EPISODE 294: ENCORE How to Become More Resilient and Find True Strength

Lisa Carpenter [00:00:02]:
Welcome to the Full Frontal Living podcast. I'm Lisa Carpenter, master life coach to driven, ambitious humans who want more out of life without having to sacrifice themselves to achieve it. I'll share how it's possible to slow down, take better care of yourself, find more peace and ease, create sustainable energy, stop procrastination and overwhelm and fall in love with your life, your business and your body. This podcast is for you. If you're ready to learn what it takes to thrive as a high performer. Do less, but achieve more. Make you and your well being a top priority and create your extraordinary life. I'm so glad you're here.

Lisa Carpenter [00:00:46]:
Well, hey, hey. And thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Full Frontal Living podcast. Today we are talking about how to become more resilient and find your true strength. Because after spending time with hundreds and thousands of women, I know that most of the women who come to work with me who are high achieving, driven, ambitious, go getters in the world, resiliency, that's really what they're always looking for more of. Because often they're not feeling very resilient. They feel like they've been banged around by life a lot, they've accomplished a lot, but they're also feeling burnt out from being on that hamster wheel of life. Because many of my clients, much like myself, carry a tremendous amount of responsibility. They wear many hats, they juggle many balls, they spin many plates.

Lisa Carpenter [00:01:45]:
So let's talk about how to become more resilient and find more and find your true strength. Because it might not be what you think it is. So first I wanted to talk about the definition of resiliency. So when I looked it up, you know, because of course, this is what we do, we Google it, I wanted to see kind of, yeah, what the actual definition of resiliency, so out of the Oxford Dictionary, it is the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties. So it's a, it's a toughness. And then I looked at the American Psychological association to see their definition of resiliency. And they said resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands. So appropriate.

Lisa Carpenter [00:02:42]:
Because a lot of what I do in my coaching practice is teach emotional resiliency, but it's often not what my clients believe it to be. So resiliency is not about just stuffing things down, working, pushing through things and pretending like things didn't happen. And so many of you get into every way shape or form possible to not actually deal with what's going on in your life, especially when life is lifing. And this can look like, you know, getting into drinking too much, like it's wine o'clock, overeating, mindlessly scrolling, shopping excessively. And it can also fall into different behavior patterns. And for most of my clients, that looks like overworking and overdoing as a way to cope. So think about it. You know, when life gets hard for you is your default setting just to, you know, disappear into work.

Lisa Carpenter [00:03:45]:
And granted, I love what I do, so it is easy for me to disappear into my work. However, I know the difference between coming into work grounded versus coming into work trying to numb out and avoid what is going on in my life. Now, if you've been tuning into the podcast for a while, you know that, that your gal Lisa has been going through it. There have been some stuff going on. I've talked very honestly about the fact that life is lifing. And today on my Instagram account, I posted some pictures from my trip to the Dominican with my family and I shared with everybody that that was supposed to be my wedding. I was, I was planning on getting married to my long term partner and unfortunately, because of some events that transpired, I decided to call the wedding off. Now we are working through the things that have been going on in our lives and I'm going to be diving more into that the further I get to being on the other side.

Lisa Carpenter [00:04:49]:
Because I really believe that I need to work through my lessons and really embody what's here for me before I'm able to share it with all of my listeners from a place that can really be supportive of you versus just like dumping my my life stuff on you. I want you to be able to take lessons from it, but in sharing this with you, you know, I'm trying to allow you to see that even when you know we'll call it bad things are happening in your life, which I don't actually think anything was, is bad. I always truly believe that things are happening for us and there's always lessons to be found. But that doesn't mean you get to sidestep the grief, the frustration, the anger, the disappointment, whatever it may be for you. But we can still show up. We can still show up with this level of resiliency. And that's what I really wanted to talk about on today's episode is how you can do this, where being resilient allows you to keep your energy stores high, whereas so many people see resiliency as kind of being exhausted and always in the struggle and you don't need to be in the struggle of it, you know, and when you can master some of these things that I'm going to talk about today as we dive into the episode, it's going to be so helpful for you in order for you to look at some of your patterns and your beliefs, what you believe to be true about strength and resiliency so that you can support yourself better and, and truly, truly embody what it means to be resilient, which has nothing to do with being a martyr or pushing through. We are capable of so much.

