Transcript:
Hi everyone, welcome back to another podcast. My name is Glennavelle Manarang, welcome to Soulish Femme, Real Talk with me. Today’s episode #64 is titled, “Transformation Through a Renewed Mind.” You thought that changing your life is starting with of course many things that play a part our environment, people that you hang out with, circle of friends, and also the words that you say. As I have previously mentioned on my last podcast to Heal your feminine wounds. You need to also be careful of what you say. However, in this episode, I would like to talk about real transformation really start with our thinking.
According to the Bible, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind.” This is exactly where I got the idea from. Transformation is a transformation of how you were thinking. Many of us grew up thinking with the same old pattern. This is the reason why many people grow up in their age of 70s and still act like a toddler. They have a mindset of very fragile ego. They have not developed an emotional intelligence because they don’t know how to think logically. They don’t know how to regulate their emotions and they don’t know how to become mature in the head.
And that's why in Romans 12:3 it says, "For by the grace given me, I say to every one of you, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought. But rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each one of you."
Have you ever encountered someone who thinks highly of themselves because they’re narcissistic? It’s me, myself, and I.
You wonder to yourself on why they are so egoistic? You thought that they have it all figured out. Their life is maybe wonderful, but if you are going to trigger them, if you’re going to say something that will provoke them, you will know that it’s just a masquerade. They are just dressing up something on the outside but they have a fragile ego on the inside. They have not renewed their mind.
Ways To Renew Your Mind:
1. Dealing with your past wounds
A person who has a renewed mind or who have dealt with their past wounds are not going to be easily offended or easily triggered by the things that you say whether or not it is intentional or unintentional. However, I’m not saying that you should tolerate disrespect from people. But sometimes you can know that when a person cannot disagree or can agree with you with a different kind of opinion and if he cannot really articulate of what he wants to share to you without getting so worked up with his emotion. You know that you’re not dealing with an adult.
Something to ponder: That's why in Philippians 2:56 it says, "In your relationships with one another have the same mindset as Christ who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his advantage. Rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness."
2. The truth will set you free
So, there is a distinction. If you have the spirit of God in you, you want to do what? The same mindset with the same spirit. You are like-minded with the same people who loves to have peace and you do not want to create conflict, division and drama. On the other hand, people who have not yet renewed in their mind because they are still what? Depraved. The Bible called them depraved mind. Their conscience has been seared. They don’t know the difference between right and wrong. They are foolish people who does not have the spirit of God and with no common sense. They are irrational.
Remember: You cannot argue with these kind of people because they have not renewed the mind. Have you not encountered with someone like this? Because I have many times before. You encounter with the same individuals. They have the same pattern. If you say something that does not align with their idea of truth because these people usually don’t know the truth. They have a false ideology of what truth is. Because their truth is haphazardly. It’s not full truth. If you somehow question that they will become triggered.
They will call you as the difficult one and they will label you as the person that has a problem. Unfortunately, for many people who do not have the same mindset as you, they think you are the problem by forcing them to grow up and that you are only mirroring their patterns: childish behavior that they have not yet developed. Unfortunately, as a young adult, we were not told how to develop emotional intelligence. We went to school to recite the alphabet. We went to school to memorize 2 * 2 and 5 * 5=25. We were taught about history, but we were never told how to regulate and how to communicate without blowing up.
3. Practice self-awareness
That’s why it takes a lot of practice and self-awareness that when you want to be in the level of a person. You must be level-headed with them. It’s a lot easier to communicate with someone who has the same mindset as you. It’s a lot easier for you to have this mutual understanding because you’re on the same page. On another hand, when you try to make the person understand you and he is actually trying to provoke you just to be divisive, it is very difficult. Eventually that will turn out into a conflict. We are told in the Bible in Timothy that says, “Avoid conflict at all any cost.” Avoid anything that will cause into a strife that it’s going into altercation that is going to come forth because another individual is going to provoke you, try to trip you off and will push your buttons.
Note: This is how narcissistic individuals like to do. They watch your pattern. They know exactly who you are too. And if you want to flip that switch on the head and you’re going to do the same thing to them. Instead of overreacting to their same tactics and you have known the pattern then you have the ability to say, “I am not going to be bothered by your tactics because I’ve seen it before.”
