Get out of your own way and start listening
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Hello, my beautiful people. Welcome back to the Moments Podcast. I'm your host, Lexi. If you're new here, thanks for tuning in. And if you're not, thanks for sticking around. I know we've been going at this for quite some time now, but I want to do an episode today pretty bite-sized. I want to keep it short. I want to keep it sweet. I want to get to the point. I want to tell you what I'm thinking and then have you move on with your day and go apply it to your life and just enjoy the day, enjoy the week and be as bright and vibrant as you always are. I

I love you guys so much, by the way. I've just been thinking about how grateful I am for this community that we've built. And I've been having so many ideas and things that I want to venture out on with this podcast. And slowly but surely, we're getting there and we're doing it and we're setting things in stone. And I'm getting ahead of myself. I am leaving for Costa Rica tomorrow. And if you guys don't know, Costa Rica is a trip that I've been going on the same yoga retreat for months.

The past 10 years of my life, this might even be my 11th year going. I first went when I was 13 years old and it was a yoga retreat that just changed my life. I went to this place in the mountains in this yoga room where the walls are all glass. I

connected with nature. I really escaped my own little bubble for the first time in my life when I went on this trip. It was my first time doing anything alone that serious and that far away from my family. And it was really hard, but it was the most peaceful and rewarding thing that I've ever done. And every single year that I go feels the exact same. And I could not be more excited. Usually I go...

with a friend or my mom comes. This year, I'm just going me. I'm riding solo. I wanted my boyfriend to be able to come, but he can't come this year, so hopefully next year. But anyways, I at first was like a little bit bummed that I'm going solo, but then I was really, really happy because I...

Know and understand how important it is to do things alone. I just never want to do things alone when i'm at home Because why be alone if I don't have to you know, like I of course I I spend time with myself while i'm home I journal I do things like go get my eyebrows done alone, but you know what? I mean, I never do anything serious and far And long-term like this by myself and I am so excited to just go the reason I bring up this trip is because

Because I set an intention. I set a goal for this trip and that that is to listen simply just listen It can be interpreted in any way that you want to take it but I just want to kind of take you through my mind of like what I want to listen to more of and what I think that we should all listen to more of because I think we've gotten to a point in our world in our minds where Listening is not a priority

Talking or speaking or planning what you're going to do next is more important to us than actually listening to others. And this starts on a very, very wide scale. I think that we should all be listening to strangers more. Like if somebody, this is just the example that comes to mind given the pandemic.

political state of the world right now. If somebody has very different views than you and they see the world very differently than you, it is so easy to keep your mind completely shut to what the other side is saying, what this person is trying to talk to you about. And we block our minds and we close our minds and we shrink it up so quickly that there is no room for us to comprehend what

different perspective of what this person is saying and It's part of the reason that the polarization in the country is so extreme Nobody wants to listen to each other because everybody wants to be right and I think with politics It's not a matter of like who's right and who's wrong in certain things Absolutely, like there are things that my morals Will keep my mind closed to listen looking at the other option. You know what I mean? but

For the most part, I think that we all need to make a valiant effort to at least hear people out before we make a decision. That doesn't mean

We have to agree with everything that people say. We have to agree with morals and things and ideas that we don't support. But I am thinking that we should all listen a little bit more to what people are saying and treat people with a little bit more compassion. And then this moves from, you know, away from political things, just in general statements. If you hear somebody...

Getting canceled on the internet. Somebody had something happen to them and they reacted a certain way. Like just listening to people's stories and taking everything that the media shares, all these articles and these stories that come out about celebrities, about people, all these, all this gossip that gets spread around your school, around your neighborhood. Like listen to what people say with compassion and understanding and listen to people before you judge people.

It's so easy for us to put a sticker on someone's forehead and label them.

The second that we know something about them, you know, like it gets really easy to do that because it's almost what we're a little bit conditioned to do and what we're becoming more and more conditioned to do. Right. But why? Why can't we hear people out? Why can't we stop labeling people and just really start listening to people again? Now, as far as me going to Costa Rica and this being my intention for there, that's not necessarily the form of listening that I'm talking about or I'm thinking about, but I

Moving on. Listening to the people in your life that are close to you. So now we're moving away from society and listening to society, which is step one. I also think we all need to listen more to the people around us, close to us. Our friends, our family, our relationships, our therapists, our teachers, like people that we directly speak to.

