Podcast Summary:
In this reflective year-end episode of Wellness Wednesday, Beth, Robin, and Jeff slow things down to explore what the past year has taught them about growth, anxiety, self-doubt, and resilience. Through personal stories—screen-share mishaps, returning to music, professional pressure, and DIY anxiety—they unpack how unrealistic expectations and negative thought loops can hold us back. The conversation reframes resolutions into gentler themes like peace, happiness, and self-check-ins. With warmth and honesty, the trio emphasizes persistence, self-compassion, and recognizing the strengths that helped us through challenges—reminding listeners that progress often begins with a pause.
Check out all the Wellness Wednesday episodes.
Show Hosts:
Robin Ennis on the web at www.robinennislcsw.com
Beth Gustin, LPC, NCC, EMDRIA Approved Consultant, CAGCS, PLGS
Www.transitioningthroughchange.com
You can message Beth and Robin by calling 612-367-6093. They are looking forward to hearing from you!
Thanks for listening!
Beth: So if you’re just joining us.
Robin: We’re embarking on an interesting topic.
Beth: We’re in the middle of a conversation with Geoff Thompson, Beth Dustin and Robin Ennis.
Intro Voice: 3,2,1..
Song: Well, this Wednesday with Beth and Robin going to settle it down. Oh yeah. Get your feet planted on the ground. Wellness Wednesday.
Beth: It’s like they’re wired for worst case scenarios and the negativity thought loops. I think we have to work a lot harder to wire our brains to think positively.
Jeff: I think when you stop, you actually put the brakes on a few things and you’re able to look at what’s happening objectively.
Robin: Anxiety is trying to protect us, but it’s more productive.
Robin: We thought since it’s the end of the year, to wrap it up with like, life lessons learned or maybe like qualities that help you overcome life challenges.
Beth: Like, what does 2025 taught you?
Robin: That’s a good way to put it. What has 2025 taught you?
Beth Yeah.
Robin: Yeah.
Jeff: Sounds good.
Beth: Okay.
Robin: Okay.
Beth: So it’s the end of December. And I don’t know about all of you, but December tends to make me very reflective. I look back over the year, kind of see if there’s any themes that stand out or lessons I’ve learned. I look forward to next year. As far as what do I want my personal focus or intention to be on for the next year? So am I the only one that does that?
Robin: No, I do that too. I do that on my birthday and then especially at the end of the year. And it makes it easy because I don’t know if all of you watch. Least in Colorado, the new stations will do a recap of the year, so that causes me to reflect as well.
Beth: My birthday is well for me as a day of reflection too. That’s actually common from what I’ve heard. Yeah.
Robin: What about you, Jeff?
Jeff: I was just thinking about that.
Jeff: For some reason. I don’t know, maybe it’s the end of the year. What I was thinking is why it’s okay not to stick to a resolution more so than adhering to something that you kind of frame up, but sometimes it’s okay just to have that and give it a go. But it’s also okay to let it slide. I guess it depends on what it is. Of course.
Robin: That brings up a whole nother thing about New Year’s resolutions. I think that causes people to feel anxious or even feel depressed if they feel like they are not carrying it out.
Beth: Or guilty.
Robin: Or guilty. That’s a good one. I think that people sometimes set themselves up for failure by creating maybe a big goal instead of small goals to work up to that bigger, achievable goal. And so some people can feel overwhelmed, and then that’s why they fall off the bandwagon easier. For example, weight loss people may say, okay, I’m going to go to the gym every single day, even though they’ve never been to the gym before. Right? So it’s starting small. Okay. I’m going to go to the gym twice a week or every other day, or whatever it may be, and gradually building up to that goal. I think that’s what trips people up out of our goal.
Beth: I was going to say, I think people tend to set really big, large goals, and then when they don’t achieve them, they feel really bad about themselves. So I think it is better, like you just said, rather than to you could have that goal as like a long term goal, but definitely break it down into more achievable, smaller goals so you can actually build on some success throughout the year.
Jeff: I also think it’s good to set the goal and aim long instead of something short and quick. You know, like I’m going to win the lottery. Well good luck. Um, that’s a far fetched one. But yeah, I like what you guys were saying about that. That not everything that you wish for comes true. But I think if you can just lean into something and let it work itself out and hopefully it catches on or something. So give yourself a break and not ask for something to happen overnight.
Robin: That’s true. And so I feel like this discussion resolutions, New Year’s resolutions or goal setting falls into what we are going to talk about today in terms of thinking about the past year and recapping it because instead of New Year’s resolutions, because I’m one of those people who will in the beginning of the year. Jeff, I’m one of those people you’re talking about. And I’ll be like, okay, I’m going to do this. And then by mid-January, I’m like, I’m in the same way. So yeah. So I create themes now. So this year the theme was A Year of Happiness. And I think that makes it more achievable because that could change from moment to moment or day to day. So for me, I think that I’ve had a lot of personal challenges this year, but that caused me to think about, okay, what does my what does happiness look like for me? And so that required me to think of, okay, I need to create my inner peace. And what does that look like? So I feel like the actions I took reflected my, um, aspiration of trying to find peace for myself.
