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CHEERS to a new year, and here’s to a new decade! It’s my favorite thing, maybe because my birthday is January 4th and I’ve always loved this time of year. But if you’re a reluctant or resistant goal setter, this series is FOR YOU! But first, a confession.

I set THREE big goals last year. 1) To pay off my mortgage, 2) To finish my 2nd book, and 3) To get to the next rank in Young Living.

NEWS FLASH. I only reached one of those goals. I finished my 2nd book, but I didn’t pay off my mortgage and I didn’t hit the next YL rank. What do I make that mean? That I’m closer to those things than I was—that I paid $40K towards my mortgage (YAY, ME!). I don’t let those things means I’m a failure or that I’m not good at goal setting. As a matter of fact, I am more excited than ever about my goals for this year. Know why? Because I can trust myself with failure, but more about that in part 4.

As we’re facing a new year & facing a new decade, my question for you is this—what is keeping you from living into your full potential?

What is keeping you from loving and serving at the highest level?

If not, why not? Here’s what has kept me from my best, maybe you can relate.

Are you stuck in the past?

Most of my life I was stuck in my past—past resentments, past failures, bitterness that had a firm grip on me. I was stuck in the past for so long because I felt so justified to be stuck in the past. My past was hard and painful and anybody would have agreed that I was justified in staying stuck there.

And I felt like I was doing some sort of justice to the people who had done me wrong if I held on to that bitterness and held on to that anger and resentment. And what I finally realized a few years ago was that the only person that my past was poisoning was ME. My resentment wasn’t having any effect on the people who I felt like had done me wrong. The past only existed in my mind and I was punishing MYSELF everyday with it—thinking about it over and over, ruminating on all the ways I was mistreated. I was holding onto a very painful story, but the only person feeling the pain was ME.

And if you are stuck in the past and you have a story that’s very painful but you keep holding onto it like me, I want you to know that there is hope. I want you to know that you can move past your past. Your brain doesn’t want you to. And the reason why is because your brain is a pro at the past.

Your brain is so good at reminding you of the story of how you were done wrong, and how such and such needs to pay, or maybe even reminding you of all your past failures. Your brain loves to do that because it conserves energy, because it’s way easier than you thinking new thoughts, or trying new things, or setting new goals.

So your brain loves to keep you stuck in a loop of the past because then it doesn’t have to do anything NEW.

Are you stuck in fear?

Then, there’s fear. Some of us have a fear of failure. We think if we try something and it doesn’t work? Then we think it means something terrible about us. I told you about my two epic “failures” from the goals that I set last year, and I bet you don’t make those “failures” mean anything catastrophic.

A lot of us stuck in self-doubt, in fear of rejection, in fear of failure because down deep we know how awful we are going to be to ourselves if we “fail”.

And here’s the thing, again, your brain loves this. Because if your brain can keep you stuck here, it doesn’t have to do anything new. It doesn’t have to be creative. It doesn’t have to be disciplined. It doesn’t have to think new thoughts or do new things. It loves to stay where it is. It loves to keep you right where you are. So your brain is going to resist change because it’s so much easier to stay where you are.

Are you stuck in negative thinking?

Some of us are stuck in the thinking I’ve always been this way or it’s always been this way.

I’ve always been overweight. I’ve always struggled with finances. I’ve always struggled in relationships. I always choose the wrong guy. I never been able to make my business work.

Whatever it is that you keep telling yourself over and over again, I want you to ask yourself, is that message serving you? Is it motivating you to the life you really want, to the life you know you’re capable of, or is it keeping you stuck where you are?

And if so, we’re going to break up with who we’ve always been.

And really, in order to make a lasting change, you have to be willing to put to death all of those thoughts. You have to be willing to put to death that person that believes that and thinks that and is stuck there. You really have to be willing to question it.

Is it serving you to move into the place you need to move in your life so that you can love and serve at the highest level that’s possible for you? And if it isn’t, you have to be willing to think NEW THOUGHTS. That’s what goal setting is at its core—you, being willing, to think and dream about your life.

Some of you didn’t make as much progress as you wanted to last year, so you’re making that mean that you’re not good at setting goals. How many of you set some goals last year and it didn’t quite work out? I shared mine above and I bet you didn’t villify me because I didn’t reach two of my goals. So, why do you do that to yourself? Just reinterpret what it means that you didn’t get as far as you wanted to get. Maybe your goal was to lose 50 pounds and you lost five, and then you gained three of those back. YOU LOST FIVE POUNDS, sister!

The good news about trying and failing…

When I was a practicing physician, I helped people make lifestyle change. I helped people lose weight. I helped people stop smoking. I helped people with addictions. And here’s what I know to be true about people who actually accomplish their goals—they accomplish it after the 11th time trying, or the 13th time trying, or the 8th time trying.

But the one thing that’s consistent about people who actually get where they want to get in life is they just don’t give up. They don’t make the failure mean, well, I’ve just always been this way, I guess I’ll always be this way.

They’re really careful about how they interpret the failure. If you’re trying to quit smoking and you’re on your seventh try and it doesn’t work, you can just throw in the towel and say, “Well, it just didn’t work for me,” or you could realize that you’re three tries away from actually doing it. And that is the truth, mama.

So be careful what you make it mean that you didn’t reach your goals.

And some of us are so used to beating ourselves up for not doing that thing that we are scared to try again.

Yeah, I try, but it just never seems to work out. Well, that’s because you make the failure means something about you and then you just stop trying. And I’m promise you’ll never get there is you give up. That’s not a good strategy either.

