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hello welcome back to the kirsten tyrell show i’m kirsten tyrell and i’m happy you’re here this is a podcast where we talk about everything from marketing to motherhood mindset mental health you name it we’re covering all the things i’m leaving nothing off the table and speaking of mental health today is going to be an episode it’s a it’s a two-parter so today is part one part two will be coming either you know in a few days or next week we’re still figuring out what consistency means for me um i intend to actually just kind of stick with a weekly episode and plan to have something up on wednesday but i will kind of explain what’s gone on and maybe you’ll kind of understand why nothing like huge event nothing catastrophic happened or anything like that just had a weekend that was filled riddled with anxiety now i’m i’m always usually like the baseline person i’m like the one in the room that doesn’t have anxiety problems i’m i’m the not that i’m the chill one i just i’ve considered myself the one that just kind of doesn’t really have to deal with that kind of stuff and i’ve tried really hard to be compassionate and understand for people who do and my husband’s one of those who really struggles with anxiety and so i have definitely seen what it looks like from the outside looking in which helped me to identify that that’s what was going on inside of me especially this weekend i want to say that i believe it could be a byproduct of covid i had it over christmas and i’ve had a few friends tell me that covet led to massive anxiety for them so i’m going to kind of chalk it up a little bit to that but it also kind of led me to be a lot more self-aware of these patterns that kind of come up at different phases of my life and there’s various different triggers that have led to them but i just kind of want to like break this down a little bit and what it’s taught me and even just some of the things that i’ve started to see as a whole that’s applicable to everyone i don’t want this to just be like a personal journal i tell you tell you how anxious i was and about the you know anxiety attacks that i had and what was going on and all of that kind of stuff but i know that a lot of you listening would probably totally understand and it would relate and resonate but i don’t want that to be what this is about i want to share with you with the caveat that i have not perfected anything that i have not like grown beyond this and now i’m sharing my wisdom i’m still very much in the middle and i’m still going through it and i think that’s still valuable to hear from people who are testing out things and trying out things and even just to bring some enlightenment that i may have gleaned from the research that i’ve done and just the observations that i have made about what’s contributing to so many people having anxiety having adhd having ocd the things that i’m self diagnosing myself with are all three anxiety ocd adhd they usually kind of hang out together they make a lot of sense together and i think i’m probably on the lower end of the scale in terms of functionality as in like i’m very highly functional with these things and i don’t really like to take the time to even like evaluate and you know the thought of like going to a doctor getting medicated for this kind of stuff sounds like it’s so overwhelming to me and i’m not saying that i’m not going to seek help for this because i definitely think i’m at a point where i can’t just keep allowing myself to kind of like phase in and out of these different you know stages where sometimes it’s really heavy and sometimes it’s not so anyway i just wanted to share though in the meantime as i’m collecting data as i’m figuring out what the next steps are for me i and this is going to really go into the this part two of this i’ve already kind of mapped out how i want to really talk about this kind of stuff because i think it’s a lot um but i have really gone internal and i’ve started to like look inside myself and figure out and using prayer and using meditation to really figure out what are my first steps that i need to take like what is the pattern that i’m seeing what is bringing this on what are my triggers what’s the consistent theme that i can identify and then so what that led me to is like just awareness phase one for me in starting to find solutions to this is the awareness and even just the first you know they say like admitting you have a problem is the first step admitting that this is not normal behavior and that this is not this doesn’t feel good and this is not how i want to function in my life anymore is my step number one and so i guess step number two to kind of correlate correlate with that correspond with that is the awareness of my triggers so because i started to see how i would act and i would spiral i’ve actually listened to this on a great podcast that talked about you know the resistance against like temptation and how if you’re at the point where you’re trying to resist you’ve already gone too far you’ve already allowed yourself to get to the point and we only have so much resolve before that resistance just diminishes we can only like hold back so long before we just eventually cave in so you have to find the place where you are before it starts to get like emotionally triggering so for me it was starting to see if i’m already at the point where like i’m starting to like breathe heavier and i’m starting to get anxious and i’m starting to um you know all the different symptoms that start to happen to me i’ve gone too far i’ve allowed myself to crush cross a threshold so i’ve been trying to create awareness on where that threshold is and and how i can prevent myself from getting there because if i don’t even have to get there i don’t have to expend a lot of energy and trying to get away from that or try to resist that um and i compare it to like resisting temptation because once you when you have like compulsive problems when you just my husband has told me it’s like i black out i just kind of go into this other place in my brain and i do not stop until there’s like a perceived resolve and a lot of times the resolve isn’t even a real resolve it just ends with me feeling exhausted and resentful and regretful of even if it was something good that i did like i went into a massive decluttering stage i don’t know if i talked about that on the last episode i set out to be a lot more organized and to say i’m gonna do a new project every week and i wrote down a whole bunch of stuff that i needed to do and i made a mental list too i i don’t even think i wrote everything down i just started collecting in my brain all these things that i wanted to do before we have to move again because yay we’re moving in like the spring or summer we can stay till the end of june and i’m kind of leaning towards just staying as long as we possibly can because we love this house and we love where we’re at anyway so instead of making my list sticking to my structured plan the obsessive