You may have heard that I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Cause I am LOL. It's a huge part of my identity and a driving factor in what I do what I do.
Educating mothers on Emotional wellness and providing effective tools to improve their daily experience of life ultimately comes from my faith.
Maybe you have wondered how my faith influences my coaching?
Maybe you have asked yourself what I believe in or why I bring it up at all when it comes to my business?
If your curious about why I'm so passionate about my faith, and equally passionate about you having the choice to choose or not choose yours... then listen in.
I do not believe that the LDS church has a monopoly on truth, but it has taught me how to find it, the importance of seeking it and what to do with that knowledge.
Enjoy this episode and don't forget to reach out with any questions!
@limitlessfemale on insta or limitlessfemale@gmail.com
PODCAST EPISODES REFERENCED:
The Chemical Imbalance Theory
Parenting With Agency and Not Influence
Increasing Your Emotional Bandwidth
interested in SHIFT? Want a free call with EMYLEE? Grab a spot for a free call here
Find more information and Free resources HERE:
https://hernextstep.limitlessfemalecoaching.com/landing-page-her-next-step
Have a question about the program or something you want answered on the podcast? Come chat with me on instagram!
@Limitlessfemale
You may have heard that I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Cause I am LOL. It's a huge part of my identity and a driving factor in what I do what I do.
Educating mothers on Emotional wellness and providing effective tools to improve their daily experience of life ultimately comes from my faith.
Maybe you have wondered how my faith influences my coaching?
Maybe you have asked yourself what I believe in or why I bring it up at all when it comes to my business?
If your curious about why I'm so passionate about my faith, and equally passionate about you having the choice to choose or not choose yours... then listen in.
I do not believe that the LDS church has a monopoly on truth, but it has taught me how to find it, the importance of seeking it and what to do with that knowledge.
Enjoy this episode and don't forget to reach out with any questions!
@limitlessfemale on insta or limitlessfemale@gmail.com
PODCAST EPISODES REFERENCED:
The Chemical Imbalance Theory
Parenting With Agency and Not Influence
Increasing Your Emotional Bandwidth
interested in SHIFT? Want a free call with EMYLEE? Grab a spot for a free call here
Find more information and Free resources HERE:
https://hernextstep.limitlessfemalecoaching.com/landing-page-her-next-step
Have a question about the program or something you want answered on the podcast? Come chat with me on instagram!
@Limitlessfemale
Hi, I'm Emily with the Limitless Female Podcast. You're listening to episode 133, why I'm a Mormon Woman. Welcome. If you're a mama who is feeling all the feels of motherhood the ups and downs of hormones and maybe even depression then you are in the right place. Limitless Female is your confident inner voice, helping you master your mood and create the epic life that calls you. My goal is to show you just how enough you are, so you can show up limitless in your own life. Let's get started. Hey everybody, and welcome to the Limitless Female Podcast. And if you are new, welcome. I am so happy to have you here.
Speaker 1:This is such a special place to come hang out, because it is a place where we value how you feel, but we also help you get out of it, and there's a lot of compassion and also a push to feel better in a way that doesn't feel so forced, in a way that's going to serve you, not in a way that you're going to become burnt out. This is that place and I really hope that you come here. You find a community. You love this podcast. Um, and don't forget to hit the follow button in the top right corner of your Apple podcast or wherever you listen so that you guys get reminders every time there is a new podcast. I'm really excited about some interviews I have coming up some fantastic new people and programs we're adding to the shift mood membership for moms. It is the only mood membership like this out there period Welcome. I'm so happy to have you here.
Speaker 1:My name's Emily McIntyre. I am a life coach. I was trained at the life coach school and I've been coaching for about five years now and I am so excited to offer a program that is both affordable and effective, which I mean. Do those two words? Does anything get better than affordable and effective? That's all we want, right? Who cares if something's affordable? If we have to try one thing after the next, we want something effective, and when it's affordable, I mean double win, right, who doesn't want that? So let's get into today's podcast.
