The Title Of The Movie In Your Mind

Hi there. Welcome to the Design Your Dream Life podcast. My name is Natalie Bacon and I’m an advanced, certified mindfulness life coach as well as a wife and mom, if you’re here to do the inner work and grow, I can help. Let’s get started.

What’s happened in my friend? Welcome to the podcast. Today I wanna talk with you about The Title Of The Movie In Your Mind. Did you know that you have a movie playing all of the time in your mind? And that movie impacts how you show up in your life. Before we dive in to all of that, goodness, I want to talk with you about a brand new workshop that I am hosting that I would absolutely love for you to join me at. This is a live workshop. It’s called Stress Less. It is going to help you de-stress so that the demands of your everyday life don’t feel so daunting, so overbearing, so all consuming, so overwhelming.

You get the idea. I am going to be explaining the latest research on stress and how it’s surprisingly good news. You will also learn how to utilize stress in a way that helps you problem solve instead of shut down. That way you can really use stress to your advantage so you’re not feeling so stuck by stress and can use it for how you wanna show up in your life, whether it’s navigating a challenge or setting a goal or just moving forward with the season of life that you are in. You will also get to ask me anything at that time. So if you’re wondering how to apply the tools that I’m going to teach you how to your life, I’ll be there to answer any questions. I’ll do some coaching so you can see how this tool is applied. My hope is that you’ll step away from this workshop feeling more empowered with some new insights around stress and really use these tools to make a real impact in your life so that you stress less.

This is happening on April 20th. It’s a Thursday. All you have to do is register. I want to encourage you to come live so that you can get that live experience and get your questions answered by me, but I know it’s not possible for everyone. So there will be a limited time replay where you can get it sent to you right after the workshop and watch it on your own time within that week. All you need to do to register is go to momonpurpose.com/stress. When you get to that page, you’ll click sign up, type in your name and email, and we’ll send you the registration link with the zoom link that you can join on April 20th. I cannot wait to see you there. Now let’s dive back into today’s topic, which is The Title Of The Movie In Your Mind. This is a tool I use with my clients inside Grow You.

How it works is you think about something in your life particularly that’s a challenge that you are working on right now or would like to work on, and you ask yourself, what’s the title of the movie I’m giving to this challenge? This is really helpful because it’s a summation of your thoughts. You have lots of evidence for this title, but this title will either be empowering or disempower it. This title is probably true, otherwise your brain wouldn’t think it. And yet, I don’t like to ask that question. Is it true? Because lots of things are true. The better question to ask is, is this title empowering me or is it disempowering me? From there, you can see the impact of the way that you are thinking because if the title you’re giving to the challenge feels terrible and keeps you stuck and in defeat, it’s not going to help you navigate that challenge.

So really the work that we do here inside Grow You and on this podcast isn’t about getting rid of all of your challenges because of course we can’t do that. But it is about becoming more empowered so that you can navigate your challenges from a more useful place. So let’s take some examples of what this might look like. Let’s say that you are struggling with your spouse right now and you’re having a marital challenge. You think that your husband is really moody after work and you look for evidence of this every single day. That is the title of the movie that’s playing in your mind. My husband is Moody After Work. So every day that your husband comes home from work, your brain is looking for evidence of him being moody. What your brain will exclude is any evidence that doesn’t support that movie title.

Not because your brain has an agenda, but because your brain is so smart it only scans what it already thinks is true. This is really good to know because it means that you’ll miss out on things that don’t align with the movie that’s playing in your mind. Good to know is the title of the movie, my Husband Is Moody After Work, empowering or Disempowering. That depends. What are you making it mean? Are you making it mean that it’s not a big deal and you know you can just go about your evening fine? Or are you making it mean he shouldn’t be like this? This is a problem. This is impacting my mood. He needs to change. And if that’s the case, then it’s probably a pretty disempowering title. I think that doing this work of noticing what the title of the movie playing in your mind is, is a useful visualization because we all have seen movies, we all are consumers of media, and we know what it’s like to anticipate how the movie is going to go.

And that is what our brains are so good at, anticipating how the story goes. And that’s great if the story ends with a positive, happy ending or at least one where you’re really empowered and the hero of the story. It’s not great if the ending of the story is that your life is happening to you or you’re feeling really disempowered or you’re focusing on something you can’t control like your husband’s mood. Now, this isn’t to say that it’s not true, but it is to say that it might not be helpful for you to focus on it. There are lots of other things that are also true that you could focus on that wouldn’t be so heavy and challenging for you to work through. So your challenge is real and valid, but how you think about it either helps you or it hurts you.

