Have you ever sent an email to the wrong person and felt that rush of panic and self-judgment? Join me, Christy Ballard-Fellaini, as I walk you through my own recent email blunder and the emotional whirlwind that followed. In this episode, I unpack how our judgments often stem from deep-seated insecurities, warping our reality and triggering self-fulfilling prophecies. By sharing this personal experience, I aim to highlight the transformative power of recognizing and reframing these judgments to enhance our self-perception and relationships, ultimately rediscovering joy and confidence in the process.
Next, get excited for an empowering "Summer of You" series launching next week! I'm offering three powerful sessions designed to uncover your hidden magic and reignite that vibrant energy within you. I'll share details on how life coaching can help reconnect you with your passionate, enthusiastic self and make this summer truly transformative. Visit christyballardfellaini.com for more information and let's embark on this journey together.
Thanks for listening. Follow me in Facebook and Instagram.
Have you ever sent an email to the wrong person and felt that rush of panic and self-judgment? Join me, Christy Ballard-Fellaini, as I walk you through my own recent email blunder and the emotional whirlwind that followed. In this episode, I unpack how our judgments often stem from deep-seated insecurities, warping our reality and triggering self-fulfilling prophecies. By sharing this personal experience, I aim to highlight the transformative power of recognizing and reframing these judgments to enhance our self-perception and relationships, ultimately rediscovering joy and confidence in the process.
Next, get excited for an empowering "Summer of You" series launching next week! I'm offering three powerful sessions designed to uncover your hidden magic and reignite that vibrant energy within you. I'll share details on how life coaching can help reconnect you with your passionate, enthusiastic self and make this summer truly transformative. Visit christyballardfellaini.com for more information and let's embark on this journey together.
Thanks for listening. Follow me in Facebook and Instagram.
Speaker 1:
Today, I sent five different emails to different people and they were all addressed to Amy. Hi, I am Christy Ballard-Fellaini. I am a certified life coach who found herself at 42, freshly divorced kids off to college and having never dated in my adult life, I was starting in the middle. If you haven't yet hit start on your middle time in life, let's do it together. Let the journey begin. Hello, hello, my friends. So yes, in fact, I sent out five different emails to five different people and they all said hello, amy.
Speaker 1:
And when I figured out what I had actually done, I was mortified. Like inside my body. I felt this panic Inside my head. My head started pounding and I started to feel very tight in my muscles because I was judging myself. I was saying things like oh my gosh, they're going to think that I wasn't being personal, they're going to think that I was copying and pasting, and you know what the truth is? I was, because I needed to send out the same information to 15 different people. Luckily, I caught it at only five, but what happened next was a huge storm of ugly sentences in my brain, and so I had to take a step back and I had to really think about what was true. Because, in case you have never heard judgment is a lie, in case you and I have never been properly introduced.
Speaker 1:
I'm Christy Fellini. I am a certified life coach and I help women stop just existing in their lives. I help them navigate the powerful decisions that they want to make in their lives around lifestyle changes like maybe you're experiencing a divorce, maybe you are experiencing emptiness, maybe it's that you're experiencing a huge dissatisfaction in your everyday life, maybe it just feels like you're just existing, and so what I help midlife women do is create those powerful decisions based on what it is that they truly want. When they start making these decisions, their relationships change. Their connections inside all of their relationships change. They become more confident in who it is that they want to be and they start creating the connections that they want with their spouse. They start understanding the connection that they have with their spouse. They start understanding the connection that they have with their adult children and they start nurturing new friendships, and all of this helps them to rediscover their joy.
Speaker 1:
So let's get back to judgment for just a minute. When I sat down and I started thinking about judgment and how it affects our lives and how it truly is a lie. I came up with 10 different pieces of evidence to prove to my brain that, yes, judging myself and judging others is a form of a lie. But today I'm just going to share with you a few of those pieces of evidence to help you to see that the judgments that you might be making truly are a lie Inside some of these. I'm also going to give you some personal examples, because we are all humans together and we're all doing this thing called having the human experience.
Speaker 1:
So if you've ever noticed when you are judging someone else, when you are having thoughts about someone else, do you think those same types of thoughts about yourself? Now I know, when I was younger and I, you know, was all self-imposed and all insecure about my own self and my own body, when I would see someone who I would say is more beautiful than I am, I would compare myself and I would inevitably decide that I didn't measure up, and then I would also look for ways that that person might be wrong, right. Or when I would see somebody that identified with the judgments that I had of myself, I didn't notice right away that I was having the same types of judgment about them that I had about myself. It's called projection of your own insecurities, so if you judge someone for being too loud, it might reflect on your discomfort with the way that you express yourself freely, and so one of the reasons that we might do this is that judgments often reveal more about our own insecurities and our biases than the person actually being judged, so this makes the judgment more about us than the truth about that other person. And so, as I mentioned, when I was younger, when I was in my 20s, my 30s, and I was very insecure within myself. These were the types of judgments that I had about myself, and so now that I am more mature, more personally developed, I'm able to see when it is that I am doing that and I'm able to shut down those judgments. A couple of things that I recognize is, first, that it's not true, and when I am comparing myself to someone else, I say something like, oh wow, she's beautiful, and so are you beautiful, and so are you.
