CwL Ep 144 When it’s time for a change – The Stories (Part Two)

Hey, it’s Lisa Corduff. Welcome to the podcast where you can expect inspiring, raw, energising, and transformative conversations with people on the path of personal evolution. I’m here to really live my life, and if you are too, these conversations are just for you. I’m really glad you are here. Enjoy.

I remember the feeling when my best friend through high school didn’t show up. These are the days before we were getting text messages about people not being at school. It was like, oh, she’s not at the station. Oh, she’s not in the classroom. Okay, she mustn’t be at school today. I remember the feeling. I didn’t like the feeling. She and I were besties from year seven to year 12, like real joint at the hip, best friends. And we did everything together was, we honestly did. And it was a very, very, very close friendship. I have always since that time, had a person. I like being in partnership. Well, I have liked being in partnership. I hate the feeling. I hated that feeling of her not being there. Felt like I’d sort of lost my right arm. I remember when my marriage was over, I felt a bit the same. Who am I if I’m not Nick’s wife? I mean, anyone who’s been through that knows the absolutely massive transformational opportunity that exists when you get to know yourself outside the context in which you have lived. It’s hugely, hugely powerful. Fricking painful, but hugely powerful. And I know that for me, a bit of a pattern through my life. We’re not going to fully unpack all my psychological issues, but I like being in partnership. Being in partnership has also allowed me to default to the needs and desires of people who I’m with.

My most recent relationship called that into question. I was asked what I needed all the time, what I wanted, and I realised I didn’t really know. Sometimes I just wouldn’t. I wouldn’t have answers. Kind of remember saying to my husband years and years ago, I’m just along for the ride. I’m not super attached to the way that life is going to look. I’m, and the truth is that’s still exists, but it’s also not 100% true. I have always been in partnership and seen myself in the context of the other person. I’ve always been in long term partnerships. I’ve liked that for me. And now that I find myself on the other side, I absolutely want to explore or what Lisa wants context of one and my children of course. But to do that and to make this change, take the kids away on an adventure on my own as a sole parent with three little kids to be responsible for the hell am I thinking? I I’ve, I’ve come up against many, many stories and beliefs that I have about myself, and this happens when we want to create change. I knew it was going to happen. I knew exactly

Because I literally teach this. I teach this in the change method. If you want access to that. I am running the last live round this June. I don’t take a huge number of people. I limit the numbers to that. So if you want to jump in, Lisa koff.com/tcm is where you need to go to get access to this. So I thought I would share in this episode what I have had to move through the stories that have come up for me as someone who has always had someone, if I’m going to do something for myself to find my spark again, to have an adventure, to see the world through a different lens, to see the life I’m living from a completely different perspective, to shake things up. If I want that, and I desperately did. I was going to have to work through some of my own bullshit because there was a lot.

Let me tell you, there is for all of us all the time, here’s one of the big things that I have realised is a story for me, not a truth. And that’s ultimately what we do in the change method You, and we’re basically telling ourselves stories all the time, and they come because we’ve told ourselves something so many times we’ve started to believe it. It’s such a well worn pathway in our brain. We don’t actually question it anymore. We just accept it as truth until you shine a spotlight on it and you’re like, actually, I mean, is that actually true? That thing I believe about myself. I mean, we’ve been told things about ourselves throughout our lives from our family of origin, from our primary school teachers, from sports coaches, from all of the different things, society, bloody film clips we watched as Kids on Rage, all those things. We’ve got these clues about life, the world, what’s possible, who we are. And we’ve told them to ourselves so many times that we’ve accepted them as truth and sometimes we need to call bullshit. One of the most pronounced for me has been I can’t make decisions and I don’t like making decisions.

So let’s unpack that one.

I wonder if you have ever said that to yourself. I wonder if you feel like you can’t kind of make a call. For sure. In my marriage, I would default to Nick a lot. A lot. What do you want? I don’t know. I don’t care. So you just decide and then I just go with the flow, losing my sense of what I actually want, what works for me. And I think so many women do this and then end up feeling resentful that they are where they are accessing and honouring our own needs, being in conversation with ourselves about them. It’s really important. And I know for sure in my recent relationship, I was questioned, you just tell me what you need. What? Hang on. No, no, no, I don’t care. Yeah, you do. What do you want? What do you need? And I was being called into making some big decisions and I realised I didn’t know.

