460. 10 Years Coaching – Lessons Learned Part 2: Love

Welcome to episode 460, 10 Years Coaching – Lessons Learned Part 2: Love. Love like Jesus. Recently my second grade daughter colored a picture of a rainbow and sunshine and birds and she wrote ‘love like Jesus’ on the top of the page. It’s on my fridge still and it’s a great reminder but it’s just not as simple or easy to do as I wish it was. Am I right? This month marks the 10 year birthday of my coaching business, since it was May 2014 when I got certified as a coach and my life changed forever.

First it changed because of the way my mindset and approach to navigating challenges and goals changed. But it also changed because I began offering the same help to others through my business. This month, I’m sharing some of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned over 10 years of helping tens of thousands of clients in my programs and millions more on the podcast. And today’s topic is love. Thanks for celebrating 10 years with me. Here we go.

This is Better Than Happy. I’m your coach, Jody Moore. And on this podcast, my objective, just so we’re clear, is to change what you’ve been taught and have likely believed about yourself up until now. Here’s what I believe about you. I believe that what you think is real is mostly imagined And what you imagine is actually creating what’s real. I believe that in the ways you desire to achieve, you 100% have the capacity to succeed.

And finally, I believe that joy, love, and miracles are your God given natural state of being. And any time you feel far from them, the way back is much simpler than you think, but that’s about to change. Are you ready? Let’s do this.

Hey there, everybody, welcome to another episode in our 10 year birth date month. I think all of us should celebrate our birthdays for a whole month. Why do we not do this? Maybe some of you do. Anyway, it’s not my birthday, it’s the birthday of my business, Jody Moore Coaching. And I was thinking back to 10 years ago, when I first just couldn’t stop talking about the model, about the things I’ve learned at coach training, about the way that all of this work was impacting me and starting a business.

But the reason I hesitate to even say starting a business is because I’m like, “What does that even mean?” I was really just like, “Who wants to learn more about this?” And I started writing a blog. I wanted to share it with people and not that I accidentally built a big business. I did intentionally build a business. But I say that in the loosest, loosest form of that term if there is such a thing. I was definitely all over the place, and I still am many times in my business.

I was definitely not perfect at any of it, in fact, I know some of you struggle with perfectionism. I struggle with the opposite, hot mess ism where I don’t want to slow down and go back and make things better. I just want to throw it out there even if it’s kind of a mess. I think somewhere in between is probably what we all should be aiming for. But at any rate I think my success though, came because I was really willing to do things that a lot of people are not willing to do and I don’t mean stand up all night working really hard.

Here are some of the things I was willing to do. And if you’re a coach, you have a business or you want to start a business or you’re considering becoming a coach or some kind of entrepreneur, similar to what I do. Just ask yourself, are you willing to do things that most people are not willing to do? And you don’t have to do extreme things. You don’t have to do hard things. You just have to do a little bit more than most people are willing to do because most people are actually not willing to do much at all.

Some of the things that I was willing to do and still sometimes have to be willing to do is to first of all figure out technology. I hear this from a lot of coaches because a lot of business happens online now. It’s the most efficient, most affordable, least risky way to get your message out there if you’re some kind of a thought leader or teacher, a coach is to get online on the internet and yet that means we have to figure out technology. I’m not a natural tech person.

I’m an almost 50 year old woman but back when I started my business, that means I was almost 40. I’m not saying that’s old. I’m just saying I wasn’t a 17 year old who naturally picks up technology and just figures it out but I was willing to figure it out. I was willing to use YouTube. Even 10 years ago, when I started doing this, everything I needed to know was on YouTube. That doesn’t mean that it was simple. Sometimes I would struggle with some kind of technology where you connect two of your systems together. I can’t remember the word now.

At any rate, I would first look at the directions and then if I couldn’t figure it out from there, and from playing around with it, then I would go to YouTube. And I would find videos and I would start watching videos until I found one that maybe showed me what to do, and sometimes that would solve it and sometimes it still wouldn’t. And at a certain point I’d have to be like, “Okay, walking away for today, walking away.”

You know that point where you’re just so frustrated, so overwhelmed, not making progress, starting to get angry about it. Which is not a good place to figure out technology from for me anyway. And so I would just be like, “Walk away for today.” And I’d come back the next morning and nine times out of ten, I would figure it out immediately the next morning because I gave myself a break, I walked away. My brain maybe was marinating on what I had learned. And it’s totally doable. So figuring out technology is something I was willing to do.