Not talking about listening like right on the surface. Yes, but I think that so many of us get caught up in getting ready to speak next, you know, like what's the next thing that we're going to do? What's the next thing that we're going to say? How are we going to make sure that we're right in this argument? How are we going to make sure that we're right in this situation? How are we going to just completely ignore what this person is trying to tell me on a surface level or a deep level and make it about me?

Now, I know that sounds like super extreme and I'm not calling us all a bunch of selfish people, but I am calling us all, yeah, a little bit selfish. You know what? We are. Oftentimes we are way too selfish and maybe you're not. Maybe this is something that you are completely aware of. But for me personally,

I like to think I do a good job at listening to people and listening to the people around me, but when I really, really sit back and evaluate and think about all the conversations, all the arguments, all the situations I've had in who knows how long, I'm like, was I really listening to that person's feelings or was I just thinking about my own? It's something that we do subconsciously. Like, it takes effort to make sure that you're not putting yourself first in any given situation. You know what I mean? So...

The next time you're talking to your mom and you feel like she's just being mean to you and she's just angry at you and she just is trying to tell you you can't do something, maybe listen deeper. Like, why do you think she's telling you that you need to get an A on this test? Why do you think she's telling you she doesn't want you going out with those friends?

Maybe because she's looking out for you and she's protecting you. Does that mean it's called for every time your mom and your parents are strict? No, but one thing I will know, and you guys have probably heard me say this many times before, I am so glad my parents were the way that they were. I'm so glad that they were strict because I don't know what I would have gotten myself into had they not been protecting me. But back to the point, try to look a little bit deeper, listen a little bit deeper, have a little bit more understanding before you fight back and say,

No, I want to go do this. You don't let me have any fun. You just care about my grades because you want to be able to say I'm a smart kid. Like that was something that I used to say to my mom, like all the time. I was like, you just want me to have good grades that you could post on Facebook that I got straight A's. Like that was so drama. Was it probably a little bit true? Yeah, maybe. My mom wanted to take pride in her kids and be proud of them.

Whatever the case is, the point was she just wanted me to get good grades because she wanted me to care about my future. And does that mean I got straight A's? No. Did I listen to her then? No. But if you're at a point where you have the chance to listen to your parents, do it. They might not be completely wrong. That's all I'm saying.

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Quick little intermission, you guys. We all know how important it is to prioritize the right things in our life. And maybe for you, that's prioritizing doing leg day at the gym or making sure you go for your hot girl walk. But how often are you prioritizing your mental health and making sure that therapy is a part of your weekly routine? If it's something that you've been open to, if it's something that you've been considering, I highly recommend BetterHelp. And thank you so much to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode. And I'll see you in the next one.

I absolutely love BetterHelp. I love therapy. I have talked about it over and over and over again. And that is for a reason. It is the greatest thing ever. Having an outlet and a person to talk to about what you're going through and getting unbiased opinions and advice is so, so beneficial.

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especially in high school and college, there's so many little things that we fight over, silly things that we fight over. And I think that the problem and the root of our arguments with our friends in high school and college and our whole lives after that is little misunderstandings. I feel one thing. I'm going to use me and Lissette for an example here. Even though we're like... I told you guys last week, maybe, 4th of July, we got into the most drunk, random, stupid fight ever. But regardless...

Now regardless, other than that, we don't really fight too often. But when we do, it's always because one of us feels something, the other person feels something, but instead of like going straight to those feelings and openly talking about them and listening to each other, we go straight to like blame and attack on the other person. It's like not I'm feeling this because you did this. We go in it with you did this and now I'm mad.

