Hello, hello, my beautiful friends. I hope you are all doing so, so well today. We're gonna talk about the thing that probably, I think everybody has asked me about. How do I stay calm? How do I stay positive? How do I stay hopeful throughout IVF? 

Now if the title doesn't necessarily sound like how do I stay hopeful, how do I stay positive, how do I stay whatever, that's because it's intentional. So I want you to stay with me as I talk about how you can stay realistically optimistic throughout your journey. So I'm going to talk about that and I'm going to give you a concept that I give to all of my clients. in how to kind of navigate that balance. 

So first and foremost, let's talk about the emotional experience of people. The emotional experience of people, and I do this on my whiteboard. If you're not familiar with like how I coach, or if you've never seen a video of me coaching or something, I do a lot on a whiteboard. I write a lot on a whiteboard. And that's because I like for people to see, have visual understanding, it was number one, of what their brain is doing by its thoughts and what it's creating for you. but also visual cues are really important, like a learning immersion tool. 

So I want you to think if you could see just a circle in front of you, a big circle, I want you to think of that as your emotional experience going through life, okay? That circle is the entirety of your emotional experience going through life. Now, if you were to create a line, draw a line down the center, whether it's vertical, horizontal, it doesn't matter. down the center of that circle, 50% of the time is going to be extremely positive emotions, right? Joyfulness, happy, positive, content, loving, in love, willingness, right? Whatever emotion that you can think of that generates a positive experience, like positive sensations, excitement, whatever is in there. 50% of the time in your life, you're gonna experience that. 50% of the time in your life, you're going to experience negative emotions, anxiety, fear, anger, resentment, jealousy, okay? 

Both are true at the same time. 

So the best example I always give for this is when I was doing hospice work. Now, if you have never been with someone who, like whether it's a family or a friend or whatever, who's experienced an illness that will eventually run its course and take their lives, then even if you haven't, you can probably imagine, but if you have, you'll know that by the time that person does pass away, it's not just a grief that you're feeling. You are also likely feeling some sort of relief, right? The relief doesn't mean that you're feeling less grief and the grief doesn't mean. mean anything about feeling relief. It just means that you're experiencing two emotions at the same time. Probably more than two, but for the purpose of this example, we're just gonna stick with two. Now, feeling relief does not mean you're a terrible person. It means that you are relieved that they are no longer suffering. That in between, which is very, very hard for people, is over, that uncertainty about when this is going to happen is over. doesn't mean by feeling relief that you will not miss that person, that you do not love that person, that you are not sad that they are gone because all of those are true and you feel relief, right? And just because you're experiencing grief doesn't mean that you're not happy that they are no longer suffering, right? I wanna drive this home so much. You're feeling both things at the same time and that's what you're supposed to do. 

When we talk about how to kind of navigate this process or feel more hopeful during this process or feel more positive during this process, what we're doing is setting a very unrealistic expectation for how anyone would navigate an objectively stressful situation by telling ourselves that we should only feel this one emotion, positivity, hope, certainty, whatever it is, right? That we should only feel this one. or that one that we're supposed to be feeling, whatever it is, that we should be feeling more of, an abundance of or exclusive to that emotion. That is probably the most, one of the most, I won't say the most, but one of the most damaging things that we do to ourselves because it's not realistic for how humans have evolved, for how humans function, and for how humans experience emotions. 

We are incredibly complex creatures. We are the most complex creatures that exist in our world today. So to set an expectation that I should only feel hopeful, I should only feel positive. And again, the most one of the most objectively stressful situations a person or couple relationship can go through. It is only going to end in you feeling as though you have failed because that is not reasonable. So when we talk about realistic optimism. What we're talking about is allowing for those two things to be true at the same time. You will feel sad and you will feel excited, right? Maybe your sadness is dialed up to 80% and your excitement is dialed down to 20%. You're still feeling both. Maybe you're feeling hopeful at 8%, but you're also feeling Hopeless 60% Oh now I've cut into less round whole numbers. This is gonna be a little bit more difficult for my brain, but here we go Maybe you're feeling Content because you feel like you're moving forward, right? Maybe you just had a transfer so you're feeling a little bit content Maybe that's taking up about 12 percent Right. So now we're at 80 percent And then maybe that last 20% is a combination of jealousy that someone else got a pregnancy announcement. 

Maybe it's, you know, happy for your friend because they also got one, right? Both of those can be true. You can be a little bit, you can feel a little bit of jealousy towards them and be really excited for them at the same time, right? That, when we accept that more than one emotion can be true at the same time. when we can accept that 50% of the time we're gonna feel happy emotions or positive emotions and 50% of the time we're going to feel negative or unhappy emotions, that is realistic optimism, right? 

The way that I encourage people to do this, the way that I teach people to do this, my clients to do this, is by concept I call equal airtime. I have probably mentioned it on this podcast multiple times. It was brought to my attention by some of my clients that I have talked about it, but I've never actually explained it. So that's what we're gonna do. 

