family life

How to master your emotions and stop being triggered

February 24, 2021 by Edie Wadsworth 2 Comments

Is there someone you always let get under your skin, or you always get your feelings hurt when you’re around them? It could be your spouse, or your mother-in-law. It could even be Karen on Facebook, or some guy at church who always talks about politics. What about one of your kids?

I have to practice this all the time because I’m raising a very highly energetic and spirited eight-year-old. It’s very difficult sometimes for me to stay in my own emotions and decide how I want to show up for him, and for me.

It’s so easy for me to think to myself, “He’s just so hard. He gets under my skin. He did that thing again.” I’m working on this right alongside of you.

A tool that I want to teach you is a very key pause. A pause between the thing the person says or does that you think hurts your feelings, or triggers you, and then your response to that.

I do want to mention, I’m using triggered in the sense that we commonly use it every day. I’m not talking about if you have PTSD and there’s something that triggers that.

You might think, “There is no pause. I pretty much just react.” But we create a pause for ourselves so that we can decide how we want to show up, so we can stop blaming other people for being angry or being resentful or having hurt feelings.

When I’m coaching my clients in Life Mentoring School, I will often say to them, “Why are you hurting your feelings like that?” We really do have control of our own emotions. I’m going to help you take more control of them and stop blaming other people.

We’re going to create space for ourselves and we’re going to control our emotions, but that doesn’t mean pretending like everything’s fine. Don’t worry, we’re going to talk about what to do instead.

I also want you to realize that you don’t need to remove people from your life that you don’t agree with. You don’t have to remove people from your life that irritate you. You can live in all kinds of amazing unity with people who think very differently from you, and people who have very different ways of communicating.

We do that by creating a pause, by holding space for ourselves, and by holding space for other people.

We live on a lake and Tom loves to go down to the lake bed and explore, since that water is down. Every night he was trashing a different pair of shoes and getting completely muddy so we got him a pair of boots. They are the kind you can just spray off with a water hose.

Yesterday, I go look outside and realize he chose to spray his boots off right by the door. There was so much mud that it was even dripping off of the sidewalk.

My first thought was, “Stevie’s going to kill us!” The next one was, “Why does stuff like this always happen?” This is the moment I get to decide.

What I really want in my relationship with this little guy is connection. I want a strong relationship. I want to teach him all kinds of amazing things. I know that I can do that when my relationship with him is strong.

I also know because of his trauma, and because of his upbringing, every criticism he takes as a personal attack that he’s not good enough. I know I have to be really careful.

Sometimes I don’t do great and it’s something that I’m hyper aware of, and that I’m really, really working on with him.

Now, some of the people that know how to get you, know how to get under your skin, you’re not in charge of raising them. I think you’ll understand why it’s still really important to create a pause for ourselves so that we can show up the way we want.

1. Identify the emotion you feel.

This is a step that we often skip because we think it’s not important. We think if we’re going to try to change it react better, then I don’t want to be identifying what I feel.

But it really is important to identify what you feel, and not beat yourself up about it. You are just a human.

When I opened the door and there was mud all over, of course that’s irritating. Of course, I’m frustrated because I’m just one of the humans. I just step back for a second and think, “Wow. That really made me irritated.”

Get curious about yourself.

It’s interesting how fast my heart rate went up and I felt hot. It’s just amazing how fast that irritated me.

Ask yourself what is the actual emotion? Do you feel scared? Do you feel frustrated? Do you feel disappointed? Do you feel rejected? A lot of times whatever the initial reaction is, there is a deeper feeling behind it.

2. Allow the emotion to be there.

Don’t resist it. Don’t pretend like you don’t feel it. I don’t want you to pretend like everything’s fine. I want you to identify the feeling, and just take a deep breath and allow it to be there.

Here’s what happens. When we resist our emotions and we push them down and we don’t allow ourselves to feel them, there’s a lot of evidence that suggests they get trapped in our bodies and in our minds. It’s not good for us.

Emotions are waves of energy and those waves of energy can become trapped.

You want to just breathe through it. There’s a really good study that showed that emotions are waves of energy, and if you allow them, they only last 30 seconds, 60 seconds, a minute and a half at the most.

They come and they go like waves.

Right in that moment, you feel whatever you feel. Frustrated, rejected, fearful. If you take a second and pause to ask yourself what is it that you’re feeling, take a deep breath, and allow it to be there for a minute, here’s the magic thing. If you take that bit of a pause, almost as fast as it comes, it goes.

We have caused ourselves lots of problems by not being willing to feel our emotions. You want to become a master of your emotions? Here’s how! You feel them.

What you realize is, it’s not that big a deal.

I can feel frustrated.

I can feel disappointed.

I can feel a little rejection.

It’s not going to kill me.

Once you do that, you gain so much power because you realize it’s just a feeling. It comes and it goes. It doesn’t last forever, and I can just take a deep breath and breathe through it.

If you move through the emotion, you can get to an emotion that you actually want to feel.

I want you to stop trying to pretend like you don’t have the emotion. I want you to stop buffering the emotion, which is also what we do. We go eat something or buy something or hide or numb. That doesn’t help.

The way through is through.

I practiced this yesterday. I kind of stepped back from the situation and I looked at the mud and I was thought, “Wow, that made me so irritated so fast.” I took a deep breath, and here’s the funny thing, you guys. By the time I allowed myself to feel it, and to be with it for a minute, it probably only took 20 seconds.