Lisa Carpenter [00:06:35]:
So, you know, I wrote this post that will be going out where, where I said that champions don't always wear crowns or hold titles. They're the people who keep showing up when life is lifing. And as I've already mentioned, 2023 has been my most emotionally challenging year by far. And if you know anything about my past that is saying a lot, I have weathered a lot through these days. You know, the biggest one was, you know, realizing that my husband was an addict. And that was really when my life unraveled. And it was also the best thing that ever happened to me. This by far even trumps that, if you can believe it.

Lisa Carpenter [00:07:18]:
However, that experience is what propelled me into this work of self development. And I don't mean just reading books and consuming materials trying to find the answer. I, like went deep with coaches, with therapists, with counselors to really embody this work, to really transform who I'm being. And this is why I'm such a believer in one to one and intimate group programs. Because you cannot just consume content and think you're going to transform. You have to be willing to get in the ring. You have to be willing to have the conversations that are going to help pull out the things in you that you are unaware of. So having a second set of eyes, having other people hearing what you're saying, and having things reflected back to you is so powerful in terms of transformation and growth.

Lisa Carpenter [00:08:08]:
So, you know, my mentor asked me last week, I believe it was last week, what made the biggest difference in navigating this time in my life. And I gave him one answer. But there are really three parts to it and that's what I want to share with you today. So the number one thing for me was sharing what was going on in my life and asking for support within my closest relationships and allowing myself to be supported when I was feeling so raw, there was so much shame. I felt incredibly Vulnerable. And I was experiencing immense grief and massive disillusionment. It was like thinking that, you know, I don't know if you guys have ever heard of that story of the, the lion who lived with the sheep. And one day he saw his reflection in the water and realized he was a lion and not a sheep.

Lisa Carpenter [00:09:08]:
It. And it just rocked his whole world because he'd been raised as a sheep. It was, it was that disillusioning for me. It really knocked me off of my center. And why I'm saying that this was so powerful for me to share what was going on because there was a time in my life where I didn't let people in. I was very, very self sufficient, which I still consider myself self sufficient. But I also now see my self sufficiency as a tremendous weakness in my life. So you may be listening, thinking, wait a minute, how can that be a weakness? But when you're always self reliant and self sufficient, it means that you have to hold it all, that you don't allow anybody else to help you.

Lisa Carpenter [00:09:57]:
And it's actually a defensive mechanism. It comes from a wounded place. Not trusting that other people will be there to support you, not believing that anybody else will have your back. And the truth is, as you move through this life, you can cultivate relationships with other people who will have your back and who can hold that space. And for me, you know, a lot of it was I never wanted to be the person that needed support. I wanted to be the supporter because that fed my sense of worthiness. So I didn't want to let people in. I did everything possible to avoid vulnerability and defined strength as pushing through and always being fine.

Lisa Carpenter [00:10:46]:
And, you know, I remember when my husband went to rehab because I told no one. My clients didn't know, nobody knew. He was gone for like three months and I told nobody. And I lived with this immense shame of what was happening in my life. So there was nobody there to really support me or to listen to me other than, you know, my therapy group and this one good friend that I have, she's still in my life because her husband had also gone through rehab. So I remember I reached out to her and I said, hey, this thing happened. And I remember saying to her, do you think I'm codependent? And she literally laughed at me. And that was the beginning of the journey.

Lisa Carpenter [00:11:27]:
But she was really the only person who knew. And it was even hard to share with her because I didn't want anybody to see me as weak because that's what I made it mean about me that if things were happening in my life and I couldn't handle it, that I was weak. And that's what I mean about being self reliant and self sufficient all the time. That is the actual weakness. You are not weak when you ask for help. Asking for help and allowing yourself to receive help is when you can be at your strongest. Because it's so much easier to go through life with people supporting you than it is to do it on your own. But that may be the story that you're telling yourself, that it's easier for me to experience this myself.

