Welcome to the Daily Send. I'm Molly Carmel and this is the podcast I always wish existed. A bite sized on the ground spiritual note that can shift your thinking and your outlook on life to help make us all a little bit more awake, alive and ascending. So I know that everybody on the pod might be sick of me talking about the weather, but I have one more weather story for you.
I mean, I'll probably have a lot more. I love talking about the weather, so I'll probably have lots more weather stories for you. But this is a good one, I promise. Stay tuned, tell me what you think.
Okay, so here in the Northeast, the snow finally melted. Like, actually melted. Like, there was a five foot mound of snow in my driveway that I was like, well, this will never go anywhere. And it's gone, you know, and just like the episode that I told you my mantra, the snow will melt.
The snow has melted. And the day before Danny's surgery, I took him to our nature walk, like this beautiful arboretum that we go to, which is our absolute favorite thing to do because I figured we would be able to see the ground again. And let me tell you something, when I saw the wood chips on the path and I saw the dirt, I mean, I swear to you, I almost got on my knees and kissed it. I was so excited that life was coming back to life.
And so then we got to this one part of our normal trail, and it's a section that connects to a middle school. And so it's a really, really, really well worn walkway. Like tons of people walk on it. And interestingly, this one part of the path was still completely covered in snow, actually, much like ice, like really thick, icy, packed down snow.
And it was only that part. Everywhere else was really bare ground, like spring on its way, life returning. But this one stretch was frozen solid and incredibly hard to walk on, by the way. And I was so confused by this that I actually went home and got a little nerdy about it and went and did some research on it.
And here's what I learned. When lots of people walk on snow, in the way that this path is built, it gets packed down really, really, really tightly and it starts to behave differently than other snow. And so it becomes really dense and compresses. And as a result, it melts much, much, much more slowly than the snow around it.
And so all of those footsteps, the hundreds of kids walking to school every day, all of us crazy dog owners walking our dogs even in the middle of the snow, it accidentally turned that snow into a mini ice skating rink. And the very thing that made the path so well traveled is the thing that made the snow so hard to melt. And I mean, this thing hit me square in the eye. I stopped walking because it reminded me so much of how our patterns work, like how our habits work.
Right? And so I hate so much when people say that thoughts become things because it's not true. It's just not true. It's much more complex than that, right?
Thoughts, repeated thoughts become beliefs. So you think something enough, it becomes a belief, right? And then eventually these beliefs become behaviors. And repeated behaviors become deeply, deeply worn grooves like that pack down snow that we walk on every single day without even realizing it.
And then we wonder why these deeply worn behaviors are so hard to change. And then to add insult to injury, we judge ourselves for being stuck, right? We look around it and it seems like everyone else's snow is melted, right? Seems like there's a lot of ground to see and we're still standing on a sheet of ice.
But here's the thing. The reason that snow is the last to melt isn't because something is wrong with it. Like the reason that snow isn't melting, it isn't bad. It's because it's been walked on the most.
And the most well traveled path is the hardest one to solve. Right? That's not a character flaw. I think that's physics.
Right. And so that brings me to our pocket stage today. One of my favorites on the show, Pema Children. I love her so much.
We talked about her a lot, a lot, a lot on the show. And this is from her book, the Places that scare you. I love her also. She really does not pretend to have it all figured out.
She's a real deal, you know, she just tells the truth about how hard it is to change. And so she writes. It is said that we can't attain enlightenment, let alone feel contentment and joy without seeing who we are and what we do, without seeing our patterns and habits. The painful thing is that when we buy into harshness, we are practicing harshness.
The more we do it, the stronger these qualities become. How sad it is that we become so expert at causing harm to ourselves and others. The trick then is to practice gentleness and letting go. Woof.
Let me read that again for me and for you and for you in the back. It is said that we can't attain enlightenment, let alone feel contentment and joy without seeing who we are and what we do, without seeing our patterns and habits. The painful thing is that when we buy into harshness, we are practicing harshness. The more we do it, the stronger these qualities become.
How sad it is that we become so expert at causing harm to ourselves and others. The trick then is to practice gentleness and letting go. I love that the trick is to practice gentleness and letting go. Because, I mean, that's kind of the part that gets me.
Because my instinct, and maybe yours, too, is to attack my patterns, right? To judge myself or still having them. To look at other people and think, why is there snow melting my snow isn't right? What am I doing wrong?
Why am I still here? And that harshness, that frustration that we're not changing fast enough, that we're still stuck, that we should be further along by now. That is the walking. That's the footsteps packing the snow down harder.
Every time we judge ourselves for the pace of our own thaw, we're adding another layer of compression. We're making the very thing we want to do change even harder to change. And so what Pemachodren is saying is pretty life altering, right? She's actually saying the complete opposite.
She's saying the more you practice harshness towards yourself, the harder the breaking of the pattern becomes, right? You're actually packing the snow down more. And the trick, I like that word, too, trick is gentleness. And so our word of the day today is thaw.
