528. How to Access Your Inner Strength

I got to tell you the honest truth about inner strength. There are not people who are mentally and emotionally strong and people who are mentally and emotionally weak. There are just people who know how to access their inner strength and who can leverage that inner strength to help them solve problems, achieve goals, and overcome the hard parts of life. And then there are people who don’t know how to do that as easily. But everybody does it from time to time.

Sometimes we access it without realizing it, maybe unconsciously or without awareness, but I guarantee you have operated from inner strength at times. And if you feel overwhelmed, stressed out, anxious, exhausted, frustrated, resentful, worried, or you feel like you’re not progressing towards your goals and things you want to accomplish in your life as quickly as you want to be, then you’re not operating from your inner strength as much as you could be.

And when you learn what I’m going to teach you today, which is how to operate from it, how to access it, how to utilize it, you will feel more rested. You will feel more calm, more peaceful, more hopeful, and you will make progress faster. That’s what we’re doing today. This is episode 528, How to Access Your Inner Strength. Let’s go.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

Sometimes, listening to a podcast is enough. But sometimes, you’ll feel inspired to go deeper. If you hear things that speak to you in today’s episode, consider it your invitation to a complimentary coaching workshop.

On this live, interactive Zoom call with me, you’ll get a taste of the power of this work when applied in real life. You can participate, or be a silent observer. But you have to take a step if you want to truly see change in your life… two steps, actually. Head to JodyMoore.com/freecoaching and register. Then you just have to show up. Your best life is waiting for you. Will you show up for it? JodyMoore.com/freecoaching. I’ll see you there.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I am excited to talk to you about inner strength today. It is my belief and I want to offer it to you that you have a tremendous amount of inner strength, that you were born with a tremendous amount of inner strength. Even a newborn baby has a lot of it, and it’s something God given. It’s something that we can utilize to make our lives easier and better, to show up how we want to, to feel how we want to, and achieve what we want to.

What we’re not taught intentionally until today, is how do we access that inner strength? How do we operate from it more of the time? Now, I want to preface this by saying none of us is going to be perfect at this. We’re not going to operate from inner strength all the time, and you don’t have to. A lot of times you’ll be able to coast and operate on default with all your memorized patterns of behaving and thinking and feeling and what we call a personality, right? Which are just memorized patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. But those will serve you fine most of the time.

But there are times when you’re going to want to access some inner strength, namely anything that you’re feeling very overwhelmed or worried about, anything that is exhausting you, any area of your life where you feel resentful. So a lot of times in our relationships, relationships, if they’re going to go smoothly and be easy and fun, are going to require a good deal of inner strength. A lot of times in the things that we’re pursuing around our family members like raising children requires inner strength a lot of times, right? Choosing to go on a health journey or build a business or go look for a new job or find a spouse or a partner, these things all require some inner strength at times. So anything we take on that’s new, challenging, different, whether it’s unexpected or chosen, inner strength is going to serve us. So let’s begin by a quick definition.

When I talk about inner strength today, what I’m talking about is you being in control of yourself. You choosing how you want to feel and how you want to show up. And the reason I want to encourage you to do this is not because you should, not because it would be better for the people around you if you were in control, although we all tend to prefer people who are operating from inner strength. But that’s not the reason why, okay? The reason why is because it’s going to be so much calmer for you. It’s going to be more relaxing, more peaceful, and you’re going to be 10 times more effective at whatever you’re trying to do, whether it be having conversations with people in your family, holding kids accountable, or again, building a business or achieving some kind of dream or goal.

I think that we tend to believe on some level that if I’m going to be effective in those areas, it needs to be harder, right? I need to be stressed out or worried or really hustling or grinding or upset or in scarcity. Part of our brains believes that’s going to cause us to operate at our best so that we can get the best result. That is not the case with human beings. We operate way more effectively from ease and trust and abundance and love and peace than we do from stressed out, anxious, overwhelmed.

