Thank you are two words I never thought I would be saying to multiple sclerosis. Why would I thank the incurable disease that's attacking my brain? Yet having lived with this diagnosis for more than seven years now, I can honestly say it has changed my life for the better in some ways. So in this special Thanksgiving episode, I'm talking about gratitude, not just from the easy days, but from the lessons it's taught me and the unexpected ways it's changed my life and how it can for you too. And if you're in a season right now where you're struggling to find hope in this diagnosis, I have a message for you too, straight from my heart. And my fellow MS sisters, if you want a more personalized approach to creating your MS diet and lifestyle, check out my private coaching program.

It includes a comprehensive assessment, personalized strategies, and lifestyle support. Each month, I only accept three new clients. So if you're interested, apply now at Alenebrennan.com/coach. Now onto today's episode. There are 1 million people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the US. So that makes you one in a million. And you have a special purpose in this world that no diagnosis can take away from you. So if you're ready to reclaim your body, mind, and life from multiple sclerosis, welcome to my MS podcast. I'm your host, Alene Brennan. I grew up in a home where we always looked for the silver linings. If I'm honest, it was kind of annoying. Not everything has to have a happy spin on it, right? I mean, am I really suggesting that something good can come from an incurable disease?

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I certainly didn't start here. It's taken me years to see the good, and there are still countless days where I am resentful towards MS, but that's exactly why this conversation is so important. Living with multiple sclerosis can mess with your head in more ways than one. I'm not just talking about the lesions. I'm talking about your mindset. I've been reading a lot about mindset lately, and I am blown away by how much our thoughts and the story we tell ourselves or the meaning that we give our experiences in life can completely change our life. So I like to think of putting on an armor of hope each day my feet hit the floor.

Just as I put on my clothes to start my day, I put on this armor that helps to shield me from all the negativity I can easily get lost in. I need to see moments of gratitude, joy and positivity sprinkled in there. So whether you're newly diagnosed, a long-term warrior, or someone who's just trying to understand what living with MS is like, I recorded this episode for all of us, for our entire community of amazing people wanting to live beyond their diagnosis. As I was preparing for this episode, I really gave it some thought, like how has MS changed my life for the better? If I'm dedicating an episode to this, I better have something good to back it up. And the funny thing is, I wanted to just identify three things.

This allows me to go into like some detail, share some personal stories about them, but not make the episode too long. Well, I started to brainstorm and like really put some thought into it. And I found myself identifying, okay, here's one way. And then there's two. All right, there's three. Yep, I got it. Oh, wait a minute. What about this one over here? What about that one? It was such a light bulb moment. It's like this. This is exactly what I'm talking about. I feel like I say this in every episode, but that which you focus on gets bigger. You train your brain what you want to pay attention to and what you want it to identify in this world. Because the reality is we are immersed with so much information throughout our day that our brain filters it.

Your brain filters the information because you could not possibly, possibly take in everything at once. And that's why people say that you can create your reality because when you train your brain, what you want it to focus on, that's what you see more of. That's what you experience more of. That is how they say your thoughts can change your life. Your thoughts can create your reality. So my first lesson, the first of my top three unexpected lessons that have me saying, Thank you, MS, is my mindset. Now to tell the story properly, I have to take you back to my first yoga class. I remember the instructor guiding us through these traditional stretches, like downward dog, warrior one, warrior two, tree pose, you know, all the different yoga postures, all the ways in which you can like strengthen and lengthen your muscles, right?

As she was cueing us through these stretches, she starts talking about our thoughts. She tells us that the voice in our head is not us. Naturally, my first thought is, well, who is it? Who has been living in my head this whole time? She explained that the voice in our head is not who we are. It's simply a stream of thoughts that we have chosen to believe. And if we didn't like the dialogue, we had the ability to change it. We had the power to change our thoughts. That's the first time this concept was introduced to me. And I think because it was in the environment of a yoga studio, I'll be honest, I kind of considered it a little out there.

Nonetheless, it planted a seed that once I was diagnosed with MS years later, really started to bloom. Because when I got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as determined, determined as I was to not let MS stand in my way of living my life, I still dealt with a lot of fear. And I started to realize how much that voice in my head was taking me down a rabbit hole of what ifs and worst-case scenarios. And they were on a constant loop playing day and night. Just as a side note, did you know that the average person has about 12 to 60,000 thoughts per day? 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. And here's the disturbing part. Researchers estimate that 80% of those thoughts are negative and 95% of those thoughts are repetitive.