Speaker 1:I chose this topic because, as many of you know, I am a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some of you are a member of my church, meaning you have been baptized into my church or you attend my church or part of my religion. The reason that I advertise that so highly in my ads and I let people know that I talk about my podcast is because a lot of people can relate to the culture of the religion that I came from and I know that a lot of you will come here to this podcast and be like, oh, I'm not a member of her church, this isn't for me, but hopefully this podcast episode will help you see why being me being a member of my church and the reason that I rely on my religion actually makes me a really effective life coach and why I actually was drawn to these specific life coaching tools in the beginning and you guys can apply any coaching to literally anybody in any religion because it is not about what I believe or what I think about what you should do. I just felt like my beliefs correlated really well with the tools and the self-help community or idea. Okay, that I feel like a lot of members of my church are highly driven to be better each day and whether you think that's a positive thing or a negative thing, it just is a thing right. A lot of people are drawn towards that and while it can be overwhelming in some spaces, I have not found it to be overwhelming in the life coach space at least. What we do here in the shift mood membership at Limitless Female Coaching. It is not overwhelming and we learn to sit with our emotions and enjoy our emotions.
Speaker 1:So, anyways, I'm going to tell you guys why I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, why I am a Mormon Because there's so much vast information out there If you just go Google Mormon and you might be confused about what I believe or who I am, and this also I want to just give a little clarification that this is my experience in the church. This is my things I love about my God and my gospel and where I'm at. And I know that my experience of the gospel is not everyone's experience of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but I hope it will give you a little insight into who I am so that you can feel more comfortable coming and getting coached, because you are worth feeling your best on a daily basis. You deserve to feel better and I don't want anything, anything to be a roadblock in the way of you taking care of you so that you can be happy and enjoy your life. There is nothing I want more for you than for you to enjoy your life and for you to just love every day and when you don't love every day, to love yourself. Anyway. That would be the goal. So first I'm just going to let you guys know a little background.
Speaker 1:I didn't title this episode why I'm a Mormon, because in recent time we have tried to stray away from the colloquial or slang term of Mormon. The church has not come out and said specifically why. My guess is because now there are actually a lot of offshoots of the LDS that's a shortened term for my faith of the LDS faith and those offshoots all believe in the Book of Mormon and so they often call themselves Mormons as well. So it's not a very good indicator or descriptor of my specific beliefs or church. And the main reason, which the church officials and leaders have said, is that it doesn't have the name Jesus Christ in it, and that is so huge. I think it was really powerful when we started to realize that people didn't even know we were Christians and Christ is the center and reason for everything we do. Christ is the center and reason for everything we do and so, yes, we are Christians and the name of our church is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Now that Latter-day Saints part the reason that sometimes it's abbreviated to LDS, which we're also trying to stray away from right, because it also doesn't have the name Jesus Christ in it is because we are in the latter days, meaning at some point we believe Christ will come again, and so these are the latter days.
Speaker 1:Now, why am I a member of the church? In this crazy time when there's so many different things going on in the world, so many different things you can Google on YouTube. You might find that you're like I don't understand. Why are people member of that church? Or maybe you aren't very clear on what we believe. I want to share with you some of the things that I love about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and why I'm a member and why it gels so well with the coaching that I do here. Number one is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints values truth above all else. Now, you might have heard people say the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the one true church, but I want you to know that we do not have a monopoly on truth. Okay, we do not have a monopoly on truth. Okay, we do not have a monopoly on goodness. In fact, we believe that truth and goodness is found everywhere.
Speaker 1:So there is a better known member of my church. His name is Thomas McConkie and he's probably best known for being the grandson of a prophet, um Bruce R McConkie, who was a prophet, I think, I want to say in the 80s, but he is known for his meditations that he puts out on YouTube. You guys can look up Thomas McConkie. He does silent retreats that my cousin has been on. But he's also written some really amazing books. Right now I'm reading one by him called At One Mint, and one of the things I love about Thomas McConkie is that he had a what some might call a faith crisis or, you know, a faith journey. I think we're all on a faith journey that looks all different ways, but for a time he stepped away from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and from here on out I'm just going to call it the church or the gospel, just for ease of speaking. But he stepped away from the church and began studying Buddhism and meditation and now that he is back, active in the church, he has brought all of this amazing knowledge and light and I just see people flocking to him because there is so much truth and goodness to be found out in the world.
