What If It All Works Out? Breaking the Fear Cycle & Choosing Love

What if instead of bracing for everything to fall apart, you got obsessed with it all working out?

Recorded fresh off a camping trip in the Apostle Islands on Lake Superior, this Soulful Sunday is about the fear loop so many of us live in by the time we hit our forties — and the choice to trade it for a love loop instead. Steph gets honest about being "addicted" to things not working out, to hard work that never feels like enough, and to doubting the good the moment it arrives.

This one goes into the programming that taught us to stay small: the childhood conditioning that trained creativity and imagination right out of us, why we call our negative thoughts "realistic" and dismiss the positive ones as dreaming, and what it means to remember you are not the things that happened to you — you are your reaction to them.

With reflections on sobriety, self-trust, manifesting the life you actually want, and the simple truth that when you give love and grace to yourself, it gets mirrored right back — this is an invitation to stop running someone else's program and start writing your own.

If you needed permission to believe it could work out? Here it is.

Topics: self-love, fear vs. love, breaking the cycle, law of attraction, manifesting your dream life, mindset shift, sobriety, spiritual awakening, healing your inner child, alignment, personal transformation.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, it's Stephanie. Thank you so much for tuning in to a special episode today. It's Soulful Sunday. And I know I'm a little late with this podcast, but I was camping up in Lake Superior, and it was amazing. Didn't get home till late last night. And I actually had another episode recorded for today, but I don't know. I just feel like a fresh start has happened. So I'm excited to share it with you guys. Here it goes. So this is where I'm at today. I am thinking about things that have gone wrong and how we hit a specific age, I feel. We get almost addicted to things not working out. And how that belief system, while honored and much obliged, is actually counterintuitive to what we should be doing when we have all this experience. We are all wounded warriors. We've gone through really hard things. We I don't know what it is, but enough things have happened to us by the time we're in our 40s that we start thinking that like we forget what it's like to be a child and we forget what it's like to have dreams and ambitions and imagination and and what we see in our silence. I'm going to be so obsessed with it being amazing and working out exponentially that even if it fails, it's going to be great. And the only way I can do that is to change my thought process from oh my gosh, what if it doesn't work out? What if I don't sell the tickets? What if I do go broke? What if the relationship fails? All of these things that are kind of always been in my brain. But after camping, I realized how much of it really does just cycle around and around and around in this karmic, energetic bullshit of a brain that I have. And I'm gonna stop it. I'm gonna change it to being holy shit, what if it works out? What if I do sell the tickets? What if the relationship does work? What if the business is is so great that like I have to turn people away? And why not why not be addicted to that cycle? Who gets to choose what goes on in my brain? My brain shouldn't pick. Fear shouldn't pick. Fear is just fear is just fear. But if I can learn to love my life, love myself enough, and to change the pattern of but what if, but what if, but what if, and have it be negative to a positive. And it just lights me up inside that I have that choice, and so do you. You get to decide, am I going to live in this fear loop today? Or am I going to live in a love loop? And it's not just a little loop, right? I heard this thing, and it was just an Instagram clip, but she says, How come when we have negative thoughts, we're calling it realistic? I'm just being realistic. And when we have positive thoughts, we disregard it as head in the sky, dreamy bullshit. Just so programmed to think negatively about our circumstances and to question our own sanity or our own worth. But it's just the cycle. We've been taught at such a young age that we are not powerful beings, that we have to accept the reality that, you know, when we were kids, having an active imagination got you in trouble in school. Being creative, thinking outside the box got you failed in school. We are that powerful that everything that is in charge of us wants us to be small, wants us to feel failure. Like if you look around, think about how many messages in your life have been created to make you feel small. Like it's not our fault. It's just the powers that be are not that powerful. So they have to make us small so that our brains stay small, so that our thoughts stay small because our thoughts reflect our reality. And if we are sad, depressed, angry, jealous, we stay in the same spot most of the time. We're gonna stay glued to that TV because we're so angry. We're gonna stay glued to that phone because my life doesn't look like their life, and I want my life to look like that life, and we we just become addicted to the cycle. And I'm addicted to the cycle. And I also have a sobriety piece to this puzzle, which I think is kind of amazing. A little over a year and a half sober. And you know, they talk about alcoholism a lot as this little thing that sits in the corner, or not alcoholism addiction, as this like shadow in the corner that's out that's always over there, just waiting for you to fail, waiting for you to want that drink. And that's why you always have to like be conscious of it, right? That yes, there's always gonna be a piece back there that's gonna want that drink. I personally don't have it. I can't imagine ever going back to drinking. It just even camping, like waking up in the morning and not being hung over is like the coolest thing. And not having to go buy beer, booze, alcohol, like make that run before camping, and how are we gonna keep the drinks cold? Like, do we bring food or alcohol and all of that stuff? I