109: The River of Well-Being
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[00:00:00] Hello, my friends, and welcome to another episode of Radiant You. I was chatting with a friend recently, and they reminded me of a song that I hadn't heard in years. But when they said it, my whole soul was so grateful that they reminded me because I remembered that when I was a teenager, this song got me through some really hard times.
[00:00:21] I remember just turning it on and playing it over and over and over again. And it helped me have courage to jump in when I didn't want to face life. And I want to read some of those lyrics to you today because it reminded me of one of the principles that has really helped me navigate not only my own mental and emotional health, but also as a mother helping me navigate the emotional and mental health of my children.
[00:00:46] So here are some lyrics from one of my all time favorite songs, The River by Garth Brooks:
[00:00:51] "Too many times we stand aside and let the waters slip away
[00:00:56] Till what we put off till tomorrow has now become today.
[00:01:00] So don't you sit upon the shoreline and say you're satisfied.
[00:01:05] Choose to chance the rapids and dare to dance the tide."
[00:01:10] Can you just hear it in your head? If you know this song, you know, it's just a classic that stands the test of time. And it's been playing in my head over and over and over again, since my friend brought it up. Because there are some things in my life, and I'm sure in yours as well, that you might be resisting or feel like you're not sure you have the courage to jump in and really embrace that river of life, or river of situation, or whatever it is that is pulling you forward. You might be resisting that. And it makes sense. It's totally human to resist it! Because it's scary and we want to be safe. And I've talked a lot about our automatic brain wanting to pull us to a place of safety where we avoid pain, we seek pleasure, and we are conserving energy.
[00:01:54] But that automatic brain, also known as the reptilian brain or Frankie, as I like to call mine, it's just one part of your brain. And I find that understanding some of the different parts of my brain helps me be more willing to jump into that river and dare to dance the tide.
[00:02:12] So today I want to share some concepts about the brain from one of my all time favorite books, "The Whole Brain Child." I know it talks about children, but it is so transferable from children to adults. So whether you have kiddos you're trying to teach or you're just trying to learn about your own brain, I want to dive into some of those principles today.
[00:02:30] I've talked about this book in the past because I actually really love it. So if you haven't read it, it's "The Whole Brain Child." There's a link in the show notes. So go check it out.
[00:02:37] I want to start by reading a passage from this book. It's on page six. It talks about integration with our brain. It says, "Most of us don't think about the fact that our brain has many different parts with different jobs. For example, you have a left side of your brain that helps you think logically and organize thoughts into sentences and a right side that helps you experience emotions and read nonverbal cues. You also have a reptile brain that allows you to act instinctively and make split second survival decisions. And a mammal brain that leads you towards connection and relationships. One part of your brain is developed to dealing with memory, another to making moral and ethical decisions. It's almost as if your brain has multiple personalities. Some rational, some irrational. Some reflective, some reactive. No wonder we can seem like different people at different times!"
[00:03:35] And no wonder that sometimes we feel overwhelmed by all of the different things going on in our brains the left and the right side the higher and lower parts of our brains... And we feel like, "How do we even navigate this all?" And then we want to stand on the shorelines You resist it and say, "We're satisfied. It's fine. We're just going to endure this..." and we lose our courage letting those waters slip away, procrastinating, pretending that we're satisfied and we're actually not.
[00:04:03] But gratefully, you don't have to fully understand all those different parts of your brain for you to be able to navigate this river well.. Which in this book, The Whole Brain Child is also called the river of wellbeing. The therapist and researchers in this book share an analogy that has really helped me in my mental and emotional health over the years. And it came to mind again when I listened to this song. So that's what I want to share with you today. They talk about mental and emotional health being our ability to remain in a river of wellbeing.
[00:04:37] So I want you to take a moment and picture today that you are in a river that's peaceful; it's flowing naturally. You're in this beautiful countryside floating in a canoe down this river and you feel peaceful as you're floating. You have a good relationship with the world around you, with yourself, with the people, with life in general. You just feel flexible, stable, at peace.
[00:05:03] That's well being.
[00:05:05] But then there's a turn in the river, or the weather starts picking up, or you start hyper focusing on the bugs around you, or things that you feel uncomfortable with, and you start navigating your canoe to different sides of the banks to avoid the things that feel frustrating.
[00:05:22] And on one bank, is the bank of chaos. This chaos bank is where you feel out of control. There are rapids and confusion and just that high energy chaos where you feel fluttery in your chest and worried about things that are going on. You know, this feeling in life, right? That's one bank of the river. the river of chaos. And what do we usually do when we respond to that chaos? Well, we zigzag over to the other bank, which is the bank of rigidity.