Beth: I’m trying to think back what my theme was, which is making me laugh because I don’t remember what I said it was going to be this time last year, and I know I said something. I don’t know if it was the year of yes and saying yes to more things, because I did have that theme a previous year, and I think I brought that back for this year because my goal was to get out and do more things and business wise to network and just put myself out there more, because that can create a lot of unexpected, positive things to happen or not, depending on how it all turns out. And I think going forward into next year, I’m thinking about my theme, and the first thing that came to mind is peace. I just want a year of peace. I’m not sure what that even is going to look like at this point in time, but it sounds very nice to have a year of peace.
Jeff: I like that.
Beth: Yeah, I think that’s speaking to just how chaotic everything feels right now, how upside down, how wrong how. And these are my personal reflections. I’m kind of rambling out loud here, but I think that’s where that comes from, is I’m just reflecting back on this year and all the global events and the local events and the microcosm of my life, and just all that’s gone on. And it’s been good in a lot of ways, and it’s been really challenging and sad in a lot of ways. And so I think A Year of peace sounds really nice.
Jeff: It does. I think last time we talked, I mentioned something about checking in on myself and, you know, how I feel and putting myself out there. Not out there, I guess. Not not out there like you were talking about getting out more. I’m talking about putting myself in front of me instead of always not worried about Jeff and worried about other things. But where’s Jeff? And that’s I like that because that near the end of this last year, I suppose the last half of the year, I’ve been looking at how I feel about things, how Jeff wants this, how’s you know, not that I’m being selfish with myself, but it’s been years that I’ve never done that. And it really feels good about acknowledging your own accomplishments, acknowledging where you need work to be done a little bit, but in a positive way. Like it’s a step forward, like a path that you’re on. So I think I’m going to continue that.
Speaker8: I like that. That’s a really good one. I’m going to.
Robin: Piggyback on and have this year be a year of peace. Since I mentioned that, I felt like I was trying to find my sense of happiness by creating a sense of peace for myself. I think that one challenging situation that I was thinking about for me this past year, and I thought that I was working on it, um, and, you know, I still have a lot of room to grow as a professional. I’m going to be open and candid is that I tend to set unrealistic expectations, as some people say, for myself. And I don’t realize that I’m doing it and I don’t realize, okay, Robin, you’re human. And one example is in class. I had to give a presentation and I was having some personal challenges that day, so it’s one thing after another. I don’t know if you all have had a situation where it just seemed like, hmm, I wish I would have just kind of stayed in bed today. And so I had a presentation in zoom. Screen share is my nightmare. I have been practicing for a whole year on screen share in this particular professor was really adamant on me doing screen share by myself. And so I have practiced.
Robin: I even practiced in a different class and it went smoothly. Then it comes to this class with this professor and my hands were shaking. I was so nervous and I couldn’t get it to work. Honestly, I burst into tears in that moment and that was a very challenging moment for me. I was able to eventually make up the presentation in a completely different platform. She actually had me use Google meets the next time, so I had to learn another platform, but at the end of it I was like, okay, so I wasn’t even practicing with Google Meet Screen Share and I was able to do it right away. So that showed me through the adversity, through the challenges. If I just center myself and take some deep breaths like I tell my clients to do, I can make through whatever challenge you know, that I’m presented with. So I ultimately finished the presentation, but it taught me because multiple people gave me that feedback. Again, you know, you set unrealistic expectations for yourself. So that’s something that I need to continue to work on. And I’ll take that into the next year in terms of creating my own inner peace.
Beth: I’m smiling over here, Robin, because the first thing that I bring was, look how much you learned that you couldn’t do before.
Robin: Exactly.
Beth: And when I need to do screen share, guess who I’m calling? Um.
Robin: I don’t know about that, Beth, but yes, I I’ve gotten better at it.
Beth: It’s making me kind of think back over a challenge that I overcame this year, and this is a personal one. But those of you that don’t know, I, I play in a band and no, we don’t play out much. We were just hanging out in a basement and make a lot of noise. But we have fun together. But I decided to pick up the trumpet again when I joined said band. And I have not played trumpet in about 25 years. And so I was like, well, this will be easy. I’ll come back to me, you know, no problem. Wrong. My chops, as we say, needed to basically start from scratch. My endurance was horrible. I learned that playing trumpet actually affected my eyes in a very painful way because of the pressure, and so I had to figure out ways to overcome that. And here we are about ten months later, roughly, and my endurance still isn’t where I’d like it to be. But it’s getting better. My chops are better, but I still get very flabby lips after I play for too long. The corners of my mouth when you have to squeeze those muscles are pretty much useless after about, you know, 20 minutes of playing straight. So my whole point of this is I think I also set very unrealistic goals for myself because I thought it would be easy and it wasn’t. I still enjoy it and I will get better over time, but it was a very humbling experience to relearn how to play an instrument.