Does that make any sense? Like lead with your feelings and then what caused them. I think in any case, it has less to do with listening, more to do with how to properly communicate, I think, but they go hand in hand. Lead with what you're feeling instead of what this person did. When we immediately put the blame on somebody, their first reaction, I mean, think about yourself. If somebody comes to you and says, you did this and da-da-da-da-da,

Your first response is to put your guard up and to defend yourself because that's what we do. That's in our nature. You feel attacked. Don't attack people. Lead with what you're feeling. And I think that this will help the other person understand you more. And again, if this is a common, if you struggle a lot with arguments with your family, friends, relationships, whatever it is, feel free to try and open the conversation about how to communicate. Be like, hey, Lissette,

I totally understand how you're feeling. I'm glad you got that out. And let's, I'll work on my thing and let's get better and be better people for each other. Right. But then be like, Hey, but also next time, if something like this happens, can you let me know how you're feeling before immediately hitting me with the attack?

situation dependent. It depends on who this is happening with and if you can even bring up that kind of conversation. I'm getting ahead of myself. I started staring and I got lost in space and my brain just started wandering and then we just started talking. But that's what we do around here. That's what the Moments podcast is for. One moment at a time. Back to what I was saying. Talked about mom, talked about friendships. Most of the time,

We continue arguments and we we get in longer fights and we get in more serious fights is because we're not really listening to each other and this is also very Difficult to just generalize there are situations where people really do us wrong and there there's fights and arguments that are called forth that are much deeper than just misunderstandings, but I'm talking to those that are and

You and I both know, if you're listening to this, that there are arguments that are so out of pocket and so unnecessary and so silly just because of a little something that made us feel a little certain way, you know? And we might be the cause of somebody else feeling that way. So in your friendships, in your relationships, especially if you're with your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your partner, this is where I notice it happens the most. Like Gabe and I will get so caught up in how...

Something that he said made me feel and then something that I said after what he said made him feel and we'll just be so focused on those emotions that we made each other feel that we like forget and

then we're on the same team. We want the same thing. We both don't want to be fighting and we'll just, we'll get, we'll, we'll hold a grudge instead of just really sitting down and listening to each other. And it's something that we, we work on constantly. And honestly, we've, we've gotten really good at, at navigating this, but when you're in a new relationship with somebody, not that our relationship's new anymore, but you know, in a,

A lifetime, if we're going to be together forever, a year and a half is really, really a small amount of time. But what I'm saying is the first few months we were together, super honeymoon phase. We saw no flaws in each other. Everything was perfect and grand. And I'm not going to lie, we still feel that way about each other. Like the honeymoon phase never ended. But...

We got to a point where we had to make more serious decisions. You know, we had to talk about a home. We had to talk about finances. We had to talk about like living together. We had to talk about family stuff. Like things get more real after the first few months that you're with somebody and you have to just expect that there's going to be differences. But the root and the key is to just keep listening to each other and keep each other's happiness at the forefront, not each other's happiness. Keep listening.

your happiness as a whole at the forefront and like recognize that you're going to have to compromise on things. You're going to have to work on yourself for this person because you're different people, but it's, it's a beautiful thing and it's a fun thing. And I'm, I could do a whole relationship episode. And if that's something that you guys want, please let me know, because it's something I've been hesitant about recording. I've kind of done episodes like it, but just the ins and out of love. If you want, just let me know, just DM me.

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Moving on, listening to your circle, your closed circle. We just talked about that one. The next one is listening to yourself. We are capable of helping ourselves so much more than we know. We've talked about this on probably every episode ever, but it's so important for you to have a healthy relationship with yourself. And it sounds so silly. Like when I get in to this topic and I talk about this, like I almost feel

like I'm a crazy person who has a person inside of me, you know? But the truth is, we do. There is a voice inside of our heads that is always going to either be our little hype man, our little task rabbit telling us, you gotta do this, you gotta do this, our motivation telling you, you can do this, you got this, our worst enemy, our evil best friend, our whatever it is. It's up to you what that voice becomes. And we have...

a lot more control of it than we realize but that voice also knows what we need when we need it it tells you when you need to be alone if you are alone for a couple minutes and you start immediately craving being with somebody that's your mind's way of telling you that you need to be alone if you're doing something and you're suddenly wanting to do the opposite so badly

