S2.E20: Who Are “They”?
"They" are judging me... "They" are talking about me... Who are "They"? Kayla explains that "They" are your own thoughts and judgements about yourself that you've projected on an imaginary group of people.
I am just the girl next door who believes that the purpose of life is to enjoy, create, and have fun. I believe that as humans, we can have anything we want and things are always working out for us. Experience has taught me that the path to getting everything you want begins with ease. If you believe in miracles and happily ever after, or even if you just want to, then this is the podcast for you.
Speaker 2 (35s): Hi there, I'm your host, Kayla Rain, and welcome back to Attract It with Ease. I have to be honest, I am a little bit anxious today, like nervous about recording this podcast episode for some reason, and I can't really figure out why. It's been a really long time since I've had nerves going into a recording. But I just wanna put that out there that for some reason I'm feeling a little bit anxious. And maybe it's the topic that I'm going to get into today.
Today's episode, I am gonna talk about who are they, who are they? And I think you know what I mean by that, and I'm going to get into that in just a minute. But as usual, I'd like to start today's episode by talking about my gratitude. What I'm thankful for this week is I am thankful for brick and mortar stores. I swear they don't exist on the level that they used to. There are so many businesses that have moved entirely online, and I will fully admit that I am someone who prefers shopping online in general, I do almost all of my shopping online.
It is rare that I go to a brick and mortar store, but today I decided I wanted to do a little bit of shopping. I really wanted some new booties, you know, those short little boots because I got these cute little jeans that are cropped a little bit. And I thought, oh, how fun to wear those with some booties. So I'd been looking online and I just couldn't settle on anything, and I thought, I'm gonna go to a real department store today and try some on. And so of course I went in there and of course, it's end of season, so everything's on sale.
And I walked out of there with three new pairs of booties, which is crazy considering that I just moved out of a tiny house. If you are a new listener, I lived in a tiny house for three and a half years, and my husband, Dan and I just recently a couple of months ago, moved into a home, a real normal, traditional home, which we hadn't lived in for years. And so it's so strange and funny to go out and shop and buy an excess like that because that's just not been my normal lifestyle.
So hopefully I'm not going to change my my ways of living and and start collecting too many things. But in any case, back to my gratitude, it was so fun to be able to go into a real brick and mortar store and be able to try things on and walk around and have that experience that you definitely just don't get when you're shopping online. And I still was able to get some good deals. So I guess so much for not having to ship things, right. I'm grateful for that today.
Second thing I'm grateful for today is my king size bed. I had a king size bed before I met Dan, and then we kept my bed until we moved into the tiny house. And then in a tiny house, you can't usually fit a king size bed, and you definitely could not in ours because ours is a very non-traditional tiny house. It's a small house built on the back of a military truck. We still own it. It's parked in the rv, parking on the side of our house.
And yeah, no king size bed is fitting in there. But my husband is six four, and if you can imagine, it was really crowded in a queen size bed for three and a half years. And I'm just so grateful to have a king size bed again, and to have all that space to be able to stretch out, to be able to have a comfortable night's sleep, to not wake up every time my husband rolls over and vice versa. I am just so grateful that we have a king size bed and that we have a bedroom that will fit one.
And the third thing that I'm grateful for today is sunny weather. It has been so, so stormy this winter here. I can't tell you how much snow we've had. It's just been snowstorm after snowstorm, and then after the snow came, the rain. And it's been rainy for days and days, and I've appreciated the rain because it's helped melt the snow drifts that have been there for so long. But it is finally a beautiful, sunny, 50 degree Fahrenheit day today. And I am just in heaven.
I can't wait for spring, and I am so excited about this beautiful weather. So that wraps up my gratitude. Let's get into this week's topic again. Who are they? So I've been thinking a lot about how much we tend to care about other people's opinions. And I know I'm not alone in this, but I can absolutely admit that I am guilty of this. I absolutely care what other people think about me, even though I shouldn't.
And I definitely don't as much as I used to. Sometimes I'm able to brush that off. But I can tell you when I'm getting ready to go out for a date night or to go out, just to go run some errands, when I'm putting myself together and I'm looking in the mirror, I'm often thinking about the way that I look and I'm judging myself, but I'm, I'm often judging myself in a sense that I care what other people think. Now, we threw a housewarming party that was also the same day as the Super Bowl, so it was like a Super Bowl slash housewarming party, and it was so much fun.
