So I’m definitely team planning. I’m definitely team house systems so that running your home feels more smooth, and so that your kids and your husband, people have some sense of expectations around, “Okay, this is how we run the home. These are the systems that we are executing.”

But I want you to know, I feel totally fine not having a plan and not having a system. And I realize that I don’t identify myself as an A-type personality or a planner, and I often hear women describe themselves that way.

And while I’m sure there is a very healthy version of that, I do think that it is often that a child who grows up in a home where there is a lot of chaos and they don’t have control over their lives, they end up becoming adults who feel this iron grip around the idea of planning and needing a plan and needing to know what is going to happen.

Of course, it is true that all brains don’t like uncertainty. Our brains would be very happy if we just knew exactly what’s going to happen. Maybe not. I think in God’s goodness He knows that if we actually could see the whole future, it wouldn’t be good for us, which is why we don’t get to see the future.

But right now, you have some sense of what the next couple years is going to look like. And it was interesting, and maybe I said this on the AI episode, but they were saying one of the things that is so disruptive or upsetting about AI is that the humans are feeling like they cannot predict what life is going to be like in five years.

We know it’s going to change at this, like, rapid lightning pace. It hasn’t yet, but we know big things are gonna change, but we can’t predict what it is, and so there’s some uncertainty there. So the skill that we actually can grow is being at peace with uncertainty without having a plan.

And of course, there’s everything from your plan for the day or the week, all the way out to your plan for your life, or specifically I think the next five years. I think our brains most often focus on that point.

So while it is, I think, a good thing to plan, if the planning is coming from scarcity or anxiety or this kind of gripping sense of fear that if you don’t have a plan, you will not be okay, that is very likely rooted in woundedness. And when we find something that’s rooted in woundedness, we don’t have to freak out. It’s not a big deal. It doesn’t necessarily have to take a long time to heal that wound.

And I’m not taking the skill of planning away from you. I actually really like planning. I do a lot of planning. I’m very proud of how we run our home and the systems that we have. But if you took them all away, if you put me into a totally different house in a totally different place, and I had no idea what the next 90 days was going to look like, I could coach myself through that. I would be okay. I could walk around and have peace.

I like to have a better sense of what’s coming. I like having plans, but I don’t consider myself a person who needs one in order to feel okay. And remember, the feeling that you have in your body is coming from your thinking.

So you think that making the plan makes you feel calmer. But the truth is, you make a plan, then you have this thought, “I have a plan,” and that thought creates some version of safety in your body. Because you could have the thought, “I don’t have a plan, and that’s okay. I’ll figure it out when I get there.” And that could also create a sense of being at peace in your body.

And the Bible has so many examples of this, right? The Bible has so many examples of God giving people kind of vague instructions where they don’t get to know. And the Israelites come to mind as obviously, like, the biggest example of that.

And of course, they wanted to know what was happening, but He didn’t tell them. They just had to trust Him, and they had to have peace in their bodies while trusting Him. And you could see the times that they lost their peace. There were many times where they questioned the Lord, and they did not walk with Him.

And then, of course, Abraham and Isaac. And that’s knowing the plan, but not wanting what you think is coming. And, but Abraham still was at peace while he was walking up the mountain thinking he was going to have to kill Isaac. He was like, “This is God’s will. I’m willing to do God’s will. God is good. I trust Him. I believe He has a plan for me that is the best plan.”

So knowing that you are going to be okay in any situation. And that feels very big to get your brain on board with being okay in any situation. And the truth is, you don’t have to be okay in extreme situations, probably. I mean, most of us are not going to experience some of those very, very unusually difficult things in life.

But probably you’re gonna be absolutely fine in every situation that God puts you in, and you’re gonna have everything that you need, and you’re gonna know what you need to do minute by minute. There are some instances where we don’t know how the rest of the day is gonna go. Maybe you’re on a road trip and your car breaks down, and now there’s quite a bit of uncertainty, right?

But you can be at peace in that situation telling yourself, “Okay. Well, the first step is I have to call someone and get help. I have to figure out where we are, and is there a tow truck? Is there a mechanic? Are any of my friends nearby?” And that’s all you need to know right then.

So schooling is happening for a lot of people, and there might be some uncertainty about that, family schedules. The person I was coaching, it was her husband’s job. Her husband’s job might change, and they may have to move somewhere else, and so her brain was having a lot of thoughts about, “Well, but I really wanna know what’s gonna happen in the next two years.”

And it’s not a problem that we have a desire to know. Again, brains want more information. They like to predict what’s coming. They want to feel a sense of security and safety. But you have to respond to your brain and say, “But if we don’t get to know, we’re going to be okay. And if I can’t hyper-plan my life, I’m going to be okay. The planning is not what creates peace in my body. I create peace in my body by the thoughts that I have.”

And of course, I think the thoughts that we should have are ones that are aligned with walking very closely with the Lord. But we know that walking very closely with the Lord involves us trusting Him and being at peace and in acceptance of whatever is happening. It’s not, “I’m gonna be upset, and rail against the Lord, and resist what’s happening, and doubt Him, and demand to know what’s happening in the next month, year, two years, five years.”

