There’s a feeling every mom is chasing — but most of us don’t even know what to call it.

It’s not happiness exactly. It’s not having it all together. It’s something deeper, quieter, more lasting. And the reason you can’t find it is because you’ve been looking in the wrong places.

In this episode, I name the feeling, explain why it’s so elusive, and show you how to actually access it.

We talk about:
* What the feeling actually is (it’s not what you think)
* Why chasing happiness keeps you stuck on a treadmill
* How God designed you to experience this in your vocation as a mother
* The simple shift that opens the door to finding it

If you liked this episode, you’ll also enjoy:
 Your #1 Mission as a Catholic Mom: Interior Peace
 2 Keys to Interior Peace Every Catholic Mom Needs
 The Only Thing You Really Need as a Catholic Mom
 
If you’re ready to stop chasing and start living — that’s the transformation we see inside Mary’s Heart Martha’s Order every single day. Come experience it for yourself at catholicmomcalm.com/marysheart

And you think if you had more money you would feel better. And I think it’s important to note that our brains often just have this vague sense of like, I’ll feel better. And I think it’s really important that we slow that down and go, well, what do you mean brain? that you think? we will feel better? How will we feel? 

So if I just magic wanded, a million dollars in your bank account right now, just like, boop. What’s so funny is for some of you would freak out and your brain would be like, oh no, we don’t know how to manage that money. 

But in this thought exercise, let’s assume that you’re someone who’s struggling financially and it would easily solve paying off your student loans, fixing the car, and maybe getting a house. Maybe, you know, you’re crammed into a tiny house. And you’re gonna be in a slightly bigger house. What does that make you feel? 

And remember, your feelings come from your thoughts. So what are you thinking and what are you feeling? You might be feeling relief, you might be feeling security. A sense of being taken care of. Like, oh, okay, everything’s taken care of. That’s paid off. That’s handled. 

Like provision is also, I think the biblical word of that, right? Being provided for you might feel safe, some sense of safety like you felt like you were in danger. Maybe the feeling of being in debt to someone created this kind of foreboding pressure in you. And now you feel the release of that and you feel safe. 

Maybe having debt or not being able to pay for things and living paycheck to paycheck has filled you with the feeling of shame. And the opposite of shame is more like love or worthiness or peace. So maybe for you having that money would lead to one of those feelings. 

And we know, ’cause we’ve heard many, many times that. Money doesn’t solve all of life’s problems, and I will suggest that it’s also that money doesn’t change the internal state that we’re experiencing. Money does not change how you talk to yourself and how you feel.

And there is a person who’s been able to master their thinking and feel peace. In a hovel and peace in a mansion, and the external circumstances do not create peace within them. So let’s use something about your body. Maybe you wanna lose weight or gain weight, or you don’t like your nose or your hair is thinning or, I don’t know, something about your body. 

And it bugs you and you feel self-conscious about it, and your brain kind of thinks people notice and it’s holding you back. So if I were to magic wand your body, boop, and it’s exactly how you want it to be, how do you think you would feel? And it’s not gonna be the same for all of us because. What we’re making it mean is different for each one of us. 

So maybe you’re making your, let’s say you have like a nose that you don’t like and you think it makes you unattractive. People are staring at my nose. I’d be so much prettier if I had a different nose. And so you feel, maybe ugly is a strong word, but maybe that’s how you feel and you think If I changed my nose, I would feel beautiful. 

And then the question is, why do you wanna feel beautiful? Because it might be. Rooted in romance, right? It might be like, oh, I want my husband to think that I’m beautiful. This is a podcast for Catholic moms. So most of us aren’t dating, right? Most of us aren’t like looking for a boyfriend. 

But maybe you want to feel more attractive to him. Maybe you wanna feel more attractive to yourself. You wanna look in the mirror and just feel like, oh, I really like what I see. But it might be that you think that having. A different nose would make you more attractive, and then you could achieve more in a career that you have, and then you would feel accomplished. 

So that person isn’t chasing the feeling of beautiful, that person is chasing the feeling of accomplished. But really, why do we ever wanna feel accomplished? We wanna feel accomplished because it’s rooted in our desire to hear the Lord say, well done. My good and faithful servant. 

And the reason that we wanna be beautiful is because we know deep down on a soul level that God created us and thinks we’re so beautiful. It’s the feeling we’re chasing and sometimes we get a glimpse of it. 

When somebody else in the world really looks at you and says, gosh, you’re so beautiful, and you can just feel like that they really, really mean it. Even that is not the depth with which God thinks we’re beautiful, you know?