I know it takes a lot of practice and self-awareness again to realize that you have seen this kind of game before and you have played this game many times before.
If you have actually controlled your triggers because you know exactly the kind of triggers that they will trigger you such as gaslighting, bringing up your past, humiliating you and saying something that will provoke you. This is what their tactic is.
So, instead of reacting to their so-called disrespect, you’re no longer going to be budged because that’s exactly where boundaries is. So transformation of the mind is what you call knowing what you tolerate and what you do not tolerate. Beforehand, you don’t know what your boundaries are. You just allow people push you over. You just allow people to say whatever they want to say.
And before you like to argue, you like to make your point across. You like to give you give them your point of view. But did you know that if you keep on explaining the same nonsense to toxic individual, they are unwilling to listen. They don’t have the ability to empathize nor empathize nor sympathize with you. That is the last on their book. Individuals who have not renewed their mind, they’re most likely going to tune you out because they have actually already made up their mind that their idea is the it’s the end of it all.
Toxic Individuals Traits:
- They don’t care of understanding you.
- They don’t care about empathizing of how you feel of what really is coming out of your heart.
- Their jargon or their built-in system only wants to do these things: to test you, to make you off the loop so that they can justify that you are crazy.
- Every time you are going to respond to their disrespect and the moment you are not renewed in your mind and you become trapped.
Offense is a bait.
So they are like the devil who’s going to trap you. That’s why these toxic people like to trap you to provoke you because that’s a bait. They want to bait you. So if you have not renewed your mind and you’re constantly being baited by their offensive or their comment, their side comment, their whatever they look at you or whatever they condescending. Perhaps, they’re very judgmental criticism. If they are somehow are able to push you and react to that kind of disrespect and you react they will they have baited you already and for them that is more than just an adrenaline rush.
They feel good because toxic people said lack of sympathy. They lack of self-awareness. So, whenever they provoke you and you responded to their disrespect they actually laughing on the inside because deep down in their heart it says I already got her again. I provoked her again. This is why I’ve always liked to say in my channel, work on your triggers. Work on your buttons. Work on the things that really provoke you. Because we somehow live with individuals, family members, people that we live with, friendships, co-workers, they’re everywhere.
Toxic people that are so immature, they are not yet matured in the head. They have not developed an emotional intelligence that their job is to make your life miserable. This is what we are here for. Even in the Bible, Jesus had to deal with toxic people. There was a scenario in the Bible when Jesus, you probably heard this story many times ago that the woman who was caught in adultery was dragged in front of his face when he was in the middle of teaching in the synagogue. And the bunch of men that dragged this woman that was so-called caught in the adultery act. The bunch of men who said to Jesus, “According to the law of Moses, we should stone her to death because she’s caught in adultery.” But I always like to say, “Where is the other person? Where’s the man?” Because it takes two people to be involved in sexual immorality. So where’s the man? But there was no man.
So instead of Jesus stooping down to their level, he actually ignored them the first time and he wrote down on the ground, this is a classic story of dealing with toxic individual, narcissistic, because they come in groups. They’re like a mob mentality. They cannot function by themselves. Mob people that are toxic individual, they have the same pattern. They are not going to go by individual because why? They are not powerful.
People that are toxic in in mindset, they cannot stand on their own ground because they have no individuality. They have not work on themselves. They are powerless standing on their own because they have not yet developed an individual autonomy and choosing what’s right from them. They cannot discern whether or not I should follow this path because people that actually have not developed, they’re being swayed by majority. That’s why many people go with majority and they have not questioned whether they should follow it, whether these people are actually reliable.
Are these people are mature enough to follow the footsteps that they’re trying to navigate? But because we live in a world that we are just being told that just because majority people are going to the right, it doesn’t mean it’s right or just because many people going to the left without questioning. Then this is why we fall into the trap of following the wrong people. And what happens to Jesus is that he functioned in emotional intelligence. He ignored them the first time. He pretended like he did not hear them and he wrote something in the ground and they could not stop asking him the same question. They would not leave him alone.
In the world of immature individuals, it is not our job to change them for the only variable we can control is ourselves.
As I said, toxic individual knows your pattern. They’re like hyenas. They come in packs. They come in a group. They know exactly that you are the weak one because you are you are by yourself. You’re alone. You’re very vulnerable because no one is around you.
