Lessons I've Learned Since Being Evicted

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Hello, hello and welcome back to Crappy to Happy. It has been a few weeks since I have been

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on the airways. There's a good reason for that, which I'm about to share with you. And interestingly,

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that makes for the topic of today's episode. Isn't it nice when I can share with you my

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lessons learned and my real life and we can all take something out of it, we can all learn

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something important and you don't have to go through the crappy thing yourself because I went

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through it for you. So this is a win-win win today. So let me first just give you a little bit of a

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background about what's been happening over here. Short version. Just before Christmas, we received

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an eviction notice. We have been renting the same house in Richmond where we live in London for

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coming up to three years and we had already pre-signed on for four so we'd signed a two-year lease. So we

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had 15 months or more left on our lease. We're very settled. We like where we live. So to get a

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notice to vacate two weeks out from Christmas when we had all of this time left was really a little

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surprising and quite a bit upsetting. The reason for the vacate notice is because the owner wants to

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sell the house and he is by the way within his rights to do that. So there's a break clause which means

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that at a certain point during the lease either party can break it with notice and so he was just

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exercising his break clause and giving us notice to move out kind of the end of February. This was

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just before Christmas right so it was it's just a bit of a two months that we had. So that was quite

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devastating and so I immediately got to work. I put on my steely determination, my optimism and said

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well we have to move. I'm going to find somewhere that's even better and I'm going to really make sure

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that this is a really positive move and we started to look at some houses and short story. There was

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nothing and everything cost about a thousand pounds a month more than we are currently paying

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and would be further away from where we are and we just love our location. So it probably took us

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about 48 hours to decide that what we really would like to do is to buy the house that we are living in.

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Which sounds extreme right that sounds like an extreme reaction to just not have to move but

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there's a lot more to it than that which is not a topic for this conversation but we have really

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established a community here where we live. The location's amazing but we have a really lovely

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group of neighbours if you've ever seen some of my posts on Instagram around Christmas. We all have

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Christmas together. We have parties in the street. We have a WhatsApp group. Everybody gets

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along really well and it's not common. It's actually not common in most big cities but particularly not

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big city like London as well. It is just a really handy location. Everything that we need is literally

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right on our doorstep. When we thought about the possibility of having to move away from this

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street and these neighbours we just were all so depressed at the thought of it. So that brings up a

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whole lot of stuff there right. So we were talking about then having to sell our house in Australia

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in order to buy a house here which was not my plan. That has never been my plan and there is something

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very reassuring about knowing that if things go pair shaped here in London we can just pack up

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and go home anytime we like. I mean we have a house on the Sunshine Coast in Australia and that's our

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home. So to let go of that and to really embed ourselves here financially like to put our money

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into a property here is it just feels like a much bigger commitment than what I had ever thought we

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were making even as we have stayed here longer and as we have really enjoyed being here we love it

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here we know we're going to be here longer than we had first thought but just psychologically it's

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another step to actually buy a house here and to let go of our house at home. So that is not just

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emotionally a big shift but it is logistically a bloody nightmare let me tell you because then I'm

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dealing with real estate agents and conveyances and mortgage brokers like across two countries in

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different time zones and just to make things even more complicated the agent who was selling this house

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that we are living in. He went around holidays for three weeks and wasn't able to be contacted so we

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couldn't actually progress anything to do with buying this house but we had to make a decision whether

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we were going to sell ours and meanwhile we've got an eviction date looming so every day we're getting

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closer to having to be out and we actually couldn't do anything make any progress towards even having

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a conversation about buying which would then warrant us having to sell so there's all of this like

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dominoes these things that have to happen and there was nothing that we could do about it so we came

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back in January we managed to have a conversation we managed to agree on a purchase price for the place

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that we're in which meant that then we could start the process of selling and that has involved late

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nights early mornings talking to real estate agents property managers wasn't what we had planned we've

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got tenants in the house it's upsetting for everybody it's it's been a whole thing it's been a whole thing

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let me tell you and then I guess in the background of all this it's not something that's right on the