So all the feelings that we’re chasing are really feelings that are rooted in how we would feel probably in the Garden of Eden. But now we would say in heaven, even our desire for connection or community or oneness to be liked, to have friends, to be part of a parish moms group, maybe even within your family unit, to feel like people like you and are connected to you. That is our deep desire to be with the community of Angels and Saints in heaven. 

So none of the things here ever really satisfy what we want. We’re always just chasing a photocopy of what we want, but it’s so important that you are very clear to your brain that the only reason you want any of the things that you want is because of the feeling that you think it will give you. 

And you can feel that now. You can feel beautiful now. You can feel taken care of. You can feel accomplished and worthy and desired. You can feel oneness with the community of Angels and Saints now. Right now they’re with us. We could just choose to feel like they’re all in the living room with you. 

We’re having a great time, and they’re praying for you, and they’re congratulating you on the good things, and they’re consoling you through the hard things. Whatever it is that you want, you can feel it now because ultimately your desire is for the Lord. Even pleasure. If you really think about pleasure, it is just this echo of the ecstasy that we would feel in God’s presence.

And that’s why we want it so badly because we want him so badly. I’m not minimizing what you’re going through. This is not one of those, like, just offer it up. It’s a slow exercise where you really sit with this idea. 

You really sit with this idea of why do I want this thing in my life, or this circumstance or this person in my life to change? How would it make me feel and how is it possible that I can have that feeling with the Lord right now? 

And the crazy thing is that when we do that, it tends to make the thing that we want more likely. Now here is where as Catholics, we really depart from the manifesting energy frequency people. Okay? In the quantum field, there’s all these like buzzwords on that side of the fence.

And they would say that. Loving yourself or believing that you are worthy, would it then create some sort of like frequency and then goes out? I’m not really sure how the frequency attracts the thing that we want. That’s also on that frequency. Okay. We don’t believe that. We don’t believe that changing our emotional state causes. The thing to come to you. Okay? We do not believe that. Just to make it clear what the difference is. 

But what does end up happening often is that when you create, let’s just talk about the feeling of security. When are in a financially, you force your brain to go brain. Look at how much the Lord has given us. Look how well taken care of we are. We always make it work. We always have food. We always have a place to live. 

God is so good. He does such an amazing job of providing for us. If you can really get your brain on board with that, all of a sudden you’re not gonna be in a stress state and the blood is gonna flow to your critical thinking part of your brain, and then you’re gonna be able to use that from a place of peace to solve your financial problems better. And so you’re gonna be more open to ways that you can save money and make money. 

So it’s not that, I don’t know, there’s energy frequencies and it pulls things to you. That’s not what’s happening. But the reason why we kind of the world kind of buy into that idea is because it does often look like, oh, I calmed down, or I loved myself, or I thought I was beautiful, or I felt like I had oneness with the Lord.

And then. The thing that I wanted happened, like I made friends, or I improved my marriage, or I stopped stress eating, and so I did lose weight from a place of loving myself. So often it is true that if we can embody the feeling of having the thing now, that really the truth is you will come out of a stress state and you will just be a better problem solver, and then that tends to solve the problem.

I also think we’re just, when we’re not angry or disappointed or freaked out or scared, we are so much more receptive to the nudges of the Holy Spirit. And so the Holy Spirit nudges us to opportunities or nudges us away from things that are dangerous and not good for us. And we have that kind of conscience where we think, you know what? I’m not gonna do that. Or, yeah, I really should do this even though I’m tired. 

And it’s from this place of trust and peace and surrender, that we’re just more open to the nudges of the Holy Spirit that do lead us often to the thing that we desire if it is a good and holy desire. I know that I’ve only spoken for 13 minutes.

But it is such a deeply profound concept. It is so important that you really slow down and take this in. To the point where you should put a date on the calendar in the next week where you’re like, I’m gonna listen to that episode again. And I’m really going to write on a piece of paper what I would be thinking and feeling if I changed my life.

And then next to each one of those be like, how can I get that from the Lord now and not in an entitled, demanding way, God is good. He says, Hey, come to me for relief. Come to me. So the burden is light. Come to me for peace and love and joy and mercy. Made it very clear that he’s just standing by waiting to help us.

But our anger, our disillusionment, our believing lies, our hurt, our wounds, they keep us from him. And they make things feel worse than they are heavier than they are. Harder than they are. And then from a stress state, we’re not great problem solvers. So I wanna be really clear that we do not believe in manifesting things. We do not believe that changing our energetic frequency then attracts the thing that we want and brings it to us. Okay? 