[00:05:53] Rigidity is when you impose your control. You try and control the people, the life, the situations, even yourself in unhealthy ways. You're unwilling to adapt, compromise, negotiate. It's a stagnant place where you buckle in, hunker down and try and control the things around you. Can you just feel the stiffness on the bank of rigidity?
[00:06:17] These two banks often rule our lives.
[00:06:21] The extreme side of the chaos bank is where there's a lack of control. And the extreme side of the rigidity bank is when there's too much control.
[00:06:31] When you get too close to either bank, you get farther away. From mental and emotional health. The goal is to find peace in the middle, not just zigzagging back and forth between the banks trying to go from chaos to rigidity to chaos to rigidity. The goal is to find that integration where we bring different pieces and learn together so that we can navigate the middle.
[00:07:01] Now, how realistic is it if you are in moving water for you to stay in the middle at all times? It's not realistic. So picture your life, picture your mental and emotional health as if you're in this canoe and you recognize when you're going towards chaos and you course correct before you get to the extreme, a little bit closer to the rigidity. And then when you feel yourself imposing more control, we go back and relax a little bit closer to the chaos bank. We don't want to be on either bank, but we want to recognize and navigate when we're feeling pulled to one side or the other so that we can flow in the middle.
[00:07:43] *That is mental and emotional health, or integrated well being.*
[00:07:50] And as you start learning how to navigate that, it will help you understand yourself and understand the people around you. Including those children that we're trying to teach, right? Because they're great examples of going from being totally fine one minute and then being in complete chaos another minute, and trying to control their brother or sister, and throwing a tantrum about things.
[00:08:11] They bounce back and forth a lot. But when we start having more emotional and mental maturity, we are able to find peace in the middle.
[00:08:21] So take a moment to reflect. What are you struggling with in your life right now? Is it something that is too close to one of these banks? Are you feeling the out of control chaos where you feel the rapids and the confusion whirling around you and you're not sure what to do? Or are you maybe in that place of rigidity where you feel like you're unwilling to adapt and struggling to compromise, trying to control all of the things, feeling exhausted at the end of the day?
[00:08:52] If you've listened for a while, you might remember that the goal of this podcast is to help you access that wellbeing and feel more able to shine your radiant self. And that looks like self-awareness, self-confidence, and self-love. When we are bouncing between rigidity and chaos, it's usually because we are not self-aware. Or if we are, we're not self-aware in neutral, loving, curious ways. We're self-aware in ways where we're judgy or frustrated or pushing or resistant. Also, a lack of inner self-confidence makes it so it's easy to bounce between one or the other because we don't have faith that we can find that middle, and we're looking for other things to make it better that are less constant or less reliable, which bounce us back and forth.
[00:09:50] That inner self-confidence helps us navigate that with more peace and more surrender towards God who helps us put things in our lives that create more of that balanced well being without the judgment of self and others that reduces that love in our lives.
[00:10:09] You see how these would influence your journey on your river of well being? Curious, compassionate self-awareness, inner self-confidence that when you feel pulled to one side or the other, you can get back to that middle, and the self love that helps you navigate the rough moments and say, "Ooh, those were hard, but I'm going to just move forward anyway because I've got my back. We don't need to beat ourselves up in judgment when we go to one bank or the other."
[00:10:36] *Because my friend, you will go to one bank or the other off and on. That's human. That's real life. The goal is not to delete chaos or rigidity. The goal is to navigate them with more ease.*
[00:10:50] So that's my invitation to you. Pay attention to your patterns of chaos and rigidity, and when you do, you will be able to better flow in the middle, creating that integration: balancing the logical, organized part of your brain with the emotional creative right side of your brain. And connecting that instinctual reptilian brain with more of the relational mammal brain. All of these pieces together can help create whole wellness so that you're not just enduring your life zigzagging back between the different banks of rigidity and chaos.
[00:11:27] Investing in your mental and emotional health will help you in ways that will transform your life and help you navigate that river of well being with radiance and grace. God will guide you to what you need and how you can have that self-care. And if you need some extra help on that journey, know that I'm always here to help you too.
[00:11:50] My friend. You can do this. You can practice integrating those pieces of your brain and navigating the river of wellbeing. And when you do, you'll find that courage so that you too can choose to chance the rapids and dare to dance the tide.
[00:12:09] You can do this, my friend. Keep shining. And have a blessed day.
[00:12:14] You are radiant and God wants you to remember that truth. But sometimes you forget. Don't worry, I've got you. I've created some free resources that will help you live lighter and shine brighter. Check out my show notes for the links.
[00:12:35] However, God guides your next steps, know that you are not alone on this journey I can't wait to see how you discover a more radiant you.