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forefront of our minds but my father-in-law who is very old and he has been unwellies in aged care

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he has gone into palliative care and we were told he had perhaps you know just a few months to live

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and so while that is awful and it's sad and we're a long way away it's not so much emotionally

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upsetting because we've probably been coming to terms with that for quite a while but it is unsettling

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in terms of we don't know when that's going to happen we don't know when we're going to get a call

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and kind of have to upsticks and get a flight at short notice to go back to Australia so it's

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it's just this like another layer of uncertainty in the background you know we've got this uncertainty

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about the house we've had all that stress we've now been given a deadline to sell our house in

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Australia so that's an awful lot of pressure and it's not sold yet so if it doesn't I don't know

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where that leaves us but it's just a lot of uncertainty and sitting in uncertainty is a really

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really uncomfortable thing as we all know we're not very good at tolerating uncertainty and when

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you're whole like all of the structures and foundations of your life and where you live are all a

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little bit feeling a bit untethered then that is unsettling to say the very least all that aside though

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I have had big plans to launch my new version of my Beyond A Confident program which is about

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cultivating grounded self trust self belief getting over you know the second guessing the self

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doubt the people pleasing the perfectionism all of those patterns of behavior and specifically

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pitching this and and targeting this program to small business owners solopreneurs self-employed

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service providers coaches therapists designers creatives anyway so that has been in the works I've

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been really working hard I'm really excited about that and I had set a start date for that program

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which I was so determined that I was going to meet I had people who were interested committed

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that padded deposit and I have been really determined that that program is going to go ahead as

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planned meanwhile up until midnight answering emails up at five taking calls spending my all

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of my days pulling together paperwork finances in different countries and doing five different

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tax returns in two different countries and I have been pushing through and telling myself it's fine

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it'll all get done not a problem just work a little bit harder just stay up a little bit later just

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to get up a little bit earlier I can make a work I can do anything this is this is fine and I really

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felt some pressure I mean not pressure I'm excited about that program I'm so excited about that

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program but I had committed to people I have made a commitment to people that this program is going to

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go ahead and I know people are really keen to join and so when I say pressure I mean I don't want to

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let people down I have had a wait list for that course for a year and a half and I have kept on pushing

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it out because the time wasn't right I spent last year doing a whole lot of background kind of work

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in my business cleaning up systems and the platform that I was on which meant that this year I was

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ready to go like I am ready to go and I feel like I all I have done is post-pone and post-pone and

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post-pone this program and the last thing I want to do is post-pone it again and I came up with some

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work around so I thought I can open the community and people can engage in the community really

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like strategizing for how I can make this thing still go ahead as planned and then just this weekend

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just gone when I spent the whole weekend feeling unsettled, untethered like just on edge wound up about

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all of this just the whole lot of it and then I thought you know what here's what I had this little

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moment of realization better late than ever here is where I thought hmm there is some irony here isn't

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there probably irony is not the word probably hypocrisy is more the word when the program that I am

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teaching the whole premise of this program that I'm madly putting together so that I can teach it

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to my fellow business owners is how to create calm in your business how to create space and how to

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cultivate the capacity to make your decisions in your business from a place that is calm and grounded

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from a nervous system that is regulated so that everything that you do in your business is coming

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from a place of groundedness as opposed to urgency or fear or reactivity and you know this is what

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happens when you have a disregulated nervous system and when you don't feel safe in your body or

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emotionally is you say yes to things when you should say no and you take opportunities when you

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probably shouldn't and you undercharge because you don't want to offend anybody or scare anybody off

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when you don't trust your worth and you spend hours perfecting because you don't think anything

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that you do is good enough and it creates this stress and angst and everything is based on fear

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and reactivity and not calm and safety and groundedness and here I was here I was insisting that this

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program would go ahead if it killed me and pushing myself to the absolute limits because I really

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was incomplete denial about the reality of my capacity and I was ignoring all the signals I've

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not been getting enough sleep I've been working from a sense of stress and obligation and not

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wanting to disappoint people and from this place of urgency as opposed to strategy and you know

