What's Inside Your Hula Hoop?

Hello my friends!  Welcome to episode 77 of the Addiction Unlimited Podcast, I’m your coach, Angela Pugh. And thank you for hanging out with me today, spending some quality time together, listening to the pod.

Today, I’m going to talk about your hula hoop. To some of you, I may sound like a crazy person, and some of you may be familiar with the saying, “you can only control what fits inside your hula hoop”. The only things that fit inside my hula hoop are me and Henry, my dog. Or, my boss, as I call him. So the only things I really have any power over, are me and Henry. And we are going to get further into this and break it down in a few minutes…. But first!

I want to shout out to all of you who are getting the Recovery Starter Kit! I’m so excited for you to have your hands on this and to hear all the great feedback on how helpful it is! I want you to imagine what it would feel like to have a daily plan in place- support, guidance, and the exact action plan you need to stay sober- what would that feel like? How would that affect your confidence and would that affect your life??

It’s huge!

And, if we’re 100% honest- if you don’t have a plan, if you don’t take action and do something to support your recovery, then you aren’t feeling great, right? What would it feel like to continue NOT having a plan, and wake up six months from now in exactly the same place- hungover again, feeling terrible, hating life.

I know that moment all too well. Feeling disgusted with myself and not even able to figure out the first step to the first step.  You have heard me say this before, I couldn’t even figure out how to start stopping. I desperately needed a plan and someone to guide me. I couldn’t fight my way out of a paper bag, lol.  I was a hot mess, my friends. And I would have loved something like the Recovery Starter Kit- a super simple process that doesn’t take a ton of time, you don’t have to go anywhere to use it, and you get to make your own rules! It’s unfreakinbelievable!

Then, you get that self-confidence you miss, and you get to feel good, and you know you are taking the right actions to be sober and feel happy. It’s almost too easy!

So anyway, I will link to the Recovery Starter Kit in the show notes so you can get there right from your podcast app- I’m so excited that you guys are doing it and loving it. It is the plan that works for me, and I use it every day. So I love that you are getting it, too!

Now let’s dive into your hula hoop and see how much stuff and how many people you are trying to cram in there…

It is definitely no secret that I am a certified control freak. I don’t have a desire to control other people, but I am extremely driven to control my self, my surroundings, and my life. I think I let people go a long time ago- especially addicted people because we are so stubborn and obstinate that the moment we feel like someone is trying to control us, we freak out and throw some sort of temper tantrum.

Maybe it’s a screaming and yelling fit, or maybe it’s the silent treatment or some good old-fashioned passive aggressive BS- or picking a fight or withholding affection… however the tantrum manifests, it’s usually there if you look for it.

I really like to leave people alone. This world is challenging, on a thousand levels. It’s challenging for me every single day and what that tells me is, it’s challenging for everyone else, too. So to me, it just makes sense that I don’t want to make your day or your life harder by judging you or criticizing you or being mad at you because you didn’t do what I wanted you to-  I want to make your life a better place by loving you and accepting you exactly as you are. And, that’s what I want in return. If I want to be accepted and I want people to be kind to me and patient with me as I work through my drama and trauma, then I am fully prepared to offer the same kindness, acceptance and patience to you. Right? To everyone I see all the time.

And I learned this lesson a long time ago- when I was still trapped in that victim mentality, and I thought every time someone didn’t do what I wanted, or they talked to me in a way I felt was unacceptable, I felt like it was this great injustice against me. Like, how dare they do something I don’t like.

My sponsor said to me once, “I want you to think about holding a hula hoop”. “Okay”, I said.

“What all fits inside your hula hoop”? And I was like, what the hell is this dude talking about? And I looked at him and said, “Me”. To which he responded, “Exactly. And that’s everything you have control of. So if it doesn’t fit inside your hula hoop, leave it alone”!

It was a moment that was equally frustrating and life-changing all at the same time, lol. But I love to think about it in those super simple terms. If it doesn’t fit in my hula hoop, I can’t control it and I don’t need to expend a lot of time and energy TRYING to control it.

This is actually a huge relief. Because, honestly, I am a full-time job. I don’t really have a ton of time to worry about everybody around me and trying to teach them a lesson or make them act the way I think is appropriate when I need to be focusing that energy on myself and my own growth.

As frustrating as it is, we, as people, are perfectly allowed to have thoughts and opinions that disagree with you. I am allowed to have my own opinion, and I am allowed to talk about it whenever I want to and to anyone I choose. Just like our friends and family members and co-workers are allowed to disagree with with us, it’s not for us to judge their thoughts or opinions, or to feel wounded when they have a different thought process or they do things a different way than we do.

