I’m Diana Swillinger, and you’re listening to the Renew your Mind podcast. Episode 63. This is a recording of an Ask and Answered session I did in my Facebook community, the Renew Your Mind community. So if you want to be a part of these Ask and Answered sessions so you can ask me questions, just head on over to Facebook, look up the Renew Your Mind community, and ask to join. I’ll see you there.
This is Ask and Answered, where you ask a question and it gets answered. And I do have some questions that came to me ahead of time. I’m going to do I used to do free Q and A’s, like, on a webinar before I had a Facebook group. But now I’ve got you guys here in a group, and so why not just come live right here for you all and do the Ask and Answered here? Because you’re my people, and I am here to help you. I know we had the boot camp in March. I want to hear what’s going on. I want to hear what you need help with. I want to, uh, serve you. I want to help you keep your mind renewal going. This is a perfect place for you guys to come and ask me questions and get all the help you need. So let me start with some questions that I got already in messages, and we’ll just go from there.
One of the questions is about dealing with kids. By the way, last week, I had a great podcast go up with my friend Joey Mascio. He’s a life coach for teens. Even at boot camp, I had people ask if I would put this kind of curriculum together for teens. And Joey Mascio coaches, teens. I don’t, but I’ve been in a Mastermind with him. He and a couple other life coach friends of mine. We meet every other week, and I’ve been doing it for two years. So I know how he thinks. I know how he coaches, and he teaches very much, like what I teach. And he helps teens figure out, yeah, some of the basics about getting out of anxiety and stuff like that. But he helps them figure out how to get what they want in life, how to stop floundering, how to stop wondering, what is it I really want? What do I want to do, how to, uh, stop feeling like I can’t achieve things. So if you haven’t listened to it yet, go listen to the how to Guide Your Teen podcast with Joey Mascio.
Okay, but this question dealing with our kids, when they mess up, should it be consequences or their own realization that they messed up and self chastisement? Yes. They also need to learn from it and forgive themselves for it. But how do you teach that? So here’s what I’d recommend for, uh, all of us parents in this group who want to help our kids grow up to not hate themselves, to not, like you’re saying, chastise themselves. So people make mistakes. We all do. Our kids make mistakes. What a lot of us tend to do is to go into a self hate or a self dislike or self judgment as a way to punish ourselves. So if I can punish myself, well, then maybe I’ll be better next time. For example, for me, I was a mom who used to yell at her kids a lot. When my boys were little, like age four, six and eight, and the several years moving up in that time frame, they were fighting all the time. They’d throw things at each other sometimes they’d punch each other. They’d argue over who gets to play on the computer, who gets to use the Legos, and then bedtime running around the house. It was so much. And I didn’t have any of these tools at that time. So I would yell at the kids. And then what I would do is I would feel ashamed for my mistake, and I would think, I’m terrible at this. I’m a terrible mom. I’m a terrible person. And then when I did that, I would try to I call it white knuckle. It like, I’m never going to yell at my kids again. That’s so terrible. I’m never going to do that. I’m a terrible person when I yell at my kids. I’m not going to do that. I won’t do it. And I could go weeks without yelling at my kids, but I was like, I’m not going to yell. I’m not going to yell. Because if I did yell, I would be a terrible person, and I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to be that terrible person. And it was a lot of, like, grit your teeth and try to get through it. So our kids do that, too. So if your kid messes up and then they self chastise, they are hurting their own esteem. They’re getting used to judging and blaming themselves and shaming themselves, and they might even get some results for a little while. So it can seem like, well, maybe that’s a natural consequence that works, but it’s a destructive pattern. So I wouldn’t call self chastisement kind of like a natural consequence of messing up. I think that’s an unhealthy way to try to regulate ourselves and become the kind of person that we want to.
So as a parent, if you can speak into that, if you can interrupt that, that’s great. A natural consequence for messing up would be like, those of you who’ve listened to, or if you listen to that podcast with Joey, I mentioned one of my boys who now they’re adults. They’re 18, 20 and 22. I’m not going to mention which one, but one of them cops were involved. Now, I can help him in some ways, and I can allow natural consequences. The natural consequences are he needs to pay fines, he needs to come up with money to pay the fines, and he needs to understand what can happen if he does something like this again, m, all of that is a lot of natural consequence. Him beating himself up is an internalization that’s not a natural consequence. That is a self judgment, self loathing process that doesn’t work.
