How Your Brain Talks You Out of What You Want

Why haven’t I ever hung art? And so all of these women were recounting, you know, their shutting down statements for why they have put off creating a beautiful space. And then I was thinking about promoting this upcoming workshop that Larissa and I are doing. We’re doing this workshop called The Life-Changing Workshop. And we’re gonna be teaching three of the major tools that we teach in the membership. And we thought, you know, this would be a great way for people to experience the work that we do in a community so other women will be there and we can discuss these tools together. And in a similar way, I knew that women were gonna have all of these shutting down thoughts about signing up for the workshop. So I wanna address some of the most common thoughts we have for not doing something we want to do.

You know, I think God really prompts us and nudges us and says, Hey, this is something that you should do. And we talk ourselves out of it. And so I’m using these thoughts toward the workshop, imagining that a woman is thinking, oh, that workshop sounds good. But then she’s having one of these shutting down thoughts and chooses not to take action and not to sign up to the workshop. But I want you to think about really anything in your life, anything in your life that you kind of feel like you should be doing. You, you actually did have clarity on what you wanted, or maybe you felt moved in your prayer life, but you’ve just had one or many thoughts that have caused you to shut down and just not deal with it. You know what, it has that head in the sand kind of feeling to it.

So the first thought I wanna tackle, and this is just so common, is I don’t have time. I don’t have time. And you know, for me, me, this is one of those Abraham Lincoln things where he says, oh, you know, it’s the story where two guys are getting ready to cut down a tree and he spends, I forget if it’s two or four hours sharpening the ax. And the other guy has a more dull ax, but he’s cutting down the tree and it looks like Abraham Lincoln is behind. But of course he spends that time sharpening his ax and then cutting the word wood is so much faster. And I think there’s so many things like that for us moms where we just tell ourselves that we don’t have time. So we will not slow down to do the things that we need to do to create a life that has more time.

And I just promise you, this is one of those things, the tools that we teach in masters, the three tools in particular that we’re gonna teach in this workshop will make you feel like you have more time in your life. After I learned these things, I felt like I had two more hours in my day. And that sounds crazy, but that is how it felt. I had spent so much time stressed out worrying about not being a good problem solver, poorly solving the same problems over and over again, and then having a lot of drama about what was happening in my day. And when I stopped doing a lot of those things, I felt like I had so much more space, it felt like I had more time. And of course, we all have the same amount of time, but if you’re, if you’re using it right now, just living a reactive life, it probably feels terrible, right?

You probably feel like you barely have a chance to breathe. And so just know that that’s a thought. I don’t have time. And if you feel called to come to this workshop or whatever else is on your mind, I want you to explain to your brain why you absolutely should take time to do this and that it will help you have more time later. The second thought that I think comes up a lot when we wanna take a workshop or a course or any kind of thing that we’re hyped up about is this voice comes in and it says, yeah, but I never really do it. And what you mean is you learn something but you don’t implement it. But usually our brains don’t give us that thought. They’re like, yeah, but you’re not really gonna do it.

And we just think that thought and we believe it’s true. And you may tell me, yeah, Sterling, but I have a lot of evidence that it has been true in the past. But I want you to know that it’s not who you are and it’s not always true. Pretty quickly I’d be able to find evidence in your life that you’re actually pretty good at learning something and implementing it. And there may have been very good reasons for why you didn’t do that in the past. And it’s true. You could come to this workshop and learn these amazing things and then never do anything with them. But you are still ahead of the game if you don’t learn them at all. And actually, we’re going to teach you what thoughts keep you from implementing things so that anytime you want to in the future, you know how to manage your mind and get it on board with implementing things or, and this is, this is one thing I love, is helping give women permission to themselves to not do it.

