Coffee Chats w/ Dr. D

Hello, Cadre. I don't know what's going on with my hair. Anyway, side note, welcome to my coffee chat. It's me, Dr. D, and I do have my coffee. I just got a little bit left. Just got out of another session which was quite interesting. I think my phone is crooked. That's okay. So I want to. I'm been reflecting a lot on my life and this process of change because I'm noticing people are starting to become stuck in things, and we're stuck in old ways, and we're stuck in old habits, and we have desire to change, but not really knowing what the process looks like.

And I think it depends on the situation. But this is also the time, if you guys remember, like, it's March, right? I think this is when the pandemic hit just five years ago. It's crazy how time flies, right? But we're still feeling the effects of that big change that the world experienced. But I want to bring you back into something a little smaller. So the other day, I finally had some time where I had nothing on my schedule. I had nothing planned. And let me tell you, that felt so good to just wake up when I wanted to do whatever I felt like doing, or if I didn't feel like doing anything at all, I had the.

The flexibility to do that, and that was nice. I wish I had more days like that. I wish I could. I wish I could schedule that more often, but that feels like that would be part of a routine that I'm creating. And I don't like that feeling of making it forced to have time off. That makes sense. But during my day off. Hello there. On my day off, I was going through my garage and just kind of organizing things, and there were a few boxes. And I just moved to a new home a few about two years ago now, and I found two boxes that I thought I knew what was in the box.

And then when I pulled them down, there were items in there that I forgot I had. And actually there were some items that I had been looking for, so I'm glad I had some time to go through them. But in one of the boxes, I had a bunch of photo albums. And if y'all know anything about me, I love to document through photos. Hello, Speak. Wonder. I document with photos. I've been getting into videos lately. I've. I was challenged to do that about two years ago, and it's been a really interesting experience because I feel my creative side come out when I'm making videos, and I just do it for myself.

But I'd like to share it with the world too. Yes, take notes, girl. This is a good one. So. But I was going through the photo album and it was photos of my son and photos of me when he was, you know, a young mom. I was 22 when I had him. And there was one particular photo that it was one of. I remember it being one of my favorite pictures of me and my son. And I think my son was about maybe 18 months or 2 years old. So I was young and I looked at that picture and who I am today. I looked at it and I was like, who is that girl?

Who is she? And in that moment I recognize this sense of I'm not that same person anymore. And that feeling of recognizing that I've changed was just like mind blowing, right? So if you think about the relationship you have with yourself, we should be the most connected person to us, right? Because it's us. We know ourselves inside and out. There are parts of ourselves that we don't know about that others see. Or there might be parts of us that no one sees, that it's just out there. It's unknown until we discover it.

But I think I know myself pretty well and I notice how I've grown individually. I've grown mentally, spiritually. I've grown in different relationships, but I never thought about how I've grown in the relationship with myself. And so looking at that photo, it brought me to this space of, you're not that young girl anymore, you're not that young mom anymore. And when I looked at the picture, I had a smile on my face. And I shared this in my recent YouTube video, if you go to the Real Dr. Leslie on YouTube.

I started some video sessions there, but I shared in that video that I saw sadness in the eyes of that girl. And it was me. It was part of me, the 23 or 24 year old me. But at the time, I didn't know that I was sad, I didn't know that I was depressed. I just remember going through the motions, doing what I had to do, focusing on my child because he had special needs, he has a heart condition, he has surgeries. And I didn't have time to think about me. So I was disconnected from myself in those years.

But I had no idea until now when I'm able to reflect back and see the growth I've had as an individual where I feel very connected to who I am. I know exactly who I am. I know, you know, the things that I like. I know what I don't like. I know what I'm willing to tolerate. I'm putting up boundaries right, in all areas. And at that time, I knew nothing about those things. I knew nothing about what I needed as a human being other than I needed sleep. I just remember that, always being tired. But that's because I was just doing too much.

And so I want to challenge you today to think about the relationship you have with yourself. And a question with that is, how do you know that you've changed? What is the evidence or any signal that you have changed as a person over time? Okay, change doesn't happen. Well, let me take that back. Change can happen instantly when we are committed to the change and we decide. But the process of change doesn't happen overnight. It's not something that happens right then, right there. The process of change, if you know anything about the stages of change, the process of change is something that we.

We think about it, we wonder. We get an idea planted in us from somebody else or something we've seen or heard. And we might sit with it for a little bit, but it's not likely that we're going to have this idea and be like, instantly, I'm going to take that idea. I'm going to change right here, right now, right? Sometimes that process of change takes years. Sometimes that process of change can happen in a week. Depends on what the change is. But I think if we had a better connection to ourselves, the process of change for what we desire would happen a lot faster.

I don't know. What do you guys think about that? So I've been reflecting on who I was, who I am today, and now I'm in the space of dreaming. Who do I want to be? Right? And I get to choose who I become next. I don't have to allow life circumstances to mold me and shape me. They will impact me, but they don't have to be the main factor. I guess they don't have to be the main factor of our change. So decide today. Have you changed? And if you haven't, why not? If there's something you've been wanting to change about yourself and consider that relationship with yourself, that doesn't require anyone else's involvement.

It doesn't require anyone else's opinion. It doesn't require anyone's agreement with what you want to do for yourself and who you want to be. It's all about you. Okay, that's all I got. I hope y'all enjoyed that. Let me know in the comments here. Drop a coffee mug and let me know that you picked that up. If there's a little nugget you want to share about what change has been like for you, how do you know you've changed? How do you know that you're changing? And sometimes we. We might even ignore the process in between.

Other people can see it sometimes before we see it in ourselves. Right. And there might be moments later, because we stopped focusing on ourselves, that we, you know, we just have a random moment, like I did, where you're able to see, yeah, I have changed, and I'm owning it, and I'm loving it. All right? So I hope you guys have a wonderful day, a wonderful week, and don't forget your coffee. Okay, bye.