Why goal setting is a worthy endeavor…

Here’s why I think goal setting is such a worthy endeavor.

When you set a goal and when you decide what you want your life to be about, it gives your brain something productive to do. And it needs something productive to do because it’s going to spin in negativity if you don’t tell it what to do. It’s going to spin in all the things that are wrong with you and all the reasons why this never works for you. It’s going to find all kinds of negativity to focus on and that is FOR SURE not going to serve you.

And my flavor of goal setting is different than most, because I don’t actually believe that the GOAL is the point. I think the point is to train your heart and mind to be in alignment with the way God created you and he didn’t create you to stay stuck in your past and in fear and in negativity.

He created you to love and serve at your highest level and that’s what this process can actually help you do.

It’s not actually better there than here. It’s not better 40 pounds less than here unless you learn to see your life differently.

So I want to ask you again, are you living your life in a way that allows you to love and serve at the highest level?

And if you’re not, it’s really worthwhile to take a hard look at your reality. It’s really worthwhile to decide that you don’t want to be stuck in your past; that you don’t want to be stuck in this bitterness; that you don’t want to be stuck always in fear of what people think of you.

Goal setting gives your brain something really important to do.

And the end result of that is not that you get to brag because you’re 40 pounds lighter, or because now you have $10,000 in the bank, or because you finally got that job, or because your business finally took off.

No. What you get at the end of that is a person who is in love with their life, a person who loves and serves at the highest level, a person who is on fire to see the needs of others and meet them, a person who is not so stuck in their own issues with their own baggage that they can’t see the people in front of them who needs the gifts they have to offer.

So this is goal setting maybe like you’ve never experienced it before.

Are you in? Then, I AM ALL IN FOR YOU!

Stay tuned for Part 2 coming soon and for now, you can download the Goal Setting Challenge Guide here!

​Recently, it was Stevie’s birthday.

I made the mistake early on in our marriage of throwing him a surprise birthday party AT WORK.

Big big mistake.

He doesn’t like birthdays or surprises or cake.

He likes just regular Tuesdays and a nice dinner at home and apple pie.

I was so hurt that he didn’t love how what I had done. 

I made his birthday all about me and I let it be an excuse to prove the story in my head—that he doesn’t appreciate what I do.

I’ve learned a lot about love and relationships and Stevie since then.

So tonight, I’m making steak and risotto and apple pie. AT HOME.

I’ve also learned that the story in my head couldn’t have been further from the truth.

He loves me.  He sacrifices so much for us.  He’s faithful and loyal and steadfast.

He’s stoic and funny and stubborn and loves to live his simple, quiet life with his family.

I didn’t always see it that way because it’s so much easier to blame and create drama and focus on the negative.

Why doesn’t he want to go out to dinner? Why doesn’t he surprise me for my birthday? Why is he so quiet? Why? why? Why?

I used to blame him for my emotions. I used to tell a different story about us.  Until I realized that I’m in charge of the narrative of my life.

I’ve found a few ways that I think will help you stop blaming others for what seems to be lacking in our relationships.

Your relationships are up to you.

You can write the story how you want.

Your life is your responsibility and you lose all your power when you blame other people for how it’s turning out.

YOU are the ONE.  

Here are the 7 ways:

Stop Blaming Others For How You Feel

YOUR thoughts cause YOUR feelings, so nobody can make you feel anything!

Mamas, this is so hard! But we all need to take responsibility for our own feelings.

I’ve had a rough couple of weeks lately, in my own head. A lot of different things have happened–nothing terrible, mind you–and it just got to me. Have you ever gotten into a cycle where you’re just in your own head, you feel sorry for yourself, and you just want to blame ALL THE PEOPLE AND ALL THE THINGS? Finally, I just said to myself, “It’s okay. I’m just having a couple of weeks of feeling a little off. ”

It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s not the fault of the person who didn’t take out the trash or who doesn’t meet my expectations or who didn’t keep that commitment. It’s not any of that. This is all me. And when we acknowledge this:

You take your power back.

Now you can be the one to change your feelings and frame of mind. But when you blame someone else for how you are feeling–mad, sad, overwhelmed, etc.–then they have to change for you to feel better.

Nope.

Nobody is responsible for your feelings but you.

So if you’re feeling off, don’t look other places to find somebody or something to blame. Look inside and figure out why am I feeling this way? What thoughts are driving this? Why am I feeling off?

Only you can own that.

It’s not anyone else’s to deal with or to make better.

Stop Making Excuses

That is, stop making excuses for why your relationships are struggling.

“Well, it’s because of this. Well, it’s because… ”

It’s so easy to do that, you guys.

But I’m here to tell you that it is important to stop making excuses and start taking action to make it better.

You’re the one who can make it better with the way you choose to think, feel, and act. Relationships take one person–one person who decides “I am going to take control and decide how I want to feel about this person.”

So ask yourself…

Do you want stronger, more meaningful relationships?

You don’t even need the other person to do their part. You can create better relationships because relationships are just the way you think and feel about the person, and you’re totally in control of that.

So decide not to make any more excuses and start making it better by thinking the thoughts you want to think and feeling how you want to feel about the person–regardless of what they do, don’t do, say, don’t say, etc.

You decide how you want to show up.

Give Yourself What You Need

It took me so long to figure this out.

I don’t need anybody else’s emotional support. I need to learn to support myself. I need to give myself what I need. I need to take care of myself and then both of us can show up.

