Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I want to talk about a clip I saw on Facebook the other day when I was just doom scrolling, which I do far too often looking at all these little clips, but this one stood out to me massively because I thought it was really poignant.

So this was a clip that had Stephen Fry in it and Robin Williams on some kind of talk show. And Stephen Fry was talking about a book that he had written about bears in Peru.

This might seem a bit of a weird thing to talk about but in the clip Stephen Fry was talking about how different we are from animals and that animals don't spend time feeling guilty or wishing that they were other animals. A bear is just a bear. Humans on the other hand are always trying to be somebody else. And I just thought that that was really interesting and it kind of summed up how we spend a lot of our lives.

When we are perimenopausal or postmenopausal, is often a time of identity shifts. So physically, emotionally and even socially,

Your body is changing. We look different. Our face is aging. Our body is aging. We may be having different roles so that we're not necessarily having young children that we need to look after. They're more independent. Maybe we're having to look after older parents instead. And the pressure to keep up and stay the same is really strong.

That we are trying to be like our younger selves, but also trying to be like other people. And your subconscious might be telling you that you're not good enough anymore, that you shouldn't look like this, that you're not who you used to be. And this pressure ramps up our stress levels and this, as we've spoken about in previous episodes, our cortisol really affects our balance of our hormones.

Inflames the whole body and causes a lot of our symptoms like hot flushes, fatigue, anxiety and sleep to become worse.

So spending all of that time and effort trying to be somebody else or being the old you is not helpful and it is actually making your quality of life probably worse and our symptoms worse. And in the clip he also will speak about how a bear doesn't care if kangaroos exist and kangaroos don't care about if

cockroaches, but we care. We compare against other people. But animals don't wake up thinking that they were a bad giraffe yesterday or feel guilty about their bodies or worry if their fur is glossy enough. They don't care about other animals unless they're hungry and then they want to eat them, but they're not constantly tracking how others are doing.

Meanwhile, we spend our lives doing this. We compare ourselves to others on Instagram. We trying to look or be like somebody else. The latest fashion we want to copy, the latest hairstyle. If someone is older than us but looks younger, we want to look the same. We're thinking that we have to be as good as them, that we have to do the same as them. We have to be better than others.

And it really is exhausting and it really erodes your self-esteem. It can lead to that perfectionism that we are wanting to be better than other people. We will never see a happy perfectionist because they are always seeking above where they currently are. And it can make changes really difficult.

Particularly at perimenopause because our body and our mind, we are changing. If we're trying to stick with who we were, or try and be like other people, that is an impossible task because we have changed, we need to change with us. Yes, we can do the things to make us our best version of ourselves now, but we shouldn't be trying to

be like other people or get to the point where we think we should be and then feel disheartened when we don't get there.

Oftentimes we try to do this because we worry about what other people think of us.

And we want to have other people think that we're amazing or really good, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with wanting other people to like us. But when we spend so much time trying to please others, then it means our self-esteem does take a hit and we are worried more about what other people are thinking than how we feel in ourselves.

But it's remembering that we cannot control what other people think of us. We can't make them like us. We can do everything possible under the sun to be the best version of yourselves or to be the version you think that they will like. But we can't control what they think of us. We can only control our own reaction to that situation. And it's also remembering

Particularly now with social media, if we are comparing ourselves to pictures of people on Instagram, that is often their highlights. They have put on the makeup. They've put on the nice outfit. They are showing you at their best. And yet we are trying to

judge ourselves on an unfiltered level when it might be our bad day, our bad version, against somebody else's edited, unrealistic version of reality. Now you see this when you get a few people who give you the images of their pose and how they stand for Instagram and then they show you the reality.

So it makes them look all pretty, like really slim and like really kind of wonderful. And then they show, this is what it's like when I don't pace. And it just shows the reality. Now, if people showed more of themselves like that, then we maybe wouldn't be trying to compare ourselves with other people's perfection. But it is comparing our outtakes to somebody else's showreel. And if you're trying to become somebody else,

It's like the bear trying to become a bird. It will never happen and you'll just feel miserable and you'll be trying really really hard but it will never happen and it will never work out. So instead of trying to be somebody else why don't you try becoming more of yourself?

Now you may wonder how to do this. Now I have created a framework to help you shift these mindset challenges and these patterns that maybe aren't helping you at the minute. And it's called the EESE Framework. So I'm going to go through this just to give you an idea of how we can make some changes and if there are things getting in the way, how we can analyze those.

So that we can be more of ourselves rather than trying to be somebody else. So the first thing to do is to explore the patterns. So identify any thoughts or behaviour or things that you are doing and find out what it is, what are your thoughts? Like, who am I trying to be? Why do I believe I have to look like that or act like that or be that way?

