E20 Seeing Clearly: Let Go of False Narratives, Debunk Wrong Beliefs, and Reframe Your Perspectives

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Jen Cudmore (00:00)
Hey, so before we dive into today’s topic, I want to pause for a second because I’m really excited. This is episode 20. So today I’m celebrating and I just had to tell you because I’m really thankful that I’ve made it this far. I am told that episode 20 is actually a pretty big milestone.

According to statistics, only about 80 % of podcasts even make it past episode 10. So here I am at episode 20. So that’s very exciting. Another thing that I recently discovered is that the number of downloads for a podcast is actually really important. And somehow in the last few weeks, I surpassed 500 downloads, which is a pretty big milestone as well. And what that means is that over 500 people have

viewed the podcast and listened to some of it. So that’s really exciting for me. I feel like all this effort, I mean, it’s been a lot of work to get this going and really build up my confidence and make this work and do it well. Then there’s been so many times where I’ve been discouraged and thought, is this even really worth it? So it’s worth it. And I just wanted to say thanks for being faithful. Thanks for all your support. I’m super grateful for all of you for being loyal and helping me out. ⁓

Now I want to be sure that you guys know that I have created a couple of different resources that are free for you to use to help you overcome some negative mindsets, help you recognize hindrances and blind spots. So one of them has been out for a little while, but I haven’t done a very good job of sharing about it. So I created 10 journal prompts with a bunch of reflection questions, and these are around ⁓ renewing the mind, but

These are going to help you you a nudge. You’re going to help you create awareness around your negative thought habits and help you to begin to sort of broaden your perspective so that you can see where your blind spots are and begin to view life differently from a different lens. And then the new one that I want to tell you is what I’m calling the three L’s worksheet. And it’s about lies, labels and limitations. And the goal is going to be to help you eliminate self-sabotage. That’s been keeping you from

being your best self, living life on purpose, reaching your full potential, all those types of things. So I’m going to put the links in the show notes. So you guys can go grab those. can have one of them, both of them, whatever works for you right now in this season of life. They’re simply meant to create awareness and give you a new ways of doing introspection and reflection and just sort of what’s going on inside my heart and mind so that I can eliminate self-sabotage and become my best self.

That’s the point of those. then also really quick, I wanted to give you an announcement and this is going to be really vague, but I wanted you to know that I am working on some new resources that are going to be available this fall. I’m working on a project with some friends of mine that we’re hoping to get developed and ⁓ get it going and started in September or October of 2025. So the best way to hear more about upcoming projects is to get on my email list so that you can

be the first to hear about just news and updates and tidbits and projects and all of that. So ⁓ go ahead and click on the links in the show notes, whichever one works best for you and get your email on that list. And then I can keep you up to date with all the things I’ve been working on. So, and then like always, just please keep sharing the show with other people, any episodes that have been meaningful to you, make sure you’re telling your friends and passing this on. It helps me so much.

And ⁓ then also check out Instagram because I’ve been starting to post additional content around like things that would inspire you in your own freedom journey and your own personal development. So there will be additional tidbits there. So definitely go check that out and follow me there. So thanks again for joining me on this really brief celebration. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m just so excited. But anyhow, enough of that. Let’s move on to episode 20. So episode 20 is a

essentially just about how we view life through filters and how easy it is to fall into just really narrow minded thinking. And so instead of living by the story that you tell yourself about that thing that happened, this discussion is going to help you recognize the biases and patterns and how you view the world. It’s going to help you pull back and broaden your perspective when it

when you’re dealing with an upsetting situation. And it’s going to help you to begin to focus more on the facts of the situation and less on your emotions around it. So it’s really humbling to admit that our perspective isn’t always accurate and that our opinion isn’t necessarily the right one. And so, ⁓ you know, life gets less complicated when you can admit to yourself that, I may be wrong in how I’m looking at this situation.

Where can I be a little bit more objective? Where can I pull back and, you know, look at this with a bit more wisdom and discernment? So let’s move into the conversation.