Lisa Carpenter [00:12:17]:
And it is vulnerable to let people in when you're hurting. When you're experiencing something that you don't have any frame of reference for, it is incredibly raw. And most of us have not learned that it is safe to be that open with our emotions and to share with people. Because again, maybe you grew up in a home where you didn't talk about feelings or if something happened, you never really felt like you were heard or understood. Maybe you were shamed for how you felt about something and you just learned that you couldn't rely on other people that you believed you could rely on. So you learn to rely more on yourself. So what I've learned and would love for you to understand, especially if you are the kind of woman that I work with. So just, you know, again, high achieving, ambitious, driven, that being strong is an adaptation we hide behind to help us cope.

Lisa Carpenter [00:13:17]:
And I am all for strong women. In fact, you know, when my mentor said to me, you know, what have you done to support yourself going through this? The first thing I said is, well, I'm just, I'm just strong as, like, I'm just as strong. And then I laughed because, you know, like, that is true. I am a strong woman. But what I want you to know is that you can be strong and not have it all together. You can be strong and need support. You can be strong and be vulnerable. You can be strong and fall apart.

Lisa Carpenter [00:13:53]:
You can be strong and have needs and wants and desires. So I no longer define strength by pretending things are okay when they're not. Nor do I look at strength as the ability to push through and survive. Screw that. I'm not here to survive. And if you're listening to this podcast, you're not here because you're wanting to survive as well. We're here to thrive. I'm here to thrive.

Lisa Carpenter [00:14:19]:
I'm here to support you thriving. And I signed up. In this lifetime, I like to believe that I am Here to co create an extraordinary life that stands on this foundation of conscious living. And that's what the women that I work with want as well. They don't want to be busy, overwhelmed doers who feel kind of helpless in their life. They want to be conscious choosers of the life that they're living. They're, they're tired of feeling, feeling overwhelmed, exhausted and strong all the time. And maybe you're listening to this thinking like, oh my gosh, yes, Lisa, I am so tired of being strong.

Lisa Carpenter [00:14:58]:
So they are ready to embrace being conscious creators of their life. And make no mistake about it, like the women that I work with are strong. They have accomplished some bad ass things in this world. They have overcome stuff that, you know, other people would crumble to. Although I truly believe that women are incredibly resilient, we are just hardwired that way. I think it's because, you know, we have the ability to create new life. There are so many things that we have to just get through. But again, this specific episode is about how to get through things better, softer, with more compassion, with more love, so that you are actually creating resilience from a healthy place versus like crushing your health to be resilient.

Lisa Carpenter [00:15:49]:
So if you're listening and you can identify with what I'm saying, have you ever considered why you believe you always need to be so strong? Where did you learn that from? And how much of your identity is tied up in being the strong one? Because I know mine was a lot. Like I really got off on the fact that I could do it all and look good doing it and look at me like I'll just bounce back from everything. But on the inside, I was dying, right? I was dying. Are you the responsible one who never asked for help? So for many of you listening, being strong also is how you mask this kind of feeling of safety. So if you're strong, you feel safe because you don't believe other people, other people will give you that feeling of safety. So it's like armoring up so that you feel safer inside. For many of you, feeling strong is a way that you can avoid feeling your feelings, right? You just kind of armor up. Not going to deal with that? No, I'm good, I'm fine.

Lisa Carpenter [00:16:56]:
Everything's good. And you're just stuffing it down and stuffing it down and stuffing it down, which really creates emotional constipation. And you know, you might be exploding at the other people in your life. You might be short with people. You might find yourself like moody and irritated all the time, like Anything happens to you and you lose your shit. So this is what it looks like when you stuff your emotions down and you don't actually acknowledge what it is you're actually feeling when life tosses you something that you didn't want. So, and as I've already said so many of you, being strong is how you cope because you're terrified that somebody is going to judge you as being weak or needy. But I want you to consider that what if your definition of strength is the very thing keeping you from what it means to truly be strong? What if your strength, right, this strength you think you have is actually your biggest weakness? Because that's what I learned.