The idea of equal air time is if both of those things can be true at the same time, that you can feel a positive emotion at the same time you're feeling a negative emotion. Because you do, I wanna say that again, because you do, because that's true, right? Then how do we kind of... cater to both sides. So if you've listened to my podcast for any length of time, you've probably heard me talk about how our brain is kind of naturally wired towards discontent. It's kind of naturally wired towards negativity. It's no fault of your own, you're not a negative person. That's just how our brains evolved. Otherwise we would have never come out of the cave, we would have never discovered fire, we would have never done some of the extraordinary things that humans have done through the great existence. Also why we also have done some horrible things through our great existence, because both can be true at the same time, okay? So the way that our brains have evolved, that most things skew to us in a negative light, what we wanna do is allow your brain to have that opportunity to vent all of the big scaries that is going through your head. It doesn't mean you're wishing those things into existence. It doesn't mean that is something that you are trying to manifest. It just means that you're allowing your brain to have a temper tantrum so that it can quiet that voice, quiet that temper tantrum, long enough for you to experience something else. 

If you have any experience with small children, then you have probably, one of them has probably tried to get your attention at some point, right? Probably some adults who act as children also would fit into this. Example, but we'll stick with toddlers for right now. The more a toddler is trying to get your attention and the more you're resisting giving them your attention, the louder and more obnoxious it gets and your brain is no different. Because the part of your brain that is coming up with those scenarios, that is dress rehearsing that nightmare or dress rehearsing that tragedy, is the same part that's functioning in a toddler. 

So you want to give your brain space to vent the scary, scaries. Again, you're not putting these words into the universe, you're not trying a negative manifestation or anything like that. You're simply allowing your brain to process what it is afraid of, okay? So, you're gonna do that. You're gonna do just that. You're gonna give yourself two minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever, to allow for the scary things that you're afraid of to be voiced. I want you to try to say them out loud, write them down. You don't have to be afraid of them, right? It's normal to be afraid of them. You don't have to be afraid of them. They're just words that are coming to you in your brain or images if that's how your brain works too. Either way, no wrong ways, okay? You're gonna give your brain that time. 

And then you're gonna give equal air time to all of the beautiful, positive, exciting hopeful thoughts. Okay you're going to give yourself the opportunity to imagine what it's going to be like to decorate your nursery or if you already have a child that what the relationship with the siblings would be like. What holidays are going to look like once you have your family. Again you're not creating a situation where you're setting yourself up to be more disappointed. You're going to be disappointed. No matter what, if things don't work out, if you get a failed transfer or a failed cycle, you will be disappointed. Allowing yourself to fill up with the hope and the positivity and the excitement does not make the crash harder. All you're doing if you're trying to interrupt that, that dreaming, that hope, that possibility, is that you are hurting ahead of time. You are. cutting yourself off at the knees from experiencing anything that could be in the same vein as positivity, okay? 

So you're just gonna dedicate equal airtime to both. That's all we're talking about. That is the balance. That is the realistic optimism. You're not gonna ignore the scary scaries. You're just gonna keep it in check. You're gonna be like, yeah, I got a pulse on you. It's okay, I hear you. I'm definitely afraid that this transfer will work and what it will look like if we have to do another cycle or another transfer and how long this is taking, right? I mean, I'm gonna let you vent all of your frustration. And then we're also gonna talk about how fun it's gonna be when we have kids, how hard it's gonna be, but also how fun it's gonna be, how rich things are gonna feel, right? Like vibrant colors, experiences. kids' laughter, like you're gonna allow yourself to kind of soak that. And that's the balance. That is equal air time, and that is how we have realistic optimism through IVF. 

We're not trying to get the pendulum to swing one way, either or. The pendulum's gonna stay right in the center, and that's because we're gonna give it both sides air time. When you're able to do this, when you're able to actually allow yourself to voice the scary scaries, and soak up the goodness and the happiness and the joy and the positivity and the hope. You're giving yourself the balance that already exists. If 50% of the time in your life you're going to have positive experiences, positive emotions, and 50% of the time you're going to have negative experiences and negative emotions, that is a natural balance that exists. All you're doing is intentionally allowing yourself to have that balance.

So as we talk about that realistic optimism towards IVF or realistic optimism just in living your life, right? I gave you some non-IVF examples. 

There's a quote that I wanna share with you that I think it reflects exactly what we're talking about, but it's also helped me immeasurably when I was trying to understand this concept of equal air time and how to have those kind of realistic expectations. So it's “life is amazing and then it's awful. and then it's amazing again, and in between the amazing and the awful, it's ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary. It's just living, heartbreaking, soul healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life, and it is breathtakingly beautiful.”

 And that's what we're talking about. Life is all of those things. Sometimes at the same time, sometimes back to back, sometimes there's a little overlap, sometimes there's none, but it's all of those things. And so it's a reasonable expectation that IVF would also be all of those things. Now I do wanna be mindful, there are some of us out there that have never experienced. more of the amazing or even some of the amazing of the IVF journey. That doesn't mean your life though is devoid of the amazing, right? And that's where we want to keep that perspective and hold that two things can be true at the same time. IVF has been really, really hard. And there are parts of your life that are also amazing.

I guarantee you when you allow yourself balance the entire experience of IVF is going to change for you. It is not going to feel so hard all of the time because you're giving yourself realistic optimism. You're giving yourself that balance and that is a gift I want each and every one of you to have. So hope you enjoyed what I have for you this week. I will talk to you soon. Have a wonderful time. Bye.