Thank goodness now I have a team and the main person on my team that figures out technology is my husband because I am that woman, that’s like, “Honey, the TV’s not working. Can you take a look at it?” And I usually don’t have to figure out technology at home or in my business anymore now that my husband works for me but in the beginning, I did and you can.

Okay, the next thing I was willing to do is just keep it simple. Listen, this sounds weird to say I was willing to keep it simple and a lot of people aren’t. Why would we want to complicate things? Why would we want to make it harder? We do. Our brains tend to overcomplicate and make things difficult for all kinds of reasons. We’re like, “Well I don’t want to exclude anyone or I mean that this person is saying I should do this thing and this person’s saying I should do that thing.” And it’s the fear of missing out.

And I was just like, “No, I’m just going to keep this really simple. I have a really simple focus of how I’m going to build this business, and I’m going to stick to that.” And if you want to know what that was, I created a course where I give that away to you for free. And it’s just a quick, I think there’s four videos. They’re each 10 to 15 minutes. If you want to go to jodiesfreetraining.com. You can see exactly what I did, how simple it was to get my business up to multiple six figures before I had to complicate it. I still keep it as simple as possible, but really simple until I was making $300,000 to $400,000.

Next thing, and this kind of goes on with keeping it simple is, I was willing to just pick one teacher or coach and stick with her and go all in on her methods. That doesn’t mean I didn’t modify it a little bit. But what I see a lot of people do is they learn from five people and then it’s confusing because those five people might be teaching 80% of the same things, but there are 20% where they disagree or differ on strategies. And then again, you’re just confused about what to do. And this person says that. But this person says that and they’re both successful. So what do I do? I just don’t know.

My teacher and coach was and still is Brooke Castillo. Although unfortunately I don’t get to work with her as closely as I used to but I still am and any program she offers I just buy. She is my main, in my mind, my main teacher and coach. And she was the one and she said, “Try this.” And I just did it. Again, that does mean I didn’t get on YouTube and have to figure some stuff out, but in terms of overall strategy, my person was Brooke Castillo.

So anyway, maybe you have a person like that, stick with them. If you don’t, part of our 10 year anniversary celebration is a brand new portion of The Lab that is for coaches who want to build businesses. And it’s simply The Lab coach access. And because it’s our 10 year birthday to celebrate for the month of May, you can get in the door at half price. And you will keep your half price payment as long as you stay in the program. So head to jodymoore.com/coachaccess if you want to check that out.

Next thing I was willing to do is be patient. I’m not always willing to be patient. I’ve got to work on that in some areas of my life. Oh, my gosh, my eight year old daughter the other day, she’s just this tiny little thing. She’s eight but she seems younger because of how petite she is and sort of quiet and timid. And she said to her 10 year old brother, “Sorry, I’m just not very patient today.” Which was so sweet.

And anyway, with my coaching business I was willing to be patient, meaning I was like, “This is going to take some time. It might take me a while to find the people that want to learn this, might take me a while to figure out how to get my business set up, might take me some time because I’m not willing to overwork myself, I’m not willing to not spend time with my family. I’m not willing to lose sleep and not take care of myself, so might take some time. Alright, that’s cool.”

Ironically enough, I think I achieved success faster than a lot of people around me because I was willing for it to take time. So anyway, be patient. You’ve got to be patient.

And then finally, this will segue into the topic I want to talk about today. I just wanted to celebrate my past self a little bit. I hope that you do this. I hope you look back and celebrate your past self because you have many wins and many successes. And I think it’s useful to take time to go, “Why was I successful at that? What did I do that was so useful in that area?” Because obviously we want to repeat those things in other areas.

At any rate, the last thing is, and this speaks to overall my ability to be effective with people when I coach them and that is to tell people the truth. It’s one of the things that makes coaching so powerful. For those of you that are in The Lab, that hear coaching with my team and I ongoing, you know this. People come to us asking us to tell them the truth. That’s what coaching is.

