68. Making Changes Can Feel Hard and Mindset Has a Way To Help

My dear friend, I feel like we could go through so many life freaking updates right now.

It is just goodness. It's goodness. And there is so much for me to learn as I'm going through this goodness.

And that can feel really hard. It can feel really freaking hard to make the changes that you want to make in your life. And sometimes it feels like the more tools and perspectives you bring into your life, the harder it feels for a moment, the harder it can feel for a short period of time. When you have more tools to use and you realize more areas of yourself that you want to work on and you're exposed to more perspectives that are available, it can feel hard for a minute. And that's kind of what I'm going through right now. It's. It's the. The hardship of understanding that we have room for improvement and we're not as fulfilled with who we've been as we thought we were. And we're realizing the areas that we'd like to improve and seeing the ways in which we can improve. Sometimes that can feel overwhelming. So if you're in a place like that, I wanted to create this podcast episode in the hopes that I could help you understand that mindset is about making the changes that you want to make. And faith comes into the picture so that you have faith bigger than fear, right? You have a vision that's so much greater than any possible limitation that might blip up into your mind. And we can have that. We can have great faith and an empowered mindset. And I believe with this, with the stronger faith that you have, the more positive mindset you're going to have, because you know everything's gonna be okay and you know that you're worthy, even if you're not perfect. And that's something that's important for me to remember, especially as I've started reading the Bible. That's one of the big life updates.

I'd love to share with you.

I started reading the Bible and there. It's amazing. It really is amazing. I started with the story the Book of Daniel, and I did that because one of my favorite songs. I'm blanking on the name right now. And there's a. There's a line in the song, though, and it goes, give me faith like Daniel in the lion's den. And I've heard that story, like, briefly. I've read it to the boys in the Children's storybook Bible. I've read that cover to cover. This is my level, and I love that. I love that book. If you Want a good place to start? The children's storybook Bible. Beautiful illustrations, wonderful stories, and there's just so much hope, like, in the pages of that. It's so beautiful. And now I have since graduated to a full Bible as of this weekend. So as I'm reading this Bible, I am realizing, like, I read. I read Proverbs 31, and it talks about, like, being this wife. And this version of the wife that.

It explains shows me several areas I could improve.

And I'm like.

And I read through some more of.

The Proverbs, which I just. I'm loving them. I really am loving them. And I was like, wowza.

Some of these explanations sound like I am the wicked that they are referring to. And some of the things that I do.

And it's been really humbling to see, like, just how much I could be improving too. And wow.

It can feel. It can feel hard.

It can feel a little bit overwhelming. And I just, I. I want you to know that I'm walking this road too, and I don't have all the answers, and I certainly don't have it all figured out. And I'm doing it anyway. I'm showing up, I'm trying. I'm allowing myself to not have a plan and just take it one step at a time. Right? What. What's the first step? Get a Bible.

There we go.

What's the next step? Well, I like that song. Give me faith. Like Daniel in the lion's den.

I could learn about that book. Like, okay, let's read that.

What's the step after that?

Let's read through the Proverbs.

They say that's a good way to live life.

Let's. Let's read through those. Like, oh, man. There are some areas for me to improve.

What's the next step? Well, focus on the ways that I can improve them. What's. What's practical for me, and to know that I'm already forgiven and that I don't need to beat myself up or tear myself down or give myself these harsh, crazy consequences and think that I'm not deserving and that I'm no longer worthy because I have shown up this way or live this way in my lack of awareness and really my ignorance to it all. Like, I don't need to make my life harder because of it. I can know better and do better and hold myself accountable and see where my errors have been and correct them. And I believe that that's something that we all can do. So in this episode, I really want us to think about one of my favorite quotes, and that comes back to, like, making these changes, the changes that we want to see in our life. And avoiding complacency, I think is really important for us to do, especially as.

Mothers, especially as wives, especially as women, especially.

So important for us to stay out of that complacent state. And it's a state of mind that we put ourselves in, and then our feelings stay complacent and our behaviors stay complacent, and our actions and outcomes stay complacent, and we experience the same cycle of things over and over and over again, not because we can't change them, but because we've been so complacent. And this quote refers to make take. Here we go.

This float. Let me say this correctly.