Speaker 1:We do not have a monopoly or believe we have a monopoly on truth and goodness. We also believe that a lot of other church leaders and people and movements, heads of movements, were inspired. Okay, whether they believe it's by the universe or God or their conscience, we believe that it's by God and um. Elder Orson F Whitney in a conference said God is using not only his covenant people but other people as well to consummate a work stupendous, magnificent and altogether too arduous for this little handful of saints to accomplish by and of themselves. So if you've ever heard people talk about being the chosen people, that simply refers to a scripture which means where heavenly father says if you choose me, you are chosen right. So we're just talking about anybody who chooses heavenly father, who chooses to follow God and heavenly father, and in it Elder Orson F Whitney is basically saying that this work on this earth is far too great and magnificent and stupendous and amazing to be accomplished by just you know us, right, just the members of this church, and that other leaders are inspired, not just the covenant people, and that refers to members of this church. And that other leaders are inspired, not just the covenant people, and that refers to members of the church.
Speaker 1:The next thing, and just one of many you guys I will not get to all of them, obviously I am a passionate believer, but the next thing that draws me to the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that we believe in personal revelation. Now, I feel like personal revelation is like a checks and balances type of thing, because I have heard people say I listened to True Crime and I heard this girl say oh man, when people have prophets, it just freaks me out and I understand what she's saying. There's been a lot of cults and um, different groups and scary things where people come out and say they are a prophet, and I think the fear for some people is that people will then follow them blindly right and not use critical thinking and follow that person. Well, we believe in personal revelation. So anything that a prophet has said to you or told you that needs to be done or that we should implement into our life, you have the right and the power to pray to your heavenly father as well as a father in heaven who cares, loves and will answer that prayer about whether or not those things are true or false, and I think to me that encourages critical thinking with faith. I think those two things together are really powerful.
Speaker 1:But to me it's like a checks and balance. My personal revelation won't trump or be different than the profits generally. So if I have some harebrained idea, you know to go I don't want to think of something that's not a crazy violent or something but if I have this harebrained idea that I'm supposed to, you know, go put grass down for free, uh, to cover the entire DC Capitol, and I I'm so, you know, greenify everything. This is the weirdest, randomest example I've ever thought of. But if I, if I have this idea and I'm like God is telling me to plant 3000 trees, okay, I am going to then go with the checks and balances, right, I'm going to go look at what the prophet has also said, right, about how I spend my time, about priorities. You know, look at the scriptures and read what is God telling me to do to spend my time, and if it falls in line with my current beliefs and I can also uh, it falls in line with also my priorities. So motherhood's pretty high up there for me, and maybe covering the entire district of Columbia with trees and grass will not allow me to be very present in my kids' lives, right. So it's kind of like a checks and balance and also goes the other way around as well.
Speaker 1:Let me give you an example. So when I was about I want to say 15 or 16 in a conference talk, which is where we meet once or twice a year and the prophet and the apostles speak If the past, the prophet, which he did he told us that, you know, one earring is sufficient, basically just drawing some kind of a line and saying your body is a temple, let's not put holes all over it. Okay, and I follow the prophet because I love him. I believe he is, you know, a mouthpiece for heavenly father and I love my heavenly father and I he, my heavenly father, tells me that my body is a temple and he helped me. He make it for me, right. So I do my best to follow and at the time it wasn't very challenging. It was pretty excited to follow the prophet and to take my second earring out. I already had pierced a second hole. I didn't think it made me a bad person, but I was really excited to just follow the prophet with exactness and then watch, like that faith and that strength of obedience kind of grow and, um, you know, I took out my earring.
Speaker 1:Now, if people had problems with that or they didn't feel like it was right for them, they are welcome to kneel down and pray to heavenly father and say, hey, is this really what you want me to do? Now, that particular example, you know, might not polarize people. They might not be afraid to follow right. Taking out an earring is not going to really drastically affect their life. But I know during COVID there were the prophet got a vaccine. He didn't say anybody needed to, but I know that a lot of people felt very polarized about whether or not to get a vaccine. And in that case you have the opportunity to get on your knees and pray to heavenly father and say, is it right for me and my family Right, is this something that I need to do? And you get to decide, and you always get to decide. And so I love that we have personal revelation. That is like a checks and balance, okay.