mean, flipping amazing. So, but I am addicted to the fear of things not working out. I am addicted to the fear of not being good enough. I am addicted because I feel it. I feel like I'm constantly seeking out this feeling of acceptance within the darkness of my soul. Like I there's part of me that just wants to freaking just give up sometimes. And I'm addicted to that feeling, I think. Like, like when I'm tired, when I've just like given it my all and I see like what seems like zero progress, it's almost like that's that's like, okay, that means I just have to work harder, you know? I just have to give it a little bit more, and it's it's like an addiction. Like, oh, let's see how much I can give and not get anything back. Like, I swear to God, that's like the story of my life that this hard work pays off, and like, so if hard work pays off, does that mean you just have to continuously create more hard work so that it pays off, right? Like, what if it doesn't have to be so hard? What if it really is that our minds are so powerful and so unique and so vast and so beautiful and so loving that if we just change our thought process to positivity and not fake positivity, but changing it to okay, this is gonna work out. I do have my head in the sky and my heart on my sleeve, and it's going to all work out. It can't not work out and just change those thought processes to it, doesn't have to be so hard. It's not hard. This is not hard. All of that stuff, and it's working. Like, what's gonna happen? What's the worst that could happen from changing our mindset? Oh, people are gonna think we're so positive. Think people are gonna think, what? Who cares what people think? Who cares what people think? Because all of this is all in our heads. Even you thinking about somebody else and what their thoughts are, it's all in your head. And I I'm saying this like a giant spotlight is like flashing on me from my own mirrored self. I'm just like, I'm seeing it all. That we really do create our own realities and we really are strong beings that have been programmed to be deduced to little worker ants when the reality is we're so much more than that. We're so much more than this hardworking mindset. We're so much more than, well, maybe it's not my time, maybe next time is my time, or maybe what I have isn't what other people want, or any whatever you're telling yourself, and it doesn't feel good, just change what you're telling yourself. I feel when I change my thought processes to there's no way I'm going to fail at this. There's no way. There's no you think that it's going to happen again exactly how it happened before. And you have these preconceived ideas, Stephanie, of what you think life is going to look like because of the past. And in the past, you had a whole different mindset, you had a whole different relationship with yourself. So the only thing standing in the way of what I want is me. And I find that super powerful, super scary, super vulnerable to be like, oh shit, like I'm creating this. I've created this. Yes, I've created, I've created it all. Every little piece of everything is my creation. And I am not the things that have happened to me. I am the reaction to that thing that happened to me. That's all I am is a living, breathing reaction to the life I have created for myself and the things that have happened. And I don't have to be reflecting that over and over and over again. Because that means if I am truly just the reflection of the things that have happened to me, like I've had some amazing freaking things happen to me, especially lately. And when these things are happening and my world is like exploding and like fireworks and like amazingness, and I can't believe this is my life. My first instinct is to doubt it, is to look for the peace that makes it not real. Like it's almost too much to handle sometimes when I'm standing in the middle of the woods in water or this past weekend camping up in the Apostle Islands. And the nature and the sounds, there's there's things that are happening to me that I cannot even, I don't have words for, I don't even have feelings for. And it's true alignment. And the only thing I can do, I have two choices, right? Because we're reactions. We're reactions to our environment. We're reactions, that's what we are. I can react to it positively, or I can react to it negatively. And the negative side says, yeah, this isn't gonna last. This isn't real. You know, like you're just out in the woods. This isn't your real life. Like you're gonna go back, things are gonna go back, and the relationship that I'm in is gonna turn into the last relationship, and the job that I am doing is going to turn into the last job I was doing. You know, there's all these negative thoughts that can happen, and they do happen. And sometimes I just let them happen, and then I'm spiraling down almost to the point where it's so stupid because like I knock my own self out of alignment from a reaction to how I'm feeling about being in alignment. Like it's so programmed inside of us. Inside of me, there's a chance if you're listening, you are more enlightened than me. And I love that for you. I'm only talking from my own inexperience reality, just new here, new here to this reality. And instead of the thought process of how can I incorporate more of this alignment throughout my day, like, hmm, that's creative. That's imaginative. That's all the things that we are only supposed to do in our class once a week on a Thursday from 8:30 to 9:30 in school for our entire young lives, which should have been completely nurtured in creativity, love, and inspiration. Instead, we're taught to sit still, to follow the rules, to stay in line, to not talk, not pass notes, not communicate with the people around you. Like, what the fuck? We're human beings. We're designed to, when we are with other people, to gain knowledge from one another. So the fact we had to sit still, be quiet, and listen to the teacher, like, of course. Of course, that's gonna cause us a lot of confusion. And it's going to cause us a lot of frustration as we try to grow, as our consciousness tries to grow, as our spirit tries to grow, and our lives try