If I hire an interior designer to come over and help me with my house, I don’t want her to walk around my house and go, “It looks really good. I love what you’ve done here.” I want her to go, “You know what? It doesn’t make sense that you have a table in this room. This room would be better utilized if we put a couch and some chairs in here. It could make for a nice sitting area. And you’ve got too much furniture here or you need something here to spruce this area up.” I want her to tell me the truth.

I want my friends to come over and say, “I love what you’ve done with the place.” But I want my interior designer to tell me the truth so that we can make it better. And that’s how coaching is. So when people come to me and tell me about their struggles in their life, in their relationships, with their confidence, in their business, in their health, in their parenting, etc. They are asking me to tell them the truth. And that’s a hard thing for some coaches to do.

They’re worried that they’re going to offend someone, or that the person’s not going to like them or that they’re not going to want to hear what they have to say. And that’s something that you can get better at with practice. Again, depending on how you were trained and what your approach is as a coach, there are lots of tools that can help you with it, and some of it will just take you figuring it out your way. But I was willing and I still am willing to tell people the truth and the reason why is because I care about them. In fact, I love them. I love my clients.

How can I love people I don’t even know? Which, by the way, this will segment us into today’s topic of love. How do I love these people I don’t even know? And is that true? When people stand up in front of a crowd and they say, “I love you”, is that true, do they love you? I actually end a lot of my coaching calls that way, I say, “Thanks for coming, you guys, I love you so much.” Can you love people you don’t know? Well, I think that you can actually.

It might not be the same kind of love that I can have for somebody that I know more intimately. But love is the topic I want to talk about today. And we’ll just start with this question. How can I love someone I don’t even know? So I want you to think of love as a feeling or emotion. There’s some debate about this. Some people are like, “Love is your action. Love is something that other people do for us. I want them to love me. So it’s something they’re doing to me or for me.” And I just think that those are kind of twisted ways of thinking about love. I can see some logic in it. So I’m not saying those things are totally not possible.

But by way of simplification I want to tell you how I think about love since becoming a coach 10 years ago. The difference is since I became a certified coach and started coaching thousands of people from before the way I used to think about love. And I’m just going to offer it to you. And if you don’t like it, feel free to reject it as always. So love, I like to simplify down to an emotion or feeling and we know that majority of the time our emotions and feelings are created by our thoughts and stories.

The reason I say majority of the time, I’ve started to caveat a little bit is because there can be hormonal things and biological things that can sometimes, I think, trigger emotions for us, but not really love. I don’t know, maybe love could be that way like when you’re falling in love, there might be some of that. But the kind of love I really want to focus on today is just feelings of affection and admiration and compassion and empathy and a concern or care for another individual. And that comes from what you think.

If you think I want them to be happy. I hope they are happy. I don’t want to see them suffer or I respect and admire that about them. I appreciate that about them. I love that about them. I think that they’re amazing. I think that they’re valuable. I think that they’re good or I see that they’re struggling. And it’s understandable, when we think thoughts like that, we feel love for another person. You can think that about a collection of people even.

Again, I don’t mean to say it’s the exact same way that I love all my clients in The Lab and all of you listening to this podcast is not the same as the love I feel for my children and my husband because I don’t know you as intimately. But I do picture you. I actually think about you all a lot, especially my clients, especially those of you that come on calls and get coached. I think about you after those calls so much. I think about what you told me. I have new questions that come up that think I wish I would have asked this and I wonder about that.

I think about what’s going on for you after the coaching session. What do they need from me? What else can I offer that will make their lives better, that will help them achieve more joy and help them navigate their lives? So when I think about you and think about how amazing you are and how deserving of compassion and empathy you are then I feel a feeling of love. You don’t feel that love because I’m thinking those thoughts. You feel something positive because of your thoughts.

The love that I feel doesn’t jump out of my body into anyone else’s body. They feel love because of their thoughts. Now, it just so happens that when I am thinking loving thoughts and feeling loving emotions, then I show up in a way that people tend to prefer. I show up in a way where I’m more attentive to you. I’m kinder to you or I maybe serve you in a way that you like or I’m patient with you. I’m kind to you. I notice you. These are things that we tend to like as human beings. And then we might say, “I feel so loved by that person.”

But I personally don’t like to word it that way because it makes me feel like me feeling that good feeling is dependent on them behaving in the way that they’re behaving. And that actually gets us into a lot of trouble, because even if people do sometimes, people won’t all the time. And sometimes the person that’s in our mind is supposed to be the most loving towards us, doesn’t do it right. I’m talking about your spouse. If I need you to behave a certain way so that I can feel loved, then we have a problem unless you also love showing up that way.