I don’t know what I want life to look like for me and the kids, and so I stay in kind of indecision to my own detriment. But here’s the thing. Here’s how I know it’s a total bullshit story, and there’s something else going on here is because I make decisions all day, freaking every day, I’m the sole parent of my children. I am literally a decision making machine. Sure I can get jumbled and I can find it difficult to make a final decision, but my life is making decisions. Some feel more important than others. Some are easy, some are hard. But I make decisions all the time. It’s a total bullshit story that I can’t make decisions because I’m going to have to make a lot of decisions on the road with the kids. I have had to make a lot of decisions about timing of leaving, whether I can actually do this talk. I’ve made a decision to talk to schools before I even had anything setting concrete. I’ve had to, I mean, literally a million decisions. And yet here I am telling myself I can’t make decisions, so I probably won’t be able to do this trip because I’m not a decision-making type of person. I don’t like to do that.

What fuck off, Lisa. I’m calling bullshit on that. And instead, I am leaning into being a person who really wants to explore what she wants, how she wants it, what it’s going to look like, and make empowered decisions instead of default decisions instead of just the easy ones. This is the most amazing opportunity for me to explore that edge of mine that keeps me kind of playing maybe a little bit smaller than I need to. Keeps me stuck. So I busted that one, but then things come up. I don’t think I can do this on my own. Now it’s funny because I shared that with friends. I’m like, I just don’t know if I could do it on my own. They’re like, you do it on your own. You already do. You have for years and years and years and years, I was married and Nick was pretty hands on, but he wasn’t able to do the things, especially in the final few years. I was thrust into doing it on my own. I have been doing it on my own. I’ve had an amazing supportive partner the past few years, but I was still doing it on my own.

And so it’s scary. I’m scared and really nervous about being the parent, the only parent, and taking the kids away and I’ve got all the worries. What if something happens? What if I’m not feeling well or blah? I don’t know if I can do, I’m not very good in emergencies. If someone hurts themselves, I faint. I can’t. I do this on my own. The story really was, I don’t think so. I don’t think I can, don’t know if I want to. And so I was staying put on this calling that I had that no, this is exactly what you need to do. My story that I couldn’t do it on my own was stopping me. And I call bullshit because I already do it on my own. This is just a different context of doing it on my own. And I know it’s not going to be easy, and I know that there’ll probably be lots of tears, but this is what we do. We trap ourselves by these ideas. I’ve always been in partnerships, so of course I need someone else there. I’m not used to not having someone else there. Here’s someone else to pick up the slack if I need them to someone else to find a laundromat and I cook dinner,

Someone to watch the kids so I can get some alone time. God, how am I even going to anyway, I call bullshit. We get to do that for ourselves. Another big, big story that I’ve had for myself is that I’m not adventurous. Adventure is one of my core values. I love just going places. I love doing different things, but my story was, I’m not the instigator of that. I had a six year relationship before I was with Nick, and he did all sorts of things like wakeboarding and surfing and snowboarding, really kind of outdoorsy, adventurous, was trying new things all the time. We travelled together around the world and he’d think of stacks, he’d think of fun things to do, and Nick was always wanting to go off the beaten track. I loved that about him. I loved that we would arrive in a small village in Croatia, even a touristy sort of town, and he wouldn’t be going to where everybody else was. We’d be strolling through the back streets, finding where the locals hung out. He wasn’t interested in just following crowds. He was always paving his own path. And I loved it, and I went along with it. He would, he’d get me up. I would just sort of like to get somewhere, chill out, relax, read my book. He’d be like, let’s go here.

