So the first thing I wanna talk about is what to do when you are having a bad day. And I know I’ve talked about this several times on the podcast, having a bad day. Well, how to deal with it. But I think it comes up for women almost every month, right? Just even around our cycle. Just even around our cycle. 

We have a bad day where we’re tired and we wanna sleep more and we wanna. Wear soft, cozy clothes and not have to run around after kids. And we want it to be quiet and then we feel our emotions very strongly. And so whatever we happen to be thinking about on this day or these two days feels really big and amplified.

And we feel weepy and everything feels so serious and heavy. And this might be true because you’re on your cycle. It might be true because contextually in your life, you’re having a bad week, right? Maybe you got a car accident, maybe one of your kids is sick. Maybe you got in a fight with your husband. Maybe, your finances are tight or your favorite genes are a little tight. 

Like, who knows, right? There’s some external things where we could look at them and go, I understand why your brain right now is upset. But for whatever the reason is, there are these moments where we just wake up and we’re having a bad day.

And it’s really important that you learn how to talk to yourself well on a bad day and that you know what kind of bad day that you wanna have. So there are two kinds of bad days I think that we can have. One is where you really can restructure your day, to have it be slower, calmer, quieter. 

Maybe we cancel some things. Maybe we stay in bed a little bit longer. Maybe we put a movie on for the kids and we snuggle up on the couch and we kind of rest our eyes while they’re watching it. 

So that day is where you go, you know what, love? I see that your energy is low today, and it has been a lot. I think we’re gonna take a bunny slippers day is kinda what they call that years ago, oh Susan, I cannot remember her last name from the Bright Line Eating Lady.

She talked about bunny slipper days. When you gear up to kind of do hard things in your life, you also need to kinda metaphorically put these like fuzzy bunny slippers on and take care of yourself with softness. Are we gonna have one of those days? That’s option number one. 

Option number two is, you know what, we can’t. You gotta wake up, you gotta do the things, whatever those things are. And how do you wanna talk to yourself with so much love and compassion for doing those things? 

Either way, whether we’re gonna have a bunny slippers day or I need you to buck up kid and do it, which is not how I talk to myself, by the way, but I don’t know what else to call it other than like, you gotta just do it.

Either way. I sit with myself for a couple minutes and I go, Hey, I see that you’re having a hard time right now. Your chest feels tight, things feel heavy. I see that you seem really upset. Are you okay? Like I just meet myself where I’m at. So few of you are doing that. You’re just like bulldozing that phase and you’re just going straight to, I gotta get outta this. I gotta get outta this. 

Instead of saying, you know what, it is a lot right now. Or that feels really big, doesn’t it? And I just sit with myself for a minute. Like, I just love you. This is hard. This is a lot. And then I try to do what I can physiologically to help my body. 

So if I’m on my period, right, or if I was sick, let’s say you had the flu. Something like that. I’m like, do you have enough water? Do you, maybe we can dim the lights, maybe I would put on some classical music. 

In college, I started this Pandora station and I used the soundtrack for Pride and Prejudice as the base of it, and then it just kind of grew from there. As Pandora does, you kind of thumbs up and thumbs down things, and now it’s just this beautiful station that like feels a little nostalgic to me and it’s so lovely and calming.

I don’t know if you’ve seen on YouTube too, you can play. It’s like clearly generated by ai, the image, but then they play beautiful music and I found one the other day that was using music from the Lord of the Rings. 

So it was like the Shire, it was like an AI generated image of the Shire, but then just all the really beautiful music from the Lord of the Rings. So you could just put that on your television and just listen to it. Water. You guys are gonna hear me say all the time, drink some water, drink some cold water, or drink some hot water. 

But again, like the care for yourself is so deep and intentional. If I’m feeling stressed or angry. I might dance, party out. I might like actually try to get the cortisol out of my body by dancing and jumping up and down and shaking my limbs around to get the cortisol out. 

And then, you know, once I come back to just being a little calm, it doesn’t mean I’ve solved anything. We haven’t solved anything at this point. I will sit down and talk to the Lord with a piece of paper for a couple minutes. Like, Hey Lord, what do you want me to do today? What do you wanna tell me about me? And I let him tell me. I love you. 

