The Power of Choice Over Worst Case Scenario | Episode 124: Check in with Ang
How do you know who you are? Are you ever willing to create changes in your own life? Sometimes we are living a “fine” life and totally missing out on a “great” life and all we need to do is make a simple change.
In this week’s episode of the Carrying Connected Conversations podcast, Angie is sharing a recent breakthrough she had all centered around the power of choice in order to move away from hitting rock bottom. As co-host Syd and Ang discuss how they perceive their own identities they unpack the true meaning to being on a personal growth journey. Ang recognizes how she often allowed her external environment to dictate her life’s direction, when now she is choosing to make changes constantly in order to make her life better. This episode is about change, conscious choice, identity and letting go of what no longer serves us.
Listen to the episode now to hear Ang share how she is empowering herself through her self perception.
You can continue reading about the conversation Syd & Ang had on the podcast through the transcript below.
Syd: Hello everyone welcome back to another episode of Carrying Connected Conversations, a podcast with Syd & Ang. This is Syd chatting at you. A great way to start the episode, and I am excited. I am really excited to be here, it’s been a little while since Ang & I have popped on and pressed the record button. We are bringing some new topics today with you. Third month of our time back here on the podcast. We took a little bit of a break and now we are heading into our third month of recordings and it feels really really good. Excited that you guys are stocking with us as we are continuing on with sharing these episodes. Starting off the month here, we are at the Check In episode with Ang. Before we get into the actual topic, which is all about picking choice over worst case scenario, and change. I am excited to dive into all the things that Ang has to share with us today in her experience in learning this lesson. Before we jump in, let me introduce my co-host. Angie, how are you doing today?
Ang: Hey! I am doing so well! I too am excited about this topic because it’s something that has been very prominent in my life. It’s something that has come forward again more recently in my life, so it’s nice to kind of reevaluate it looking at it completely different.
Syd: I think that is something that is actually really important in our personal growth journey. It’s recognizing that we don’t learn a lesson and then it’s done and it’s over and we move on. It’s actually about taking those moments to reflect on the things that we have learnt, or we may even see that situations pop back up to remind us of a lesson that we’ve already heard to see if we are integrating it.
As we jump into today’s topic, I know that when you were trying to pick what you wanted to talk about today you did a meditation. My first question to you is, can you explain your experience with your meditation and what you uncovered? How did you get to this topic?
Ang: Yes, absolutely. The main reason as to why I wanted to meditate on this to choose my topic was because I didn’t know what to pick. I was having a hard time because I was stuck between a couple of things, but nothing was feeling like a Hell Yes to me. This meditation was so beautiful because I went into it knowing that there were certain topics I wanted to think about, but I wanted to go into the meditation to completely clear my mind. Rather than going into it thinking it would amplify a certain thought, if anything it changed the way I was looking at the previous thought by completely clearing my mind and allowing me to reconnect to myself. It got me to this idea of change and what change means to me in my life and that I am currently going through change. After all this is a check in for myself. What lesson have I learned? Are there any breakthroughs that I am going through? Is there a certain quote or video I’ve watched to bring me back to where I am now? What I have realized, the bottom line of it all is change.
Funny enough, actually I don’t want to jump too far into it. That’s really what I uncovered from the meditation.
Syd: I really like this, I am an advocate for meditation. I think that everyone in the world should meditate. Again, there is that word should, I always like to use it lightly. I think the power with meditation is that there are so many different ways we can meditate, so if one doesn’t work for you then try a different one. Ultimately what meditation does, and I had a moment myself this morning in my meditation where I was focusing on this one thought. The thought pattern was cycling and cycling. What I explained in one of our first episodes back, stillness helps me to embody my Higher Self, so I can’t think my way to a solution and I can’t think my way to an answer. We can create a practice of over analyzing. I love that you said that meditation helped you to clear your mind and connect back to yourself so you could see the topic from a totally different perspective.
You talk about change and how you are moving through this change, and that is really the topic that came forward for you today. I am looking at my questions and none of them really tie into what you said with change, so I want to understand this a little bit more. What is it that you feel like you are moving through with this concept of change? Can you share a little bit deeper how that is coming up in your life right now?