We had a bunch of people come to our house, but getting ready that day was so nerve wracking, both getting the house ready, getting it clean, making sure everything looked perfect, making sure everything had a place, but also getting myself ready, physically ready. Being in a space where I felt like I looked good, I was wearing something that I felt good in, that wasn't too dressy, that wasn't too casual, that fit me well. And I'll tell you, moving out of the tiny house into this house and getting whatever items we had in storage out, I was able to take my seasonal wardrobe and kind of put everything together in my walk-in closet.
And so when we were in the tiny house, when it was winter, I had my winter clothes in the house and my spring and summer clothes in storage. And then when the seasons changed it, it would reverse. Now everything's altogether, and that's so nice. But what I've realized is so much of my clothes don't fit me anymore. And I don't mean like I can't fit into them, but I don't like the way that they fit. Because over the last few years, and I'll blame Covid, that has a little bit to do with it, because during lockdown, when we were stuck at home and five months of that period, I was unemployed.
I, and we were living in a tiny house, not moving around a whole lot, physically moving around. I definitely put on quite a bit of weight. And since then I have put on more weight. So yeah, I can put a lot of those clothes on, like physically can put 'em on, but they're not clothes that I feel comfortable in, and I definitely shouldn't be walking outdoors in them because people don't wanna see that. So, long story short, getting ready for our Super Bowl party or our housewarming party was kind of frustrating because here I was going to be entertaining for the first time in our new place, and I just wanted everything to be perfect.
I wanted to look perfect. I wanted the house to be perfect. And I know that that's unrealistic expectations, but I'm kind of a perfectionist anyway. And if you bring somebody over and I am expecting that they're coming over, I'm gonna try and make sure that everything is the way that I want it to be. And so it was just so hard for me to get ready because I felt like I had nothing that fit me, nothing to wear, nothing that I felt comfortable in, and I just got frustrated.
And it's funny because it can be a point of contention between my husband and I, because he's supportive of me trying to lose weight, but he's also supportive of me, the size that I'm in. He's just wonderful and loves me exactly how I am. And so he gets frustrated when I complain about my size or the fact that nothing fits me. And then he's just like, well, then do something about it and do something about it. Could be lose some weight or do something about it could be go shopping and get clothes that actually fit you, that make you feel good.
So anyway, this, to bring this around to who are they? Well, that day, who are, they were in my mind, the people that were coming over to my house, the people that were going to have these first impressions of me and my decorating style, and maybe hadn't seen me in a while, or maybe were meeting me for the first time if they were people that worked with my husband or whatever. And I just wanted everything to be perfect. And it's really got me thinking about why do we care so much?
Why do we care so much about what everybody else thinks? And when I say who are they? What I'm referring to is we have a tendency to think that people are judging us. We have a tendency to worry about what people think, we worry about what they think, what are they thinking? They are judging me. And I can tell you, when I look in the mirror, that is the lens that I'm seeing myself through.
I'm looking at myself and I'm like, oh, no, no, I can't wear that. Or my husband will recommend something, like, he'll grab a pair of shoes or a jacket for me. And I'll be like, are you crazy? I, I'm not wearing that. That doesn't go with what I'm wearing. And in my mind, it's because I worry that people will judge me, that people will look at me and be like, that doesn't go together. And instead of making decisions based off of literally what makes me comfortable or makes me happy, it's which is what I do when I'm at home actually, when I'm entirely by myself.
Like if I have a day off and I'm saying it, and I'm not going out, I'm just gonna put on what's comfortable. And I might wanna wear something that's cute, but I'm gonna wear something that's absolutely comfortable. And yet when I'm going out, I'm trying to put my best foot forward. And so I'm putting on my less comfortable clothes, and I'm putting on my heels and I'm putting on more makeup or who knows what, because I care what they think. Who are they? Who are they? And so that's the question that I wanna pose to you.
And I want you to think about who are they? Who are the people that you care about? Who are the people that you think are judging you? When was the last time you felt that way when you were getting ready where you thought, Ugh, I can't do that. They'll judge me. Or times that you've been in a situation and you feel like people are staring at you or watching you or judging you, and I want to tell you that they are actually you, they are you.