And then we want to evaluate where those thoughts have come from and what's getting in our way. So is it that those thoughts have come from childhood that you were criticised as a child unless you were perfect? If your hair was out of place, were you told by a parent or no, you look too messy or you had to be perfect? Or was it from school that people used to bully you if you looked a little bit different?

Were you compared to other people by your parents or by people at school? This is the difficulty with our schooling system is that we are given grades and we are always compared against other children in various different respects, whether it's the exam grades or whether it's our behaviour, but we are always compared with others as we are growing up. And that leads us to then compare ourselves to others.

Were we expected to be perfect? Or did you put that upon yourself that you had to be perfect? Did your parents only praise you if you got the high grades? It's just evaluating where those thoughts and patterns have come from. But also we need to evaluate what barriers or things are stopping you from letting go of those patterns.

So if it's the thought that I've got to look beautiful, I've got to be the most pretty person ever, where did that thought come from? But now what is stopping you from letting go? Are you afraid that other people won't like you? Are you afraid that if you let go that you won't be successful? Or are worried about other people judging you?

Are you tying your own self esteem and self worth to how others perceive you? When we are making changes, it's really important to understand the why and the underlying cause of those particular patterns. So when I'm working with people with hypnosis, we find out what the pattern is that you currently have, what the pattern is that you want. And then between those two things,

What is stopping you from already doing that? And this is where we uncover these barriers and those underlying thoughts and behaviours that may have been stemmed from kind of childhood.

Then we need to start to shift those patterns. So there are various tools and ways that you can change the patterns. Hypnosis is one of those. But if you're doing this yourself, then you could start by journaling. Now, the first two points are really good to write it down, to discover it. And then once you've been journaling about what pattern I have, why I have that pattern,

Then we need to think about how we can reframe it.

So maybe the pattern is, I'm not pretty enough. Then it's like, well, where does that come from? We write down, because other people have criticised me, or from a young age I was made fun of. Then we need to think, well, what's stopping us from believing that we have our own beauty? It might not be traditional beauty, or it might be that our worth isn't tied to being beautiful. Then we would journal and reframe it, say that I am beautiful.

In different ways. I mean, it might be that you are beautiful and you just have a poor self image, or maybe that actually is not about being beautiful. It's about, I'm worthy in other ways that you've done well in your job, that you're intelligent and that gives you worthiness. It doesn't have to be linked to beauty. So then it's writing down and reframing it. How would you talk to a friend

It's like, how would you switch that round and talk to them, reframing it a different way, argue against those negative points. And then your subconscious starts to believe that. Maybe it's guided meditation or visualisation, visualising yourself in a situation where you're maybe it's like you worry about what other people think of you and you're going to a social event, and you're too worried and anxious about going.

So maybe you visualise yourself going into the room, being confident, talking to people. It's like a mental rehearsal and once our subconscious knows that this is what we do and this is how we respond in this situation, even if we imagine it and we visualise it, when you get to that situation your mind already knows, ⁓ this is how we react in this situation. We become confident, we go and talk to people, we enjoy ourselves.

Maybe it's having positive affirmations. You could create yourself little sticky notes or buy some cards that got it written on saying that I am worthy. I am the expert on me. I don't go by what other people think of me.

I am beautiful.

My self-worth and value is not linked to beauty. Whatever it is that your issue is, then create some positive affirmations. There's lots on the internet you can just search for or ask some kind of AI and they can produce you some positive affirmations. And maybe if those things don't help, I've already mentioned hypnosis or coming to a control workshop.

Things that you might need some more one-to-one support with. Because sometimes it's difficult to investigate your own thoughts and behaviours. It's difficult to work out where those things have come from. But once you have started to make changes, then we need to embed them. So you build habits and strategies to reinforce this new mindset so it might be daily journaling.

Or maybe doing those positive affirmations on a regular basis. If you catch yourself comparing to others, then just take a minute, take a step back and work out why you're feeling this way. Surrounding yourself with people that you admire, but you are not trying to be.

People that are realistic. So following the right people on social media,

So just breaking it down to who am I trying to be? Why do I believe I should look, feel, behave differently? Where did that belief come from? What would it feel like to just be me today and feel happy being me? You are not a bear, but maybe it's time to act more like one. Be yourself, fully, messily.

Gloriously let go of who you think you should be.

And if this resonated with you today, and you're ready to change these patterns, then come and check out my mini course, which is Subconscious and Mindset, the first steps of managing menopause. It walks you through the ESSE method using videos and exercises and a workbook. And it helps you to start making shifts today. You'll find the link to that in the show notes.

Or if you want one-to-one support I do offer control which is a type of hypnosis without trance or come and have a menopause MOT and then we can work on mindset changes and help to move you forward.

Take care. Be more like a bear. Till next time. Bye bye.