And so the same people in our lives, a toxic individual. If you are not emotionally regulated, if you’re not healing properly, you will be triggered over and over again with the same tactics.
Glennavelle
Because when you are not yet developed emotionally and mentally strong enough, this is why many people are going to fall prey and they’re going to snap. They’re going to retaliate. They’re going to say something back. And I used to be this way back when I was involved with another toxic relationship in my twenties. I had the same thing. this person would trigger me, would say something, and I would try to rebuttal and would say something back to him, and we would fight for 5 hours straight, and we were just going in circles, and then next thing you know, it’s going to escalate into physical abuse.
And at that point, there’s really no point of trying to discuss with someone who is limited mindset. You cannot have discussions with people that have a pigeon mindset. You do not have any solution whatsoever. When you try to make yourself understandable for people who have a fifth grade level understanding and you’re in the 11th grade understanding, it is impossible. How can you possibly try to make yourself be understandable to a person who is a close-minded, who is incapable of listening, who doesn’t want to listen to understand you. At that point, you just have to stop. So in order for you to renew your mind, you must have silence.
Silence is golden in front of a fool.
You cannot give them a 500 essays and five points and says this is what I think you should do and this is what I I think that is going on with you. You cannot correct people that are foolish. As I said before in my podcast, people who are unwilling to be corrected because they’re foolish enough to think that they’re doing is actually right even though it’s wrong, you cannot correct them. You cannot help people that are idiots, for the lack of better word. I cannot find the right word for idiots, but it is an idiot. It is idiocy. It is very idiotic for you to make yourself be very frustrated by trying so hard to get out of your way to make yourself known to this person that what you’re saying is wrong and this is exactly what I think. Of course, there’s a time to make yourself understandable.
TThis is why sometimes when I have disagreement with people, I rather want to text you because you can read it word for word because sometimes when you talk to people who are dysfunctional and you are mentally immature, they’re just going to go in circles. they’re just going to talk over you. They’re not going to listen. They’re going to they’re just going to shut you off. They’re not going to be able to reciprocate with what you say because they’re just unwilling to do so because they’re talking to a childish. So, this is important.
For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God that take every thought captive to obey Christ. -2 Corinthians 10:45.
So, our warfare are actually a stronghold in our minds. These are what you call an old belief pattern. These are been embedded in your psyche. Many of us think the same thoughts over and over again because it is coming from our old childhood wounds. Our parents probably thought the same way. They speak the same way to us. They probably are doing the same thing and they don’t know that they’re doing the same thing, which is insanity. According to Albert Einstein and you need to change your thoughts and change your world according to Norman Vincent Peele for you to change your world it has to come with your thoughts.
How do you change your world without changing your thoughts?
It’s not about the physical you can relocate to Alaska Nebraska or move across the world if you are not changing your habits that are the patterns that are destructive for you if you’re not changing in how you view yourself and how you think about yourself and how you not tolerate disrespect from people, you’re still going to have the same problem because people are going to be there. So instead of changing your location because you think maybe it’s the location is the problem.
Although environment do matters and as I always like to say moral companies corrupt good e I mean evil company corrupts good morals. It is important but needless to say if you if you cannot afford to relocate you got to change your thoughts. It is how you deal and respond with toxic people. It is how you remove yourself if you need be. You are not there to entertain people.
You’re not there to make people like you. It’s not your job to make people love you. It’s not your job to change people. If they cannot see your worth and value, it is not on you, it’s on them. If they do not like you for one second and one iota, it’s because maybe you’re they are threatened by your growth and they’re insecure about themselves. and it actually elevates their insecurity every time they come around you. It is not your job to fix them. It is not your job to convince them that you’re likable, that you’re very good.
As long as you know your worth and value, and as long as you know what you offer to the table, that’s all that matters. I used to be a people pleaser like many of us. We like to give everybody the service. We want people to think that we’re so good. I used to be this way, too..
Learning to say, “no.”
Everybody was calling me. I would always show up inviting me over. I would always be there to a point where I had to run myself, you know haggard and I would be so frustrated. And many of us are frustrated and very irritated is because we are always saying yes to everybody. We cannot say no. We want to say no but because we’re people pleasers, we always like to say yes.
