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[00:00:01.910] - Carlee
Is your story holding you back from living the life you truly desire? Hi, I'm Carlee Myers, your friendly stress management expert, and this month we are talking about our basic human needs. Now, this episode I bought, I brought on an incredible guest, Ally Rose, to talk about one of the fundamental basic human needs, and that is self esteem. Now, there is a lot of nuance in this specific category. We both know that. I think you as our listeners know that. But we're going to really create a foundation today. How do we create self-esteem? Now, my guest, Ally Rose, is the founder and owner of Your Story Matters, a collective of writers, coaches, therapists and healers. And they create healing containers where you can interrupt and shift the story that's no longer serving you, right. That story that can be detrimental to your self-esteem so that you can shed the layers of who you who the world told you you should be and you can find your way back home to yourself. Ali is also the author of The Divine Pause, a collection of over one hundred affirmations and reflections that invite you to reflect, recentre. Ugh I love that word, recentre, and reconnect with your inner wisdom in a noisy world. Now, I have to just put a little one in here, which is the the title of your book, Ally, because The Divine Pause like it is such a powerful title and I haven't shared with the world, but my theme for 2020 and even into 2021 has been connect and share divine wisdom. So the fact that your book is called that, I was like, we're in the right place right now. One hundred percent. So welcome to the show. I'm really excited to have you here.
[00:01:58.860] - Ally
Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
[00:02:01.520] - Carlee
Absolutely. So for those of us who don't know you, how did you end up here? How did you end up as the owner of your story matters?
[00:02:10.730] - Ally
Yeah. So essentially, I've been in the mental health space for, like pretty much my whole life. It feels like I sometimes joke that I was born a therapist because I'm super curious about humans. But more specifically, I have a private practice. So I do mental therapy and I'm also a mental health coach. And so I work on both sides of the coin, helping people kind of like shift and look at those stories that might be holding them back from the living, the lives they want to live.
[00:02:40.590] - Carlee
I love that. So let's dig in. What do you really recommend when we're looking at how how we break free from these stories that no longer serve us? And these are the stories when we reconnect back to this basic human need of self-esteem, what do you recommend that we do?
[00:02:58.760] - Ally
Well, first, I just feel like we have to recognize that the stories that we create, right, are all about... Oftentimes, there are these ingrained patterns and belief systems that were formed in our childhood. And so it's all about creating safety, right? Our stories, keep us safe. And what I find is that people get really attached to their stories. And so I think the first step in any change process is to get awareness of what is the story that I'm telling myself about who I am or about my life. So that would really be the first step. And the way that I often have people do that is do an emotional check in. And what I what I kind of like parallel that, too, is if you're going to the doctor, they'll take your temperature or they'll take your vitals, that kind of thing. And they can tell, like, oh, you're not feeling well, like you haven't been doing well. Well, an emotional check in is kind of the way that we get our temperature, our emotional temperature, or we look at kind of the stories that go along with the emotions that we're feeling on a more regular basis. So that would be the first step that I would say if someone wants to start to make this change and look at the stories in their life.
[00:04:07.190] - Carlee
Yeah. So you can't fix it unless, you know, there's something there for sure. That awareness. OK, so we do that emotional check in and we take our our emotional temperature. We have that awareness. What comes next?
[00:04:22.400] - Ally
So I would say that the next step is to get curious, like where did this story come from? Is this coming or is this actually my story or is this something that my mom or my dad or someone from elementary school like said about me? And they kind of planted the seed and it has sprouted into the story in my life, right? Or is this something that I actually believe about myself? It's really interesting. When people get this awareness, sometimes they'll say something about themselves and they'll be like, wait, I don't actually believe that. And that's where we'll look at and say, well, where did that story come from? So I think that that's important to notice where it's coming from.
[00:05:05.330] - Carlee
Yeah, I love that. And it's so funny. I think about like some voices I'll hear in my head or I'll hear a client share the stories that are some of those the stories that are going on in their minds. And I'll ask a question like, well, what does that voice sound like? What what's the like, does it have an accent? Does it sound like mom, does it sound like and would you ever say this that way? And it's a really good indicator of that curiosity. I love that. So, OK, so we we have the awareness of this story. We start to figure out where it comes from. We maybe we realize now that it's just not like we're like, I don't want this anymore. It's not serving me what's next? Like, how do we begin going from having this as a maybe a subconscious story or belief to breaking through that and creating something that might serve us?