What does that mean? Well, you are the person that's judging you. You are projecting yourself outward into this other being or these other people that you have created in your mind. They are not real. They are not judging you. You are judging you. And why are we judging ourselves? Why do we care so much? Why are we so critical of ourselves? We are our own worst critics. And I can promise you, when you are going out into public, if someone is looking at you or someone is thinking anything of you, rarely are the thoughts that they're thinking on the level of what you are thinking.
You know, we know ourselves better than anybody else, and we look at ourselves through a lens that no one else sees. Meaning when we're getting ready, we are like right near the mirror, especially women. If you're putting on makeup, you are literally putting on your mascara right next to the mirror. You are standing there trying to see things in fine detail, and nobody looks at you like that. Nobody sees your pores the way that you do.
Nobody looks at your hair. And if a, a hair is out of place the way that you do, people see us in an entire package. When you meet someone or you enter a room, people see us from our head to our toes. They see us as a whole, as a, as a whole package. But when we look at ourselves, we don't see ourselves as a whole package. Even when we take photos, rarely are they full length.
They're usually like a headshot or from the waist up or, or you know, these selfie kind of pictures. We don't usually look at ourselves as a whole package. We're looking at, you know, do we have something hanging from our nose? Do we have something in our teeth or we're looking down at our hands or our feet? That is our perspective of us, and we get so judgmental. I'll tell you what I've said to my husband before, that the way you can tell a woman's age is by her hands and her neck.
Meaning women can have plastic surgery and do a lot of amazing things, but you can always tell how old they are based off of how much aging is showing on their neck and how much aging is showing on their skin. And I can tell you, my hands these days are looking kind of aged. And I think about that all the time because as I'm typing, I type a lot at work. I'm often on a computer, and I am looking down at my hands frequently.
And I think to myself, oh my gosh, I am looking old. Well, I can tell you, nobody else is looking at my hands and thinking that I'm old. Nobody. Nobody is looking at my hands and going, oh my gosh, she's way older than she looks. But we come up with this judgment. We come up with this just skewed perspective of what other people are seeing. And I am telling you that the majority of people that meet you, and the majority of people that look at you because they see you as a whole package, they adore you, they look up to you, they admire you.
And you know what? If they're not telling you that, it's because either A, they're too embarrassed, they don't know how to say it, it's hard to compliment some people. Or a lot of times when people are really cute and really attractive, they think that they, again, the public, the general public people around you think that you get compliments all the time. So they tend to not compliment you. So don't think that because people aren't telling you constantly how wonderful and how cute you are, that that's not true.
We put this lens on ourselves. We create this fake, like, I don't know, this fake projection of people out in the world that are sitting there criticizing us. And you know what? Even if they were, what does it matter at the end of the day? What does it matter what anybody else thinks? They don't have to live your life. They don't. They don't understand you.
They don't know what it's like to walk a mile in your shoes, to live a day in the life of you. What does it matter what anybody else thinks? But I'm telling you, the majority of people are thinking positive things that people, that you surround yourself, adore you and love you, and they're not judging you. So why do we have this need to please other people? Well, I'm gonna shift gears a little bit and talk about another aspect of this.
They, because they sometimes is just our idea of who's paying attention, who's got their eyes on us. And I'll tell you, social media is a big piece of that in a lot of ways. We encourage people to have their eyes on us in the sense that likes, comments, shares, interaction. We're looking for that validation. And we're putting ourselves out there when we're posting on social media because we want to be seen.
And what I wanna say to that is, how much of the time are we projecting or presenting something or presenting something in a way that we feel will almost get the outcome that we're looking for or get the reaction that we're looking for? And what I mean is that most of us only post the good stuff. We're not posting our bad days. We're not posting our no makeup selfies.
We are not, we're not posting the burnt dinner that we made unless for some reason we wanna make fun of it. We're posting our amazing Thanksgiving, Turkey and how it turned out, and we're posting our vacations in Mexico and our girls night out and our bachelor party and the live sporting event that we attended, we're posting all of the highlights, the highlight reel of our lives.
And we're putting that out there because almost in a way of bragging be, but it's again, because we care about what other people think. And so I've been thinking about this today, and I actually was thinking about something that Brianna West, who is an author that I just absolutely love, and she, she wrote the book, 101 Essays that will Change the Way you think.