Speaker 1:And one of the reasons that this, to me, really connects me with coaching is that, from the kind of spiritual side of me, looking at the way the brain works, when we talk about your higher brain and your lower brain. Your higher brain is the part where you supervise your brain, where you stop and take a minute and you notice your thoughts, you think about your thinking. And your lower brain are those automatic thoughts that you're watching. They're the thoughts that are pre-programmed, that come automatically and they're based on survival right Just keeping you alive, not progressing your life, not making you a better, stronger, more adaptive version of yourself, but just keeping you alive.
Speaker 1:Now, when I look at that from a more spiritual side, I see you know me, my spirit. Looking at my brain, you know my, my body, my carnal thoughts. I see this higher version of me that is kind of like the core of who I really am. Right, the the best of me, the part of me that feels cognitive dissonance when I'm making choices that aren't in alignment with me. Right, not who, what I do, not how I feel, not how I show up, not what people say I am, but just who I am. At my core is that part of me that watches my own thoughts, and those thoughts to me are my mind, my body, but my body, my physical body, and so to me getting personal revelation, where either I am watching my thoughts and I'm like wow, that that really doesn't align with who I feel like I am or what I know to believe about who I am. And that made a ton of sense to me that our brains work that way, and also that personal revelation seemed to be what it was when I'm watching my own thoughts and noticing and feeling that cognitive dissonance between who I am and what I'm thinking and telling myself about me, the world, my family, et cetera.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the third reason that I love the church and being a member of the church is because I believe in a hierarchy of truth. Now, not the hierarchy of truth, because I was looking it up and I saw that the Catholic religion has something called the hierarchy of truth, which is kind of I from my understanding, very limited understanding is kind of an order in which certain beliefs or truths rank, and that's totally wrong. But what I'm talking about is a hierarchy of truth that, whether things are true or not, we get to decide the purpose of the truth, right, the purpose of getting to the truth. Now let me give you guys a simple kind of real life example.
Speaker 1:If you've ever been in an argument with your spouse and the argument starts to be about the argument who said what when? And you start to try to figure out what is the truth, right? Did I say this and you didn't hear me? Or did I never say that? Or did I say that after you had already done the thing? And you start to argue about it. Maybe this happens with you and your kids. Now there is a truth to be found there. You can figure out who didn't hear what and who didn't follow through, when those are all going to be truth, right, but the purpose of that truth is not going to be very useful, right. There's not really a big great purpose to figure out who did what when and what their motive was right. A more useful truth would be what do I want? What kind of outcome do I want from this conversation?
Speaker 1:And I mentioned in a previous podcast mentioned in a previous podcast something that I learned from Jodi Moore, and she talks about what do you want more of in your life? When you're trying to figure out what results you want, think about what do I want more of in my life, and that is going to help you prioritize what truth you are seeking. And you guys, in coaching, we talk about what you look for. You will find whatever thought or belief you are believing when you go about a certain action. That will create your results 100% of the time, every time. Okay. So if we believe that it's important, that we are right, we're going to find a reason that somebody else is wrong and that we are right and that will feel true. We will be able to find evidence that that is true, okay.
Speaker 1:But what I really want to know when I'm talking about truth is is it going to serve me? Is being right going to give me more of what I want? And the truth is no. Being right has never given me more of what I wanted. Okay, it's made me feel bad for being a jerk. It's made me not learn from somebody else If I believe I'm right. It's made me think I know more than somebody else. I'm not humble, I'm not open or curious. Okay, needing to be right has never served me. But wanting to get it right Right, if I want more of getting it right of you know, having a strong relationship, or having more compassion for my spouse, or having more understanding for my spouse, or, you know, understanding the world better, or having more empathy for my neighbors or for my brothers and sisters here on this earth who I don't share an identity with, I don't share a life experience with um, getting more empathy for them was never, ever going to come from. I'm right, I already know.
Speaker 1:Okay, so when we're talking about truth here, we're talking about our beliefs. We're not talking about circumstances. We're not talking about facts that you can prove. Okay, I'm talking about the truth that we get to choose, and we get to choose. What truth are we seeking? Are we seeking to be right? Are we seeking for the exact facts and the exact temperature, or are we looking for stronger relationships? Are we looking for a happier day? Are we looking to get more stuff done, cause we could definitely look for that truth Like like it's just true that all I did today was X, y, z or is the truth we're seeking that would we want more of in our life? Not getting more done, but feeling more accomplished. Right, that's a much different truth, that's a higher truth, and I believe in a hierarchy of truth In the scriptures.