Take that in for a minute. You have on average 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. 80% of which are negative, 95% of which are repetitive. That means if you are just letting your thoughts run the show, you'll have negative thoughts on repeat every single day. No wonder why we feel like we lack motivation. If our mind is thinking negative thoughts all day long, how likely are we to make changes or pursue a dream? We're not. And this was never more evident than when I was trying to wrap my head around this diagnosis. And if I'm being honest, it's something I still struggle with to this day. But here's the deal. The voice in our head and the thoughts that we think are taking us in one of two directions, towards our goals or away from our goals.

There's really no in between. There's not much sitting idle in life. Because honestly, if you're sitting idle, You're kind of moving away from your goals. You're certainly not getting any closer to them. My point is that Microsoft really brought my attention back to my mindset. And I realized that there was just too much on the line here. I can't let this voice constantly feed me negative thoughts and worst-case scenarios. I have to interrupt those thoughts. I have to start paving new patterns in my mind with thoughts that are supporting me, not tearing me down. So what does that look like? Honestly, it's a daily battle. I would be lying if I suggested anything but that. I mentioned earlier the idea of putting an armor of hope on each day, and I really see it that way: Putting on an armor to guard against those negative thoughts.

Because this isn't just a one-time decision that you decide that you're going to have a growth mindset over a fixed mindset or that you're just going to erase these negative thoughts out of your mind and then all of a sudden it's just all rainbows and unicorns. No, that's not how it works. And I'm not suggesting that. This is an ongoing battle. It's worth it because what's the alternative? Are we really going to sit there and just let our mind run the show and take us down all of these worst-case scenarios, rehearsing them over and over again? No, no, I refuse. I refuse to allow that. But again, to make this more practical, when I catch myself thinking a negative thought, I try to interrupt it because every time we interrupt a thought, we weaken it.

The more times you think a thought, the more your brain imprints that thought in your head. So it's like saving that thought to your favorites playlist. But the more we stop or kind of skip that thought, the sooner your brain realizes this thought is not something that we want to have again. So it starts falling to the back of the list. It starts falling off the list. So does this happen the first time you practice it? No. Absolutely not. It's a daily practice that can take weeks, months, and years. And I know that sounds depressing and discouraging, but again, what's the alternative? We're going to live each day with 60,000 thoughts looping through our mind that 80% are negative? No, no, I refuse. I refuse.

MS sparked a fire in me to really check my mindset. To make changes, not just to let my thoughts run the show. Because here's the deal. Prior to my diagnosis, my thoughts were kind of just like lukewarm, I'll say, in the sense that they weren't like detrimental, but they certainly were not supportive. There was a lot of self-doubt and insecurity, and a lot of other things that were just constantly running in the background. But there wasn’t enough tension for me to feel the pain to want to make a change. But once MS came into the picture, those thoughts got louder and they were filled with bigger worries. And I realized that they were going to have too significant of a role in how I lived with MS. So I had a choice.

Again, let them run the show with a false narrative about my life. Or start stepping up and interrupting those thoughts and building a more positive experience with MS. And that in and of itself can help me to live a better life with MS. I don’t have to be victim to my thoughts, my worries, my fears, my doubts, all of that. They are a natural part of the human emotional experience. It's not to say that we are trying to live without fear. I don't believe that. I believe that we need to learn how to work with it, but we can't let it be in the driver's seat. We can't let it make decisions for our life. It can be a voice at the table. But it doesn't get to make the decisions.

And it's because of MS that this got so heightened that it forced me to change my mindset, not just about MS, but about life in general. And realizing that every time I interrupt those thoughts, I'm weakening that thought and paving the new way for something that is more supportive to me. And quite honestly, something that is actually more realistic because all of those worst-case scenarios are they a possibility? Yes, of course, they are; but they're not a guarantee. They're no more a guarantee than a positive outcome for me. So instead of focusing on the worst-case scenario, I'm choosing to focus on the best-case scenario. And by doing so, I'm training my brain to see that, to focus on that, to identify things in my life that support my best-case scenario and not my worst-case scenario.

