Welcome back to Empowerment, the Radiant Nurse podcast. So for the month of October in Radiant Nurse Essentials membership, we have been diving into self-love. So there's self-love modules, there is also energy work, and the reason why, you know, there's not just one thing, there's a couple different ways of going at it because this is the way that our brains work. we need to have the neuroscience to actually reprogram our brains and change the way that we are thinking about ourselves and change the way that we see our reality and our experience and all that. And then we can also have the energy work to kind of like give you that push, that boost to get the neuroscience, the brain reprogramming working the fastest. And then in addition to that, we can have somatic work which is basically helping your body shift and move and process emotion.
So when you kind of combine all of those things, you get the trifecta that actually creates real sustainable brain changes to have you feeling your best self inside nursing, outside nursing, and really create those changes. And this is what this self-love program and month is really focused on is being able to create that sustainable change. So for this episode I want to be talking about you know similar kind of topic but basically um self-acceptance and being able to kind of see the perfection in whatever happens and this is something that I've been personally working through and then it's been coming up in client sessions and I was like this is this is ready we're ready to shift this and move past this so I really wanted to kind of spend some time talking about it and bringing it up so Basically what was coming up for me was this, especially in social situations, not seeing my own perfection.
And really what I mean by that is often creating these like you know self-doubt this feeling of not being good enough this feeling of maybe like not belonging or just not feeling like you can authentically be you in social situations really overthinking things and feeling like you need to be someone else and how you can know that you're doing this and this is just such a classic simple like um symptom of it basically where is if you have a conversation and things like are kind of awkward or you say some things and you're like why the heck did I say that like you're beating yourself up after and you know we've all had those moments but if you then spend you know hours to days to weeks like being like why the fuck did i say that like that was the dumbest shit i've ever said in my entire life and i said it to this person and what i should have said was this and like you're creating all these like well if this situation happens i'm gonna say it this way and we we overthink you know we're
classic overthinkers here, right? Girl, I get it. So just that is a prime example of this, you know, area of work that could happen. So not really what it comes down to is not seeing the perfection in yourself, but this comes up so much in those social aspects of when we're engaging and interacting with other people and when we're constantly overthinking about saying the perfect thing or presenting yourself in a certain way or Are they thinking about how I look? Are they thinking about what I'm saying? Are they second, you know, we're the ones, second guessing, we're the ones overthinking. We're the ones making, you know, you stuttering over your words or you saying the wrong thing or whatever it could be. Texting and you use the wrong there and you're like, oh my god, I'm such an idiot. Like, if that's where your brain goes, it's not a problem. This is the way that your brain has been trained from early childhood.
Most of our beliefs and our brain programming has come from like age zero to five. You don't even remember how those belief systems but all that had to happen was a parent, a teacher, a friend, somebody needed to say something and your child like you know think of a three-year-old perceiving an adult conversation situation and what their brain interpreted at that three-year-old brain level is what your brain believed to be true and put that into its like way of thinking and said this is the way that the world works, this is what I need, how I need to treat myself, this is how I need to show up, And it could have been, not even something said to you, it could have been just something that you witnessed happening with like other adults and that was like your 3 year old brain being like, this is what I need to believe, this is how I show up.
And this happens and patterns repeat itself over and over and over again, so it is not your fault that your brain treats it like you the way that it does but now you have the capacity and capability to recognize this and to start shifting this and to start changing the you know neuroscience the way that your brain speaks about itself so that you can create more more abundance more you know of your in your life what does that even mean like that basically means How much more capable would you be if you spoke kindly to yourself? And just think about it, like, how much time do you spend overthinking, being the crap out of yourself, second guessing, you know, living out scenarios that will never happen in your brain, going through all these different situations, figuring out how to, you know, interact with your patients or co-workers, the physicians, whatever it is, like, how much time? is spent on that? How much energy is spent on that?
How much emotional capacity do you give to those kinds of situations, places, and things? And at the end of the day, how do you feel? How much do you have left over to give to your personal life, to your passions and hobbies, to your spouse, your kids? What do you have left to give after all of that? the answer for most people is like zero zilch like you got nothing you are in the negative zone there is not a damn thing that is possibly left for you to give to somebody else and this is what i want you to just have that awareness of right we cannot beat ourselves into feeling better we've beaten ourselves to this point and if beating ourselves to feeling better worked, worked, you would have already done it, right? You would have already, you'd be like a freaking millionaire. You'd be, you know, running the biggest hospital system out there if beating yourself was the way to get to where you wanted to be.
And so recognizing that like, okay, like it's not my fault that my brain is programmed the way that it is now. I can't continue beating myself to get to where I want to be in life, whether that be in a nursing career, a leadership role, just happier or enjoy life or have more passions and hobbies and actually like get to enjoy them because I'm not so damn burnt out. If that's what you want, it has to come from a different way. We can't just, you know, the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result and that's what happens. Your brain has been programmed this way probably from, you know, age three or five or whatnot. And now you've repeated this pattern over and over for decades. And now it doesn't work, right? Like it's not getting you to where you want to be and it's leaving you feeling miserable, not enough, not worthy. And how does that show up when you feel not enough, not worthy? How do you interact with others?