to grow, we're constantly going to be going back to that old feedback loop of sit still, be quiet. Say please, say thank you. Listen to your teacher, do as you're told. Of course, when you're in alignment and then and the openness is happening and the heart is filled up, and life is just existing, and you're existing in life, of course, that's going to make you feel really uncomfortable because it's the exact thing that has been taken out of us. And so by allowing that in, we feel like we're doing something wrong. And our mind is just trying to make sense of it all. Like this doesn't feel safe. This doesn't feel right. And it doesn't feel right because all of that rightness, this self-love, this trust your gut, trust your instincts, hear your heart, spend some time by yourself in nature, all of that stuff has been programmed out of us. And now is the time that you get to decide whether you are gonna allow that program to continue or are you going to write your own program? Are you going to remember what it's like to be a child and to imagine and to create and to talk to spirit and sing songs? Are you gonna allow that part of you that has been forcefully taken out, set aside, so that you can be a good little worker aunt to society? Are you gonna allow that back in? And I know the answer for most of you is yes, but I don't know where to start. I don't even know what that means. And for me, it means meditating, it means listening to music that's positive and happy, it means writing notes to myself. Truly, what does it mean to exist in your power and knowing that the only power you have that is creating your life is your reaction? Are you gonna react positively or negatively? Are you gonna shut down or are you gonna open up? Are you gonna focus on the one thing that's making you sad or the 50 things that are existing and loving and amazing? Because you can't do both. You can only pick one. You can only pick one reaction. Is it going to be, oh shit, it's happening to me again, I knew this was going to happen. Fuck me, fuck my life, I'm such a loser. Or is your reaction going to be like God, I I'd put my whole heart into that. And I'm so grateful I did that. Or God, this is just amazing. And for this moment, I'm going to allow myself to feel amazing. In this moment, I get to allow myself the privilege of remembering what it's like to be a four-year-old, a three-year-old, a five-year-old, playing in the beach, playing in the water, playing in the sand. Like you get to be aggressive or positive. You get to be calm and collective and loving and bright to yourself, which then inherently like just gives. When you're giving to yourself and you're loving yourself and you're loving your life, and you're just simply allowing this idea to float around in your head as an idea of peace and beauty, calm. When you're giving yourself that gift, everybody around you is receiving that gift as well. When you're allowing yourself to be negative, feeling unworthy, disappointed in yourself, wishing you would have done better, could have done better, but replaying old memories of when you messed up or what you could have done. And you're you have that negative energy around you, you feel shut down, you're tired, and you're like, I just gotta power through. Just gotta finish this task to get to the next next task, to get to the next task, and then I can chill out, and then I can take a break, and then I can love. You're putting yourself last. And when you put yourself last, you are mirroring that out. And then your situations are gonna mirror back to you those feelings. And you're gonna feel unappreciated, you're gonna feel alone, sad, unworthy. And we don't want that for this day, for this Sunday, for this moment, whenever you're listening. If you could just close your eyes and just feel grace for who you are, that's gonna get mirrored back to you. And that's what they have hidden from us. Not to sound conspiracy theory, but that is what's hidden in our society. Because when we're taught very, very young to trust ourselves to not create, to not imagine, to hop on a bus and go to school, hop on a bus, come home, do your homework, do your chores, and if there's extra time, watch TV. Like you're completely in the system. And you're in the system so long that it becomes comfortable, and this is just what we do. But to break open that concrete shell that's been put around us and truly feel what's in our hearts for a minute, a second, an hour. You can set a timer on your phone every hour. Just remember what it feels like to feel the sun on your face as a child, to sing a song like you did when you were a child, to dance around, to create. You're breaking the cycle. You're breaking the system. It's not gonna feel good. It's gonna feel like you're doing something very wrong. But when it gets mirrored back to you through a smile of a stranger, a good parking spot. A small gift. There's so many ways that positive thoughts will get mirrored back to you. A beautiful experience. There's so many ways. You have to be open to it, and then when that thing happens, when you walk into a coffee shop and there's no line and just a smiling barissa ready to take your order, you have to know that you created that. That your own positive self-taught created that. There's no, oh, that was lucky, that was chance. No. Your positivity created that. That whole experience. And that's not to say when you walk into a coffee shop and it's freaking packed and the barista's being a total bitch ass barista. That doesn't mean you're doing something wrong necessarily, but it might just be a really good opportunity for you to send some love, right? And what do you do when the barista's a bitch ass barista? You give them that energy too. It's so funny. Like everything really is a reaction. Like, like their cre their reality is creating their reality. Our reality is creating our reality. It's cool stuff. It's super powerful. That's my soul Sunday. Sorry, I rambled. And I hope you're having a great day. Don't forget that life is what you make of it. And if you want a beautiful life, you have to learn to to love yourself and to know that you are beautiful. Have a great day.