#51 Question Your Beliefs

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 Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women, like you, with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intention.

My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend. If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing-up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Well, hey there, welcome back to Your Favorite You. I am coming off the heels of a huge mastermind of coaches. This past week, we all met in Dallas and so many amazing women that I did not know prior to this week came up to me and told me how much they love the podcast and how much they look forward to listening every week. It's crazy and incredible to me to hear this and know this, so if you are one of the people who thanked me, you are so welcome. I am so honored that you are listening and sharing with the people you love. Thank you.

Today I'm going to be talking about some of the pieces of advice that have been passed down through my family over the past 50 years of my life. As you will see in this episode, some advice was amazing, some of it, in my opinion, not so much. And, of course, as with nearly almost everything in life, nothing is black and white. Not much is all or nothing. There is definitely nuance in using your own discernment to figure out what you want to believe and, as a disclaimer, this is not a blast to my grandpa Len or my mom. Hi, mom, you can call me after you listen to this one. I do, however, want to invite you to question any old adages or advice that have been passed down through your family to see if it serves you to keep following this advice, if you want to tweak it or make it your own, or if you want to come up with some new ideas to try on instead.

My maternal grandpa, Leonard Paul Reichlin, grandpa Len, grandpa Lenny, lived a very full and long life. He had 90-plus years of life experiences. He loved traveling, he loved celebrating the holidays. He loved, loved, loved getting presents. At Christmas time we would open gifts from the youngest in our family to the oldest. This was quite an ordeal when you have seven children, and six of your seven children have children. Most of them had multiple children. We would sit on the floor in the middle of the living room at the funeral home while we were unwrapping, kind of being the center of attention, and as a patriarch of our family, he always went last, and he always had the largest pile of presents. He sat in a chair. He did not get down on the floor. He would always shake the gift and try to guess its contents. He was right more often than he was wrong about what was contained in the box. He had strong opinions about most everything. He gave advice when we asked for it and sometimes when we didn't.

He and my grandma, Peg the warrior that you heard about recently, were a huge part of my upbringing. Before I started receiving coaching, I accepted his frequently used phrases without giving them much deep thought of my own, but now that I have been taught to question everything, I was taught to believe. I have given some thought to these things. He used to say that I took at face value and decided to believe too. One of Grandpa Len's frequent adages that I resolutely still subscribe to is his saying it all comes out in the wash, or wash, as my dad, Ron, would have said. This has been something that he passed down from himself to my mom, to me, and I will gleefully pass it down to all of you, if you choose to accept it.

If you live a full life, you will get your clothes dirty. You will make mistakes. Your boobs will catch the food that doesn't make it to your mouth. Your favorite pen will explode all over your clothes and your suitcase. It's not a problem. Put it through the wash. You might have to wash it a few times. You might have to try Spray and Wash, then Dawn dish washing liquid. You might have to use some hairspray to get the ink out. If all else fails, you can buy something new and start all over. If that's not an option, maybe you can learn to love the item with a stain. This is obviously a metaphor for life. It is not supposed to be clean all of the time. A life well lived is messy. Think about it. Some of the most fun you've ever had has been when you've been making a mess. Literally or figuratively, the best stories in life are not linear, they are not pretty. Things don't go exactly to plan. This is when we can choose to decide that things not going as we thought they might could possibly be the best thing ever. So, yes, it all comes out in the wash.

Another one of his famous phrases that gets quoted in our family quite a bit is the saying it is what it is. This one I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, it is what it is helps me to accept things as they are, which is quite useful when I'm attempting to stay away from my control. Enthusiasm when things that are genuinely out of my control come up in my life. It is what it is. So true, let it go. It is not yours to fix or control. It is so powerful if you can subscribe to it when things are outside of your control. On the other hand, I think some people, me included, have used the phrase it is what it is to tolerate things in their life that they likely would be better served not to tolerate. In this case, it is what it is an idea that might keep you stuck in a situation that actually is changeable and only you have the power to change it, should you decide to do so. Also, so powerful. So, I love the nuance of this one. I'm going to keep it in certain situations and question it always.

The final phrase I'm going to talk about in this episode is one that I am choosing to unsubscribe from. This one is never wear your heart on your sleeve. One of my grandpa's favorite phrases. He had many. Holy Toledo, Jiminy Christmas, hey, be a deer and make me a sandwich, but I digress. One of the things he loved to advise us was, to quote, never wear your heart on your sleeve. I had to look up the origins of this phrase because I never thought to look it up when I was younger. I never thought to question it. Apparently, it came from the Middle Ages and was first written in Shakespeare's play Othello. It's likely that the phrase wear your heart on your sleeve comes from medieval jousts, where a sleeve referred to a piece of armor which covered and protected the arm. Knights would often wear a lady's token around their sleeve of armor to indicate which lady he favored.

Grandpa was admonishing us not to wear a heart on our sleeve as a way to tell us to not indicate what we truly cared about, so as not to let ourselves be open and vulnerable by letting others know what was important to us. At least, I think that's what he was trying to get across to us. He's not alive for me to ask him, or I definitely would. I think he was advising this so that we would decrease our chances of being hurt if the other person we cared about did not feel the same way, or to decrease the likelihood that other people could harm us by harming the people or the things or the ideas that we cared about.

Interestingly, my grandpa was an emotional man. It was not often that you wondered what he was thinking or feeling, because he would tell you. He loved me very much and was not afraid to let me know. He did not shy away from giving his opinions about anything and everything. The one thing he refused to talk about was the time he spent in the army during World War II. I'm certain that the time he spent there was very impactful to his life. I know he hated being away from my grandma, Peg. I didn't think I was going to get emotional. I'm showing you, my emotions. I cared about my grandpa. I still do. I know he refused to carry a weapon. I know that he worked in the morgue tagging the toes of the dead soldiers. I know he missed the train the morning of the invasion of Normandy, or he would have been killed on the beach, like many of his comrades, but that's all I know. He thought he was protecting himself by not talking about it, but my guess is that he may have harmed himself quite a bit by refusing to talk about it.

All this to say that it makes complete sense that he thought it was harmful to wear your heart on your sleeve. I am going to boldly and loudly proclaim that I think it is best for you and for me to definitely wear your heart on your sleeve. Let people know exactly what you care about. Be loud about who and what you love. As I said in episode number five, feel your feelings. I think that young kids have this right where they feel all of their feelings loudly and proudly and aren't afraid to let the world know exactly what they're feeling right now. Wearing my heart on my sleeve will often involve letting all of my feelings be known in the moment without apologizing for them.

I'm curious what phrases from your family of origin, what ideas passed down through generations, what beliefs that were given to you do you want to question? As you can see, going through the process of intentionally deciding what to believe, going forward, and which beliefs to use with discernment and nuance, and which ones to completely unsubscribe from, can be a very useful exercise. I would love to hear from you about this. I'm sure so many of you have great examples. Some of you may be so lucky as to have your grandparents still around to talk these ideas through with them. Anyway, I would love to hear from you and, of course, if you get stuck at any point with questioning these beliefs with love for yourself, I would love to be your coach.

Thank you for listening to the podcast and loving on me all the time. Now that my group launch is closed, I am opening up two spots to work with me one-on-one. If one-on-one coaching is more your jam, please reach out to me to book a consult by going to my website, MelissaParsonsCoaching.com, and clicking on the Work with Me tab.

I would love to discuss with you how I can help you on a one-on-one basis. Talk to you soon.