You might just be in the fog of failureness and yuckiness, and high levels of pain, and you won’t then yet have the awareness to like, I wanna move, you know, through this and out of it. But once you have the awareness like, I’m doing that thing again where I feel like I am a failure.

The first thing that you wanna do is to calm your body down. Just be like, Hey, we can totally talk about that. We can absolutely think about that, but right now, I want you to know that I love you and you are safe, and you are going to be okay. I love you and you are safe. And you are going to be okay.

Because in your body it will feel like those things aren’t true. There’s like this buzzy thrumming that comes through your body and it feels like there’s imminent danger and we’re gonna fall off of a cliff into a big, dark black hole. That’s how it feels. 

So you have to calm your body down enough to be like, Hey, I love you. We got some stuff going on right now and maybe some of it isn’t ideal or what we wanted, but actually you are okay right now. Gotta reach yourself and create safety in your body because your thinking brain, your problem solving brain will not come back online if you’re in a fight or flight state.

So it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, whatever the thing is, that we feel like we failed, we’re gonna think about that in a moment. The first thing that we do though, is we calm our body down and I like to add the, and I love you. I love you. Just like you would talk to a kid, Hey kiddo, I love you so much. Gimme a hug. 

You can hug yourself. Did you know that you can give your own self a hug? You can snuggle your own kid’s stuffed animal, or find a soft blanket or a pillow. Anything to create safety in your body. Lots of deep breathing. We’re breathing deeply and in your mind, you’re just repeating. I love you and you are safe right now, and this is okay.

Sometimes it takes me a couple minutes. It feels like a long time to do all of that for a few minutes, and sometimes it takes a full like five minutes to do that till my body, I can feel it. When it finally goes, and it like, lets it go, I can feel the softness in my muscles and I’m breathing a little more deeply and slowly, and I’m like, okay. Yes. And it’s really, I can feel my brain coming back online. I’m safe and this is okay. I can handle this, and I am loved.

From that place. I also tell myself, Hey, let’s make sure we’re not wearing, I’m a failure glasses because I am is an identity statement. So it is not true that you are a failure. That’s not even a thing. You’re just a human and you do things, but you are not a failure. It’s not part of your DNA. It’s not an identity that you have.

Now, it may be true that we had some sort of activity, and collectively we could measure that you failed that activity. For example, if you take the LSATs to become a lawyer and you do not get a high enough number to get into law school, we could collectively say that maybe you failed to get into law school, but you are not a failure.

One of the reasons why these thoughts feel so bad is because we take on a deep identity belief and listen. If that were true, it would feel awful. Like if I opened up your brain and I went, yep, we got a broken model here. This one’s a failure, folks, that would be terrible. But instead, usually the reason that we’re in this place where we feel like a failure is because something went differently than we wanted it to.

In mom life, once we’re outside of school or sports or some careers, very little of what we do is measurable anyway. So it’s not even true for most of us that we have failed even in the thing that we’re thinking about. 

An example might be, you left creating an All Saints Day costume to the last minute, and you either didn’t make one at all, or you made one, but it was pretty lame and you were embarrassed.

And then your brain goes, you’re such a failure as a mom. ’cause you saw the other moms. So they’re like perfectly hand sewn, you know, replicas of. Something that a saint wore sometime and it’s beautiful and amazing. 

So then you look at that and you think, I am a failure. But it’s not true. It’s not an identity that we’re gonna take on. And if we actually even look at the thing nobody’s winning or losing at saint costumes.

The truth is. and you’ll have to figure out what this truth is for you. Is the truth that you didn’t make as good of a saint costume as you wanted to? Is the truth for you that you actually don’t care about costumes, but you feel like you should? So then you feel bad about that? 

Is the problem that your kid made a comment? And had their own thoughts about it and said something negative, and then you feel bad. Like, you know, dig around. There’s different flavors of how we fail or how we perceive that we fail.