Ang: Yes 100%. This is where I’d like to tie in why I want to talk about change. I had this inspiration from a movie I watched, it’s called Run Woman Run. It was absolutely beautifully done. I loved every single second of it. Full of laughs, full of tears. Long story short it was about an indigenous woman who hit rock bottom. She hit rock bottom with her health and her son decided to move out. The only way that she could have her son back was if she decided to put herself first. To me looking at that from my perspective is you don’t need to hit rock bottom in order for you to then make a change. You can choose to make changes ahead of time. Why this is important for me in my life, I unfortunately let my external world develop in front of me before I then chose something different. What I mean by this is that from the last relationship I had, I chose in a moment where I felt empowered, that I no longer wanted this anymore. I gave in to that and then next thing you know, 8 months later it developed into a worse case scenario and I had to leave.
Realizing that no matter how good my situation is, I can always pick something that is better for me because I am constantly changing. What do I need to do more of or what do I need to do less that’s still going to support my higher self? Knowing that everything is going to be constantly changing. Watching that movie I really did see certain parts of me in it. I don’t know if you Syd have hit a point in your life where you hit rock bottom and then you felt like you had to make a move. I am approaching change in a very different way, that I don’t have to hit rock bottom in order to make a change. I can choose differently now, whether my life is okay or good.
Syd: It’s interesting that you say that because I agree with you. I have hit a rock bottom in my life where then I realized I needed to make a change. What you are describing I think, I don’t want to generalize it, but I think it’s what the majority of us go through when we are on our personal growth journey or when we awaken to our spiritual journey. When we become more conscious of how we are moving through life. I think many of us need to hit that rock bottom at some point to then awaken, to then realize, “hey I am letting life control me and I don’t want to, and I want to see things differently”. Whatever it is that we learn in that moment. For me it was that I realized I thought life could be better than what I was experiencing. So then I was on the pursuit of how I could create that better life. From there on out, for me in my experience and what I see with a lot of my clients and what I think you are explaining, we find ourselves in this space where we are aware much faster. Hitting the rock bottom is the moment of awareness. It’s the moment where we awaken. We wake up and say “woah, I don’t like where I am, what can I change”. Whereas once we’ve already had that moment, as we move forward rather than waiting ntil we get to that moment we take control of what we can change. We are moment conscious in the moment of the choices we are making and that is what it comes down to. Are you waiting to let that rock bottom moment happen, not even realizing that’s what you are waiting for but its’ what is happening. Or are you consciously aware and making choices that are for the best for you, the best for your well-being and you are creating change in that process.
Ang: Absolutely. It’s funny because the first time I learned about this was because the reason why I needed to change was because my external world was completely different from where I am seeing the change needing to happen now. It’s for all different reasons. I love that you brought back this idea of becoming woke in those moments when you realize there is something that is better for you. Again, reminding myself I think not having to get to that point, in whatever aspect of my life it is, is very empowering in itself. So often we let everyday life happen and then all of a sudden you are thinking, “how did we get here”. I am coming from a place now where I did let that happen, I absolutely let that happen this past year. I let life catch up to me. I put a lot of my personal growth on the back burner and there was a lot of fear with that. For me the big catalyst of it all is change. The power of choice and choosing to change when you want to rather than choosing because you have to.
Syd: Ya. I think that is really really impactful. Really what it comes down to is what you said, letting life happen to you and letting life take over, versus what actually is your ideal life. How do you actually want to live and what is important to you and what are you prioritizing? What are your values? Recognizing that you have the choice to make those changes to lead yourself in that direction. That brings me to my next question, which is what does choosing your ideal life mean to you?
Ang: It’s the complete opposite of what I said. Choosing my ideal life is not having something happen for me to then make a decision on. It’s me acting in accordance with my Higher Self. I kind of broke this down a little bit more thoroughly based on the definition of change itself. I do want to read it out because it might spark some ideas in you listeners, or in just understanding my example.
The definition of change - a change implies either making essential difference often amounting to a loss in original identity or a substitution of one thing for another.
That struck home for me because there is two parts of that that really stood out. The loss of identity is something I will get into a little bit later. The substitution of one thing for another I realize is my external world. There is something in my external world that I need to substitute that is either no longer serving me, whether it’s things or people in my life. Before I continue and go off track, can you Syd repeat to me your question.
Syd: What does choosing your ideal life mean to you?
Ang: Based off the second part of that is finding choice in my ideal life is finding the places where I need to substitute things that are no longer serving me. If I am finding that things or people in my life are no longer serving me then that is when I can actively make the choice to choose something different.
Syd: Mmmm. That makes a lot of sense. So then I want to ask you, how do you know? How do you know when something is no longer serving you?