When I say it out loud, it makes sense when I say it that way, but notice your brain thinking that what would be better is if you were upset and stressed out, that’s probably going to get you where you want to go. That’s not the case, right? Okay, so inner strength is that choosing intentionally and managing both your thoughts and feelings and your behaviors in the end. Okay? This requires inner strength. It requires some discipline, it requires some consciousness, it requires some decisions.

Now, what I’m going to give you today are three things not to do and seven things to do that will help you operate from inner strength. Now, you don’t have to do all of these. I’m just giving you lots of options so that you can pay attention to like, oh, that’s one that I could easily try on that might make a big difference. Okay? And some of these things you might already be doing. Cool. These are just then good reminders that you’re doing the right thing in that area. Keep doing it. Others might be things that you maybe need more practice at or you want to do a little bit more. Okay? 

So let’s go ahead and dive in. I want to talk about first of all, three things not to do because these things weaken you. They cause you to operate from inner weakness or from a lack of inner strength. Okay? Sometimes this is victim mentality. It can show up like a lot of different things, fear and scarcity. All of these things are inner weakness, and we want to operate from inner strength. So, first thing, do not feel sorry for yourself. It’s so tempting to want to feel sorry for ourselves. It’s valid. And what I mean by it’s valid is you have a good reason for struggling if you’re struggling.

You have a good reason for being mad about whatever’s going on in your life or being really hurt or grieving what you thought was going to happen. I see this happen when people get a health diagnosis, or they have a child who’s going through something really challenging, a health problem, or a child who’s got major behavior issues or is really struggling in some way, a child with an addiction or a spouse or family member with an addiction or there’s valid reasons to go, poor me, this is so hard. The reason I say there are valid reasons is because I want to just acknowledge, of course it’s valid that you feel the way you feel, but don’t start feeling sorry for yourself because you will weaken yourself if you do this. Okay?

Now, what’s the alternative, Jody? Am I not supposed to be sad or struggle? Of course you’re allowed to be sad and struggle. And you don’t have to feel sorry for yourself at the same time. You know what it sounds like? Instead of going, poor me, why do I have to have this experience? Why does my family have to go through this? Why does everything hard or bad always happen to me or to us? Okay? Instead of that, you try, yeah, this is hard. This is painful. And you know what? I’m going to be very compassionate with myself and with others if there are other people involved. We’re going to be very gentle with ourselves. We’re going to pay close attention to what kind of self care or support or help we might need to go seek to get through this thing. But we can do hard things.

And guess what? Life is hard. All people experience hard things, and this is a hard thing for us. And I’m going to acknowledge that. I’m going to be very compassionate. I’m going to lower my expectations of myself or other people, but I am not going to feel sorry for myself because guess what? It could always be worse. It could always be worse. Of course, it could always be better as well. This is also true, right? But focusing on how it could be better disempowers me, weakens me.

But remembering that it could always be worse strengthens me, okay? And what I want to do is be compassionate with myself, kind to myself, gentle with myself, and also believing in myself, right? There’s a PS of, and I will figure it out. And I have faith that I can get through this, that God will support me, that I will find the help I need. We will figure this out. Is it going to be hard? Yeah. And I can do hard things. Let’s go.

You see the difference between, poor me, why me? Why does this always happen to me? Of course this is happening to me. All the bad things happen to me. That will weaken you. Will not serve you. Don’t recommend. All right, number two thing I want you not to do.

Do not pay attention to other people’s opinions. Okay? Notice I didn’t say, don’t care about what other people think, because only sociopaths don’t care about what other people think. We all care to a certain extent. Some of us more than others. It depends on the topic and the area, right? But of course you care. Of course you prefer that everybody approves of you and thinks you’re doing it the right way and handling it in the best way and only sees your wins and successes and perfection. That’s what I would prefer, too.

But I also know that’s not the reality, that I can’t please all the people, that everybody has opinions, that their opinions are more about them than they are about me, and that ultimately paying too much attention to what other people think interferes with my own ability to choose how I want to navigate this, how I want to achieve this goal, or navigate this challenge, or parent this child, or have this conversation. Okay?

