confessions

How to Stop Being a People Pleaser

March 23, 2021 by Edie Wadsworth 5 Comments

I am a lifelong, somewhat recovering people pleaser. So, mostly today I’m talking to myself, but I have done a lot of work on my people pleasing.

Most of us who are people pleasers, wear it’s somewhat like a badge of honor. I want to show you some simple ways that you can understand if you’re doing it, and give you a little more understanding of what it’s doing to you, and what it’s doing to your relationships.

It’s not helping.

It’s not authentic.

It disconnects us from people rather than connecting us to people.

People pleasers think it’s our job to make everybody happy. We think it’s our job to make sure nobody’s upset. We think it’s our job to make sure everybody’s having a good time, and everybody’s having pleasant emotions.

We will sacrifice ourselves at this altar.

The problem with this is it assumes we can have some kind of control over someone else’s emotions. That’s the toxic part of people pleasing I think we don’t realize.

When we people please people we actually are just manipulating them.

We’re trying to control their response, control their emotions, control what they’re thinking. We usually do it because we want some kind of approval from them. We like to have people like us, we’re addicted to approval.

I do believe it often stems from a good place. I think a lot of my people pleasing came from my childhood where it was the way that I coped. It was the way that I got accepted. I was a performer, an achiever. How can I make everybody happy? I think most people pleasing usually comes from a similar place.

But, if we don’t learn some skill to outgrow people pleasing, it becomes very toxic in our relationships.

People pleasing might look like you doing something that you don’t want to do, but you pretend like you want to do it, so somebody else will like you.

Or maybe you say yes to something that you clearly shouldn’t be doing and don’t want to do. You say yes so that people will think a a certain way about you, so that they’ll approve of you, so they’ll like you.

Maybe you pretend to agree with something that you don’t really agree with so that you don’t hurt someone’s feelings or so that you don’t cause any disturbance of any kind.

I want to show you a side of people-pleasing that’s not very pretty. And when I discovered this, it really changed my life. It made me realize I’m not doing myself any favors, and I’m certainly not doing the person in my life any favors when I’m people-pleasing.

People pleasing is manipulative.

You’re using your behavior as a way to manipulate somebody else to think of you a certain way, treat you a certain way, or approve of you, It’s manipulation because you’re not being your authentic self, and so the whole situation is false, You’re not being true to yourself, so whatever they think about you, they don’t really think about you. They think it about whatever version of you that you have presented to them.

People pleasing is lying.

We are lying to other people when we people please and it does not build healthy relationships. We basically end up betraying ourselves. We basically end up disconnecting from our true self.

We think we’re doing it in order to connect with other people, but we really aren’t because they’re connecting with a version of us that’s not really us.

In the end we end up feeling resentful, bitter, disconnected, and lonely. In the moment people-pleasing feels kind of pleasant, because we often do get the response from people that we want right away, but then in the long run we just feel resentful and bitter.

The short-term discomfort that not people-pleasing will bring, and it will bring some short-term discomfort, is worth it in the long run.

It’s worth it to build stronger relationships.

It’s worth it to build a relationship with yourself that’s true in integrity and in honesty.

People pleasing is not love.

It’s actually the opposite of love. Sometimes we do it because we feel like we want to appease another person, or because we love them. We just want to make it easy, but we’re not making it easy in the long run, and it’s not love.

There’s a huge difference between people pleasing and true, authentic, unconditional love.

I will be the first one to tell you to serve your neighbor. I believe we are called to sacrifice. I believe we are called to service in generosity to other people. I believe we are called to kindness and compassion and all of those things, but what I want to show you is that people pleasing is not that. It’s actually the opposite of that.

It looks like we’re doing the right things on the outside, but on the inside, we’re seething, we’re harboring resentment, we’re getting bitter, we’re showing up passive aggressive. There are all kinds of net negative benefits.

I do think a lot of times we think we’re doing it for the right reasons, or we think we have good intentions, basically what we have is this deep need to be liked and accepted.

We think we can easily get that need met by being whatever people want us to be, and doing what we think other people want us to do. In the long run, that disconnects you from them, and it disconnects you from you.

Often what you will do is ignore yourself.

You will ignore your own beliefs.

You will ignore your own desires.

You will ignore your own priorities.

You will ignore all those things in order to make everybody else happy, and here’s the truth. You can’t make other people happy. You can’t use your behavior to manipulate them to feel happy because other people’s emotions are caused from their own thoughts.

Actions we take that are not really true to who we are, and true to how we want to show up in the world, they’re very superficial. They won’t work.

If it seems to works for a while, what will happen is when you do start showing up as who you really are and what you really think, it’s going to be a rude awakening.