Ang: Good question. A lot of that comes from reflection definitely. Especially this morning when I had my meditation I had a lot of Ah-Ha moments. I realized a big part of this was my identity. I was so focused on “I don’t know who I am, I don’t know who I am, I don’t know who I am trying to be”. I was so caught up in the unknown and that’s obviously fear that is presenting itself. If it feels off then I need to check in with myself. Going back to my Human Design and asking myself simple yes or no questions. One thing I was journaling about this morning and this might make sense, I was often stuck on focusing on how I felt being around people or I was forgetting on what I loved for myself. That brought the people pleasing back into it. KNowing that something is not for me is am I so focused on how I feel being around these people or things, or am I focused on how I feel while doing this things? Am I over thinking it in a sense?
Syd: Ya I think it does make a lot of sense. It’s something that you and I talk a lot about in regards to Human Design. It’s this idea that in making decisions, which is choice, making a choice on something the majority of the world, we are not actually meant to make decisions from our mind or mental space. We are not supposed to use our thoughts to make a decision. It’s not that you cna’t make a decision from your thoughts. It’s that if you are wanting to make the most aligned decision for you, it is not through your thoughts. It is not through your mind space. So, for you learning what’s not serving you, it’s about taking that time for reflection and tapping into how you feel. Tapping into whether you are focused on your thoughts too much, while also tapping into whether you are people pleasing your way through this.
Ang: That is exactly it.
Syd: You kind of touched on something there. How do we know who we are? I think this is something that a lot of us struggle with. Who am I? How do I know who I am? Especially when we are on our personal development journey, we feel like we are going through all of these changes. We feel like we have hit these rock bottoms and we are trying to guide ourselves through life so we are not hitting the rock bottoms. We want to make change in our life through conscious choice, so we are not hitting those moments where we feel like we are totally at the bottom. Instead we are making choices and we are changing things so we can live our ideal life. How do we make choices? How do we guide ourselves through change if we don’t know who we are? I think maybe this is something that you are guiding yourself through right now? I’m not really sure, but I’d like to dig in a little deeper on what that means to you. How do you know who you are? And if you don’t know who you are, how do you guide yourself through change? What are the things you are doing through that?
Ang: That’s funny that you ask that because in my journaling this morning I said that I didn’t know who I was. But I didn’t say it from a “woo is me” I said it from a very empowered place because I don’t know who I am because I am constantly becoming someone different. If I am always to know what my future self is going to be then I am always going to know myself. I only know past versions of me, those are definite concrete versions where I say “yes I know who I was”. Those parts of me are what I am trying to change. So who I am right now is a catalyst to the change of my internal world, especially from my external world. Realizing that it’s okay to not know who you are is because I am constantly growing, constantly changing, constantly adding and obtaining more knowledge in order for me to change who I am. I find that so empowering because every old aspect, or every old version of myself that I once knew, I knew them very very well, but where I am at right now is “okay how can I better this”. Did that old version of me support me? If not, then what can I do right now to support myself? I am coming from a place of I’m never really going to know who I am in the moment, I am only going to know past versions of myself. I think that really rang true for me in my meditation this morning. Before I was journaling about “I don’t know who I am”, whereas now I realize I never know who I am and it’s okay. It’s okay to not know who you are.
Syd: Ya, exactly. I think there is so much in what you said that really resonates with me. It’s also this concept of defining yourself on past versions of you. I’m not saying that’s what you are doing, you are saying that you can only look at who you were from the past because it’s concrete and definite. I think a lot of us can find ourselves in a worm hole of limiting ourselves because we end up only defining ourselves from past versions of us. But what you are saying is that you are expansive, you are limitless, you are growing. That means that you can’t really limit your identity to a specific definition right now because you don’t know who you are, because you are changing. Because you are growing. That is so empowering, if we are able to look at it from that perspective! Looking back on that past version of ourselves, maybe it ties into what you were saying about how you know if something is not serving you. This is me asking a question, not assuming. For you, is it because you are able to look at past versions of yourself and you are able to say, “oh I can see how that didn’t work for me, I can see how I am growing now so what I once placed an importance on and I defined myself as, now I am starting to recognize it actually isn’t serving me”. Is that how you use reflection to determine what’s not serving you?
Ang: Ya in a sense. I would say so, because it’s coming from concrete examples. My concrete examples are who I was in that scenario, and realizing if this is no longer going to serve me then it’s me choosing from a place of unknown. What’s better for me? Maybe it was fine, quote on quote everything is fine, when in reality it's just good or okay. Can it be better? Finding if something can be better or not is where I come from.