Jen Cudmore (05:17)
Hey there everyone. Hope you’re having a good day. I am actually having a good day at some. I haven’t had a lot of those lately as I’m sort of in just going through, you know, the grief process with my family over the loss of my father. But, uh, this is a good day. I’m feeling, um, a little bit more normal. So I’m looking forward to getting into this next episode. I haven’t struggled quite as much with the brain fog lately and the fumbling over my words. And so,

⁓ I’m excited to be getting back to feeling like my normal self. But in any case, let me just dive right into our topic today. So my question to get us started is, have you ever found yourself assuming the worst about a situation only to find out later that the truth wasn’t even close to what was going on inside your brain? I think that we ⁓ all have a tendency to make up stories and we don’t mean to, we can misinterpret situations.

and ⁓ it ends up becoming this big deal inside of our minds when ultimately when everything shakes out it’s not usually that bad. And I’m not just talking about being afraid of something, I’m talking about just a skewed perspective about a situation.

And I think that just over time with growth and maturity, we’ll learn that our interpretation isn’t always the right one. so I think that that is normal, especially when we’re children and we don’t know how to process everything that’s going on in the world around us. But then as we grow, the process would normally be that in our maturing process that we would begin to understand, OK, I wasn’t looking at all the things. I had a really narrow perspective and I need to sort of broaden my thinking.

So it’s normal that humans would do this. The catch is, as we grow mature, are we learning how to ⁓ sort of expand our thinking? But we do have a tendency to filter everything that we hear and see. And so we can develop incorrect narratives, false assumptions, wrong beliefs based on the input that we’ve received and misinterpreting what came in through the senses.

We, I’ve talked about that a lot, just different mindsets and our blind spots and different things, but I want to go just a slightly different direction. We actually make up a lot of stories in our head that make us miserable and we’re not properly filtering the facts. when we realize the facts later or when the situation resolves itself, we’re like, goodness gracious, I made this a big deal and it really didn’t have to be. Or sometimes we don’t even notice because it becomes a habit, but I’ve…

I’ve heard of this thing called the 80-20 rule or, mean, depending on where you go to get your source of information, it’s called different things, but essentially it talks about how our brain filters information and how we perceive the things that perceive our different experiences. 20 % of what

is going on inside us is actual facts about the situation and 80 % is our perception or our the story we tell around what happened to us.

I think of that quote which is typically attributed to Chuck Swindoll that says, life is 10 % of what actually happened to us and then 90 % of what we make of it. And I think that is very true, but it can be difficult to recognize in our daily lives. So that’s one of the things that I want to bring up. I remember hearing this story by a prominent female speaker several years ago about how

She started going to the gym. She was trying to get healthy and get in shape and there was always this one woman there who was so fit and so healthy and ⁓ The speaker was talking about how she just felt so judged like this woman was never friendly Would never smile at her would never talk to her and she just felt my goodness this girl Why does this girl not like me? I don’t understand and so a few weeks went by and they bumped into each other

I can’t remember the full story, but essentially the other woman was like, was super friendly and kind and their conversation led the person telling the story to realize that this other woman had actually not even noticed her at all. And so had no thoughts around her and made no judgments around her. But here the speaker was like making up all these stories in her head about how the woman didn’t like her and whatever, what could possibly be the reason.

And that story really hit home for me. ⁓ I wish I could remember the details, ⁓ but for me it was just creating an awareness around, my goodness, how often am I doing that? How often am I making ⁓ incorrect narratives, false assumptions, or having wrong beliefs around a situation or another person?

I was on the phone the other day with a close friend of mine and I’m just going to call her Mary Ann for the sake of the story. But we were on the phone and she was sharing with me just some of her frustrations around some relationships and her family. And she said, Jen, I just need to talk this out and I know that you can help me process this and see the reality of what’s going on and not just get stuck in my own skewed perspective. And I really appreciated that, that she knew right off the bat that, you know, coming

coming right into the conversation, she could admit that she wasn’t viewing the situation to the full capacity or the full spectrum of what was truly happening with the facts. And so she had told me the story about how she had sent some text messages to her nieces and nephews and they were not very good at responding and how that would often hurt her feelings and how, you know, she has a very small family and the fact that these

family members were not being responsive or engaging in conversation with her was really hurtful. And she was trying to be understanding, most of them were younger. And so she was kind of saying all the facts, like all the logic around, well, they’re young, I know kids at these age, they’re not typically gonna be chatty with their aunt. I shouldn’t let it bother me, I shouldn’t take it personally.