Then the whole situation was kind of funny. I went and got my camera and I was like, “Well, here’s Tom. And here’s what he’s doing. He’s got the water hose out.” Then he and I cleaned it up.

I said, “Buddy, this is not the best place to choose to do this. So let’s do this. Let’s get the hose out and let’s squirt all this off, and then we’ll put the hose back up.”

We made it into a teaching moment, andI saved myself a lot of upset.

In those kinds of moments, it really teaches your kids a lot about how to have relationships. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to mess up. Sometimes I do mess up, and sometimes I do react in a way that I don’t like. When we do that, we just say we’re sorry.

3. Realize that you are creating the emotion.

You have to take responsibility for your emotions. You think that the reason you’re irritated is because your son cleaned off his muddy boots by your front door. That’s not why you’re irritated. Newsflash!

We have feelings because we have thoughts. Our thoughts are what cause our feelings.

So when he cleans his muddy boots off right by the front door, that doesn’t mean anything to anybody else, right? It doesn’t make you irritated that Tom cleaned his boots off by the front door. The reason it means something to me is because I’m thinking to myself, “Oh my gosh, Stevie is going to kill us. He has gotten this mud all by the front door. This is going to take forever to clean up!”

I have a bunch of thoughts about it, and then from my thoughts, I feel frustrated.

What I was able to do in my pause was I was able to just reevaluate. I was able to feel that feeling of frustration and decide.

Is it worth it? Life’s pretty short. Is it really worth getting that worked up over? We can just squirt it off with a water hose. Not that big of a deal. And because I changed my thoughts, now I don’t feel irritated.

This is so crucial. You can take all your power back. You can stop getting offended so easily because nobody can offend you if you don’t allow it.

The reason this is so powerful is because when I get really frustrated at my eight-year-old, guess who gets to feel the vibration of frustration? Guess who gets to feel the tightness in my chest? Guess who gets to feel the heat come up my neck? I get to feel it, not him.

I’m not punishing people with my feelings of anger or resentment. I’m punishing myself.

This pause will create better relationships with others, but it will also create a better relationship with yourself. You’ll like the way you show up in your life!

I want you to take back your power. I want you to decide what you want to create in your internal body for yourself. Want to create resentment and anger and negativity and rejection? Probably not.

I’m really into love and joy and peace. How do we do that? By creating the emotions that we want. How do we create the emotion that we want? We decide what we want to think about what just happened. We decide what we want to think about what somebody just said to us. We decide how we want to show up for ourselves in our own life.

4. You’re going to fail.

You’re to read this today and you’re going to go out later today and fail at this. So am I. The key to making this a habit is to forgive yourself and try again.

When you don’t do it right, when you let resentment get the best of you, when you lose your temper, when you let frustration take over, when your body makes a big, juicy, negative cocktail of rejection and fear, you just recognize it and you say, “Oh, there I went again, making myself some fear. I don’t want to do that. Let me just forgive myself and move on.”

Learn how to allow people to be who they are.

Guess what? They get to be who they are either way. We might as well allow it. We might as well decide that the only thing we can ever control is how we show up, how we respond, and how we take a little bit of a pause.

I practice this. I make it almost like a game. After you start practicing this, you will look for situations to practice, and of course you’ll find them all the time. You’ll think, “There’s another one. I get to practice again and again.”

5. Take action and create the emotion you want.

Nobody is to blame for your emotions. You are fully 100% responsible for them.

If you feel bad a lot of the time, if you have a lot of negative emotion, if you have a lot of sadness, or a lot of fear, I want you to recognize that you have agency over that.

You can decide, by the way you think, that you want to create something different for yourself, and you deserve it. You deserve to feel joy and peace and love and generosity and kindness and compassion. When you generate those emotions for yourself, you are the first recipient of them.

You can’t make anybody else feel anything, and you are responsible 100% for the way you feel.

Master your emotions.

Stop blaming other people.

Stop being triggered.

I want you to practice this. When you jump on the internet today, and you read something, and just for a moment it set something off in you, I want you to take a pause and decide, do I want to make this cocktail of resentment today? Maybe you do, but I want you to choose it consciously.

I promise you that after you do this for a while, you will decide, you want to be a person who feels love and joy. You will not want to be a person who’s always feeling anger and resentment and negativity.

How to focus on what matters most. 3 things that actually work

February 2, 2021 by Edie Wadsworth Leave a Comment

Sometimes do you find yourself in a season where you feel like you’re busy, but you’re not productive?

Your schedule is full, you’re busy, you’re doing things, but you’re not moving the needle. You’re not doing the things that matter most.

Or maybe you find that a lot of the things that really do matter to you don’t end up on your schedule.

Some of you know that the fourth of January, was my birthday. Stevie and I took a little trip together, and we did some hiking, and we just had a great time together. We got away for a few days just by ourselves. We haven’t done that in a long time.

We got out of the driveway and I started crying. Just unexpectedly tears filled my eyes. That might be the first clue that something has gone wrong, when you find yourself instantly in tears and you didn’t expect it.

I was thinking about it as we were driving. Why did tears come so fast?

