Why do I fail when I have the best of intentions | 54

The reason faith alone does not suffice is because you cannot live your faith if you haven't done the personal development work. It's confession time. Raise your hand if you've ever gone to church, and while you're there to receive the life-giving word of God and become a better person, you are criticizing what someone is wearing. Or you're criticizing the priest or the pastor that's speaking and doesn't even know what he's talking about. Raise your hand if you have left church that day, and as soon as you got in the car, you got a little bit of road rage because somebody got in front of you and you're like, "What the heck, man? They just left church and look at them." But then you're kind of doing the same thing. Now raise your hand if you have ever like gone to a retreat and decided, "That's it, I'm a new person. I am ready to become a docile wife." and an amazing mom who doesn't lose her cool. And as soon as you get in the car with your family, your kids trigger the crap out of you and you scream at them. I am guilty of all of the above, all of them. I've done all those things and then some. And why? Why do I fail when my intention is to live my faith and be Christ-like and just shine bright? The light of God that lives within me, that is on fire, starting with my family and then extending to the rest of humanity? Like, why do I fail when I have the best of intentions? Why do you fail when you have the best of intentions? And that's what today's episode is about. I am going to explain to you why faith is not enough. I am going to prove to you that being religious, going to church, doing the thing, reading the Bible, going to retreats, meditating, reflecting, praying every single day is not enough. As powerful as that is, why is it that when you commit to, to engaging with that spiritual life, you still are not measuring, like, up. You're, you're still falling, falling short. Why, my friend? The reason faith is not enough is because we are human beings. We are in this body. We have this mind. We have imperfections. We, we are not the spirit that God created to His image and likeness alone. That is part of us, that is within us. And the idea is that we use this life to tap into that and to become just that, like to unbecome the things that we've become in our flesh so that we may go back to the beginning. When we were born, when we were co-created with God in the womb of our moms, When we opened our eyes to this world, we were perfect. We were created to God's image and likeness. We were pure. We were perfect. That's why we ought to be like children, Jesus said. So what happened? What happened that we have all these struggles nowadays? Well, imagine that you have a whole bunch of Post-it notes in your life, and you've been putting them on your forehead, on your cheeks, on your body, your shoulders, your arms. You have been assuming and owning. Imagine those Post-it notes are like identities, adjectives, nouns, like things that describe you. With experiences that you've gone through, you've decided, oh, I'm not good enough as an athlete, in math, singing with words. I don't measure up. I don't have what it takes. I'm not the smart one of the family. I'm not very creative. Like, or I am athletic. I am good in math. I am— you've decided who you are. And in psychology, we call that ego, personality, identity. We have built and created our personalities. That's not something we were born with. We have genetic predispositions and all the good stuff, but Ultimately, the ego, as opposed to the spirit, is something that is self-created. Esto es un invento, mi gente. Like, we made it up, this whole personality thing. We have experienced life, and through the experiences that we've had, by what our parents told us, what other people around us told us, what we heard consistently became a belief about who we are. And then ultimately, created the reality that we live. Like, oh, this is who I am. This is how I am. But is that 100% true? Is that flawless and never-changing and eternal? No, it is not. That is why you are able to change who you have always been. That is why you should never, ever— please promise you will not do this again. You should never say, that's who I am, that's how I am. That can be changed. If who you have been and how you have been is getting in the way of who you desire to become based on that guidance you're receiving from your inner wisdom, from the Holy Spirit inside of you, then my friend, that's not serving you anymore. It served you at some point because I promise that the reason you've built this identity and this ego is because it worked at some point. But the moment it stops serving you is the moment you get to reflect on, oh wait, do I need to recalculate, make a U-turn? If you've heard my podcast before, you know that's an analogy I use for God's guidance. Sometimes we see signs all over saying, uh, that's not the path. Recalculate, make a U-turn, go a different route. So the reason faith alone does not suffice is because we are human beings who have experienced trauma. And now trauma may be with big T for those like sexual abuse or physical abuse, emotional abuse, or tragedies, you know, things that like events that are traumatic in our lives that we've experienced that marked us. We may have experienced trauma with a big T like no questions asked, that's trauma. Or we may have experienced just trauma with little t. Now, here's the thing. If you are a human being, you have experienced trauma, period. And trauma with little t is that sense of like somewhere along the lines you learned or you believed that you're not good enough, that you don't have what it takes, that this is not you, nobody loves you, you'll never find love. And then, of