Speaker 1:There is a book in the Book of Mormon by the prophet Nephi, and in it he is teaching about the Book of Mormon and he is pleading that people believe in the Book of Mormon. And he is, you know, pleading that people believe in the Book of Mormon as another testament of Jesus Christ over in the Americas. But then he says, in not so many words, if you don't believe in the Book of Mormon, at least believe in God and that he loves you. And to me, that was all I needed to hear to be like yeah, that's the hierarchy of truth, that it's not about believing that Nephi was a perfect man or even a prophet. He didn't want you to believe that. He didn't need you to believe that. What he wanted you to believe was that God is your father and that he loves you.
Speaker 1:And that has served me so much in being a parent and trying to decide what I really want my kids to understand. Do I need them to know every date in the scriptures and every single name of every single person? And do I need them to, you know, be a part of 30 sports and you know what do I need them to do? Or is the truth I'm looking for them to know? Uh, higher. And I have found that the higher you go up your truth ladder, your priority ladder, you know what you want more of in your life. It actually becomes simpler, right? If I want my kids to know God loves them, that is a much simpler task than helping them know that they can achieve anything in their life, which is also a truth I try to share with them. But I would much rather my kids know that God loves them and with him they can do all things, that God loves them and with him they can do all things. I would much rather have them know that, because they have a savior, jesus Christ, there's nothing they need to do to be worthy of his love and his atonement. There's nothing they need to do to be worthy of God's love, and there's nothing they can do to diminish their worth. Those are truths that are really high up on the truth ladder.
Speaker 1:Okay, this brings me to the fourth reason that I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ, and that is that it allows for my humanity and also reminds me of my divinity. At the same time, there is space for both, and this is so important when it comes to our emotional health because, again, if you have one without the other, it's really rough. If I believe that I am divine, I might consistently try to do more than I can. I might always feel that I am falling short. I will never be enough, and any prophet of God or any great truth that comes in my life through my husband or my kids, or any amazing thing learned from another leader in the world or a self-help expert, right, it will always be tainted with oh, but like you know. But they did this thing right, they were a great man, but then look at this other thing they did. You know, my husband said that and it's really amazing, but you know he also forgets to flush the toilet. That's not true. But I'm just saying when we don't allow for people's humanity, we will miss the amazing truths that come from divinity.
Speaker 1:And when we allow for our divinity but also our humanity, we are able to say oh, hey, yeah, but I'm human and that's like the whole thing I teach in coaching is that so much of who you are is a beautiful grand design of you being a human. It's not a mistake that you're human and that you're flawed. All of that is intentional. It is part of the plan. It is the way in which you are able to grow. It is the way in which you are able to struggle and therefore rely and need a savior. There is no other way to need a savior other than to be flawed, to be human. Now. I talked about Joseph Smith earlier. To be human.
Speaker 1:Now, I talked about Joseph Smith earlier, a prophet of our church, and Truman Madden said Joseph Smith spent half his life convincing people he was a prophet and the other half that he was a man, and I thought that was so interesting. Right, we want people to be, you know, on a pedestal when we are looking to them for help, advice, guidance. We want them to do everything perfect, right. And in that space, they're trying to convince us of their divinity, like, yes, I have the answers, I can help you, I will guide you. But then we also want them to be human, we want them to be relatable, we want them to be to understand us Right. And in that aspect, joseph Smith was trying to explain to people like I am only human, like you know, I'm not going to always get it right. I'm going to have struggled relationships in my life. I'm not going to be a perfect husband. Even a prophet will make mistakes. Not going to be a perfect husband. Even a prophet will make mistakes.
Speaker 1:And I see people pulling up quotes from Brigham Young, who was a prophet, you know, of things he said when he was a prophet, a very long time ago, that would not be politically correct today. And I get to say to myself yeah, he was a human, you know. And when he says something that I feel is in alignment with the character of God, right, in a loving way, then I can say he was divine. And the same goes for me. I do divine things and I also am very human, and I'm grateful for a savior which fills in that gap of being human. All right, this takes me to the next reason that I am a member of the church, and that is that the church provides a standard. The church encourages me to progress beyond who I am, and that is exciting. That is what makes life worth living.