So if you can let your child have the natural consequences of whatever it is that happened, if there’s a school, there’s principals, or if, uh, another child is involved and the parents say, your child’s not allowed to play with my child anymore, those are natural consequences happening outside of your child internally. We want to shore up your child’s ego and confidence, and we want to let him or her know they’re still an okay person. Because all people make mistakes. Every single person. They’re not the one person that makes mistakes, and half the population doesn’t. And they’re in the bad population of the half that makes mistakes and then there’s another half that doesn’t. No, everybody makes mistakes. So you normalize it. Guess what?
Just like everybody else, you do good things and you make mistakes. That’s how it goes. And sometimes it’s hard when you make a mistake because you have to deal with the consequences that come up. Identify what those consequences are, let them see how it’s happening, what’s unfolding, but then speak into their ego in a healthy way. Our ego is our understanding of self, okay? That you are a human who makes mistakes. It does not make you a bad person. Telling yourself you’re a bad person isn’t going to help. It happened. Now give yourself grace. You’re a normal human now. What do you want to do going forward? What do you want to do if a situation like that arises again and again? If you go listen to that podcast with Joey, this is great. He talks about this spider effect or not effect, but where he takes a spider web and he’ll map out on a whiteboard. Now, if a situation like that happens again, you could choose this, okay? Now what would happen? If you choose that, what are the natural consequences then? If you chose this, what are the natural consequences that would happen? And if you chose this, what might happen? And if you chose this, what might happen? Now, consequences aren’t always negative consequences. What happens? It means with sequence, what’s the next thing to happen in sequence, consequences can be good.
Show them all the different paths that they could take and what would come in fact, instead of showing them like Joey says, I’d have them come up with the consequences with you. Like, if you choose this path, what happens next? You tell me what’s another path you could take. Okay, if you chose that one, what would happen next? And then you let them decide, which path do you want to go on? So it’s a mix of them having natural consequences, having grace and love for themselves and compassion as they move through the consequences of a mistake, and then looking forward to what kind of person it is they want to be. What path do they actually want to go on? How would they like to handle a situation like this if it comes up again and you get to you’re a guide. Now, if there are no other natural consequences, let me just throw this in there. As a parent, like, if my kids got in trouble at school, the school had consequences, I often would not add consequences. But if it’s something that happens at home, I may be the one who creates a, uh, natural consequence. As a parent, naturally, I want to have consequences for my kids if they do something that’s against the rules or they disobey or they’ve been rude or whatever. So I might be the one who creates a natural consequence. But if a consequence is coming from an external factor, that’s not me. I might not need to add any.
Uh, all right, next question. What pastors or Bible teachers do you like to listen to and learn from? Which teachers do you think teach how to renew your mind correctly? Let me start by saying I don’t classify what anybody teaches as correct or incorrect. I don’t think what anyone teaches is right or wrong. I think what people teach is what they believe to be correct or effective. As human beings, we’re always interpreting what we read. We’re interpreting what we see on the Internet. We’re interpreting what other people do. We’re interpreting what the Bible says. We’re interpreting what other spiritual teachers say. It’s all interpretation, interpretation, and then coming up with our best answers. But for me, what I like to do and so what I gravitate towards is people who put things into practice with steps you can take or a guide or tools.
That’s why I love my tools. My main one is the mind shift tool. We’ve got what you think, what you feel, what you do. It’s from cognitive behavioral therapy, and it goes in order, and we can plug things into it and see what happens. I also find this to be congruent with Philippians Four, where Paul is telling us, whatever you, uh, think about, whatever is good, whatever is holy, whatever is righteous, set your mind on these things, what you think. And then he said, I have learned to feel content in all circumstances. And when somebody’s content, guess what? They’re feeling peace. They’re feeling joy. They’re feeling hope. All these good things that God has for us. And then Paul goes on and says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. So all the doing he’s going to do is going to come from a healthy place. So if people are speaking from things that are congruent to the Word and are practical, I’m attracted to that. One of the teachers preachers that I’ve listened to several times that I think I’m like. He sounds like what I love to teach. And so he’s a mix of a theologian and a pastor and a coach in my brain. And that’s Andy Stanley. I think Andy Stanley is rooted solidly in this kind of mind renewal stuff. Um, as far as pastors, I’ve also listened, uh, to several things from is it Phil Greshel? No, it’s Craig Greshel. That’s it Craig. He also is very congruent. Oh, um, michael hyatt. He’s just very practical. He’s not a preacher. He was the president or the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing, a Christian publishing company, for many, many years. And now he’s an entrepreneur out doing his own thing. So he is very practical. And I use his planners and, uh, all that kind of stuff.