We’ll teach you how to know that too. How to implement things if you want to. But then also just to go, you know, that’s not for me right now. I’m not gonna focus on that right now. We really have to train people to do that in the membership because there’s just too much. You cannot do it all. So you can’t do a book study and then a minimalism challenge and the quarterly theme and be working on the parenting course. Like you just can’t do everything that we’ve got going on. So you’ve got to learn this very important skill of deciding what’s important to you right now and implementing it without getting distracted.

So another thought that might keep you from signing up for this workshop or anything else that you think is important to you is the thought. Nothing is going to help me. If you believe your marriage is beyond help, your kid’s situation is beyond help, your finances are beyond help. This is one where we’re just in a dark place and maybe we’ve been hit with thing after thing after thing and we just feel sad. And our brain, when we feel sad, says things like, nothing is going to help me. Nothing will make a difference. Because the truth is your brain prefers you in your existing state, even if it’s sad, because that is a known state, it is known and familiar, and your brain’s like, you know, this isn’t my favorite, but at least you’re alive. But man, I don’t know if you start changing your life, if you start standing up for yourself, if you start treating yourself well, well that could really put us in some danger. So let’s not do that. That’s what brains do. And I perhaps am a little bit melancholic and I have this thought float through my brain a lot. Some version of nothing will help. This is terrible, right? I called him my, your thoughts. And before learning these tools, I just believed them.

I was just like, oh, that must be true. And sometimes I still think about them and I allow them to feel true, but other times I stop them and I say, whoa, there’s an EOR thought. That’s not true.

It’s not always true. And now I really love looking for evidence that things have gotten really better. Things are better today, things are better this month, things are better this year, this is the best decade of my life, right? I just, I have now trained my brain to go the opposite. And again, I don’t always do that, but I know how, another reason why we don’t do things is we have this thought, I don’t have the money. And it seems like such an innocent thought, maybe even a prudent thought. But the truth is, we spend lots of money on things all the time. So the same person who will tell me that they don’t have any money will then go out and buy things that I think a person wouldn’t spend money on if they didn’t have any money. Okay? So we all have these kind of arbitrary lines, and I’ll just use $5 coffee for an example. You know, someone might say, oh, I don’t, I don’t have any money. And then you might see them go get $5 coffee. Now I’m not making a moral judgment, I’m just saying there are other people who would say, oh my goodness, $5 coffee or $50 jeans or organic blueberries, right? It doesn’t matter. Everybody has an opinion about what they choose to spend money on.

And so tell yourself the truth. Now, I don’t have the money to buy a yacht right now. That’s true. Okay? But there are things that we just are choosing not to buy and tell yourself the truth about it. Okay? This workshop is $37, by the way. And so that’s like choosing not to buy a couple extra things. When you go to Target, it’s eight coffees.

And you know, we laughed a lot when we thought about calling it the life changing workshop because we’re like, that’s such a dumb name. Like, it’s so cliche. No one will wanna sign up for that. No one’s gonna believe us. And so we really brainstormed a bunch of other names for it, and in the end we just, we just kept coming back to it. We were just like, you know what? Because Larissa and I have such a deep conviction that if we could just grab every Catholic mom on the planet and teach her these three things, her life would be drastically better. It would literally be life changing. And so I just wanna press anyone who says I don’t have the money, that could be true. Totally could be true. But if you could scrounge up $40 to change your life, which will change your life for the whole rest of your life, by the way, cuz you’re gonna come and you’re gonna learn three skills, I think you could find the money. And if you don’t wanna go, that’s totally fine too. But tell yourself the truth. And again, I’m using this workshop as an example, but there are things on your heart, there are things you want to do.