Speaker 1:
So projecting our own insecurities onto someone else is actually a lie, and, along those same lines, where judgment trips us up into a lie is that of self-fulfilling prophecy. You've heard me say it before what you focus on is what will grow. And so if you're focused on judging yourself, like say, for example, if you are believing the thought I am a failure, then yes, your brain's going to look for evidence of that. Your brain's going to easily come up with confirmations of how you are a failure. I very easily could have said something along those same lines when I sent five different emails out to different people addressed to Amy. I could have said, oh my gosh, you're a huge failure. And then that would just be a file in my Rolodex, inside my subconscious, of ways that I have failed. And so when I'm thinking that thought, that file inside the Rolodex could easily pop up saying you know, hey, remember that time. And then, of course, I am fulfilling that prophecy about myself.
Speaker 1:
Now how this is a lie. A reason that this is a lie is that this type of judgment creates a reality where we act in ways that reinforce this false belief. When we make judgments seem like they are true when they actually are not, our brain is going to continue to look for the evidence. So be very careful. Again, I will reiterate what you focus on grows. So, to counteract this, start creating those I am statements to reinforce what it is that you do want to believe about yourself, all right. And then this last one I want to share with you will have a huge impact on your relationships, because when we are judging the people that we are in relationships with, it hinders our empathy for them and it hinders our connection with them.
Speaker 1:
So what this might look like, say, perhaps, in your marriage, is when you are judging your spouse for mistakes that they've made Say, for instance, forgetting to do a task that you asked them to do without understanding the underlying struggles. This definitely can hinder your connection with them. So let's say, for instance, that you are downplaying or not understanding the overwhelm that your spouse may be experiencing at work. Maybe they are going through some things at work and they haven't completely told you everything that it is that they're going through. Or maybe it's that they are having some health struggles that they themselves don't quite understand but is at the forefront of their mind, and so, accidentally, they forget to stop by the store and pick up the milk, or accidentally they forget to take out the trash. So be very, very careful about judging someone, especially those that you are relationally connected to, based on mistakes.
Speaker 1:
Have an open door of communication that you can fully understand what it is that is going on with them. I know we often think that the people that we are closest to are going to be open and honest, and sometimes they do tend to keep things to themselves, maybe out of fear of what is actually going on. Maybe it's something that they don't quite understand themselves, and so, rather than judging them based off of these types of mistakes, without having that full understanding again, try to have that open communication to help foster a safe space for them, to fully help you understand what it is that's truly going on, because judgment, in this case, creates barriers to the empathy and the connection that you really do want to have with them. It prevents us from fully seeing the complex reality that other people may actually be experiencing. So I'm going to give you an inside peek to a practice that I do with my clients to help them to become more aware of where they are allowing judgments to create blocks in between what it is that they truly want, which is to lessen the amount of negative feelings within their body, and to help them to create the true connections that they want to with other people in community and with the people that they are closest to in their lives.
Speaker 1:
So the first step is becoming aware of the thought, becoming aware of the judgmental thought that they are having, and the next step is to identify how it makes you feel. Is to identify how it makes you feel. Is that judgment causing you pain or is it causing you pleasure? Most often, it's that it is causing you pain. The third thing is to notice the circumstance. What is it that is going on? When you're able to notice the circumstance on, when you're able to notice the circumstance, you're able to find the pattern and what it is that triggers this sort of judgment. And then the fourth thing is how are you choosing to respond? Because you always have the ability to choose again. You always have the ability to ask yourself is this something that I want to believe? And then you get to choose again. And then I always like to help them set themselves up for success the next time this happens. And so I have them complete the sentence the next time this happens, I will. Now. The reason for this is that you are setting your brain up ahead of time to notice the thought, decide. Does it give you a feeling of pain or pleasure, notice the pattern. What is the circumstance that is happening and the trigger that makes this sort of judgment come up and deciding ahead of time how you want to respond the next time.
Speaker 1:
So, whether it is that you are judging yourself or you are judging others, I just want you to realize that doing this distorts the truth and it creates an inaccurate representation of the reality of it all. So what did I do with all those emails to Amy? I first reminded my brain that every single person that received that email knows me and they love me and they themselves have experienced my heart. So I simply replied with an email saying yikes, I made a mistake. The responses that I got back were so true to their hearts. One of them said oh my, I didn't even notice and, by the way, I like the name Amy. The other responded oh hey, I just wanted to let you know that there was a glitch and I simply thanked her for having my back.
Speaker 1:
So you guys, if you know someone who struggles with judgment and you can tell by the conversations that you have with your friends do they often bring up sentences about other women that sound like judgment, or do they often criticize themselves, or do they see themselves in a light that you don't Meaning that you are able to see their goodness and you are able to see their heart, but they don't. I encourage you to share this episode with them. I encourage you to share this episode with any woman who may be struggling with this without us even knowing, because this is the type of work that's going to help us rediscover our joy. All right, you guys. So until next time. If you want to connect with me, please search me out at Christy Fellaini Coaching on Facebook, the Midlife underscore coach on Instagram, or shoot me an email at Christy at Christy Fellaini coachingcom.
Speaker 1:
Hey and PS, remember that next week we are kicking off the summer of you. I'm going to post the link inside the show notes. Go check it out. You are not going to want to miss the three powerful sessions that I have for you this summer. Let's unlock your hidden magic. All right, you guys, have a great week. Who is your life coach? I would love the opportunity to work with you as you are rediscovering the woman you were meant to be. Visit christyballardfelainicom for more information on how we can work together to ignite that passionate, enthusiastic woman who may have been tucked away for some time. Let's start in the middle together.