course, confirmation bias. Life makes sure that it confirms whatever we believe. And we've talked about this plenty in previous episodes. So you have believed something because it's been repeated. Remember, we talked about this a few episodes ago, where something is repeated consistently, whether it's by your parents or family members or friends or yourself, your mind. And then that sentence that pops up in your mind or that people told you, if it's recurring and repetitive, it becomes a belief. A belief is a repeated sentence that we call thought. And then that belief, if repeated, if you continue to engage with it and nurture it, it becomes reality. So then you prove, you confirm, confirmation bias. You prove that you are who you thought you were, but are you? Like, what if you decided to prove something else? And this was another episode in the past couple of months. What if you decided that you were going to confirm that you are enough, that you have what it takes, that you can afford it, that you were born to do this? What if? Quick interruption to invite you to reignite the spark in your marriage. If your relationship has gone a little dull and you've been consumed by routine and busyness and kids and logistics and all the things, and you're ready to feel deeply connected to your spouse again and to feel not the butterflies but the fireworks, I got you. Go to reignitemarriage.com and meet me for just 1 month and leave equipped to build the fulfilling relationship that you said "I do" to. And by the way, it's only $397 for the entire month. I have never ever offered such an inexpensive program, but I felt guided to do so this time because I want to make sure I help you bless your marriage. Now back to the episode. Gosh, I remember there was a time that I, I couldn't even run a mile without stopping. I just couldn't. I would get too tired. And I didn't like running. I hated running, actually. And I thought I just couldn't. I'm just not the kind of person who can run a marathon. Kudos to you who can, but that's not my thing. That's not my gift. And then Fofi died, my daughter. And I was invited to— well, my friends were going to run a marathon in her honor. A half marathon in her honor. And I was invited to participate. And I was like, oh, how do I say no to honoring the memory of my daughter? I must. I have to do this. So I trained for that half marathon with my friend, Caro, who also didn't run. She didn't even exercise at that time. Now it's a completely different story. And I ran the half marathon. I did it. I was a little miserable while doing it because I hadn't done the belief work, but I did it. And then a couple of years later, her dad passed away, and her dad was the love of her life. So I wanted to show Caro, who knew how much I hated running and I had sworn I would never run a half marathon or a marathon or anything again, I wanted to show her, like, my solidarity, my love for her. Like how much I cared about this loss that she was experiencing. And I decided to accompany her in running. I thought I was committing to a half marathon for her dad. It turns out that then she's like, oh, by the way, I'm doing the full. But this time, when I committed to doing the full marathon, I was like, OK, this time I'm going to enjoy it. I have to. And in order to enjoy it, in order to be really good at it, and have a great time in the journey, in the process, I need to believe that I am a great runner, that I am a runner, period, and that I love to wake up early in the mornings, which that wasn't necessarily the case. And I just have to tell myself a lot of stories that I didn't believe. I didn't believe I was a morning person. I'm a night owl, I would always think. I didn't believe I was a runner. In fact, I hated it. I didn't think I was capable. Well, I needed to change all those beliefs, all that identity, in order to step into this new identity of, I am a runner, and I love to wake up early in the mornings and witness the sunrise while I'm training for the marathon. I got this. I needed to believe that in order to enjoy the process. So I changed my identity. I went from a non-runner, non-morning person, to embodying all of it as my truth. So all those personalities, traits, identities that we have built ourselves and accompanied by the community that we are surrounded with, beginning with our family of origin, all that is not permanent. I was going to say not real, but I know it feels really real for you. But it's not permanent. It's not eternal. It's not, it's not who God created to His image and likeness. You are limitless, unstoppable. If you tap into the indwelling God, forget a marathon. You can, you can do an Ironman, no problem. You can, you can do all things, all things. So the reason you are not being able to be where you desire to be, accomplish the things that you want to accomplish, and step into the purpose and the bigger life, the greatness that God created you for, is not because you lack faith. It's because your faith is not enough to help you heal, to help you transform, to help you reinvent the human side of you. For that, you need tools, real science-backed tools, practical things that will help you create awareness. Oh, the reason I'm not where I want to be is because I don't think I'm worthy enough. And that belief is preventing me from taking opportunities that are going to help me step into that greatness. Or this lack of worthiness is holding me back and is creating fear, which is keeping me stuck. Or in thinking energy, I think about it and I kind of want it, but can I? Do I? We start create— we create doubts and discouragement. We give up because we don't think we're worthy of it. So here's the thing. If we were not spiritual beings having a human experience, experience, then we'd be