So when it comes to mind renewal and what kind of teachers you want to listen to, you’ve got to be checking in with your own spirit and your own soul and decide, does that seem like a truth that’s coming from God, that honors God? Does this lead me more down? Does what this person’s teaching, does this feel more like or does this feel like more love, more compassion, more empathy, more, um, growing more maturing, getting closer to Christ? Is this creating more harmony in my life? Is it creating more confusion or less confusion? So that’s something to test. I also do learn from a lot of non Christian people. I think wisdom comes in many forms, and some of the people say they’re Christians. And I’m like, I’m not sure. And then some people are just in their own thought process. Like Byron Katie. I wouldn’t recommend Byron Katie for consuming, um, her work. I would recommend getting familiar with it a little bit. She is not a Christian. She’s a little bit wacky. But her book, um Loving What Is. Helped. I like to think of it as like breaking my brain a little bit. Like our brains get stuck on, this is how I operate. This is how I operate. And reading her book kind of took me off that hamster wheel of being stuck in my thinking, kind of broke my brain a little bit and made me think outside the box to the place where she’s the kind of person who has found peace no matter what’s going on in this world now. She has found it through her thinking and without pointing to God. So I’m very careful with that. But, uh, I loved how she really encouraged me in this book. To challenge my thinking. And I think as Christians, we need to know the skill of challenging our thinking.
Another person I listen to and read books a lot that I love is Byron Katie. No, I just said Byron Katie Bernet Brown. Many people have heard of Brene Brown. She has a great Ted Talk on shame. She says she’s a Christian, but she’s also very liberal in her views. I love in her liberalness of views at least. She just wants to love people and not condemn people. I mean, isn’t that we’re supposed to be doing as Christians? But, uh, she does a lot of study in sociology and psychology on shame and connection and vulnerability and just getting along in humanity. That really helped me think differently about what I do with my own shame. And am I willing to be me and be courageous and get out there? I hope that helps a little bit. I just read all sorts of different things. I’m kind of all over the board on it. Like a book called The Art of Thinking Clearly. I don’t even remember where this guy came up with this. He just has all these different he opens up your mind to, like, the tricks our brains play on us, like this automatic stuff that our brain does. If you’re a brain geek, read The Art of Thinking Clearly. And then I, uh, think his name is Daniel Amen. He’s a neuropsychologist. Neuroscientist. Change, uh, your brain, change your life, I think is what his book is called. Something like that. But his last name is Amen.
So I get into the neuroscience of stuff as well. And then I highly recommend Dr. Rick Marks. He has a podcast, Relate Well. He’s a friend of mine. He’s been on my podcast. He’s got all these degrees in psychology. He’s brilliant, and he really loves diving into relationships. And he teaches you how to think differently about relationships. Really, really good stuff. This is the last question that was sent into me. So here is the question. Are, uh, there steps you take to overcome anxiety and a feeling of helplessness and worrying? I understand to trust God and pray. Yet sometimes my mind just starts worrying about my loved ones because there are some life altering things happening to people I love. I know it never changes an outcome. Yet no matter how hard I try to let go, it seems to take over. It’s definitely wasted energy worrying about stuff we can’t control, yet I still do it. Yeah. So getting out of worry takes a little practice. It takes intention.
Because what’s happening with worry and psychologists, I don’t have the resources in front of me, but my general knowledge from the things I’ve read about worry from psychologists and the studies that they’ve done is that our brain wants to try to solve problems. So if you see in someone else’s life that they’re having a struggle, or if you think if they keep going down that path, something bad’s going to happen. Then our brain goes to work. Not our critical thinking brain. Yes, that gets involved, but it’s triggered by the amygdala or the fight or flight or freeze part of our brain that just sends out some fear hormones that then tell your brain, oh my gosh, something bad’s going to happen. We need to get to work. Critical thinking, how to solve this. And then again, the amygdala is like, oh, the critical thinking brain. Look at it. It’s totally trying to find a solution to a problem. We need to be stressed out. We need to have anxiety until this problem gets solved. And it’s this loop. So it takes practice to get out of that loop because you have to be intentional. You need to be willing and wanting to interrupt that process. If you really don’t want to worry anymore, you’re going to have to be intentional about what you want to think. Let’s interrupt the worry cycle.
