Episode 187 - Let People Be Wrong About You: Exercises to Calm and Shift Your Perspective
When someone is angry with you, it’s easy to spiral into self-doubt and worry about what might happen next. In this episode, discover practical strategies to stay grounded and in control during conflicts. Learn calming exercises to reduce stress and shift your mindset, helping you respond with clarity. Tune in for actionable tips to maintain your inner peace.
Topics
The two possible paths of reaction when someone is wrong about you.
Techniques to calm your nervous system and steps to question the story in your mind.
Perspective Shift and Mindset Work.
Exercises for Grounding and Reality Connection.
Accepting that not everyone will like you, and that it’s fine.
Links
👉 Want to dig deeper into what you learned in the podcast? Go to selfgrowthnerds.com/school to work 1-on-1 with me! 👈
Transcript
[AUTO-GENERATED]
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:00:06]:
Welcome to the self growth nerds podcast. I'm your host Marie, a courage coach, creative soul, and adventure seeker. Since through hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in 2019, I'm on a mission to help you embrace your most confident self so you can achieve your dreams too. If you're eager for deep conversations, big questions and meaningful connections, join me on the quest to discovering how we can create a more magical and memorable life. Hello, nerds. How are you? I'm doing so good. I feel so in love with my work these days. I've had really meaningful conversations that make me feel grateful that I get to do what I do.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:00:54]:
I see people in their truest moments and it makes me feel so much love for them. I also came back from a very lovely vacation, a 5 day vacation in the countryside of Vermont. It's so beautiful. I didn't expect that. We rented a treehouse on Airbnb for 2 nights and then we went on a bikepacking trip for 2 more nights with our tent. We camped by a beautiful lake and then by a river. We went, up the river, climbed some rocks. It was magical.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:01:34]:
And I'm coming back feeling so rested and centered. And we're about to move in a few days. I really look forward to being in a new place and and and finding some more stability. The doors have closed for the Brave New Path retreat coming up in October. And the doors have also closed for my 8 week program, The Courage to Start New, which begins tomorrow, the day after this episode comes out. I really look forward to it. But if you wanna work with me this fall, you have not completely missed the boat. It's still possible to work with me 1 on 1.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:02:14]:
I have a few spots left. You can just book a call to have a conversation, see if we're a good fit at selfglotnerds.com/school. Okay. Today is going to be a short but important episode about why it's important to let other people be wrong about you. Recently I was on a call with a client who was telling me about a friend of theirs who started being mean out of nowhere and then ignoring them. They reached out and asked for an explanation but none was given. There was no openness to honest communication. In a situation like this, you have 2 options.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:03:01]:
The first path you can take is the fearful one. You worry about what you've done, try to guess how you should have acted differently, what you said that might have offended them. You review every little thing that might have gone wrong in the past. You might also turn towards the fight response and blame them. Think about all the ways that they should have acted differently. Another thing you might do is get anxious about the future and think about all the potential worst case scenarios. Like what if they go tell other people about what they think of me and then these other people also decide to turn their back and abandon me and then it all breaks into a 1000000 little pieces and I end up alone. Or you might take a blame that is not yours to carry.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:03:55]:
You might tell your friend I'm sorry, whatever it is that I did, I apologize, I shouldn't have acted this way, when actually when you're honest with yourself you stand by the way that you showed up. These are all examples of ways you might show up when your survival instinct is activated. Fight, flight, freeze, fawn. This is our default programming when we perceive danger. But it's not the only option. Instead of letting your primitive brain take over, you can learn to pause and practice creating a bit of distance between the circumstances and your reaction. You can instead respond in a more conscious way, a more grounded way, in a way that's connected to reality and aligned with your values. This is the path where you put things in perspective and realize you're actually not in real danger.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:04:55]:
But it requires more effort. It requires that you first notice that your nervous system is activated, that fear is wanting to take over. Then secondly it requires that you calm your nervous system down, and lastly it requires that you take a look and maybe reframe the narratives that have created the fear in the first place. It's important to be able to make the difference between the facts and the stories. So the fact might be my friend is no longer talking to me. And of course you can apply this to any situation that you're in. And then the story that you tell yourself is going to be different for everyone. Very often the stories we tell ourselves are informed by our biggest fears.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:05:45]:
So if you have a big fear of abandonment, then the story you might tell yourself could be, well, they they will go to other people that I love, they will talk behind my back, and then these other people will also want to stop being my friend. This is not factual. This has not happened. This is the story that your brain makes up. And what creates the feeling of fear in your body is not your friend no longer talking to you. It's the story you make up about that circumstance. Now the first step is to notice that this is happening. The second step, like I shared earlier, is to calm your nervous system down so that you can see a little bit more clearly.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:06:35]:
There's many different ways to do that from taking deep breaths to putting a hand on your heart to putting both of your feet on the ground and focusing on the present, focusing on how you are safe in this moment in time. And then once you sense that you're a little bit more in control, that is when you can start questioning the story in your mind. Simply being aware that your brain is making up a story, that in itself is already going to be super helpful because then you're able to hold the fearful part of you. Instead of being the freaked out child, it's like you become the parent and you're sitting next to the child. You can see that they are afraid and you understand why. And you can be there for them in a more powerful way. What is crucial here is that you meet yourself where you're at. Meaning that if you are deep in emotions, you don't try to intellectualize what's going on.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:07:53]:
