QMR #13 Toxic People

Ready for a Quick Mindset Reset? Have you ever labeled someone in your life as "toxic"? Have you ever wondered how to heal from a toxic relationship or toxic people in your life? In this episode Lunden talks about a potential reframe that might help you heal in some of these situations. What might your life be like if you stopped ruminating on them being toxic, and instead thought of it this way....tune in to this episode!

Timestamps to help you navigate this episode
0:00 Intro
0:24 FREE Self Love & Sweat MONTHLY Calendar
4:13 How To Set Boundaries With Toxic People
6:10Turning Toxic People Into Teachers
8:31 How To Turn Toxic Relationships Into Positive Ones

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:24 FREE Self Love & Sweat MONTHLY Calendar
• 4:13 How To Set Boundaries With Toxic People
• 6:10 Turning Toxic People Into Teachers
• 8:31 How To Turn Toxic Relationships Into Positive Ones

Transcript

Lunden Souza: 0:00

Welcome to Self Love and Sweat the podcast, the place where you'll get inspired to live your life unapologetically, embrace your perfect imperfections and do what sets your soul on fire. I'm your host, Lunden Souza. Hey, before we jump into this episode, I just want to make sure that you get all the free things possible, if you haven't already. You need to get your Self and Sweat Sweat free f monthly life coaching calendar. Honestly, the way to experience deep change in your life is by doing small little things over time, and so that's what you'll find in this free calendar. You can get it by going to lifelikelunden. com/calendar. Get yours for free and let's get into today's episode. back

Lunden Souza: 1:05

This QMR episode, Quick Mindset Reset, is about toxic people and transforming them from being toxic in your life to teachers. It can be so easy, especially in this culture, to point at other people as toxic. They're the problem because of them. This is why I am this way. They did this to me. They're toxic, right, and I definitely want to make a clear distinction. There might be people in your life that are abusive physically, mentally, emotionally. There might be people in your life that are abusive physically, mentally, emotionally. There might be people in your life that have done horrendous things to you and if you've listened to the podcast before, you know I've had so many incredible guests share about how they've turned their pain into purpose domestic violence, so many things, so many amazing guests I've had on this episode or on this show different episodes. So I don't want to discount. This episode is not about just letting things slide and letting people that have done unkind things or things that have done you wrong, let's say, let them slide. But I do want you to listen to this and consider the real estate that they're taking up in your mind and in your heart when you call them toxic. They were toxic and they did this to me.

Lunden Souza: 2:42

I spoke on this in a webinar series for my friend, Veronica Kelly. She hosted this free event all about freedom and she asked me to speak on it and going into it. I didn't know what I was going to speak on. I just figured that whatever it was I was supposed to speak on would just speak through me, and that's exactly what happened. When I popped on that webinar, there was a speaker before me and one of the things that they were discussing not the speaker before me, but one of the things that everybody in the room was starting to discuss was like toxic family members and how they were seeking freedom from, yeah, toxic people in their lives, in their family, in their relationships, et cetera. And I happened to tap in and join the webinar right when they were talking about it and it came to me. I was like, oh, I can talk about this, right, I can talk about change your words, change your world when it comes to toxic people, right, and I definitely was that person who was pointing the finger at everybody else. You're the problem, you're the toxic person. You did this to me because you did this to me. This is why I'm this way and definitely spent a lot of years having that story on replay in my mind and heart, especially within my family.

Lunden Souza: 4:13

If you've been following me for a while, you know that there were some major issues within my family, with my grandfather, him not approving of certain decisions I made in my life. Him, yeah, just exploding. There's just been so many, even friendships, friendships where I would consider them toxic and I would say I made a whole course on this. Maybe you guys remember a long time ago, in 20, I think 18, I made this five-part course, it was called Positively Productive and it was five short videos about how to be more positive and productive. And there was an episode in that five-part series that I actually said I was like you need to get rid of the toxic people in your life. Right, I call these people toxic, like I literally said that in the course because that's where I was at the time. Right, that's where my heart was, that's where my thought process was.

Lunden Souza: 5:12

But, honestly, when we can transform these toxic people in our lives to our teachers and figure out what lessons we could not have learned without them, that's where the true power lies. Right, it's so easy to ruminate in what they did to you and what they said and the way that they treated you and how they gaslit you and blindsided you and treated you like this. That's easy. Right, we can have that tape on repeat and ruminate on that. But when we can really take a step back and figure out what lesson we were supposed to learn because of them, what lesson we couldn't have possibly learned without them, right, you can get so much appreciation and gratitude from that. Right, so much learning and growth outside of stagnance and stuckness and just being angry and upset about it.