So I do think it’s interesting if you consider yourself an A-type person if that’s coming from woundedness. The planning part tends to come from woundedness. I think the. Sometimes the overachievers come from. You know, in my childhood, I received these messages that if you work really hard, and you’re a good girl, and you get good grades, and you’re very performative, you’re more worthy of love or attention.

And so those two childhoods are very different, right? One is chaos. One is being rewarded, getting attention for being a high performer. Both of them might look like a person who plans really well.

But I want you to see that I’m this other person, which is neither I plan because I have to do that in order to feel okay, nor do I feel like I need to perform in order to be worthy of love or attention or anything like that. I just really want you to know that there is this really grounded, healthy version of you. That is at peace in your life.

And again, I do plan, and in a lot of ways I think I am very productive and ambitious. I just don’t need to be. I don’t make that mean anything about me, good or bad. For me, I’m always talking to the Lord. I mean, I do every day ask the Lord, “Hey, what are we doing today, Lord?”

And I ask him what he wants me to do. Although a lot of times he gives me states of being as the answer, like, “Be at peace today.” Sometimes he tells me a task to do, but most often it’s just, “Know that I love you. Be at peace.” And I like telling my children, “Be the light of Christ in every room that you are in.” I think that is a really great goal for all of us. You bring the light of Christ everywhere you go. Can people tell?

So if you discover that your planning or hyper-productivity is from woundedness, you know, you can grab a Bob Schuchts book, you could grab Bria Hannan’s something about the inner child. And I’ve said before, if you do Bria Hannan’s book, do one chapter a month. Like, it’s deep work. You don’t just read that book.

Not a lot of time, but I want your brain to really, like, read one concept and think about it. You can listen to Restore the Glory, which is, you know, Bob Schuchts’ podcast with Jake Kim. Both of them are psychologists, and they talk about psychology from a Catholic perspective and healing wounds. But I just really think it’s as simple as inviting Jesus into the wound.

I often go, “When, when is the first time that I remembered this or the most painful time that I remember?” Wanting for the hyper-planner, it would be seeing that there was so much chaos around me, and I didn’t have control.

When was the youngest time I felt like I can’t control what’s happening around me? And for the hyper-performer, it would be, when did I first receive the message that I am good and better and I get more attention or love if I perform well?

And then you just relive that moment with the Lord, and you ask him to heal it and to tell you the truth. We call it revisiting a memory, and you just revisit a memory. I like to imagine it like I’m looking at it on a movie screen, and the Lord is sitting next to me in the theater, and he’s just walking me through what was happening.

And he tells me usually about myself and anyone else in the story, what was really happening, and what I can think about it now. It’s like you just have to go back and help your child self make sense of it. But it takes five minutes.

Now, if you had many painful memories, you might have to do that 10 times. But wouldn’t 10 healing sessions of five minutes, and I would do them. I would only do one a day, be worth you setting down this anxiety, this iron grip on the idea that you are a planner, you have to plan everything. We need to have a plan. It shouldn’t come from that feeling.

For me, planning feels light and playful. Like, “Oh, what are we doing this year?” We’re signing the girls up for a drama class. I’m really excited about that, for the whole year. So they work on, you know, drama, and then they produce a play at the end of the year.

We’ve never done that before, and it’s Monday nights, and so I’ve been thinking about the rhythms of our family and what that’s gonna look like, and dinner, and. But I bring this, like, lightness to it. It feels like a gift to my future self to do planning, but I don’t feel this, I need to do it, something bad will happen if I don’t do it.

And again, it’s funny because the world really rewards planners and performers. So we may live like this for 20, 30 years without realizing it’s a distorted behavior that’s coming from woundedness.

And then when you heal the wounds, by the way, you might still be a person who likes to plan. It will just come from a very different feeling, and you won’t feel so attached to the plans also. And that’s where I got that mom.

She said the most beautiful thing. She said, “I really want to provide my children with roots and stability.” And her brain was saying, “If we move every two to three years, my kids will not have roots and stability.” And I said, “You are their mom. You bring roots and stability everywhere you go.”

And it was a powerful moment for the group because I think they really understood, oh, yeah, like her brain was creating this external thing that had to happen. But she could create rhythms and artwork in the home and traditions that happened no matter where they’re living so that the children felt this amazing identity around their family.

Like, “This is our family. This is what we do, and we do it no matter where we live. And my mom provides stability for me.” And she fully acknowledged she wasn’t doing that because she was so upset about having to move. They had moved a couple times and, and she was worried they were gonna have to move again.

And that’s all of us. I mean, all of us would have those thoughts. So I really want you not to feel shame about a lot of the negative thoughts that you’re having. It’s normal that those thoughts come up, but the thoughts come up and then we get to redirect them.

We get to choose which ones we plant and water, and I just love thinking, you know, I create roots and stability for my kids. I can handle life without a plan. It’s okay that I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m really good at tolerating uncertainty, right? It’s just a capacity issue. You have. Like, for example, if you were to train yourself, you know how kids do it, where they see how long they can hold their breath underwater?

