This video is very much for me as it is for you because my brain loves to think the same negative thoughts but each time they rise up, I whack it with a reminder.

So that's what this video is gonna be about.

I want to really break down the difference between states versus traits.

A couple of months ago, I was having a pretty lousy day and my patience was running really thin.

My toddler was inconsolable.

Nothing I did would make him stop crying.

I just felt this immense guilt, like ah, I'm such a terrible mother.

And so I scribbled that into my journal and then I had a therapy session and she essentially told me that I am not a bad mother.

I'm a mother that's having a lousy day.

Whenever I'm feeling a big emotion, particularly a negative one, I have this tendency to cling onto that temporary state as a permanent trait that's embedded into me.

So states are fleeting emotions that we feel.

This can range from anger, resentment, envy, even joy and awe.

All these emotions, they pass.

Our traits, however, are things that we will always be.

Like I will always be a human.

I'll always be a daughter.

I'll always be a mother.

This was a clear like aha moment for me because having a clear distinction between these states versus traits allowed me to have more space between temporary things that I was feeling and my identity.

And the way we speak to ourselves is so important.

I have to be very careful on what I choose to identify myself as because that's the behavior that I'll end up continually doing in the future.

So if I say that I'm a bad mother, if I say that I'm a friend, then I will continue to put myself in situations where I make that my reality.

And this mental exercise can be applied to anything.

Instead of saying, God, I'm so lazy, I can't do anything right, you can reframe it to I'm a human being trying their best.

I made a mistake, but I am the master of my emotions and I will try again.

It just softens everything and it makes you less critical about yourself.

And it also preserves the pureness of your identity.

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One overarching assumption that I continue to have in my life is to assume that everyone is trying their best.

Now, is this an objective truth?

Probably not.

But when I continue to make this assumption in my life, it helps me function better, especially when I face challenging interpersonal situations.

Let's say I go to a store and the clerk is rude to me.

Like a quick reaction would be like, oh my God, like what's this person's deal?

Why did they have such an attitude?

And if I hold onto this anger, then it ends up just bleeding into the rest of my day.

I overthink.

Holding onto that anger only ends up hurting me in the end.

It creates a story in my head that that person is a villain and I'm the victim.

And God, that cloak of victimhood can feel really good.

It's heavy, it's familiar, and it passes the blame onto somebody else.

But when I assume that that person was trying their best at that given moment, it immediately releases that tension and heaviness, and it turns it into forgiveness and lightness.

There are so many reasons why people behave the way they do.

Maybe the clerk was rude to me because they live with chronic pain.

Maybe they got into a fight earlier.

Maybe they just hate their job.

And yeah, best behavior looks different on different people, different days.

But when I make this assumption about everyone trying their best, it puts me more at ease and allows me to move on from things that trigger me.

So my next lesson is all about hitting the pause button.

This is essentially to try to remember to take a beat before reacting to things.

Now, this is very challenging because we are faced with hundreds of cause and effect situations.

And a lot of the times, it's like an automatic response.

If we touch something hot, then we let it go because we don't wanna get burned.

Now, this is an example where we're rewarded by our automatic response.

But the thing is, our brain just likes to apply that same system everywhere.

So if someone cuts in front of us on the highway, we honk.

If you receive a snarky comment, we quit back with an aggressive response.

Every time I delay my reaction to things, it gives me the space to tap into that higher, more evolved version of myself.

And I can ask myself the questions of, wait, how do I actually wanna respond to this?

Or do I even need to react to this at all?

It's honestly pretty rare for things to require an urgent response.

In most cases, you can afford a one to two minute delay of reflection and really think about how you want to respond to it.

Questions like, why would this person be behaving this way?

Is this something that I need to resolve right now?

Is this a life or death situation?

And usually walking through and answering these questions puts me in a better, more calm state.

I always try to give the situation and the person the benefit of the doubt.

I just assume that they're trying their best.

There comes a time in everyone's adulthood when you have that chilling realization that you are responsible for yourself.

And that includes all the emotions that you feel.

So whenever I'm feeling down or dysregulated, I repeat this mantra to myself.

I have a choice to make myself feel better.

And when I say this, it gives me a sense of control.

Like, hey, I got this.

I'm gonna make myself feel better.

I got you.

So in those moments where I may be feeling anxious or I don't know, this like level of despair humming in the background, first I do like a physiological check-in.

Am I thirsty?

Am I hungry?

Am I tired?

Did I have too much caffeine?

I feel like we just don't give our bodies enough credit.

Like our bodies are highly intelligent and they're constantly communicating to us, but it's really our choice to decide to lean in, listen to it and give it what it needs.

And honestly, after I do this physical check-in, it's usually one of those factors.