You know, thawing is not a sudden thing. We don't thaw all at once. Thawing is slow and gradual and requires warmth and gentleness, right? Not force.
And as much as I wish I could, right? We can't take a hammer to pack down snow and expect it to turn into spring. And we can't stream at ourselves and shame ourselves into changing a pattern that took years and often decades to form. It's just not how thawing works.
Thawing requires patience and warmth and sunlight. And sometimes even accepting that you're going to be the last patch of snow on the trail. Not because you're doing it wrong, but because your path has been the most walked on. And so, you know, what if instead of judging the pattern, you give it credit for how deeply worn it is?
Like, what if we start to honor the fact that they say 17 miles in the forest, 17 miles out, right? It took a long time to build, so it's going to take some time to soften and, like, think about the patterns in your life that really feel the most stuck. Maybe it's the way you reach for food when you're anxious, not because you're hungry, because it's the Only thing that's ever quelled your anxiety. Or maybe it's the way you abandon yourself in relationships, right?
Saying yes when you mean no. Swallowing your needs, making yourself smaller so nobody leaves, right? Or maybe it's that inner voice that tells you you're behind, you're not enough, you're failing, right? A voice that's so familiar that it doesn't even register as a thought anymore.
It just feels like your truth, right? I mean, unless you're a real exception, those patterns did not show up yesterday. They have been walked on for years and decades, right? And they.
They've become entrenched for a reason. You know, I. In my research, I learned that packed down snow and ice actually protect the ground beneath them. Makes me want to cry.
They actually that that pack down snow and ice insulates the soil. It keeps the root systems alive underneath, right? Holds in moisture. So ice isn't just stubbornness, it's armor.
And it's formed. It's formed so it can protect what's below. And I mean, I'm pretty sure those patterns do the same thing, right? That unhealthy relationship with food, protecting you from feelings that felt unsurvivable, People pleasing, protecting you from abandonment, perfectionism, Protecting you from criticism that could feel devastating, right?
So these patterns weren't random. They're built layer by layer, footstep by footstep, in the name of survival and protection. And my goodness, if you're anything like me, they were your best solution at the time. And in the internal family systems therapy, very popular ifs, you know, they have this principle, there are no bad parts, right?
So every part of us, even. And especially the parts of us we don't like, and even. And especially the parts of us that feel like they're ruining our life, those developed for a reason and they are trying to help. And you can't shame them into leaving.
You just can't. Shame doesn't melt any ice. It just actually packs the snow down harder. And that's what Pema children's saying too, right?
The more we practice harshness towards our patterns, the stronger these patterns become. Like walking on that snow, every time you beat yourself up, we're still being stuck. You're packing it down tighter, you're making it denser, you're guaranteeing that it takes longer to melt. And so if you're looking at everyone else's trailer wondering why their snow is gone and yours isn't, by the way, usually never true.
Just comparing your insides to their outsides, right? That's just Another footstep on the ice. And so I love this trick that she's talking about, right? Gentleness, Gentleness towards the pattern, Gentleness towards yourself for having it.
Gentleness towards the fact that this pattern was built to protect you. And I really do think about the rest of that trail. You know, all the parts where the snow had already melted. That snow wasn't like better snow.
It wasn't more motivated snow. It just hadn't been walked on as much and probably had more access to the sun. Less weight on it, right? Less compression, less history.
Your deepest patterns have the most history, they've been walked on the most, they're carrying the most weight, and underneath them, they're really protecting something tender, something that needed armor at one point and it may not anymore. And you just can't shame that away. You can only warm it slowly with gentleness, with the kind of patience that says, you know, I see why you're here. I really understand what you're doing for me, and I'm ready to let the thaw begin.
So your reflective question for the day, what pattern are you judging yourself for that might just need more time and warmth to thaw? And so listen, if this is landing for you, if you've really been stuck in a pattern with food or your body or the way you eat or think about eating or starting over on another diet over and over again and you've been hammering away at it, judging yourself, you know, I want you to know something. In my Stop Starting over system, we do not hammer, we thaw. We have very, very hot lamps over there at the Stop Starting over system.
And we bring a ton of warmth and gentleness to these patterns that have been walked on the hardest. Because that's how real, lasting change happens. Not through force, through care. And so if you're really tired of the snow being so packed, I would love to talk.
And you can either go to the show notes where you can sign up for call with me, or you can go to my website, mollycarmel.com and I am right here with you ascenders, standing on that last patch of ice myself. And I'm just trusting the thaw. And hey, it is the 100th episode of Daily sent today. Woohoo.
Triple digits. I really can't believe it. I'm like, the show is really changing my life in ways that I never expected. And I just want to really say quickly that the fact that you're here listening, ascending with me, and we grow every month, it's so exciting.
It just means the world to me. I love this. I love doing this, and I'm gonna keep on going. So, listen, if this episode hit you in the chest, share it.
Even if it didn't share it. Send it to someone. I just want to make a huge Ascender crew. That's all I want for Christmas is a huge Ascender crew.
And I want to do 100 more of these with you, and 100 more after that. We rise together. Until next time.