So now, this is not the same as me saying, don’t learn or get advice from experts or people who you want to get advice or opinions or guidance from. I’m all for you doing that. But ultimately, I want you to be the decision maker in your own life. That is how you access your own inner strength, is you do a reasonable amount of consulting with experts or teachers or whoever you need to about a topic. Sometimes it’s doctors, sometimes it’s coaches, sometimes it’s therapists, sometimes it’s teachers, right? You do a reasonable amount of learning, and then you make your own decision.

And you set aside, you don’t pay attention to other people’s opinions. This means that we know they’re there. And inside we still wish, again, that everybody liked us. We just don’t pay attention to it. We don’t have time to think about it. We don’t put focus on it. We don’t spend a lot of time researching it, wondering about it, asking about it, trying to figure out other people’s opinions. That is such a waste of your brain, and it does not strengthen you. It doesn’t cause you to operate from inner strength. It causes you to operate from inner weakness, and it continues to weaken you. Okay?

I like to remind myself, of course other people have opinions of me. It’s just not relevant. Right? What they think of me is just not relevant. Do I prefer that they all loved me? Yes, but it’s irrelevant in the end. Okay? You can also just give other people permission to judge you. These are like little brain hacks that we do, right? That help the brain not focus on other people’s opinions. You’ve got plenty of other stuff to focus on. All right, the third thing that I want you not to do, if you want to operate from inner strength, is I want you to stop. So many of you are doing this. Please stop. Stop owning other people’s happiness.

Listen, I get it. We want the people that we love to be happy. We do. It’s natural. It’s understandable that as a mom, I just want my children to all be happy and thriving, and I want my spouse to be happy, and I want my parents to be happy, and I want all my clients to be happy. And of course we want other people to be happy. What I don’t want you to do is to own their happiness, to take responsibility for their happiness. This is very different than wanting them to be happy. I’m going to keep wanting all of them to be happy.

I’m just not going to take responsibility for it. You know why? That’s a losing battle. That weakens me. It causes me to operate from inner weakness. I start doing weird things. I start people pleasing, I start manipulating, I start becoming passive aggressive. I start lying even at some point, because I want everyone to be happy. That is not me at my best. That is not me at my strongest.

So do I want them all to be happy? Of course. Am I going to make it my responsibility? Like, really tiptoe around saying the right thing or doing the right thing? No, I’m not going to do that. That doesn’t serve me, but it also doesn’t serve them. It doesn’t make them happier. Have you noticed? So if your child is really struggling with something, of course you’re going to want them to solve that challenge.

And you can even be supportive in any way you want to be supportive. But don’t cross the line into taking responsibility and owning their happiness. Because guess what? It’s not yours to own. It’s not your responsibility. They don’t even want you to have it. Have you noticed this? There’s a thing called agency. God gave it to every one of us, and he said, you are responsible for your own agency, and your kids and your spouse and your loved ones and your clients and everybody else are responsible for theirs. That’s God’s plan.

Okay, those are the three things I want you to not do. If you’re not doing them already, great, don’t start. If you are doing them, we got to stop doing them. Now we’re going to move into the seven things to do. All right, the first one I want you to do is to choose discomfort on purpose when you know it might serve you, whatever’s on the other side of that discomfort. Okay?

I love so much this concept. It has changed my life. It’s helped me start eating healthier and exercising more. It’s helped me grow my business. It’s helped me be a better parent, and I still have a long way to go. There are still many areas where I need to get better at choosing discomfort. But you know what? Because I’ve done it in these other areas of my life and I continue to practice doing it, doesn’t mean I’m perfect at doing it, but I practice doing it. It’s making it easier to do it in other areas as well. Choose discomfort on purpose.

Okay? You do this already in some way. I promise you do. Right? Like, you could go pick up dinner, but instead you make dinner at home because you want to save the money and you want to eat healthier and whatever other reasons you have. So you choose the discomfort of making dinner over picking up dinner because what’s on the other side of that discomfort serves you for whatever reason. Okay? So you’re doing this all day already. I just want you to up the ante a little bit. I want you to do it in an area of your life where you’re feeling stuck or struggling.