[00:05:58.740] - Ally
Sure. Well, I just want to pause and go back really quickly and tie this back into the safety piece of things. And
[00:06:04.690] - Carlee
Yeah
[00:06:05.250] - Ally
these type of things because like I said, the reason why we tell these stories is to keep us safe. Right. And so I always say to someone, right when they come to me and they have this, like pattern or the story that continues to play on their life or something, what are you getting from this? Right. And often people will say, what do you mean, I'm not getting anything from this? And I said, there's a reason. Right? There's some part of you that continues to play this story out because it's serving you in some way. And so if we can really look at what are we getting from the stories that we're creating, then we can start to which goes into what you ask is we can start to question it. Right.
[00:06:42.990] - Ally
And I like to call that putting our thoughts on trial. Right. And really breaking it down. And I can go into more depth into what that looks like if you want.
[00:06:53.270] - Carlee
Yeah, I would I would really love that. And before you do, I want to just dig in here for a second, because I literally just had this conversation with someone this morning. You know, they were saying, you know, I don't want to be a pessimist. I want to be an optimist. I don't want to assume everything. Shit's going to hit the fan. I don't want to keep my expectations low. I want to be able to look and trust, look at people and trust them. And when we looked back, it was, well, yeah, but you can't be you can't necessarily beat yourself up about it because you were in environment that was toxic or abusive and that was how you protected. You had to expect the worst. It was something there that was meant to serve you. And that was the conversation I was having. But it was you know, now we're not in that toxic situation anymore. Now we are safe. And so we have the opportunity to say, OK, it's not serving me anymore. It's it's not working. So I really I love that you brought that forward because I think that's really, really important. But, yeah, let's talk about putting our thoughts on trial. What does that mean?
[00:07:56.540] - Ally
Sure. So essentially, I usually do this in a couple of different parts. I mentioned the emotional check in at the at the start, and that's like the first part of it. The second part then is to graduate from that and you pair a thought with the emotion. And then from there you look at the thought and you start to ask questions about it. You start to ask questions like, is this thought true? Is the thought helpful, right? Does this thought actually help me live out like the best version of myself, or is there an alternative way that I could look at the situation?Another one that I like to ask, and these are kind of the four horsemen questions that I often have people it's kind of if a friend was going through this, what advice would I offer them? Because that helps us get distance from it, because often we're so close to it. And if we then realize, like what we would say to a friend, which is often very compassionate and kind and loving and supportive, then I often ask, can you offer that to yourself as well?
[00:08:56.530] - Carlee
Mhm. Yeah. I love that. I love that you brought forward the Four Horsemen. You know one of the things that we talk about in the Stressless community is this thing called fact checking, which I think is very similar to your putting your thoughts on trial. The first question and the first question that you asked, which is, is this true? And we when we're talking about fact checking, we're really talking about we're asking that question, is this story true? Is this thought true? Is this worry true? And what what is the evidence to either support it or or not support it and to be able to move forward? I love this. This is a great, great foundational training.
[00:09:37.780] - Carlee
So, you know you know, for those of you who are listening at home, you know, we want to know what what's one small step that you're receiving from today's episode, one small step that you know that it's time to take to be able to break free from these old stories and step into some stories that serve you right. And I do want to ask, Ally, where can we find you if we want to dig in a little bit deeper?
[00:10:05.250] - Ally
So you can go to my website, which is your story matters dot love, and I'm actually created a special link just for the Stress Less community, and I believe that to be linked in the show notes and I will I'll have a bunch of different resources that I referenced throughout this episode. I also spend most of my time on Facebook, my Facebook page, as your story matters, or if you want to connect with me personally, it's just Ally Carter Rose
[00:10:33.720] - Carlee
Beautiful. So make sure definitely to check out those free resources on our special link in the show notes. So make sure you scroll down, check out the show notes. Now, this concludes this week's episode of The Stress Less Show. I want to give one last big shout out to Ally. Thank you so, so much for coming on the show.
[00:10:57.150] - Ally
Thank you so much for having me.
[00:10:58.800] - Carlee
Absolutely. Absolutely. So if you enjoyed this week's episode, let us know by giving us a big old thumbs up and hitting that. Follow our subscribe button. Thanks for listening. Share if it resonated. And we will see you next week bye.