When you have been through heaps of challenges in your life, you learn and grow more even when there are stressors haunting you. Today’s guest, Ashley Berges, who is the author of The 10 Day Challenge to Live Your True Life is someone you should listen to because her perspectives in life are truly inspiring. She shares some insights on how people are more concerned with their phones these days rather than being in the moment. She points out the importance of not stressing ourselves too much and how you can deal with triggers, and gives some tips on how to stop sweating the small stuff and start living in the moment.

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Erin Learns How to STOP Sweating the Small Stuff with Therapist Ashley Berges

I’m with my friend, Ashley Berges. Ashley and I have been friends for a good long time.

We’ve had a great time. It’s been a good time.

I like to do this thing where we talk about our first 24 hours of being friends. Do you want to walk everybody through our first 24 hours? That did not happen in Dallas. 

It happened in LA. For the first 24 hours, I met you in a place in Beverly Hills.

I already had four mimosas.

I showed up. I’m being good. I’m doing a good thing. I already dealt with going to the Directors Guild thing, dealing with some crazy roommates, all that stuff for that time. I met Erin for the first time and then I meet all these folks from The View. It was the Barbara Walters days.

We were all having brunch. You were at brunch too.

I was like, “I’ve got to have a drink too.” I ended up having a glass of wine with you all. That’s where it all started.

From there, it was Super Bowl Sunday. We went to a party somewhere. 

It’s a party at a lady’s house, Donna Scott.

Actually. everyone knows who Donna is.

She was one of the original Fembots in Austin Powers.

She’s the lead Fembot, I believe. Of all Fembots, she was the hottest, no offense to the other subpar Fembots in the background. She was the one that was in the front and her bots were femmier. They were looking good. We did that.

We hung out there and there were a lot of people there watching the game somewhat.

That was a long brunch. 

Then we had a drive-by on the place we were staying at. We dropped off a friend of ours at the hotel that they were staying at. We went to the party and then we hung out after the party and then we ended up bringing people back over to where we were staying at.

We didn’t. We were at our house. We rented this house on Airbnb. We were in town, not because we’re party animals, which we are good at that, but we were in town shopping a TV show that we’re thinking about doing together.

There was a work component behind all this. It’s not all mimosas and partying and Super Bowl. There was a whole work component behind it, but remember this is Sunday. We don’t start the work component until Monday.

God doesn’t want us working on Sunday. He said rest.

It’s the Holy day. We did that.

 

I thought mimosas bring me closer to God. I did what I needed to do. That’s my church. 

I like that. The only problem with the whole church thing is that when we woke up on Monday, there was no coffee in that place. No bread. No food. We did get coffee after that though.

It took forever and then we go to Whole Foods to get the coffee or something. We did go to Starbucks. 

One of our other friends went to go to Whole Foods to get us some Genius Juice or something like that. That stuff did not work at all. It did not make me a genius.

I gagged on it. 

It was gross.

I realize I have a big gag reflex. 

We’ve talked about that.

We had talked about my gag reflex, which we don’t have to talk about right now.

We can talk about it later if you want.

Only invite people who you want to be in events in order to make the moment more meaningful. Click To Tweet

It’s an interesting story. I’m not going to lie. Ryan Molloy of Frankie Goes To Hollywood loves my gag reflex story. 

That’s how he ended up back at our Airbnb.

Ashley has this amazing private practice. She’s a therapist. She is on the Who’s Who List of Dallas. She’s always being asked to be in those reality TV shows that talk about being in Dallas, Housewives of Dallas. You politely say no.

I’ve been a little bit of the extras lately because some of my friends are in the show. I was at the wedding for Leanne and they did a whole People spread on that. It was so funny because all these people were taking pictures of the cake. What’s so funny about is I didn’t post one picture from that. You start looking in your phone and you realize all this stuff you never post anything about. You’re like, “I missed the good 361 days of the year that I didn’t post.” I had been in the background on some of it but I’m not a key player and I like that.

We all know people that are people. If you post and it’s a notable event, who would post on about a celebrity? At that point, is your post sincere or is your post saying, “I’m posting so everyone knows I was at this wedding?”