Lunden Souza: 6:10

And the reason why I love the ability to change toxic people into teachers is because this is how we can connect with people on a deeper level. Right, yes, we can connect with people and talk shit about all the toxic people in our lives. But imagine the next level connections we get to have when we can not only share the toxic thing that happened but how we were able to alchemize that and to be our biggest teacher. And now what we're doing, moving forward. Right, that type of cohesion within connection with others is so much more profound, so much more powerful.

Lunden Souza: 6:47

When we ruminate in toxicity, that's group chats where we're talking shit about people. That's connecting with people over negative things. Right, do you have any of those friends where it's like they don't really want to talk or connect if there's not something going wrong or whatever in your life? Right, that's how we bond over toxicity. But when we bond over the way that that has become a teacher in our lives, that's magic, right. That's why I really feel a lot of times people will tell me like, oh, you make friends so easily, you just go into places by yourself and you just go alone. And I think one of the main reasons why I do that and why I can do that is because I'm open to sharing those stories about how things were hard and, let's say, went from being toxic to a teacher in my life, how I was able to reframe being toxic to a teacher in my life, how I was able to reframe what this situation might be.

Lunden Souza: 7:48

I've left the group chats. In my friend group there was a big group chat and I leave the group chats. I've left them over and over again. I don't like to be in that space where people are talking crap about others, talking about things that I don't feel like are up-leveling and are, yeah, just next level, and so that, for me, is like they've taught me. I could say, oh, forget my friends, all the things, but I'm like, no, they've taught me how to set boundaries. They've taught me how I can still be friends with people and not engage in particular conversations. They've taught me that I don't have to. I can make other friends. I can find other groups of people that are going to feed my soul in good and new ways.

Lunden Souza: 8:31

I've had issues within my family, big struggles with my grandfather that took years and years for me to work through. I would be so angry at him. I would wake up in the middle of the night screaming, crying, sobbing. And then now I'm at a point where he came to visit me him and my grandma and my mom last weekend and he told me like three times that I was amazing. He was like you're so amazing, I'm learning so much from you. And I was like I never believed that that language was amazing. He was like you're so amazing, I'm learning so much from you. And I was like I never believed that that language was possible to come out of my grandfather towards anybody, to be honest, let alone me, the person in his family that went against the grain, that didn't do what he thought we were supposed to do. Wild, right, wild.

Lunden Souza: 9:19

And then I think about this guy I dated when I was in college. He cheated on me. I found out in the most like. When I think about that version of me, I cry for her, I cry with her. I've worked through a lot of that, but he cheated on me and it was devastating. I was devastated.

Lunden Souza: 9:42

I could have held on to that story of all, men cheat and he's toxic and that happened to me and that's why X, y or Z. But now when I look at it, I'm like, oh my gosh, that relationship taught me so much. It taught me how to love myself even more. It just taught me so many things on so many levels, and so that's why I love the way that I coach my clients on breathwork, written exposure therapy, even hypnosis, visualization really changing our subconscious belief around what happened, because we can carry that stuff and that's disease and that is just like back pain and that is toxicity within our body. To be honest, we want to talk about toxicity, right, that internal world, our poor detoxification organs, with all the stress and all the trauma and all the stories that we choose to tell of what happened to us and why we're this way, in a place of stuckness. I feel like changing from toxic to teachers in our lives and being able to literally write out that story of like this is what happened, and then make that because matter, because this happened to me. Now here's how I've overcome it, how I'm going to make a bigger ripple in the world, how I'm going to transcend some of the hardness and bring more gifts to the world.

Lunden Souza: 11:10

And so I challenge you this week to think about these people in your life that you might have labeled as toxic, and I think honestly, like I said, I've had some incredible guests on my podcast. I've spent hours in conversation with people off the microphone just talking about deep pain, right, and the human brain and body and spirit is so resilient. You can have people that you would consider, oh my gosh. They have every right to believe that person was horrible and disgusting and toxic and oh my gosh. But they're choosing love instead. It is possible, and so I challenge you this week to think about those people that you are labeling as toxic, that you're letting that toxic track play in your mind, and figure out what they taught you right? What are you grateful for? How could you not have become who you are today without them, without that challenging moment? And I want to hear from you.

Lunden Souza: 12:10

So, if this episode resonates with you, send me a DM on Instagram @lifelikelunden L-I-F-E-L-I-K-E-L-U-N-D-E-N. And this is our quick mindset reset for today how to transform toxic people into teachers. Who comes to mind for you? I know somebody is coming to mind for you. Think about it, hang out in this space, you know, pray about it, meditate on it and share it with me in the DMs. I want to hear from you. Have a beautiful day. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Self Love and Sweat, the Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode or were inspired by it or something resonated with you, do me a favor and share this episode with a friend, someone that you think might enjoy this episode as well. That's the ultimate compliment and the best way to make this podcast ripple out into the world of others, and also you can leave us a review up to five stars wherever you're listening to the podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you at the next episode. I appreciate you.