Syd: Okay, so how do you make those choices for you personally in that search of something better? Do you have something that guides you? Is it a feeling based? Is it I’m just going to try it and see how it is? What is it that makes you say, maybe this could be better so I’m going to head in this direction?
Ang: It’s by experience definitely. If I put myself into an experience, I go and do it completely blindsided because how are we supposed to know how an experience is going to dictate itself, or turn out? At the end of the experience I normally come out of, “hey that felt great, that didn’t feel so great”. Usually the moments where it doesn’t feel so great is when I do a lot of reflection. What was I doing? What kind of things was I saying to myself? Was I focusing on a lot of what I needed to say? Was I over-analyzing it, not from a negative standpoint but instead around whether I need to be in that situation again? A concrete example I can give is who I was, go back and listen to episode 1. I was all over the place and excited and go go go. That was Angie. I had to be super bubbly and super out there. Why? Because other people felt good in my energy. I was so focused on making sure the other people felt good in my energy that I wasn’t even sure what that was doing to myself. Now I have realized that I am a completely different person then who I was a couple of years ago. I find myself, even in social settings, where I feel a lot more anxious and nervous. I don’t want to go and introduce myself. This might be some new things I am moving through, it might be part of my old conditioning, whatever it is I am still moving through it. What I am realizing is that right now I am a different person. I am actually okay with me being a different person because who I was before was again me trying to get that center of attention. I don’t necessarily want the center of attention any more because it’s not my purpose in life. My purpose in life is not to be the center of attention, my purpose in life is for me to feel good. For me to recognize this shift as I am going through this journey of mine has been very insightful, but also scary because I get caught up in why I am so anxious right now. In reality I can see that I didn’t like being the center of attention. I didn’t like it when all eyes were looking at me. I’m like, “stop looking at me, I’m still trying to figure my stuff out”.
Syd: Ohhhhh. So interesting. Would you say that the old version of you, that was searching for the center of attention, maybe it was subconsciously that it happened. But you were viewing yourself through the eyes of other people?
Ang: Yes absolutely..
Syd: Which made you want to be the center of attention because then they would see you as the bubble, carefree, excitable person. Whereas now you are trying to figure out, well how do I view myself? Even though you aren’t trying to get concrete on the definition or identity. You are understanding that it’s expansive and growing, but still in that space you are trying to gain information and knowledge on who am I? How do I value myself? How do I perceive myself?
Ang: Yes. It’s a lot more internal now, whereas before it was very much externalized. It kind of goes true in terms of, your external world is a reflection of your internal world. The places I’ve lived along the years, the more and more away I got, the less and less attached I felt to people. Now that I am back and surrounded by people, I am looking at it very differently and I am approaching it differently. All because I feel like a different person. I am needing to figure out how to interact from all the changes I’ve made over the years, and also from the changes I am trying to get to now.
Syd: Okay. Would you say that, because you mentioned the anxiety and nervousness when you are in public settings or group settings, you are anxious to introduce yourself to people or start up a conversation. Looking internally, do you think that that anxiousness and nervousness comes from the space of “I still don’t know who I am yet”.
Ang: I was going to say, not knowing. Ya that is something I was reflecting on, because is it that or is it something different? That is something I don’t have an answer for right now because I am still navigating through it. That is something I’ve been trying to figure out. Why is there all of sudden so much anxiousness? Is it because I am so traumatized from my past? Am I living in this place of not feeling 100% empowered still? Or am I just really trying to figure out who I am? There is a lot of uncertainty in that.
Syd: I think it takes time in the space of when we are shifting our perspective of viewing yourself through somebody else's eyes, versus yourself as yourself. Learning how to value ourselves as ourselves, rather than valuing yourself through what we think somebody else values as us. That external validation and the external approval. I know on my journey I definitely experienced a moment of anxiousness and nervousness in group settings because I didn’t fully know who I was yet. I didn’t fully value who I was yet. As I continue on that journey and I’ve been able to get myself to a space where I do value who I am, I can show up in a group setting, even if I feel that nervousness or anxiousness trigger I am able to talk myself through it. I am able to remind myself that it’s okay whatever their perception of me is that I know it’s through the mirror of whatever perception they have of themself.