We had such a great time together. It was so good to reconnect, but what I realized was, because we’ve been on this adoption journey with Thomas, who’s eight years old and has been through so much loss and trauma, and the process of trying to help him heal, and help him through his loss, and his grief, we just let things go.

You might be in a season of your life where whatever you’re dealing with; maybe it’s a health problem, maybe it’s loss of job, or maybe something with one of your kids, and you feel like a lot of important things you just let go, because you were in survival mode.

I don’t think I fully realized how much it was affecting me, and how much it was really a burden that I was carrying, and we’re only human so we can only carry so much. Some of the things that you drop along the way are important things.

I realized that one of the things that I had basically dropped or let go, was just the priority of that most important relationship to me.

It was really amazing to have time together. I can’t even tell you how it has changed our outlook over the past few weeks, just knowing that we can reconnect with each other, and that we can hold on to each other while we’re holding onto him. It has just been a really, really good reminder.

If you’ve been following along with my live streams, or maybe you did our Live your Dream Challenge, you know I love setting goals at the first of the year. I’ve been asking myself a lot of questions.

What do I really want?

What do I really want this year?

What’s most important to me?

How can I make time to actually do the things that matter, to actually focus?

I really do want to get to the end of the year, and have done the things that really matter. I’m sure you do too.

1. Decide what really matters and write it down

I think a lot of times we assume that we know what matters, and we assume that we’re living a life that’s focusing on the things that really matter. But if we’re not actually deciding it on purpose, and writing it down on purpose, I think sometimes we really do forget.

If you’re going to fill a jar, and you have big rocks, little rocks, sand, and water, there’s a certain way you have to do it or it won’t all fit.

You want to put the big rocks in first, and then you’ll have room for the little rocks, the sand, and the water. But if you fill it up with sand and water at first, you won’t be able to get the rocks in.

The rocks are the really important things in you life.

When I’m making my calendar every week, I put the rocks in first. For me, I have to prioritize my own spiritual, mental, and emotional health. Then I’m actually able to take care of the people that I want to help take care of, that I want to be a blessing to, and that I want to serve in my life.

The things I put there FIRST are the ways I can make sure I really am prioritizing health and sanity, and taking care of my mental health.

One of the things that I started doing at the first of the year that I hadn’t been super consistent with is the relationship piece. I’m now making sure I put that piece in when I’m figuring out what I want my schedule to look like for the week.

Ask yourself:

What is my main priority?

What are the things for me that are non-negotiable?

What are the things that really, really matter?

Am I living my life as if they matter?

We can say they matter, but if they don’t make it into our actual lives, then we’re really not living up to the things that we say actually matter.

What are your big rocks?

What are the things that are the big things that you want to make sure you focus on?

What do you want to make sure you pour your energy into?

How can you add those to your life first?

How can you take your calendar, or your planner, and put those things in first?

Somebody asked me the other day why I put sleep in my calendar. Because sleep is really, really important, and if I’m not taking care of myself in that way I start to suffer, and the people in my life start to suffer.

I put things like sleep, make a healthy dinner, and go to the gym and lift weights. I put my church time in there. I put my quiet time. I put all these things in my actual calendar first.

I run two businesses from home, and the things that I put in my calendar first are the ways that I can make sure that I’m fit to serve. Those things give me the energy and vitality so I can do the things I really want to do.

2. Decide who matters most

This is where I was finding that I was lacking a little bit, and not out of not prioritizing the other person, For us, we were just trying to make sure Tom Tom was ok. He has taken priority, obviously, as it should be.

The thing I want to remind you of when you’re making your list of who matters most, is not to throw a bunch of guilt on there. Stevie and I have been doing the best we can. We’ve been taking really good care of him. We’ve been taking good care of our other kids. We’ve been trying to take good care of each other. We’re doing the best we can.

We want to look back with kindness to the season that we’ve been in.

We’re all in different seasons, and we want to look with kindness to the season that we’re in, and just give ourselves a little grace, and a little bit of a break. We’re all doing the best we can.

When we think about who matters most, this may seem obvious to you. Of course, it’s my spouse and my children, it’s my faith, my relationship to God. It’s the people in my community. We all would probably say the same things.

Here’s my question. Is that actually how we live? Do we live as if those people and those things are really important to us? How do we know?

It shows up in the way we spend our lives, the way we spend our energy, the way we spend our time and our resources.

I think what happens to us if we’re not careful, and if we don’t do this with some intention, is that we end up spending time trying to please, or arguing with people we don’t even really know on the internet, sometimes to the neglect of the people we actually love and want to be spending our time with.

How are we actually spending our time? Are we spending hours a day scrolling through, reading about people’s lives that we don’t even really know, or are we really investing in the relationships that we know we want to be investing in, that we know matter most?

One of the things I’ve been doing that really helps me is to pick a person of the week. You could pick a person of the month or a person of the day. I tend to do this by the week.

I kind of try to figure out whose birthday it is, or who in my life really needs my love and attention right now. Then I write it on my actual calendar, and for that week, I really try to be super intentional about how I love on that person.

It’s so easy for us to take the people for granted that we love the most. It’s actually almost always the people who we love the most that we take for granted.

I know that a lot of times for Stevie and I, we will have a busy week, taking care of all the stuff we need to take care of. He’s doing his medical practice. I’m running my businesses from home. We’ve got Tom Tom, we’ve got our other kids. We have all the responsibilities that two people building a life together have, and sometimes the only pause I feel like we get is when we’re at church together.