Speaker 1:I want you guys to think about an analogy I've used in some podcasts, called the pond of misery and the river of misery. Okay, I know it sounds like wow, everything's miserable, emily, but I just want you to think about this for a second. The pond of misery is when you are stuck and you are in inaction, and you are miserable because of what you think you could be, what you think you could accomplish, and you are struggling because you feel like you aren't fulfilling your potential. It is that discomfort of not taking action, that discomfort of always wondering Okay, and in some ways it's quite comfortable, right, if you're sitting in that pond, it may be as warm, right, the water's not moving, it's been heated up from the sun, there's warm stones to lay on and you got your frog friends and some minnows and, like it's a nice place to lay out, okay, but there is a river over there and that river is rushing and it's going to take some thought and there's some stones all the way across the river which are going to be the challenges, and each time you figure out a challenge, you're going to jump on one of those stones. They are going to be the way in which you cross the river of misery. Now, both are uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:The river of misery is a challenge that you take on. It is the discomfort of trying something and not knowing the outcome, rather than the discomfort of not trying something and knowing that it will never change. So they're both going to be uncomfortable, but the river of misery has the promise of you being a different version of yourself on the other side, whereas the pond of misery has no outcome of any change, no promise of anything different, and we are built in a way where we want to grow. I don't care who you are, how happy you feel like you are in your life, if you feel like you're somebody who's lazy or complacent, or you just believe like you know. I don't want to be any different than I am today or I don't want to do anything different.
Speaker 1:Every single person who is mentally healthy has a desire to grow in some way, to create, to change, to understand more. Everybody does, and I'm sure it's on all different levels, but we all have this desire to be more tomorrow than we are yesterday and the standard pushes us. Now. Some people may feel like a standard is feels like pressure. Right, and again I say we have a savior. We have a savior that makes up for the human part of us, but I feel like sometimes the world would have us believe you know, come as you are everyone and stay as you are, which sounds like a really nice thought. But the gospel of Jesus Christ says come as you are and become like Jesus Christ and heavenly father and be better. Right, and I usually don't use the term be better, because I feel like you are as amazing as you ever need to be, but discover your worth by trying new things and being like, wow, I am stronger than I thought, I'm braver than I thought, I am more divine than I thought. So the world would have us kind of get rid of all the different you know levels of challenges and equal us all out. But I feel like my church tells me that I am welcome as I am, but because I have a savior, I'm welcome. I am encouraged to be better, strive for more, and that gap between where I am and where I want to be does not hurt and is not challenging, because I have a savior who makes up the space for the emotions. I feel that I'm not there, and for anybody who doesn't understand why you aren't where you want to be or why you're not where they think you should be, the Savior makes up for all of that, and so I love that there is a standard that pushes me, but I am welcome to come as I am.
Speaker 1:The next reason that I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is our belief in agency. This is so huge and I talk about this all the time because it is. I think it's my favorite thing on the whole planet, and everything I teach in coaching is about agency. It's about choice, right, choosing your thoughts and knowing that your thoughts are different than your circumstances. You might be stuck in your circumstances, but circumstances are boring, they're simple, they're like the address of your house or the exact temperature outside thoughts. The thing we have control over are things like, like I said, our truths, our beliefs, right. Whether or not where we live is a good place or a bad place, or is limiting us or allowing us to grow. Those are things you have choice over.
Speaker 1:So choice is so important in coaching choosing your thoughts, because you also get to choose your feelings. You get to choose your feelings and you do that by monitoring your thoughts, and when we choose our feelings, it will guide our actions. So it means we don't need to be reactive. We get to be proactive. We get to be intentional about the way we show up in the world, because, man, it really stinks when we feel like we don't have a choice, that we just have to show up the way we do because of other people in our lives or other situations. And because we get to choose how we show up, we control our outcome.
Speaker 1:That is powerful. That's powerful coming from somebody who believes that, you know, god is an omnificent, omniscient, god knows all things. Because I believe that God knows all things, it's powerful to believe that I also get to choose my outcome and I believe that I am that divine that heavenly father wants me to. He wants me to choose the outcomes I have in my life, not just to sit back and say, heavenly father, make things happen. No, he gave me my divine brain and then my Holy spirit to live in my body so that I can make and choose those thoughts, feelings and actions and create my outcomes, which is really, really powerful.
