The Power of Choosing

Summertime. And it’s really easy to look on Instagram and see people, you know, going to Disneyland or renting a lake house and doing fantastical things with their kids. And it’s a sneaky way of feeling trapped to think, oh, I can’t do that. And so today I wanna talk about how you can shift your mind around that. And I will tell you that this is one of the biggest tools for finding freedom for enjoying your life. This is what Victor Frankel knew. When he was captured in a Nazi internment camp, he knew that he could control his mind.

He knew that he could choose how he wanted to show up in his life. And that’s why his book is so popular. And so I want you right now to think of something where you feel stuck or trapped, or you feel really yucky. I was talking to someone recently whose kid didn’t get into a private school and the private school was being extremely evasive about why, like they basically just didn’t tell her, which I think is kind of odd, but for whatever reason they had said no. And that feels really terrible. Again, that feels like, oh, I’m trapped. I’m stuck here. I can’t do what I want to do, but I will tell you that when you are in that state of mind, you’re gonna feel anger and sadness, and then your body doesn’t want to feel anger or sadness. So you’re probably gonna do a bunch of things to avoid those feelings. And usually the things we do to avoid our feelings are not helpful for our lives, right? Eating, drinking, scrolling, buying.

And so instead, I want you to ask yourself, what do I have control over here? And I want you to look for where you choose. I choose. So let’s go back to the husband, right? Actually I want to stay married. I believe in the Sacra sacrament of marriage. I believe that God called me to marry this guy. I choose. No one is making me stay. It is very much an option for me to leave. Now on the motherhood thing, two choices, one I could choose to leave. I think very few of us actually think about that. I’m not sure I’ve ever thought about packing up and leaving the kids.

I think the second choice is could I, could I go to work full time and hire someone to come and do the little kid circus full time for like five years? So I really didn’t have to do the majority of it. And in the beginning of our parenting journey, we chose not to do that. Even if my husband had come and said, Hey, all right, I found the money we can bring in someone. You can go to work. We’ll have somebody watch the little kids I would’ve said no, I chose. And then later when I was on bedrest and we did bring in a nanny to help, I did choose that too.

And I was so grateful for being able to make that choice. Now let’s go to the vacation example. You absolutely probably could get a credit card and put a five to $8,000 vacation on your credit card and take your kids wherever , or maybe you actually have the money and you’ve kind of earmarked it for something else, but you could just use that money to take your kids somewhere. This is not a moral issue. There’s not a right or wrong how we spend our money. But when you’re looking at Instagram and you’re feeling trapped and you’re feeling terrible about not taking your kids somewhere for the summer, it’s stealing your peace and you’re acting like you don’t get to choose, but we always get to choose my husband. And I have never chosen to take an expensive vacation with our young children. Because at the moment we did not believe that we would have a good time. So we’ve gone camping with them. And we have taken, I think, three cross country trips in the minivan to visit his extended family. And we stayed with someone and we probably, at some point, had the money to take them on a Schmaier vacation, but we chose not to.

And so I want you to look at your life and look at what feels constraining or restricting or anywhere where you think you don’t have a choice. And I want you to see the choice that you do have.

Now let’s go back to the school example. Let’s say, you really did want your kid to go to a school. And they said, no, well, you have two choices. One, you could fight it. You could kind of press and be like why. And you could make friends with the right people and maybe buy someone a gift bag. Or I don’t really know how that works, but I’m pretty sure there’s a way that you could change their minds if you really wanted to. And the second thing is you could decide, you know, what? If they don’t think my kid is a good fit, maybe that isn’t the place for him right now, either because I don’t want him to be there or because I really respect and value those teachers. And maybe they see something that I don’t see. I choose.

Now, there are some things that happen that we cannot affect. People pass away. Unexpectedly people get hurt in car accidents. We don’t get to choose those things, but we always, we always get to choose what they mean in our lives. How we’re gonna show up, how we’re going to react, how we’re going to keep living our lives. And that is the power of Victor Frankel’s work. Because even though he was in a concentration camp where on the outside, you’d say there’s very little choice. He chose to have peace in his mind. He chose to think about the future. He chose to give meaning to the circumstance and he knew he was like, I’m gonna get outta here and I’m gonna teach other humans how to have meaning in their life. So this never happens again. So we can always take a circumstance in our life, like an unexpected or tragic one. And we can respond in a way that honors that thing that we went through. And I will tell you that the most unhappy we are as humans is when we feel helpless. There’s nothing I can do. I am stuck here. And I used to think and say those things a lot. I used to be in a very dark victim mentality place about a lot of things.

And every once in a while, I’ll slip back into it. But I, now I feel it very clearly in my body like, Ooh, you’re being in pouty pants right now. , that’s what I call it. You’re being a potty pants. You’re acting like a teenager, no disrespected teenagers, but a lot of teenagers, you know, kind of wanna blame all the people around them instead of taking responsibility for things. At least I did a ton when I was a teenager. So maybe that’s why it feels that way to me. And I just asked myself, where is your power? What do you control? Because God has set the stage. God said, all right, Sterling, here’s the environment. Here’s the players. Here’s the tools that you have the resources. How are you gonna show up? You get to choose. You get to choose. If it’s prudent for your family to go on vacation or not. It’s not actually a moral issue that people who go on vacations raise better children, right? That’s not an absolute truth. And in my personal opinion, if what I want is a relaxing experience, I look for a lot of other ways to do that than hauling little kids in a car, to a different house or a hotel.