Usually 30 to 40% of the time, my mood can be enhanced by checking in on one of these physical things that my body was needing.

Let's say I'm still feeling like I'm in a slump.

That's when I look to my self-soothing checklist.

Now this is a list of activities that I've written down that I know will make me feel better that require no calm down, and I will never regret doing.

I actually have this list saved onto my notes because when I'm feeling down, the last thing I wanna do is like conjure ideas on what will make me feel better.

So just having this physical checklist on my phone and running through at least one or two of the tasks, it makes me feel a little bit better and it creates a momentum so I can make, again, like pull myself out of this like lake of despair.

I think the real beauty of doing these things is that it allows that temporary state that you're feeling to pass so that you can fully release it and move on.

These days, I have been reprogramming what productivity means to me and what also being lazy is.

We live in a capitalist society, for better, for worse, where productivity is prized above all else and anything that interferes with being productive is looked down upon.

And I feel like sometimes it can make relaxing really difficult because you feel guilty.

For a long time, I thought academic reading was more virtuous than reading a smut novel.

Honestly, I just had to rethink what being lazy actually meant and just the importance of what doing nothing does for me because I noticed that I end up being more creative and have more of a zest for life once I've released and I went dancing or I had a lovely dinner with my friends or I went to a music festival.

And it's also a great way to find inspiration when I'm purposely under-stimulating myself with work.

I feel like it's quite similar to when your laptop gets overheated.

You unplug it, let it rest for a couple minutes, and then it performs efficiently again.

So my next lesson is to stop romanticizing that something will fix me.

Let me explain.

In my mid to late 20s, I got into my big self-development phase.

I was reading so much material, absorbing all these seminars on how I can improve myself and my mentality.

The thing is I'm a natural problem solver and things got very interesting when I began troubleshooting all the things that were wrong with me.

I wanted to work on my temper, my self-esteem, learn how to be a better storyteller, a better speaker.

I wouldn't say it was an addiction, but it was this endless need for me to constantly be improving myself.

And when I boil it down, it came from this need to be perfect.

So there was an instance last year where I was applying to do this MDMA assisted therapy session and after a couple of rounds of interviews, my application was rejected.

And I remember just being so upset.

God, I really needed this.

Why didn't they accept me?

But then I paused and I reflected.

Why am I putting so much weight on this one activity?

I realized that I was romanticizing a solution.

I thought that once I did this, then I would shed my traumas.

I would release any doubts that I had and then I would be healed.

I would be cured.

But life is not like that.

That's like a plain lie.

There's no amount of books I can read or great seminars that I can listen to, even like experimental therapy that's gonna make me feel whole immediately.

Change is incremental.

I'm learning that the more I can accept the version as I am right now, the way I'm showing up right now is the key to self-love and for me to just be more relaxed in the skin that I'm in.

I do wanna preface that this isn't gonna stop me from taking those classes and to continue to put myself outside my comfort zone, but it's just less of an urgency and this expectation that I need to be fixed.

As you get older, it's rarely the case that there are right or wrong decisions at a crossroads.

There are choices that you make and then you make the best of them.

This was beautifully said by Bobby Hundreds and when I read it, it hit because there are so many big decisions that we make in our lives where we put so much weight and pressure on it, being like, is this the right thing?

If I don't do this, will this fuck up my life forever?

But in reality, all these decisions are pretty neutral and the hardest part about a decision is just making one.

When you're younger, you're really doing the work, training yourself to get instincts so you can move through the world, but at a certain point of your adulthood, you just have to trust yourself that you are making the best decision at that given moment.

Not everything needs to have this deep meaning or this narrative.

If anything, all that stuff can only happen in hindsight.

You can never really do that in the present.

Also, this pressure of making the right choice really comes from our need for certainty.

We wanna know what's gonna happen.

We want a guaranteed future, but in the end, certainty is a lie.

Nothing is guaranteed.

And so what helps calm my anxiety about wanting to know what's gonna happen is to just welcome the mystery.

Maintaining the mystery in my life helps romanticize the uncertainty of it all.

I don't know, when I say it's mysterious, it makes it a little exciting, it makes it sexy.

I mean, it's boring when you know exactly what's gonna happen, so you might as well just surrender and let whatever's gonna happen happen.

So many of these realizations happened to me during therapy, so if you guys are interested in starting your therapy journey today, you can visit my link in the description box or visit betterhelp.com slash Jen.

Clicking that link helps support the channel, and it also gets you 10% off your first month using BetterHelp.

You can join over four million people who have used BetterHelp today to live a deeper, more introspective life.

I wanna thank you guys so much for watching, and I'll see you guys in my next one.

Bye.