My responsibility is to make sure that I am being the best version of myself, to make sure that I am being the person I want to be and effecting the world around me in a way that I am proud of.

As you see yourself standing inside your hula hoop, think about who you want to be. You’ve heard me talk about my personal code of conduct- this is what I base my life and my person on- love, service, and gratitude.

First of all- gratitude will change your life. It’s the easiest decision to make on a minute-by-minute basis. Am I being negative and nasty and judgmental? Or am I recognizing all the things I have to be grateful for in any given moment?

I remember one time when I was living in Los Angeles, I was probably 25 or 26 and I was managing this amazing restaurant on Sunset Blvd, and there was a group of servers standing around talking- 3 or 4 girls talking about their hair. And each of the girls was pointing out something irritating about their hair and how frustrating it was, and we had one girl from South Africa and she had this beautiful accent and she was gorgeous and she had caught a piece of the hair conversation- and as she walked by she chimed in, “I’m just grateful I have hair”.

And, initially I thought it was kind of a weird comment- but later I asked her what she meant by that, being grateful for hair. And she explained to me that only 2 years before she was diagnosed with cancer and lost all of her hair during chemo. Now, she didn’t care what piece of hair curled the wrong direction or never laid down, or frizzed in the humidity- she was just grateful to have hair at all.

What a beautiful lesson in gratitude. See, we have this built in sense of entitlement. Like not only should we have hair, but that it should do exactly what we want and look the way we want or we feel mad and cheated somehow. And, btw, I am guilty of this in an EPIC way because I have naturally curly hair that has a mind of it’s own and is similar to a chia pet where a single drop of water makes it grow to epic proportions. And oftentimes, I feel like my life revolves around my hair and what mood it is in or if it’s a disaster or if I went to the gym that day or if I have to wash it that day then I can’t do any filming because I have to work around it’s process and being presentable.

When, the truth is, I am blessed  with a phenomenal head of hair that is healthy and crazy and enough for 3 people. And even when it is really pissing me off, I have to remember that my circumstances could be very different, and I get back in gratitude for the blessing of hair that pisses me off.

Gratitude is a powerful decision and will absolutely change your life and who you are as a human being. So inside my hula hoop, I make sure I am in gratitude throughout the day. Some days are more of a struggle than others, and that’s okay too. Because if you are trying, even 10%, you are doing more than most people.

Instead of focusing on others, you have to turn that focus on yourself and see who you are being and how you are being- and are you making yourself proud? Are you behaving in a way that you feel good about?

We’ve talked before about getting really clear on your vision of yourself. What are the qualities of the human you want to be in the world? The parent you want to be? The spouse you want to be? Who do you want to be in your community?

Is it patient, kind, honest? Living with integrity? Dependable? Strong? Capable? Open?

Or do you want to be the person that blames everything on everyone else, who can never recognize their own part in anything or own it, who throws a fit and starts a fight as soon as something doesn’t go their way?

When I recognized that’s the person I was being, is when I started getting into some serious work on my self and taking responsibility for my part in EVERY area of my life. I used to freak out the very second something didn’t go my way or the very second something happened that struck a chord of fear in me.

I remember one time, when I was maybe a year sober, and I was backing out of my garage and for one split second my car did this really weird thing when I was shifting- it was literally one second. And, for those of you who don’t know, I am a car fanatic. I grew up in a family of car people, although we like very different kinds of cars, but I am car crazy. I love cars I follow cars as they are being developed, I go to the car shows- car crazy.

I had a nice car, and I always had this incredible fear of something major going wrong with it because it would be super expensive to fix. So when that split second of my car shifting weird happened, it struck a chord of fear in me.

Of course I didn’t recognize that in the moment, I just freaked out and threw a temper tantrum, lol. And my sponsor called right as it happened, now that’s a higher power moment if ever there was one, he always called at the perfect moment. As soon as I picked up the phone I just started yelling about my car and how my life was over, the transmission is going out, it’s going to cost thousands of dollars to fix it, I couldn’t afford it… I was just losing my mind, stuck in drama and chaos with the committee, being completely irrational.

My sponsor says to me, “Is it driving right now?”

“Yes,” I said, “It seems to be fine”. And I started to feel a  little embarrassed.. and he calmly said

“Okay. Why don’t we see how it goes the rest of the day, and if it does it again, I know a guy who works on transmissions and I think you have his number, too- because IT’S YOUR DAD!”

