Cecelia Baum Mandryk (00:01.518)
Hey, welcome to Calmer Conversations. I’m your host, Cecilia. Today, we’re gonna talk about maintaining your calm when crazy things are happening around you. And the crazy could be something really personal in your own life, or could be something systemic within the country you’re in. It could be something in your family. It could be a sickness. It could be just your kids going crazy one afternoon.
but how to keep your inner calm. And so this is coming up because the current political situation and what’s happening has seemed unsettling to a lot of my clients and both one-on-one in a group. And so we talked about it there. So I thought it might be helpful to address it here on the podcast. Okay, so there are some things that we need to, some kind of agreements you have to make with yourself first. And these are some of the principles that we have here.
on the podcast, but also in the work that I do. So one is that calm comes from within you, not from without. So feeling grounded and connected to yourself, feeling a sense of inner peace and safety comes from inside of you, not from outside of you. This sounds really simple and it’s easy to agree to, but I want you to just pause for a moment and think about it. So often, many of us think that we need…
We need people or situations around us to be a certain way so that we can feel a certain way. So we need people to behave in a certain way or we need things to happen in a certain way so that we can feel a certain way. And if they don’t, then we think that our Zen, our calm, our happiness is because of them. This recently came up this morning with a person who, one of my clients in the group mentioned that they went out to yoga.
They came back, their dog had kind of figured out how to lick a hot spot on them and the dog quote unquote stole their zen. It’s so easy for us to say like, I’m feeling crazy because something is happening outside of me. So notice that and see if you’re willing to say, okay, actually, really truly when I connect to myself, when I work with my own brain, that’s where my common happiness comes from.
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (02:19.074)
And of course it’s easier perhaps to feel calm and happy when the things around you are going well, but it still comes from something inside of you, not something outside of you. So that’s something we kind of have to have as a basis for this. Then the second one, and this one is also one that sometimes people on first hearing it, it’s like, okay, fine, I can agree to that. But then when we look at how it presents in our life, it can be a little bit more challenging. And that’s…
Are you actually willing to feel calm and collected and connected to yourself during this time? Are you open to feeling happy? A question that comes up over and over again in my group coaching is how willing are you to feel and be happy right now? Are you open to it? And some of us are like, yeah, duh, of course I am. But when we actually think about it, so for instance, if our kids are going crazy, we may not actually be open to feeling happy. We might.
want to be in the frustration and the anger and be annoyed at them. And so really asking yourself, am I open to this? Am I willing to see things differently so that I can feel differently in this moment? And then third, this is the inner calm, the inner peace. We know that it’s something that is accessible to you because if you look to powerful leaders across time, they were able to connect to that. And that’s how big changes happen in the world. So just even like
Knowing that the path to peace and calm is not having peace and calm on your outside, but it comes from within So that’s kind of connected to one again, but I made it a suffer one. Okay, so if you are feeling Crazy unhinged frustrated angry in the moment. What is it that you do? Okay. Well first Bear witness to that notice it. I’m feeling crazy. I’m feeling scared. I’m feeling whatever it is. I’m feeling right now pausing in that moment and making space for that
and maybe even getting curious why is it that I feel afraid? What are the thoughts that I’m having that are causing me to feel afraid? What are the thoughts I’m having that are causing me to feel crazy or to feel like I’m in chaos or whatever it is so that you can start to understand your own story? Because related to those that, you number one, more than what is happening outside of you, it’s the story you have about it that makes…
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (04:38.658)
you feel the way you feel. And if we want to take this to the current political climate, the way you know that’s true is because people look at the same piece of news and some people feel like this is wild, how can this be happening? And other people are saying this is the best thing that’s ever happened. That just has to do with their perspective, with their story, with what they think within them and that creates how they react to it, right? So what’s happening is what’s happening.
and then you get to decide, you get to get curious actually first what your unintentional story is about it. This part can be really uncomfortable and it’s one we usually wanna rush through, but it’s one of the most important. It’s understanding your autopilot thoughts, your unintentional thoughts that you have about a situation so that you can get to know what’s going on in your own brain. And I wanna say right here is this doesn’t mean that you’re condoning what’s happening, it doesn’t mean you’re…
You’re endorsing what’s happening. It’s not saying you whatever is happening, you want it to keep happening. All you’re doing is you’re noticing your thoughts about whatever is happening. And you’re seeing if you can accept your own thoughts and yourself in that moment. And if you can accept what is happening as what is happening. Not again, you’re not condoning it, but you’re saying I’m accepting that this is what’s happening in the world around me. This executive order was signed. My kid just threw yogurt at me. My dog licked his tail while I was away at yoga, whatever it is.
You’re saying this is what happened. I’m accepting reality. I’m allowing the reality to be as it is so that I can start to work with it. So now you know your background thoughts. You know what is actually happening, right? You’ve admitted it. Instead of saying this shouldn’t be happening, what you’re doing is you’re naming. So my kid shouldn’t have thrown yogurt at me and now I feel angry versus my kid threw yogurt at me.