Isn’t it beautiful to show up to a friendship where you don’t have any weird expectations? You just show up with love, curiosity, care, and tenderness. You are open to all the possibilities. You don’t need them to do anything.

Why?

Because you’ve figured out what you need and you’ve made sure those needs are met. This means that you show up to relationships fully you and fully present without a checklist of needs that you need to other person to meet.

What is it that I need? I need to take care of myself. I need fuel myself and my soul. I need to have downtime. I need to exercise. I need to eat healthy food. Once I’ve figured out what I need, I am responsible for seeing that those needs are met.

I am the boss of me.

Stop Chasing Happiness In Temporal, External Things

Your contentment and peace of mind is YOUR work.

Other people cannot make you happy. They don’t hold the secret to your peace and contentment.

Neither does money, nor any kind of socioeconomic status.

In fact, nothing external is going to fill the emptiness in your heart.

You were created by God for relationship–with Him and with His people.

When we go about life thinking, “Oh, this person is going to make me happy. When I finally get this house, this is going to make me happy. When I finally get this job, then I’ll have peace and contentment.” We put all this pressure on everything and everyone in our lives to get us to the point of peace and contentment.

But I’m here to tell you that’s an inside job.

You make you happy and then you show up to your relationships, ready to have fun, love, and serve.

Stop Complaining About The People In Your Life

You guys, we complain so MUCH about the people in our lives!

What about making it more fun?

I say to myself all the time, “How can I make this relationship more fun? How can I make it more fun to be with my kids?”

You guys comment on my Instagram stories saying, “Oh my gosh, it looks like you and Tom Tom are having so much fun. You’re giving him such a good life.”

Here’s the thing. I have to coach myself. I have to say, “I could just complain about what I’d rather be doing or I can totally submerse myself in the life of seven-year-old boy life and just enjoy it.” I have trained myself over the last few months to let down my weird adult expectations and complaining and just enjoy him. As a result, I have eyes that see and appreciate all the fun and hilarity he brings to life.

It’s the same with teenagers. Can you just enjoy them? Can you just listen to their crazy music and watch their crazy videos and go, “Oh my gosh, this is so funny. This is so interesting.”

Do you see what I’m mean?

I feel like so often, we bring this heaviness to our relationships when we could just make it lighthearted and fun–just enjoy the relationships we have.

What are you saying out loud about the people in your life and your relationships? Are you complaining all the time?

Go on a gratitude spree.

I want you to message 10 (or thereabouts) people and say, “I’m so thankful for you in my life. I love you. I adore how you do this and I am so grateful for you.”

The other day, I did this for Tom Tom and I wish you all could have seen the light on his face. It was the best. What a precious thing it is just to remind people that you adore and are grateful for them.

There’s a quote I love and it goes like this:

To love someone is to remind them of their magic when they have forgotten.

Who can you remind today of their magic?

Know what will happen?

Not only will you make that person’s day, you are going to make YOUR DAY. You’re going to end up feeling so grateful for the people in your life.

Stop Resenting And Start Forgiving

Give people the benefit of the doubt.

If you could walk a mile in their shoes, you might change your mind about them. Maybe the heaviness that they are feeling, maybe the heartache that they’re walking through, maybe the grief that they’re in right now is so heavy that they’re just doing the best they can.

What if we just stopped resenting people and just started forgiving them?

Not even so much for them, but for us and our holding onto resentment.

What if you just let it all go? What if you just started over and said, “You know what, I’m just going to come to this relationship with love. No expectations, no weird neediness, just love. I just want to show up and look at you and your life and be thankful for how God made you and for the fact that our paths have crossed.”

What if we just showed up like that?

What magic would there be in the world if we just showed up like that?

Take Action TODAY To Make Every Relationship Better

You can make every relationship in your life better today.

Today.

It doesn’t take much. Just give someone an extra-long hug and say, “I’m so grateful for you.”

What messages can you send? What tiny little acts of love can you commit? How can you remind people of the things that you love about them? You can do this for your spouse. You can do this for your kids. Anyone.

Can you step out of whatever it is you’re in long enough to be thankful for the people in your life?

You have the power to change your relationships and you don’t need anything from anybody else to do it. You don’t need them to change.

You can change your experience of the relationship by choosing how you think about them, how you choose to show up with them, how you choose to mull over the things that you love about them.

I reimagined the relationship with my dad after he died. I just decided what an amazing relationship it was, what an incredible man he was, how he loved me in the way that only he could. If you’ve read my book or looked at my life, you know this wasn’t exactly what happened. You can tell the story however you want. It’s true either way. Did he love me? Yes. Was he an alcoholic? Yes. Same thing about your marriage, you can build evidence for your relationships in either direction.

I encourage you today to build some evidence for the beautiful, amazing, messy relationships that you have and go nurture them.

Go take massive action. Go today. Don’t let one more day go by without telling your people how thankful you are for them.

If you want to take your life and relationships to the next level, get on the waiting list for Life Mentoring School, my coaching program. We open back up for a few days in January!

Here’s what happened.

One Saturday morning recently, Tom-Tom decided to sneak out and take both of our dogs down to the lake. If you’ve seen pictures of my house you know there is a steep drop off to the lake and when the water’s down in the fall and winter you can climb on the rocks. Tom-Tom LOVES to take Banda down there and climb on the rocks.

Usually this turns out okay.

But not today. He could have gotten back up alone but he couldn’t get back up with the dogs.

So this turns into a two hour ordeal where my oldest daughter Elea has to scale down there to try and figure out how to help them.