And sometimes he says like, Hey, let’s take an easy day today. That’s totally fine. And then sometimes he’s like, I need you to do the things today. I need you to do that for me. Can you do that for me? But it feels totally different when it comes from him. He never yells at me. But that’s where we dig deep into the mission work where we realize we’re all saints on a mission.

And it’s so much easier to do the difficult or unpleasant things when we know that it’s coming from him, like, I wanna please him so badly. That’s where that fear of the Lord comes in. It’s not that we’re walking around shaking and we don’t wanna get yelled at, it’s that we want to please him.

And so sometimes we still have to do the things. But I want you to get to the place as quickly as possible to wanting to do the things like, alright, I’m tired, or I’m on my period, or whatever the circumstances is, you know, are maybe, you know, those external things, car accident, hard stuff, and I’m just gonna choose to do these things today for the Lord. I’m gonna choose.

And I think that having a bad day, well, and viewing the things that you have to do in your life as missions given to you by the Lord are the two keys to internal peace, because we’re gonna have bad days. You’ve gotta learn biologically how to have a bad day. 

And it’s not ruminating in your brain. It’s not worst case scenario. It’s not beating yourself up. It’s not being hopeless. That will just make it worse. I am the queen of that land. I lived as queen of that land for so long, and I still have to fight really hard against it. I have to fight really hard. My brain just wants to be like, but everything’s terrible and it’s never gonna get better.

And still, I am able now on my worst days to be like, Hey, I love you. I see that you’re in a lot of pain right now. Well, and that’s a really big story, or could be all those things. Brain, I love you. Could be all those things. Or maybe you’re a little underslept or maybe you’re on your period, or maybe there’s some external things going on, and those are real. But it does not need to change our internal state of internal peace.

And I think willingness is right next to peace. Like, okay, this is what we’re doing today. I’m gonna get up, I’m gonna do these things today. It’s okay. I’m willing. I don’t reach for happiness. I don’t reach for like satisfaction even that even feels like a positive word to me, but. Willingness is just right there. It’s so neutral. I’m just willing to do this.

So whether you’re having a bad day or whether you are consistently coming up against a set of activities that you really don’t want to do, you feel a lot of resistance in your life somewhere. You gotta take that to the Lord. You’ve gotta take that to the Lord and find out if you are carrying something that he does not want you to carry, or if he’s asking you to do it and you need to do it with more grace. 

Like if he’s asked you to go on a mission and do some work. You know, maybe you’ve got a kid who’s going through something right now and you’re that kid’s mom. And the Lord is like, yeah, it’s you. You’re up. I need you to do this thing. I know it’s hard, but you’re the one I chose to do this.

One of my friends recently, just found out for lots of reasons, they’re gonna end up having to move and they’re kind of devastated about it and it’s a temporary move ’cause they love living here. They have to go somewhere else for a couple years. 

And I was telling her, I’m so impressed by your willingness to pray and talk to the Lord and do what he says. And isn’t that how we all want to live? And I was telling her that is the number one thing I wanna teach my kids is how to pray and talk to the Lord and do what he says.

So you gotta make sure you’re doing that because if you’re stressed, because you signed up for five extracurricular activities to feel self-important, and they’re driving you nuts and creating a lot of stress in your family, that’s on you. If the Lord has asked you to do something hard, like pack up your family and move somewhere, you don’t want to move for a couple of years. It’s a big ask. 

Then you gotta do it the best that you can with the most grace. And we can ask for grace. By the way, it’s not like you have a bucket of grace and it’s yours and you have to manage it like he has all the grace. You ask him for it. I need some more grace here, Lord.

But you know that you will. You will handle it. And you wanna float through your days with internal peace. And this is how I do that. It’s not like I have the internal peace all the time. I lose it, but I come back to peace. I either come back to peace by acknowledging biologically what’s going on around me, right? Tired, period six, something like that. 