compulsive nature in me came out and i ended up doing in about a week what should have taken me two or three months maybe not you know but like really trying to pace myself and recognize that i have a business that i want to build right it’s not that i have to there’s a business i want to build and grow there is a family that i want to take care of i’ve chosen to homeschool these things should not become the inconveniences that get in the way of the big project and the only way for me to overcome that is to pace myself for the project and so i lost it i didn’t get i crossed that threshold where there was no resisting anymore and i just gave in and i blacked out and for a few days i was just completely ignoring what my kids were doing and i wasn’t being intentional with the way we were spending our time like it was just kind of chaotic i don’t think anybody else really noticed but at the end of the day i just felt like garbage i feel like what did i even do you know but i had accomplished a lot i had cleaned out the closet i had cleaned out all of our books i mean i could go on and on with the things that i did that yes are really great things to do but they were really really bad for my anxiety so kind of that was just a little bit of like the back story of what led to this anxiety over the weekend and how i had to start creating awareness for that and the first thing like i was saying was to identify the triggers where is this stemming from why do i feel this insatiable need to fix it right now and i started to see that that has been the pattern in the way that i approach business i’m going to talk about that on a totally different episode about the ways that like this obsessive compulsive thing really sabotaged a lot of the things that i have done in business where it could be a superpower if left if if not left unchecked it cannot be unchecked um anyway so i started to and i just kind of want to shift out of that i started to see how there are so many people right i kind of mentioned this that are struggling with adhd with ocd and i i want to say i think we’ve done this to ourselves now that is not being insensitive to say like we’re choosing to be ocd or adhd but i’ve had some really interesting conversations that have stemmed from totally unrelated events and people in my life and i started to see this common thread and that’s what i want to share with you guys today and it’s just about being on this never-ending cycle of perfection i read a blog post from an entrepreneur who shared that 2021 was a total fail for her she was giving in to the pressure that she had done x amount in her business in 2020 she wanted to double that and so she started making what she thought were wise business decisions being really aggressive hiring more people doing all these things so that she could scale her income and double that and in turn what it actually did is it killed her profits it killed her business and it actually led her to her first plateau and even her losses in business after having like insane success that desire to continue to excel and to double even though she’s a solopreneur it really it really inhibited her ability to number one enjoy the money that she was making and we’re talking this is a person who has a multi-million dollar business and who is not enjoying it and who does not enjoy even creating in that business anymore and then there was another instance where i saw kind of like an instagram feud between um you know an influencer and some of the people who had chosen to hire this person to do a job and i saw i really like to look objectively at both sides and what i saw was that there is a system that has really broken that we are all a part of and until we can create awareness for that we are not going to be able to step outside of it and i don’t think it’s going to be an over and done overnight kind of a thing but i just want to break down to you kind of what i’m seeing and explain to you the common thread that i started to identify and i was actually texting a couple of my friends and i was like oh my gosh podcast episode coming in hot i have got to put this in a podcast this is so important for people to start being aware of it’s something that i need to hear it’s something that i needed to like have an aha moment with so if i can share this with everyone great okay so the common thread with both of these instances there is a huge amount of our decision making that is dictated by things outside of our scope of vision so let me give you this example so that that um content creator that multi-million dollar business owner that i was referring to actually kind of shared even more so that she doesn’t like the content creation but she’s started to go down this this niche that she’s creating and because she had a video go viral and so i want to speak to this from both ends of the spectrum from consumers and from creators because both of them are falling into a trap and they’re both blaming each other but we’re all stuck in the same cycle okay so as a content creator as an influencer a coach whatever you want to call it a lot of our decisions in business are dictated by looking at the numbers finding out what’s working and then doubling down on those things which is why this person sees that this one video went viral on youtube and then her whole entire business starts to be shaped by that virality all of her videos start to be created with that same focus and so the algorithm actually punishes her if she starts creating content that is not relevant to that space even if it’s content she wants to create and it’s super good content she would almost have to go completely create a whole new channel for that content to be viable and you guys you might see this as business owners or even as consumers hearing business owners talk like the riches are in the niches you have to focus in you have to talk about one thing over and over and over and i think that is a really valuable thing for any business owner to know it helps you to stay focused however when did we decide that because is this really what people want or is this what the machine wants is this this is going to sound like i’m trying i’m not trying to be a conspiracy theorist this is just the reality of what we’re living in if you guys have ever seen i can’t think of the name right now it’s the movie that’s kind of an expose on facebook and pinterest even the ceo of pinterest admits like he doesn’t even allow his children to be on there or whatever um that it’s he can see the destructive nature of it because all these things are compelled to just get the the most views the most income whatever like everybody’s vying for our attention so as the content creator you see this is working and you know that when things work it means that you’re going to make more money it means you’re going to actually be able to grow and your identity gets wrapped up in that you’re like well now i have to be this person i have to be this guru this is what i’ve chosen and i have to stick with it i’ve seen this so many times with