good. Faith is enough, because faith is, is the greatest, greatest gift. But because we are having a human experience, because we are in this flesh, and in this world, we experience trauma. And trauma exacerbates triggers, which are like irrational unconscious reactions that don't necessarily make us respond in the most Christlike way, right? Like sometimes when we're triggered by something that we didn't like, it reminded us of something that, like, let's say, I always say that there's two umbrella triggers, like two major ones. One is that I'm not good enough belief or trigger. And the other one is the I don't matter one. So the I'm not good enough trigger is usually experienced by people who, I don't know, like your spouse comes, you've been cleaning all day and your spouse comes home and points out at the one thing you forgot to clean that day. And you're like, concho le, like no matter what I do, it's never good enough to him. I'm never gonna measure up. Or maybe this happens at work where you were like busting your butt working on something really important. And then your boss comes and notices the one thing that you did not get right. And then you feel like, that's it, I can't measure up. Like your kids, maybe. You do everything for your kids, and then suddenly they feel you're not loving them enough, or the way you need them to, or they don't appreciate what you do for them. You feel like, that's it, I'm never going to measure up. I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy enough. I don't have what it takes. Right? Like, so if that's something that constantly, like, invades your mind, then that's typically the main trigger that you experience. And then the other trigger, the other umbrella trigger, is the "I don't matter." And these are the people that don't feel considered or taken into account, or, you know, I didn't matter enough for you to stick around. Like, you know, let's say your parents went through a divorce and your dad left you You left your mom, but he kind of left you too. And you feel like, gosh, like, I wasn't— I didn't matter enough for him to come back and pick me up and spend time with me. Or perhaps you are married and you find out that your spouse made plans with friends or with your in-laws. And you find out about the plans through them because your spouse did not tell you anything. And you feel like, Gosh, you couldn't think about running this by me or consider me or taking me into account and, you know, letting me know so that I could partake in the planning. Or maybe someone gets late to a meeting that you had with them or a lunch and you are like, they don't care. They're disposing about my, you know, they're disposing of my time. They don't give a crap about my time. Like whenever you feel those things, those are triggers. That's in the I don't matter category. Or like, oh, they said they were gonna call me and they didn't call me, right? Like whenever those things like bother you a lot, like bother you so much that it's hard for you to regulate your emotions, the emotions that are exacerbated by that, that's usually the I don't matter trigger. So we have all these triggers that are typically, they typically stem from our childhood, from our family of origin, from our experiences as a younger person, or even from trauma. And we're not even aware. In fact, they're called unconscious triggers. And if you heard the podcast on Fuse, then you're familiar with that. It was one of the first podcasts, and it's my intellectual property and one of the most powerful concepts that I've been able to acquire as a result of doing this for so long. And unconscious triggers are like— we're like puppets to them. They're controlling them. So imagine, imagine that they're like the person controlling you, right? Like if you were a puppet. So then those triggers that are unconscious, so you're not even aware of them necessarily, you know, whenever they— whenever the person who's controlling you as the puppet— or in this case, the trigger, right, is the person controlling you in this analogy. You lift the hand and you lift the other arm and you lift the leg and you open your mouth and you said the thing and you screamed. And you do all these things involuntarily, unknowingly, unconsciously with your kids, with your spouse, with your loved ones, with your parents, even with yourself in your mind, with ruminations. You do all of this because you don't even know that there's a trauma that you're reacting to. And my friend, we are human beings, and human beings have the power and capacity to respond. We are responsible, response-able. We have the ability to respond to life circumstances. But when we have no awareness, of what's been triggered and what we're reacting to, we are reactive, reactive like animals, as opposed to responsible, responsible. So the reason faith alone does not suffice is because you cannot live your faith if you haven't done the personal development work. You cannot live your faith. You cannot be Christ-like. You cannot be grace. You cannot be love and kindness. You cannot be forgiveness. You cannot have peace, the peace that surpasses all understanding. You cannot be generous. You cannot serve in the capacity that you were created to if you haven't done the personal development work. Because even though you have the intention, your belief, your heart, the inner part of you as a human being, including what's in your mind, will not allow you to do a good job in practicing your faith. You won't even understand what having faith means. Let me give you examples. If I am a woman of faith and I go to church to— in my case, I'm Catholic, so I go to receive the living body of Christ, in the form of the Eucharist. Some of you, my dear Christian brothers and sisters, and other people from