It’s almost like we both just kind of collectively sigh, and he’ll put his arm around me at church and rub on my shoulder. It’s a moment of, “Oh yeah, this is what really matters.” I want to build in more times like that.

We’ve been trying to be more intentional about how we can spend time together, how we can connect, even in small moments like moments together at church, or taking a hike together. Like the trip we took together. Really prioritizing what we say is important, and not just saying it’s important.

3. Decide when you will focus

In my coaching program right now, Life Mentoring School, we’re talking all about how to create pockets of focus.

Decide when you’ll have your focus time each week and decide what the most important things that you can put into that time. Planning that time will really help move you toward the life you want.

Maybe it’s a goal. Maybe it’s a relationship. Maybe it’s some dream that you have that you’ve been wanting to do.

Set aside time to do it, and decide when you’re going to do it at the first of the week. Then put it in your actual calendar. For me, that’s almost always those two hours in the morning before anybody else gets up. I call it my dream time, my sacred time.

I have gotten so accustomed to that time that I can barely stay in bed. I look forward to that time that I know I’m going to spend doing something worthwhile, making some dream come true, working hard at something that’s really important to me. I want you to figure out when you could do that.

Be ready! If you’re not used to sitting for two hours and doing something, you’re, or for however long you decide your focus time is going to be, you’re not going to be great at it at first.

You’re going to get restless.

You’re going to want to be distracted.

You’re going to work for literally 30 seconds and think, “Yeah, this is not as much fun as I thought.”

It’s not that easy to sustain focus and to do something that really matters to you. You’re going to have to practice. You’re going to have to be willing to be bad at it for a while.

I know when I first started doing this, I thought, “Man, where has my attention span gone?” I had set aside two hours, but literally after three minutes, I’m was thinking, “Okay, I don’t know if I can do this.”

So just expect that it’s going to take you a while to be able to get into the groove of really creating some focus time where you can do the things in your life that really matter.

There’s a secret in life: What you focus on, that’s where your energy go.

Even writing it down is powerful. Even if you do terrible at it the first seven times you try to do it. Just continually create that pocket of focus, where you’re going to spend some time working on the things that really matter to you.

Maybe you know you need to write a book.

Maybe you know you need to get your health in order.

Maybe you’re working on your finances.

Whatever it is, dedicate some time every week where you can really focus on that.

There are a lot of things that I have in place to make that time really precious to me, and make it the most productive part of my day. But if you haven’t been in the habit of doing it, I just recommend that you set aside at least two hours a week and focus on what really matters to you.

We’re going to decide what to focus on, and we’re just going to write it down. We’re going to decide who matters most to us, and then we’re going to give ourselves these pockets of time where we can really do the things that matter.

We as women, we as doers, we as dreamers, we really do want to help. We sometimes get lost in doing things for people, in spending our time in ways that are not actually congruent with how we want to be doing life.

It’s never too late to start. I’m so excited that we get second and third and fourth and millionth chances. So don’t tell yourself, “Oh, I’m not good at this. I’ll never find a way to be focused and make my dreams come true.” Yes, you will.

You just keep starting, and you let yourself be bad at it for a while, and then pretty soon you find that you’re consistently showing up for yourself, and you’re consistently showing up to your life in the ways you really want to.

5 Morning Habits That Will Change Your Life

October 21, 2020 by Edie Wadsworth 4 Comments

One of the highest engagement I’ve ever gotten on an Instagram Post was my tribute last year to my brother, Todd.

I ADORE him and the post was pretty sweet and very heartfelt. You can read it here.

I think one of the reasons it struck a chord with many of you was that our relationships are so very important, and most of us spend very little time cultivating the relationships we want.

Todd’s birthday was on October 7th so at the top of my planner for that day, I wrote his name and surrounded it with hearts–like I was channeling my inner 8th grader.

I thought about him and all the things I love about him throughout the day.

When I sat dodwn to send him a message, it was so easy to think of so many things I’m grateful for about him.

Part of the reason for that was that I directed my brain towards him early that day.

Our morning habits and morning thoughts are so important, because they set the tone for the rest of the day! Today, I want to tell you about FIVE morning habits that will CHANGE YOUR LIFE! Buckle up buttercup–you are going to love this!!!

One – Prep For The Morning The Night Before

Does this one surprise you? Here’s what I mean.

It is so, so, so important that we all prioritize our sleep. The research is unequivocal on this people! The first step in prioritizing your sleep is to have a good evening routine so that:

you are going to bed EARLY ENOUGH to get a good amount of sleep
it’s EASY to fall asleep
you actually GET the sleep you need

Really, really prioritizing sleep makes everything better.

If you want to live your best life, you have to get your sleep.

So one of my favourite parts of my nighttime routine is to lay on my bio mat! Have you heard of a bio mat? Mama, it is the ultimate! It is like a revved up heating pad and I love, LoVe, LOVE laying on it–it relaxes me so! I will take my evening supplements. I take a yummy hot Epson salt bath–usually with a variety of AMAZING essential oils that help me sleep. I can’t even tell you how much better I sleep when I don’t rush to bed and just do my little routine. Hot bath with essential oils? Check! Evening supplements? Check! Lay on my bio mat while reading? Check! I often also listen to something–a podcast or whatever–while I am winding down.