Lisa Carpenter [00:17:57]:
And that was me more than a decade ago. Like I said, I would have never, ever asked for help. I would have never shared with people what was going on with me because I didn't want anybody to know that I didn't have my shit together. So today I am really proud of the strength that I've cultivated and the resiliency that I've cultivated because it's not fake. It is rock solid and unfuck withable because I know what it means to be truly strong and emotionally resilient. So this was massive for me when everything happened that I pulled those people in who I knew could carry me, because, trust me, I needed to be propped up for. I needed to be propped up. It was so powerful having them close and in my life.

Lisa Carpenter [00:18:48]:
They supported me, they saw me, they. They witnessed me. They gave zero judgment, which was so, you know, as somebody who, you know, like I said so often, we, we try to be strong because we were so afraid of being judged. And to allow myself to be fully vulnerable and open with these women and to have zero judgment come back from them was so empowering for me. And their support and their love and their encouragement and their ability to just be with me, be present with me in all of the emotions that I was experiencing really gave me a lot of strength and really allowed me to see that resiliency isn't just something I cultivate within me. It's something that I can cultivate with the community that I've built around me. And, you know, so what I want to say to you is, find your people. Find your people.

Lisa Carpenter [00:19:45]:
So not only did I have these friends and colleagues that I reached out to, but I also reached out to old therapists that I had. I, you know, got myself a coach. Like, I really pulled in the people that had come into my life and said, I am going to give myself everything that I need to support myself getting through this, everything. Okay. Which leads me to number two, this. The second thing that was really key in me navigating all of this, because it's only really been, you know, six months since everything kind of blew up in my life, was I decided to be 100% committed and responsible for my healing. And it could have been really easy for me to go into a place of pointing fingers and blaming and being a victim. And listen, I had those moments.

Lisa Carpenter [00:20:40]:
So I'm not going to pretend like, you know, I did this perfectly, because I did not. But I really looked at my role because, again, we all play a role. But my role wasn't so much like what I did or how I showed up, but my role in terms of what is it that I wanted in my life. Because I believe that we are always calling in. Call it, you know, writing a memo to the universe. I want this thing. We're always calling in things we want, and we often get the things we want in unwanted ways. So looking at my role in.

Lisa Carpenter [00:21:21]:
Okay, if this is in my life, I helped to create this. So I didn't. You know, I do play a role. You play a role in what's being created in your life, whether you like that or not. And when you're willing to take a step back and really be curious about what is it that I've been asking for in my world and is the lesson in here, the universe trying to give me that very thing I want, man, that was a hard pill to swallow. But this is what happens when you decide to be 100% committed and responsible for your healing. I also didn't sit around and wait for things to change. Your girl took action, because that's what I do.

Lisa Carpenter [00:22:06]:
So I got my butt into the chair of the coaches and the therapists and the people that I knew were able to really support me. So I had my friends and my colleagues who were there to listen to me, but I also had the professional people that I hired and paid to support my healing. And that meant that I had to be financially responsible for that as well. Like, I just. I did the things that I needed to do in order to help me change, because I knew if I didn't get committed to and take responsibility for that, that nothing was going to change. Because my thoughts were like, man, I was creating story after story after story after story, and I needed support instead stopping that. So even though I have all the tools in my toolbox, I have been coaching and deep in this work for over two decades. It doesn't mean that I don't also need professional support of coaches, therapists, mentors, etc.

Lisa Carpenter [00:23:09]:
So such a powerful way of me embodying my own work in an, in an even deeper way. And I do have so much appreciation and gratitude for that. This experience really allowed me to see how different I am now than I was even, you know, 10 years ago or even two years ago. And I really stayed committed and responsible for living in this work, meaning being in integrity with how I show up for my clients. So I didn't just throw all my self care out the window. I didn't just stop sleeping and stop eating, although I did have a few days of not sleeping and not eating. That is a, that is a very reasonable trauma response. But as quickly as I could, I got back into, you know, the routines, the basic, the basic, basic foundations of eating, sleeping, hydrating, moving my body to support myself.

Lisa Carpenter [00:24:01]:
So being committed and responsible for my healing meant I couldn't just stay in a ball and cry all day. And I did do some crying in a ball. Okay, but if you want to heal, the only person that can support you healing with whatever is going on in your life, if you want change in your life, even if it's like you want to leave a job or, you know, you want to parent your kids differently, it doesn't matter what your thing is. Maybe you want, you want to not be working so much all the time. Only you can choose to be committed to and responsible for making those changes happen. Otherwise nothing's going to happen. Right? Like, nobody was coming to save me from my suffering. And it sucks because it's like the part of you that may want to be a victim wants someone to save you from yourself, but that's not conscious living.