but I am, so what’s going on? And she even brought up the fact that she knew that she was still struggling with some wounds from the past around ⁓ rejection. And so I was really just impressed with her awareness around the situation, but she was just stuck on this one little point of how do I move forward? I recognize that this is my problem, not theirs, but how do I move forward and make sure that I don’t make ⁓ wrong assumptions?

about these people and cause problems in our relationship. And so I kind of just went through some things that I saw about the situation. And so some of the things that I shared with her was, you know, we have to make number one, allowances for other people’s personalities. Not everybody is going to respond to a situation the same way that we would. And so ⁓ giving people space to be who they are.

For example, one thing for me is I am definitely one of those people that likes a lot of communication, if you will. And so when I created the family chat ⁓ for me and my kids and my husband, and now my brother or my son-in-law is also in the group. And so

it’s typical for families to have a family text message chat or in whatever capacity that looks like just so that you can keep in touch on certain important matters. All that to say is my family really doesn’t enjoy texting. Nobody in my family is really much into texting and especially phone calls. And so I have learned that I have to limit the amount of communication that I send through this ⁓ text message chat because

it is bothersome to them to get multiple messages over and over. And I can understand that. I’ve been put in group chats before that kept like blowing up my phone and I’ve had to mute them because it was frustrating to get multiple interruptions coming through or even senseless information where you’re really busy and they want to talk about the weather or you know, just something that felt, you know, foolish and a waste of time. And you’re like, my goodness, can we please stop? I have more important things to take care of.

So I get the concept of not wanting to be involved in a really long ⁓ communication through a text message. And so for me, what I’ve had to learn is to just accept that even though I would like to send multiple memes or encouraging messages throughout the week or throughout the month, my family doesn’t appreciate that. And so why would I continue to do it when they don’t like it? But to the opposite point of because my family knows that I ⁓

and more that type of personality, they try to keep in touch with me, ⁓ like in a ways that I need it. And so it’s the back and forth of relationships of not just getting locked into one way of doing things, but similar to the concept of love language, like what is that person’s personality and how can you communicate with them and bond with them on a level that works for them and not just meeting your own needs. And so obviously my friend,

Mary Ann recognized that concept and she was definitely willing to do that. It’s just a matter of trying to be creative and come up with other ways that you can try to bond with those family members. Another thing that I brought up and I want to do more research on this because I’m not, I feel like I don’t have great language around it, but the concept of how we can unintentionally invite other people to treat us badly. And there’s this concept of how we can give off a negative energy that says,

⁓ You know, I believe this about myself, therefore I am expecting you to treat me this way. And I’ll give you an example. ⁓ I have mentioned before on the podcast how I used to feel invisible. I really felt ⁓ unimportant in a lot of areas of my life. And so what I discovered later in life is that I was unintentionally kind of giving off this energy or this expectation that

and the relationships around me, or even really especially in meeting new people or joining new groups that people would not remember me, that people would not recognize me. And so oftentimes I was overlooked, but what I didn’t understand is that I was sort of giving off a vibe that, I want you to overlook me, which is silly, but we do these kinds of things all the time because we have wounds and wrong mindsets and all of those things. So.

I suggested to my friend, you know, are you giving off some sort of vibe to your family that says, I want you to reject me. And ⁓ there’s, think there is a lot of that that goes on beneath the surface of our lives that ⁓ we really have to practice awareness around and begin to understand ourselves. So I wanted to tell another story. We have, ⁓ we put a lot of expectations on other people.

And we don’t even necessarily recognize that we’re doing it, but we make assumptions about this is how people should behave and this is how people should respond to certain things. Or because this is how I would do it, I’m expecting those other people to respond in the same way as me. And we have to be really careful of that. So, you know, the idea of, should people respond to text messages? Well, I mean…

Yeah, typically the polite thing to do is to respond, but there are people who don’t do that. And I’m going to give you an example. I have a friend who is ⁓ more ⁓ of a sort of a logical type of person, not really much of a touchy feely person. So I have learned that based on people’s personalities is how I can interact with them. know, friends who are more sentimental, I can be a little bit more loving and sweet.