And in that single moment of him being rational, my fear started to fall away. Because, if something major was wrong with my car, I would have figured out a solution. Because I always figure out a solution. And he was right, my dad is a transmission guy. Like my biggest car fear on the planet, is probably the most manageable thing that could go wrong, but the committee tells me it’s worthy of a little temper tantrum. Because the committee needs me to be stuck in drama so it can run wild and continue being in control.

I reacted like that to a lot of things- instant drama and chaos, forever trapped in fear- fear of everything. Fearful of people hurting me, not liking me, fear of being broke or running out of money, fear of never accomplishing anything because I didn’t know how, fear of never being anything. I was a giant ball of fear.

When your hula hoop is a place of fear and anxiety, or anger and resentment,  with no plan or goals or action- it becomes a hostile environment. And when the hostile environment is inside your hula hoop, that means it’s your responsibility to get that place cleaned up and figure out who you want to be instead of who the committee has trained you to be, and start taking some solid daily action to feel better and be better.

I can not stress enough the DAILY ACTION part. Small action every day will get you way farther than trying to make big grandiose actions that are only sustainable for a minute.

This is why I created all the tools at myrecverytoolbox.com. Go over there and sign up for one of the  tools to start taking action-  the Mindset Makeover has been super popular- and, for those of you who have gotten the Mindset Makeover, it’s a 5 day series of videos, are you continuing to use them and listen to them on a daily basis?

I hand-picked those 5 videos to appeal to different personality types and learning styles- so choose the ones you like, SAVE THEM, and listen to them every day. This is how you begin to retrain the committee.

Take some time and think about the qualities of the person you want inside your hula hoop- and think about what that looks like in daily behavior.

If you want to be dependable, that means you do the things you say you’re going to do. Call when you say, be on time, get things done on time, show up when you say you will- that’s dependable.

If you want to build your personal integrity that means you want to do the RIGHT thing, all the time. You don’t just do the right thing when it will get you praise or get you recognized or get you an ego boost- you do the right thing because it’s the right thing. You do your best in everything you do, you go the extra mile because it’s the right thing to do.

Maybe you want to be less judgmental, more open and fair. That means you keep those negative thoughts about people and things to a minimum. Check yourself and see how critical you are of people and places, and people driving, and your house, or the food at the restaurant- that negativity spreads like a fungus and it will destroy you, mentally and physically.

You’ve heard me talk about this before, I used to be super negative. Every sentence out of my mouth started with the words “I hate”- I hate it when that thing happens, I hate it when they say that, I hate it when they do it like that. Or, if it wasn’t ‘I hate’, it was “I don’t like…”

I mean everything- I would complain about the food at the restaurant because I didn’t like a certain thing on the plate, I would complain about my gym and how they organized the locker room, I would complain about every single thing in the world. And I realized that that negativity drains the energy out of the room and all the people around me. It’s exhausting.

And that is definitely not the person I want to be and not the affect I want to have on my surroundings.

So look at your thoughts and words and start looking for things to be happy about. Don’t waste your time and energy focusing on the negative aspects, focus on the good things. If you don’t like a certain thing at the restaurant, move into gratitude that you are in a restaurant with family and friends and there are a lot of people in the world that would love the opportunity to be in a restaurant with family and friends.

All you have control over is what fits inside your hula hoop. Spend your time and your focus on what’s inside the hula hoop, instead of focusing on pointing fingers at everyone and everything outside the hula hoop.

When I started doing this work, I made a mind map- and I will share a picture of my actual mind map in the FB group- if you haven’t joined the group yet you can do that at facebook.com/groups/addictionunlimited- my mind map is a simple piece of paper where I did a little brain storm of all the qualities of the person I want to be- so when I start feeling off track, or I start acting a little crazy, I can look over my mind map and see where I’m off and I can see which of those qualities I need to put some focus on, and I can get my head right again. It allows me to get centered again and remember my direction so I can start taking the right actions to get back there.

I want your hula hoop to be an amazing and relaxing and comfortable place for you. I know we’ll have some great conversation about this in the FB group so get over there and join if you haven’t – facebook.com/groups/addictionunlimited.

As usual, I will link to all the resources in the show notes- My Recovery Toolbox where you can find a ton of support and resources, as well as the different ways you can work directly with me to get fast results and feel better immediately, and if you have questions and want more info about a program, schedule a free consultation with me and we’ll get you whatever you need!

And if you don’t follow me on Insta, please take a second and do that @addictionunlimited

I hope you are having a fantastic sober day, I’m so proud of you for doing this thing and for being willing to work on yourself and be a better human, have a great day and I’ll see you next week!