We will often end up feeling lonely and disconnected, and the reason we feel that way is because we have disconnected from who we really are, and from what we really believe, and from what we really desire. That disconnection will be very painful for us, and then we will blame the other person.

We’re also assuming all kinds of things about the other person. It’s kind of a lack of trust in them, and it’s a lack of trust in you, in who you actually are. When we people please, we’re lying. We’re lying to ourselves and we’re lying to other people so they will approve of us. We have this addiction to approval.

People pleasing looks on the outset like love. It looks from the outside like you’re trying to love that person. But it is not love. It’s a lie.

How can we untangle ourselves from this? Here are 4 ways:

1. Become aware of it in yourself.

Be honest with yourself. I would venture to say that everybody, at least at some time or other is a people pleaser, right? We have to admit when we see this in ourselves.

We don’t like to be manipulated. We don’t like to think others are just being fake or they’re just doing things in order to make us feel a certain way, right? We don’t like it when it’s done to us, and our awareness in ourselves when we’re doing it is really important.

I want you to get curious about it though. I’m a lifelong people pleaser, but beating myself up for being that way is not going to help. I want you to have some curiosity and compassion about why you ended up being a people pleaser.

You’ll probably see where it stems from, and you’ll might see that your little self learned how to do that as a way to survive. I look back at my eight-year-old self, and my 12-year-old self, and my 14-year-old self and I have compassion for her.

Because I had never recognized it and dealt with it, when I did come unhinged, I really came unhinged. That’s why recognizing it is awesome. You can have compassion and kindness with yourself, and that compassion and kindness to yourself will then eventually lead to true compassion and true kindness to other people, instead of manipulating other people.

You learned to do this for a reason, and it served you for a while. It helped you survive, you’re here. So we’re not going to beat ourselves up for how we’ve used this coping mechanism to sort of get by, and get through, and get what we needed.

I want to teach you a better way. I want to teach you how to give yourself what you need, instead of always farming out your self-worth and your approval to someone else.

2. Build your sense of self-worth from the inside out.

You agree with God about who you are, and why you’re here, and how he made you. You agree with him. You stop looking to other people to validate it, and you just look to him.

He will look you in the eye and say, “I love you. I created you. I made you for a purpose. I adore you! I’ve equipped you with everything you need to live a full life, and give your gifts to the world.” We agree with him about who we are, and we stop looking for other people to validate us. We stop looking for other people to approve of us.

If you’re a people pleaser, here’s a news flash, you don’t have a good relationship with yourself.

You’re always disrespecting your own beliefs and your own wishes and your own desires.

People pleasing is different than choosing to sacrifice for someone else, recognizing that maybe this is not what I would choose, but this is what I want to do, is different than doing something hoping that by doing it you’ll get their approval.

When you people please you’re ignoring you.

You’re ignoring your sense of self, your sense of what is right and wrong, your sense of the world, your sense of relationships.

You’re not having your own back.

You’re not being true to yourself.

You’re not liking yourself or accepting yourself.

Then you’re wanting everybody else to do it for you.

No, that’s your job. That’s an inside job.

How you strengthen that sense of value in yourself is just how you think about you. You just start trusting and believing that God made you and he loves you. You’re here for a purpose. You don’t need everybody else’s approval for what you’re doing.

You have to decide how you want to think about yourself. You decide what relationship with yourself is like. You reinforce it. You give yourself what you need. You stop ignoring you.

All of those things will help you build a sense of self-worth from the inside out. Learn to be you, and learn to like you so you’re not always looking to other people to do it for you. That’s what people pleasing is.

We’re afraid someone will be disappointed in us. I hate this feeling so bad! I hate it when someone’s disappointed in me. I want to fix it. I want to do whatever I can to undo those feelings they have about me that are unpleasant, but we can’t.

We have to allow people to have their own thoughts about us. What other people think about you is none of your business. The sooner we realize that, the sooner we just go to work, fixing the things inside us that need fixing, tending to our own sense of self-worth so that we’re not farming it out to other people.

We never can control what they think anyway so trying to control it with your actions, or with your words, just doesn’t work. What is does do is leave us feeling like we’ve let ourselves down. We have let ourselves down, because we never pay attention to what we think. We’re always wondering what someone else is thinking!

3. Get clear on you.

Get clear on your goals, on your priorities, on what you believe, on what’s important to you. This is the one that has really helped me, because I’ve had the hardest time in my life saying no. The thing is, when you say yes to something, you are saying no to a bunch of other things.