But when I’m talking to other people, ⁓ I kind of stay away from the emotional, gushy type of things and stick with more factual things. the other day I had a friend of mine reach out and say, how are you doing? It’s been like a week since your dad passed away. How are you doing? And so I appreciated that she had reached out to me. And so ⁓ my response was based on all facts. Here’s how I’m doing.

this is how I’m feeling, this is how I’m coping with it. And I saw that she read the message and didn’t respond. So to me, my feelings were not hurt. My feelings were not hurt that she didn’t necessarily care so much about my feelings, that she didn’t respond because I expected that of her. I know her personality and I understand that that’s who she is and I’m not going to try to make her be something else that she’s not. However, I had other friends who are a little bit more on the ⁓

sentimental side and I had made the assumption that they would reach out and check on me and they didn’t. And so that was really bothering me. I started to get really angry. Like I cannot believe, you know, these friends over here are not checking on me. They must be terrible friends. How could they just ignore me for two weeks while I’m dealing with the death of my father? And so I had to catch myself like, wait a minute, like why am I getting so upset with them?

And why am I putting different expectations on them than I was putting on this other friend? And so I had to really pull back and say, wait a minute, I should have kind of across the board expectations, but then also based on personality and give those other friends grace. There could be lots of reasons why they hadn’t reached out to me yet. And so there’s…

I wanted to give some real examples that I had personally gone through recently that says, hey, when we are looking at things objectively, when we are just kind of sticking to the factual information, it’s a whole lot easier to deal with the situation than when we let our emotions get involved and when we are reacting and responding out of negative mindsets or bitter roots in our hearts, wounds that we haven’t been healed from.

where do you need to give people more grace? Like stop assuming the worst about them. Choose to believe the best about them. I used to be so, so bad at assuming the worst and judging and criticizing. I can’t believe they would behave this way. And then realizing like, wow, that person had a legit reason for behaving that way. And I wasn’t giving them grace. wasn’t giving them the benefit of the doubt. And

I don’t want people to treat me that way. So I’m trying to give, be much more giving than I used to be. The other thing is that we, pardon me, we can tend to put rules on situations and relationships. We have expectations of what we think the relationship should or shouldn’t look like. And that’s dangerous. That can really get us into some trouble. And so we have to pull back and scale back that and really try to be more objective about how we’re reacting and responding.

in relationships and making sure that we are being a good friend and having our expectations of others in a healthy spot. And we don’t mean to, but unfortunately we’re human and we have a tendency to make it all about us. And I know I’ve talked about this a little bit before, but that’s…

Another really important thing about pulling back and reassessing the situation is, wait a minute, am I making this all about me and what I deserve and what I think should happen in my opinion? Because again, that we don’t want to be selfish creatures. We want to be giving and loving. That’s the best version of ourselves. And so we’re focused on what we want and what we think should happen.

then we’re going to miss out on the richness of some of those relationships if we were to sort of scale back our expectations and be more focused on them rather than us. you know, something that my husband says a lot is that facts don’t care about your feelings. And we have a tendency to view everything through our feelings, right? This is how you made me feel. This is how the situation made me feel. And so sometimes we need to step back and say, OK, wait a minute, let me reassess the facts here.

Let me sort of dial down the emotion and let me just get to the heart of the matter and say, okay, here is what’s really going on. And so if I can sort of separate my feelings from the situation, I can respond better than if I were to respond just in the moment or reacting out of my emotions. So it’s really, really easy to make assumptions about the motives of others.

I have really gotten frustrated at myself over the years of like, why did I assume that so-and-so had this going on? I should have just, you know, I wish I would have just pulled back and said, hey, you know, tell me more about the situation or whatever. Help me understand ⁓ why this happened this way or why you did what you did. And really also leaning into prayer and asking God for wisdom and discernment around situations like, okay, I’m feeling really emotional and upset about this.