Ang: 100%. It’s funny because in thinking of that, the moment when the feeling pops up, why is it my job right here right now to explain to you my whole life story in terms of where I have come from and where I am going. Is it really going to matter tomorrow, the next day, the day after? If I look a little anxious or like I am keeping to myself, what is it to the other person? I feel so different now, looking at that and it’s a lot more accepting because I don’t feel like I have to explain myself. I definitely know that old Angie was the type of person, if I met you on a bus and you just said hello to me, I would give you my whole life story. I was that girl. Let me just dump all my crap on you. I’ve realized that’s who I was and with random people walking on the street. Now if I am in a social setting I am very conscientious of what I am saying and why I am saying it. I think that’s why a lot of being reserved comes from not going above and beyond to where old Angie was. It’s okay because I am testing the waters. It’s definitely going through experience, and it’s also testing or trying something a little bit different.
Syd: That makes a lot of sense. I really like what you explained there around giving your whole life story. That is something that I talked to one of my clients about in the last couple of weeks and it’s something I‘ve had to learn in my own journey. For me the desire for approval ended up triggering me to try and be how I thought they wanted me to be. So maybe you can resonate with that a little bit in being the center of attention. Until I learned that my focus doesn’t actually need to be on how someone else perceives me, it needs to be on how I perceive myself because no matter what someone else’s perception is of me, they actually don’t know me. They don’t know my whole life story. They don’t know all the things I’ve had to move through to get to where I am today. No matter how they create their perception of me, I don’t need to identify as that perception because they haven’t lived my life. I think that right there was the empowering perspective that I needed to realize, well it doesn’t matter how someone perceives me. It only matters who I view myself and value myself because I’m the only one who has lived every single moment of this life of mine.
Ang: Exactly, exactly.
Syd: Whew! Wow! I love this! There is so much. I love this idea of picking choice over worse case scenario and being led to rock bottom. Stopping yourself in that track and instead taking the time for reflection and checking in with yourself to see if it’s serving you, if it’s for the better for you. Leading yourself through new experiences even though change can be scary at times, but really coming back to choice. I get to choose to make a change in my life that is for the better of me. As we wrap up this conversation is there anything else that you feel like you haven’t shared that you want to share? Maybe a breakthrough or Ah-Ha that got you to this perspective.
Ang: No. I shared it earlier. It was how I viewed myself, my identity and not knowing who I am, but realizing I always knew who I was. I think that was a sense of relief really. It helped me remove the need to know who I am into just embody the fact that I’m not going to know, but I’ll always know old versions of me. Then realize from there what I can do to support myself moving forward. That was my biggest breakthrough this morning. For a long time coming I was thinking about it but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Syd: That is so empowering to give yourself that space of, I don’t need to have a specific definition of my identity. In my spiritual journey it’s something that a lot of spiritual teachers talk about when we come into consciousness we realize that we are not our thoughts. If we are not our thoughts, then what are we? We are the awareness that is aware of the thoughts. So really, who you are and how you can identify yourself, if you are thinking about it then you are identifying yourself with the thoughts. Your identity is simply I am, because you are awareness.
Ang: Point period blank.
Syd: It’s that ever changing, and ever expanding concept of, if you do choose to identify yourself in a specific way you are actually limiting who you truly are.
Ang: 100%. Funny enough that was one of my questions from my meditation this morning. How am I limiting myself? Right?!
Syd: Yup! I love that so much! What a beautiful conversation Ang and I want to thank you so much for bringing this forward. It gets me to reflect on my own journey of identity and I know it’s going to trigger a lot of our listeners. Trigger not necessarily in a bad way, sometimes the triggering is in a good way to get you thinking about who you are or how you have limited yourself in your perspective of yourself. Absolutely beautiful.
You listeners, if you enjoyed this and this topic really resonated with you. This concept of conscious choice and not waiting for the rock bottom moment, instead trying to figure out who you are in this expansive, ever changing identity. If that resonates with you, hits home and gets you thinking then please hit that 5 star rating on whatever podcast player you are listening to. We want to know that this is something that really made you think. If it didm, give us a 5 star rating.
This is where we end today’s conversation. As a teaser for next week, talking about perspective and shifting perspectives, I am bringing forward a check in with me. I want to talk about how I have shifted my perspective from lack to abundance. I am really excited to dive into that, so stay tuned for next week.
Thank you so much for leaving that 5-star rating! So glad you enjoyed the conversation from today. I know I loved it. Thank you so much Angie for sharing. That is where we are going to love you and leave you all. Until next week, bye everyone.
Ang: Bye!