Speaker 1:I do believe that if I'm going the wrong direction, heavenly father will step in in a very clear way and be like no wrong direction, right, you really shouldn't go that way. But for the most part, I don't think there's a lot of wrong choices or wrong moves we can make in every direction. We have the opportunity to choose and then to learn and then to repent and repeat, and I think that is the entire purpose of this life to choose, learn, repent and repeat. And I think that is the entire purpose of this life to choose, learn, repent, repeat, and the only place where we make a mistake is not by making a wrong choice, but it's by not learning from each step so that our next step is a more informed one. Now, what does that look like for me in my life? How do I use that? Well, look like for me in my life. How do I use that?
Speaker 1:Well, I have been very intentional about not parenting from fear, knowing that I get to choose what I think and feel. When my children are struggling, I get to choose to feel peace rather than fear that they will never feel better. I get to choose to feel peace rather than fear that I will make a wrong parenting choice and guide my children down the wrong road. It has also helped me to allow my kids to have agency, so I am able to show up and, instead of basing my parenting on all of their outcomes, I know that they also have agency, that, no matter how great of a parent I am, they get to choose how they think, feel and act in their life, and so I could be the best parent and make the best choices, and my kids' choices will all look different, and it is not a reflection of my parenting.
Speaker 1:That's a really powerful thing for most women, especially women who belong to any type of high-demand religion Knowing that you can do your best because that's the kind of woman you want to be, that's the kind of mother you want to be, but not because you want to make sure your kids end up here there, right, we don't get to decide, your kids get to decide. And that is the only reason why I'm able to feel peace when my kids are struggling, because I know that when they're ready to stop struggling or when they're supposed to stop struggling, they will. They'll find a way around it, like I did. They'll find a way to manage their thoughts. They'll find a way to change their circumstance or sit in their feelings or choose a different outcome, and I know that that is how they become like Heavenly Father. That's powerful, because now, when they're struggling or in something that maybe in the past, I felt like, wow, this is a huge like, as, as anybody who's a faithful member of any church or believes anything, believing that something has gone wrong or is a sin, I think most parents feel like they have to feel fear and be extremely sad, but I do not believe that somebody sinning, no matter what sin it is, or no matter what choice or trial it is, means that something has gone wrong. Actually, I believe that something is going exactly right because my kids and me were supposed to have agency. That is the only way for us to become like heavenly father, to make choices, learn, need and desire a savior because we're human, and then become more like our heavenly father by kind of accessing our divinity through our savior, jesus Christ atonement. It's pretty amazing, this idea of agency. It is the only reason I find relief in parenting hands down. Okay, and one of the final ones I'm going to talk about is that I'm a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because it validates my emotions as a divine attribute, as a purposeful thing that happens to me, as a very useful and intentional tool the Heavenly Father has given me, tool the heavenly father has given me.
Speaker 1:There is a scripture in the book of Mormon and it says in second Nephi, 2, 11, for it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so my firstborn in the wilderness, he's talking to his son righteousness could not be brought to pass, so he's saying there must be an opposite to everything neither wickedness and he's saying the opposites nor holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad, having no life, neither death, nor corruption, nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, nor incorruption. Happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility. And from this scripture I kind of see that he's not just saying we need incorruption, we need happiness, we need sensibility. He's saying there couldn't be sensibility or insensibility, there couldn't be incorruption or corruption. Right, there is a necessity for an opposition in all things. He's saying there must needs be.
Speaker 1:And in an episode I have titled your emotional bandwidth, I talk about this idea that as our negative emotions grow, you know, because life gets bigger, our experiences get bigger, our knowledge, our understanding of things and even, like the duration of time, right, how long emotion might last, our understanding of space and time goes, our heartache sometimes grows, our, you know, intense emotions sometimes grow, the emotions we would call negative. They get deeper, right, they last longer, they feel much greater because our mind is growing. But the opposite is also happening. Your positive emotion gets greater because of the distance between that deeper negative emotion. The distance between the two is growing. And so when you have a day where you get to feel joy, where you get to see your little girl on stage in her first ballet recital. The emotion you feel is so much greater than something you as a kid knew or understood. You could experience when you get to see your child graduate from high school, when you get married, when you buy your first house, when you have a epiphany or an understanding, or when you just have a good day, when you wake up and you can actually feel the sunshine on your face and you can feel the emotions that you think you're supposed to feel on a daily basis. As someone who struggles with depression, the joy you feel, I promise you, is so much more immense than what somebody who has not experienced the depth of your emotion might have felt.