She’s walking up and down the lake. They’re trying to figure out, “Can we get up here? Is there a little place where we could swim around this?” But, Tom couldn’t swim because he didn’t have a life jacket and he had a cast on one of his arms. (Another story, another time, dear reader!)

Then, Tom said, “Well, I’ll jus’ holler for some fisherman to help.”

So that’s exactly what he did! There were some fishermen out in a fishing boat on the lake and he got their attention. Pretty soon the muddy dogs and the muddy children got into the fishing boat and the dear fishermen drove them to safety and dry land.

Well, let me tell you, my daughter was not happy. Actually, nobody in the house was happy.

Except for Tom Tom.

He was totally thrilled with the adventure and himself. He tried not to smile when he got back home. That young’un just loves drama and an adventure.

And us? We were all just so mad.

Time, as it does, lent us some perspective and a few days later we all just realized that the whole situation was kind of hilarious. The stuff that he said when he got back up, the stuff that he said to all of us about the whole ordeal–the whole thing was really, really funny.

But it was not funny at the time. Nope.

How many of you can relate?

Something happens that makes you SO frustrated and angry but a few days later you realize, “I probably shouldn’t have gotten that worked up about it. It’s not that big of a deal. It’s actually kind of funny.”

I think we all can relate.

We catastrophize a situation, and then, an hour or two or even several days later, you calm down and say to yourself, “Okay. The sky’s not falling. No one is dying. Everything is just fine. “

I’m sure that many of you HAVE DONE THIS EXACT THING.

This got me thinking.

Sometimes the people in our lives–our kids, our husbands, our mother-in-laws, and so on–bring us such frustration, anger and resentment. This is such a good thing for us to work on!

The thing is, in so many situations we can’t change the circumstances. I didn’t know that Tom-Tom was sneaking down (and out!) with the two dogs. There’s nothing I could have done about the circumstance. So then I have to figure out, “I can’t change everything around me, so how am I going to manage myself in the situation?”

So let’s talk about three powerful ways that you can deal with situations that cause you anger, frustration or resentment.

First: Ask Ourselves Why

• Why do I feel so angry about this?
• Why am I so frustrated?
• Why do I feel resentful?”

I JUST LOVE THIS because it allows us to be curious without judging ourselves. So many of us jump to judgment before we even figure out what is really going on, “You should be over this. You shouldn’t get angry about stuff like this.” We jump to judgment over the situation and then jump right on in to judge ourselves.

Asking yourself, “Why?” will allow you to give yourself a pause and a little compassion. “Well, okay, why do I feel this way?”

The temptation here is to think that you feel this way because of the situation. But, and this is important, the circumstances and the events of your life are not actually causing you to feel this way.

It’s the thoughts you are thinking.

So I love to ask myself, “What is the thought that I’m thinking about the situation that’s causing me so much pain, frustration, or anger?” Not everybody would react the same way that I react to that situation. “What’s causing ME to react this way?”

One of the thoughts that was causing me so much pain was, “This shouldn’t be happening.” Don’t we say this to ourselves SO often, whether the situation is serious or, in this case, not-so-serious and mainly mischievious?

So this was my thinking that weekend. “I thought we were doing so well. We’ve been to therapy. We’ve been doing all this. We’ve been working through this. I’ve been so patient. I’ve done all this. Why is this happening? It shouldn’t be happening. This should be better. He should be more adjusted. I should be a better mom.”

UGH! I was judging BOTH of us.

Let me tell you people, when you argue with reality, you lose. This is happening, though sometimes it’s something truly awful that’s happening.

Every time we tell ourselves, “This shouldn’t be happening,” we need to ask, “Is that thought helping me through this?” And honestly does a thought like this EVER help us through a situation? In my situation, that thought was poisonous. I started judging everything and everyone.

Learning to accept and love what is in our lives is so powerful. There’s a Latin phrase for this that a dear friend of mine reminded me of recently, “amor fati.” It means love of one’s fate. Loving what is, or at least getting to the point where we aren’t arguing with what is.

After Tom-Tom’s adventure I spent a good day (or more) with a heaviness in my chest. I said, “What am I doing wrong? Why did he disobey?” Really making the situation worse. But then, I was finally able to say, “Of course he’s going to take the dogs down without permission on the rocks. It’s too tempting for a little Tom Sawyer like him. Of course he’s going to do that. Of course that should be happening, because it is happening! My fighting against it is only making it harder for me.”

So, when you find yourself angry, frustrated or resentful, I want you to ask yourself, why?

“It’s so curious that I feel that way. What is the thought that I’m having that’s making me resent my mother in law?” Often the thought we are having is, “She should be different.”

“Why do I feel angry towards my husband?” Here too, the thought often is, “The situation should be different. He should be different. Our marriage should be different. We should be further along. We shouldn’t be fighting about things like this.”

Learning to be right where we are is so powerful.

Second: Just Allow The Feeling

The second powerful way to move past your anger, frustration and resentment is to just to allow the feeling.

What would happen?

Resisting your emotions absolutely makes things worse. After the adventure, I was saying to myself, “You’ve been a mom for a long time, why are you letting this get the best of you?” It wasn’t really frustration with what Tom had done but more frustration with myself–that somehow I should be a better parent or that I shouldn’t react this way.

It’s okay to be frustrated.

It’s okay, even necessary, to be exactly where you are.

If we would just allow ourselves to say, “Wow, I feel really frustrated about this. I’m curious about that. I wonder if there’s anything else going on that is adding to that?”