You're probably in the right space. You know, this goes very different if we're talking about like addiction and stuff here when that voice in your head is telling you, oh, pick up the vape or oh, have a drink or oh, go smoke weed. We know that those are bad things. I'm not talking about that voice. Like, please ignore that voice at all costs. But the voice that is looking out for you, the one that says, maybe you should go for a walk.

and then you know there's like the other voice in your head that's like no don't go for a walk it's like the angel and the devil on each shoulder listen to the voice that is looking out for you okay there is a soft i feel like most of our audience listening to this is is the girlies but there's a soft little feminine younger version of you voice that's in there at least for me

And she's always hiding underneath all the bad voices, you know, the anxiety mind, the angry mind, the mean, evil enemy little voice. There's the soft little feminine girl, the young girl who wants to take care of me, you know, the girl who wants to put on a cute outfit and...

feel pretty and be around people that make her happy and laugh and enjoy life and do things that scare her and chase her dreams. That's the voice that we should listen to. And I think we choose not to listen to it. We choose to just push it away and be like angry with it and fight with it. And I hope that what I'm saying makes sense. I might sound insane. And if I do, forgive me. And if I don't, then that's awesome. But

Choose to listen to the voice that you've been ignoring. Your mind, your heart, your body, and your soul will tell you what you need. But what you need to do is find a way to clear out the noise, clear out the busyness. Ways that I like to do this, I like to go in the sauna. I really feel like I can hear myself think when I'm in the sauna. Like I am listening to music.

My clear-minded voice when I go in the sauna because I drown out the noise of everything else. I go in there with no music, no podcasts, no nothing, no headphones. Ideally, there's nobody else in there. And I just listen for the soft voice, the voice that is hard to hear underneath all the noise. Or going for a walk. Or even if those things aren't accessible to you, like sitting at any moment that you have alone and just...

Setting the intention of clearing the noise and letting the voice come through Let the noise flow out and let that voice come through and your mind body and heart are gonna tell you what it is That you need to hear sometimes. It's things that are hard to hear sometimes my voice in my head tells me that I have been a Serious drama queen and I need to go apologize to some people for either things that I've said or ways that I've acted or things that I've done And I'm like no that can't be right

It's probably right. You know, we hurt people on accident, not in extreme ways or serious ways. Like a lot of these things are minor, but listen to the voice, even if she's calling you out, okay? Because most of the time she's not going to be calling you out. She's going to be telling you that you need to be kinder to yourself. She's going to be telling you that you need to go stretch. She's going to just talk to you. Let her talk to you. And I also like to think of this voice as,

Like I've always kind of referred to it as like little baby me telling me what to do. But it's also to me, that's when God comes through. When I drown out the noise and I clear out the noise, I let God come in and talk to me. And he's never going to lead me astray. He's going to tell me what I need to hear, how I need to hear it, and what I need to do. It's up to us to actually listen to it. It's the moral of this whole episode.

Actually listen to things, to people, to yourself. Listen. I just want to get that tattooed on my body right now because it's so hard for us to do, at least for me. It's so hard for me to do. I'm not a good listener. I'm a good listener if somebody's telling me a story. You know, I'm not the kind of person who's going to just sit there and interrupt every 0.2 seconds, except sometimes the ADHD does have me doing that. But on a deeper level, listen.

And the last thing that I want us to listen to is nature. Okay? Go outside. Let the wind talk to you. Let the birds talk to you. Let things talk to you that God has given us on this earth. Hear them. Like, just get very intentional. I encourage you to get intentional. Okay? And I'm just going to leave it at that. I'm going to give you that. Little bite-sized pieces of listening.

things to listen to. Can I speak? Not really. Anyways, I really love you guys. I'm going to record this next upcoming week's episode while I'm in Costa Rica. So can't wait to share with you how that's going and what it's been like. And I love you guys. And please feel free to always DM me any ideas you have for the podcast, any guests you want on the podcast. I'm very happy. I'm going to LA.

In the next couple of weeks and i'm going to record a couple of episodes with people so super fun super special super excited I Am so grateful for you guys Don't forget to go order a moments journal if you don't have one yet, you can get to know yourself better We could journal together And yeah, I just love you. So so so much have the most beautiful beautiful beautiful week ever