Frame Co-founder and CCO Sage Grazer and Jenna share a wide-ranging conversation about how we can deepen our relationship with ourselves. Sage shares a variety of self reflection exercises to understand our thoughts and behaviors and employ coping mechanisms to feel better. We explore tools to manage anxiety, avoid ‘fortune telling’ our fears, and reroute negative thought patterns. Awareness is the catalyst of our evolution, and Sage explains how we can use it guide our personal growth, promote feelings of wholeness, and make positive life changes.
Simple Tools to Take Care of Our Mental Health
How often do you think about how your past experiences are influencing your present thoughts and behaviors?
Frame Co-founder and LCSW Sage Grazer studies the interplay of our experiences and biology and helps us understand how the seed of our reactions today often trace back to an experience we’ve had in the past. “It starts with your first experiences; That’s when your relational patterns, and as you get older, your beliefs about yourself, others, the world, and what the future holds all start to develop. A lot of times those beliefs are unconscious. We don’t realize that we look at the world through our own lens and that lens was shaped by the experiences we’ve had.”
Our experiences shape us every day and it’s only through examining them, and the thoughts and feelings they provoke, that we can begin to understand what and why that lens is reflecting back to us. Sage shares a variety of ways to deepen our understanding of ourselves and exercises to prompt the journey, from examining past beliefs to identifying what we need to feel whole and what triggers our anxiety. They all share a simple premise: It’s only when we become aware of what we believe, feel, and need that we can we respond to it. Nothing is unchangeable, she assures, but we need to have the courage to start. Our personal growth journeys begin when we bring conscious awareness and effort to understand, reexamine, and rework those beliefs to fit where we are today, she adds.
Sage’s episode feels like a mini-class in getting to know and taking better care of ourselves. I’m so grateful for the many tools she shared and hope they’ll offer you a similar sense of clarity and direction as you navigate your journey.
Here’s a glimpse of what we discuss…
- Understanding how our experiences influence our beliefs, behavior, and biology
- Consciously utilizing that self-awareness to catalyze our personal growth and improve our relationships with ourselves and others
- Why we can’t cope with anxiety until we identify what triggers it and how to do so
- A simple question to reroute negative thought patterns: Is this a helpful or harmful thought?
- Strategies to avoid ‘fortune-telling’ our fears and futures
- Caring for our mental wellbeing by checking in with yourself regularly and fulfilling your needs
- Gratitude and grounding practices to stay present and optimistic
- Overcoming our attachment to familiarity to make positive life changes and why our comfort zones aren’t always comfortable