Right? That happened. There’s yogurt all over my shirt. Maybe it’s in my hair. Whatever it is. There’s yogurt in my hair right now. And it was lobbed across the room by my child at me. Taking a breath there, feeling the feelings that come up, understanding the story you have that made you angry, right? Because the yogurt being thrown didn’t make you angry. Your thought, my child shouldn’t have done that. My child doesn’t respect me. Whatever it is, that’s what made you angry in the moment. Or maybe even felt scared or vulnerable, whatever it is that came up for you.
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (06:56.13)
So being in that place. And then you’re starting to ask yourself and see, there other things that I can believe right now that I can work with to help me? And this is where, again, we’re not going into toxic positivity, we’re not going into gaslighting, you’re not lying to yourself. You’re asking what else is available to me that can help me reconnect to me. Because when I reconnect to me, that is when I’m a more powerful human being. That is when I am a more compassionate parent.
That is when I can actually help my dog rather than scream at my dog, right? That is when I am available to be my highest self because my nervous system is regulated. My primitive brain knows that it’s not in danger and I can suddenly work with whatever it is that I have. So what you’re doing essentially is you’re getting yourself back into a place of being grounded so that you can act in a way that you want to act, whether that’s on a big political scale.
like your national scene kind of thing, or really just in your living room when you’re where your kid just threw yogurt at you. Okay. This might be thoughts like, I don’t know how this ends. I’m not sure where this is gonna go. I’m safe right now, even though I have yogurt on me, right? I think I can figure out how to help my dog, right? There are different stories that, I can’t, I’m not gonna be able to coach you individually here on the podcast.
although that might be fun to do something like that. But this is what we do when you come to coaching and the Life Lab, right? This is what happens when you get coached, is you get to start to understand what are the stories that I have about all of this stuff, so that I can hold space for me, I can hold space for the fear that I have, for the frustration that I have, whatever it is, so that then I can work with my brain and I can…
choose to be in a place of love, can choose to be in a place of compassion, I can choose to be in a place of forgiveness or understanding for myself so that I can show up how I want to show up, whether it’s in the political sphere, right? How I want to interact with the news or with my friends and how I want to interact with my kid, how I want to interact with my dog for using those other examples. So the craziness, life will continue to happen around you, right? Like life…
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (09:14.382)
You don’t get a pass from life just because you’ve done this work or just because you’re you. And so things are going to come up and you get to decide how you want to be with them. And when you drop the story or you at least switch around, at least become aware of the story, then you understand all the subconscious and unconscious thoughts that are driving how you feel. And you don’t, you start to understand them and work with them.
and see, okay, if I don’t like what’s actually happening politically, okay, now that I’ve recognized the thought and instead of just going into the anger spiral, I can pause and I can say, but now what do I want to do about it? If I am, if I don’t like the direction things are going, how is it that I want to show up? And that can be in many different ways, right? That can just be working on yourself and starting to feel loving, compassionate thoughts towards yourself. So you can be that in the world. It could be,
taking action on a larger scale. But when you take the time to move your nervous system from fear-based, from frustration-based and anger-based into love-based or compassion-based or regulation-based, you actually have a much greater impact. You act from a place that is more authentically and aligned to you, and you will have a larger impact in the world, again, whether that’s just within your own home, whether it’s with friends, whether it’s with family, whether it’s in a community, whether it’s nationally.
but acting, taking the time to move back to this grounded place will allow you to not only feel calm in the moment and connected to yourself, but it will allow you to move forward in a way that speaks to yourself in a way. there’s not a right or wrong thing to do there. It’s really just asking you, what is it that I wanna do now that I’m back in a place of calm? Now that I’ve recognized that you’re was thrown at me and I can take a breath.
and I’m not acting from anger, how is it that I want to react? What is it that I want to do in this moment? If I knew that I was safe and everything was gonna work out one way the other, what would I do in this moment? And this is where that nervous system regulation and getting curious about what’s going on in your brain is so powerful. And it’s when you really get to start to work with yourself. Okay, so another short and sweet one about how to actually work with yourself during times of crazy. And again, this is…
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (11:35.338)
Somebody said in coaching the other day that this is why we come to coaching because even though I know these thoughts are there, it’s really hard for me to work with them because it’s never been safe for me to work with them before or I don’t know how to work with them. And that’s why coming to coaching is so powerful because not only do you get to witness your brain, because you might be familiar with a story like this is crazy, why isn’t anybody doing anything about it? But you might not know where to go from there. And that’s what we do together is I help you figure out where to go from there.
so that you can figure out what you wanna do in your own brain, how you wanna think, how you wanna be in the world. All right, I hope that this was helpful and I will see you on the internet, bye.
