family life

The Power of Being Present and 5 Ways to be More Present

June 9, 2021 by Edie Wadsworth 82 Comments

Are you struggling with being distracted? I know I often struggle with not being truly present in the moment. The reason this is so important is that ALL of your personal power lies in the present moment.

When we live too much in the past, we’re living in regret, maybe even in victim land, and we may have some sadness or depression. When we live too much in the future we may have a lot of fear or anxiety.

We are giving our power away to all those things. Whatever we’re distracted by in the present moment, we give little bits of our energy and power away to.

If you feel like you don’t have the energy and power you need to live the life you want, it’s probably because you’re giving it all away.

When you can bring yourself back to the present moment, you get back your energy and your power. There’s nothing more amazing than somebody who’s truly present in the moment.

I don’t think I have ever have met, especially a child, who was more present in the moment than our Thomas. He brings all of his power, and all of his energy right now, and in every moment.

It was awards day at his school, and Stevie was talking to him about awards day and said, “Are you going to get an award buddy?” And he said, “I don’t think so. I think they only give that to kids who don’t get in trouble,” and Stevie said, “Well I bet you’re going to get a bunch of them. You never get in trouble do you?” Thomas kind of snickered and said, “Dad, I get in trouble every day.”

But I knew how his teacher was going to do awards, and she is the most precious angel ever to have graced the earth. I didn’t know what the award was going to be, but the girls and I went to awards day, and I was already walking into the building feeling emotional because I know how much she loves him and I know how much he loves her.

I wanted to be really there for all of it, so I thought, “Okay, Miss Edie, forget everything else. Just savor this moment. Be present in this moment.” I enjoyed the whole thing so much that I really couldn’t stop thinking about it.

When we got there, they did all their pledges. It was so precious. They sang their little patriotic songs. Then she started giving the awards. She wouldn’t say the kids’ names before she gave the award. She would start describing the kid and then give the award.

What was so cute is the kids would know who she was talking about. And when she started talking about Thomas, she said, “I’ve never met anyone ever in my life with so much of a zest for life. With so much enthusiasm.” And everybody started saying, “It’s Thomas, it’s Thomas.” And she said, “He changes the room when he walks in,” and everybody knew it was Thomas.

It was so sweet when he got this award for enthusiasm!

I recently listened to a podcast, and Jordan Peterson was talking about the root word of the word enthusiasm means full of the spirit. So as soon as she said the word, I was already crying, and I just started thinking about how much magic this kid brings to my life.

So much of it is because of this powerful presence, present in the moment, ready for what’s to come, ready to experience things that you can only experience in the present moment.

Guess what you miss when you aren’t really present in the present moment? You miss all the good stuff!

If you’re sitting there worried about your past or worried about your future, worried about the bills, what you’re going to do, or mulling over the past, you’re missing all the good stuff.

I heard somebody say our sense of time intersects with God’s sense of time in one place, THE PRESENT MOMENT. God is present in the moment. When we miss the present moment, we miss Him. We also miss the fruits of His spirit.

Think of all the things we miss.

Love

Joy

Peace

Longsuffering

Gentleness

Goodness

Self-control

Faith

Meekness

All the good stuff is in the present moment, and we are often distracted and not really there for it.

1. Pay attention to your thoughts.

Start to pay attention to your thoughts. When I pay attention to my thoughts, so often they’re nothing related to the present moment, nothing. When I redirect them to the present moment, I get to experience what I experienced last Friday in Thomas’ school.

Nothing could have distracted me from that moment. I wanted to be fully present. I wanted to experience everything. The sounds, everything in the moment.

I noticed so often that I’m not there. Are your thoughts in the present moment? This is where God is. This is where all His fruits of the Spirit are, right here in this moment, right now. They can only be had in the present moment. It’s all we really have.

2. Pay attention to who you’re with.

Paying attention is the gift of the present. I’m as guilty as any. How often are we with people, but we’re not with them? You know who knows that more than anybody else? The people that you’re not really with, they know.

Thomas will bust my chops for this faster than anything, “You weren’t even listening.” He said that to me last night actually. I was doing a story about him, and I was typing up the little story on my phone. He was mad because I wasn’t tracking with him. They know when we’re with them.

How are they doing?

What are they feeling?

Make eye contact.

Do you realize how often we don’t make eye contact?

3. Pay attention to your body.

One of the best ways to come back into the present is to come back into your body. Often I will ask myself, how am I feeling? Like what’s going on in my actual body, because I think one of the things that’s hardest to do.

We talk about this a lot in life mentoring school, my coaching program. I find that one of the things that’s hardest to do is to actually feel your emotions. I teach people how to do feel their feelings because it’s a powerful skill.

Once you can feel your emotions, you’re not afraid to do anything. You’re not afraid to set big goals because you know how to feel disappointed and rejected, and how to experience failure.

One of the reasons I think we want to skip the present moment is because we don’t like the emotion we have. Something really powerful that I often teach people how to do is be present.

Decide what are you feeling.

Why are you feeling that?

What thoughts are causing that feeling?

Is that something I want to feel?

Process through it.