And then I want you to ask yourself, once you find that thing, does that matter? Let’s say that for you, it was that you wanted to make a really cute saint costume. You totally forgot it fell off your radar. And we threw something together the last minute and it was kind of lame and you’re embarrassed.

And so that’s the truth, which is you wanted it to be better than it was, and so you feel like you failed the assignment. But then I want you to look at that. You could even write it down. I’m a big fan of writing things down. You would look at it and go, so what? What am I making it mean that I wanted to make a detailed, super cute saint costume? And I didn’t.

What are you making that mean? Sometimes that’s the really painful thing, and most of it tends to boil down to I’m unlovable, I’m unwanted, I’m a bad mom, you know, I’m a sucky human. I have no discipline. I can’t trust myself. You know, those like big, deep buckets.

So just notice how quickly we get there and how yucky it feels and how much energy we spend chewing on those stories. I feel like a failure. I am a failure. And then you guys have heard me say this on the podcast bajillions of times. Once you put I am a Failure glasses on, then you will see it everywhere.

And I’m terrible at dishes and I’m terrible at laundry, and I can’t even help the kids with their homework, and my husband doesn’t like my face, which is definitely not something he ever said, but we just like go there. In our minds, we’re very sure that our husbands don’t like us or your mom isn’t proud of you, or your dad judges you for working or not working, whatever it is.

But once the failure glasses are on, we see everything in that light. So then you’re just living your life feeling awful no matter what you’re doing. We’re driving feeling like a failure. We’re cleaning, feeling like a failure. We’re parenting from feeling like a failure, and it’s a pretty solid guess that you’re not doing your best job when you do that.

So then we continue to see more and more evidence that we’re not good at what we want to be good at. And it feels awful. And then this is when we try to avoid our feelings by overeating, over drinking, over scrolling, overspending, disassociating. Some of you stress exercise, some of you stress read, so they’re good activities, but the way that you’re doing it is to numb yourself out and not deal with your own life.

And it only takes a few of those to compound before we really feel crushed and paralyzed. Because listen, if you’re a failure and you suck at everything, why would you even try to do anything? Why would you get up? Why would you go for a walk? Why would you try to cook dinner for your kids? It’s a terrible feeling.

So the steps are you need to calm your body down so we can even think about this rationally. You need to get to the truth of the situation and ask yourself, so what? So what if the All Saints Day costume wasn’t as good as you wanted it to be? There’s actually no consequence for that. Most of the other moms are not actually thinking about you.

Really, usually the biggest consequence is how we think about ourselves and how we talk to ourselves. And spoiler alert, you get to control that. You get to control how you think about yourself and how you talk to yourself. So if the biggest consequence of thinking that you’re a failure is then you feel terrible and you beat yourself up. We can control that.

And I don’t like to be dismissive of the part of me that wants to do things well. I’m nice to her, but I would say something like, Hey, Sterling. Who wanted to make a nice Saint Day costume. I love that about you. I love that you have ambitions. I love that you wanted to make something detailed and intricate and cool.

But we didn’t have time to do that. We did other things and I really liked the other things that we did, and the other things might just be keeping the kids alive and feeding everyone and making sure there’s clean underwear. 

So it’s not even like we did anything grand or noble beyond regular life, but we just look and we go, yeah, that is actually what I chose. I chose to do regular life things to keep the ship afloat and going. 

And I chose not to put the extra time into the Saint Date costume, and that’s okay. And I love you. I love that you wanted to do it, and I love you even though we didn’t get to it. This is not a problem. 

One of my clients recently said, I hear your voice in my head now saying, what if it’s not a problem? And I love that. It’s not a problem. You’re not a failure. In general, I think moms are very strategic. I think the choices that they make are very strategic and they’re good choices. I don’t know why we have to dislike ourselves so much, but that is often what we do.

So you need to find the truth. You need to prepare something with yourself like, Hey, I love you. This isn’t a big deal. Maybe you did totally let yourself down, and maybe you just need to forgive yourself. Like, Hey, I just forgive myself that Wednesday me, totally blew this off and did something else, and I could have maybe worked on the same costume and I’m gonna do better about that next time.