And some of you, my brother, he and his wife love to travel. And they have taken their kids all over the place and had a wonderful time. And that is exactly how they wanted to spend their money. And I really admire that about them. They’re so adventurous. So there is no right or wrong answer there, but I just don’t want you to feel trapped. So I want you to look around at your life. God has set the scene. God has put the players in. He’s given you whatever resources and tools, time, money, talent. He’s given you a certain kind of husband, certain kind of kids. What can you choose? How can you feel like you have agency power over how you show up in your life? Yesterday? We had some Oreos left over from the 4th of July and I had some on the 4th of July, but they were just sitting around yesterday the day after 4th of July. And I was not planning on eating them. And I felt so powerful every time I walked by them, I thought no one could make me eat those. I choose not to eat those. And it felt so great. You can choose not to watch certain shows on television. You can choose how you spend your money.

You can choose to take some deep breaths before responding to perhaps a hurtful comment that your husband said, and you could feel so powerful in that moment. I love that guy. He’s having a hard day. He probably didn’t mean that I’m gonna take a deep breath and I’m gonna respond calmly right back to the school example. We really do feel in those moments sometimes like we have no control, but there’s always control. I think you could double down and figure out how to get the kid into the school. Or I think you could choose that it probably isn’t the best place for the kid and have acceptance over that and, and go to work, choosing something else. We get to choose how we live. We get to choose what we experience in our minds. And I’ll tell you knowing how to do this feels amazing. And to me, I’m talking a lot about feeling powerful and that’s exactly how I felt. Every time I walked by the Orioles, I was like, Ooh girl, you are so powerful, but I will tell you to me, what it really means is that I have the great humility to accept whatever God has put in front of me. And to show up

With the fruits of the holy spirit. I see somebody’s going on a smancy vacation. I choose to feel love for them. My kid doesn’t get into the school that I want. I choose patience. My husband is having a bad day, and says something a little sharp to me. I take some deep breaths. I show up with gentleness. And so it’s interesting. I think they’re great. Power and humility. I think those two things are almost flip sides of the same coin because when our power is in trusting in God and surrendering our lives to him and showing up with peace and joy and love and self control, I think that’s the ultimate humility, cuz it’s the opposite of humility to say, oh, I really want this thing, but I can’t have it. Cuz we’re kind of telling God that he’s wrong and we’re acting as if he doesn’t give us everything. We need to fulfill the desires of our hearts. And he does. So it’s either not a full desire of your heart or he’s given you what you need. You need to figure out how to use it.

If I could give a gift to all of you, it would be the power of agency, the power to choose the ability in your mind to decide how you’re gonna show up in your life. And I would hope that you would use this control, this power to try to walk closely with the holy spirit and exhibit the fruits of the holy spirit in your life. To use those as a gauge for me, I know that I’m walking closely with the Lord when that’s what I see show up in my life, the fruits of the holy spirit. I think the holy kind of control that we long for is controlling how to show up no matter what God puts in front of us. And we see that time and time again with the saints, they were very good at doing that. So in the month of July and August, we are focusing on the holy spirit. We just had our first class, which is recorded and put up in the membership. That class is an hour, but all the rest of them will be more like 10 minutes. And for two whole months, we’re learning how to talk to the holy spirit, how to ask for the gifts, the seven gifts of the holy spirit, how to actually receive them

And then how to look for the fruits to see if we are on track. This is how God desires us to live controlling our minds, trusting him and exhibiting the fruits of the holy spirit. So if you were feeling stuck or frustrated or helpless in some area of your life, I would just encourage you to come join us. It is such a beautiful place just yesterday. I was doing coaching on my husband, wants to get a dog, but I don’t wanna get a dog. My husband wants to have sex more than I want to, but I’m been breastfeeding for 17 months and I’m struggling. My mother-in-law shows up unannounced. What do I do about that? I’m trying to get my business off the ground, but I’m tired. And I feel guilty about working when my kids are watching TV. These are the kind of things that we talk about that people feel safe enough to talk about. And we talk about them as a group and we always point you to the Lord cuz the Lord is always the answer and we will show you how you can create agency in your own life. What you do have control over

How you can show up with more of those fruits of the holy spirit. Masters is not a religious membership where we do Bible studies. Masters is a life coaching membership where we teach you how to manage your mind and it will change your life. I think a lot of you have heard how it changed my life and how it changed Larissa’s life. And we see that over and over again with our members. So I want you to consider joining us. I know a lot of you think the summer is too busy, but I actually think the summer is the perfect time to practice managing your mind and being flexible because that’s what the summer requires. A lot of you are perhaps yelling a bit more than you wanted to over the summer and we can help you with that. We can help you walk closely with the Lord so that you feel really loved by him. And when we do that, our life has a lot more peace and love and joy and gentleness and faithfulness and self-control all right, mamas. I’m praying for you. Remember you are Made for Greatness.