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interestingly enough last week I was invited to be a guest on Dermot Willins podcast and I will drop

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the link to that when that episode is released but before I got on Dermot's podcast I Dermot's

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a radio guy from Ireland who's also a mindfulness meditation teacher and he was on my podcast just

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last year you might remember and Dermot had me on his show and before we started a conversation he pulled

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the card and the card that he pulled was acceptance and so we had this whole conversation about acceptance

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and you know the value of being willing to accept the reality not as you want it to be not how you

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wish it was but how it actually is and the courage in that and I sat for an hour and talked all about

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acceptance and why that's so important and the benefits and how I use it in my own life and then I

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got off that podcast interview and immediately went back to try to work out how it's going to get my

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cause running starting this week so my goodness we are blind to ourselves a lot of the time and you

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know sometimes you can know something intellectually and you can even know something emotionally but you

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can still be unable to see how your own patterns are playing out in real time because when you're

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in it and when you're the one you're trying to make a decision that kind of goes against what your

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nervous system feels like it wants you to do it doesn't feel wise and evolved and grounded it feels

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like giving up it feels like making excuses it feels like disappointing people it feels like

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yeah letting people down being lazy being flaky making excuses these are all the stories and so

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it's the willingness to kind of recognize that that's what's running the show here and being willing

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to accept that actually this is your old conditioning showing up your conditioning to push through and

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to prove yourself and to not be seen as unprofessional or uncommitted and making those decisions from

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that place is in nobody's best interests and like I said just a little bit contradictory for me to

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be teaching that meanwhile doing that myself but I did think this is a classic example even though

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it's me and that's a tough thing to admit I did think it was a really useful example to talk about

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how your nervous system does drive your decisions a lot of the time now whether you are in your

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own business of employed like I am and like the people that I'm proposing to work with in my program

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whether it's in your your normal work whether it's in your family your friendships all of the

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stuff that you just have to manage in your own life it is really interesting to have a sense of how

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these nervous system patterns play out and how they impact your behavior and what that looks like

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and how the things that you do which you know you may even well recognize some of them you you

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you might put both hands up and say oh yeah I'm a people pleaser when you really start to understand

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how these are nervous system reactions these are safety behaviors all designed to help your nervous

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system feel safe they are safety strategies but they're not that helpful or sustainable in the long

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term it's useful to start looking at your behaviors and your patterns through this lens because then

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it helps you to know what to do about them and to have some strategies and tools for managing those

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patterns and those reactions instead of just trying to talk yourself out of it or think yourself

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out of it which doesn't work

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so your nervous system's job is to make you feel safe that's it number one nothing else it's

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primary objective is to make sure you are safe it is automatic the autonomic nervous system it

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happens without your conscious input it is just running like your operating system in the background

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all the time it is constantly scanning your environment for threat doesn't have to be real threat

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it's constantly scanning for the perception of threat what it perceives to be threatening and this

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is not just physical danger it's social threat it's rejection emotional threat relational threat

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somebody being mad at you somebody being let down by you people being disappointed thinking you're

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unreliable having a bad opinion about you thinking that you said the wrong thing and that you don't

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actually know what you're talking about people losing respect people not needing you anymore I could

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have been concerned that if I took too long with my course somebody's going to go and buy a different

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course and I would lose that income and I'm about to buy a house so this is this is the stuff that

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drives us and these threats are as real to your nervous system as any physical threat these social

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threats these emotional threats are just as real as any physical danger because throughout human

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history if there was a chance that you were going to be cast out from the tribe rejected and left alone

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you would die and even in your own family as a baby you're born you rely on the people around you

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to keep you safe you learn very quickly it's not just your your primitive like your genetic coding

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your biological coding that has your nervous system operating like this then you are born into a family

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where all of the people around you that care for you and that shape you feed you lots of messages

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either directly or indirectly through their behaviors about what you need to do and how you need to

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behave and what is acceptable and what gets you approval and what gets you acceptance so there's

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layers and layers here then you go to school and you learn more and then you go onto the workforce

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and you learn more and then you look out into the world and you learn what's acceptable for whether