This is a powerful thing to do–to step back from a situation as a compassionate observer. This gives us some perspective and helps us to move past where we’ve become stuck.

I read something recently that really applies here. When we get in a negative thought loop, our thoughts get narrow and our emotions follow. Our focus becomes so narrow, we keep having the same thoughts over and over. We get stuck in frustration. We get stuck in anger. We get stuck in resentment.

We just get plain stuck.

Something wonderful happens when we open our minds and are willing to question how we are reacting to a situation. When we are willing to be gentler with ourselves and the people in our lives, the spiral from the positive thinking and emotion gets wider and wider. It allows us to see things differently, to think of more creative solutions, and to have more compassion–for ourselves and others.

Allowing emotion is powerful, even if it’s a negative emotion. There is nothing to be afraid of. You can feel frustrated. You can feel angry.

But here’s the thing! When you are aware of your emotions, you don’t immediately act on them. Whereas when you aren’t aware of them, you get angry and just react.

When you give yourself space and a little bit of grace, when you give the people in your life some grace and compassion, you are able to push the pause button before you act. “Interesting that I got so angry over that.” Don’t immediately beat yourself up. Don’t immediately snap at him. Give yourself a minute to figure out what else might be going on.

Third: Take Ownership Of Your Feelings

Living in emotional adulthood.

I’m not angry because a six year old took the dogs and went for a hike when he shouldn’t have. I’m angry because I have the belief that it shouldn’t have happened. When I own my feelings, I don’t need for the circumstance to change before I can feel better.

Here’s the thing that’s so important.

You can decide to stay angry, frustrated and resentful. There are a lot of creative ways that you can decide how you want to think and feel. Take the simple step of ownership, “I don’t feel this way because my husband didn’t take out the trash. I don’t feel this way because my kid disobeyed. I don’t feel this way because of anything that’s happening in my life, it’s how I’m choosing to think about it.”

“Is it something that I want to be frustrated and resentful about?”

I’m very careful when I answer yes to that question. Let me tell you why. It’s not because it’s morally wrong to feel frustrated. It’s because our body makes a chemical cocktail when we are feeling resentful, frustrated and angry and boy, do we feel that chemical reaction!

Your chest gets tight. Your throat gets tight. Sometimes we get so angry we feel like we might throw up.

Does the person you are angry with get to feel this?

Nope.

Only you get to live with all this internal rocking and rolling. So choose wisely. If you say, “Yes, I want to feel this resentment” that’s fine, but ask yourself, “Is this fair to me?”

What a gift it is to be able to look at a situation and go, “Wow, what an amazing curriculum God has given me for my life. This is how I become the next best version of myself, because this is my schooling.”

Sure we are all going to be in pressure cooker situations but I say yay for that!! It is exactly these kind of situations that are going to allow you to work on yourself–to have more control over yourself.

I promise you, when you spend time blaming other people for your emotional life, when you blame them for your anger and your resentment, there’s nothing you can do except hope they change.

Well, good luck with that, because they’re not changing.

I have a feeling that I’m going to have a lot of interesting adventures over the next few years! Because at the core of it all, I’m not going to change anyone.

So that’s the work of our lives. That is our curriculum, and I really am thankful for it. Sometimes it takes the perspective of a day or two away from it to say, “Wow, what has happened to my life? What has happened to my peaceful Saturday morning where I sat on the porch and drank coffee and read the paper?”

I’ve exchanged it for a much richer, more colorful experience, and I’m so grateful for it.

We sold our VRBO lake house last month and have a house full of stuff to give away or sell before November 8th.

It’s a good problem to have and it’s been fun to let my kids and family pick out what they want from that adorable place.

I actually hired movers last week to bring some of it here to my house, so I could switch out older, more used things for newer things.

But that created a temporary mess where we had lots of piles of stuff that needed a new home. (It’s still a work in progress)

Editing my spaces is one of my favorite things. 

Deciding AGAIN whether or not I want this or that in my house and in my life is a GOOD THING. And it brings peace to make decisions ahead of time, so that I’m not tempted by every cute thing at Target.

All that moving around and shuffling led to a massive closet clean out and boy was I overdue. PHEW!!

I guess adding a rambunctious six year old to my life has for sure been a huge priority and I feel like I had pretty much let everything else go.

As it should be.

But cleaning out my closet reminded me how much I love and crave things to be a little simpler.

It’s easier to get dressed when I’m looking at fewer things that I love instead of a closet full of things I like.

And that led me to making a list of more things I want to simplify and edit in my life.

Your Stuff

If you need to edit, the NUMBER ONE thing you should edit is some of your stuff!

Why? Because some of your stuff–especially when we have too much–can just weigh you down and you don’t even know what you have. Can I get an AMEN?!?!

I know it sounds trite, but I’m telling you if you haven’t cleaned something out lately, you need to. In my coaching program, The Life Mentoring School, we are talking about mindset and managing our thinking. Surprise, surprise–just like our closets, our minds get cluttered with LOTS OF THOUGHTS that no longer fit, that aren’t serving us, that we’ve outgrown.

I challenge you.

Pick one area of your life that’s driving you CrAzY–your closet, the cabinets underneath the sink, your purse, your car–Your Choice!

BUT (and this is important)…

Before you start the project, come up with a thought that you want to think when cleaning out that area. “I love the peace and energy that comes from being organized” or something motivational like that.

What can you get rid of to give yourself more peace? The bonus–you can let someone else have that thing who can really, really use it. I find this type of editing so helpful!