Redefining Your Commitments
So instead of declining and saying I cannot commit because I’m overly booked. I have so many commitment already this month or maybe in the next month but because we don’t want to be perceived as a person that is not ready to get along or we’re antisocial or we’re not the most agreeable person in the room but because we’re constantly want to say yes to everybody because we want we don’t want to be painted as this whatever maybe you’re so stuck up that you can’t even socialize. You have a choice to say no gracefully and say yes if you want to.
Steps in renewing your mind
So this is the problem that many of us think that transforming your mind is also always relocating and changing locations when in fact it’s it starts with your mindset. It starts with your attitude. It’s self-awareness. And I would like to emphasize that self-awareness. You cannot be aware of something that you don’t know anything about. First of all you must be aware of the root causes of your triggers, the root causes of your problem.
According to Proverbs 23:7, it says, "For as he think it think it in his heart, so is he."
- And so whatever you think in your heart, whatever you ponder, that’s who you become, which is correlated to what I said earlier of Norman Vincent Peele, change your thoughts and change your world. Whatever you think in your in your heart, so is he. The more and more you think about yourself that you are still a stagnant lukewarm warm. You don’t want to change.
- That’s why you’re crawling instead of metanoia is a change metamorphosis. Remember when you’re changing repentance is a metanoia. Greek word metanoia is the changing of direction. So if you want to change and renewed your mind you must have a metamorphosis like a butterfly. You have to go through this incubation period when a butterfly is still in this I don’t know how many years or many months that they have to go through this cocoon to wrap themselves and before they can fly away they have to shed all those old versions of themselves from being a worm a worm or this caterpillar that was crawling on the ground and they have to go through the transformation by a metamorphosis.
- It takes months probably before they could develop their wings in the same manner with us as a human being. If you want to change your life, it has to start with your mindset. Renewing your mind takes a lot of shifting from positive from negative to positive rather. It it is about being aware of where did this thought come from. I don’t know if it has been proven scientifically, but I’ve heard that you are not your thoughts. that m majority of our thoughts are based on indoctrination.
Majority of our thoughts and our beliefs are based on propaganda. Majority of our thoughts are based on the books that we read, the education system that we have been taught as a child. Majority of our thoughts that are stinking are based on the old patterns of our parents that we probably never questioned. Majority of our thoughts are based on our experiences.
If somehow you have a thought like me that all men are bad, why why did I think that way? It’s not that all men are bad. It’s because I came from a broken home. That I have had this idea that just because my dad was a cheater and he was an irresponsible human being who did not support his family, therefore all men are bad.
But that is actually not facts because not all men are bad. Not all men are responsible. Not all men are going to cheat. But because of that experience that I had as a child coming from a broken home and a fatherlessness at home, therefore I have created that conclusion that all men are bad. However, I’ve also seen that some men are actually not bad because I’ve seen my uncle uh married my aunt who married an uncle that was uh very supportive. He actually provided for his family. He was a very good provider. He was a good father, a good husband.
So this is why sometimes we have all of this half-baked ideas or belief system that are not fully real or truth because of what we have experienced. The same thing when we say that I cannot change. According to Henry Ford, if you think you can, you’re right. And if you think you can’t, you’re also right. It is what you convince yourself otherwise that if you think you cannot change because you have already made up your mind that you cannot change.
Change is hard as I always like to say if change is easy everybody would have done it. But because change takes a lot of effort it takes a lot of determination. It takes a lot of self-awareness. It takes a lot of humility. It takes a lot of falling down again and getting back up. It takes a lot of accountability. When you want to learn and grow, you need to take accountability. You learn to apologize when you have made a mistake and you’re going to learn how to dust off your feet, move as fast as you can.
Don’t beat yourself up and try to just start again if you where you left off. And this is what it’s constantly going to do. Life is all about evolving and changing constantly like the weather. You cannot just stay stagnant. If you are not growing previously, if how you deal with your circumstance and you’re the same person, you are not matured yet. I have encountered people in my life. they’re in their 70s, they’re still acting like a toddler.
They cannot communicate with you without getting snappy or without giving you a cold treatment or a silent treatment, especially with other toxic people that we have to live with. I know that some women are also the part of the problem. As much as I like to want to support some women, but you’ll be surprised that the people that we have to struggle living with is either our mother, our aunts, our sisters, or mother-in-laws that we have to deal with.