And I go, okay, what do you need? And I try to give myself those things if I can. And then if I can’t, like if we just have to have a day where we’re doing all the things, I do them for the Lord, I make sure that he wants me doing those things. And then if he has asked me to do it, I am a yes sir. I will do it well for you.

So I want you to think about, first of all, just how are you feeling right now? Do you know how you’re feeling? It’s really important to know how you’re feeling to care so much about yourself, that you care about how you’re feeling. Now, what’s tricky about feelings is you have to decide if the feeling is coming from something true or not.

So if you are feeling bad because you keep thinking I’m a bad mom. That’s probably not true. And so you’re, you know, you’re acknowledging this feeling, which is good. That’s step one. I’m having this feeling, but then where’s this feeling coming from and is that even true?

I had a really busy day on Tuesday. And Tuesdays are a busy day for me. Mondays are a really busy day ’cause I do co-op. And then Tuesdays I like work, I catch up on a bunch of stuff ’cause I did co-op all day Monday. And then I teach religious education, which is just a lot. And I had a great day, I had a good attitude.

And I remember getting home thinking, normally Tuesdays can feel really chaotic or intense. And this Tuesday felt really lovely. And nothing had changed. Just my thoughts about it. I just didn’t resist it. I didn’t spend the day being like, oh, I gotta do this, and then that’s coming and then I gotta do this other thing. I just kind of dropped into acceptance about it.

And it was nice and I was still physically tired because it was a lot of stuff, but my experience of it was so much better. And so how are you feeling right now? How do you wanna feel today? And really ask yourself that because we don’t want to be happy all the time. I like willingness. I like focused. I like honored, like, I wanna feel so honored that the Lord has asked me to do this. 

Sometimes I wanna feel fun and playful. Sometimes I wanna feel like I am taking really good care of myself, I’m really well taken care of. It’s one of those phrase feelings well taken care of. How do you wanna feel today? And how confident are you that you are spending the day doing what God wants you to do? 

And if not, just kind of sit with that for a minute. Be like, why am I not confident about that? I’m telling you, that’s how we really wanna live our lives. We really wanna live our lives talking to the Lord, knowing what he wants us to do and doing it. 

And the more that we can align with that, the more deeply satisfied and deeply peaceful we will be. And that’s really what we want. We don’t want the world’s fake happiness, the sparkle. The shallow, shiny things. We don’t really want that. We know that.

So I want you to imagine that today I’m like teaching a flow chart and the flow chart starts with, I don’t feel great. And then first you’re like, are there physical reasons I don’t feel great? Right? And then if there are physical reasons, we’re like, okay, I’m just gonna help you in whatever way I can, if possible. Can we have a bunny slipper’s day?

Right. Like, I might be like, we’re not homeschooling the kids today. We’re not doing any of that. We’re gonna read books. That’s what we’re doing today. That’s the kind of day I need. Can we have a bunny slippers day? Because there’s some biological things going on with you. Okay. 

Then there’s like, no, it’s not really biological. It’s, I’m thinking a bunch of things and they feel really big and scary, and then you gotta just. Sit with yourself and go, Hey, first of all, I love you so much. I love you even when you feel this way, but let’s just take a second and look at it. Do you wanna take a second and look at it with me and you’re gonna look and see if it’s true.

Are these things true or are they exaggerated, or are they self-imposed, or are they constructs of the culture but they’re not coming from the Lord? It’s a lot of that going on. And then we sit with the Lord and we kind of show it to him. We’re like, Lord, here’s what my brain is offering me. Here’s the story. What’s the truth? What do you want me to do? 

And then he is gonna tell you. And some days he tells me, I need you to do some hard stuff for me today. I’m like, okay. It feels good though. And then it makes me feel purposeful. It gives me that mission feeling. And that’s when we tap into our ability to do hard things. I like that feeling. I don’t always choose it though. 

Remember I asked the bunny slippers question first. Like, Hey, Sterling, can I take care of you today? Do you need me to help you? And so I’ve just experienced both of those in the last week, kind of days where I really needed to take care of myself, minimize what I was doing. Rest and then days where I just really didn’t have that option and I had to do what God asked me to do.