Robin: I can imagine it was humbling. I told you this message that my hat goes off to you. I didn’t know that you were very musically inclined the way that you are. I just learned, I didn’t know that the trumpet could impact your eyes, which makes sense with the pressure and all of that. But I think that’s very cool that you are doing something that you enjoy, right? The key word is enjoyment that you you said with music and I’m definitely not musically inclined. So my hat goes off to you for that one.
Beth: It’s humorous because I joined the band to play trumpet, but I do more singing than trumpet playing, and I’m finding I’m not a singer, y’all. I’ve never. I took I took singing lessons for a semester of college back in the day. I’m not a singer. Um, but I’m finding I really enjoy it. And I’ve always liked to sing, but I never thought I’d actually have to hang out with a microphone and sing. And so it’s also been a really fun growth exercise for me. And I think I like singing better than trumpet playing. I don’t want to say because it’s easier because it’s not per se, but it’s interesting where my where my musical skills are landing me. And I would like to become better at both over time, but just interesting the opportunities life can present you with. If you are able to stand back and let it do that versus fighting everything.
Jeff: It doesn’t surprise me because when we sometimes are talking before the podcast, before we hit record, or after we’re done and we mention a song. You always start singing that song.
Robin: That’s true. I didn’t think about that.
Jeff: So I’m not surprised at all that you like singing.
Robin: That is true. Yeah, that’s a good point.
Beth: Yes, I’m that person that walks around quoting song lyrics. Or if I can make a song out of it, I will. It’s one of my coping skills for de-stressing, honestly.
Jeff: I know something, over the last year I noticed I developed this anxiety thing, and I think it was because I brought in a couple professionals to do some work that professionals have to do, like put in a 200 amp electrical service box. You switched that out. I mean, they even had to hook up the wire that comes from the street. So, you know, no one’s going to do that themselves. But I’ve always been taught, you know, if you can’t afford it, you better learn how to do it. So I’ve always been in that DIY, do it yourself type of mode. And then I had the plumbing done underneath the concrete all the way dug up, replaced. I mean, we’re talking some heavy duty work here, but I got some anxiety about other stuff that I would do if I shut something off, like the electricity that I got to get this going because no one wants to be without hot water or electricity or computers or everything like that. And I don’t know where the anxiety came from, because I’m always pretty confident. But it was like, am I going to do it right? Because I think it was because I was surrounded by professionals for about two weeks, and they’re the ones that do everything right. And now they’re looking at my work and I was just feeling. But I’m getting over that now. When anxiety comes up or those thoughts come into my head, I address them. I mean, this isn’t everyone doesn’t stop in the whole house. Why? Jeff sits down and addresses this. It’s just one of those little thought bubbles, and I look at it in my head and just think for a second, ah, that’s that. But I know I can work around that because it’s plan A, plan B that it works, it’s done, you know? But sometimes anxiety has a weird way of weaving in and just making you spin your wheels. And I’m glad I’m, I’m working it through.
Robin: And the key word. So Beth mentioned about growth and you mentioned about working it through. So those are two key aspects I feel in moving forward with whatever accomplishment or goal or challenge that you’re trying to overcome.
Beth: And you did too with her screen share.
Robin: And that’s true. That’s a good point. Yeah.
Jeff: Yeah. I don’t know where that comes from, where you’re confident you can learn it, you’re confident you can do it. And yet the mind sometimes sits there and goes, wait a second, what about this? What if this doesn’t work? What if all these little things come from, you know, 360 degrees and it’s like, where’s that generated self-doubt? Or why is that creep in?
Robin: Anxiety.
Beth: Anxiety.
Robin: Yeah. And I tell my clients is that anxiety is trying to protect us, but it’s not productive. It’s not advantageous. So if it causes you to doubt yourself so much, then you’re like, okay, nope, nope, I’m not going to I’m not going to do that. And so you stay in your safe zone. And so that’s where your body feels like, okay, now you’re safe. Now you’re protected. But if you are constantly staying in your safe zone, then that’s when you’re not going to grow or experience new things. So that’s why I always say it’s more productive.
Jeff: I’m picturing a puppy dog sitting next to you named self-doubt, and you’re petting it, you know, like, good boy, good boy.
Robin: Right. That’s a good one, too. I was actually visualizing that, as you said, that honestly.