That’s the duality of it. That’s where there’s a grey area and that’s why I had trouble with them. I posted a few things from the bachelorette party, but when it came to the wedding, there were so many things you could post but that’s true. You had all these people posting all these pictures, the cake, the dance. Some people where there enjoying themselves like I was, because I had a good time, but some people were there for all the pictures. They were there and they were posting those pictures before they even left there.

I don’t like that. Maybe Leanne was fine with that because as a marketing person that helps your brand. It helps evolve your message out and stuff like that. For me and we’re very similar because all kidding aside, we have spent hours on the phone chatting and we’re on the same page with most things in our life. If you’re going to be at a wedding of a notable friend or they’re going to be at yours, if we all go to something for you, are you secretly hoping people post for you? 

I don’t think so. It’s always up to the person about what they want to do. You have to be really good with yourself. I have to get to be comfortable. You have to invite people to the event that you want there. It doesn’t matter about posting, not posting. We got to take social media out of it. We put so much into social media, but what does that mean? I’m cool with people posting an event. It’s great but my thing is, are you at the moment while you’re there? As long as you’re in the moment having a blast, that’s what it’s all about because that’s about actually being in the moment. Then later on if you want to post because you loved it, I know most people post because they look good in a picture, “I look great in this picture.”

I post because I’m like, “I look so thin in this photo.” I’ll re-edit the shot so I look like that thin all the time and stop saying when I’m at your house because I’ll be like, “No, this is me 200 days out of the year.” For me, I’ll take photos and then I’ll post after. That has nothing to do with being a notable or not. That’s everybody. We miss half of our life because we’re looking down at the screen.

I agree with you and a lot of people almost take their lives in their own hands every day looking down at the screen. I can’t tell you how many people are. I’m on the street driving and next thing you know, I’m looking at someone and they’re literally face down on the phone. They’re walking across the street and they’re not paying attention to anybody, anything. They’re walking when they shouldn’t even be walking. I’m dodging them from hitting them. I don’t even know if they realize that. I feel like they’re in some video game, like a Frogger game. They’re not paying any attention to it. I get it though but people are so stuck on the phone.

 

It’s sad because I’m big on this mindfulness track. I’m big on being in the moment and getting out of that negative broken record and getting out of my thinking mind of what happened. All the crap that happened or the stuff that I want to happen in the future, is it ever going to happen for me? I get out of that and I get in the moment. In order to be in the moment, I can’t be on that phone because that phone puts me in the side-lines again. It’s like watching everybody else play the football game and I’m standing up in the bleachers eating popcorn, “I don’t want to eat popcorn. I want to play the game too.”

It’s interesting to hear you say, “Will this ever happen for me? I’m caught up in the past or whatever.” You’re a therapist, you have a radio show in at least 40 cities across the country. You go on vacation and because your voice is so distinct, that people in Caribbean are hearing you and going, “I know that voice.” You just said you’re worried about if that’s ever going to happen for you. Are you saying you stress like everybody else? Do you think you stress even more?

I don’t stress the small stuff anymore and I worked on that. It was funny because one of my best friends and my assistant, George, was stressing out about losing his charger for his computer. He was freaking out. I left that freak out a long time ago. I understand why he’s freaking out about it because it’s a big deal. I’ve been able to dislodge that from being a big deal a long time ago. My deal is you sit there and you put a lot of effort into the stuff that you hope for. Most of you out there know that we want something to happen. You have a dream, you have this goal, you want it to happen and you’re working hard to do it. You’re doing all this stuff and dedicating all this time, you’re keeping all this effort and there are so many times when you could have been playing or partying or doing something and you don’t because you’re focusing on what you’re doing. Sometimes when those glimpses, you’re jumping over these hurdles, you’re jumping over these mountains, things are good but sometimes you wonder because you have that thought in your head, “Will I get to the top of that mountain? I’ve seen the mountain, I know it exists. I know what I can do.”