Lisa Carpenter [00:24:59]:
Conscious living is choosing to show up for yourself in a different way. Okay, so last thing number three, and this has been by far the hardest, and I think this is a really hard one for, for most people, is releasing attachment to the past. The past is data. It gives us information, it helps us to make decisions. But the past is not a predictor of the future. And if we, if you, if I choose to hold on to the past, you can never create the future you want because if you're tethered to the past, you're always going to be creating more of what you don't want. And we become attached to the past for a lot of reasons, right? The fear is if I let go of that, what if I get more of it? We stay attached to the past as a Feeble attempt to stop us from being hurt again in the future. You know, our body well, we basically embody trauma in these moments when things happen as our body's way of trying to protect us from that ever happening again.

Lisa Carpenter [00:26:19]:
But the truth is, you cannot be committed to the future you want. As my therapist said, Lisa, if you keep your hand on the doorknob of the door to the past. So this means, you know, again, coming back to being committed and responsible for the future that I wanted. That also meant that I had to release my attachment to the past and be okay with linking arms with fear, doubt, and uncertainty. Right? Just because we let go of the past doesn't mean the fear and the doubt and the uncertainty just like melts away. It's a constant process every single day of saying, I'm going to be here today. I see you fear, I hear you doubt, I'm with you uncertainty. And today everything is okay.

Lisa Carpenter [00:27:11]:
Right? Because as soon as we put our door, our hand on that doorknob of the past again, we're sucked back into the reality that we don't want. So it doesn't mean pretending like what's happened in your life didn't happen. It doesn't mean that you just forget it all together. It means accepting that it happened and choosing to stay committed to what you want in the future. Wow, this was a meaty episode. I thought this was going to be a quick one. It was not. I don't know why I always think they're going to be quick because they always end up being meaty.

Lisa Carpenter [00:27:50]:
So this is how you create true strength and resiliency. It's not stuffing it down. It's not pretending like things didn't happen. It's not pretending you're not feeling certain things. It's facing things. Full frontal, right? Full frontal living. That's what full frontal living is all about, is showing up with courage and commitment and responsibility, allowing yourself to be supported and remembering that the past is in the past. You only have today, and you can only create your future from today.

Lisa Carpenter [00:28:28]:
You can't create it from the past. That's true resiliency. And that's why even through this period, although it was, you know, I definitely wasn't inspired. I didn't have as much life force energy flowing through me. I was still able to show up and run my business and be there 100% for my clients and most importantly, be there 100% for me, my family, and everything that was going on. And, you know, there's still more healing to be done. But I truly believe, as I've said before, that when things like this happen, when life lifes, it is for you. There are so many gifts if you're willing to open your eyes, be curious and do the deep dive work into exploring what might be there for you.

Lisa Carpenter [00:29:20]:
But I guarantee you, if you're trying to do it by your own devices and reading books, you probably will not find it. Because I can tell you the gifts that I've gotten from this, which I'm not ready to share yet. I wouldn't have discovered this on my own. This was in such a blind spot of mine. Like, my jaw was literally on the floor as I began unpacking this with support. And now it's so clear to me that I absolutely created this because it was the only way to truly get my heart's deepest desires. And is it terrifying? Yeah. Does it make any logical sense? No.

Lisa Carpenter [00:30:02]:
And that's life. It's not always logical. And I am a lead from the heart, but lead from a healed place in my heart. And this has really opened me up to so much more healing within myself, which is just going to make me more powerful because as was said in a conference that I was at this this weekend, you know, your pain becomes your power. Your pain becomes your superpower. You know, just a reminder, if you want to do something in your life, just start. Because you don't know where it's going to take you. So until next week, take good care of you.

Lisa Carpenter [00:30:39]:
Remember, like, nobody's coming to save you and only you can be committed to and responsible for supporting a life that you can thrive in. I'll catch you on the next episode.