa, which they had this little, tiny cracker box house that we thought was just magical and like a castle. And my grandpa was a carpenter and he built, well, he was a railroad engineer but he was very, very crafty with woodwork as my dad and my uncle were. And he built us a table for 13 kids. We all had our place.

And he built us a merry-go-round with hand carved animals and he enclosed his very teeny back patio which didn’t seem teeny to us. And that’s where we would all sleep, all 13 of us kids. And my grandma would just have all these little mats laid out. And we’d all have our little blanket and our pillow. And we played tag around the house and kick the can and with all my cousins and we all overlapped in age. That was such a sweet memory and just made such a huge impact on all of our lives.

And when I was together with all of them in January, everyone’s doing so well. And I can tell you for sure that we’re all doing so much better than we think we are and it’s just the story we tell ourselves in our head, the stories we tell about our past. So I work hard at my stories about my past to bring up the stories that are true and good for me to think and satisfying for me to think and will keep me motivated and moving forward, knowing that everything in my past was exactly perfect for me, everything.

Even my failures, even my traumas, all of it, totally perfect for me because look at me now. Look at all of us now, we’re doing so much better than we think we are. We are. And I love even seeing those words on my Kleenex box every single day makes me smile, makes me happy, gets me motivated and inspired just to do the next thing today that I promised myself that I’m going to do. So last weekend was a great weekend going to Palm Springs. Palm Springs has such a vibe, oh my gosh, you guys, it’s so much fun.

And so my vibe right now with all my vibrant clothes, all my colors, if anyone was going to wear a neon orange dress and be super tanned this last weekend it was going to be me in Palm Springs. I was the queen of Palm Springs this weekend. It was so fun. And then I’m also looking forward to, I’m going to a business mastermind in Louisville, Kentucky which I’ve never been before. And one of my clients actually lives in Kentucky. So I’m just excited to be close to her. I won’t see her. She just told me she’s an hour and a half away.

But Jeff asked if he could come. Well, wait a minute, I think I invited him first because we’ve never been. And he is such a lover of whisky and a lover of horses. And even though we are not going to be there for the Kentucky Derby, we’re going to be there just before it. We get to actually go to, I can’t remember the name of the stadium that they run in but you know. And we get to take a tour and see the horses and just be there even though we won’t actually be there for the race. So that’s going to be fun.

But what I was going to tell you is I usually don’t invite him to my masterminds because I really do like to go by myself. And there’s really no reason for him to come with me. And I like to fly first class, he doesn’t necessarily want to fly first class. And I like to have my own room. I like to stay in a five star hotel and have my own suite. He doesn’t necessarily need any of that but I did invite him to Louisville, Kentucky. And I said, “We can extend my stay and do a couple of fun things together there.”

We could do whisky tasting which he will love to do and go to the Kentucky Derby place and see the horses. And then he can do some things while I’m at my meetings. But I did tell him when I invited him, I said, “I would love for you to come. It will be so much fun. But I do want my own room and I have a particular hotel I want to stay in. And I am flying first class.” And so he was just like, “Okay, great, fine, I’ll come with you, that sounds fun.”

So I just want you to know how far we have come, how far I have come as a woman who knows exactly what she wants, a woman who knows that she’s doing so much better than she thinks she is. A woman who knows that nothing that I want is a problem and that I’m worthy of every single thing. I’m absolutely worthy of flying first class. I’m absolutely worthy of staying in a five star hotel and having my own room. I’m worthy of all of it. And even if it’s not my husband’s vibe, he loves me enough and he’s on board enough.

He’s gotten so used to this new self-concept that I have, he is all in. He’s like, “Yeah, that’s totally great. We’ll make it work and I’ll have a great time too.” So I’m not worried about keeping him happy. He’s not worried about keeping me happy because he knows I’m going to be happy either way. I’m going to make sure I get what I want. He is very welcome to sit in the back of the plane and I told them that. I said, “I do not have a problem with that And even if you don’t want to stay in the same hotel with me. I don’t have a problem with that. That’s totally fine.”

And he’s like, “Oh, no, I’m going to sit up front with you and I’m going to stay in the room next door to you.” So I just want you to know, anything that you think, you’re capable of the dream life that you are imagining in your head, that you’re even daring to imagine. You’re capable of creating that for yourself. And if you’re like me and you have a husband who loves you, he is going to eventually get on board, even if at first he is resistant to it and he takes it personally, it’s all okay.

All you have to do is get good at being uncomfortable and having your own back and knowing that you’re worthy of everything that you want. And once you get over the original hump of it, you get some coaching around it, you’re going to be so glad that you got good at being uncomfortable and that you picked up some helpful thoughts like this isn’t a problem. My husband not being on board with this new version of me doesn’t have to be a problem. And I’m doing so much better than I think I am.

So the things that are keeping you stuck, the things that are getting in your way are just thoughts, I promise you. And if you can just even start with this thought and practice it over and over and over until it becomes your default thought when your brain is offering you nonsense like you’re not doing very well, you should be doing better, you shouldn’t have said that, you shouldn’t have done that, that was a huge mistake. Whatever nonsense your brain is feeding you like you’ll never be able to do that, it’s too late, you’re too old.

I’m just trying to think of just common thoughts that our brain feeds us in the second half of life and those are very common thoughts. So those might sound a little familiar to you and that’s why. But I am here to tell you those thoughts are all nonsense. They are not true. You are doing so much better than you think you are. So learning how to give yourself credit, knowing how worthy you are of all of your dreams, of everything that you want, what you want now, you’re capable of so much more than that. Just go get what you want now.

But once you get that, know that there is going to be a whole new door that opens up showing you all the possibilities for the next year, for the next five years, for the next 10 years. This is just super fun to live this way and to really believe and to know that you’re capable of so much more, that you are so much more beautiful and smart and stronger than you think you are. You are doing so much better than you think you are. And maybe you’re doing better than anyone else thinks you are. It doesn’t even matter.

What matters is that you know that you’re doing so much better than you think you are. And you’re just getting to work creating the life that you absolutely are obsessed with and you cannot wait to get up every morning to live. That’s what’s possible for you.

Alright, so I will always be your advocate. I will always hold you accountable to all of your possibilities and your capabilities. And I will always tell you that you’re doing so much better than you think you are and hold you to that bar, hold you to that standard. So I like to think of everybody as their highest self and treat them in such a way, treat them that way. I just really feel sorry for anybody because I don’t see them as a victim. I don’t see myself as a victim and I do not see you as a victim.

Being in your brain, let me tell you for sure my friend, your brain loves to put you in a victim position. And I don’t know why our brains do this, but we do not want to be the victim. And if being the victim feels comfortable for you, I want you to realize that you’re doing that, your brain is doing that to you. And you are doing so much better than you think you are and I want you to pop out of that victim position, that victim place or that victim mentality and start thinking, oh my gosh, I am definitely not a victim. I am doing so much better than I think I am.

And if I have anybody that’s negative and telling me negative things in my life, I’m going to just tell them to stop it. And I’m going to tell them the truth that heck, no. I’m doing so much better than I think I am and I’m doing so much better than you think I am.

Okay, so that’s what I have for you today. I hope that was so helpful and encouraging. And it’s really not that hard to think like this. It just takes a shift. It’s just like a little shift in your brain, an aha, oh my goodness, she’s right. I am doing so much better than I think I am. Now what do I want to create today? Let’s get to work. Alright, I love you so much for showing up today. Have the best week ever and I will see you next Thursday.

Thanks for listening to Reinvented After 40. If you want more information or resources from the podcast, please visit KymShowersLifeCoach.com.