If I need to process through it. Oftentimes that’s exactly what we need to do. We need to process through it, and then decide, how do I want to feel? What do I need to think in order to feel that way?

In order to become present in your actual body, you have to ask yourself how you feel in this moment right now?

4. Pay attention to your breath.

This is probably one of the ways that I do it the most often. I will just take a few deep breaths.

How many of you even in the course of reading this, you’re already gone? You’re already distracted? You’re already not here with me? Come back to me and let’s do this together.

Take a few really deep breaths.

Deep breath in through the nose.

Deep breath out through the nose.

Again, deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Your breath is present with you in the present, so becoming conscious of my breathing is one way that I bring myself back, to the present.

5. Pay attention to the powerful presence of God in your life.

Pay attention to the presence of God in your midst right now. This is where He can be experienced, in the moment, right now.

The capacity to experience joy is right now.

The capacity to experience peace is now.

When you worry about the future, you don’t really experience peace for the future. You have peace and you have it now.

I want you to think of all the best things in life. They come from being present. Think about how your life would change if you brought the generous power of your presence to everything you did. The energy that you’re now giving away to worry and sadness and fear. You’re giving it all away and you don’t have that energy to bring to this current present moment.

This is something that I think we have to practice, that we don’t necessarily automatically get good at. I am committed, especially this summer with Tom out of school, to presence.

I want to be present for myself.

We talk about this a lot in my mentoring school, you know what happens when you decide not to be present for yourself? You start to buffer with all kinds of things. You don’t want to be present with yourself so you overeat. You scroll social media. You spend money.

Really being present with ourselves is a powerful thing.

Being present in the moment with the people that you’re with is a powerful thing.

Acknowledging that the presence of God is present, and that’s where we can experience it, is a powerful thing.

A huge part of learning to live a life that is meaningful and joyful and deeply satisfying, is learning to live in the present.

If you’d like to practice, jump on the waiting list for Life Mentoring School! We’d love to have you next time we’re open!

How to talk to your kids and why it matters.

May 26, 2021 by Edie Wadsworth 8 Comments

When I was growing up, I grew up around really miserable, slightly mean sounding Appalachians. The way I heard people talk, especially when I was really young, was very negative. Even if they didn’t actually feel that negative about the thing they were saying, it just sounded to me like they were always mad.

The way that I internalized that was, I just assumed they were mad at me. It’s really common in the area where I’m from, among more mountain people, there’s just this way of talking that just sounds mean.

When my cousin and my sister and I get together, we talk that way. I’m really good at it, and when we get together we speak it, because it’s like our first language!

I was talking to a friend about this, because we were both kind of raised by these Appalachian savages, and I realized that this way of talking had a huge impact on me. It was basically the script that was going on in my mind all the time and it was really negative.

Not my mom, by the way. My mom provided a different way of talking, but it took me a while to realize the difference.

Now, it’s like slightly comical. It’s kind of the way Tom talks. He always sounds mad, even when he’s not. He talks loud and is kind of harsh because he was also raised by an older Appalachian woman.

I love my roots so much. If you’ve read my book, you know I love my people and I have a lot of respect for them, but I will say that it took me a long time to deprogram myself from this negative talk.

I think I had enough of an awareness about it when I started having kids that I really never talked to my kids that way, but I always heard that script in my mind. If you were raised by people who were kind of loud, or yellers, or people who are super confrontational, you know what I’m talking about.

I have never really struggled with yelling at my kids. I think because I was so tender, and hurt often, by the way I was spoken to. I remember when I went to kindergarten how gentle and how kind my kindergarten teacher was to me. I thought this is like another world. I was amazed by her level of her soft- spokenness and her level of kindness.

After I wrote my book a few years ago, I actually went back and found her and told her what an impact she made on my life. Her words to me, 45 years ago, still make an impact on my life, and I went back to tell her that.

In my coaching program, Life Mentoring School, we’re studying nurture this month, how we nurture ourselves, how we nurture our children, and how we nurture our own gifts within ourselves. One of the things that people struggle with so much is this topic like yelling. People don’t want to be yelling at their kids. Nobody wants to be at Walmart and hear people yelling at their kids.

We all live as humans in reality, and sometimes we shake our heads and think, “Yes, it is necessary. Have you seen my children? The savages that they are!” So I get it.

The thing that I want to remind us all of is how powerful words are. I think we know this intellectually. We know how powerful they are, but I want you to think of a time in your life where somebody spoke it to you harshly. It was probably when you were younger and you carry it. You’ve carried it forever. You hear it over and over in your mind.

I think we know from our own experience that words are so powerful.

People have done science experiments where they speak kindly to different things and they record the results. In the one with water, they speak positively over this water, and it freezes is this beautiful, amazing pattern.

They do the same thing with negative words with crystals, and the way the crystals form, it’s ugly and not in a pattern.

It’s basically an experiment to tell us what we already know, which is that our words carry power.

Words either bring life or death.

I don’t say that to make us all feel guilty for the times when we don’t speak kindly, but I want to bring in awareness to how we speak to our kids. You may think this is backwards but first you have to pay attention to how you speak to yourself.