Want to know why?

After you do this and are out somewhere tempted to buy something, you say to yourself, “Oh wait, I have 16 slots for socks and they are already full.” Apparently I don’t need any socks. Or, do I love this so much that I’m willing to donate something I already have? Conversely, you can also discover that you don’t have enough of something. For me it was pajama bottoms–I did not HAVE ANY that were presentable!!

So, I challenge you to pick one area of your stuff and edit it. What do you need to get rid of? What do you need to clean out? You will get so much peace of mind.

This process is such a gift and will domino into other areas. You will soon be saying, “‘Okay, now I want to clean out this and this and then this…”

So edit your life, edit your stuff.

Your Time Commitments

Some of you are volunteer crazies–you volunteer for everything!

I used to volunteer for everything because I wanted to be helpful and contribute, and, because I wanted people to think a certain thing. “Oh, she was so helpful.” “She brought this.” “She did this.”

Here’s the thing.

If I fill my life up with tasks like volunteering, sure it probably helps someone else but it isn’t really in the sweet spot of what I’m good at! I won’t have room in my life for the things that are actually important if I just fill it up with random things.

So here’s what I don’t do anymore.

I don’t really volunteer at school. That might sound bad, but I’ll send everything you need. We’ll read to Thomas at night. I will do all kinds of things to give you the best child that I can give you. But, I know that in order to be the best mom I can be, I can’t be at school all day and then try squeeze in all the other things that I have to do (including work) at night (often after everyone else goes to sleep).

So I’ve figured out that unless something is really in my sweet spot, I just don’t volunteer or do those things.

Here’s your challenge. I want you to be way more intentional with how you give your time. Think, “Is this the best way of using my gifts?”

For me, I really want to pour into my family first, the businesses that I run from home, and making sure I take care of myself. It’s important to me to honor the things I’ve already committed to. As a result, I am super picky about how I spend my time outside of my family.

How can you edit your time commitments to give you more peace?

Paper

I throw 99% of the paper in my house away.

Do I sometimes throw things away that I regret throwing away? Yes.

I love throwing things away because most of it–say 90% of the mail for sure–I don’t really need to see, so I have a very low threshold for throwing things away.

I have clear acrylic bins to keep receipts for my business, etc. so I do keep a few papers. But when you compare it to what comes into the house, I keep very little. I’ve had a lot of kids now and I realize that you just can’t keep everything. Sometimes if it’s super cute, I’ll take a picture. Most of the time, I just throw it all away!

Another habit I recommend is to make a calendar entry right away as things come in–hopefully BEFORE you throw it away LOL.

Money

What can you edit out of your life that you don’t need to be spending money on?

I just went through all my business expenses on QuickBooks. For each expense I asked myself this question, “Is this expense really serving me?” As a result, I edited some things from my life that I don’t need to be paying for!

Another example could be the coffees or drinks that you buy, or meals out.

The challenge is to just think through the things that you are currently spending money on and asking yourself if it is serving you.

Your Calendar

Let’s talk about our calendars.

Something I’ve done the last several years that has been so FREEING is to figure out a schedule for myself (work, CrossFit, horseback riding, etc.) and then put it on my calendar. For example, I decided to send my emails on Monday, do all my videos on Tuesday and write my blog posts on Wednesday. The time for these (and other) things are specifically blocked out in my calendar. This has allowed my to really edit my calendar and be super picky about what’s scheduled. I want to really honor the commitments I have and this is SO MUCH EASIER because my calendar isn’t cluttered with a lot of other things.

So here is the challenge, really think through your schedule and figure out what you can edit so that you really honor the commitments that ARE there and most important to you. We can all do a much better job with fewer things to do!

Your Relationships

Basically, take a look around your life for places to edit. Do I still want to commit to this? Do I still want to commit to this activity on my calendar? Is this still working? Ask yourself, is this still something I want to spend time doing?

Some of you have probably been in a book club or a girl’s night for many years. Does it feel like it’s not really where you are in your life anymore, but you just keep going anyway?

Really think it through.

Would I join this again today? Is it important to me? Is this group of people or this relationship something that I want to continue to invest my time? We all have a limited amount of time so it’s important that we leave ourselves a margin for the things we really want to say yes to.

So edit your relationships.

Your Consumption

A lot of us get stuck in consumption.

We consume a lot of social media, we consume food, we consume TV. We consume, consume, consume instead of using our brains to create the things we want. This can be a huge issue for me because I consume podcasts and audio books. I have to really be careful that I don’t just spend all my time consuming(even though it’s great stuff). I am committed to creating things in my life!

One morning recently I had a course that I really wanted to watch, but I also had two emails that I needed to write. I was moving slowly that morning as I’d been under the weather over the weekend. I was listening to my course and then I finally realized, “I’ve got to get busy. I can’t just listen and take things in and consume, consume, consume. I have to create!”

So ask yourself, are you consuming more than you create?

This girl’s got goals!!

Your Food

I have been editing my food for a long time.

How can we eat cleaner? How can we eat less processed food? How can I create simple meals where the food preparation is not overwhelming?

One of the most important things I’ve learned in this area is to just keep things simple. I eat the same things a LOT–especially for lunch. I don’t really eat breakfast as typically I am intermittent fasting during the week. For lunch, it’s often rice and a protein–usually shrimp, or a salad with some kind of protein on top. I don’t go out to lunch very often, I just keep my food routine simple.

What could YOU edit?