I’ve realized that I can’t say yes to everything. I get resentful and too busy and then I don’t have enough energy to do the actual things that I say are important in my life.

When you get really clear on what’s important to you, and what your priorities are, then it’s easy to say, “I can’t do that thing,” and you don’t have to apologize for it. “I would love to help, but I can’t.”

This will change with your season of life. This has changed for me over the years, but I know what I have the bandwidth for, and I know what’s really important to me, and what takes a lot of time and energy to do.

You can learn to say no to the things that don’t fit in with what is important in your life, even though it will disappoint people. You will disappoint people.

Don’t you wish we could just manage them, and make them like us? But we can’t, and the sooner we realize that the more we live in the power of the thoughts and feelings we can create for ourselves. The more we live in how we can take care of ourselves. The more we can learn to approve of ourselves instead of asking other people to do it for us.

4. Choose unconditional love instead.

People pleasing is not love. People pleasing is lying. People pleasing is manipulation. It’s not the authentic version of you. It’s not love.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself.
Luke 10:27

That assumes you’re taking care of you first, that you’re putting your own oxygen mask on, that you’re deciding what you need, and that you’re meeting your needs.

You’re not expecting other people to do those things. You’re good at being clear about your own priorities and your own goals. You’re learning to honor yourself, honoring the commitments you make to yourself, honoring the beliefs that you have about yourself.

Notice how you feel.

Over time, people pleasing leads to bitterness and resentment. If what you’re doing in your life, for your spouse, for your kids, or for your job is leading you to feel resentful and bitter and disconnected, you’re doing it wrong. You’re people pleasing.

If what you’re doing in your life is leading you to feel love and connection and kindness and compassion, both for you and the people in your life, then you’re operating from a place of love.

They’re not the same.

If somebody asks you to do something and you feel like kind of icky about it, but you decide to do it anyway, you just people pleased them, you just manipulated them, you just lied to them. Instead you can say no in a really kind way.

I want you to get into the habit of taking care of yourself. We expect other people to take care of us, but we don’t take care of us. You take care of you. You know what’s important to you.

People pleasing sometimes does feel good in the moment. We get this little hit of dopamine, because we feel like everybody is happy with us. Everybody loves us. Then we wonder why six months later, or a year later, or 20 years later, we’re bitter and resentful.

It’s because we’ve been people pleasing. You’re choosing that instant gratification of saying yes in the moment so people will like you, instead of in the moment feeling a little bit uncomfortable, but in the long run choosing love, compassion, and kindness for yourself and others.

Notice how you feel.

People pleasing will eventually make you not like yourself deep down because you know you’re lying to yourself, then you’ll blame the other person. You’ll think it’s their fault.

Resentment feels bad, love feels good. Love always includes the truth. We have to stop lying. We have to say the truth, and we have to be true to ourselves.

Unconditional love of course will require sacrifice and lots of it, but it will not require you to lie.

People pleasing will require sacrifice, but you’ll be lying, and you won’t like yourself in the end. When we live a lifestyle of people pleasing, it disconnects us from the deepest part of ourselves that has wisdom and love. We choose this sort of superficial connection.

It’s not really connection, because the person isn’t really connected to us, they’re connected to a version of us that always does what they think we should do.

If you want to honor yourself tell the truth. Be clear about your priorities and your goals.

Unconditional love is fierce, because unconditional love is the truth.

People pleasing is not true and It’s not love.

I was so used to people-pleasing that when I ran into Stevie, and he’s not a people pleaser, I thought, “Whoa, is that legal? Can you just tell people you don’t want to go somewhere, and like not do it?”

He’s really clear about his own priorities for himself. I started to bump up against that and see what a better way it is to live. It’s a little bit more uncomfortable at the first, but then you know where each other stands. You live in more integrity and you live with more honesty, instead of just doing what everybody thinks you should do and then secretly seething inside.

These are the kinds of things we are talking about this week in my first ever 5 day #RelationshipGoals Challenge! It has been powerful so far and we’re not even half-way through yet! You don’t want to miss it!

Sign up here for tomorrow’s zoom link, and I’ll also email you the replays!

Are you numbing your emotions? 4 ways to get your power back

September 23, 2020 by Edie Wadsworth Leave a Comment

I love cookies. Like LOVE THEM.

Sometimes, it’s easier to eat cookies than deal with the pile of bills on my desk.

Cookies make procrastinating piles of bills tolerable.

But the piles don’t fix themselves and when I don’t give myself cookies or shopping or scrolling Facebook as an option, it’s way harder to just let that pile of papers accumulate.

And what happens to that pile when I solve it with cookies is that it continues to grow. And a small pile becomes a big monster.