And you might start off at 37 seconds, and then eventually make it to a minute. Maybe make it to a minute and a half, right? You’re increasing your body’s capacity to be able to hold your breath. It’s a skill, and you can practice it, and you can grow that skill. The same thing is true for the skill of tolerating uncertainty.

And right now, it might feel really small and tight, and your brain might say, “We need a lot of certainty.” But that’s not true. You don’t. And you could get better at tolerating uncertainty and still being at peace in your body. And I know that you want that.

So one of the things that I think is really great about being in the Catholic Mom Calm membership is you never know what the Holy Spirit is gonna bring to a call, right? We had that amazing concept of you bringing roots and stability come out in a call, and we have 10 major concepts probably that we touch on in every call.

And there’s just something so powerful about being the kind of woman who wants to improve her life and listens to coaching calls and is open to that kind of wisdom. And not all the wisdom applies to everybody. But there is something in every call for everybody. Every woman gets something out of every call.

And I just think listening to coaching, whether it’s live or the replay, I’m telling you, it doesn’t matter. But spending an hour a week listening to coaching so that you genuinely begin to see, oh, the way that I think is creating my experience of my life.

So right now, if you are not happy with how your life feels, I can help you change that. And you should have seen this woman was on the verge of tears, and by the end of me coaching her, she looked so radiant. She was smiling. She had hope. Something really shifted in her brain. And she had this newfound, like, mission, like, “Yeah, I bring roots and stability to my kids.”

And probably she will also go and work on discovering whether her identity around being a planner and planning and wanting a plan is coming from woundedness or not. I don’t do that with people on the call. I think that that is something that needs to be done prayerfully, quietly, not in front of other people, and so I will give them that as homework.

But this is the value of coaching. And listening to real women ask real questions about what they are thinking, ’cause that’s what they do. They show up and they say, “Sterling, blah, here’s what my brain is giving me, and it’s making me feel terrible.”

Because at this point they understand that their thoughts are creating their results, that their thinking is creating their experience of their life. They may not be able to see the thinking clearly for what it is or how to change it. That’s what I help them with.

But almost all of our testimonials are around, “I’m so much calmer. I have so much more peace in my life.” And you will notice that the way that we market the program is often around planning and systems, because that’s what women think that they want. They think that they want planning and systems, which I will teach you how to do that. It’s just not actually the problem.

The problem is you keep thinking external things in your life are creating how you feel in your body, how you are experiencing life, and it’s not true. The greatest control that you could ever have is controlling your mind so you control how you feel.

And I just think Mary was the best at this, and then we have a lot of incredible examples from saints who were also really good at this, being in difficult situations and managing their minds and just trusting the Lord.

Because the only thing we really, really, really are is made by God. We were made from love. He had so much overflowing love that he poured it into creating human souls. That’s who we are, and we were made in the image and likeness of God. And then the Holy Spirit lives inside of us. The Holy Spirit is part of us.

I just feel like we don’t talk about that enough. And that’s why we never need a plan, because we can go inside and talk to the Lord and say, “Lord, what should I do right now?” So kind of back to that car breaking down example, you could pray and let God guide you hour by hour, genuinely not knowing what was coming, and feel okay and feel safe.

And that is what I want for all of you guys. I want you to get to experience motherhood without gripping anxiety, panic, sadness, fear, shame, guilt, pressure. These are the primary emotions I hear from moms. And then after they put this work into practice, they say, “I handled it. I can’t believe how well I handled that day.”

One of my favorites is when they post in our Slack community like, “Oh my gosh, you guys, let me tell you what happened today,” and they will list these five crazy pants things, and they will just say, “I was calm. I cannot believe it, but I was calm through all of that.” And it is because they have done this work and they understand that their thinking creates the experience of their life. They don’t need a plan. They don’t need certainty. They can lean on the Lord.

And they can genuinely improve their lives. And you can still plan and have systems. I’m a big fan of those. One of my favorite things that we teach are protocols, and that is planning ahead of time for unusual things like a snow day or a migraine or throwing up because you’re first trimester pregnant or, you know, deciding ahead of time how you wanna live on those days. Protocols are really powerful, and we teach that in week one of our upcoming challenge.

So I love you. You’re doing a good job. You are a good mom. You’re not screwing the kids up. You’re doing better than you think And I know you care, I know you want to improve your life, but one of the things that will help you the most is paying attention to your thinking so that you can have more peace, you can be at peace in your life, and walk with the Lord with complete openness. We want to be women who receive what He has for us in any moment.

All right, my friends, scroll down to click the show notes if you wanna sign up for Catholic Mom Reset. We start September 6th, but our first call is September 10th, so you beginning anywhere in that window is totally fine because the assignment for week one is really simple. And I’m just really excited. I’m excited to turn the page from summer to fall. That’s one of my favorite things to do, and thank you so much for listening.

I’m praying for you. Please pray for me, and have a blessed day .