Speaker 1:And this scripture tells me that this is all intentional, that the curriculum we have here in this life, the things we're supposed to learn, they are built into our brains. Our brain will always look for what is negative and happening in the world on default to keep us safe. Right, it's that survival part of us I talked about. But because of that we will always find something challenging. We will always have negative emotion, or I like to just call it strong emotion, which also means we will experience really great highs, really long and deep and edifying, positive emotion that changes us and grows us, and empathy and connection and understanding, which are some of my favorite emotions on the planet. And it is because of that built-in curriculum that I know that it is Heavenly Father's divine plan for me to have emotions.
Speaker 1:In Moses 7.28, it says and it came to pass that the God of heaven looked upon the people and he wept. So if you ever felt like there was something wrong with you or you were just too emotional or sensitive, or if you could just keep it together all the time and keep going, you would be who you're supposed to be and that the goal of daily life is to get better, be better, be happier, be stronger. You're wrong. Even heavenly father wept and, I imagine, weeps. He weeps for your hard days. He weeps for the challenges that you watch your children go through. He weeps for the times when you can't see a way out. He weeps for the times when you don't draw near to him or when you don't feel like you know which way to go, like you know which way to go. He weeps.
Speaker 1:Emotion is such a beautiful thing, not to mention that it is this amazing gift that directs the way we should show up every day. It is a cue. They are red flags to tell you what you need when you're sad. It's a great clue to figure out. Why are you sad? Are you lonely? What do you need? What do you need to draw near to? What do you need more of in your life? It is not something to be brushed under the rug or ignored. Everything about you is divine and human at the same time. It's all okay and also it was all on purpose. Every flaw, every mistake, every left right choice, everything that you are is by divine design. And if you are experiencing, you know, a diagnosis of depression, or you're having a hard day, or you feel like you are constantly overwhelmed, I want you to know that it is by divine design that you have emotions. What I want to offer to you is a way to leverage those emotions so that you can be the person you know like deep down, when you feel that cognitive dissonance between who you, who you are at your core and the way your life looks. It's okay that you're not there yet, right, it's okay, but if you want to get there, cause it's fun, cause you can, let's do that. Let's do that. So I hope you guys enjoyed this podcast. I hope it gave you a little bit insight into me.
Speaker 1:My passion, um, for just I mean really. My membership in the church Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the reason that I have compassion or any empathy. It is the reason I do what I do, because I love y'all so deeply. I feel so compelled to teach women about their worth and then to give them actual, real, science-based tools to help you access those feelings, help you access the rights you have to. You know, become divine and whatever that looks like for you. If you're not a religious person, that's okay. To just become who you want to be. Do the things you want to do, not because it makes you better, but because you can, because you are divine, because you always could do it.
Speaker 1:I have a strong belief that we don't do more to be better, but we do more to discover who we've always been. You just forgot. You forgot how capable you are. You forgot how beautiful you were. You forgot how talented you are, how compassionate you are, how perfect you are, how understanding you are, how creative you are, how joyful you are. You just forgot. And when you try new things you'll be like oh, that's also who I am. So before you write yourself off and you say, well, I'm just not this or that and I'm just not cut out for that, come give me a chance, come listen to the podcast.
Speaker 1:If you want even more, if you guys want some hands-on help at an affordable price, you gotta check out the Shift membership.
Speaker 1:So grab a free coaching call with me. Click in the link below and grab a spot. Call with me. Click in the link below and grab a spot. It's a 30 minute call and, if you want, we can just chat about anything. We can talk about who you are. You guys can ask me questions or I can do a little coaching with you. Either way, if you feel like you just want to do something because you can and you want some help remembering who you are and you feel stuck I got you woman, I'm here, I've been there let's do it. If you have questions about anything you've learned here on the podcast or want help with something going on in your own life, hop on a free coaching call with me. In just 30 minutes you'll have real tools for your unique situation. In just 30 minutes you'll have real tools for your unique situation. Go to limitlessfemalecoachingcom. Forward slash work with me or you can find a link in the show notes below. Spots are limited, so grab one before you miss it.