Anyone relate?

Ask yourself what you are tolerating that you wouldn’t tolerate if there weren’t cookies.

If you couldn’t temporarily forget about the piles? If you just had to feel the discomfort of knowing that there are things in the pile you need to deal with?

Dealing with the pile is harder RIGHT NOW but so much easier than it will be to deal with it two weeks from now.

That small pile will keep growing until it seems very overwhelming.

The buffers we use (cookies, shopping, social media, Netflix, and more) seems pretty innocent, until we realize what we are exchanging for them.

So how do you know when you’re numbing your emotions?

one – you lose it over little things

When you notice you lose it over little things, it’s a sign that you’re actually numbing your emotions, you’re pushing them down, you’re resisting them, and then they’re just ready to explode out of you at times when you don’t want that to happen.

two – you’re addicted to doing, not being.

If you have to be doing something all the time, it might be a sign that you are trying to keep yourself from feeling. Any other workaholics out there? I have a tendency to be this way. I have a tendency to just do, do, do because it keeps me from feeling whatever I’m trying to not feel. You’ll eventually burn yourself out because it’s not an authentic way of living.

three – you have less joy.

The third sign that you might not be processing your emotions and you might be numbing yourself out is that you have less joy. When we numb our emotions, we numb them all. We have less pain possibly, but we also have less joy.

We live in a world where numbing is fast becoming a way of life. We numb everything that brings us discomfort—we have anesthetics for physical pain, distractions for emotional suffering, and the false promises of feel-good consumerism.

We believe these bandages will heal the hurt that’s an inherent part of being human. Instead, they’re simply making us more sensitive to our pain.

The only way we truly heal is by learning to feel again. Because when we do, we not only connect back to ourselves, we also connect to our responsibility to the world we live in.

How do we stop numbing and get our power back? Here are four ways I’ve found helpful.

Access what may be causing you to numb yourself & the cost it’s having in your life

I think it’s really important to ask ourselves some questions, because some people totally downplay emotions and say, “Oh, they don’t matter.” They really do matter because your emotions are what fuel your actions. If you’re not willing to process and feel your emotions, you tend to be stifled in your whole life.

What are we running from?

What are we afraid to feel?

What is it that is keeping us at a point where we’re choosing this over what’s actually happening in our lives?

What’s it costing me to do this?

For some of us the cost is pretty mild. Maybe you’re just procrastinating things that you wish you would do. But a lot of times it’s costing us a lot. It’s costing us our relationships. It’s costing us the potential of what we could be in our life. It’s costing us years. It’s costing us time with our kids that we’re never going to get back.

I want so bad to see all of us wake up to our lives. This is the only one we get!

Accept what you’re actually feeling and stop resisting it. Be willing to be uncomfortable.

The thing that you’re resisting with is going to have its own set of problems, and it’s not actually solving anything.

You’re going to get addicted to pain medication. You’re going to get addicted to alcohol. You’re going to get addicted to Facebook. You’re going to get addicted to cookies!

They give you this temporary sense of relief, but the real problem is not going anywhere, and the real problem is going to get a lot bigger than it is now if you don’t deal with it.

When we’re not willing to feel the negative emotions, when we place a buffer between us and the negative emotions, what happens over time is, all we feel is negative emotion. We’re robbing ourselves of joy, because in order to have joy, we have to have the other side of joy too. We have to be willing to have both sides.

Really accept where you are. If you’re in a hard place, be willing to be there, and be willing to feel whatever it is you actually really feel. Even if that’s anger, or if that’s resentment, fear, or any negative emotion. Get curious about what you’re trying to push away, and just let it be with you.

Here’s the magic. When you let it be with you, it doesn’t stay forever.

It comes and goes. You just sit with it and be curious about it and learn something from yourself. Become more aware of it, and then you can pass through it.

Grief is similar. You have grief and you are unwilling to walk through the grief. If you just keep resisting, resisting, resisting, it just keeps trying harder to come to the surface. Whereas if you just let grief or fear or anxiety or anger or whatever the feeling is, just be with you, it passes so much faster.

I think we beat ourselves up, especially as women. We think we always have to be happy. But acting happy is not the same as true joy.

Can we just let ourselves be where we are and not judge ourselves for it? Then we’ll have the capacity again for joy.

I had oral surgery and when I was taking something for pain, it was so easy to think,”Oh, it’s all good. It’s all fine.” Yeah, it’s all fine because it’s numb. But when it’s not numb, what’s the situation? When it’s not numb I can see to it that the problem actually gets fixed.