There's no point trying to be rational when you're face to face with a toddler in crisis. You just want to help them feel safe. And it's the same thing with you. There's no point jumping straight into mindset work when your nervous system is dysregulated. This is the same as when someone jumps straight into wanting to find a solution to our problem when what we actually need is to feel seen and understood. So often we do that to ourselves. We lack empathy towards ourselves. We're in a rush to feel better when actually what we need is to slow down and be there for ourselves.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:08:36]:
Just imagine again that your child comes back from school and they tell you that one of their friends is angry at them and no longer wants to talk. We've got to understand what's going on underneath. They're probably just afraid that something is wrong with them, that they're unlovable and that they're going to be alone. As their parent, you're going to be much more helpful if you speak to this rather than try and strategize and figure out what happened with their friend at school. Because when you jump straight into strategizing, it's as if you're telling the child that the reason they are afraid is valid, that they actually might be unlovable, which of course, if we zoom out, we know that that's not the case. When we look at the situation with a mature perspective we know that what the other kid is doing has nothing to do with our kid and everything to do with them and what's going on in their life. And so we want to reassure our child that it's okay, that we love them, and that we're going to figure it out. And once they're calm, once you are calmer, can you do mindset work? The first exercise you can do that I find super simple and helpful is on one side you've got, okay, what's the feeling telling me? What's the story? And then on the other side you want to come up with 3 facts.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:10:14]:
So for example the feeling is telling me that this friend is going to ruin all of my other relationships. On the other side, if we come up with 3 facts, we might say, number 1, I trust my closest friends. I trust that the relationships we have built over time have value. Number 2 might be, I stand by the way I showed up. I showed up in alignment with my values. And number 3 might be, none of the scenarios I have been imagining have actually come true. The goal of this exercise is to help you feel grounded and more connected to reality. Another exercise you can do is ask yourself the question, so what? In what ways is this actually not a problem? In what ways is this actually an opportunity? Well, let's see.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:11:16]:
It might be an opportunity to, one, deepen your self trust, trusting that you have your own back and that whatever happens, you can figure it out. It's also an opportunity to get to know your values, to strengthen your sense of self, to understand what's really important to you. So for example, maybe you are realizing that it's important to you to surround yourself with people who are kind and who communicate honestly. When there is contrast between us and someone else, we can see them and our differences as an inconvenient, or we can see this as a learning opportunity. We can see them as a teacher. They're teaching us about ourselves. They're teaching us about what we value. And they're giving us an opportunity to take our values seriously.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:12:19]:
Let me give you a personal example. When I was dating on the dating apps and people asked me what my job was, there were a few times when I said I was a life coach where people had judgments. And that is great. I could have been offended, but actually I was thankful that they were showing me who they were. It's important to me to be with someone who's open minded and curious instead of closed minded and self righteous. This brings me to the last exercise you can do in a situation like this. And it's asking yourself the question, what does that tell me about them? Instead of taking it personally and wondering what's wrong with you, you get curious and turn it around. If I take the dating example, what did their reaction tell me about them and the way that they lived their lives? Well, maybe these are people who have a very strict idea of what they can and cannot do.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:13:27]:
Maybe they wouldn't give themselves permission to do something risky or to do something that's unconventional. And I can have compassion for that. If we take the, the example of the friend who's angry with you, who's ignoring you, what does that tell us about them? Well, maybe they are jealous. Maybe there's something about you that they envy, but they might not have the emotional intelligence or the self awareness to be able to be honest with themselves about that. They might not be able to say, actually, the way that you show up, you're unapologetically yourself. I look up to this. I wish I could be a little bit more like this. And so their discomfort is projected onto you with anger or with ghosting.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:14:23]:
And I think we can have compassion for this. It's easier to feel compassion for someone when we realize that the way they are behaving says nothing about us and tells us everything about them. What they crave, what they need, what they haven't been given growing up, what they struggle with. So that's it for this week. There is so much freedom in letting people be wrong about you. And I wanna add a caveat. I'm not advocating for never questioning your behaviors. Sometimes we do get things wrong, and it's okay to think about how we could have acted differently.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:15:10]:
What I'm saying though is you don't want to put your whole sense of self in the hands of other people. You know who you are. You are your number one authority. Not everyone will like you and that's okay. You will not like everyone either. There is a lot of peace in accepting that. Okay. Have a beautiful week.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:15:39]:
I'm sending you lots of love, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye. Hey. If you love what you're hearing on the self growth nerds podcast and you want individual help finding a new direction for your life and developing the courage to make your dreams a reality, you have to check out how we can work together on selfgrowthnerds.com or message me on Instagram at selfgrowthnerds. My clients say they would have needed that support years ago. So if you're tired of feeling like you're wasting your life, don't wait. Get in touch now, and I cannot wait to meet you.