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your male or female or your race or ethnicity or gender sexuality like all of these things like

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you look out into the world and you learn what is safe and what is not safe and how you need to be

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and who you need to be in order to be safe your nervous system is scanning all the time and when

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it is unsafe when it detects that you are unsafe the four predominant responses which I know you

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have heard of our fight or flight or freeze or form fight and flight most people are familiar with

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now look in business just while we're talking about it I was probably you know kind of in fight

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keep going push through be determined it's this mobilization to action and just like keep on pushing

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that's kind of the fight response now flight is avoidance it's the busyness but it's a bit

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distracted like I'm I'm going to get really busy changing the fonts on my website when I know I

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have to make a really hard phone call or make a sale or do something that feels a bit scary or post

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on social media and that feels frightening to me so flight is this escape sort of behavior this

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escape avoidance like I'm still busy doing all the things but I'm just avoiding doing the thing

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that I know that I need to do freeze is when you stall like when you shut down you stare at the screen

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you might just go into a complete collapse but it's when you are kind of stuck on the spot it can

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look like procrastination it can look like avoidance it can look like having no energy motivation

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to get up and to do anything it can be numb disconnected like we talked about the functional

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freeze in a earlier episode but it can sometimes look like I've just got so much to do and I don't

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know where to start and it all feels a bit overwhelming and scary and therefore I'm just I'm just

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sitting here and I'm not doing any of it and I think everybody has experienced that at times

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but the four one is the one that we have not talked so much about it's being talked about a lot more

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now but certainly when I was learning in my psychology degree this was not something that anybody

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ever was really talking about. Fawn or a piece is the safety strategy the nervous system response

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which involves being agreeable being helpful putting other people's needs ahead of your own

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making sure that everybody around you is happy never causing conflict being the reliable one being

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the one who never says no never letting other people down always the one who delivers always the

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one who goes over and above at your own expense and this response just like all the other responses

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is not conscious it's not something you necessarily choose. For a lot of people the chronic people

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pleases like the lifelong people pleases they will tell you this is just who I am this is just my

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personality this is just it's in my nature it's not it's a learned behavior it's a learned

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response and it is just like all of the others it is designed to keep you safe so when you were growing

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up you might have learned that you needed to be the good girl and you needed to be the helpful

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one and you needed to not cause problems and that is how you got praise and that's how you got

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attention and that's how you got approval you might have learned that your value was in how much

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you could do for other people how helpful you could be I mean there's loads of conditioning there's

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loads of messaging around that but this self sacrificing this putting other people's needs ahead

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of your own and feeling like that is the right thing to do the only thing to do the only option that's

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very much a foreign response and so whatever your your early experiences where whatever your family

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environment was however you learnt this and for some people this is created by some really

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traumatic experiences like if you lived in a in a household or an environment where there was danger

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then a lot of people from those environments have a very strong foreign response just keep the

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piece just do whatever you have to do to just keep things calm and keep things safe be agreeable be

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quiet just do it do as you told you know so some of that is pretty deep conditioning and it was

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adaptive this is the thing about all of these responses right this is the thing to understand all

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of these responses were adaptive at the time they served a really useful purpose at the time

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and when people get down on themselves for these patterns of behaviour and oh why do I still do this

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and why can't I stop doing this and there's something wrong with me or it's weak or I should know better

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I should be stronger I should blah blah no no you did what you needed to do you learned what you

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needed to do when it was all you had and it was genius and you survived go you compassion for

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yourself compassion for the younger version of you who learned that and who got you through that

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and then as an adult oh well now I know I can choose to unlearn that and it feels difficult and

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challenging goes against everything that I have always done but I can choose now to unlearn that

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and choose a different response because otherwise what happens is whatever that was programmed into

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all those years ago even now as an adult all these years later as soon as your nervous system

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detects any kind of threat it's going to default back to whatever your learned behaviour was whatever

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your pattern was that's how these things play out but it is really interesting to look at some of

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those patterns that we talked about the perfectionism the pleasing and the procrastination and the