This numbness that we’re tolerating, that we’re seeking out, is keeping us from assessing where we really are. It’s really motivating to get something fixed when it’s hurting and it’s not numb. When it’s hurting and you numb it out, you’re not motivated to fix it.

What are you tolerating in your life because of this numbing out that you wouldn’t tolerate otherwise?

Acknowledge that your feelings are coming from your thoughts.

Acknowledge that you are the one actually causing this with your thoughts. When we realize that we have so much control over all of this, our thoughts, our feelings, our actions, we can get ourselves into a much better place of taking the action we really want to take in our lives. But you’ve got to stop numbing to do that.

Let’s say you lose your job. It’s so easy to blame the circumstance, “Well, I’m just really depressed because I lost my job.” The real reason you’re depressed is because of the way you think about losing your job.

You could lose your job and think, “Oh, this is going to be an amazing opportunity. I’m going to figure this out. It always happens like this. God’s always opening a door, and I can’t see it right now.” Do you see the way that you could tell yourself the story about that job loss that wouldn’t make you dive into unending stress and overwhelm?

The first part of the equation is to feel what you feel. Then decide, “No, this is not the way I really want to think about this. I want to think about this in a way that is productive for me. I want to think about this in a way that motivates me to make some good changes in my life.”

The first side of the coin is to feel it. The second side of the coin is to acknowledge that you’re the one causing the feelings by the way you choose to think about the circumstance. There’s so much power in this process!

Take responsibility for what you’re creating in your life.

Take responsibility for your life. Everything in your life, you’re creating it. If we don’t have to keep numbing all of our feelings, we can get back to our real life!

I love this quote by Mary Oliver:

“Tell me what it is that you plan to do with your one wild life.”

What is it costing you to stay numb, and to stay stuck, and how can you be willing to be where you are, feel the pain that you feel, and then acknowledge that you have the ability to change that the way you’re thinking about your life?

I want to really live it and really feel it and really create it for myself and for my family. I want that for you too!

You always find what you’re looking for

September 16, 2020 by Edie Wadsworth 2 Comments

As you know, we have been through kind of a strange time as a nation and as a culture, and it has given us a lot to process and work on and think about.

There are the people who process change and hardship and suffering by over performing and people who process by under performing. Both ways end up at the same place.

I’m am an over performer, so I come out of the gates like, “I’m going to learn everything. It’s going to be great. I’m not going to let quarantine get me down.” Then about four weeks later, I’m crying on the floor. And then there are those who underperform. They start their crying on the floor and then they slowly get up and start to function.

One thing that I’ve noticed about myself over the last couple of weeks is I’ve been letting the division get to me. We say to ourselves in our mind that there are these camps of people. The truth of the matter is most of us are somewhere in the middle, but what can appear to happen is this divide, and you can tell who’s on one side and who’s on the other.

You’re supposed to hate all the people on the other side of whatever your camp is, right?

We tend to villainize the people who aren’t in our camp.

I started to see this huge divide and think,”Oh my gosh, we’re so divided. People can’t see the nuance. We’re just so divided. We are pitting people against one or the other.”Then I realized, wait, this is how I see it because this is how I choose to see it.

When I made that revelation for myself, it helped me kind of step back and think,”People are probably not just one way or the other. They’re probably nuanced like I am.”

I don’t feel like I know everything about everything. And they probably don’t either.

It kind of drove the point home that I’ve been learning for the last 10 years, which is

You always find what you’re looking for.

What I mean is if you look at your spouse, and your story in your head about your spouse is that they don’t contribute and they’re not supportive, you will look for evidence for your story and you will find it. You will find LOTS of evidence for your story, which will confirm your story.

Your brain likes to confirm its story and that’s okay, except ask yourself, “Do I like what I’m finding?” Because if I don’t like what I’m finding, I probably need to look a little closer, see a little more nuance, see both sides of the story.

Those of you who have that story about your spouse, you could probably tell another story about them. My spouse is supportive. My spouse goes to work every day and he takes care of our family and he loves us, right? You could tell both stories.

Which story helps you like the way you show up?

If your story is he’s not supportive, he doesn’t help, he doesn’t love me, and he doesn’t support me, then you’re going to show up pretty needy and pretty defensive. But there’s always another side to the story.

If you live from the other side of the story, you’re going to probably give him the benefit of the doubt, and show up with more curiosity and compassion and love. That’s probably where you want to be living your life, I would guess.

The same thing is true when you see somebody on the internet that you don’t agree with.

Can we hold the same space for people?

Can we see that there are two stories?

Can we see that telling ourselves everybody who thinks THAT way is awful and I don’t like THOSE humans, pretty much Xs out about 50% of the humans!?