And I got to choose how I wanted to do it. How was my attitude? My attitude lately has been so much more positive with the kids. I’ve been telling them more of these things and showing them like, yep. ’cause they are living their own experience of this, right? They’re living their own experience of being tired and having to learn when to care for themselves. Versus when to kind of push through.

And I’ve been helping them understand that and just being more positive and more encouraging, which is what I wanna do, right? I want to be a positive and encouraging mom instead of like a melancholic mom, which is my natural state at the moment. You know? I still have to fight against that Inclination pretty hard.

So. I love you. I want you to love you. I want you to enjoy you this week, this month, this year is gonna pass. It’s gonna pass, but the way that you experience it inside your mind is up to you. You can. Have a beautiful garden in your mind, and it’s lovely and it’s a sanctuary, and there’s a bench and some beautiful flowers and a tree with a swing. I don’t know what you want in the garden in your mind.

But it could be lovely and you can take care of yourself there, and you can like yourself. Do you like yourself? Or it can be dark and gloomy and scary, and you can beat yourself up and be mean to yourself. Time is gonna pass either way, but you get to decide what the environment looks like.

Alright? For my announcement. Are you ready? So, I love doing this podcast. Podcast is one of my favorite things to do. I just really like it as a medium. I like listening to podcasts. I think it’s great for moms because we can just kind of throw them on while we’re doing other things. But I gotta be honest, this podcast is not growing. It’s been several years and it’s really just not grown. 

And that’s okay. I know that the fruit of it is those of you that are coming, and I thank you for coming. And I know that there is fruit. That comes out of these episodes, but in terms of growing catholic mom calm and getting it to more people, which is my mission, right?

That’s what God has asked me to do, is to help moms. Manage their minds so they’re not stressed all the time, and so that they see themselves the way that he sees them. I have to do something else. And so I’m going to try to build a YouTube channel. Okay? I’m gonna try to build up a Catholic Mom Calm YouTube channel, and I’m gonna start making content for that channel.

And then what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna take the audio from those YouTube videos and put them on the podcast. And what I’m noticing, ’cause I’ve already filmed several of them, what I’m noticing is they’re shorter. They’re more like five to seven minutes because I’m making a very tight point and my hope, eventually, is to be posting three of these shorter videos on YouTube every week.

And so what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna extract the audio from that, and I’m gonna put them here, but they’re gonna sound, I think, a little bit different because normally here I’m generally taking up 15 to 20 minutes. And I’m giving more details and more stories and more examples, but I can tell that in the YouTube space it’s not quite the same.

And so I’m gonna make content for them and I’m gonna put it here. And I think you might really like it. You might really like how tight it is. And then you basically might get three slightly smaller episodes a week. But oh man, I just filmed one about why. It would be ridiculous if your kids wanted to pay the mortgage. It’s so good. So look for that. 

Not yet. I think it’ll be next week, so not yet, but next week if you wanna help me, it would be very helpful if you would go to YouTube and you would search for a Catholic mom and then find one of my videos and click on it, because that is how you grow. YouTube channel.

It does. Like if I were to put my YouTube channel link in the show notes here, then you would click on it and go, YouTube doesn’t really count that very much because it’s like, well, those people came from a different platform. YouTube wants YouTube people to like it. So I will tell you, and I hope you will help me, and I know that you will to kind of make a big splash over there when it’s time.

It’s not time. The videos will end up dropping this week, and so on the podcast next week, I’ll say, okay, go. Team Catholic mom calm, go and search for Catholic mom and click on that, just so it knows that, you know, we’re real and we have people who wanna see that content. And then you’re all  welcome to watch those there for sure. But I will put them here.

And it’s gonna be great. I think it’s gonna be really powerful and I’m gonna see if I can’t grow our presence there to reach more moms. That’s my mission. That’s what I’m trying to do, and I want to help moms, not be so unhappy. I always say, if we’re not the good moms who are the good moms, isn’t it ridiculous that we are walking around feeling like bad moms? That’s crazy. It feels so backwards. So I just wanna help the world with all of that. 

All right. I love you. Thank you so much for listening. I’m praying for you. Please pray for me and have a blessed day.