So the first step of utilizing this tool is just becoming aware of the story that you are telling in your mind. The title of the movie that you are playing in your mind is Fill in the blank. It might be something completely unrelated to your spouse. It might be this season is too overwhelming for me to handle, or My kids frustrate me so much when they don’t listen. Or I have lots of big things I’m trying to accomplish right now and I don’t know where to start. Or I am a physician and should be able to handle a medical diagnosis better than I am. That was a recent client example. So we all have titles to the stories that we are telling in our minds, and we make those titles true. So once you’re aware of the movie title that you’re giving to this challenge, notice the impact that it has on your life. So you might ask questions like, how does this title of the movie play out?

Is it the title of a movie? I want to be focusing on how does it feel when I think about this title? Does it feel heavy and tense or overwhelming? Does it feel light and open and expansive? So once you have the title of the movie that you’re playing in your mind and you can see the impact that it has on your life, and particularly through the lens of how you feel when you think that title, then you can decide if it’s a useful title or not. So for example, if you have the movie title in your mind, my kids frustrate me when they don’t listen, and you really get some awareness around that title and you ask yourself, what’s the impact of me focusing on this movie on this title? Well, I feel really frustrated when I think about it. Interesting. So is playing out the movie in your mind that your kids frustrate you when they don’t listen helpful?

Probably not. Now, I know your brain wants to be right about this, and what’s interesting is that it can be right and it still isn’t useful. So what you can do instead, once you see that the impact of keeping this story title isn’t useful is you can come up with some new titles of the movie that you want to be playing and start focusing on that. So for example, in this case, the new title might be My Kids are Confident and Strong-Willed, and sometimes that makes it hard for me to manage my thoughts and my feelings and my actions, and that’s okay. You’ll know immediately if the new title that you’re giving this movie is useful by how it makes you feel. If you immediately feel lighter or more empowered and better equipped to navigate the challenge, then it’s more useful. So this is very similar to thinking just about the thoughts that you have and how those thoughts make you feel, and questioning those thoughts, which is all of the work that we do inside Grow You, my membership community for women and moms.

However, the difference that I wanna point out with this tool is simply that thinking about the title of the movie, it reframes it in a way that you can really visualize and see that it’s the summation of so many other thoughts. So it’s just another spin on it and another angle to approach this work, and I don’t know about you, but personally, the more angles that I approach this work from, the more clearly I understand it, the easier it is for me to apply to my life and the more impact that I see in real life, and of course that impact is is felt by my clients as well. So again, the steps to kind of using this tool are to come up with the title of the movie in your mind that you are playing to notice the impact that it has on you, meaning how does that title make you feel, and then re decide on a better feeling title that you want your brain to scan for evidence of. So in the example where I had a client who was a physician inside Grow You say, you know, I’m a physician and should be able to handle a medical diagnosis better, and that was the title, and she had so many other thoughts related to her appointments and how she was navigating, how her body had changed capacity and she was more tired and she was really beating herself up by being so self-critical. And all of those thoughts could be under the umbrella of the movie title of the story that she was playing out in her mind that just because she was a physician meant that she should be able to handle this medical diagnosis better than she was. And when she saw that that was the lens through which she was navigating this challenge, she noticed how defeating that lens was. And so she changed the title of the movie, she changed the lens through which she wanted to navigate this challenge, and for her, in this case, she came up with a better movie title for her, which was I’m a human physician and navigating this exactly as I should be.

And that gave her a lot more confidence and also allowed her to be a messy human navigating something really challenging, but without the inner self-talk of beating herself up and being really harsh critic. So pick any challenge that you are navigating right now can be big, it can be small, and ask yourself, what is the title of the movie playing in my mind related to this challenge? Be really curious and become aware of the impact of that title and how it is the lens through which you navigate everything included in that challenge. And then if it’s not an empowering, helpful title, come up with a new title. I think I’ve mentioned this on the podcast, but maybe not. Steve and I are in the home buying process and we had so many twists and turns and change of locations and all of that. I cannot wait to give you more updates on that, but I remember my default brain having the title in my mind of the movie, this is also stressful and urgent.

And when I viewed this challenge as the movie, this is also stressful and urgent. Guess what? Every little email and phone call and decision became really stressful and urgent because that is the lens through which I was navigating this entire challenge. That’s the story that I was determined to play out. Now of course, this was happening on default, not consciously. So once I brought awareness to this, I realized that by thinking that, by focusing on that, by creating that movie in my mind, this is also stressful and urgent. I felt worried I was in scarcity. I wasn’t navigating this process in the way that was most useful and helpful. So I chose a new title, I chose a new title for the movie in my mind, which was, all of this will work itself out and I can trust the process. I cannot tell you how helpful this was.

