Ep 99: Honoring Your Processes

Welcome back to season 3! I've been on hiatus for the last month or so, spending extra time on my upcoming retreat.

By the way, if you're feeling like the summer left you overwhelmed and exhausted and you didn't have nearly enough fun,, you should definitely check that out.

kortneyrivard.com/retreat

In this week's episode, I am diving into our processes and patterns - the way we do things. Some of our processes serve us well, and others, well... not so much.

But it's so important to understand your processes and patterns and to be patient and compassionate toward yourself with them. They have been around for a long time and they came to be for a reason!!

Once you understand your processes, you can course-correct and make little tweaks (question your limiting beliefs and Stories, etc) to better support you, but you can also soften and accept that a lot of your processes are just part of how you're wired. You can look at how you can work with them instead of against them.


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Transcript

0:51

Hello, my friends. And welcome back to real brave and unstoppable. It's been a little bit since I've had some new content for you. I was, I've been on hiatus trying to put more of my energy into planning my fall retreat, which is now just a little less than a month away. I'll have more on that at the end of this episode. Today I'm going to talk about honoring and respecting your process, which can really be just thought of as the way you do something. But before I get into the episode, I'm going to try something new this season. I have grown to really love what are called Oracle cards. And if you don't know what those are, they're just card decks and, you know, you kind of use your intuition to pull a card from the deck, and then there's usually an accompanying guidebook with it that has like something, like a writeup about the card. And, um, the cards are great or the write-ups, you know, the cards and the write-ups are great because it kind of brings things to the surface that you maybe weren't really thinking about. It can spark something. You know, intuitively that maybe you weren't really aware of. For example, recently, my partner and I were having some issues in our relationship and, um, without getting into all the details, it's a pattern and you know, it's like the same pattern over and over again. And I drew this card from a deck called the rose Oracle by Rebecca Campbell. And the card was called release the petals. And it's all about transformation, death and rebirth, shedding and change. And the write-up in the card. It was like, it brought a lot to the surface for me to like, think about in a different way. It kind of helped me find a different perspective on a relationship and how we proceed. And it was interesting because it was the perfect card at the perfect time. That tends to happen. It's really weird, but it helped me look at okay, if this relationship is actually going to work, both of us have to drop past hurts. We have to drop past belief systems about how our relationship works. And we have to like create a new one. So that's an example of how a card might, you know, help you. Or, you know, help you think about something or give you some, some guidance. It. It's usually just sparks something for you. So today I'm going to, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to play with us at the beginning of each episode and just draw a card. And, you know, if it fits for you. Great. If it doesn't just leave it. But today I'm going to draw a card. It's actually a taro deck. but tarot decks you can use the same way as Oracle cards. You're just drawing a card and it really just stirs up stuff in your intuition about, you know, gives you a spark of something to think about. So this card is from the light Sears taro, and it's by Chris- Anne. I really love this deck. But I drew the king of cups. So this deck is interesting because it gives you two perspectives. If you're in a place of light or more like, think of it as like positive. There's one way of looking at it. And if you're in a place of like shadow, or feeling more negative about things there's, you know, it kind of brings up some other things. So this card in terms of like the positive or the light, the highest expression. Is all about love emotional intelligence, patience, experience, stability, and balance creativity, diplomacy, someones supportive. Being nurturing a wise leader. And the other side, the shadow side, or like the lowest expression. Is drama king, withdrawn, not in touch with emotions being triggered temperamental, an opportunity to work with the subconscious mind and dive into self-care. So the write-up about this card is he softens his gaze and reaches for his singing bowl. When something unexpected comes into the king of cups awareness, something that may shake another person's composure and send them into a state of stress or anger, he regulates his emotional state with his mature practice, meditative energy. Finding the sweet spot between the empathic heart and intelligent mind is the key to this successful leadership style. Allow your emotional intelligence to guide you as you seek to marry logic, kindness, and love. If you are in a situation that asks you to navigate tumultuous energies, find your grounded serenity by calmly choosing care and diplomacy over force. In shadow this king can suggest that you may be feeling withdrawn, moody, or temperamental, or you may be losing touch with how others are feeling at this time. Stay clear of situations that feel emotionally manipulative. Instead seek to understand others through empathy, tolerance and compassion and emotional fulfillment will be yours. And then there's a little affirmation at the end that says my heart holds deep wisdom and love, and I use it to connect and lead. So take that if it fits, if it doesn't, no harm, no foul. All right. I would also love your feedback. If you think that that's fun to have a little card reading at the beginning of the episodes. Okay, so let's dive into the actual meat of today's episode, honoring and respecting or process. So when I was in coach training, the first certification that I attained several years ago, we had a unit on understanding our processes. And what I mean by that is your process