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overworking like looking at them through this lands of is it fight or is it flight or is it freeze or

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is it foreign just recognizing these behaviors as all strategies nervous system strategies for

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staying safe and it doesn't have to make logical sense it doesn't make logical sense but that's what's

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happening they're fear driven behaviors if you are perfecting and performing and editing and

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correcting something for hours that is a fear driven behavior can tell yourself all you like but like

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me with the acceptance the denial right you can tell yourself all you like or no I just hold myself

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to high standards I just like to do really good work mmm yes and also it terrifies me that I would

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put out work that is subpar and that somebody might judge me for it is probably more likely the truth

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and so getting back to my story I decided on the weekend I realized I came to some acceptance that

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this was ridiculous and that I was pushing myself really to the edge and remembering too that at any

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day I could get a call and have to pack up and go to Australia I'm still dealing with the house

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stuff and it's just the reality is that this course was not going to start on the date that I wanted

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it to start but the truth of it is the reason why it took me so long was not just because I'm really

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excited about that course and I wanted to start 100% there was a fear of or concern about disappointing

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people about people thinking that I'm just making excuses like that was all there and I had to

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accept that that was that was part of what the thinking process was but if I panned into that like if I

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let myself believe all those stories and I let myself continue just pushing I was just going to push

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myself right over the edge and that is the exact opposite of what I'm trying to teach people and

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encourage people to do and so this is what I see this is what I see other people doing I see people

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running themselves into the ground running their nervous systems into the ground trying to be

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productive and reliable and be the person who never lets anybody down and feeling really

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uncomfortable with saying no and setting boundaries and adjusting their own expectations of themselves

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and and that's what is so important that we all learn how to do so if you relate to that if you

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if any of this you can relate to and you have a pattern of overworking and overgiving and over

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delivering and maybe feeling exhausted but telling yourself I've just got to get through this is

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the the classic burnout I've just got to get through this busy period I've just got to get through

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this deadline then I can relax and meanwhile there's no sleep happening there's no exercise happening

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not eating properly that is the exhaustion funnel that's how burnout happens and that is how it

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happens and this is a nervous system response that was programmed into you probably before you even

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had words to understand what was happening and the key thing here is you can't think your way out

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of a nervous system response you can't positive think your way out you can't talk yourself out you

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can't decide your way out of a nervous system response you what you have to do is the deeper work

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of self compassion for a start you have to do the work of cultivating safety from the inside

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cultivating safety from the inside means even if I let people down I'm okay even if I disappoint

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people I'm enough I cultivate my own safety on the inside my own self trust my own alignment with

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what is true for me what what my capacity is I create my safety from the inside so that I am not

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contorting myself to feel safe by pleasing somebody else by accommodating some external factor or

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metric or standard which is probably not even real you've made it up in your own head what other

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people's expectations are but if you get your safety from pleasing if you get your safety from

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assuming what you're doing is going to get other people's approval you'll get your sense of safety

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from never feeling like you've let somebody down or never feeling like you've done a bad job or

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never opening yourself up to criticism or judgment then you are driving yourself to a breakdown

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you are driven by fear and chaos and inconsistency and nothing is aligned nothing feels true and easy

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and spacious for you because you're in a constant state of monitoring and reacting monitoring looking

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for the threat and reacting in ways that you think are going to keep yourself safe even if it means

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destroying yourself so it is okay to disappoint people it is okay to prioritize your own needs and

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to be truthful about your capacity it is okay to adjust your plans and having your circumstances

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change it's okay to charge more money it's okay to set a boundary to say I can't do that level of

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work anymore for that fee that doesn't work for me it's okay to not always be agreeable what is not

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okay is sacrificing yourself for this illusion of safety and this is emotional healing work this

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is nervous system work this is somatic work and it is about building that internal safety and self

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trust that internal capacity because until you can go head to head come face to face with that old

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programming those old stories see them for what they are and have strategies basically to to not

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be driven by those stories and those reactions anymore to come back to yourself and your center and

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make your decisions from a place that is calm and grounded where you are your own safety until you