I think many of us sit there and say, “God, will it happen? Will it actually come to fruition?” I have to back it up because what I found is that when we don’t do that and we stay on that trajectory of, “I’ve got to get to that mountain, I’ve got to get to the top of the mountain. It’s got to happen now,” I’ve realized that we’re out of the journey. We’re no longer participating in the day-to-day life. It’s like A to B. It’s like, “I’m not getting to focus on how I got to work. I just got to work. I’m not going to figure out how I left the restaurant, I just got home.” Instead of paying attention because isn’t it part of the journey to get there? What if something cool was happening that we didn’t even pick up on because we were so focused on that one mountaintop that we didn’t realize there were four other mountain tops that were probably better and they were somewhere over there?

In a way, it’s good to constantly touch base with yourself and tune in and even if you’re stressed out, because at least it means you’re present. 

You can feel it too. It’s okay to feel feelings. It’s okay to have feelings. It’s okay to feel behind the eight ball. It’s okay to wonder. It’s when we start avoiding that, it’s when we start looking at other people and try to save them and try to fix their problems because that’s the next thing.

You don’t want to fix yourself or you don’t think you have a problem, so you’ll fix everybody else. The people that bother me, I call them Eeyores. 

Tell me more about that.

When they are looking at people, they make these assumptions. Let’s say they look at you and they think, “She’s popular, she’s being asked to do TV shows, she’s thin, she has this cool voice. She has this awesome husband and dog.” They make these assumptions, which are all factual right now of things I said, but they make it mean something and then they say, “It must be nice. Nothing like that’s ever going to happen to me.” As if you did a scratcher and won the lottery and it was blind luck that you got to where you were. It bothers me. The Eeyores bother me. I feel like they’re never taking into their own account what they could be doing. They’re so downtrodden on who they are, that they’re constantly beating themselves up. They’re never even realizing that there is a mountain. That not even over here, over there. They’re not even getting in a car. They’re not even taking the first step because they’ve already lost. I say they bother me because they do, but it bothers me because I don’t know what to say to them and they’re everywhere. You’re everywhere. Eeyores. What do you do with those people?

I think one of the reasons why folks feel like that is because bad things have happened to them. You have a constructible life where things have not worked out and then things have not worked out again. What happens is we create the mentality in our head that things aren’t ever going to work out for me. It becomes part of that background. Do you know when you go into a restaurant and they have the music low enough that you can make out the words, but you can’t. You know you heard the song and you liked the song and you’re like, “Old Billy idol, yes.” Instead of white wedding, you’re hearing, “It’s never going to happen for me. The world is against me.”

We focus too much on one thing that we forget that there are other better things surrounding us. Click To Tweet

I had a client and she said, “I’m never going to get married.” I said, “Why?” She’s like, “I’m never going to get married because there are no good men out there.” I said, “I’m going to have to argue with that, but that’s okay. What else?” She goes, “All the good guys are gay. If they’re not gay, they’re married.” I said, “Wow.” With that trajectory, there are no good men out there. The ones that are good are gay or they’re married. Understand no matter where she’s going, she’s going to find the gay men that are good guys, the married men that are good guys. There’s not going to be any single available men because of the way that she’s thinking. There’s not going to be any good guys that aren’t into those two groups. I said, “The thing is that you’re creating this reality for yourself.” “I don’t understand how that is.”

I create the rules of my life and those rules are either I’m going to be successful or I’m not. I’m either healthy or I’m not. I either make friends easily or I don’t. People hate me, people love me. Whatever that is that there is. I construct that and I create that as my laws land. We’re like the brain is the government and we’re reacting to it. I was like, “What if we changed that? First of all, you know that there are a lot of good guys out there. They’re not gay or married. We had to break those thoughts down, take away, realize that they aren’t true.” We had to work on letting those thoughts go because every time she got into a social situation, she was triggered to believe every guy has got to be gay, every good guy is going to be married. Finally, we got to that trigger and we got her to realize that. I have a way of her taking that thought out and I had to do it responsibly over and over again. All of a sudden, she’s actually meeting decent guys that aren’t married and aren’t gay. She changed the way that she thought about the world.

Is that like a response? Is that what it is? Does it come back? You have to be more present into what you’re thinking.