It seems so simple, and yet I would just remind myself all of this will work itself out and I can trust the process That’s the movie playing in my mind. That’s the story that I’m gonna tell myself that helps me show up in a more grounded, connected, optimistic way. Doesn’t mean that challenges don’t come up, but I am so much better equipped to navigate them from this place of competence instead of from a place of stress and scarcity and urgency. So if you just do what I’ve taught so far in this podcast episode, it will be tremendously helpful getting awareness of the movie title, playing in your mind, seeing how it feels and impacts your life, and then choosing a better movie title for that particular challenge. That in and of itself, that three step process is life changing. But I also want to add on here that you can share the movie title that you are playing in your mind with someone if they are involved in the challenge, if you find it to be helpful.

So let me ground this in a more specific example. Let’s say that you are having a challenge with your spouse and you find that the movie playing in your head is that your spouse doesn’t want to navigate this challenge together. And it’s really hard for you to come up with a more empowering title. You have awareness that this is an optional title, and yet it just feels so true. You can share that with your spouse. And the reason that this is powerful is because you’re still taking responsibility for it being your brain and your mind, and yet you’re sharing your real experience with your spouse offering to them that this is what’s going on in your mind and seeing if that’s what’s true for them. They may say, yes, that is actually the truth. Or they may say, oh my gosh, you know, thanks for sharing that with me.

That is not actually how I’m thinking or feeling about it. Who knows what they’re going to say. The key is though, I think that knowing you can share with your spouse your experience of the challenge that you’re having with them using the framework, the title of the movie in my mind is, can be a way for you to share even a disempowering or somewhat negative title of a challenge that you’re going through with your spouse in a way that can end up being very connecting because you’re taking responsibility. You’re not saying this is your fault and you need to navigate this challenge with me. Instead, you’re saying, Hey, the title of the movie I’m playing in my mind is X, y, z. It’s a very different way and it it really takes, um, kind of the attack mode that we tend to get in with our spouses or our friends or our family or our partners out of it.

So someone receiving that is less likely to be defensive when you frame it as this is the title of the movie in my mind, versus This is what you’re doing wrong. Do you see how ownership of your thoughts just in and of itself can be very connecting? It’s so, so very helpful. So let me give you another example. Let’s say that you have a spouse who doesn’t help with bedtime, and the story in your mind is, I have to do so much all day long and the fact that my spouse doesn’t help at bedtime is so frustrating. And you know that that movie title isn’t helpful because that’s all your brain scans for. And yet it feels so true. Instead of kind of blaming your spouse for not helping at bedtime, you can simply say, Hey, the title of the movie that I’m playing in my mind, the story that’s happening in my mind right now is that I do so much all day and then you are not helping at bedtime.

And when you frame it that way, of course we can’t control what their reaction is going to be. That’s not the purpose of it. But I do think that just owning that it’s the story that’s playing in your mind can be enormously helpful. And I just wanna point out that whether this quote unquote works or not is not dependent on their reaction. We’re not doing this to try to get a certain action or an action from them, but instead just using it as a way for you to take ownership in the stories that are playing in your mind in the movies that you play out in your mind. When you take ownership of them, you take responsibility of them, then you are more empowered. So the purpose of sharing is not to kind of control their actions, but instead, this is the kind of wife who I want to be.

I wanna be a wife who takes responsibility for what I make things mean. And that still means I wanna share this perspective and I wanna see what’s going on for my spouse, but not from a place of I need my spouse to change. I need my spouse to be different. I need them to do X, Y, and Z. Then we get into doing it from a place of wanting to control. It’s a very different energy, even though you may be sharing the exact same challenge, the frame with which you share this challenge, it’s a tongue twister. The frame with which you share the challenge matters, right? If you ever heard the saying, I’m sure you have, it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. That’s what I’m talking about here. When you say the title of the movie in my mind is Fill in the blank, or the story that I’m playing out about this challenge with us is fill in the blank.

It’s coming from you and I are sitting on the couch, we’re on the same team, and this challenge is in front of us versus it’s me against you. And that right there is so much more connecting. And when you approach a challenge from connection, it empowers you to be the wife you wanna be. And of course, it’s more likely to have a positive impact on the other person as well. If you try this tool out, I would love to hear from you and hear how it went for you for your own inner work, as well as if you tried it out with a spouse or someone who you are navigating a challenge with. You can just send me a DM over @NatalieBaconCoaching and I will be over there and do my best to respond. Personally. That’s what I have for you today, my friend. I will see you next week. Take care.

If you loved this podcast, I invite you to check out Grow You my mindfulness community for moms where we do the inner work together. Head on over to momonpurpose.com/coaching to learn more.