I don’t buy a lot of snacks. Primarily I buy real whole food that you have to make. This simplifies your food routine and you tend to eat better, feel better.

Another thing I’ve done over the last few years is to use a meal kit delivery service. Talk about simplifying your life!!! We know what we’re going to make four nights a week and then the other three nights we do something fairly simple. I used to make such elaborate meals you guys! The problem with being so elaborate is that you create a lot of stress for yourself. UGH! Ain’t nobody got time for that!!

Don’t get me wrong–I love trying new recipes! But on a regular basis, keeping your food simple will be great for your health and great for your mind because you’re not constantly stressed about it!

Your Life Drama

How can you edit the drama out of your life?

Here’s what I want to tell you about the drama in your life. Are you paying attention mama?

Lean in.

You are creating 99% of the drama in your life.

So if you are living a life that’s full of drama, you need to take a long, hard look at yourself.

You are creating that. You’re creating the drama with how you respond. You’re creating the drama with how you think. You’re creating drama around things–like food. How many of you, like me 🙋🏻‍♀️, can create so much drama around food? “I shouldn’t have made that!” “I shouldn’t have eaten that!” Then you beat yourself up and create so much drama just inside your own head. I know so many of us do this and it doesn’t have to be about food–it can be about anything!

Sometimes we create drama about things that happened in the past that we can’t change. By ruminating on it, you keep dealing with it over and over again. You think about what they said. You think about what you should have said. YOU CREATE THE DRAMA!

The person who says, “My life is so full of drama”, what they really mean is I am creating so much drama in my life.

You don’t need to. It’s cluttering up your mind.

When you find yourself CREATING THAT DRAMA, just decide “Nope, I am not going to let myself slide into this drama, mama!”

You decide. You decide what you are going to feel in a situation. Love, of course, is always the best option.

Where can you edit the drama in your life? Where can you just let it go? Where can you just forgive? Where can you just decide to feel love? 

Your Negative Thinking

Where can you let go of negative thinking? This is a continuation of what we just talked about.

When you find yourself in a negative thought loop, STOP, and just say to yourself “This just is not serving me!”

Here’s the thing about this. I’m not just talking about significant situations, I’m also talking about those times that seem trivial at first glance.

For example, you might be thinking about cleaning out your closet (pretty minor in the scheme of things) and telling yourself, “I’m just so disorganized. I’m am so messy, etc.” What’s going to happen if you allow these negative thoughts to just run in your brain unmonitored? You’re going to fulfill them! You’re going to feel bad and then you’re not going to want to organize anything.

Take control of even seemingly trivial thoughts like these and say, instead, “I get so much peace and energy from decluttering and organizing my life.” Or, “I get so much peace and energy from decluttering and organizing my brain and deciding what I want to think about my life, myself, and my relationships”.

We have these unsupervised negative thought loops that make us feel bad and then we act upon them. We don’t even like doing it, but we do it anyway. I used to say, “I’m creative, but I’m not very organized” about myself all the time. Well, guess what? You’ll live it out. You’ll prove that it’s true. Your brain likes to be right.

I don’t say that anymore. I say things to myself like, “I love the energy and peace that I get from being organized.” Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t mean that you won’t look and might find disorganization. You can. I choose to focus on the fact that I do love being organized and the energy and peace it gives me. Lo and behold, I can find evidence of that too! Then I act on that instead of the negative thought loop.

See how this works?

You are in control of the narrative that you are telling yourself.

You control what you are telling yourself about your life, about yourself, about your marriage, about your house, about your weight.

Miracle of miracles, you have the opportunity to retell the story–however you want to tell it.

Use it. Use the power that you have to tell a better story.

Edit your life.

Make it what you want and start today!

The highest and most noble part of you knows it.

When somebody mentions it, you FEEL it—the gnawing, the conviction, the aspiration, the belief that you can change it.

But then, the survival part of you brain says, “You’ve always been this way, you’ll never change, you can’t do it.“

And then you give up before you ever start.  Or maybe it’s just me.

WHY are our brains SO resistant to change?!?! UGH!

But I know change is possible. I’ve done it in many areas of my life.  And so have you!!!

Here’s why I think it’s worth it to keep asking more of ourselves.

It’s not so we can finally weigh 140 pounds or make 100K or write that book–it’s not the destination…

Because THERE is never better than here if we don’t continue to change and grow and challenge ourselves.

The point is the person we become along the way.

The person who’s had enough challenge and adversity to be strong and humble.  The person who has put herself out there enough to work through her people pleasing and fear of rejection. The person who has denied her flesh enough to know how strong appetites can be. The person who faces her resentments and finally trains her heart to forgive. 

Diamonds are made under pressure.

We live in a world where we its easy to skirt around most of that pressure, staying stagnant or apathetic or hidden. But at what cost to ourselves and to the people who need us?

I LOVE October and fall and the 4th quarter of the year.  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. I REALLY LOVE using this time of year as a way to jump start a new year.

So if you had to pick one thing that you could change about yourself, about your life–what would it be and why?

The why is just as important as the what so don’t forget that part when you are trying to pick the one thing you want to change! I took an inventory of my life and while in so many ways its incredible and amazing, it is also HARD.

As many of you know, we have been in an intense stress cycle since January–Tom Tom’s mom passed away and he came to live with us full-time and on and on. In fact, it has felt like one thing right after the other.

And, when I get stressed I feel it in my health! So I know that for me, I am in a season where that is exactly what I need to work on.