You’re thinking life altering things are happening. Now. That sounds very serious. It sounds very important, life altering things. But we all have a different definition of what a life altering thing is. Now, some of us might think it’s going to be a life altering thing. If someone fails a class, it’ll be a life altering thing. If they get in a car accident, it’ll be a life altering thing. If they stub their toe and then get an infected toenail, I mean, who decides what’s a life altering thing maybe that toenail is going to fall off. That could be pretty life altering. What our brain is doing when you tell it it’s going to be life altering is they’re like, danger the brain. Danger, danger. Life altering thing could happen. Life altering thing is happening. That’s bad. But is it even bad? Is it even bad if something life altering happens? I mean, we could kind of say everything that happens is life altering. What does life altering actually mean? Life altering is when something in our life is altered. You ever take clothes in to get altered? I mean, the alteration I used to work at a clothing shop in the Mayfair Mall in Wawatosa, Wisconsin, and we had a part time seamstress. Her name was Arsha. She even altered my wedding dress and made me avail she did the alterations. We gave alterations for free to our customers. I mean, that was some pretty good service. It was a good job. An alteration to an item could have been to bring up the pants a quarter of an inch. Or it could be pull out all the seams, add material, pull it out. Like bringing up pants a quarter seam. Like Arsha could get that done in a few minutes. She’d be like, Shirt, let me just go take those downstairs. Don’t leave them with me and come back. I’ll have this done in a few minutes. And she comes back and the pants are done. But if somebody needed their dress let out, material added and stuff, she’d be like, Come back next week.
So just because we say it’s altering doesn’t mean it’s a big deal. It just means it’s a change. It could be a very slight change, or it could be a big change. But what our brain is doing is life altering. Life altering. That’s big, that’s dangerous, that’s bad. Is it bad? Maybe life altering is great for people. I quit drinking alcohol ten and a half years ago. And what they say, and I guess, uh, I found it to be true with me, is that before you make a change, it needs to get really bad. You need to be in a lot of pain. You need to just get so fed up with your life and it’s so painful that you finally want to change. Sometimes it takes something life altering. Sometimes it takes a spouse walking out. Sometimes it takes a car accident. Sometimes it takes somebody stealing from you. Sometimes m life altering things that we would think are bad bring about the best possible change in our life. Like we wouldn’t want to go back. When I look back at the painful things in my life, man, like even losing my sister, that 18 years ago, that still brings me pain. I mean, I could say I’d like that to change, but I don’t think I’d be here coaching anybody today. I’m changing lives in a completely different way because of all the things that I had to go through, all the difficult things I had to go through for losing my sister. It was life altering. Struggle in my marriage, have foreclosure papers delivered to my door, turn to alcohol, be ostracized in a church.
All of that stuff was painful and life altering and it made me become an amazing life coach. Do I want to change that? So you’re worrying because you think life altering is bad. What if, uh, life altering is amazing? Could be we’re like, oh, no, don’t marry that person. It’ll be terrible. But maybe when you marry that person and then you get divorced two years later, then you find the exact right person for you. And now you know exactly what to look for in a marriage. That happened to a young, uh, friend of mine. She used to babysit my kids. Beautiful woman, lovely story. Did we want to stop her from that life altering decision about marrying somebody? She would divorce soon after because she wouldn’t be married to who she is today. She would have went down an entirely different path. Okay, let me see if there’s anything else in this question I can address but that’s, you know, changes that thought. Or either it’s not life altering stuff or it is, but, uh, if it is, it’s not necessarily bad. It could be amazing. You don’t know. At least acknowledge, hey, this looks like it’s going to be life altering. Could go bad. But even if it goes bad, that could be the best thing ever. Could be awesome. Okay, um, I know it never changes the outcome. Yeah, worry never changes the outcome.