So if it’s with your business, for example, I’m constantly trying to practice choosing discomfort on purpose. So when I notice myself say over and over again, I’m not good at that thing, then I know the only reason it’s relevant is because it would be useful if I was good at it. This happened to me years ago when I was a newer coach and I was helping some other coaches, and whenever it came to Facebook ads, I heard myself go, I’m just not an expert at Facebook ads. I understand the basics, but I’m not an expert at Facebook ads. And I kept saying it over and over again. It kept coming up in conversation. And it was coming up in my own business, right? And it was coming up with other people’s businesses. And I realized, wait, why am I talking about not being an expert at Facebook ads unless becoming an expert at Facebook ads would be really useful?

So I guess I’m going to go ahead and become an expert in Facebook ads. Now listen, my brain was like, oh man, that’s the last thing I want to learn. I don’t like technology. I’m not good at it. I’m not interested in it. I don’t even love social media that much. And I went, yeah, but I’m going to choose the discomfort of learning to be good at Facebook ads because what’s on the other side of that would be so useful. It would help me in my own business. It would help me as I guide my clients. So I’m just going to choose that discomfort.

I choose it on purpose. And that way, every time it’s time to sit down and learn Facebook ads, my brain’s like, oh, this is hard, or this is boring. This is overwhelming. I don’t understand it. I’m not good at it. I was like, I know. And that’s what we’re choosing today. We’re choosing the discomfort, the overwhelm, the boredom. Like this doesn’t light up my brain. There are other things I learn about that light up my brain, right? That have to do with my business or whatever. But this is not one of them. But I choose it on purpose. Not only because I want to learn the Facebook ads in this example, but because I want to get better at choosing discomfort.

This is how I access inner strength. You see it? What area of your life do you need to apply this in? Is it having difficult conversations that are more honest and straightforward with your spouse instead of passive aggressive or just downright aggressive and judgmental? Is it being vulnerable in your relationships? Is it telling the truth more often? Is it having a conversation with your child? Is it holding your kids accountable to something?

It’s usually around getting real and honest and being vulnerable, and also for some of us, it’s around being humble and open and not prideful and closed off. That’s what it tends to look like in relationships, right? With our health goals, it has to do with forgoing pleasure and allowing for some pain. In our businesses, it tends to be learning and trial and error and putting ourselves out there and all of those kinds of things. But choose discomfort on purpose. Okay, that’s only number one. I better get going. I got six more. 

Number two, make confident decisions. Okay? This is where you access inner strength is by making confident decisions. Now, how do you make confident decisions if you feel unsure of your decision? You just decide to get your own back. You make a decision again, based on a reasonable amount of information. I’m not talking about flipping a coin. I’m talking about gather a reasonable amount of information which by the way, in most cases doesn’t take more than an hour max. Most likely five minutes. Okay? Gather a reasonable amount of information, and then just pick one and go all in and own it to a certain milestone.

So for example, if I’m trying to make a decision about what eating plan I’m going to follow to get healthier, I do a reasonable amount of research. I spent 15 to 45 minutes max online looking up some things or talking to some people that I trust, right? And then I decide, and I tell myself, I’m going all in on this eating plan for the next six months. That would be a possible milestone. You could pick a timeline. You could pick a certain result like I’m going all in on this plan until I lose five pounds or until I get my A1C back in check or until I lower my blood pressure or whatever it is you’re trying to do, right? To this amount, and then I get to reassess how am I going to continue to eat after this.

But you give yourself a milestone. It prevents that part of your brain that wants to revisit decisions and go, maybe this was the wrong choice. Maybe I shouldn’t have picked this one. Maybe this isn’t working. Like any eating plan that you research to a certain extent that people have had success with will work, right? What happens is we don’t fully commit to it. We don’t make the decision. We just pick something, which is different than making a decision. And then we second guess it, and so we don’t go all in on it. And so we don’t make it work. Make confident decisions. All right, let’s go to number three.