And I want you to just be really truthful with yourself about whether or not you have the money or you couldn’t make the money, or you could find the money. Because most of us were pretty resourceful. And you know, if you really wanted to take that trip, or if you really want to go to the gym, or if you really want to refresh your wardrobe a little bit and your brain is telling you you don’t have the money, I want you to really look at the facts, really sit with yourself and say, you know what, is that true? And again, sometimes it’s a yacht and we really don’t have the money, but that is a thought. Like all these others that are just shutting down thoughts where we just shut down and we don’t problem solve. And I want all of you guys, I, I feel like I talk about problem solving in every episode. I was thinking about that the other day, but I think our superpower is moms talking to God and solving problems. And then the last thought, which I don’t think if you listen to this podcast, you would think, but I, you know, maybe if you share this with your friend and they don’t know us, they may think it might not be Catholic enough,

Right? I mean if you saw a poster for something called the Life-Changing Workshop, I don’t know that that would scream Catholicism to you, but Larissa and I are just extremely conservative, traditional Catholic moms and we really live it out. We live out sacramental lives. Our faith is more important to us than anything.

And we are so careful what we expose ourselves to and we take it so seriously what we teach you. And if we are not sure about something and we don’t back it up by our faith, we don’t teach it. Even if we like it, even if we’re like that, that seems pretty cool. If there’s any question, we don’t teach it. And our number one goal is to lead you to the Lord in everything that we do. That’s our goal. And so again, I’m gonna read these thoughts and I want you to listen and sense in your body how they feel. Cuz my guess is that they’re all gonna feel some version of shutting you down. Okay? So you feel excited about something and you wanna sign up for something, but then your brain says, we don’t have time, we don’t have time to do that. And you know, you never implement things anyway. You sign up but you never really see it through and nothing’s really gonna help you. This is it. Kid kind of stuck and you really don’t have the money for that. Probably shouldn’t do it and I don’t know about that. It might not be Catholic enough. You should stay home.

Are you our brains? Talk us out of things all the time. And just like I teach on the business side of things, I think the only reason to do something is because God wants you to do it. And so I’m always challenging people to pray, just pray, take it to the Lord, listen to his voice. And remember we tend to hear God’s voice in our own voice, but it’s calming and soothing and convicting and encouraging feels like love and warmth and compassion. It never rushes. It never stresses us out. It never shames us and it doesn’t shut us down. It feels open. And so I wanna invite you, whether this is the first podcast episode you’ve ever heard from us or the 100th, I want you to join this workshop. We wanted to give a really easy way for people to come find out about this work we do. If joining a monthly membership feels like a lot and you’re unsure, this is just a one-time workshop. It’s three days in a row, but it’s one hour each day. And each evening we will send out the replay and then you will get to keep the replay and the workbook

Forever. That’s what you’re buying. And we will teach you these three powerful concepts and we will ask you what you’re struggling with. And you’ll see how that goes. Lots of women will tell us, which first of all will feel incredibly validating because you’ll go, oh, lots of people have the same thoughts and challenges that I do. And then you will hear us coach, you’ll see what coaching is. Because if you’ve never experienced coaching before, it’s rather remarkable. And you’re gonna see what it looks like to solve problems from peace. And you’re gonna feel hope. You’re gonna feel hope that maybe things that you’ve struggled with for a very long time could be better. And that’s exactly how I felt when I learned these things. And it, it really delivered in my life. I enjoy my life so much more than I used to. I have so much more peace. And even in the struggles, even in the things that are still challenging, I’m like, oh, I’m gonna figure that out cuz I know how to manage my mind. I know how to try hard things. I know how to stay calm and I’m a better problem solver when I’m calm. And if I could give that gift to every Catholic mom on the planet, I would.

So if you’re already in Masters, you just get to come to the workshop, we’ll send out the link. If you’re not in Masters, I want you to sign up for this workshop and I want you to invite your friends. God will put them on your heart too. He’ll say, you know who could really use this? And you’ll think of someone who’s struggling because this workshop brings relief and not just one time, it’s the tool for relief and the tool for peace, and it’s anchored in Christ and it leads us to sainthood. I’m very proud of the work that we do. It is such a privilege to be God’s hands in the world and to help people. And I hope that you share this episode and share this workshop with other Catholic moms. Let us create more peace in the world. It’s time. All right ladies, I’m praying for you. I hope to see you. It’s next week, March 14th through the 16th. Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.