for doing certain things or like your pattern, how you go about something. For example, my process for writing is to, unintentionally, but it's to make everything feel really hard and complicated when I'm getting my first draft out. My inner critic is right on my shoulder, criticizing everything I'm doing. And like, I'll feel like what I'm writing is complete crap. This is so hard. It sucks. It's, you know, all the things. So I get really frustrated. And then I realize I need to just walk away from it. So, you know, leave it for another day. Usually, usually it has to be another day, but then I come back to it and I look at what I've written and everything just clicks. And I just bang out the piece really quickly. So everything kind of flows. And it's really frustrating that that first part of the process has to be there. But I know now that this is my process, so I just honor it and I don't judge myself for it. You know, I could say, I'm a terrible writer. I shouldn't struggle so much. Or good writers. Don't bang their heads against the wall like this. Which I know I've talked to other writers and I know that's not true. But those things aren't really helpful, right? No. They're not. So I just try to roll with it. And I have compassion for myself about the process. You know, I kind of understand this is just how it works for me and accept that about me. It's just how it works. It doesn't mean anything about me in a good or a bad way. It just is. So I'll get some more examples in a bit, but most people don't really stop to think about what their process for something is. What this taught me is that when I recognize how I tend to do something or handle something, I need to seek to understand it and decide if it's working for me or not. If it isn't, I can make little tweaks so that it does. And often all we need to do is offer up a little self-compassion and self-love. And just accept the process is another unique part of our humanness. We all have our unique processes, right? Knowing my processes and always being open to understanding them and working with them has given me a lot of permission to just be me. And not judge me. Be authentic. Be real. So for example, another one of my processes relates to creativity. I tend to have a lot of ideas. I'm a multi-passionate. I'm. Not going to get in it, into it, but my human design is is that too, like I have tons of ideas kind of all over. I'm a Gemini.... And when I have a lot of ideas floating around in my brain, it's sort of like alphabet soup. I get really overwhelmed and sometimes, well, most of the time really confused. And I don't like confusion or overwhelm, but what was happening was that the energy of confusion was putting me in a place where I would judge myself. Like, why can't I just get this done? Why can't I get all these ideas together in one thing? Why can't I just make it happen? I must be stupid if I can't make sense of all this and just do it. Like I said, this is also not how my human design works, but more on that in another episode. Hopefully I'll have someone on to talk about human design soon. So through the master certification program, I just spent the last year completing. I learned something about that confusion process- that it isn't bad. And I learned that when I'm in the energy of-confusion and overwhelm, my, my ideas just haven't like coalesced yet. The idea, isn't the whole thing isn't done cooking. So I can just let it marinate a little longer and not stress about it. And it also might mean that I, you know, it takes some of the ideas, like the ones that make sense to me and run with them, but wait to incorporate other bits when they make more sense. So here's a really good example of this. Obviously I'm a life coach. But did you know I'm also a photographer personal trainer, and soon to be yoga teacher? And I also love the outdoors and training for races, although I haven't done like that particular thing in a while. But I really love setting a goal that seems hard and then setting this, or, you know, a little bit out of reach is a stretch and then creating a plan and doing it. It helps me really gain confidence in my ability or in my capability or what, I'm, what I'm capable of. And for a while, I've thought that I really want to find a way to incorporate what I do with coaching, with movement, the outdoors, setting goals, like doing some kind of race,,creating a healthy lifestyle, including a movement habit that feels good in your body. And also I'd love to offer photography sessions to my clients because photography can be so transformative for people. So right now I'm actually, finally, the, started to kind of congeal. It's been cooking for like a year. But I'm cooking. I'm cooking. Up a beta program, more detailed soon on that, that will incorporate the wellness aspect, setting up like a movement goal and working towards that. It has so much to do with your belief in yourself. That you can do it and stick with it. And that applies directly to the much bigger picture things like creating your entire life in a way that you love it. Uh, by the way, this is the stuff we're going to be working on at rise into possibility. The in-person retreat that I'm leading in September. Stay tuned at the end of this episode for more details. So knowing my process in all of this, like, you know, that I tend to get confused and overwhelmed. I just left it all in my brain and it gave me permission to not need to have it all figured out right now. It gave me permission to just accept this is how I roll and wait to respond when I'm ready to take my next right step. When it feels clear when the next right step feels clear. Another example might be your process when someone asks you to do something, you don't really have the bandwidth to do. You might go into people pleasing mode. Now you don't really want to stay in people pleasing mode. But you also need to be aware that it's your process and honor and respect it. And then you explore it. You explore the stories about yourself and identities you have for yourself that trigger people pleasing mode. And it's important to have compassion for those parts of you. And when you understand why you go into people-pleasing mode, why that's your process. It's almost like validating and it doesn't feel as you're not judging yourself. So you're not resisting