other religions, go to church to receive the life-giving word of God, right? Like through scripture and reflection, or you go there to have an encounter with the Holy Spirit through worship and music. Whatever your reason, you go there to connect. You go there to become one with. But then when you're there, you're triggered by this person that you can't stand who's living in, you know, sitting in the front pew. And you are like, you're, you feel like scandalized by the one who's wearing very short shorts to go to church. How dare she? And, you know, like we're judging. And judgment, guess what, is not how we live our faith. Do not judge. Do not look for the speck on the eye of the other person when you have a whole tree inside yours, right? Like, we know judgment does not come from God. That's not living your faith. How about when your spouse triggers you, right? Like, he came home and saw the one thing that you didn't clean and pointed it out, or or your boss or your coworker, or someone didn't consider you, and you scream at them or say a couple things that you shouldn't have said, or you hold resentment in your heart and you harbor that and you let that contaminate your essence. It's reasonable from a human perspective. If I were your therapist, I'd be like, I hear you. I hear you. Like, I would feel the same way. And I would, because it's human. It's human to feel the feels. In fact, feeling is healing. So the idea in faith is not to not feel. Emotions are not bad or good. They're neutral. We must feel them to heal them. But many times we believe our emotions. And if we feel anger and resentment, resentment and envy and unforgiveness and all the things, we believe them to be true, just like we believe those thoughts that are just sentences. And by believing those emotions, we, instead of allowing the emotion to run through our body so that we can release it, and then from a place of centeredness and neutrality, from spirit, deciding how to move forward, we believe the emotion, we let it lead. And when you let the emotion lead, you cannot practice your faith. And again, emotions are not bad. In fact, I believe emotions are the compass God uses to guide us. In general terms, when we feel something consistently, I think that's God's way of entering our hearts and moving us to action. But emotions that are caused by a trigger, a reaction, like a hurt, like someone who you felt hurt by, or experiences, tragedies, or traumas that you experienced, those emotions are short-lived and they're just meant to flow through your body so that you can release them. Now, faith alone does not suffice because you haven't done the inner personal development work to be aware of your triggers, to create consciousness, awareness of why you feel the way you feel, why you feel resistance, or why you feel the, you know, the feelings, the negative feelings that you have towards a person that hurt you. Like, why is there so much anger? Why are you so easily triggered? Why are you so like, like, like a switch? Like you have a short fuse. You, when you gain awareness of that, that's the first big step to then knowing exactly how to address it. That's the first step. Awareness, psychology, coaching, personal development. It gives you tools to become aware. But then awareness alone is not enough. Okay, so now I know what the problem is, but how do I change it? How do I fix it? And that's where tools come in. Personal development tools, psychology tools, psychology theories that help you understand further why you think, feel, act the way that you do and why the people you love think, feel, act the way they do. Psychology gives you the answer to the humanness inside of you and the people around you. It helps you understand so that then you can be compassionate. But if you do not understand, if you cannot put yourself in their shoes, if you do not know where it is coming from, if you are just judging them as they are freaking crazy and that is it, period, they are evil, they are this, they are that, If you're just judging them and not understanding them, how could you be compassionate? And the only place in the Bible where it talks about us being perfect, like it invites us to be perfect, is where it says— it's the scripture, I never know exactly the book of the Bible where it's in, but the scripture in which Jesus is talking about loving your enemy because everybody can love their loved ones and their family and their friends. And, you know, anybody can love the people who are nice, but we're invited as Christians to love our enemy. And in that, like, after he says that, love your enemy, he says, therefore be perfect like your heavenly Father is perfect. And what he's referring to by perfection is mercy. Therefore, be merciful. In fact, I once heard that it was probably a poor translation, that it should have been merciful. But I think still it's interesting that the translation is perfect. Be perfect, be merciful, be compassionate. And in order to be perfect, to be merciful, to be compassionate, you need to understand the other person in front of you. You need to see their pain. You need to see the ache and the trauma in their hearts. And you get to do that with yourself too. So the reason faith alone does not suffice is because you cannot live your faith without doing the personal development work. And my friend, I would be sinning of omission if I didn't tell you that I am the answer to your prayer, and I have the answer and the solution to that problem of not being able to become the person God created you to be because faith has not measured up alone. Now, I will tell you, faith, when accompanied by personal development work, by consciousness, awareness, like accountability, responsibility, when accompanied by this work, by the tools that