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can do that you're just going to keep on reacting keep on playing out these patterns nothing will ever

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change you will keep pushing through when you're depleted you'll keep saying yes when you mean no

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you'll keep on compromising your standards you'll keep on giving more when you're not paid for it

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you'll keep on over delivering running yourself ragged sacrificing your own well-being because

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there is some part of you that believes that that's what is necessary for you to be worthy and

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safe and accepted so I put off the start date of my program only for a few weeks and as soon as I

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told the people who had committed to studying my course that's what I needed to do and that this

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was the reason why of course nobody was mad at me nobody was disappointed and said give me back my

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money I'm going somewhere else in fact most people's response was great I could use the extra few weeks

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and that's what happens usually that's what happens when you're honest about where you're at people

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appreciate the authenticity and people appreciate the breathing space themselves so that's just

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probably just another thing to consider you know when you are sacrificing yourself because you think

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that you're pleasing somebody else maybe somebody else could really use the break as well and I'm

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not going to say that I didn't feel awfully guilty for having to send that email to push the start

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date out but I feel so much lighter since I did I feel so much more energized again for knowing that

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I have more space to create the program how I really want it to be because I want it to be great

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and doing that and having that positive experience and getting that positive feedback I just want to say

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this too that is an example of what needs to happen for you to start reprogramming if you keep on

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doing things the way that your voice done you never give yourself the opportunity to have a different

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experience to actually let somebody down and have them say you know what that's completely fine

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you need to tolerate the discomfort of doing something different that that feels uncomfortable

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feels like you're letting people down that feels like people are going to judge you you have to

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tolerate the discomfort of doing that and allow yourself to have the positive experience

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just start to reprogram those old stories the other thing is if you do get a negative response

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if somebody does judge you or criticize you for sticking to your boundaries well that's really

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important lesson too because that is your golden opportunity to practice your safety from within

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to practice knowing that you are enough that you're okay that you are worthy even without that

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person's approval that you can tolerate that discomfort as well because that discomfort is

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nowhere near the discomfort of continuing to please that person and sacrificing yourself so I hope

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that there is something in there that you can take away from my experience hasn't been fun granted

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but I hope we can all learn a little lesson from that and that is the stuff that we will be doing

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in the new Beyond Confident course so if you are interested to hear more about it I'm happy to

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tell you more about it I'll put a link in the show notes you've now got another few weeks and there

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is still the founding member price because it's a whole brand new program I am I didn't by the way

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tell you all that story so I could give you a sales pitch it just happens to be what is most present

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and on my mind at the moment so it seemed irrelevant but because it's a whole new program even though

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it's sort of got the same name it is a founding member price because it is very different this program

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includes one-on-one calls with me it is a six-month container but you as a founding member can stay for

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12 months in the community so that's a bonus as well weekly calls and all of the inner work the safety

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the emotional psychological, somatic work that is so important but mapped onto your business so

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mapped onto how are these patterns playing out in your business where are you selling yourself short

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and look I may still open it up again for people who are not small business owners but right now I just

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would really like to create a community of those of us who are self-employed and who experience

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some kind of unique challenges because self-employment is its own beast you know the uncertainty

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the inconsistency of income they're having to sell yourself not somebody else's product but you

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being the commodity and the thing that you're selling like there's a whole lot of personal

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development work involved in that no matter how good you are at what you do and that's the reason why

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for this particular round of the program which will be open ongoing there's no kind of you've

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got to sign up by a certain date it will be open next month again if you can't join this month but

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that founding member price will be for a limited time so details are in the show notes we'd love to

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have you and I'll keep you posted about my living situation hopefully I will not end up homeless at

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the end of all of this you'll be the first to know if I do so that is it for me today thank you

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for your patience I may have to drop these podcasts back to fortnightly again in the interest of

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creating my own space in my life while I am focused on getting this program up and running and I think

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it's probably better to do that intentionally than just have these weeks go by when I haven't had

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the space to put out an episode thank you for being here I appreciate you so much can't wait to catch you

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on the next episode of Crabbit Happy

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[Music]