Eckhart tolle. Another kind of woo woo out there. But I just love this quote. He says it’s something like, I’m not going to get it perfect. Worrying pretends to be useful, but it serves no actual purpose. And then there’s the Bible scripture. Which of you has added an hour to his life from worrying? Again, just paraphrasing, but none of us improves our life from worrying. It’s wasted energy. It’s painful. It really does take a lot of energy. It will exhaust you. So in addition to knowing that the life altering things might be, um, just as likely to be amazing as they are difficult, I mean, difficult is not bad, you guys. Difficult is the journey we’re supposed to be on. But you get to remind yourself all the time, too, um, worrying, just taking a lot of energy and ask yourself, do I really want to be spending all my energy on worrying? When, one, I can’t change the outcome, and two, let’s face it, this could be a really good thing. It might be if God’s in control. If God’s got this, could be a really good thing. I’ll send you a link to a webinar I did a year ago on how to stop worrying. So it’s just a replay of the video and you can watch that too. It actually will walk you through allowing yourself to feel the worry. Just let it be there for a little bit, see what it’s like.
There’s a lot of power in choosing to experience our emotions. It lets us identify what we’re feeling. It lets us, um, start getting the driver’s seat of our emotions, where we start having control of, do I want to think this and then feel this? Or now that I know what it feels like, do I actually want to feel it? We get a lot of leverage. So I’ll send you that video. If anybody else wants it, just send me a message or put it in the comments and I’ll send that link to you. Okay, one more question. In the boot camp, which, by the way, you guys, I’m going to do another boot camp. I don’t know the topics yet. It’ll be things I teach in coaching, and I’m going to do it in September, so stay tuned for that. It’ll be in this group.
Okay. In the boot camp, which was in March, you spoke on the list, the list that we have for other people. How can I let that go when what they do or don’t do affects me? For example, the husband doesn’t help me around the home. Well, what happens when we go through that worksheet? And the exercise on the list is we get to this question about, well, what’s the list? How does it make you feel when they don’t do it? And then the question is, what have you been doing to try to get them to do these things and how’s that been working? So the question for you, Angela, is if you have the list, is that helping? Is the list helping at all? When m you have the list, is your husband helping around the house? Like, he should mow the lawn without me asking. He should do the dishes. If he sees crumbs on the floors, he should sweep. You know, he should help me teach the kids how to clean up their toys.
How is the list helping? So in a marriage, in a partnership, I mean, a healthy marriage has some level of partnership. We make a request known to the other person. That’s fine. Hey, husband, here’s what I’d like you to do. That would be a healthy way to have a list, I suppose. I do still kind of have a list of things. I think my husband it would be nice if he did, but I don’t think he should do them. So it’s a difference. I don’t think he should do anything on the list. I think I would like it if he did some things on the list, but when I think he should do it and then he doesn’t, what are we left with? So we talked about this at boot camp. We’re left with resentment. When you have a list and the other person doesn’t do it, you resent it. So the question is, is it working? Usually it’s a no. And then why do you want to keep the list if all you’re feeling is resentment? If m you could just let go and let your husband he’s going to do whatever he’s going to do, let husband be husband and then not resent it, wouldn’t that feel a lot better? So what this would look like with still wanting him to do things but then not resenting it is you can make a request like, hey, husband, I have a request. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a lot of things that need to get done around the house. Um, I even have a list, lack of a better word. I even have a list of all the things I do. I mean, and I actually have an app.
Do you guys ever hear the Toady app? T-O-D-Y. I’m going to go through the entire Toady app and everything I have on it, uh, in a week and a half, when I’m taking some days off and I’m going to get it all done. But it’s a list of all the things that you need to dust, you need to vacuum, need to clean the windows. It’s all on there. So, hey, husband, there’s this list of all the things we do to take care of the house, and I kind of noticed that I’m doing almost all. Of them and ah, I could really use some help. I have a request. Would you be willing to do there’s like 20 things on the list. Would you be willing to do five? I’ll still do 15. Would you be willing to do five? I’ll even let you pick. Or there’s two I really want you to do, but you could pick the other three. You just have a conversation. What’s going to happen if you do that? Chances are he’s going to say yes. I mean, maybe he’ll say no. It’s possible. Then don’t have a list for him that, uh, he says, I’m not going to do this. And then you’re just stuck in resentment because now you’re punishing you for him not doing the list.