And I absolutely love that book. And I'll tell you what I love most about it is because it's all these short essays. You don't have to read more than a couple of pages to get so much insight and wisdom. But in one of her essays, she talks about how we tend to take pictures in a way to impress others, so to speak. And so it's like we go out to sushi and we post pictures on social media of our sushi role because it looks amazing and so cool.
And we want people to know that we were there. And we wanna share that with the world. And it's all about those likes, comments, interaction. It's all about the feedback from everybody else. It's the feedback from they, right? And what she encourages is that instead of doing that to actually create a photo album in your phone called Happy Moments.
And what she suggests is that you actually only take pictures of your happiest moments. So that could be anything, and it could be sushi, it could be going out to sushi, but generally it's not gonna be your food generally. It's not gonna be your outfit of the day. Generally, it's going to be the things that are your most fond memories. It's gonna be the anniversary with your husband.
It's gonna be the time you laughed your butt off when you were having a good heart to heart with a friend. It's gonna be when you sat and played crazy Uno with somebody and you whooped their butt and you just enjoyed every single moment of it. Those happy moments are what we should be capturing in photos. And the photo. There's no rules to that. If it's a game of Uno, you could take a picture of the Uno cards, you could take a picture of you, an unflattering picture of you laughing your butt off.
I can't tell you how many unflattering pictures I have of me laughing my butt off. Now, that's mostly just because I enjoy life and I love to laugh, but oh my gosh, they're the most embarrassing pictures because my head's half tilted back and my jaw's wide open. And I'm not thinking about what's being projected on the camera. I'm not trying to get that perfect angle or that perfect photo because I care what people think. It's just me caught up in the moment. And those are the happy memories.
And imagine if you had a folder on your cell phone that was just those happy moments. And when you have that folder on your phone of just those happy moments, and you scroll through that, and again, these photos are not for social media. These photos are for you. These photos are for you to capture the best moments in your life. It's like a little memory trip, you know, to go through these, to see the vacations, to see the gifts you received from your children, to see the, the happiest memories and the best meal and the just the things that you're taking in for you, take it in for you.
The happy memories. That album is going to be completely different from what people are posting on social media. It's gonna be completely different than what you are posting on social media because those pictures, you are not trying to, to orchestrate the perfect photo. You're not trying to get a reaction out of somebody else. You are not trying to create the perfect background or the perfect filter, or the perfect angle, or you're not retaking the photo over and over.
You are capturing memories. You're doing it for you. What would your life be like if you lived it just for you? If you let go of what everybody else thought and you just did it for you, can you imagine how happy you would be? Can you imagine how different your life would be if you took it in for you and you let go of the filter you let go of trying to impress you, let go of caring about what other people think?
I've said on the podcast so many times that I am just absolutely so sick of social media, and I have been on there more frequently because I have been posting daily inspiration. But I can tell you, I just get so sick of trying to put on this happy face. And, and I don't mean like be fake in like I'm not happy, but I'm so worried about caring about what other people think. I'm so tired of that.
I'm so tired of just not being authentic. And I think it's time for us to be authentic. And I think it's time to capture the best in life and be grateful for the best in life, and to remember those, those amazing moments, and not do it for the gram, not take the photo before stopping to experience.
You know, I can tell you there's been so many times because my husband's a professional photographer. There's been so many times that we have gone somewhere, somewhere just amazingly beautiful, and I just wanna sit down and just absorb it and take it all in. I just want to just capture it. And one thing that I've talked about, I think on previous podcast episodes, probably somewhere in season one, but something that I have tried to do as a personal behavior is do what I call bottling things up.
And the way that you bottle things up is you try and be completely present in the moment, and you try and memorize the moment. And what I mean is you pay attention to all five of your senses. What are you seeing in that moment? What are you feeling in that moment? What do you smell in that moment? You know, when you think about the temperature of the air, what you're wearing, you know, a lot of those moments for me are, are outdoors.
I, I won't say all of them are, but the majority are. And so it's, you know, what is the view in front of me? What am I physically seeing in my view? What does, you know? Is there wind? Is there moisture in the air? Like is it raining? Is it snowing? One of those moments for me was on a cruise and just sitting on the balcony, I was on a cruise and our room was on the very back of the ship, so we only had one neighbor on one side, and our balcony literally faced the open ocean.