And I would just follow. It was great. I loved adventure, but he found it for me. Same goes with the relationship that I had these last few years. One of the most adventurous person I’ve ever met. Always looking oof, still so raw, always looking for different things to do obsessively. It was like being on a constant adventure, being with him. It was the best. I didn’t have to think about what to do with the kids. It was like, Hey, I found this. Do you want to? Yeah, let’s do it. It was amazing. So I’m not the adventurous one. I’m with adventurous people, was my story. And they give me the adventure. Well, I have had to do a lot of work on that story because this whole trip is basically one big adventure that I’m responsible for, and the kids are going to be co-creators and going to absolutely have a say in what we do. In fact, it’s a big part of what I want them to learn and how I’d love to see them grow over this trip is taking the opportunity to be, make decisions about what we do and where we go and planning trips and figuring out timetables and all of that sort of stuff.

It’s not going to be me every single day coming up with ideas. That is for sure, and I look forward to that for all of us. It’s going to be amazing for them. But I need to step into the role of Lisa as leading the adventure of a lifetime. And this is what we get to do. We get to rewrite the stories and it’s why a big part of the change method and the upgrade that I did from ready for Change involved testing your new stories, getting to prove the new stories, building that new pathway in your brain that says, I live an adventurous life by my own design is what my new story is. Instead of feeling like an adventure has to be given to me. It’s powerful when we get to do this stuff for ourselves. And we do get to, if I assumed that adventure was over until I met someone who could give me more, I am forgoing a life aligned with one of my core values. So I will lean into this new story and create fucking adventure. Oh gosh. I mean there’s been so many stories. Another big one has been I can’t homeschool my kids no freaking way after the covid years.

That was big actually. That really did stop me for a while. I just thought, no, the torture of that. No, no, no. And I looked at it and I thought, you know what? It won’t be the same. And maybe we should just get some information from the teachers about and the schools about what this might actually look like and whether this might be possible and how in what capacity. And I had conversations. I mean the girls primary school principals, like the best learning they will ever do is outside the classroom. We support this 100%. We will make it happen. There’s really simple things that I’m going to be doing with them. And they can check in with their classes on Zoom. They can write reports, they can, let’s just whatevs. And my son, the school was equally as supportive.

He’s a really diligent student. He doesn’t not handing stuff in. They have seen him so far this year and fully trust that he can move through his core subjects. And there are ways in which we are going to build in support for him to do that. And the whole point of this trip is not to be bloody sightseeing every day. It’s to be somewhere else to experience life in a different place, to expand our minds to learn. But it’s not going to be fast paced. I will burn out. We need downtime. I’ll still need to be doing some work and he’ll need to do school. And I busted the story that I can’t homeschool them because literally it wouldn’t be possible. And also, what is life? If we are just going to stay committed to these stories of something was hard before in a particular context, it’s going to be hard. Again, we have to call ourselves on that stuff. No, it’s not going to be fun. I already know it’s not going to be super fun, but it doesn’t mean we don’t get to have this adventure. What do I value more? How can we make this work for us? I’ve got a sense. My kids do structure, and so it will actually give us a bit of structure to our weeks

And he will grow in confidence and he will learn to ask questions. He’s a pretty good question asker, I must say. But he can totally do this. It’s not going to be easy necessarily coming back. But the school’s so supportive, and he’s such a little champ. He’s mostly concerned about not seeing out this year as soccer captain of his team, and he’s just a bit sad about that. There’s things that all the kids are worried about and a bit sad about me. It seems like such a long time for them even, although I know it’s like a blip. A blip, but they don’t know that that yet. So I’ve had to look at the stories. I mean, there’s been some real doozies, there’s a stack more. But

I needed to, because I have the skills, because of what I teach in the change method, I was able to look at this stuff and really see, is this true or is this a story I’ve been telling myself that’s just keeping me here? I actually think it’s a story and I get to call bullshit, and I get to create a new one for myself. We get to do this all the time. We just don’t realise it. We believe what we think and our thoughts aren’t always necessarily true. So in the next episode, that moment of decision making, when you really have to make a big call, I’m going to unpack that with you. And some of the things that I came up against once again, and some of the core ways in which I helped myself make a decision. If you’ve done my programs, you will have heard this stuff. But sometimes, I mean, there’s just getting a little bit brave with ourselves, but there’s also the fact that I’m responsible for other humans and a lot of things needed to be weighed up. So I’ll unpack that in the next episode. I’ll see you there.

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