the change so much. Other examples of processes could be how you manage your emotions, how you respond when someone says something you don't agree with, how you tackle a big project, how you feel about someone when they do something that goes against your values, or even how you initially interact with people that you meet. Honoring your process is really about self-acceptance and self-compassion. And it's really the act of dropping that I should do it this way mentality and just letting yourself be unique and messy. And when we cultivate, acceptance and honor our processes, we also invite more peace and flow into our lives. And let's face it, like who doesn't want that? Right? So many of us live in a constant state of resistance. Resistance to our processes, resistance to a lot of things, but why do we do that? It's mostly because we have an idea of what our process is. I should quote, unquote, look like, you know, we don't trust ourselves to have our own back. We assume other people's way of doing things is better or the right way to do things. And if we can't be successful doing it, the quote unquote right way, there must be something wrong with us. So we don't want to change our process because we feel like that's the measuring stick. So then we resist feeling our emotions that come up also when we judge ourselves, what we resist persists. Have you ever heard that? And the more we resist our processes, the worse we're going to feel about them and ourselves. You are perfect exactly how you are. And honoring your processes means trusting that. It's trusting that you're exactly where you're supposed to be in this moment, and your life is unfolding as it's supposed to. Good things are always ahead. Even if it feels sticky right now, that is not permanent. So, how do you know what your processes are? Well, You have to start to give it some thought. You have to get present to the way that you do things, and then you look for patterns. So you have to pay attention. When I was in my first certification program many years ago. I've mentioned my writing process. I discovered how that writing process works. Because I would just feel like I'm such a terrible writer. I can't do this. And. Yeah. I was really hard on myself about it. And I mentioned in my advanced certification program, I just completed, I discovered my pattern and process around confusion and overwhelm as they relate to having a lot of ideas. But you just have to spend some time bringing the way you do things into your consciousness. Most of us have a lot of things we do on autopilot, right? So it's not unusual to not have an idea of how your processes work because they're unconscious. So you need to just bring them forward into your consciousness and pay attention. Practice awareness. Mindfulness, being in the now, meditation, things like that. But once you know your process. You know, you look for those patterns, you can start to work with it. Now, sometimes the process isn't going to serve you. So you'll want to make some tweaks. But in those cases, it's important to look at the underlying triggers that cause that unconscious process that doesn't serve you. So let's use emotions as an example. If my process is to go into emotional reactivity every time my partner says something to me that feels like a criticism. There's clearly a trigger. And a response. So ideally I wouldn't emotionally react. I'd get my wits about me and respond when my thoughts were clear, you know, I'd make my response about me. And the facts, not my stories or I wouldn't project my perceptions that I have. I wouldn't project the way I see the world onto my partner. So in this process, you'd first want to give yourself a lot of self-compassion and self-love. Send that to the part of you who emotionally is reactive. And then you look for other patterns, like what are some of the other times you emotionally react in a way that isn't helpful and what seem to be common triggers? And then we'd look at the beliefs that you have about yourself and life and other people. That you've brought with you from childhood. And the stories that are coming up for you around these situations. We'd look at your desires in life, your expectations and the systems you have for dealing with the world that all cause patterns. So this will help you understand your pattern and it gives you permission to change it or keep it so that it serves you. Understanding the mechanics of these things is so huge guys. Really is. And it's really important to note as well that we always want to, wherever we can, honor and respect processes that are already in place and capitalize on those. You know, we make small tweaks as we go. For example, if you have a hard time starting things, you'd want to understand why, like we talked about. What triggers make starting things hard? And then you would want to learn how to have a little patience with yourself. You know, not to judge yourself. That's just your process. It takes, it takes a while for you to start things. And you'd actually be surprised when you soften into that and just make that okay. You might find that you actually don't have as hard of a time starting things as you think, because there are underlying stories and beliefs that you just buy into without thinking about them, that caused you to have a hard time starting things. So, working on that patience is just really an important first step. That one is similar to my example of confusion. You know, I'm not trying to change the confusion. I'm just learning to be patient with myself so I don't judge myself for the confusion and overwhelm. Because that is just part of how my brain works. You know, I have a lot of ideas. I have a hard time sifting them out, so it's really not going to do me a lot of good to judge it because I'm just kind of wired that way. And that's okay. Because the fact that I have a lot of ideas is a wonderful quality that I have. Or with writing, I accept it's my process. So I can kind of laugh at myself, honestly. And I know eventually my piece will come together, but until it does, I just can muddle through and be messy. And then patient at the same time. But having a little sense of humor about it really helps me with that. You're going to trust yourself a lot more when you can try to find ways or, you know, pathways to what you want