But I love just having a conversation and if it’s non threatening, I’m not saying you’re doing anything wrong. I don’t even think you should do this stuff. I shouldn’t do it either. We could both just not do this stuff on the list. That’s an option. So you could approach it like that. Here’s all the stuff that needs to get done for the house. I don’t want to do any of it. Do you? No, you don’t want to do it either. Okay, cool. What should we do? Should we just let the house be dirty? Should we hire someone to help clean the home? Do we need a nanny that helps teach the kids how to clean up their stuff? What are your ideas for how to get this done and be curious when you don’t have a list and you don’t think he should do any of it? You don’t bring resentment to that conversation. You just get to be open and be curious and interested in solving the problem instead of judging him. So I think there’s lots of ways to make your request known and get the help that you want without bringing in the idea that he should do any of it because then you just end up you feel terrible. Okay, angela, if you have a follow up to that question, let me know. Kylie, can you talk a little about how we practically can see our natural circumstances and still remain hopeful? Our example finances are tight. Not quite sure how things are going to get figured out, but I want to trust God and not get worried. So anyone who wants to watch the video on how to stop worrying, I’m just going to post a link in the group and everybody can get it you name share it with your friends.
Okay? How can we practically see our natural circumstances and still remain hopeful? Okay, so one thing I’d like to say about this, I have it posted across the room from me is I think this is practical, but we’ll still get to your question more specifically, but one of my favorite verses is colossians three two. It says, set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on Earth. So you’re asking me how to look at all the things that are on Earth and remain hopeful. Colossians three two is telling us instead of looking around at all the things on Earth, set your mind on the things above. Kind of a mind renewal verse if you think about it, right? Set your mind on the things above. We’re like, let me keep looking at the fire next door. The neighbor’s house is burning down. Let me keep looking at and feel peace. I don’t think you’re going to feel peace when you look at that. Where do you feel peace? We feel peace when we look to god’s promises what he has for us. God, I know you work all things together for good. God, I know he who completed or he who started the work is faithful to complete it. I know. I read the back of the book. We win. God conquers all. These are the things that I know when we look around at the things on Earth all the time and we think they’re negative, by the way, your finances are tight. I don’t even know what that means. Maybe they’re tight, maybe they’re not. Maybe somebody else in your same financial situation would not think they’re tight. They’d think it’s awesome. I don’t know. You think it’s tight? Is that bad? Is that bad to have just the right amount of money to pay all the things you need to pay? I mean, that could be a huge blessing. So first I’m noticing that you’re thinking things around you like that are bad. Not all of them are bad.
Things could be awesome. That could be the greatest blessing you have. We have just enough pennies to pay the bills. I love it. This is awesome. But I, uh, don’t know. Let’s say somebody’s in a hospital with cancer. How can we have peace and hope and not get worried and trust God when somebody’s in the hospital with cancer? If we look around, we’re going to see the bad stuff happening everywhere. We’re going to see people in pain. We’re going to see people with disease. We’re going to see fighting. We’re going to see sex trafficking. We’re going to see people addicted to drugs. We’re going to see people losing money. We’re going to see all sorts of stuff. How on earth do you have peace ever? Unless we gain an understanding that this is what our Earth is supposed to look like? When Adam and Eve ate from the apple, all the effects happen. And then, as the scriptures tell us, we’re going to have trials of many kinds. We are going to suffer, though. We suffer for a little while. We’re here for now. We do all sorts of suffering on purpose. You guys, have you noticed that people will go get tattoos on purpose? Do you guys know that hurts? I’ve had surgery, uh, elective surgery on my arm.