There will be some areas where we have matches in that regard, but there will probably be some, where I’m like, “I kind of prefer that you behave this way and if that’s not natural for you and you don’t want to behave that way and you’re just going to do it to try to please me. Now, we’re actually going to build disconnection and resentment instead of connection and love.” So instead of I feel loved I might say something like, “I really appreciate that person’s behavior.” It’s really cool when people pay attention to me and like me, but it’s always my thoughts about their behavior.

I am thinking that I must be a good person if this person is going to treat me this way. There must be something great about me. I must be doing a good job because somebody said something or behaved in such a way that I liked. The person’s behavior doesn’t mean I did a good job. It means they are thinking thoughts that make them feel love. Are you following me? I feel I’m a little all over the place here, but this is a really important concept.

So if that’s true, then love is something that we do for us. Now, again, other people like it as well but love is a feeling that we feel in our bodies and it feels really good. It not only feels really good, it magnifies your ability to be who you want to be. I think this is why when we talk about Christ, we talk about how good the Savior is at loving all of us and how He was love. And look at how He magnified his abilities on this Earth, beyond what any of us will be able to do but it’s because He was operating from so much love.

So the more we operate from love, the more we try to love like Jesus, like I said in the beginning, the more successful we will become at anything we try to do. This is just the reality of it. And we get the reward of feeling so good and expanded and complete in all the ways that we want to feel. It feels so good to feel the feeling of love. Other people are going to feel their emotions. Other people, think about this, somebody who, think back to when you were dating, some of you are still dating.

If somebody is interested in you and they’re paying attention to you and they’re asking you a bunch of questions and you are not interested in them, you don’t suddenly, you don’t feel that good feeling. You’re like, “Oh dear, I’m actually uncomfortable now because how am I going to get away from this person? How am I going to tell them I am not interested?” And yet they’re feeling some version of love, maybe we wouldn’t call it love. Maybe we would call it interest or a softer version of love. But they’re liking you and you’re not liking them.

Then you’re actually going to feel uncomfortable because their emotions, even their behaviors don’t create your feelings, you do with your thoughts and stories. That’s step one.

Now, let me tell you that when I went through coach training, one of the things that I was trained on, to be able to do, is to love everyone in the story. This is such a beautiful concept and I want to offer it to you because you don’t have to be a coach to benefit from this at all. This will change your life or it changed my life anyway. So as human beings, we like stories.

And if you’ve done any learning about good storytelling or you just pay attention in the world, then you know that good stories, according to all the experts, have heroes and they have villains and they have victims. And then they have some kind of a journey. And they have guides and maybe other side characters, but the hero goes through some kind of journey. This is Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey type stuff. The hero needs to go through some kind of journey where he or she has to overcome something.

And there has to be some kind of resistance. There often is a guide helping them and there’s some kind of villain. The villain might be a person or the villain might be a natural disaster or an institution or some kind of resistance which is the villain. And what kind of transformation do they have in the process of overcoming that villain? And we love a story like that. There’s something emotional about it for us, probably because we see the possibility of our own transformation in it.

I was going to add one other thing. As I was preparing for this I was thinking about in the LDS Church we believe that in the premortal world there was what we call the war in heaven. And God had his plan that we would all go to Earth and Satan said, “Yeah, let’s all go down there and we’re all going to choose the right every time, and everyone’s going to glorify me and then we’ll come back.”

And then Christ said, “No, let’s all go down there and have agency and people can choose whether they’re going to do right or wrong, and sometimes they’re going to choose wrong. And so they’re going to need a savior and that will be me. I’ll sacrifice for everybody to compensate for the wrong choices so that everyone can still come back. But that way people can have the growth that’s necessary to become more like God and all the glory will go to God. I don’t want the glory. I’m going to do the work and make the sacrifice, but the glory will go to God.”

And so two-thirds of us chose to follow Christ’s plan. And a third chose to follow Satan’s plan. And the third that followed Satan didn’t get to come to Earth and get bodies, so all of us, congratulations. We all chose Christ’s plan because you’re here on Earth, you wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t. That’s what we believe in the LDS Church. That was a really not very good explanation of it, but I want to keep it brief.