Beth: I was thinking about a client of mine who’s been working really, really hard to overcome something that this person’s always wanted to do, but is finding it harder to do, and makes me think of the persistence we can have self doubt. We can have a lot of challenges with our confidence, but if we can be persistent, we want something bad enough. We will continue until we can get it. I think our brains are really, really good. I don’t know that they’re wired for this per se, but I feel like they’re wired for worst case scenarios and the negativity thought loops. I think we have to work a lot harder and a lot more consistently to wire our brains to think positively, and not all the time, because I don’t want to minimize when bad things happen. We have to give that attention to. But I do think it’s a lot harder for us to get our brain to wire those positive neural pathways.
Beth: Mhm. Yeah.
{pause{
Jeff: I like how we’re all thinking about that.
Robin: Yeah. We are we’re having a reflective moment a pause. Yes. Yeah.
Jeff: But that’s a good place to be. Sometimes when you actually have to pause and think about stuff and how it relates to you or how it relates to the now. And I think without those moments, it just keeps on circling and going round and round. And I think when you stop, you actually put the brakes on a few things and you’re able to look at what’s happening objectively and step forward, and hopefully you deter that more and more as you move along the path of life.
Beth: You do. And I, I work with a number of clients who are struggling with self-doubt and confidence and self-esteem and those kinds of things. And it’s really neat from a therapist perspective, to be able to watch someone in that moment be like, yeah, I don’t know if I ever will be able to do this, but I did do this well or yeah, it was actually easier this time. You know, like they’ll catch themselves in those thought loops and they will redirect it. And as a therapist, kind of from a selfish perspective, I guess it’s really rewarding to see that. And it’s it’s hard to get there. It takes a lot of work to be able to do that. And I myself struggle sometimes it’s like, no, if if your clients can do this, you can do this too. And so I think it’s just it’s nice to see that growth and progress. And it’s also good reminders I think for myself of like, and you’re kind of stuck in a negative loop about x, y or z. So can we get you out of that.
Robin: I agree. And to go off of that is thinking about your your life challenges, but then also thinking about the positive that enabled you to overcome those challenges. So at the end of every session, I ask my clients the dreaded question and I say dreaded is because a lot of them, I would say 90% will say, I knew you were going to ask me that. But I always say, so what is one positive that you can say about yourself that you, you know, in terms of the challenge that you’ve overcome in these past couple of weeks, or I’ll make it more according to what we talked about for that session, I’ll make it even more specific. And that’ll get people to think about the challenge, but also to create like a positive affirmation for themselves. Oh yeah, I know I was able to do this because of my resiliency or because of my determination or whatever it may be. So far we’ve talked about the challenges, but also think about the positive qualities that you all have that enabled you to make it past that challenge so that you can carry that from day to day and it can give you motivation. And I just want to quickly add that is that it is very rewarding to hear clients change over time and have a shift of perspective, especially the clients who give me pushback about that question that I ask. And I notice over time they don’t give me pushback and they will answer it right away. So that’s an indicator to me that their confidence and self-esteem is improving over time.
Beth: I like that I don’t have my sessions with that question, but I like that.
Jeff: I like that you guys bring this up because we started out by looking back and talking about the resolutions we may not have achieved or something, but to look back and find the rewarding things that the accomplishments that you did as you look into the new year might give you an opportunity to strive for more accomplishments. And sometimes it’s not even the ones you think of, but the ones you overcame, the barriers you broke down or something like that that were just part of, you know, making it through the year. And I just hope that we, all of us keep doing that for the oncoming year.
Robin: Exactly.
Beth: I agree. If you’re interested in sharing with us, what’s something that you overcome that you thought you couldn’t or that was really hard, but you did it. What did you overcome and how did you do it? And you can leave us a message. Or there’s ways to reach us and we do get all of your feedback, so please feel free to share.
Robin: As we’ve said many times, we love to hear from you. So I’m just going to end with my usual phrase, but also to I had a last session with a client last week, and he gave some really good parting words, and he said, you know, be strong and courageous. So that goes along with what we talked about today.
Beth: I love that.
Robin: Yeah. Yeah. And so until next time, take care.
Beth: Until next time. Stay grounded. Take care.
Jeff: Thanks for listening. And until next time. Bye bye.
Song: Oh, yeah. Wellness Wednesday, with Beth and Robin going to settle it it down. Oh, yeah. Get your feet planted on the ground.
Jeff: For more podcasts with a blindness perspective, check us out on the web at WW. Com and be sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want to leave us some feedback, give us a call at (612) 367-6093. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks for listening. And until next time, bye bye.
Song: Taking care of ourselves. It’s all about you and taking care of yourself. Yeah.
[Music] [Transition noise] –
When we share-
What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.