But it’s so gentle. We’re not like coming in with execution or energy, you know, looking for some blood. We just are gentle with ourselves. We love ourselves. We’re kind to ourselves, and you can still want to be better, but I’ll tell you, your plan for being better is gonna be much more likely to succeed if you’re not coming from the place of disliking yourself and beating yourself up.

So right now, I want you just to ask yourself, do you think like you’re failing at a bunch of things? Are most women spending the day thinking that they’re failing at many things? Why are we doing that? Who wants us to do that? Why is that part of our culture? Where did we learn how to do that? Like, I’m just so fascinated.

Like if you were an anthropologist that came to a different planet and you were like, it just seems like all the moms dislike themselves and say mean things to themselves all the time and never think that they’re good enough. That’s so interesting. Like why? 

And I want us to be the last group of women that does that. I don’t want our daughters to do that. I don’t want their daughters to do that. I think it’s good to have goals and to-do lists and systems, but I do not think that we should be beholden to them, and I do not think that we should walk around feeling like failures in many different areas of our lives.

And by the way, I made this podcast because I was feeling like that earlier today. I was like, I’m not getting my steps in. And I feel behind in my job, and one of my kids is struggling to read, and I keep saying that I’m gonna make time to sit with him and work on the reading skills, but I keep not doing that. And my husband’s unhappy with me.

And I share this in other groups, but then, like, this is silly, but the paint is chipping off of the stair. Railing that you see when you first walk into my house. So every time I walk into my house I’m like, I see this chipped paint and I feel like a failure that I don’t wanna take out all the paint stuff. 

Because the last time I took out the paint stuff, some of the paint spilled on the plastic that was on the ground. So I put the plastic on the ground, good for me. But then that got like. Moved, like somebody stepped on it and it moved, and then the paint rolled off of the plastic thing onto the floor, and I had to use paint thinner to clean it up.

So my brain has this like big feeling now about painting the stairs. Like, it’s such a big deal. But every time I see it, I feel like a failure. That’s the first thing you see when you walk in my house, which by the way, I’m not sure anyone except me thinks about. But just notice, it just takes a few things and then all of a sudden we feel crushed under the weight of this thought. I’m such a failure at everything. Nothing’s going right.

And then we extrapolate that to mean that we’re kind of bad at life and it’s always gonna be like this, and there’s no hope. And I don’t want you to live like that. And I don’t wanna live like that. And the reason I do this work is because I know the tools for how to get out of that, and I want to teach everyone how to do that, how to notice,  I put those failure glasses on, and when we do that, here’s what that cycle looks like.

Here’s the pattern that I go through. I’m like, Hey, Sterling, we can keep doing that and we can feel bad for three days. Or we can breathe and calm down and recognize. I try to get to silliness as fast as possible. Like it’s quite silly that you think you’re failing at everything. I actually think you’re doing a pretty good job.

You’re raising six kids with two businesses, homeschooling, four of them still married even though it’s painful. Pretty proud of that, and I’ve been eating really well lately. And yes, it is true that I’m not getting as many steps in as I want, but that’s okay. I do like what I am choosing, and I kind of understand why that’s happening right now.

And this always happens by the way, after daylight savings time, when all of a sudden I’m used to walking outside and it’s part of my rhythm and it’s warm, and then it’s rainy and cold and dark. And there’s always this transition for me about, okay, well, like now how are we gonna move our body? And where is that gonna happen and when is that gonna happen?

So I’m not a failure, it’s just the fall exercise, transition time. And remember, humans actually really like change, but we don’t like transition. We don’t like the process that we have to go through from one state to the next. So I will figure out my winter walking plan. I will like it, but right now the like slow grinding gears of getting from one to the next is unpleasant.

But nothing is wrong with me. God loves me. I’m a good human, I’m a good mom, and I am definitely not a failure. What does that even mean? And so I wanted to make this episode also so you could share it.