Number three thing that I’m offering to you to start doing is just a belief system that I want to offer you that has again, changed my life in exponential ways. And I adopted it years ago, probably ten years ago when I was first building my business, which was I decided that there’s no such thing as wasted time or wasted money. There’s no such thing. Because there’s just time that goes by, and I’m having an experience and I could be having a different experience, but it’s just time going by and any experience serves me in some way. It’s either pleasurable and enjoyable, or it’s challenging and an opportunity for me to learn and grow and evolve. And so there’s no such thing as wasted time.

And sometimes I have to make a decision and go down a certain path before I learn that’s not the path I want, and then I make a new decision, but that was not a waste of time because if I hadn’t gone down that path, I wouldn’t know that was the wrong path for me. So that was a very good use of my time to learn that. And same with my money. Sometimes I’ve spend money on something and then realize I don’t want that thing, but I just decided there’s no such thing as wasted money.

And maybe I had to buy that thing to learn that it wasn’t the thing that I wanted. And a lot of people think that this just sounds frivolous. If there’s no such thing as wasted time or wasted money, aren’t I just going to start spending money like crazy and just making the flip a coin in the air type decisions? And the truth is, no, you won’t do that because you’re still a rational, logical human being. I’m still a rational, logical human being. This goes back to number two, right? I make confident decisions, I make them faster, and my life gets better because of it.

So we can talk more about that one, especially if you’re in the lab and you’re like, wait a second and you have questions on this. I anticipate you might have some pushback. Bring it to me and we’ll discuss it. But it’s really a way to access my personal strength because in the end, if there’s no such thing as wasted time or money, I’m the one who gets to determine if I’m going to get what I want out of the time I’m spending on something or the money I’m spending on something.

And again, back to maybe this has to do with someone in your life. Maybe you’re trying to make a decision about how to best support your child. Maybe you’re trying to get them some help in some way, right? Do we hire this coach or do we have them work with this therapist or put them in this program or whatever? Is that going to be a waste of time and money? No such thing as waste of time or money. So does this feel like right now, based on the information that we have, a direction we want to go to best support the child? If the answer is yes, then you go all in on trying to help make it the right choice and you can always revisit your decision at some point if you have valid reasons.

If you have reasons that you like coming from inner strength, not coming from weakness because there is no perfect choice, there’s no perfect solution, there’s no perfect diet, there’s no perfect way to build your business, there’s no perfect program for your kid, right? So you want to make decisions from inner strength, and that’s part of believing there’s no such thing as wasted time or wasted money. All right.

The fourth thing that will give you so much inner strength is to let it be messy. Now, this can apply in so many ways, but this is basically the opposite of perfectionism. Perfectionism is a really common form of inner weakness. Okay? It’s coming from concern about what other people think, lack of vulnerability and honesty, a desire to put up some kind of a front because we don’t have our own backs. You can see why this is all coming from inner weakness.

If you let it be messy, if you let it be not very good, if you let people judge it, remember because we’re not focusing on other people’s opinions, then you can operate from so much strength. You can have confidence in your choices and your decisions. You can move forward with more speed. You can move forward with more effectiveness because you’re more confident about what you’re doing. Whether again, this be a decision about how to support your child, how to parent your child, what exercise plan to follow, et cetera, how to build your business, these are all decisions that I want you making from inner strength, which is this is what feels right to me. And I might change my mind down the road, but today this feels good to me and I’m going to go all in on making it work.

And as I do that, it won’t be perfect. I won’t even be good at a lot of things at first. I will be inconsistent. I will be not good at the skills part, and I will be not good at the consistency part in the beginning. Okay, let’s go. Let’s give myself permission to be messy about it.