Make a choice to take a chance if you ever want anything to change. Make a choice to take a chance if you ever want anything to change. It's one of my favorite quotes. And it helps us to realize, like, all the change that we want, all these desires that we want to see fulfilled are not going to just magically happen. What do we need to do before that? Well, gosh dang it, we've got to take a chance. And what do we need to do before we're ever able to make to take that chance? We need to make a choice. We need to make a decision. We need to draw a line in the sand and sometimes dig our freaking heels in and say, this is my choice. This is who I am. This is the way I'm going to think. And with mindset work, it can feel so difficult because our mind plays like a record over and over and over again. It's so freaking repetitive. And. And you might be feeling right now that the negative thoughts playing are so loud and they're so strong. And that's valid. That's valid for you to feel that way. Just remember that not all of your thoughts are valid. Your feelings are valid. I'll give you that. Your thoughts are not always valid. They're not facts. That's one limited perspective. And as you shift that perspective around, maybe you realize, like, oh, my gosh, I was looking at a square from this angle, and. And now it looks like a circle from the back, and it looks like a straight line in this angle, and it's like an optical illusion where it tricks your eyes into believing this is the only way to see things, and it's just not true. There's always another perspective that we can take. And if you think about how many people are on this planet, and how many perspectives we would all have about the same circumstances. It's humbling. It's humbling to remember, like, wow, there's more than one way to think about this, and am I setting my ways in a harmful way and think about it that way? So if you think about the quote, you need to make a choice to take a chance. If you ever want anything to change and you consider what you'd like to change in your life, are you taking chances to make those changes? Are you making choices to take chances to make those changes? And sometimes that's where mindset and complacency get confused and mindset gets written off as this form of complacency, which is so, so bizarre to me. It's so bizarre to me. And to me, that is just the devil's conning way of doing things. The. The deceiving way of tricking us into thinking. Don't focus on your thoughts, don't focus on your mindset. You don't need any of that. Things are just are the way they are. And they want you to think about it this way so that you will just accept it the way that it is. And that's so not true. That's not true. We work on mindset, yes, to find acceptance. Absolutely. We need to have acceptance that our kids are gonna have tantrums. We need to have acceptance for the reality of life. And sometimes there's life, and sometimes there's death, and sometimes there's hardship, and sometimes there's ease. And that there's so much to be grateful for. And it's okay to have those hard moments. We need to have acceptance for all of that. And then the next step after acceptance is what you're going to choose to think about it. I accept that I had a miscarriage. I accept that. That's the reality. Before I had sweet little drewb, I had a miscarriage. And the reality was that what I chose to think about it is what changed my experience with the miscarriage. I refused to stay complacent. The complacency of woe is me, and I am the victim. And this shouldn't be happening to me. I don't deserve this. That is not the only perspective to take. The perspective that I decided to take through that experience was, wow, I have been thinking that I am just entitled to be pregnant and have a healthy pregnancy just because I say so, Just because I say, okay, I'm ready to be pregnant now, that that should just happen in an instant. And that's not the way that it works. It's just not. And it was. It was a very humbling and hard experience for me. And I'm so grateful for it because I find so much more just. Gosh, I just see how motherhood really is a gift, and all of our kids truly are miracles. Because the moment I thought I was about to have, you know, pregnant with my third baby, it was. It was stripped away from me.

Just as quickly as I felt the.

Joy and excitement of it happening, it was gone. And it was so humbling for me to realize of what. Wow. I. I really don't know what's gonna happen next. And as much as my mind thinks, oh, I'm pregnant, so I'm gonna have a healthy pregnancy, that's not a fact. And I'm not. I'm not entitled to have what I want just because I say I want it. And I. And I don't control everything. So when I allow myself to accept the circumstance of the miscarriage, and then I can take the next step of asking myself, okay, Tess, what are you gonna think about it? I can help myself. That's the opposite of complacency. That is the activity of showing up in life as who I want to be and feeling proud of myself along the way. Now, as I've been reading the Bible, there is a verse in here in the Proverbs, and I want to share it here. It's Proverbs 32, 33. Did we.

Did we say that right?

We didn't.

Maybe we did.

I think I'm gonna have to be more specific. Proverbs 1, verse 32 and 33.

I think we're getting closer to communicating this so that you can go look it up, too.