The biggest thing was the trigger. Why are we triggered into thinking that? Where did that come from? We have to exhaust all the opportunity of understanding where that thought began, where it originated. We figured out it’s fake, because it is. When she’s triggered into thinking that, where is that trigger coming from? Is it her insecurities within herself? Is it her feeling like she’s not good enough to meet a good guy? Do you see where those come from? Eventually when we nail that, then I have a strategy. I can tell you a little bit about it. I basically take out those words. I have people slow down the thought and you can walk through it and you can let it go, but you have to practice that. Once they do that, they have to catch themselves on the triggers though, because the trigger is like, I’ve had clients that say they’re not good enough or they’re not worthy or they’re not going to get the best job. Sometimes they don’t want to hear the words anymore. They don’t hear that thought. What they do is they act by it.

I had a client that thought they weren’t good enough at work. This huge job comes open. It’s perfect for them. It should have had their name in the job description. They were like, “I didn’t apply.” I’m like, “Why?” They’re like, “I’m not going to get it anyway.” I was like, “Why?” The next thing we find out that somebody that he had actually trained, somebody under him, got the job because they said, “Why didn’t you apply?” He said, “What do you mean?” They go, “We would have offered you the job, but you never applied. We can’t give the job to someone who doesn’t apply.” He was so beaten down. Now, he was beaten down earlier for not getting the job. Now he’s being down for not applying. He said, “Where does that come from?” I was like, “Because in your head, you believe you can’t get the job.” Why even apply? It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Is he getting something out of feeling like he didn’t get the job? That has to be serving him somehow. You’re getting validated. 

You’re getting validation that what you’re saying is right. People like to be right at any cost, even if it hurts. To me, I’m not going to sit there and fight to be right on something. This is painful. I don’t want to be right. I don’t want to be right about the fact that somebody is stealing from me. I don’t want to be right about this or that.

There are so many things I want to be wrong about. 

I want to act like it doesn’t exist. Think about how when we have a thought in our head, there’s a part of us that wants to be right about it because it’s our thought and there’s a part that we hate about it that gives us guilt and sadness because we don’t want that to be right. We don’t know where it comes from because we’ve had it for so long. We’ve been living with this.

We could make that happen because we’ll manifest it. All these Eeyores are manifesting like the crop love that they have in their life.

 

I used to be one.

Did you use to be an Eeyore? 

Yeah. I was born with a condition that nobody understood. I had all kinds of experimental surgeries done on me. I almost died on the operating table three times. In my head, I was thinking I’m not good enough. How could I be a good enough person to have a condition like this that nobody understood? If I was a great person, why would I have a health condition like this? Why would the universe do this to me? I must be a bad person. I was thinking all that stuff all the time and I’m never going to be healthy. It’s never going to happen for me. I was in a position where I would see people that were healthy and be like, “It must be nice.”

I realized there’s that trajectory of all these negative things happening since my childhood, since I was born with my health and being on the operating tables and having blood transfusions. That stuff can make your mind go a million different places and create the narrative. I understand where the narrative comes home. Years ago, I took a year off from dating and everything and I figured out who I was. One of the things I figured out was the stuff that I was telling myself. I had to work on that and I actually figured out how to do it and I actually did it myself. I was there. I was the one that when I see somebody running a marathon, I’d be like, “It must be nice.” I was the one that had the handicap sticker on my car and I couldn’t go to Six Flags or those kinds of things because you had to walk so far. Even if you had a handicap sticker, you couldn’t even go to the theme park. I was always going, “It must be nice to go to the theme park for whole day.” That’s what I’m saying.

What was it that you had or have? What’s it called? 

I have a venous lymphatic malformation. When I was finally diagnosed, there were 180 cases in the world that they knew of. It’s the second lymphatic system and it takes up about a third of my body.

I don’t know where it’s going.

You don’t know where it is?

You’re so tiny. 

It looked like a double hernia, almost. That was the first surgery they did. They thought they were going to take out a double hernia. There was no hernia. They were like, “Crap.” Next thing you know, I’m waking up out of anesthesia in the recovery room. They were like, “It was touch and go there.” I’m like, “Touch and go?” They were like, “The lymph was coming out at such a rapid rate. We had to put a mesh docking and hold it back. Then we had to fill it back up.” I was in high school. You look at your life and this has been years of this culmination. Finally thinking that we’ve figured it out and then we hadn’t. I went through years of other misdiagnosis and everything else. I finally met a physician because of a boyfriend at the time that was on a flight from Dallas to Miami. We were living in Miami and he met this doctor and he’s like, “I think she might have what we work on.” I flew up to Colorado and that’s when I finally got diagnosed after two MRIs and sets of Angiograms and then sure enough, that’s how we figured that out.