Because the other day, we went to this beautiful mass on Old Soul’s Day. The priest nearby has 40 relics. It’s incredible the amount of relics he has. He has Faustina and Saint Therese. Steven, the original martyr, just some very, very cool ones. Anyway, 40 of them. I’m not gonna listen all. 

So it’s like so special. He brings them out for it was All Saints Day. I think he has them out for all of Hallide. But anyway, we saw them on the first Saturday, which was All Saints Day, and it was so beautiful looking at those and thinking about the Saints and it was a very moving mass.

And I had a rough morning with my husband. And I cried through most of mass and I’m pretty good at locking it up in public, but it was just really painful and I hate when my kids see that. I mean, I don’t wanna hide crying from them, but I don’t also want them to know I cry as much as I do.

So anyway, I’m there and I’m softly weeping and pulling my veil over my face, and it’s just what I needed that day, and it was beautiful. And I found a lot of healing through the mass, and I stayed a little bit afterwards to keep praying and when I came downstairs there were two other moms who had glassy eyes, and I know that they’re struggling with other things.

So the three of us looked like we had been crying and then two other moms, I went and talked to them and they were like, gosh, it’s just been so hard lately. And they just had normal people. Stuff that’s hard, busy schedules, kids being sick, finance stuff, husband stuff, normal stuff, right?

But I was really struck by just in this small pocket, how many of us were in a lot of pain and our human brain doesn’t stop to think. Yeah, there’s a lot of people in pain, and we’re in a season of pain right now, and I know this is difficult. The brain actually as a weird self-protective measure says, oh, you’re a big failure, and everything that you do is wrong.

And I’m not gonna use the rest of this episode to explain psychologically why the brain does that. But it does us, yelling at you is a form of self-protection that it thinks is effective and it’s just not. It’s not what we really need. It’s not holy. It’s not good. 

And I know that collectively, a lot of moms are in pain right now, and they feel like it’s their fault or they should be better at being at pain, or they should be better at managing the house or the food or the steps or the reading practice better when they’re in a lot of pain.

But really what we need is compassion. We probably need community, but that isn’t always possible. And even though I feel like I see people a lot, I don’t think that’s really what community means. You know, having a safe place to share like hard things and heavy things and support each other.

And really even when you have that. But if they’re not neighbors, if you can’t share the workload. You know, you might see someone at mass and hold each other’s hearts for a minute, but then you’re basically still isolated and on your own for the other six and a half days of the of the week. 

And so I just wanted to create an episode that we could share with each other that just says, Hey, like you’re not a failure. I love you. And here are the steps to stop feeling like a failure. And if you’re feeling brave, do all of that with the Lord and let him tell you the truth. 

Let him tell you what you’re good at, what he sees, how special you are, how much he wants you, how beautiful he thinks you are, that he’s proud of you for what you’re doing. Let him tell you that that’s the truth, but you have to be brave in order to receive the truth from the Lord. 

And you have to be vulnerable. It’s actually hard for us to hear positive things. I don’t know why that feels so scary, but just like American women are really good at feeling bad about themselves, we also tend to not be good at hearing deeply genuine compliments about ourselves. We get better at that too. 

All right, my friends, next week I’m gonna share a special episode, an interview with a good friend of mine, and next week also, we will make less stress for the holidays available. It’s just a short digital course. It’s 30 minutes. You watch it for 30 minutes, and then you plan out all of your holidays for 30 minutes.

And man, you are gonna feel like a million dollars. And I promise you, an hour of your time is absolutely worth having more peace in November and December. So it probably will drop a little bit earlier next week if you’re on my email list. But I will put the link in next week’s show notes when the podcast comes out.

Alright my friends. I am praying for you. I really am. I pray for moms all the time. I prayed for you in front of all of those relics. I think it’s important that we just keep praying for moms. For marriages, for the family. That’s where the last battle will be, and we’re living through it right now, so let us pray for each other. 

Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.