So, there it is! Your number one habit is your nighttime routine and making sure that you are going to bed early enough to get enough sleep.

While winding down I am also thinking ahead to what I need to accomplish the next day–your number two habit!!

Two – Make Tomorrow’s List Tonight

Here is the thing about this and its so simple, but so POWERFUL!

When you direct your brain somewhere, that is where it will go. Simple, right?

For example, say I know that I have to write an email the next morning, make an outline for a livestream, go to a hair appointment (Yay for the Hair Wizard!!). Here’s what happens. I start thinking. I know my topic. Here’s what I’m going to be talking about. I just get my brain thinking about it and, “Oh, okay, good.” I don’t actually DO THE THING–I don’t write the email or make the notes but I got my brain percolating on it so that when I wake up the next morning–MOTIVATION CITY!!! This is simply because I already know what I need to accomplish and most of the time, I can get one or two things off my list before I wake Thomas up.

I think a lot of times, instead of looking ahead, we replay our day. We think about things we wish we wouldn’t have done or said, things we wish we had done–thinking that is very focused on the PAST.

I love thinking ahead, “Okay, what kind of day do I want to have tomorrow and what do I need to accomplish?” So, when I wake up, the anticipation of the day is so motivating and allows me to JUST START.

Being intentional about my evening and mornings sets me up for a fantastic day!

Three – Wake Up Without Delay

The number three habit is waking up–without delay.

Waking up with intention.

Waking up rarin’ to go!!!

Obviously, it really helps to do morning habits one and two, but it’s pretty much the first thing you do every day. If you train yourself so that the first thing you do every day is delay your day–can you see how that isn’t the greatest?

I first heard about this concept from Mel Robbins in her book The Five Second Rule. Here’s an excerpt from her book:

Start by counting backwards to yourself: 5- 4- 3- 2- 1. The counting will help you focus on the goal or commitment and distract you from the worries, thoughts, and fears in your mind. As soon as you reach “1,” move. That’s it.

Mel Robbins said the habit of launching herself out of bed and starting her day this way (and then using it in other situations) changed her life! (P.S. I highly recommend this book!)

So wake up without delay and just commit to, “This is the time I wake up.” Because if you do, you’re going to have 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour before other people get up. Of course, this will be easier if you’ve gone to bed early enough and gotten adequate sleep.

Four – Thought Download

I grab water, start my coffee and then I do a thought download.

By thought download I mean I do a little bit of journaling, “Okay, here’s what I woke up thinking about.” Or, “Okay, here’s what I need to remember today.” Or, if it’s grocery store day, “Here’s the list.” I usually wake up with a full mind and I want to transfer all that “fullness” onto paper so that it’s not clouding my mind when I start my work. I want to start my work with intentionally. THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!!

Five – Pick The Thoughts You Want To Think AND The Three Things You Want To Get Done

I have a list of intentional thoughts that I like to keep on hand, “This is what I want to train my brain to think.” Some of my favorite morning thoughts came from ideas I got from Louise Hay. It’s a POWERFUL list.

I experience love wherever I go. I am surrounded by loving people and easily give love to others.

I begin and end everyday with gratitude.

My heart is open and I am willing to experience anything God brings my way.

I am full of creative ideas for my life, my family, and my business.

My body is strong and I create abundant energy for myself by how I eat and move and rest.

I easily forgive myself and others and joyously accept God’s truth about my worth and value.

I am surrounded by love. All is well.

I show up with love and service for myself, my family, and all those I meet everyday.

I live and work from a place of sheer abundance. My heart and life are full and overflowing.

Now you’re going to say to me, “Dr. Edie, I don’t wake up feeling these thoughts everyday.”

Neither do I, but I tell my brain that this is what I want to look for.

If you tell your brain to look for that list of things, you’re going see love everywhere. You’re going to see how abundant your life is. You’re going to see reasons to send people love notes and write amazing posts about them instead of complaining. Complaining about politics or the restaurant you went to that didn’t get your order right.

Do you see the power our words and our thoughts have that we aren’t using?!? We just let out thoughts go to the “default”. And since we are human, it defaults to sin. It defaults to complaining. It defaults to blaming. It defaults to resentment and unforgiveness.

But you are the BOSS of your brain and you have to tell it what you want it to think and do.

See why the thought download is so important? Because you will realize, if you do this for awhile, that sometimes you don’t wake up with the most wonderful thoughts.

You have the power to change that.

You have the power to direct your mind, to think about what you want it to think about.

That, my friends, is life changing

After I download my morning thoughts, I organize that thought download into a meaningful list. Then, I pick three things that I want to get done that day. THAT’S IT. If I get more than done–YEE HAW–I love it when that happens!

Most importantly, when I make my list of the three things I want to do, I do it with my intentional thoughts in mind. When I write an email to you, I do it with the thought in mind, “I’m surrounded by loving people. I live in abundance. I work from a place of love and service.”

When I’ve got these intentional thoughts in my head, I generate good work. I generate things that are helpful for people. It allows me to do my work in the world without worrying about what other people think of it. I’m thinking, how can I love and serve? How can I embrace the hard things that come? How can I keep my heart open?

What’s your FIRST morning thought? Is it about the past or about the future? Is it positive or negative? Does it make you worry? Feel fearful?

Or does it motivate and energize you?