When you give yourself permission to be messy, you gain so much strength. And then ironically enough, what happens? You get good at it. You become consistent. It becomes easier. You develop skills. You’ll never be perfect at it, but you get a lot better at it as you let it be messy. I’m going to give one other example of this because we’ve been talking a lot about relationships and like difficult conversations, right? If you think you’re going to sit down with your child or your spouse or whoever to talk about something difficult and it’s going to go smoothly and you’re going to know all the right things to say, that is a position of weakness, expecting that, because it may not.

But if you give yourself permission to let it be messy, you will come from a position of strength. You got to be honest. Strength is honesty. Strength is, hey, listen, I want to talk to you about something. And I’m probably not going to say it right. It’s probably going to come out all messy. And I don’t intend that, but I just want to be upfront with you right now that I’m kind of nervous even saying this to you. And it might be hard for you to hear it. And so I just want to be really clear that I don’t have the right words and you know, if what I’m saying doesn’t make sense, I’m hoping we can talk it out and that eventually I can articulate it in the way that I intend.

Doesn’t that sound strong? That kind of a preface to a conversation versus like, thanks for joining me today. I have an agenda here we’re going to follow, starting with a. That is not strength. That is pretending in most cases. Now you will get to that point again after lots of practice. But in the beginning, let it be messy. All right.

Fifth thing, and this again, I touched on it a little bit with number four, but let’s expand more, is tell the truth. Tell the truth. Okay? When you’re pretending, you’re coming from weakness, when you tell the truth, you’re coming from inner strength. I was just listening to something by Alex Hormozi on YouTube. And he was talking about this in a sales situation. And he talked about imposter syndrome. This was so brilliant. I got to share it with you. It’s a great example.

He said most people who tell me they feel like they have imposter syndrome are not being fully honest. Okay, so he works with entrepreneurs and he said he’ll ask people and they say, I just feel like I have imposter syndrome. Well, are you talking about anything that doesn’t feel genuinely true? So for example, if you’re a new coach and you have a brand new program and you’ve never taken anyone through that program before and you’re trying to sell that program, you’re trying to sound confident and you’re telling people, these are the results you will get if you go through my program. But there’s a little piece of you that’s like, I think, but I’m not sure because I’ve never actually done it.

Then you’re not telling the whole truth, right? And that is a position of weakness. But if you tell the truth, which is, I’m a new coach, this is a new program, and to be honest, I’ve never taken anyone through this program before. But I do have a lot of experience personally and I have a lot of training or I have a lot of education or whatever in this area, and this is why I’ve created the program the way I have. But what I want to tell you is that I’m going to be paying attention to you. And if at any point I realize that this program falls short, I’m going to compensate for it, and I’m going to add pieces. And that’s also why I’m giving you an introductory rate because we’re going to be testing this out together.

That is a position of strength, right? And as a person on the receiving end of that, I tend to believe that person because when they tell me about all their strengths and all their education and their expertise, I believe them because they’re also telling me about their weaknesses or their lack of experience or their vulnerabilities. And I would much rather work with that person who I trust than the person that tells me that they’re a perfect expert and they know exactly what they’re doing and that they have no weaknesses or shortcomings, right? Of course, nobody says it in that way, but that’s the impression people try to send. That is not strength. That is weakness. Tell the truth. Again, same thing with your spouse.

Hey, husband of mine, or wife of mine, I want to tell you something, and I’m going to try to be open, but it’s hard for me because I do get my defenses up when we talk about this subject. I’m going to try really hard not to. That’s so much stronger than going in with guns blazing, dukes up. Tell the truth.

Number six. This is an interesting one. This has to do with when you’re at the receiving end of somebody else who’s struggling in some way. So sometimes people come at us, this is very frequent, from a place of personal weakness. They are feeling hurt or vulnerable or upset or angry or victimized themselves. I shouldn’t say they’re always coming from that place. Sometimes we’re the ones in the place of weakness and so we misinterpret what they’re saying. But oftentimes they are. And they’re being passive aggressive or downright aggressive or something with us.