My point is, even in this story, in the way that we believe, this part of our experience anyway began as a story where we had villains and heroes and good guys and bad guys. Fine and good except that now we use that part of us that loves the good guys and bad guys version to create problems in our relationships. So back to what I was saying before. In coach training, I was taught to love everyone in the story.

So here’s how it looks. Client gets on a call with me and starts telling me what they’re struggling with. Let’s say they have a mom that they’re not getting along with, and they’re like, “My mom.” I’m just making this up, but this is a version of a very common scenario.

“My mom, she’s just very critical and she’s very opinionated and she’s coming to visit my family and I next week and I know how it’s going to go. She’s going to criticize my parenting and the way I run my house. And I know that I’m an adult and I can do it how I want, but it just makes me feel really bad. And I have a hard time not getting snippy with her. And then I might say something and then she’s offended. And now I feel bad, and help me with this, Jody Moore.” This is common.

Okay, so immediately my client, by the way, before my client even comes on the call, I already love her because I get myself to a place of love. And then as soon as I see her face and her name and maybe it’s somebody I’ve coached before and I know them, maybe they’re brand new and I don’t. In my mind, I’m like this person is so lovable. I just love her. I literally say that to myself over and over again as I’m listening to their story. I love that she raised her hand. I love that she signed up to get coached. I love that she’s willing to share these things with me. I love how she wants to work on this.

I love how she’s doing her best to be vulnerable and she’s so nervous. A lot of times people are really nervous when they come on. I just love that she’s here anyway. So many reasons to love my client. Then as she starts talking about her mom, my next thoughts are, I love this girl’s mom, I do. I love how this mom has strong opinions. I love how she has ideas about how the world should be. I love how she cares enough to share her opinions. I love how confident she sounds.

She sounds like she also has some insecurity. I don’t want insecurity for her, but it’s just so lovable. Somebody who is struggling and insecure, we can relate to that. That’s so lovable. And it sounds like she gets her feelings hurt, and that’s totally understandable and lovable too, because it’s so human. I love this woman. So I had to train my brain to do that. And by the way, I do that when I’m coaching. I don’t normally do that in the rest of my life. I can do it, but it’s not natural for me.

But when I’m coaching, I turn on that part of my brain that’s like everyone in this story is lovable. And if there are other characters in the story, if they start telling me about a sibling who also got mad at her for offending mom or a brother who’s totally with her. And she calls the brother and they vent about how mom is so terrible and she knows that’s not good but that’s just what we do. Or maybe dad’s in the story and dad doesn’t help or whatever.

Anybody in the story, as soon as they tell me, I’m still listening to what they’re saying but in my mind is, I love this person. This person, they just told me about, there are so many reasons I can find to love people because I’ve trained my brain to do it. And this is necessary as a coach with the type of coaching I do because my job is to be neutral and to show my client their brain and help them see where they’re getting in their way and help them solve their own problem. But I can’t do that if I’m right there in the story with them, sounds like you’re the good guy and your mom’s the bad guy.

That’s what she’s telling me. That’s what her brain believes, which is fine. My brain believes that about my own personal stuff too. But if I step back and I go, “What if everybody in this story is completely lovable, how might that be true?” It’s not hard at all. Keep in mind, these are people they’re telling me about people, and maybe I know my client.

Oftentimes I don’t know the client very well. They just came on a call and now I’m coaching them. But even if I do know them, I don’t know the people in their lives usually. And I still, just on the little bit they tell me, can find so many reasons to love them. And what this does is it gives us clarity. It gives us the ability to decide if everybody’s lovable in the story and everybody’s doing their best even though our best is sometimes really bad then now what? What do I want to do? How do I want to feel? Who do I want to be in this situation?

And so we can refocus on my client and not try to control the world outside of us. Sometimes that means boundaries. Sometimes that means communication. Sometimes it just means letting go of some drama and things like that. But I’ll tell you, that skill has really impacted me. I will say it has made it easier in my personal life, although I don’t do it to that extreme in my personal life. And sometimes I have to stop and take a step back, but it’s something you can definitely try out.