help us understand ourselves as humans, is unstoppable. Then faith becomes your superpower. Faith is my superpower. So today I want to directly and intentionally invite you to book a call with me at talktobetsy.com if you're ready to do the work of combining both psychology, practical tools, understanding why you and the people around you think, feel, and act the way that you do, and spirituality. And when I say spirituality, I'm not saying religion. I am unapologetic about my faith. I'm Christian, I'm Catholic, and I do have Christian language. So if you're turned off by Christian language, I'm not your girl. But if you want to connect spiritually with the indwelling God, which I call the Holy Spirit, if you wanna be one with God, not in theory, not conceptually, not because this is what I think it should be, but practically, like you wanna embody that faith, you wanna become Christ-like. If you wanna combine the two and you want to leverage the faith that you've been pouring into and nurturing through your religious practices or even like the practice of prayer or Bible, of meditation, if you are ready now to take the step of combining both of them, and becoming the person God created you to be, which ultimately really is unbecoming all those posted descriptions and identities that you've adopted throughout your life. If you're ready to unbecome your personality and tap into the spirit that God created to His image and likeness so that it can shine through your human body, so that you may be a vessel of good, of light, of kindness, of service, of mercy. I got you. Come to the call at talktobetsy.com and allow me to help you discern where is that gap? Like, where is the gap between who you are being and who you are meant to be? What is missing in your life? Because you've been feeling it. You've been feeling it like, you know, life is good. I'm stable, I'm good, no crisis. I can't complain. But there's something missing and you know it. There's a call to more. There's a desire to have a better relationship with your spouse. There's a desire to learn how to coach and support your children who are now grown and teenagers, young adults, like they're— they either have left the home or about to, and they don't need you anymore, but you still wanna support them and you don't know what that looks like and how to do that, I got you. I have the practical tools to help you understand them and guide them in this season they're in. I got you. I must, I must insist that if you feel in your heart that this message is for you, that you please book that call, talktobetsy.com. Notice you have to answer some questions, and those questions will help you discern if you're ready for this or not. And if you're not ready, no problem, you'll be guided to some resources. And if you're ready, you'll be guided to my calendar, and I would be delighted, delighted to support you in this. I live a very aligned, purposeful, fulfilling, peaceful, joyful life. If you know me, you know it's the real deal. I am the happiest woman on earth. And my friend, may I remind you that my life wasn't easy. I lost my daughter. If you are a mom or a dad, you know that that's probably what, the one pain you don't think you'd be able to survive. And I didn't think I could survive it myself either. But when you have this combo, when you have the faith and you're able to tap into the peace that surpasses understanding, the joy that depends not on external circumstances, and the indwelling God I call the Holy Spirit, and you're able to tap into that because you have the psychology tools, that help you recognize them, that help you become aware. If you have those two superpowers, you are unstoppable. And with unstoppable comes deep joy and peace. But if, on the other hand, you're a ball of anxiety and a worrywart, and you have faith, but you're so scared that something will happen to your kids, and you have faith, but you're scared of accepting that opportunity because you don't know if you're good enough. And you believe you're a faithful person, but if anxiety is part of your life, your faith is not strong enough, and it cannot be because you haven't done the inner work. We need to undo those beliefs that create the anxiety. We need to divorce the identity that believes you are an anxious person because you got it from your mom and your grandmother, and it's just part of you. It's who you are. I'm an anxious person. I have anxiety. Are you? Is that what God would create to His image and likeness? I don't think so. So this is an invitation for you to take the first step in gaining clarity on what God is calling you towards and how to become equipped with practical tools, science-based, science-backed tools a PhD-level education in psychology and become connected, which is the relationship with God. It's the spiritual part. And when you become connected to God, you become connected to yourself, and you become connected to the people around you. So this work will yield fulfilling relationships, a purposeful life, and the peace and joy that surpass understanding. Talktobetsy.com. I cannot wait to chat with you. I cannot wait to support you, and I cannot wait to be a witness to the transformation, the unbecoming that you are about to encounter. I love you. Have a beautiful day and make sure you share this with someone you love. Bye. That's it for today's episode. I loved, loved, loved spending this time with you, so thank you for joining me. If somebody came to mind while you were listening, bless them with this episode, send it to them. And if you may, please subscribe and leave a review. Those are really helpful to help us spread the message. And if you want to grow in faith and wisdom Join me at faithandgrowth.com. Thank you for spending this time with me. Love you. Bye.