How lucky is that?

It was cool. I realized that when you have something like that, you have to be very careful because people want to use that and capitalize on that. I had to figure out how to get my life in my own hands because I went through two surgeries with that and a wheelchair after each surgery. I had a full thrombosis throughout my body. I said, “No,” eventually because I realized the trajectory where it was going so it wasn’t going to be good. Eventually I took my life on my own hands, I started working out, figuring out how to do that with my situation, figured out how to change my diet with that situation. I figured out how to change my thought process because that was a big deal. When I started doing all that, it took about a year and a half to get it all together, get out of that dark place in my mind. That’s when I started working on it. If anybody’s going through a dark place like that right now and having some trouble, think about that because we’ve all been through a challenging place. The challenge is what a strong person, a strong soul has to go through. Overcome that and you can see even more of your value. It is hard though, and it’s going through the process.

Honestly, the grass is not greener. There have been so many dark times. There are times where I’m awake at 3 AM, I don’t have a second lymphatic system and I’m still going, “What do I do next? How do I get there? How did I get here?” People make these assumptions. Thank you for sharing that with everyone. 

You’re welcome.

I appreciate that.

I got better with sharing a few years ago. There was a time when I couldn’t share about this because it stressed me out. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to put this stuff on the line. Now, I’ve gotten better in the last few years and I’ve realized that it can help people. Secrets are what keep us sick. If we can get that stuff out in our own life, it can change our life in a different trajectory and then we can also maybe help other people.

I’m going to end our little chat right here because I don’t think we can go into anything other than greatness because you’re awesome. 

You’re awesome.

Thanks for being here.

Important Links:

• Ashley Berges

About Ashley Berges

Ashley Berges has been on a microphone, stage and radio for the majority of her life. Currently working on TV and on-air projects while she speaks to audiences about taking their life to the next level. Often the extra oomph that’s needed comes from a reliable outside source. Ashley’s motivational speech can be exactly what is needed to provide cohesion, understanding, and power within any organization. Groups, businesses, and corporations choose a workshop concept either half-day, full-day, two day, or weekend. Ashley will work directly with your company or group managers to understand exactly what is needed. With that knowledge, Ashley will meet with her team and create the exact workshop that will inspire, relate, and facilitate the needs and desires of the organization, business, or corporation. By the end of the workshop, prior to the lasting motivational speech, your group/employees will be ready and willing to positively co-create and lead with success. Book Ashley to be your next keynote speaker to motivate your organization to see recognize the greatness of the organization and the greatness within themselves. A corporation or organization thrives when all parts are working in corporation towards a goal that may be challenging, however the individuals that make up the corporation believes in the process and believes in the cause. Ashley’s motivation speeches, keynotes, and workshops leave audiences inspired, feeling connected, energetic, and refreshed. It’s like a pep talk and a day at the spa, this gives everyone the drive they need and the renew that organizes groups to achieve what they thought was out of reach.

Syndicated talk show host of Live Your True Life Perspectives, CEO perspectives coach, professional therapist, creator and host of The Celebrity Perspective, keynote speaker, contemporary philosopher, writer of truth, and the creator of the Live Your True Life workshop and book series. Ashley’s latest book, “The 10 Day Challenge to Live Your True Life” is the guidebook for busy people who want to make valuable changes to their life.

Appearing on NBC, ABC, CBS, WFAA, and CW33, Ashley discusses and exposes how to live authentically, tips for handling depression, equality in the workplace, leadership skills, overcoming addiction, bettering the family dynamic, and more. Live Your True Life Perspectives airs nationally and internationally six days a week. The Celebrity Perspective airs every Thursday. Live Your True Life Perspectives airs locally in Dallas, Texas on Sundays at 8pm on 570AM KLIF. Ashley had dedicated her life to helping others understand their lives and offer them the necessary tools to create an honest authentic fabulous life.