How do you interact with your patients? How do you interact with your coworkers, your managers? How do you advocate for yourself? Do you take the time off that you need? Do you leave on time? Do you get breaks? What does that create in your life when you're replaying those programs? So, as I said, it's not your fault that this is the way that your brain has created the situation. what we can do is start to shift that but we have to do it from a place of like acceptance of understanding of like okay I can see you know how my brain created this programming because of you know the way that I was raised or the like the examples that were taught to me or my experience I had when I was in kindergarten and I stood up and people laughed in the back of the room and that made me feel that I, like, you know, I didn't, I was dumb or didn't have something to share.
Any of those moments you can be like, okay, it makes sense that like my child version of my brain created this scenario and said, this is the way that things are and this is how this pattern has created and repeated itself in my life. So we have to come from that place of like, Oh yeah, understanding, like I get it. You want to like take that like little girl version of you and like give her the biggest freaking hug of like, oh my God, like I can see how you thought that. I totally understand. And then that's actually like, okay, what do we do now? What do we do now? So this is really where it, it comes into, there's a couple different ways of going out about it. And with, you know, the train intuition that I have, I have like the capability of taking those, you know belief systems and actually like pulling them out. Now here's the problem is if we take that emotional root cause and just like energetically remove it amazing gives you a boost.
But if you don't change the way that your brain is thinking you haven't actually changed anything. So I mean I could take out that like that emotional root cause it's causing this belief system that's causing the problems. But if your brain hasn't actually changed the way it's programmed you're going to continue thinking the same way and it's going to recreate that same emotional issue that has caused the problem. So, what do we do then? So, that's why I want to pair the energetic work, the emotional work, as well as the actual neuroscience brain change stuff. I think it's so important that we understand how our brains work and you don't have to understand the deep nitty gritty but understanding how do our belief systems get created. Our belief systems get created mostly by emotions. When you have an emotionally significant event Your amygdala and your hippocampus, depending on how stressful that event is, says, God, that's an important event. I need to remember this.
This is something that's significant. And it creates a neural connection based on the emotions that caused that event. So you think a thought, but the emotional experience is actually what signals to your brain, this is significant. We need to remember this. So this is actually how we start to change your brain. And you can't, truly erase old memories. You can rewrite old memories and they do that a lot in different psychology practices of therapy and things like that, but what actually is happening is you're building a new neural connection that's stronger. So when the neurons are brand new. Think of it like if you had one single piece of dental floss. How strong is it? You could probably snap it with your fingers if you tried hard enough. But then if you braided that together it's going to get stronger and you braid it together and then you have a piece of string and that can probably, you know, it's going to be harder to break it.
And then you keep braiding it together and now you have some like rock climbing rope or something like that like the more and more connections and like braids that get added to that rope the stronger it gets and I want you to like think of that almost like like the neurons and stuff that happens so every time you make a new a new neural connection, you're like adding a new layer of like, you can say like the dental floss, so a tiny little string and that adds up and that adds up and they braid together and they get stronger and stronger and stronger. And so then what happens is the neural connection that's the strongest, the thickest rope is going to be the one that gets chosen. You're not going to go rappel off of a mountainside with a dental floss. You're going to rappel off the mountainside with the big ass thick rope that you know is going to support you. And the same thing is kind of happening. Our brain always wants to protect us. Our brain gets in fight flight.
Our brain wants to avoid pain, seek pleasure. It's going to choose the neural connection that it trusts the most, which is like, you're gonna go rappel over the mountain with a really thick rope, right? Like you're not gonna do it with a dental floss. So your brain is gonna choose the neural connection that it can trust the most, which is the strongest neural connection. It's the most reliable neural connection. So when we go to reprogram our brain, we can't do it from that place of beating yourself up, because what actually is happening, you're reinforcing that. other belief system that you don't want to continue with. So if you're not seeing the perfection in yourself, you're feeling not enough, you're feeling not worthy, we have to understand why that happened, where that came from, have some self-compassion. I know it's hard. I know it's hard. But if beating yourself up were the answer, you would already be there by now. And then we need to build a new neural connection.
And what did I say earlier? It has to be emotionally significant. So this is why affirmations don't generally work for people. is because what they're doing is they're restating a statement over and over and over again, but if they're not getting the emotion behind that statement, it's not telling your brain that it's emotionally significant, which means it's not creating a new neural connection, which is signifying, hey, this is important, this is what we want to be, the thing that we want to focus on and we want our brain to remember. So, this is really vital. if you're finding new statements of, you know, accepting yourself and like how the one that I have been using to reprogram this, like not seeing how perfect I, not seeing the perfection in myself, right? So not seeing the perfection in myself socially of saying like, okay, I show up in a situation where I make that fool of myself. How was that perfect?