First of all, we 100% have an energetic frequency, so I want you to know that’s not crazy that they’ve proven that with science, right? They’ve been able to measure energetically what happens in the human body when people have different emotions, and they’ve mapped that on a scale.  

So that’s not crazy. Like we are energetic beings and when you have the feeling of love, it has a different energetic like number or intensity than when you feel hate or sadness. Or disappointment. 

What we don’t believe though, is that changing our emotions energetically causes things in the universe to happen, but I’m telling you the reason why it might look like that from the outside. Is because when you are calm, you are just better able to receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit guidance from the Holy Spirit and even just rationally solve problems where it’s hard to solve problems somewhere really upset and despondent.

So I was just coaching somebody in catholic mom calm today, and she listed a whole bunch of things. She was like, and then this is bad and this is bad and this is bad. And this was hard. It was a lot of stuff. 

And I said, listen, that’s a lot of stuff. There were some real things, and I said, but sitting around and thinking this is so much, I don’t know where to start. I can’t even see, you know, the forest or the trees. I said, you’re probably just walking around in a near constant stress day. 

And she was asking me of the tools that I teach, she said, Hey, where should I start? And I said, you absolutely need to start with calming down. That’s it. I said, forget all the other things. I teach some really cool things, but I forget all of that. 

All you need to do right now is calm down because when we are in a stress state, we just do not think clearly. We must calm down and. That is a very unsatisfying answer, by the way. I know I really like complex things and deeply intellectual things, and I love a good formula, and I love a 10 step process, and I love a workbook.

You know, our brains kind of like some of us. Some of us really like those things we can sink our teeth into. And it’s kind of like when somebody says, oh, you should probably just like lift weights three times a week, and you’re like, I would rather train. For a marathon, which sounds so cool and romantic, then do something boring, like lift weights three times a week.

And it’s just the same thing with this, like we want a really sexy way to change our lives and it does not sound very interesting. To breathe slowly and calm your nervous system down and tell yourself that you are safe and loved and do that many, many times throughout the day. 

That does not sound very interesting, but I am telling you, it’ll change your life because God lives inside of you. He knows what you need to do. You can discern what he wants to tell you, but you must be calm first. 

I had a friend recently say, and it was a moment of vulnerability and we have a high level of trust with each other. So please, I was not offended when she said this at all, but she said, you know, I really didn’t like the name Catholic Mom Calm, and I really like the name Mary’s Heart, Martha’s Order, which has been proven on the internet. When we run ads to Mary’s Heart, Martha’s Order, a lot of you get very excited about it and click on those ads. 

And the phrase Catholic mom Calm is just not as interesting. And it didn’t bother me at all because I said, yeah, the internet also agrees with you that they like this idea of Mary’s heart and Martha’s order because it sounds like, Ooh, we’re gonna create systems and I wanna be like Martha and rock the house keeping stuff, and then I wanna be like Mary and sit at the feet of Jesus and just like soak it in. There’s just so much romance there. Right. 

And we had talked actually about changing the name of everything to make it Mary’s heart, Martha’s order. But I just kept coming back to the truth, which is I just feel like God put me on this earth to teach women to calm down.

And I’m going to never shut up about it, and I’m gonna teach it so often and in so many ways, and I’m gonna reach so many of you that eventually you guys will make that cool. Eventually you guys will tell all of your friends and some of you already do. Thank you so much. 

Have you seen anything from Catholic Mom calm? All of the things that they do are amazing. You should check out their Advent program. You should check out their Lent program. You should check out those prayers that they put out. You should check out the Mary’s Heart Martha’s Order Challenge. 

But the reason why my entire company is called Catholic mom calm and my book. Our flagship book is called Catholic Mom Calm. It’s because the result is in the name. It is what you need to do, and I will just spend the rest of my life convincing you that it is cool and it is sexy and it is the way, even though it sounds kind of simple.

And this is just another version of that, which is you only want what you want because of how you think it’s gonna make you feel. And you can get that feeling from the Lord. You do not have to wait. It’s why some of the holiest saints just had this super serene kind of floating on a cloud feeling to them no matter what was happening.

And it looked unworldly like, wow, it looks like they’re already in heaven. And it’s because they just knew how to tap into this from the Lord, which is everything that they want, really was just a feeling that they desired from the Lord and they knew how to get that already. 

All right, my friends, I’m praying for you. Please pray for me. Go calm down. It’s worth it, I promise. Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.