Lord, help me dial it back and help me pause for a minute and help me have a full perspective around what’s truly happening here. ⁓ Unfortunately, we misinterpret things and make up stories a lot. one ⁓ book that I had read a while ago, and I really wish I could remember the name of it, it’s bothering me. But there was a chapter in there about what she called the playground in our mind. And that was really mind blowing for me because I thought,

goodness, I do this all the time. So what we tend to do is we’ll experience a situation that upset us and then we will spend a couple hours mapping out ⁓ what we want to say, how we wish things would have gone, know, all the ways we wish we would have defended ourselves or here’s what I’m going to say next time, I’m going to give that person a piece of my mind. And ⁓ God doesn’t like that. I

I began to notice that that’s how I was living my life, is constantly reactive and really focused on myself. And I really wasted a lot of time and energy on things that didn’t matter because I was choosing to look at that from a skewed perspective. And I was looking at that through the filter of ⁓

lies, negative mindset, wounds, all the things. And so we don’t mean to make it about ourselves. We don’t mean to waste time and energy getting all spun up in our mind, but we do. And so how can we stop doing that? I think that it starts with awareness around where is this coming from? And why am I reacting to this situation in this way instead of pulling back and viewing it from a healthy manner? What am I doing?

you know, what filter am I using that is causing me to have this skewed perspective about the situation? And I think, you know, there’s a lot of things that impact it. And I’ve kind of mentioned all of these before. think a negative mindset is huge. When we’re stuck in habits of victimhood, scarcity, poverty, orphan mentality, there’s so many things there. And I’ve been meaning to delve more into those and I will at some point, but negative mindsets,

are huge when we come to look at a situation, we need to understand that these are our tendencies, these are our habits, and ⁓ we need to kind of push that out of the way or deal with those things so that we can come back to the situation and view it properly through the right perspective, the right scope. Another thing is ⁓ the lies, labels, and limitations that we’re living under, again, that we don’t recognize, that we don’t notice are there. And so that’s, again, why

practicing the habit of digging into what’s going on inside my heart and inside my mind and why am I looking at this wrong? Where do I have lies, labels and limitations? Those three L’s that are affecting my life and holding me back and causing me trouble. then, know, wounds, bitterness, unforgiveness, that came up in childhood that we never got healing from. If we are living life unhealed and unholy,

then we cannot respond well. We cannot respond in a healthy manner. We have to get healing and we have to get a cleansing from a lot of that stuff. And so that’s why it’s so important to dig into your own freedom journey. So there could be so many different things that are causing us to skew our perspective. And that’s why it’s so important that we have awareness around ourselves and that we push ourselves to grow and learn and become the best version of ourselves. ⁓

So that’s pretty much all I wanted to say around this topic. Like look at the situation and ask yourself, what story am I making up in my head? What am I making this mean? And what are the actual facts here of the situation and how can I view this more objectively? And then just to throw out, I have finally finished the 3Ls worksheet about lives, labels and limitations. And so I’m really excited. I’ll throw that link in the show notes so that you guys have it.

but you can always go to my website or hop on Instagram. I’ve got it posted up there too. So this is a free resource, a free worksheet that will help you ⁓ gain awareness around where you’ve got lies, labels and limitations in your life. And then it will walk you through the steps of how to deal with those and how to get rid of them so that you be.

can begin to clear away some of that clutter in your mind that is causing you to have a skewed perspective, that is causing you to develop these incorrect narratives, false assumptions, wrong beliefs. So I will get that posted. I’m excited to finally have that up and going for you. So ⁓ I would love your feedback. I think you’re gonna find that to be extremely helpful as you move forward in your own journey of freedom. So as we go about this week, let’s explore the depths of this final thought. I’ve got some questions for you here.

Where are you reacting to situations out of a skewed perspective? Where have you been making up stories and assigning meaning to certain situations or certain people? Where are you making it all about you? Unintentionally, right? We’re not doing all these things on purpose, but we can’t stop if we don’t see it, right? That’s where the whole concept of blind spots comes in, developing that awareness. And then,

How can you become more aware this week of where you are holding on to incorrect narratives, false assumptions, and wrong beliefs? So some things to ponder as you go about your week. and I’ll see you back here next time.