I found myself going down into this place where I would do that. I would think, “Well, they’re one of THOSE people and I don’t agree with that,” and I would kind of discount them and lump them into this group of people that I don’t really respect or agree with.

Can we hold space for each other?

Can we at least acknowledge that there’s another part to the story, and that person who’s really worried about going out might have a sick child, and it feels so personal, and it feels like everybody that’s recommending that we do something different is against her child.

Can we just be curious about the people who are on the other side?

This is what I have ask of myself, because you will always find what you’re looking for, and if your brain is looking for division and looking for people to be wrong and looking for the negative side of things, you will always find it.

Then you have to ask yourself, do I like living from the place where I think half the world is wrong and awful. I really don’t. I really like holding a bit more curiosity and love and respect for people who don’t see it the way I do. So it’s been a good exercise for me, honestly, because I found myself saying, “Oh, everybody’s crazy. The world’s going crazy.”

It does feel like the world’s going crazy, but can we hold space for people and can we just be a little bit curious? Can we step back just a little bit and say, “I can kind of see why that person with that upbringing from that part of the country could see it that way?”

Where in your life are you doing this? Are you doing it in your marriage? Are you doing it with one of your kids? You may have a story in your mind about one of your kids and everything they do just confirms the story that you already have. I would beg you to ask yourself, “What’s the other side of that story?” What if more of the time you lived from the other side of that story?

We’re all doing this in different parts of our lives, in different settings, in our marriage and our families, and in the culture. It just makes us better humans to be willing to HONOR other people and the way they think, even if it’s not the same as us, and to try to find some understanding.

It makes us better humans to listen a little bit more to their side. Ask, “I wonder why they think that,” or “I wonder why they so quickly go to that.”

I’ve really been working on this. This year has been difficult for us in a lot of ways, and we have the choice of how we want to see it.

Even if I looked at last year and all the different things that have happened, I could think,”Oh my gosh, God hates us. This has been hard. Why do bad things happen to us? Why has it been like this?”I could look at it that way, but when I look at it that way, I feel like a victim.

I’m not a victim. I don’t want to feel like a victim.

The other choice I have is,”Wow, look at what has happened FOR me. Look at the chance that I have gotten to see things differently, to really grow, to accept the suffering and challenge, and let it be my teacher and let it change me in the ways that it can.”

What if we looked at it like that?

We have a pandemic in front of us. You can tell yourself a story about that. And you live a certain way, according to that story. Remember though, there’s another side to the story.

I do believe that the pandemic of fear is real, and when we live in fear, do we like the way we show up? It’s okay to do it either way, but I’m just asking us, asking myself, to step back from all of our dogma and say, “Is believing this story helping me show up the way I want to?”

It’s a question that’s worth asking, because if it didn’t matter how you looked at it then we would all see it the same way, and obviously we don’t all see it the same way.

We don’t see the pandemic the same way. We don’t see marriage the same way. We don’t see suffering the same way, right? What that tells me is that the way you see something really becomes your story about it, and you can choose how you see it.

Sometimes we look at a circumstance like a pandemic and go,”Well, there’s no other way to see it, except that this is terrible and we’re all going to die. We should stay in our houses forever.” That’s one way to see it.

We have to ask ourselves,”When I look at it that way, do I like the way I show up? Do I like the person that story makes me into?” It’s really worth asking, “How do I want to see this? How do I want to look at life? How do I want to look at my relationships?”

You might be saying to yourself,”Well, you’re just looking at it with rose colored glasses.”Possibly, but what I always ask myself is,”When I tell myself this story and live from this story, is that the best, highest version of myself? Am I living from love? Am I giving people grace and the benefit of the doubt and all the things that I would want people to give me?”A lot of times I’m not.

It’s been a really good time of learning and growth. That’s what I think is so cool about collective hardship, collective suffering. We talk about this a lot at my gym, voluntary hardship.

Sometimes we sign up for things that are hard and we, in our minds, tell ourselves, “No, this is good for me. It’s good for me to challenge myself. It’s good for me to deny myself. This is going to teach me so much.”

Then we have the involuntary hardship, involuntary suffering. Sometimes we don’t change our mindset about it and decide how we want to think about it, and then we get into this weird victim mode where everything’s happening to me and i’ts all wrong. Woe is me!

I just find that I like the way I show up when I truly believe that God is doing this for me. This is for me, not because I need to be punished or did something wrong. We’re all sinners. We all need to repent. We all need God’s grace, but coming from the aspect of this is for us. He’s doing this for us. This is for our good.

He will turn every situation into good.

Is there any harm in believing that? How does it help us show up when we believe that?