Surgery is a big deal. I had somebody purposely slice up in my arm and move nerves around. I mean, I chose signed up for, showed up, volunteered to go through pain and suffering. We could just stay home. But there’s a lot of people that go out there and exercise and exercise and exercise so they can run a marathon. I’m sorry to tell you all exercise is pain. It’s suffering that we’re creating. But we see purpose in it. And when we see purpose in the difficult things, we don’t have a problem with it. We’re like, that’s fine. I see purpose. I can do that. I went back to school to get my degree in my 40s. There was some suffering, a lot of extra work. But I saw purpose. So you, uh, can notice purpose in everything you do. If you have to. You can back it out to that. God’s got purpose here on Earth. He has us going through refinement so we can grow. We don’t grow and get closer to God when everything’s hunky dory. I’m thinking the example I said on my podcast. So you guys listen to the podcast this week on how to figure out God’s will. But, uh, we kind of think life’s supposed to be amazing. And we’re going to be sitting on the beach drinking pineapple juice. And then we can be hopeful. But there’s no purpose in that other than some enjoyment, which is a great purpose. I love sitting on the beach. So what is the purpose? What is your purpose? Do you have purpose for your life? Do you see God’s purpose in your life? Can you find purpose in all of it? Even when we don’t know what it is? I mean, I just assume. Oh, God. I bet you got some great plan on this one. OOH, I bet this is going to do something great. Whoa, that situation was challenging. I bet you’re really working here. Something awesome is going to happen. Maybe I’ll see the connection someday, maybe I won’t. But there’s purpose.
I feel like I kind of was talking around that one a little bit. But, uh, you specifically said finances are tight. How can you remain hopeful? Why couldn’t you remain hopeful if you lost all your money and went to a homeless shelter? Why couldn’t you be hopeful then? And maybe you’re going to learn some amazing things and meet amazing people. And you’re going to grow in your journey and you’re going to mature. Maybe you’re going to go witness to other people. Maybe that’ll be the best thing that happens to you if you lose it all.
There’s a movie called Life is Beautiful. I recommend it. But I mean, I say that, uh, yet I’ve only watched it once because movies that really wrench my heart, I have a hard time watching more than once. But in Life is Beautiful, I think it’s an Italian movie. And I’m not sure if he’s like an Italian jew, but it’s set back at, like, Auschwitz or another concentration camp. And there’s a man in the concentration camp. He pretty much just goes around and smiles at people and does magic tricks and brings joy. They’re in a concentration camp, and he brings hope and life and peace right there to the concentration camp. It’s possible regardless what the circumstances are. He did it because he chose to set his mind on the things that were hopeful and the things that bring joy and relationships and people.
I think where the list? This is just a, uh, follow up on the list. I think where the list comes from is that I feel it overwhelmed and tired. Can’t get everything done. And I think, I wouldn’t feel that way if he helped me. No, you wouldn’t feel that way if you stopped thinking you need to get everything done. That’s a terrible thought. You don’t need to get anything done. Stop thinking I need to get everything done. That makes you feel overwhelmed, not what your husband is or is not doing. Okay. Uh, I think I wouldn’t feel that way if he helped me. So the issue is really that I need to address is my overwhelm and be willing to let things go. Yes. You get to choose every single time. What do you want to do, what do you not want to do? What are you going to do? What are you going to not do? It’s not about your husband. It’s about you and the choices you’re making for you. Do I like cleaning the toilet? I don’t know. I decided I don’t have to figure out if I like or dislike cleaning the toilet, because if I really ask myself, I’ll probably say I dislike it. You know what? I like a clean toilet. I care about a clean toilet that doesn’t smell and doesn’t have gunk on it. I’m the one who cares. Nobody else cares. Okay? One of my kids cares. I don’t think the rest of people in my family notice, which, okay, I care.
So I choose to clean the toilet. I don’t need to be resentful at anyone else for not cleaning it. I want to clean. If I feel overwhelmed by all the stuff I need to get done, it’s because I’m thinking I have too much. Overwhelms mean you’re thinking too much. Too much. Stop thinking too much. You have just the right amount of things to do, and you get to choose what you want to do and what you don’t want to do. You don’t have to do any of it. And stop telling yourself that there’s too much. There’s not too much. It’s never too much. That’s just a story that makes us feel overwhelmed. All right, y’all. This was fun. Thanks for dealing with my scratchy throat and all that, but, hey, I just show up as myself here. So you guys have any more questions, you know where to find me. I’m here. You don’t have to go this alone. Just send me messages. Send me somebody else uses that voice to send me messages on Facebook a lot. Oh, that’s fun. It’s like we’re having a conversation. I’ll voice you back. All right. Here to help you all have a great day. Thanks for coming and hanging out with me. Take care of you. Bye.
As an advanced certified life coach, I help Christian women trying to live their best lives, but they still feel unsatisfied and stuck. Uh, I teach thought management skills that work so you can enjoy life again and step into who God has created you to be. Don’t forget to head on over to Rympodcast.com to get my free resources or a free coaching call.