And. And I love that. I just love. I really love being a beginner so much. I feel like the.

The bar's so low, and it's okay for me to stumble and fumble.

Anyway, as I was reading this just yesterday, this really stuck out. Stuck out to me. Cause I hear so much about the word complacency, and. And that mindset work is just complacency. And that's so not. Not true. And that example of miscarriage really shows that because I'm not going to stay complacent in my health and in my pursuit of having my third baby, I'm not going to beat myself up, tear myself down, or treat myself as a victim to my circumstances, because I'm not. I'm not. I'm very much empowered. I get to take care of myself. I get to seek out the Help and resources. I get to communicate when I'm having a hard time and feel my emotions to. To all ranges and allow myself access to gratitude and to lessons within the hardship. And I get to do all that. So anyway, Proverbs 1, verse 32 through 33. I think that's how we say says for simpletons turn away from me to death. Fools are destroyed by their own complacency. For all who listen to me will live in peace, untroubled by fear or harm. And the part that really I want us to acknowledge is fools are destroyed by their own complacency. As in, we're not making the choice to take a chance to make a change. Because sometimes our fear is greater than our faith. And that's the way that I'm interpreting this. And maybe you interpret it different. My point in all of this is what do you want to see change in your life? What do you want to see change? And how often are you allowing yourself to say, well, making that change would just be way too hard. So then we choose complacency. And that's such a fool's route to take to just stay complacent right where we are, where we feel unfulfilled and we're not happy with it. And we know we have this dream in our heart and this fire in our soul that's just like, go do the thing. And we're just refusing to do it because we think it's going to be too hard. So we just stay complacent in our life and, and we, and we don't make the choices, we don't make the changes. And we refuse to change the way that we think, which I believe is worse.

Worse than all of it, is refusing.

To change the way that you think. So in this pursuit of making changes and understanding that mindset is the exact opposite of complacency, you actually make more changes because you have a mindset that supports you, rather than having a mindset that paints you out as the victim and that victim mentality, which can be described in a lot of different ways. And when you look at the changes that you wanna make, I just want you to know that it's okay if it feels like it's gonna be hard. It's okay if it feels like you have no freaking idea what you're doing right now. You wanna know what that feels like? That's how I feel right now. Like, do I really know what I'm doing? Do I really. Do I really know how to talk about this? Like, yeah, this is. This is how I feel. And I feel, like, good in my faith and. And that feels really vulnerable to share because, gosh, like, it's just something that. It's so sacred to me and I. And I want it to be my little thing. And I know that in doing so, it's such a disservice to others. And I have, if I've learned anything. Oh, here comes the kiddo. Well, Liam just came downstairs and showed me a butterfly that he just caught in his bug catcher, and it was a big moment.

So glad that I got to experience that.

That.

And coming back to this episode with you, here's motherhood. Be open to all of it. Coming back to this episode with you.

When I said that it would be a disservice to others, I mean that in the terms of when you withhold the goodness in your mind and the goodness in your heart, that is a disservice to others. So if that is a form of faith for you and you're withholding that from others because fears of judgment or limiting beliefs in your own mind, that is. That's a disservice. And if you have something wonderful that you want to share about your day and you withhold it from others, that is a disservice. Withholding good is not. It's not serving anybody, and it's certainly not serving you and the people that you love most. And like I was saying, if there's really anything that I've learned in this journey of my own self discovery and healing work and life in general, and the lessons that I choose to allow myself to learn through everything that I'm given is that there's so much, so much beauty happens and life gets 10 times better than you can ever imagine if you just remain willing to show up, even if you don't know how it's going to turn out, and even if you only know the first step to take and you're not sure what the step after that would look like, and you, especially when you don't know the how behind things, like you know what you want to do and you're just not sure how you're going to.

Do it, that is what I have learned.