Especially in the divide that I see in my own life, the divide that I see in my own family sometimes, the divide that I see in my own town, in my own Facebook feed, it’s worth considering giving people a little bit of space and being curious about what makes them tick. It’s worth being curious about how we are interpreting things, and how we are seeing things.

Do we like ourselves when we interpret things that way, and when we show up the way we are showing up? Because we always find what we are looking for.

1. Reclaiming Your Past

July 12, 2019 by Edie Wadsworth 8 Comments

We often define ourselves by our past. We think we can’t escape the circumstances of our upbringing or our wounds or our failures.

In this episode, I’ll show how to reimagine your past that you can question the story you’ve been telling yourself. Once you learn this simple technique, you’ll get all your power back to write your story in a way that helps you create the life you want.

When weird worlds collide…

October 6, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 14 Comments

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Last night, I left soup simmering on the stove and went to an alumni dinner for my medical school alma mater.

I usually avoid such things because of the obvious. You know, the obvious things like the fact that I’m not practicing medicine anymore and therefore not much of a donor to the school and totally out of the game of medicine and its politics. There’s also that the small fact that I spend my days teaching people about natural health and essential oils.

But the dean of admissions and my gross anatomy professsor (also now the dean of student affairs) (both of whom were there I was a student and both of whom are precious to me) were going to be there. So, when I got the email, my answer was a swift yes.

As I was driving to the country club my heart was beating fast.

Am I nervous? I thought to myself.

I think I’m nervous.

I never get nervous. Well, I mean, almost never.

It was the weirdest feeling.

Then I started to feel oddly self-conscious. (also not normal for me.)

I took out my Frankincense and dabbed it on my wrist and almost immediately felt more at ease. I reminded myself everything I always talk about here on the blog—you know forgetting about yourself and being interested in other people and not worrying about where you’re going to sit and who you’re going to talk to. In other words, I gave myself a good pep talk.

Once I got there, I was fine. Mostly. It’s a small town, there were several friendly faces, and Dr. Kwas and Doug Taylor were both a sight for sore eyes.

We hugged, we chatted about life and kids and I gave them both copies of my book, since they’re both mentioned in it. I kept fighting back the urge for a whole world of memories to flood in—those formative, crucible years of medical training that broke me and then eventually remade me. I felt hot again.

Funny how, even after all these years, not much changes. Doug was always like a father to me and Dr. Kwas was by far my favorite professor of all time. (That’s saying a lot for someone who has made a career out of learning). Seeing them felt like one of those rare full circle moments— like coming home, being cared for, being known.

We all sat down and began to introduce ourselves and tell about our practices.

This is the awkward part I was dreading.

“Hi, my name is Edie Wadsworth. I graduated from the class of 1998, right about the time my Daddy died and my life fell apart. From there I had two more babies right away and practiced medicine in a small town ER on weekend nights for 3 years, leaving there to practice 3 years as a family doctor in an office beside my husband. That’s when the world is sure I lost my mind again and left work to homeschool my kids. I started blogging and writing, and then became a certifiable Appalachian medicine woman. Nice to meet everyone.”

I mean, that’s not exactly what I said, but I’m sure that’s what it sounded like. It was a bad case of ONE OF THESE IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER.

And I’m so okay with that. Finally.

I absolutely can say that I am so thankful for all the twists and turns life my life has taken.

When I first started really exploring natural health and essential oils, it felt like going back to medical school all over again—learning so much that was foreign to me at the time, staying up late at night, reading and studying everything I could find. I watched videos, listened to audio recordings, went to meetings.

Basically, it led me to a whole new lifestyle, a whole new set of priorities, a whole new way of thinking.

And in the weirdest way, it led me back home—to my roots, to the pledge I took as a young doctor, right there in front of Doug and Dr. Kwas, to do no harm and to do my best to bring healing to those God brought in my path.

About the same time I was learning about essential oils, I also was writing my memoir and reliving some of my most painful memories. It was wreaking havoc on me emotionally. I went into a dark season and it took its toll. Thank God for the oils because I know those months would have been unbearable otherwise. I will always associate that period in my life with some of our most powerful emotion balancing oils.

Young Living’s motto is wellness, purpose, and abundance and boy has joining this company given me all three. I’m so very thankful. I now make a full time living working part time from home sharing something that I believe in with my whole heart, something that has given me healing and wholeness and so much more. It’s the best job I never knew I wanted.

To celebrate the weird twists of life and two year anniversary/oiliversary?, I’m doing a “weird worlds collide” giveway!