pretty much everyone that becomes a creator of of any sort now there are a few people who kind of escape it and they really are not niched and they’re just creating whatever they feel excited about and thankfully i think there’s a huge push in this direction for content creators i think platforms like tick tock have really helped however there’s still an algorithm that we become a slave to that dictates the type of content we should create you go from like i’m going to create this and this and this and this and have fun even this podcast of saying well i have to make it more of a direct thing so that the seo is on point so people can search it and they can find what they’re actually looking for the way that i phrase my episode titles is based on the algorithm it’s based on those kinds of behaviors and and it just becomes like a runaway train to where we are feeding in to the problem of not being well-rounded whole people that are able to share the realities because if you’re getting a lot of virality on a post where you’re sharing your perfect pinterest house why on earth are you going to go off brand and share reality this is what’s going on in the behind the scenes world we all know this we know that most of what we see is not real but who do we blame because now let’s look at the consumer side of things because i’ve been on both ends of the spectrum as consumers were saying well you guys are influencing us poorly you’re creating this content that’s making me feel bad about myself you know i can look at myself and say where is this notion coming that my house has to be spotless where is this coming from and i can look and i can see well i’m seeing a pattern of everybody else looking like they have their lives together but then uh as a creator on the flip side of that i’ve had people reach out and say you seem like you have so much figured out with homeschool can you help me do you have any tips where i’m sitting here like oh uh have i like perpetuated that i have everything together because i still don’t know what i’m doing half the time it is still so hard for me and i question why i’m doing it almost daily and so i can see how in sharing like some of these highlights and sharing what i think people want to see because i know that’s what’s going to get the clicks i’ve perpetuated the problem but as a consumer i’m see anyway okay so i’m not going to like beat this too hard but i hope you’re kind of seeing a pattern because we have to recognize that a lot of our decisions are not based on actual conscious decisions that is the biggest takeaway that i want you to have from this episode and the the awareness that i want you to have in starting to see that even though you think you are a human being making conscious decisions all the time most of what you are deciding is actually very unconscious even i was texting like i said some friends and one said well i’ve really found myself drawn to you know this kind of content because it’s very peaceful and it just makes me feel you know like more serene and i think there’s a lot of people craving that because it’s just so noisy and i was like okay i think that’s great but in and of itself you just admitted that you are still craving the influence you are still seeking out an account on instagram to help you feel peaceful to help you create this actually kind of unrealistic lifestyle where everything is just dreamy and wonderful and it’s very jane austen it’s not the world that we live in and it doesn’t mean that you can’t white you can’t want to do these things right it can’t it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t strive for peace in your life but what i said to her even is why are we looking outside of ourselves for this peace why are we searching why are we doing google searches why are we following accounts to teach us to help us to learn everything that we think we need to know and when did we gravitate away from this like inner wisdom and that is what i want to discuss on part two of this series i’m going to leave you hanging a little bit because it’s something i want to spend a little bit more time on but this episode what i want to leave you with is a challenge to start creating more awareness of the decisions that you’re making how much of it is dictated as a business owner by the algorithm by the open rates by the conversion rates on your things which are really good right like we want to have numbers one of strategies but how much of your moral compass the inner passionate creator in you is dictated by the numbers versus the calling of what you’re meant to do and as a consumer how many of the things that you do in your daily life the meals that you cook the way that you keep your house the way that you nurture your children the time that you spend how much of that is dictated by conscious decisions and how much of it is habits and traps that you’ve fallen into as a result of the things that you consume i think the first step to trying to create more conscious lives and to start being more intentional and to actually feel that inner peace is to first recognize how much of our lives we are not consciously creating how many of the decisions that we’re making that are influenced heavily by other people by even as consumers the algorithm that’s showing us more of what it thinks we want we all know this is going on right if you don’t you have some research to do but actually don’t do research because that perpetuates the problem right no no i’m not saying don’t research but i do have a lot of thoughts on getting into that frame of mind leading to more anxiety anyway i’m going to wrap it up right here i hope you’ve followed along with my train of thought and this tangent i think it’s so important that we have these discussions because i want to be a responsible content creator i want to be a responsible marketer i want to take into consideration the decisions that i am making as a consumer and a creator to ensure that i am you know i’m really creating from a place of authenticity and that i’m doing what i’m called to do in this life i only get one life i don’t want to look back in 15 years and say what i really wanted to do was this but i didn’t because nobody would have purchased that that wouldn’t have converted nobody would have watched that content we have to start breaking this cycle and thankfully i think there are people already doing it but i want to talk on the next episode about how we can really escape this never-ending cycle of perfection and what we need to do to start gaining real wisdom it’s going to get a little woo-woo not going to lie but i think we need a little bit more of that in our lives to break away from this you know hard fast tangible stuff so thanks for listening to this episode i’ll see you guys on the next one have a wonderful day and share this on social with anybody who you feel like needs to hear it which spoiler alert is probably everyone and we’ll talk to you guys on part two of this episode have a great day
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