So thank you, MS, for the mindset reset; clearly, it sparked a little passion in me. Can you tell? And that's definitely a topic that I'm going to be talking more about because I am so passionate about it. And it's something that I am just immersing myself in now. I think I've mentioned before, I just got a bunch of books off Amazon. I'm diving into them. I got my highlighter, my notes, all the things. It's fascinating to me. What blows my mind is how much it literally changes your experience going through life. But yet this is not something that we are ever taught or told. I happened to stumble upon it in a yoga class. And then because of the work that I do and my interest in health and wellness and all these things, I chose to seek it out.

But this is not something that the average person is taught. Yet it can literally change your life. It's incredible. Okay, I have to move on to the next one. The second unexpected lesson I got from MS is about how to spend my time. See, prior to my diagnosis, I tried to do it all. I used to juggle work, family, home, and a busy social calendar. I would always say I'm just going to plow through it because I wanted to do it all. It was exhausting, yes, but there was like a thrill that I had from getting more accomplished and doing it all. But the reality is that was not supportive to my health. MS or not, that was not taking me in a good direction.

And it's only until MS came into the picture where the MS fatigue and brain fog started to set in that I realized, oh, I don't have the same energy that I used to in order to be able to maintain this lifestyle. But again, guess what? That wasn't sustainable, MS or not. So I feel like MS coming into the picture helped me to realize this sooner. You likely heard me say this before, but what if MS is giving us a gift to be more intentional with our time and our energy now? That's how I started to see it. MS became my compass with how I spend my time and energy, not my constraint. Yes, we likely have less energy than most people. But what if we were able to use it wisely instead of spending it frivolously?

I often make the comparison to how we manage money. A person who has all the money in the world but isn't intentional with it can end up broke. We hear about this all the time with major celebrities going bankrupt because money didn't hold the same value when they had so much. They spent it with little thought. On the other hand, take teachers, for example. They often have limited funds and therefore are forced to become really intentional with their money. They may create a budget and start building a savings account. And believe it or not, they tend to be the ones that end up on top. I was shocked when I heard Dave Ramsey say that teachers can have just as good of a chance retiring a millionaire as a doctor does.

Why? Not because they earn more money. Because they were intentional with how they spent the money they had. That, that is what I want for us when it comes for time and energy. I want to be more intentional with how I spend my energy. Now, just like somebody with a limited income who feels really restricted on their budget, we may feel disappointed, discouraged, and even resentful. But what if we flip the script? What if we decided we're going to be more intentional with our time and energy so we can come out on top? We may have less to spend, but if we spend it wisely, we can have more meaningful memories to look back on at the end of our life. And isn't that what we want anyway?

So how exactly do we make this happen? The first step is identifying what is most important to you. How will you know what's worth your time and your energy if you don't clearly identify what is most important to you in life? You need a destination to set your compass. So just as a budget directs how you spend your money, understanding your priorities in life guides how you spend your time and energy. So honestly, it's because of MS fatigue and experiencing that, hey, I may not have the same amount of energy that I had prior to my diagnosis or the same amount of energy that I envisioned for my life moving forward. So if I have limited funds, so to speak, I better make sure that I'm spending what I have wisely.

If I just sit here and be in a slump because I don't have the energy that I want all the time, that's not going to help anything because that's just going to further drain my energy. I need to trim the fat here. What is in my life that's draining my energy that is preventing me from having more time and energy with the things that are most meaningful to me? Again, if I didn't have MS, if I didn't experience MS fatigue and the reality of living with an incurable chronic illness, I wouldn't have had that tension in my life. I likely would have stayed on that hamster wheel of trying to do it all. And that's just exhausting on meaningless things.

This is forcing me to use MS as my compass, not my constraint, to dedicate my time and energy on what is most important to me and to let go of the things that are not priorities. let go of the things that at the end of the day, the end of my life will be so insignificant. I refuse to waste any more time and energy spinning my wheels on meaningless things anymore. I want every bit of time and energy spent on the things that are most meaningful to me. And for me, that's my faith. That's my family. And that's the work that I do. Very passionate about the work that I do. I view this as a mission, not just a career. So I want to have all of my time and energy for those things.

And honestly, I can say without MS, I wouldn't have that clarity. So thank you, MS, for helping me to better prioritize my time and energy. And last but not least, MS brought me into a world of knowledge about health and healing that I likely would have never discovered. And I say that as a nutrition coach. At the time of my diagnosis, I was already a nutrition coach, a personal trainer, a yoga instructor. I had a lot of training under my belt when it comes to health and healing. But yet it wasn't until I got my MS diagnosis that I started diving deep into it. And I started understanding the body's ability to heal in a very different way. And I started to become a better advocate for myself.