Now, I’m using the word love and that’s what I called today’s episode. But I just want to kind of circle back and remind you that it doesn’t always have to be love. Love is not, to me, always the right word. I don’t think that you have to love everybody. I mean, if you want to, I’m trying to think if there would be a downside, you can. But I’m not saying you should love everybody. What I’m saying is, love is awesome, it feels good. When you can get to it I highly recommend it.

And when you’re in the thick of a struggle, ask yourself, what if everyone’s lovable what would love do? That’s the other question I forgot to give you, that I was trained in as coaching is, what would love do? Love includes love for yourself, by the way, love for your mom if this is the kind of situation I just described, love for everybody in the story. What would love do? That’s not an easy question to answer, because sometimes love would say no. Sometimes love would set a boundary and sometimes love would let it go. But what would love do if everyone’s lovable in the story, then what?

But there are different kinds of maybe more softer versions of love that are still going to feel a lot better than anger or hate or frustration or resentment. Because just like love rewards us and feels really good, and we get to feel it, and then we’re the main beneficiary of that. Hate, anger, resentment, frustration, judgment feels really bad. And those bad feelings don’t jump out of our bodies into other people’s bodies either. We have to feel them. We punish us with those emotions.

Now again, other people probably don’t prefer the way we show up from those emotions, but we’re the main one suffering when we think thoughts that generate those emotions. So what I want you to do, I don’t want you to love everyone or work on love more for their sake. I want you to work on it for your sake. But if you can’t get to love, try some of these. How about compassion? If it feels forced or faked to you to be like, “Well, I love her.” Then don’t try to do that. But can you just be like, “I have compassion for them, him or her?”

And this is especially useful when people are behaving ‘badly’ and I put badly in quotes because of course that’s subjective. But the only reason that people behave ‘badly’ is because they’re in fear and insecurity or scarcity, or triggered trauma or something like that. That’s why we behave badly. We don’t behave badly, we aren’t mean to people, we aren’t critical, we don’t lie, we don’t judge them and pick on them and be really violent and abusive even. We don’t do any of that when we’re feeling really confident and good about ourselves and we’re operating from a healthy place.

We do that when we’re feeling bad about ourselves and we’re in fear and we feel out of control and we’re operating from some kind of pain and trauma. So can you have compassion for the person? And again, you have to also be loving you and have compassion for you. I’m not talking about putting yourself in harm’s way. You’ve got to love you first. How about empathy? Empathy sometimes is easier to get to.

And then finally, this is if you’re just like, “I don’t know this person”, maybe it’s a famous person or somebody that you see in the public eye that you just can’t stand. One of the ones I get a lot when I teach love is, people are like, “What about Hitler, you want  me to love Hitler?” I’m like, “No, you don’t have to but are you going to punish yourself because Hitler did terrible things? Because you hating Hitler is punishing you. Hitler, he’s dead. He’s not feeling your hate. It’s not punishing him or anyone like him.”

So I’m not saying that you would be like, “I want to love Hitler.” That kind of feels like a stretch. That might feel inappropriate. Can you at least just be fascinated and curious? And even if there is some disappointment there too. Dude, what makes somebody get to that point? My husband’s watching some kind of true crime drama type show about somebody who seems to have murdered several people. I don’t remember what it’s called, sorry.

It’s so fascinating to see this guy tell the stories he’s telling to see how he gets out of it, to see how he seems to rationalize and justify things and to hear what everybody else has to say. But why do we watch shows like that? Why are we so into true crime? Because we’re fascinated. We wouldn’t watch those if they made us really angry and bitter. We don’t like feeling that way. We’re able to not be angry and bitter because these are people who are not in our lives, it’s not impacting us.

So here’s the thing, even if you’ve got somebody behaving the way you don’t like, that is in your life, that is impacting you. If you can get to fascination or curiosity and then decide what to do from there, how to protect yourself, how to again, if necessary, put boundaries or whatever else needs to be done. You will be more effective at that. And you won’t be, most importantly, you won’t be sitting around waiting for them to change before you create what you want in your life.

And then some of these relationships it is necessary to end or to get away from. You don’t have to take that pain with you and keep punishing you on the other side of it. You can walk away with compassion, fascination, curiosity. So you’ve got to ask yourself, do I even want to love this person? I’ll tell you though, it’s not uncommon in, again, all my years of coaching, people don’t often bring me situations when they don’t want to love or at least be compassionate for the person. You guys don’t bring that to me.