For example, I coach a lot of women who say things like, I wish I could get the house decluttered and organized, but I just can’t get myself to do it, or I can’t keep up on it or whatever, right? And as we coach on it and we understand that this actually really doesn’t matter at all and at the same time, we can absolutely do it, but you’re not going to do it from judging yourself and feeling bad about it. You’re going to have to do it from a place of again, inner strength, which is compassion and understanding and knowing that it doesn’t matter at all and then from that place, ironically, we can do it. That’s the short version of how I would coach someone on that. So then often what comes up is they say, but it really bothers my spouse. Because I’m encouraging them to first just make peace with where they’re at. Okay, but my spouse comes home and says things like, wow, the kitchen is really a disaster, or the house is really a disaster.

And so this brings me to the number six tip I want to give you today, which is take what people say literally. Just take it literally instead of taking it personally. If you take it literally and the spouse comes home and says, well, the house is really a disaster. Now, we take it personally, we’re like, oh, he’s saying that I should have done more, and I’m not doing a good job and what was I doing all day? Because I was home all day while he was at work. That would be taking it personally. But if you take it literally, your spouse says the house is really a disaster. The answer is, it really is. It’s bothering me, too. Right? That’s it. Take it literally.

I take what people say quite literally, not 100% of the time. There are times when it makes sense for me to read between the lines as to what they’re saying and what they mean. But if I want to come from a position of inner strength and it’s challenging for me to do, it’s because I’m interpreting usually what they’re saying through my own lens. And even if I’m right, even if what he meant was, you’re lazy, you should have gotten more done, there’s zero upside to me taking that on. That is his baggage, his opinion, his problem. It doesn’t mean I’m not compassionate. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about what my spouse thinks. It just means we actually both agree here.

This is the ironic part when I’m coaching on this topic, is the women will go, well, what if that is what he means? Is that you should have done more. I’m like, it doesn’t matter. And you think the same thing. The reason you’re bringing this to me is you’re telling me you want to keep up on the house. So you guys both agree. So if he says the house is a disaster, you’re like, it really is. What are we going to do about that? I remember this one client saying that her husband came home and said, the floor really needs to be mopped. And I was like, well, did it? And she said, yeah. I’m like, then the answer is, I know it really does. I wonder who’s going to mop it.

Now, this is starting to sound a little passive aggressive and everything I realize, so you got to be careful about that. But what I’m saying is your inner strength will come when you stop trying to read between the lines of what everybody’s saying. Remember, we’re not focusing on other people’s opinions and we’re not owning other people’s happiness. It’s enough to own our own. You got enough on your plate. Okay?

Last but not least, number seven thing that I want you to do that will help you access and operate from your inner strength is to be your own hero. Now, this sounds very trite. This is advice that we’re given all the time. No one’s coming to rescue you. But I’m not saying this in a way that’s like, well, you’re going to have to be your own hero. I’m saying this is the best news ever. When you learn how to be your own hero, it doesn’t mean I don’t want you to have friends and get support and connect with other people and have mentors and teachers and coaches and all of that. I want you to do all of that.

But in the end, who’s the one that’s creating your amazing life? You are. All the amazing things in your life you have because of you. Do you thank you very often? Do you acknowledge you? Because you have a lot of goodness in your life. I promise you do. You’ve achieved a lot. You’ve created a lot. You’re in a good place. You have a lot of things going for you, and you did that.

And the areas where you’re feeling challenged or you’re stuck or you’re struggling, those are yours too, to own. But that’s okay. You don’t have to be good at all of it. But you have the capacity to create what you want, to feel how you want to feel, to achieve what you want to achieve, to connect with people in any way that you want to connect with people, to live your life in the way that you desire to live your life. I promise you do. You are the one who can create it. Isn’t that the best news ever?

Choose to be that one for you. Choose to acknowledge all the good you’ve done and choose to be very curious and open and willing to become more of who you need you to be. It’s so much fun when you learn how to do it. All right, thanks for joining me today, you guys. Let’s operate from our inner strength and I’ll see you next week for another episode. Bye.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: JodyMoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s JodyMoore.com/freecoaching.