Imagine starting everyday with a handful of positive, intentional thoughts.

How would that change your day? Your relationships? Your life?

I’m so excited about our Honor Challenge based on Romans 10:12

Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.

It starts November 2nd! We are going to take 12 ordinary days and create 10 life-changing habits! Sign up here and get your FREE download!

How to simplify everything in your life with one word

September 30, 2020 by Edie Wadsworth 5 Comments

When I went in this morning to give Stevie a kiss goodbye, I was already thinking, How can I show up with love today? How can I show up in a way that makes him know how much I love and appreciate him? How does Stevie feel loved?” I had five seconds before I had to have Thomas out the door, but lingered . “Good morning, I love you,” sealed with a smooch!

Just that little bit, one second in the morning, could change your whole day. Imagine what accumulating a bunch of days, a bunch of months in a row, or a whole year would do! Imagine your capacity to love!

It’s so easy to think of everyone and everything that needs to change in order for things to be right in our world.

My husband needs to be more attentive, my children need to listen, my coworkers need to be kinder, my mother-in-law needs to stop offending us.

But the truth is, the only thing that needs to change is you, and me. That’s the ONLY thing we can change!

How can I love unconditionally, even in hard situations? How can I see the truth in the criticism and still show up with LOVE?

How can I increase MY ABILITY to love and be loved, by just deciding that that’s what I’m going to do?

I know it’s possible and I know that no one else needs to change. Just you and me.

The question I’m perpetually asking myself is how can I see things differently, better, more clearly.

YOU’RE THE ONE MAMA!

It only takes one emotionally strong and committed human to change everything. Are you strengthening your love muscle, towards your spouse? Towards your children? Towards the ONE person in your life that you are still letting offend you? Take your power back!

There is no greater power on earth than LOVE!

Where can you UP YOUR LOVE GAME?

Love is the one word that will simplify everything in your life, the one word that makes everything better. Love is a skill that we get better at with practice. When you start practicing, you become conscious of it, and you become so aware of how many ways you’re not loving. You realize how much you’re comparing or judging, and how much your expectations of someone is causing you to resent them.

The paradox of this is, when you practice unconditional love, you are the one who gets to feel it!

The more you practice it, not only do you notice that everything in your life gets better and everything in your life is simpler. There’s no drama and there’s no resentment. When you slip into a place of unconditional love, dare I say, it takes away all of the problems!

What I’ve learned the last few years, as I’ve consciously been practicing is; how to realize when I’m not in unconditional love, and how to train myself to go back there. What I notice is that my capacity for love is so much greater than it used to be. My capacity to be kind and patient with everybody is so much greater, but so is my capacity to love myself. My capacity to have patience with myself, and to forgive myself is so much greater.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the last year with Thomas. He had a lot of behavior issues, and it was always really easy to slip into anger or think, Things should be different, or his behavior should be different. Instead, I try to practice staying really centered. “What would love do in this situation?”

How does love show up?

When I started practicing this with him, and in every situation asking, How can I show him 100% how loved he is, it changed everything. I have watched so much of his bad behavior just melt away, because unconditional love is pretty irresistible!

The same thing happens with people in your life. The same thing is true for our marriages. Ask yourself in every single situation

How does love show up here?

How does love respond here?

How does love act?

How does love think in this situation?

I feel like everything opens up when we drop our expectations of what everybody else should be doing, and instead focus on the only thing we ever can change, which is us.

How can I really practice unconditional love for myself, for my life, for my work, my marriage, my children, the people that I see in my everyday life?

If you really become aware of it, what you’ll notice when you first start paying attention is that you’re not practicing unconditional love most of the time.

Most of the time you’re comparing yourself to other people. You’re trying to figure out if it’s fair, or if somebody hurt your feelings. You’re really not in a place of unconditional love 95% of the time. This is how it was for me when I first started practicing this and I would have considered myself a very loving and patient person. Then I started paying attention and I noticed how often I wasn’t!

I started practicing!

What would it look like in this very situation to drop the judgment, to drop any weird expectations of other people, to drop my own agenda? What would it look like if I just decided, I’m going to show up with the life changing question, How can I show up with love today?

I really want you to think about this with the people in your life who you’ve had a hard time with. I want you to re-think that whole relationship.

If I’m having a bad day because someone said something or treated me a certain way, I give away all of my power to that person. They can totally set the tone for the whole day for us, because we’ve given away all our power. What if we just decide instead of being influenced by all of that, we are going to feel and give love as our default!

Love is now my default, and feeling and giving love is the way I’m going to operate.

Here’s what will happen, difficult people won’t seem difficult anymore. You’ll see them differently. You’ll understand a little bit why they do what they do. I think it’s why the scripture says you must love your enemies. There’s something that your enemy says that has a little kernel of truth in it. Can we receive that in love, and still show up with love, and not lash back at them?

This practice has changed my life more than anything else. In every single situation. Especially in the hard situations, in the situations where I used to get offended really easily, or make me angry, or hurt my feelings.

I decided, I’m going to take the most powerful stance in the universe. I’m going to take the stance of unconditional love in this situation!

You can give that person the benefit of the doubt, and you can probably see a little bit of why they show up the way they do. Then you can practice how you want to show up!

What relationships in your life do you most need to practice this in? Is it your marriage? Is it your relationship with your children? Is it your relationship with your mom, your dad, your mother-in-law?