And as the cruise ship was sailing, you could see the, I don't know what you call it, essentially the, the tracks in the water. I, I'm, I'm struggling to find the right words for that, but you could see the, the water movement from the ship moving, so to speak, so you could see the waves. Maybe that's what I'm trying to say. You could see the waves that were being created in the ocean from the, the ship traveling. And so we're looking at the, the sunset and the, the ocean just completely unobstructed view.
And I can remember, I literally can remember the details. I can remember what I was wearing. I remember it was a little bit chilly, and I was wrapped in a blanket that was a little bit scratchy, and I'm a total germophobe, so I don't like using other people's blankets. But I remember in this particular moment, I was so grateful for the blanket that came in the room on the ship, because I didn't have my own personal blanket. I remember it was a plaid blanket, and I remember there was moisture in the air from just kind of the sea foam that was flying up from the motor of the engine.
That's probably the same thing from the engine of the ship and from just the waves that were being created. So there was just this salty smell and just this incredible vu. And I had a glass of wine in my hand. I'm a huge wine drinker, and I can take myself back into this moment because I took the time to be present and bottle it up.
What I mean is you memorize the details, you memorize it, and you consciously decide, I'm gonna take this moment in time and memorize everything I can about it and put it in a little bottle, and I'm gonna store it on a shelf in my brain so that anytime I want, I can revisit this memory and I will remember all of those details. And that is bottling it up, that's being present. That's not worrying about what anybody thinks, that's not caring about doing it for the gram.
It's not worrying about getting the picture before the experience. And that's where I was going with all of this is so many times I've traveled with my husband and I just want to sit down and I just wanna bottle up the experience. I just wanna take it in because it's just so incredible. And I try and get my husband to do that. And he goes, hang on, I just wanna take a couple pictures. Now, there's nothing wrong with that because that's his, his job, that's his passion. But for me, I feel like why not enjoy it first?
Why not take it in for you? And then after you've experienced it, maybe take some pictures. Now, there's no right or wrong way, as long as you're doing a little bit of both, I think. But so often we don't actually stop and be present or really enjoy the moment. We just take a picture of the moment so that we can post it. And we usually don't take one picture. We take multiple pictures, we take multiple pictures to make sure that the lighting is right, that the angle is good, that we feel like we look good, that there's no people in the background that like all these details.
It's like trying to get the perfect everything because of what they think. Why? Why do we care what they think? Why can't we just be present in the moment and soak it up and take it in and do it for us? Do it for you. Take it in for you. Don't do it for them that her, your life is not for them. I just did an episode on that. Live Your Life for You.
And so that leads me into this week's action item, which is to create your happy moments folder on your phone. Create that while you're listening to this podcast before it even ends. Create a folder on your phone, a photo folder on your phone called Happy Memories. Do it. Do it right now. I'm not going anywhere. Create that folder. And then I encourage you to start capturing those moments for you, unfiltered, un un worried about what anyone else will think, because these are pictures for you.
They are capturing your best memories, your best moments. Who cares what you look like? Who cares if it's first thing in the morning and you're laying in bed and you haven't even brushed your teeth? If you are just having the time of your life with your partner or your spouse and you're giggling or they make you breakfast in bed, capture it. Capture it for you. Don't capture it to post it on social media. Don't make it about anyone else. Don't make it about what anyone else thinks because they what they think are you.
They are you. It's your projection of how you are judging yourself. Stop judging yourself. Start living in the moment. Start doing it for you. I promise you, the more that you can be present and the more that you can appreciate the things that you already have, the more you will attract more of the good, more of what you want and more of the best moments. You haven't even experienced your best moment yet, I promise you.
So start appreciating the moments that you have. Create a collection of those that you can refer back to. Stop worrying about what other people think and do it for you. I just wanna remind you about my weekly giveaway. If you get anything out of the podcast, leave me a review from those that leave a review. You're entered into a weekly drawing for one of my manifestation journals. You can see those on my website, attract it with ease.com.
They are super cool. I promise you will love it. The only way to get one is by leaving a review, but I will ship it to you for free. So leave me a review and tell me what you think. Spend nice chatting with you this week. I'm looking forward to next week, start enjoying those happy moments, living in the moment and living life for you. I'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye. 