You’re just like, “No, I’m done. I don’t want to think about them.” And you can write it off. The ones that come to me are things like my sister and I have just never gotten along. She’s really difficult. Maybe she’s up to no good. She’s stealing from people. She lies. She takes advantage of people, whatever. And they’re like, “I am trying to love her, but it’s just so hard.” And I’ll often ask them first, “Do you want to love her?” And they’ll kind of go, “I mean she’s my sister, so I should, right?” I’m like, “Not necessarily, but do you want to?”

And maybe the answer is, yes, I want to, and maybe the answer is, I just think I should. What I try to do is tell them “There’s no way that you should feel, but do you want to at least have compassion for her? Do you want to at least stop punishing yourself?” So that’s the case in most of the situations that I’ve coached on.

I can’t think of very many times when somebody was like, “This is going on in my life and I don’t want to love them at all.” Because then I’m like, “Well, then, why are we talking about it? Just don’t then, just be angry, just hate them. Just keep resenting them. What do you want me to tell you? Just process the emotion, I guess, take a deep breath. It’s okay, don’t beat yourself up.” That really might be the answer at times. People don’t usually bring me those.

Two more things I want to say. One is that loving people is not the same as people pleasing. I want to be very clear about this. Loving other people is not the same as people pleasing. People pleasing is when we are doing things because we are trying to manipulate how they feel. We’re trying to control how they feel. We’re trying to get them to feel a certain way. Loving people is doing things because of how we feel, doing nice things because of how we feel. Do you see what I’m saying?

Sometimes loving people looks like saying no. I mentioned this already, but it’s easier to think about when you think about if you’re a parent and you think about your younger kids. Loving my kids doesn’t always mean doing the thing that makes them happy or letting them do the thing that’s going to make them happy. Sometimes loving them means, no, I’m sorry, you’re not going to eat that until you eat something good for you or we’ve got to go to bed or you need to take a shower or you’ve got to do your homework.

That’s the best way I can love them sometimes, and it doesn’t always make them happy to hear those things but I do those things because I love them. So now if you have other people in your life that you think maybe you’re people pleasing with, ask yourself, am I doing this because I love them or I care about them or I’m concerned or I have compassion? Or am I doing it because I’m trying to control what they’re thinking? And just check yourself if so. So loving is not the same as people pleasing.

Some people won’t like the way you choose to love, which leads me to the last thing. I’ve said this before, but I have to emphasize it. Love is not just something that you can feel about other people, you can and I want you to work on feeling it about yourself. In the 10 years that I’ve coached so many different people on so many different things. We cannot love people or the world in general more than we love ourselves. I just don’t think it’s possible. I have not seen someone be able to love others beyond their capacity to love themselves.

People who are very confident, who genuinely are able to love themselves, this doesn’t mean you have to like everything about you. This doesn’t mean you’re always walking around feeling love for yourself. But overall, some of you again have this situation maybe in your marriage or something where you’re like, “Sometimes they really get on my nerves but overall I love them.” Or maybe it’s with your kids, “I love them. Sometimes they drive me crazy, but I love them.” Think about that kind of relationship. That’s what you want to have with yourself.

Sometimes I really wonder about you self, whatever your name is, fill in your name. I talk to myself in third person a lot. Sometimes I really wonder about you, Jody. Sometimes you disappoint me. Sometimes you let me down. But you know what? I love you, overall I love you. So you’ve got to work on that, my friend, because you won’t be able to love other people beyond your ability to love yourself. And the more confident you become the easier it is to love everyone else around you.

Alright, so love, a really interesting emotion and I don’t know, I just find it so fascinating and it’s such a valuable thing to work on because it will change every area of your life. It will affect the way you interact with anyone, whether it be in a business setting, a church setting, or your personal relationships if you work on fostering love and all of that happens up in your beautiful mind.

Alright, thanks for joining me today everyone. We’ll be back next week for part three of the lessons I’ve learned in 10 years of coaching. I’ll see you then. Take care.

If you find the podcast to be helpful you’re going to love The Lab. In Better Than Happy: The Lab we experiment with applying all of it in your real life. Whether you’re in the middle of a challenge and ready for some relief or you’re ready to commit to pursuing your dream goals and making them a reality, come join me in the lab at jodymoore.com/thelab. That’s jodymoore.com/thelab.