Lessons - How to Transform Your Personal Narrative Into Your Greatest Strength | Nona Jones - Resilience Expert

In this lessons episode, discover how to turn life's harshest rejections into catalysts for growth with a simple four-step framework. Learn why observing your inner talk track reveals the root beliefs holding you back. Learn how pausing and exploring those beliefs frees you from old trauma. Learn how naming your next step empowers you to move forward with purpose. Obviously that has an impact on your talk track because then you start to see signs that rejection is a gift. But is there is there work that somebody has to do beyond that? That's like a shock. That's like a sort of a flash in the pan event and you're like oh shit, it's like a wake up call, which is it's good. Those things, those things help. But for somebody who's gone through a life of trauma, how do they rewrite their talk track fully? I think now that I'm kind of on the other side of this revelation, I truly believe that it starts with observing what is the talk track because what's going to have to happen in order to even get to a place of healing and freedom is you're going to have to be able to go back to the place where the defeat happened. You're going to have to be able to go back to the place where there were words that were spoken over you. There was an action that was taken because sometimes it's not even words. It's what people do. It's the fact that your father chose to leave when you were in elementary school. It's the fact that this person that you loved chose to leave and be with somebody else. It's not even what they said, it's what they did. So you have to go back and you have to begin to ask yourself, what did I believe because of what was said or because of what was done? And is that true? For example, when he cheated on me, I thought no one will ever want me. How could anyone ever want me? Like, I gave my heart to this guy and he basically discarded it. No one will ever want me. Well, as it turns out, I actually had other relationships after him. Some of them were crazy, but one in particular ended in marriage and my husband and I have been married now for 20 years. And so this, this idea that no one will ever want me actually isn't true. And here's the thing, even if I never got married, this is where I know there are some people who don't necessarily believe in like God or spirituality or anything like that. But I want to say this, I was a microbiology and self-science major in college. I love science. I love math. I think I took up to like count five. I love calculus of all the things. It is literally impossible. There is no law of physics where order descends from chaos. Think about it like this. If a chandelier drops from the ceiling and crashes onto the ground, I don't care how many millennia go by, it's not going to either reform into a chandelier or something beautiful and amazing, right? It's going to just continue to disintegrate. And I say that because no matter what you've been told, you are not a mistake. No matter what has happened to you, you are not an accident. Somebody else's choice was not your fault. And it doesn't invalidate the purpose on your life. And so you have to observe, what is the talk track? And is it true? Because even if they didn't want you, the reality is you are here because you have purpose on your life. I mentioned this before we press record. And I think it's just an interesting point. I want to get your perspective on it. And I love that. I love that. I love that sort of that thought experience. It makes a lot of sense when you lay it out how everyone is, it takes so much, there's so many coincidences or however you want to call it that we're alive here living today. It almost seems impossible. I think statistically it is almost impossible that we're alive living here today. But I think that a lot of people, they don't have spirituality and I think less and less people have got in their life. And maybe not just speak about the important, speak about if somebody does not have God in their life, what problems do they run into when facing rejection? Is there, is there ways that God's spirituality helps? I'm sure because I mean, you've mentioned it that it's impacted your life twice just in this conversation. But if somebody doesn't have that peace in their life, what is the puzzle piece or the component that they're missing that they should try and solve for to make some of these difficult life events a little bit easier? I love this question because what I can tell you first of all, I did not grow up in a church going home. Like I didn't grow up in a situation where I just knew about the Bible or Jesus or God or any of that. I had my own encounter, my own awakening, my own experience. And what I will tell you is I had my own awakening in the middle of being abused and not not the act, but I'm saying in the chronology of my life, the abuse was still happening. And so what it did for me is my awareness about God. There's a, there's a verse of Scripture in the Bible that says it's in Romans chapter 8 verse 28 and what it says is that God will work all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. What that says to me and what that even said to me then is this situation may not be good, but God has made a promise to work it together for my good, which means I have to figure out what is the good in this? Like that, that what is what is the kernel of good in this that could serve other people? I think what, what spirituality does, what faith does is it gives you an anchor for hope. In the absence of, of the belief that all things will work together for my good, you can get so fixated on the bad and what happened that you lose sight of this will eventually work together for my good. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even next year, but I know at some point I will look back on this situation and I will be able to say, oh, that's why that happened. I think about my God, I think about the rejection of my mom, I think about the many times I was cheated on, I think about professional rejection, like deep, deep rejections that I've experienced and every single experience has worked together in some way for my purpose and for the ability to serve other people. And so even if a person doesn't have a faith or spirituality, I do think that what we ultimately need is we need hope. And that's why the gift of rejection is really a message about hope. It sounds crazy, right? It's like, how can you say rejection is a gift? But understanding that it is is a source of hope. And I take my hope from my faith in God and just knowing that it may not feel good, but it will eventually be good if I just continue in persevere in this, in this situation. I think it's beautiful, but I think the biggest issue with, with lack of faith or spirituality or God and I've, I love this, I don't love this concept, but I love sort of this thought experiment is when you do not have God or spirituality in your life, something else becomes your God or your spirituality and it could be, it could be money, it could be women, it could be gambling, it could be drugs, it could be alcohol, it could even be work, which is technically not a vice, but it cannot be all consuming. And when shit hits the fan, none of these things really give hope because they're, they're, they're not things that you, they're not things that like kind of like exactly what you describe, they let you see some potential better future. They're just sort of these vices in the moment. And I think people, yes. You're absolutely right. We, we actually all do have a place that we look to for hope. Some of us, and you use the exact right word is like, our God is something. For some of us, our God is frankly ourselves. Like we're like, look, I, I'm got it all figured out and I'll make it happen and I'll make it, but there comes a point where you just realize that you've exhausted all of your personal resources. And, and you need, you need that higher power to be able to, to kind of re-infuse the sense that, yeah, I can't do this on my own. I can't. And I have, I have a bunch of friends who are APS and agnostic and I'll also, I'll always joke with them because I'm like, you guys actually have more faith than I do because you have to have a lot of faith to look around at all this and be like, I just came from nowhere, you know, you have that. So we all have faith in something. Yeah. No, that's, I love that. I want to, just to a framework that people can at least walk away with. And I'm just going to caveat with this. So, so the book is out now. So you can get it wherever you get your books. Like we'll put, we'll put the links in the show though, to whatnot. But one framework that you speak about is the open framework. And so I just want to leave people with a framework they can take away and they're going to go dive into the book and learn a little bit more obviously. But I want to, I want to unpack that one. Thank you for, for even offering me the opportunities to do this because one of the things I am very careful about as a writer is I don't ever want people to read my books and just be like, oh, that was nice. I don't know what to do with it. That's, honestly, one of the reasons I write my books is because I want people to be able to have practical tools that they can apply that I had to discover on my own, because I couldn't find it anywhere else. So the open framework is, it's essentially kind of a four part framework that will help you really start to get intentional about understanding what is the gift in this rejection experience. And so the, oh, stands for observe. And I talked about this a little bit earlier, but what you want to do is when a rejection happens before you allow yourself to mentally, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually spiral into your normal rabbit hole, you want to observe what am I thinking and what am I feeling? What are the thoughts that are just automatically playing in my mind? What are the feelings that are just automatically cascading through my body? And when you kind of pause and you, and you actually think about the thoughts, like metacognition, like you think about the thoughts, you're actually able to then begin to pinpoint where did this come from? Where did this, this belief that nobody wants me? Where did this idea come from? And once you can actually pinpoint where the idea came from, now you have something that you can start to work with, okay? And it's important to pinpoint it because until you identify where it comes from, you'll think it's you. You'll think this was just my own thought, but I promise you, 95% of what we think after we experience rejection was seeded into us by words somebody else said. So start with observing. Secondly, what I encourage people to do is just pause. Just pause. Don't allow yourself to act because sometimes what we'll do is the pain will be so real that we'll just want to either get back at the person immediately. We'll want to take some sort of action to try to, you know, nullify the pain. No, just just pause. What I do is I pause and I pray. And I actually bring those thoughts to God. I'm like, okay, I just thought my thought was no one will ever want me. No one ever supports me. No one ever. And I bring it to God because that then gives me the opportunity to reflect on is this true? You know, as I've been releasing this book about rejection, I've been experiencing so much rejection. God, it's been crazy. I run it. And I got isn't ironic. And I got to a place where I literally felt I was like, man, nobody's nobody supporting me. But as I pause and I prayed about that, I had to actually reflect on the fact that wait a minute. A lot of people are supporting me. And there are people supporting me who I've even not even met before. And like even being on this platform is just such a gift because it's like you so lovingly cultivated this platform. And yet you're inviting me on it. Like that is a gift that counters the idea that nobody supports me. Nobody wants to be right. So we pause and we pause and for me, I pray and I just get into a meditative place. And then the E is explore. So I believe that every rejection has a lesson that it can teach us about ourselves or about others. In the case of my book release and, you know, having some folks that I thought I could count on not show up for me. As I explored that, what I realized is I placed them in a category of friendship that they actually worked in. Like these are people that I supported. These are people that I just knew would show up for me that didn't. And so as I explored it, I realized, oh, our relationship actually isn't where I thought it was. So now I don't hold a grudge against you because you didn't show up. I just realized I can't count on you for what I thought I could count on you for. And so that then changes the nature of the relationship. And the last step, which is in the end stands for name. And what I talk about is just name your next step. So you've observed your thoughts. You know how you're feeling. You've paused. You've actually explored the lessons and the experience. Now what are you going to do with what you've learned and how's it going to change the way that you show up? So that's the open framework at a nutshell. And you're right, I go into a lot more detail in the book, but, but it's practical. And it's something that I'd even used as I've experienced rejection of releasing the book. And it works. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.