And it’s true because you know why there’s so many also going on between women and women. There’s always this cattiness. They’re envious. They’re insecure and they’re jealous of you. And this is exactly why we cannot really go down with that kind of level. If you want to create solution in your family, you cannot copy bad behavior.
If women in your life are toxic, maybe your mother was toxic, she was dysfunctional, maybe your mother-in-law too is dysfunctional because of their wounds from the past. And that’s not your job to heal them. It’s not your job to carry their burdens with you. It’s not your job to fix them. It is actually their job.
But you must be the person who has to give them the right example. You cannot really be bogged down to their drama, to the own old cycle pattern. It’s not your job to baby them. It’s not your job to cater them. But it’s not your job as a human being to really just impose to them that you must change. You can only influence people based on your choices, based on your example and how you act and behave.
And if they cannot still get that memo and and they still not yet have the clarity and they don’t understand what you’re trying to do and they are threatened by your boundaries and they don’t like what you’re what you’re saying or doing, it’s on them. It’s not on you.
As I said, either people want to level up with you or they don’t. Either people want to go at the trajectory or the trajectory of your future to make them a better version of themselves or they want to be stagnant. It’s okay to let people be stuck to where they’re at. It’s okay that if people don’t want to grow with you, that’s fine. If they want to carry this bitterness until the day they die, it’s up to them. It’s not up to you.
Your job and the only variable that you can control is yourself. You cannot control people. You cannot expect people to like you, to love you, and to embrace your growth. The only thing that you have control is yourself, and how you can move forward without getting so caught up in whatever people think. It is not your business of what people think. Let them think whatever they want.
It’s none of your business what they think about you. It’s none of your business whether they’re going to congratulate you or support you in your moving forward or better meant of your future. It’s not your job. It’s none of your business whether people is going to say, “I love you. I like you.” and actually admire what you do because you cannot really expect people to do that.
Other people is going to hate you because they are just not matured in the head. And it’s okay. Let them be. Let it go. As Jesus would say, you cannot really have this dichotomy of if you love your life, you must let go of yourself. If you hang on to your life, you’re going to lose yourself. It is one of those dichotomy thing that if if you try so hard to do something for people because you think that they’re going to love you, it’s actually not true.
Just because you’re doing something for people and serving them and giving them everything, if people are still blind, it doesn’t matter what you do for them, even even though you bend backwards for people, they don’t care. So sometimes it’s okay to pull back your energy, to only minimize your time with people and to only give them a few minutes of your time because if you are not appreciated where you’re at and you’re constantly giving everything you’ve had and you don’t have any appreciation, they don’t see your value. It is their loss. It’s not on you.
So please stop trying to prove yourself and to go above and beyond for people who is not even willing to do the same thing for you. So I have done trying to prove myself of my worth. It was a long time process. It took me a long time to realize that I was giving and giving to a point where I was very exhausted and I was very hard on myself and I thought to myself it is a one-sided love. It is nothing that is reciprocated. It is not mutual.
And at that point when you keep on giving you will become depleted of energy and people are takers. You will be surprised that today’s world people are narcissistic. They like to take something from you. They just want to take and take and take and they never want to give. And if you keep on doing that, they always expect it.
And if the moment you unplug and you says, “I’m not giving this nonsense anymore. I’m not going to tolerate this.” Then you become a problem. And you know exactly that that’s the kind of people that you should probably get rid of or not be around with because those are not the people for you in the first place. If people don’t want to support you of your growth, then there’s something’s wrong with them. It’s not on you.
But if you’re constantly learning and growing and evolving and take accountability and you said, you know what, I have so much to learn. I’m still learning because it’s not about perfection. It’s about progression. And we know that transforming your mind takes a lot of shifting and uncovering your old wounds and old patterns and taking the skeletons out of your closet instead of sweeping it under the rug.
Make sure to face it head on and really ask those questions. What demons am I still sleeping with? Because as we know, another year is almost over. And this is a good segue for you to assess your life before 2025 is over and moving to 2026. Instead of starting on the January 2026, maybe you should start now by asking yourself the question, am I really changing? Am I really growing or am I just growing old but not maturing according to Maya Angelou?
