Episode 228: What to Do When ‘You Can’t Do Anything Right!’ with Coleen Greco
If you're breathing, you've probably had one of these negative thoughts: I suck, I can never do anything right. What's wrong with me? Why does everybody else know this but me?
Today’s guest, Coach Coleen Greco shares the moment that she realized she was doing that to herself, and how she started to change things. She now teaches her clients what she calls the SNAP Method™, which I think you will enjoy if you’ve been feeling stuck.
Coleen is a compassionate, empathetic, and violently authentic human being. But she wasn't always like that. In many ways, she has been plagued by her own self-defeating thoughts, which she generously shares in this episode. Colleen calls herself a Joyologist. She provides mindset and nutrition coaching, as well as personal training to people who want to reclaim the joy in their life.
Note this episode has mentions of suicide.
Rewriting negative thinking as a Joyologist
In college, Coleen says she pursued the money. She went for the highest-paying internship, earned an MBA and started working for EMC, now Dell. She did this for 26 years.
“I just woke up one day and realized this is not my life and then made it switch,” says Coleen. “I never got quiet enough with myself to realize I had another option.”
Six years ago, her 10-year-old son had a suicide attempt (he was unsuccessful and is now doing well!). Coleen and her family were shattered. They struggled to find help. Coleen says she ate and drank until she decided to take back her health.
“In these types of situations, there's very little that you can control, but I can control how I respond to situations, I can control how I respond to my own emotions, and literally the food and drink that go into my body,” says Coleen.
“I started to lose the weight and was working with a nutrition coach who was not willing to help me develop strategies to keep the weight off.”
She says the nutrition coach didn’t see the connection between mindset and food choices. Coleen knew she could do it better. It was through her own healing journey and helping to heal her family where Coleen realized they had to center everything around joy.
Joy became almost an obsession. “It was my choice to just see the beauty in everything, even in the darkest of moments, to be in a place of gratitude for the opportunity to change so much of what was going on,” says Coleen.
It’s not that it's not painful and not that it's not real, but there's always a next. There is the ability here to choose not only what goes into your body, but also how you view that choice.
Grounded in self-love
If you lack self-love, then generally speaking, maybe you're not feeding yourself the very best foods. For example, Coleen says, if something upsets you, you might run to the pantry and need a bag of chips or a package of Oreos, (which she has also done).
But as you begin to develop self-love, you start to say I deserve better than this. I deserve the best of the best. Why not me? All of those negative thoughts start to shift, and it just leads to this level of freedom and opportunity.
Discovering the SNAP Method
Coleen says the SNAP Method found her. She says when she started writing and thinking through the triggers, she realized if she was telling herself one story, then that means she could tell a different one. It’s a battle with the ego that’s trying to protect you.
When the negative stories come up, and you feel triggered, that's the ego saying, here's the story. Remember, you're not smart enough. You're not good enough. And I have the evidence right here.
Breaking the emotional connection to those stories and then retiring those stories is really the power. For Coleen, it was how she kept the weight off.
She says food’s job is to keep you alive, but we put all these unfair expectations on food, and that's what gets us into trouble.
What is the SNAP Method
SNAP is an acronym.
Stop: When the trigger comes, you simply stop and let it wash over you. The trigger isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Notice: Get out your journal and record all the symptoms in the stories as you believe them to be. Symptoms are the visceral response.
Accept or analyze: Go back and review your entry and separate the facts from the emotions.
Practice gratitude: You want to thank the trigger for coming because it's your body's way of saying that you still have work to do. It's being kind and compassionate and gracious to yourself because at the end of the day, you're human.
Remember, the negative thoughts you tell yourself can be rewritten. Looking at where they came from and challenging and analyzing them can help you tell yourself a different story.
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