Pick the hardest relationship you can think of. How can you decide that you’re going to change the quality of that relationship, without them even knowing it? You’re just going to decide, I want to feel love, so I’m going to show up with love in this relationship. There’s nothing more powerful in the world, and it doesn’t make you weak. Try it!

You have never been in a place of more calm, peace, and power, than when you are operating in unconditional love.

You always find what you’re looking for

September 16, 2020 by Edie Wadsworth 1 Comment

As you know, we have been through kind of a strange time as a nation and as a culture, and it has given us a lot to process and work on and think about.

There are the people who process change and hardship and suffering by over performing and people who process by under performing. Both ways end up at the same place.

I’m am an over performer, so I come out of the gates like, “I’m going to learn everything. It’s going to be great. I’m not going to let quarantine get me down.” Then about four weeks later, I’m crying on the floor. And then there are those who underperform. They start their crying on the floor and then they slowly get up and start to function.

One thing that I’ve noticed about myself over the last couple of weeks is I’ve been letting the division get to me. We say to ourselves in our mind that there are these camps of people. The truth of the matter is most of us are somewhere in the middle, but what can appear to happen is this divide, and you can tell who’s on one side and who’s on the other.

You’re supposed to hate all the people on the other side of whatever your camp is, right?

We tend to villainize the people who aren’t in our camp.

I started to see this huge divide and think,”Oh my gosh, we’re so divided. People can’t see the nuance. We’re just so divided. We are pitting people against one or the other.”Then I realized, wait, this is how I see it because this is how I choose to see it.

When I made that revelation for myself, it helped me kind of step back and think,”People are probably not just one way or the other. They’re probably nuanced like I am.”

I don’t feel like I know everything about everything. And they probably don’t either.

It kind of drove the point home that I’ve been learning for the last 10 years, which is

You always find what you’re looking for.

What I mean is if you look at your spouse, and your story in your head about your spouse is that they don’t contribute and they’re not supportive, you will look for evidence for your story and you will find it. You will find LOTS of evidence for your story, which will confirm your story.

Your brain likes to confirm its story and that’s okay, except ask yourself, “Do I like what I’m finding?” Because if I don’t like what I’m finding, I probably need to look a little closer, see a little more nuance, see both sides of the story.

Those of you who have that story about your spouse, you could probably tell another story about them. My spouse is supportive. My spouse goes to work every day and he takes care of our family and he loves us, right? You could tell both stories.

Which story helps you like the way you show up?

If your story is he’s not supportive, he doesn’t help, he doesn’t love me, and he doesn’t support me, then you’re going to show up pretty needy and pretty defensive. But there’s always another side to the story.

If you live from the other side of the story, you’re going to probably give him the benefit of the doubt, and show up with more curiosity and compassion and love. That’s probably where you want to be living your life, I would guess.

The same thing is true when you see somebody on the internet that you don’t agree with.

Can we hold the same space for people?

Can we see that there are two stories?

Can we see that telling ourselves everybody who thinks THAT way is awful and I don’t like THOSE humans, pretty much Xs out about 50% of the humans!?

I found myself going down into this place where I would do that. I would think, “Well, they’re one of THOSE people and I don’t agree with that,” and I would kind of discount them and lump them into this group of people that I don’t really respect or agree with.

Can we hold space for each other?

Can we at least acknowledge that there’s another part to the story, and that person who’s really worried about going out might have a sick child, and it feels so personal, and it feels like everybody that’s recommending that we do something different is against her child.

Can we just be curious about the people who are on the other side?

This is what I have ask of myself, because you will always find what you’re looking for, and if your brain is looking for division and looking for people to be wrong and looking for the negative side of things, you will always find it.

Then you have to ask yourself, do I like living from the place where I think half the world is wrong and awful. I really don’t. I really like holding a bit more curiosity and love and respect for people who don’t see it the way I do. So it’s been a good exercise for me, honestly, because I found myself saying, “Oh, everybody’s crazy. The world’s going crazy.”

It does feel like the world’s going crazy, but can we hold space for people and can we just be a little bit curious? Can we step back just a little bit and say, “I can kind of see why that person with that upbringing from that part of the country could see it that way?”

Where in your life are you doing this? Are you doing it in your marriage? Are you doing it with one of your kids? You may have a story in your mind about one of your kids and everything they do just confirms the story that you already have. I would beg you to ask yourself, “What’s the other side of that story?” What if more of the time you lived from the other side of that story?

We’re all doing this in different parts of our lives, in different settings, in our marriage and our families, and in the culture. It just makes us better humans to be willing to HONOR other people and the way they think, even if it’s not the same as us, and to try to find some understanding.

It makes us better humans to listen a little bit more to their side. Ask, “I wonder why they think that,” or “I wonder why they so quickly go to that.”

I’ve really been working on this. This year has been difficult for us in a lot of ways, and we have the choice of how we want to see it.

Even if I looked at last year and all the different things that have happened, I could think,”Oh my gosh, God hates us. This has been hard. Why do bad things happen to us? Why has it been like this?”I could look at it that way, but when I look at it that way, I feel like a victim.

I’m not a victim. I don’t want to feel like a victim.

The other choice I have is,”Wow, look at what has happened FOR me. Look at the chance that I have gotten to see things differently, to really grow, to accept the suffering and challenge, and let it be my teacher and let it change me in the ways that it can.”