The first step to speaking more kindly to other people in your life is to speak more kindly to you.

Many of you have a lot of negative self-talk about yourself. The reason it’s so easy for you to speak negatively to other people is because you do it all day long to yourself. You have this rut worn in your brain of how you talk to yourself, and it just carries over.

I think becoming aware of how we talk to ourselves is really important. I don’t want you to use this to beat yourself up, or to make yourself feel more guilty. I want you to realize you’re just one of the humans who happens to not speak kindly to yourself and to your kids sometimes.

You can decide, “I want to grow in this area.” Heaping on a bunch of guilt and shame about this is actually not going to help you change it.

The only thing that I would recommend is that if you do have a lot of guilt about it, that you just pray and you ask for forgiveness. God will forgive you, and you move on, and you become a lot more aware of how you talk to yourself, and how you talk to the people in your life.

You are either helping people grow and flourish and learn how to talk to themselves right, and learn how to talk to other people, or not.

The funny thing about my experience with raising Thomas is that even though he has this sort of harshness with the way he does it, he’s very sensitive to everything I say to him. He’s very sensitive to my tone of voice. He’s very sensitive even if I’m just tired, he can sense that I don’t have the same inflection in my voice, because I’ve over the years really tried to work on the way I talk to the people in my life.

I just think it’s so interesting because he’s kind of a yeller, so he can yell and he can do all that, doesn’t bother him. But boy, if I so much as change my tone in the slightest, he’s very sensitive to it. I’ve noticed that over time, the more I just hold space for how he has been programmed, like I was programmed when I was little, and I try to not come down on that too much, and I just infuse all the goodness, it has gotten so much better.

To get better at this, speak more kindly to yourself. Realize that you’re human, that you are loved and adored, and that you’ll do plenty of things wrong and there’s grace available.

As you have more patience and kindness, and even curiosity, it gets better. Sometimes when I notice that I’m not speaking life into my people, I’m think, “That’s interesting because I normally do, so what is going on with me?”

Just get curious with yourself about why maybe you’re not speaking the way you want to, to yourself and to other people. Get curious and compassionate, having lots of grace for yourself, and deciding what you want to speak to yourself.

Decide that ahead of time and practice believing that you are the kind of person who speaks life, who speaks kindly, deciding that you’re not a yeller. Maybe you just rewrite that story. It’s just a story you’re telling yourself that you’re a yeller, so just retell a better story.

We set the tone.

When we’re not in a good mood, everybody can feel it. We don’t have to be in a good mood all the time, but we need to be aware of how our presence affects other people, and how powerful our words are.

Words create things.

What am I creating right now in my family, and in my children?

What kind of words?

What kind of life?

What kind of nurture am I creating by the way I speak to them?

We often teach in Life Mentoring School to just take a little pause, when your tendency is to just react, and think, “Life or death.” That may seem dramatic, but it really helps me.

Life or death, what do you choose?

Are you choosing life or death in this reaction?

Are you choosing life or death in these words?

If you have trouble with this, just give yourself a little space, give yourself a little pause, give yourself a little second to not just react because if we just react, we’re just going to mirror them.

There’s a lot of study on emotion that shows that emotions are just energy, and like energies attract each other. Our tendency is going to be to mirror their energy. If they get all riled up and mad, you’re going to have a tendency to match their energy.

You have agency and control over your reaction, and you can take a pause and decide, “No, I don’t want to match that. I want to hold space for peace right here today. I want to hold space for maybe getting curious about what they’re going through.”

We want to be curious as to why we are being impatient or angry, and we want to do the same thing for the people in our lives.

Write it out.

A lot of times, if I’m struggling with one of my kids, I just brainstorm everything I love about them, and I actually write it down.

How can you speak life by writing it down?

How can you decide how you want to speak and think by writing it down FIRST, and kind of practicing?

As you write it down, what you’re going to be amazed by, is that how amazing your people are. You’re going to brainstorm everything you love about them, and you’re going to think, “Oh my gosh. How was I so irritated and mad the other day? These people are amazing.” Brainstorming on paper really, really helps me.

I think that this is something that’s so fun to practice and here’s what’s going to happen. If you tell yourself right now,”Okay, for the rest of the day, I’m going to be really conscious of how I speak,” there’s going to be plenty of opportunity for it to go south. If you live in a family like mine, there’s going to be plenty of opportunity for you to feel justified in what you say.

I want you to ask yourself today, in all those different interactions…

Am I taking a pause?

Am I speaking life or death?

Is this encouraging them to be who they can be?

Is this my highest self showing up to this interaction today?

Maybe you have specific interactions that seem to always go south. If you can think of those times ahead of time, and you can think, “I want to show up as my highest self in this interaction today.” That intention, I’m telling you, will change your life.

When we spend a lot of time yelling and being angry and frustrated with our kids, who is it that’s actually feeling angry and frustrated most of the day? That would be us, right? I don’t know about you, but there’s a lot of other things I would like to feel besides angry and frustrated, and we do have the power to choose something different.

Choose well. Life or death, choose 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 2 Comments

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 6 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.