I’m giving away a free bottle of Christmas spirit, a lavender lip balm, and a signed book to anyone who jumps in with me this month.* (Just click this link and it will walk you through ordering process.)

I promise you that you won’t be the same. When you join YL, you don’t just get a starter kit, you get whole new sisterhood/community and the invitation to a whole new way of thinking about wellness. You get the unbelievable healing power of God’s medicine and (if you want) the chance to share that with other people.

Minus a few awkward dinner conversations, (and even those are pretty humorous!) you are going to be SO GLAD you jumped in.

I’ve said this before, but it’s true. I believe God gave me the gift of compassion for helping others find healing. Sometimes I’ve used medicine and sometimes words and often just a cup of soup or a smile. I think I’m finally okay with however He chooses to use me, no matter how small or how ordinary it is or how awkward it makes alumni dinners!

I’d love to have you join me (you have until October 9th) but either way, I’m sharing an Essential Oils 101 class I taught. Just click the link below.

Click here to watch my Essential Oils 101 Class!

*you must join with a wholesale membership and premium starter kit to qualify!

When Comparison is Paralyzing You

June 6, 2016 by Edie Wadsworth 3 Comments

When I started blogging, I found the Nester in the first two days and I was mesmerized. She was funny and quirky and we shared a common love for our homes and how to make them better. I was convinced I wanted to be a home blogger like her. I documented my house projects and tried to figure out how to be the Nester when I grew up.

Then I found Melanie. And I loved the way she wrote about nothing—like the Seinfeld show of blogging. She was hilarious and so comfortable in her blogging skin, which was (and is) mostly about going to the grocery store and dealing with dogs and meals and life, with some awesome fashion thrown in. Maybe I could be like her.

Then I found faith bloggers. And style bloggers. And food bloggers. I compared myself to all of them, to their writing styles and their photos and their social media presence. I wanted to be everything they were. Then, I wanted to quit. Because it felt too hard and I wasn’t sure where or if I could fit in with my very different background and my very different outlook on life.

After years of trying to figure it all out, I quit trying to be like everybody else and ventured into the scary waters of trying to be myself.

I’m what happens when the Nester and Melanie and Ann and Christy have a Lutheran, cowboy boot wearing, karaoke singing, Southern appalachian love child with an weird enthusiasm for food and natural health and theology and decorating. I’m a quirky mix of all of them and yet nothing like them whatsoever. In other words, I finally learned to be me. And I do me much better than I do them. And when I settled into doing the best version of me, I found my sweet spot.

C.S. Lewis is a dangerous man to read and confirmed my suspicions when he wrote this:

You will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will find it. ~C.S. Lewis

We’re all guilty of it, let’s just be honest. We look around and see people who seem to have it all. We wonder why we struggle in certain areas, why we’ve been given this particular set of circumstances, why we aren’t more gifted or beautiful, or why everyone else seems to be gliding by so effortlessly, with perfect passion and energy and joy. And if we’re not careful, we start to develop bitterness toward the people we’re comparing ourselves to.

Find comfort in this: think of the most wonderful, successful, kind, blessed person you can think of and know that she is comparing herself to someone too—and she’s not measuring up. It’s a pitiful cycle that we can all get caught up in and it steals our joy and contentment.

And none of us are exempt.

Actually, the women we most compare ourselves to—the ones that seem to have it all—are often the ones who struggle most with insecurity and self-doubt.

Lean in, pretty momma, because I have something important to tell you.

You are beautiful. You are enough. You are just who God made you to be, in every way.

And once you let that sink in, it will slowly begin to change your view of yourself and your interaction with others.

Our tendency to compare ourselves to others makes us more self-centered than we ought to be. And once we settle into our own skin—comfortable with who we were made to be—we can finally stop focusing on ourselves and start spending that valuable energy on how we can best serve and love those around us.

The truth is, comparing ourselves to others doesn’t just steal our joy, it robs those around us of the rare gift of a woman who has learned to give her uniqueness to the world.

Lay down the comparison, the self doubt, the insecurity, and start offering your gifts to the world. We need you. And to butcher my favorite song lyric from Bob Dylan, the world ain’t seen nothing like you yet.

***

If you’re struggling with self-doubt, comparison, insecurity, maybe even going through a grown up identity crisis, I think I can help. All those years of struggling to be myself? I took some good notes and learned a few priceless gems along the way. I rediscovered my passion and learned to live with a more purpose and creativity. Most of all, I learned the joy (and the heartache) of offering myself to those who need me most. And I’m still figuring it all out. But I decided to share my cliff notes in a 4 week mentoring/accountability group called O V E R F L O W.

You can find out all about it here. I can’t wait to meet you there.