What if we looked at it like that?

We have a pandemic in front of us. You can tell yourself a story about that. And you live a certain way, according to that story. Remember though, there’s another side to the story.

I do believe that the pandemic of fear is real, and when we live in fear, do we like the way we show up? It’s okay to do it either way, but I’m just asking us, asking myself, to step back from all of our dogma and say, “Is believing this story helping me show up the way I want to?”

It’s a question that’s worth asking, because if it didn’t matter how you looked at it then we would all see it the same way, and obviously we don’t all see it the same way.

We don’t see the pandemic the same way. We don’t see marriage the same way. We don’t see suffering the same way, right? What that tells me is that the way you see something really becomes your story about it, and you can choose how you see it.

Sometimes we look at a circumstance like a pandemic and go,”Well, there’s no other way to see it, except that this is terrible and we’re all going to die. We should stay in our houses forever.” That’s one way to see it.

We have to ask ourselves,”When I look at it that way, do I like the way I show up? Do I like the person that story makes me into?” It’s really worth asking, “How do I want to see this? How do I want to look at life? How do I want to look at my relationships?”

You might be saying to yourself,”Well, you’re just looking at it with rose colored glasses.”Possibly, but what I always ask myself is,”When I tell myself this story and live from this story, is that the best, highest version of myself? Am I living from love? Am I giving people grace and the benefit of the doubt and all the things that I would want people to give me?”A lot of times I’m not.

It’s been a really good time of learning and growth. That’s what I think is so cool about collective hardship, collective suffering. We talk about this a lot at my gym, voluntary hardship.

Sometimes we sign up for things that are hard and we, in our minds, tell ourselves, “No, this is good for me. It’s good for me to challenge myself. It’s good for me to deny myself. This is going to teach me so much.”

Then we have the involuntary hardship, involuntary suffering. Sometimes we don’t change our mindset about it and decide how we want to think about it, and then we get into this weird victim mode where everything’s happening to me and i’ts all wrong. Woe is me!

I just find that I like the way I show up when I truly believe that God is doing this for me. This is for me, not because I need to be punished or did something wrong. We’re all sinners. We all need to repent. We all need God’s grace, but coming from the aspect of this is for us. He’s doing this for us. This is for our good.

He will turn every situation into good.

Is there any harm in believing that? How does it help us show up when we believe that?

Especially in the divide that I see in my own life, the divide that I see in my own family sometimes, the divide that I see in my own town, in my own Facebook feed, it’s worth considering giving people a little bit of space and being curious about what makes them tick. It’s worth being curious about how we are interpreting things, and how we are seeing things.

Do we like ourselves when we interpret things that way, and when we show up the way we are showing up? Because we always find what we are looking for.

The BEST thing about homeschooling teenagers is…..

September 8, 2017 by Edie Wadsworth 17 Comments

So, you’ve probably heard.

I’m homeschooling again. Sort of. I mean, my girls are in 11th grade and taking classes at the local community college (dual enrollment) along with taking a few classes at home, so technically we are doing an independent study year.

And Y’ALL. It’s AMAZING.

First off, let me explain why we decided to come back home after spending several years at an awesome classical school. I think part of the journey for us has always been really paying attention to what the girls need. The only reason I ever decided to homeschool initially is because one of my daughter’s needed one on one attention. After being home for a few years with me, she began to THRIVE and eventually wanted to try “real school” again.

So we did. We went to “real school” for 7th-10th grades and it was wonderful. They made some great friends, they learned so much, they were challenged in ways I could never have challenged them at home and it was a great decision for the time.

But these two sweetie pies are mature for their age and were kind of “done” with high school. They were having hours of homework every night and not having any down time. Between a heavy load at school and dancing 2-4 hours at night, they were exhausted. And my Elea complained that she had no time to read. (She’s her mother’s daughter!)

And listen, I feel like after you homeschool for any amount of time and have your kids home with you, it’s hard to let them go. It’s hard to give up all that time with them and we were THRILLED when they mentioned they might want to finish high school with independent study.

So, they take 3 classes at Walter State Community College (10 minutes from our house!). They have Spanish, English Composition, and US History there. Then, they do Algebra 2 (teaching textbooks, so mama doesn’t have to try to relearn Algebra!) and Chemistry (Apologia) and then later this semester, we’re adding Dave’s Ramsey’s Financial Peace course. And we are all LOVING IT!!! The best part is having them around so much!

The girls are so much more relaxed and happy and we see each other throughout the day all day. I can’t even tell you how much I love having them around during the day again. It’s been such a gift.

And given the fact that I know how fast this all happens, I’m so glad that they get to spend their last two years at home like this. It’s really a WIN WIN.

They were telling me last night how prepared they feel for their college classes. They are both very self motivated so I don’t have to worry about them doing their work and assignments. And college classes have been VERY eye opening. Their history professor told them the first day not to come in hung over or stoned. YES, HE DID. So, that led to some interesting conversations but overall, they love their classes and are enjoying the little bit of freedom it gives them! They were ready for that and honestly I think it’s made them even more mature and responsible.

I am so glad they wanted to try this. It’s been a huge success so far!!

Do you veteran homeschoolers have any advice for homeschooling high school?

I feel like a newbie again!!