without having to like rewire all of your internal impulses. They've been with you for a long time. So changing them is definitely possible for sure. But you don't want to overwhelm yourself. You want to set yourself up for success. For example, whether you're a night owl or an early bird, it's wired into you. You know, it doesn't mean you can't learn to get up early if you're a night owl. It just means that might be harder for you to get up earlier because it's not innately who you are. So instead of trying to be an early bird, maybe try to find ways to still get done what you need to get done we'll still honoring your a night owl ways. It's just who you are and that's okay. There's no right or wrong. So, yeah, wherever it's possible for you to do whatever your innate processes seem to want you to do, then do that. Work with that. Don't look to other people and think you need to do it like them. Just release yourself from that and just start trusting yourself more. That the way you do things is fine. It doesn't mean you can't want to change them or work on them, but it doesn't make you wrong. There's nothing wrong with you. Okay. So there are usually stories and beliefs that are underlying that part of you creating your processes that we need to look at. For example, if you're a perfectionist, your processes may be dependent on the underlying belief that you need to be perfect to have worth. So your process may be to avoid trying new things because you're afraid of failing. And then you have all kinds of judgements about yourself with that. Or maybe you become a workaholic because you need, you know, you feel the need to spend time always making everything perfect. And that takes you a lot longer than if you just, you know, got 90% of the way there and say, good enough. Those processes, aren't really in service of your wellbeing, and there are clearly some underlying belief systems that you can address. But honoring those processes and why they came to be is an important first step, no matter what. But then you'd want to dig into why your self worth is tied to being perfect. But, like I said, the honoring of the process is so important because it validates that you have those processes for a reason. They came from somewhere and they've likely been keeping you safe in some way for all these years. And understanding them helps you be more compassionate and loving towards yourself. The bottom line here is that knowing your processes, understanding them and honoring and respecting them helps you stay in the now it helps you accept yourself and your way of being. It doesn't mean you don't want to change things a little bit, you know, make some tweaks or course correct. But doing this work helps you validate yourself that you're not wrong. You know, understanding your processes and where they come from, you know, your triggers, your beliefs, stories, the narratives, you have perceptions, systems that have helped you define your processes over time. Understanding those is so important too. Understanding is like validation that, oh, okay. I can see where this comes from. It makes sense that I would have this. It makes sense. You'd have those processes based on the beliefs, perceptions, et cetera, that are embedded in the fabric of who you are. It doesn't mean you can't change those beliefs and all, you know, all the things, the narratives, the perceptions, because you absolutely can. It's just, you know, understanding where they're coming from is so helpful. Respecting and honoring your processes gives you permission to be you. It gives you the permission to drop the"shoulds" and do things in your own unique way. There really is no right way to do something. Who defines right? Quote unquote, you're defining what's quote unquote, right in your head. But it's really based on all of the beliefs and perceptions and all those other things I keep talking about over time. You know, that you take on that you buy into over time. So, you know, three, think your definition of quote unquote, right? Okay friends. I hope that was helpful. And I hope this inspires you to spend some time thinking about your processes and how they help or hinder you. If you need help getting to the root of some of them, cause it can be really hard. We all have blind spots. Reach out and we can talk. Okay. So before I go, I want to remind you about rise. The live retreat experience. It's just a month away, and I would love for you to join us. We're gathering in the beautiful serene, bucolic countryside of Maryland, just 45 to 60 minutes- ish from DC, Baltimore, Northern Virginia. We have, if you are flying, we have three airports in the area. All about equidistant from where we'll be staying. And, it's beautiful and peaceful and, a great opportunity for you to get away and really focus on yourself. During the retreat, you are going to transcend what you think your limits are and remove some of the barriers that are preventing you from living your best life. That life you really want, that makes you happy and joyful content peaceful in flow. You'll rise into believing in what's possible for you in your life. Not your limits and what's possible for you is so much more than you can even imagine right now. You're going to get to know yourself again, you'll see yourself in a whole new way. You'll transform and a space where it's safe to be messy and. And learn what your processes are and you'll have real time help. Understanding them and accepting them. And capitalizing on them, seeing where you can, you know, seeing what you can build on to catapult you into an amazing life, the amazing life that you deserve to have. You'll meet lifelong friends and you'll make huge shifts. In just a few days. Transformational retreats seriously can take months if not years off of the work in just a few days. I know because it's happened to me. I would love to chat with you about all the details. So if you're leaning in at all, Just go to kortneyrivard.com/retreat and set up a call with me to see if it's for you. By setting up the call. You are not locked in. We just want to explore if it's a good fit. So just go ahead and book the call. Let's get you on the fast track to living the life you really want. Okay friends. Thank you again for tuning in. I will be back next week with another new episode. Have a great week.