And it's so important to show up. It's so important to. To make that choice, to take a chance so that you can see the change that you want. And those changes end up being, again, 10 times better than you could even imagine. So no matter what changes you wanna make in your life and how hard they may seem Right now, complacency is not the answer. It's really not. And having faith bigger than your fear can look so different for all of us. And. And now I'm giving you a glimpse into what that looks like for me, where I just. I know everything's gonna be okay. I just know it. And I know that whatever I'm given is meant for me, and I am meant to learn from it. And rather than staying complacent or having a complacent mentality, I just allow myself to see a lesson and to learn it and to try and learn it quickly. Like, okay, this is hard. And that doesn't mean that I smile through all the things. It doesn't mean that I'm constantly laughing through all the things. Although it may seem like it here. I just feel such joy when I'm talking to you. I just feel such joy that. To know that I get to put out a message that makes a difference, and it's something that I feel very passionate about. That's why I smile so much when I make videos and record things for you guys and I do my live coaching and all of that, because I just feel so overwhelmed with gratitude and joy that this is what I get to do. And please believe me when I say that change feels freaking hard for me, too. It does. And just because it feels hard, what honestly helps me is to remember that, yes, the change I want to make, maybe if it's an early morning routine or reading the Bible, or I'm trying to develop a habit of just reading more in general, reading more books, like I've shared with you guys, um, maybe you're trying to build a habit of thinking positively, or you're trying to build a habit of communicating respectfully with your spouse or modeling breathing to your kids before you choose what you're gonna say to them. Whatever it is, all of those things are personally hard for me.

Like, they take. They take very intentional effort.

And I know that allowing myself to do something hard like that is easier than the hardship of staying the same and dealing with the same problems and the same patterns and the same limiting beliefs and the same fears for years and years and years, because I refuse to just try. I refuse to just show up and give it. Give it my best attempt. And that's what I hope for all of us, is that we can just decide to show up to just try to try and make that change that you want, even if it feels hard, even if you don't get it right the first time.

Remember when I said like, reading those proverbs, I'm like, am I the wicked? Like, what some of these things? I'm like, whoa, okay, I have some work to do. It's very, very humbling.

Um, and a little funny note on that. When I got this Bible at the store in Omaha, Nebraska, when I got the Bible at the store, I told Marcus I was like, I'm gonna be a Proverbs 31 wife. And he just looks at me and gives me a little, little smile because.

He, he's so kind, guys. He's so kind and he's just very, very funny.

We have so much lightheartedness, so much humor within our relationship.

So is in no way like, poking fun. Like, it is just keeping it light hearted and, and allowing me to embrace being a beginner, which I'm just so grateful for.

So anyway, I tell him I'm gonna be a Proverbs 31 wife. And he goes. He just looks at me and he smirks.

He goes, proverbs, you're gonna be a Proverbs 31 wife. And he goes, are you reading the Bibble?

Just.

It was such a great moment. It was such a great moment.

And again, humbling.

Like, Tess, you're a beginner, and that is so exciting.

The bar's low. You can show up, it can be messy, you can read it wrong.

You can look up the words and.

Terms and write down things that inspire you and feel really excited about it. Like, it's easy to do when you're a beginner. So I hope that you just focus on what it is that you'd like to change. What would you like to change? And then ask yourself, what choice do I need to make to see this change through? What choice do I need to make? Do I need to make the choice to get started right now? Do I need to make the choice that I'm going to take a deep breath before I communicate? Do I need to make a choice? Allow your choice to be your plan. This is my plan of action. This is a step that I'm going.

To take and I'm going to trust.

How it works out from there. That's the choice. I'm making this choice to do this thing, and then you take a chance and you do it. To think that you're going to change is not enough. It's just not. We need to follow through with action. Without the action, it is complacency, and we don't want that in our life. And without the action mindset continues to feel hard because your mind has no evidence to pull on that you're making the changes that you say you're going to make. And so that bully in your mind speaks a little bit louder and gets a little bit more harsh and cruel. And I don't want that for you. I want you to make that choice, to take a chance so that you can see the changes that you want to see in your life and to know that it's okay if it feels hard and to have faith bigger than fear and a vision bigger than your limiting beliefs. Focus on what you want, focus on who you want to be, focus on how you want to feel. And I promise you that you will see the the greatest shifts and changes in your life 10 times better than you could have even imagined. And I know that's true for me, so I want to share it with you too. Thank you for joining me on this week's episode. If you enjoyed the podcast, don't forget to subscribe and share it. I love spreading the message of how positivity can come in so beautifully to help you through your journey of self discovery and healing. I'm cheering for you. I believe in you and I'll talk to you really soon.