That means paying attention to my nutrition. It means recommitting myself to what I want MOST versus what I want NOW. I’m sure most of you know exactly what I mean! What I want NOW are some Krispy Kreme donuts. But, what I want MOST is to have a strong, healthy body with healthy hormones that can serve the people in my life well.

Did you catch that?

I want to have a strong, healthy body with healthy hormones that can serve the people in my life well.

There it is…my why.

Your One Thing may be different. It might be finances or marriage or your parenting or something job/vocation-related.

Remember how I said your why is just as important as your what? It is because all roads lead right back to that WHY. It helps us to train ourselves into the habit of choosing what we want most in our lives instead of choosing what we want now.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve heard me talk about the fact that when you make a change in one area of your life, it often causes a domino effect and you continue to want to change and grow. You just see areas where you know that you’re not living to your highest self, you know that you’re choosing what you want now rather than what you want most.

But let me say it again.

It’s not about your destination or goal.

We think, oh, if I just lost a hundred pounds, if I just got down to 140, if I just built my business to $100K, if I just got to this rank.

If I just.

We have this idea that if we achieve our goal that, “Everything’s going to be amazing and it’s going to be unicorns and butterflies.”

But let me tell ya, it’s not any better there than here unless you do the hard work–the mind work–changing your thoughts and following through in order to be the person you are called to be. If you don’t, you’re just going to be the same person there.

Becoming the person that you were meant to be is almost always through hardship, sacrifice, suffering–just being willing to expose yourself to ALL THE HARD THINGS so that you can learn more about yourself. Diving deeper.

We really have no idea how strong the appetites of our flesh are until we try, say, not to eat sugar for a month. Then we are saying, “Oh my gosh, that has such a hold on me. Food has such a hold on me. Drink has such a hold on me. Approval of other people has such a hold on me.” It”s only when we try to make a change that we realize,“Oh my word, that is a hard thing for me.”

This is why I love challenging myself and trying new things. This is why I love fasting, intermittent fasting, or cutting out sugar. This is why I love challenging myself about getting my work done in a certain period of time.

It brings up all of my drama.

It brings up all of my issues. It brings up all of my appetites. It brings up all of the areas of my life that really need work and change. And, if we don’t challenge ourselves, then we just don’t know what we don’t know. We don’t know how strong our appetites are because we’ve never challenged ourselves to change them. We don’t know how negative our mindset is because we’ve never made ourselves aware enough to go, “Oh my gosh, I’m just doing that to myself.”

That pesky brain, tho…

The other thing that happens is the battle between the higher part of our brain that sets goals, that knows something needs to change, that makes us feel so inspired and the lower part of our brain that just likes to keep us safe. He says, “You’re never going to do that. You know you’ve always struggled with your weight. You know, you just are the way you are. You’re just negative, gossipy, and that’s not going to change. You just don’t like exercise.” Well that is exactly the point! Let all of that bizness come to the surface because that will teach you who you are.

Why is this such a big deal? We don’t realize how we have made basically everything into an idol. We’ve made wealth into an idol, we’ve made frugality into an idol, we’ve made the way people look at us into an idol, we’ve made our children into an idol, we’ve made our marriage into an idol. It is this kind of journey that will make these things apparent. The only way that I know how addicted I am to sugar is to not eat sugar. And let me tell you, as soon as I tell myself I’m going to go a month without sugar, do you know all the drama that comes up? A lot of drama. It’s so worth it. It’s so worth it for the journey.

Let’s Get To Work!

Remember, once you pick your One Thing, you’re going to be super motivated about it initially. “I’m going to work on my marriage. I’m going to work on my finances. I’m going to work on my weight. I’m going to work on whatever.” Then, all the negativity is going to rush in about why you can’t do that and why it’s so hard and why don’t you just go watch Netflix and eat donuts.

Remember that this is the point. Let it all come up and over the next few months we’re going to work on how to manage that, how to be willing to walk into hardship and sacrifice. We are going to learn how to train ourselves so that the pain becomes more than tolerable–so much so that you almost like it. It’s kind of like how I felt when I had been in CrossFit for a while. It’s really hard and you’re sore, but you get to the point where you crave that because you know what that means, it means I’m getting stronger.

The hard part where champions are made. Now, when I get to the hard part, I think to myself, “This is the hard part. Good.” We are retraining our minds that the hard part is not even the hard part. The hard part is the good part.

The hard part is where the magic happens.

The hard part is the part where everything finally changes and you’ve learned to embrace it.

I want you to go into the next several months with the eye of the tiger! I have the eye of the tiger in a lot of different areas of my life because–domino effect! But I am committed to really zeroing in on my health in the coming months. Continuing intermittent fasting, continuing to challenge myself to figure my hormones out, to learn how to listen to my body, to prioritize rest. Part of that has been focusing on working three days a week instead of five. Constraining my focus and challenging myself in an area I know I need to work on and being willing to endure the misery that comes with that for a while. Knowing that six months from now or three months from now, that misery is not even going to feel like misery! It’s just going to feel like, this is the part that I’ve been waiting for. This is the part where champions are made. Get the eye of the tiger. Y’all.

What can I do NOW or change NOW that will set me up for the best 2020 ever?

None of the habits I want to train into myself are glamorous or easy or even praise worth in and of themselves.

But the accumulations of good disciplines makes for a life that has depth and meaning and purpose.

We are inclined to what is easy and what is normal, but what if the BEST God has for us isn’t easy or normal?

What if it’s counter cultural and hard and totally worth it?

What ONE thing needs to change for you?

Maybe now is a good time.