And I really started to be intentional with building a bridge between conventional and functional medicine, because we live in a time where we can have the best of both worlds. Both fields are advancing better than they ever have before. So let's choose which works best for us on a case-by-case basis. Let's leverage the best of both worlds. Let's build a bridge. And I can say that this has had a life-changing impact on me and my health. But the real gift, the real gift in this knowledge is positioning me to show up better for my family and friends. And that's everything to me. If I have to go through MS to be able to be a better mother to my daughter and be able to better guide her nutrition and her healthcare and all of the different medical decisions that you make as a parent, I would do it 10 times over because if I can set her up for better success in life and with health, 100%, yes, I will do that.

That means the world to me. And then with other family members and friends, I'm just able to introduce them to things that they might not have otherwise considered, but tools that can support them. And this community too, I include you in my family. You are part of my MS family. And it is, as I said earlier, a mission for me to help all of us live a better quality life with MS. The tagline for this podcast is reclaiming your body, mind, and life from multiple sclerosis. MS has given me the gift of learning so much more about health and healing than I ever would have because it's this determination, it's this fire that it has sparked in me that leads me to learn more, implement more, and share more.

So thank you, MS. Thank you for that fire to understand the body, food, lifestyle, supplements, exercise, all of it, all of it. Thank you for that burning desire to want to know: what these tools can do for me and how I can best heal, how I can best create a healing environment in my body so I can reclaim my body, mind, and life from multiple sclerosis. And now, as I shared at the beginning, I have a message for all of you who may be struggling to find hope right now: You may say, 'Alene', these lessons are great. They're amazing.' I'm so happy for you. But I'm not there right now. I'm not in a place of hope and gratitude. So here's what I want to share with you.

Honor where you're at. Honor where you're at right now. If you're at the beginning of a diagnosis, that is a lot to process. I am not sharing all of these lessons that I've learned having just walked out of a doctor's office being newly diagnosed. I'm almost seven years removed from my diagnosis, and I'm sure there will be many more as years to come. I'm always learning every single day, but I couldn't see these lessons in the overwhelm of a diagnosis. So if you're newly diagnosed, honor where you're at and just give yourself some grace and compassion to take a breath. Grief takes time. And when we are diagnosed with an incurable illness, we are going through a grieving process. You're grieving the life and the health that you thought you had.

That's what I felt at least. So find the tools and support that you need right now to help you process this diagnosis and move forward. forward. And I encourage you, if you haven't done so already, check some of my early episodes from season one of this podcast, because I talk a lot about the emotional processing of a diagnosis like MS. But no, you are not in this alone. And you have the opportunity to choose better thoughts, to choose a mindset that will pull you forward one day at a time, one thought at a time, one breath at a time. Okay, my friends, let's do a quick recap. My top three unexpected lessons living with multiple sclerosis. Number one, mindset. It has given me the gift of recognizing the voice in my head is not in control.

I get the opportunity to change those thoughts. And by changing those thoughts, I'm training my brain to focus on what I want more of in life. Number two, getting off the hamster wheel, being more intentional with how I'm spending my time and energy. MS has lit a fire in me to be so much more discerning of how I'm spending my time and energy because I want to create more meaningful memories in life. I want to spend my time on the things that matter most, not the meaningless things that I will not even think about days, weeks, years later. And last but not least, it has given me the incredible gift of learning about our body's amazing ability to heal, not just for myself, but for my family and friends.

These are some of the things that MS has taught me. As I said, there are so many others, but they have been blessings. And I encourage you in the midst of living with MS day in and day out, we have good days, we have bad days, and we have really tough days. But I encourage you to take an opportunity to see, is there any blessing? Is there any gift? Is there any lesson that has come out of this from you? And maybe some of the lessons that I have shared have sparked some inspiration for you too. I certainly hope that that is the case. And I am so glad that you showed up to listen to this episode today, so you can get one step closer to reclaiming your body, mind, and life from multiple sclerosis. Well, my friend, we've reached the end of this episode. Pick one lesson from today's discussion and put it into action now. It's time to reclaim your body, mind, and life from multiple sclerosis. And for more resources, events, and programs, head over to AleneBrennan. com. See you on the next episode of my MS podcast.