305. Approval Power

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 305: Approval Power.

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.

Can we just begin with the challenges I’m having today making a podcast episode? I mean you’d think after 304 episodes it would get easier but today that is not the case. I recorded an episode earlier that I didn’t have my mic turned on for. So I was like, okay, I guess it’ll get better the second time around. And then I keep just saying the name of the podcast wrong, the name of the episode wrong. I just barely started up Zoom and started talking into Zoom and there were still some of my clients on there from the call.

And anyway I feel like this time it’s going to be a go. I’m ready to go. I’ve practiced it so many times that it’s going to be amazing. So get ready, but before we dive into approval power which is a super fun power to practice utilizing in your life. Before we get into it I want to make sure you register for Train Your Brain because so many of you listen to this podcast which I love. I’m so grateful that you’re here, that you download, and share, and incorporate what you’re learning here.

But I’m telling you, if what you hear on this podcast strikes a chord for you and it feels powerful to you at all or it just kind of resonates as something that makes sense and that’s true then you’re going to have your mind blown by experiencing coaching. Because coaching is where the rubber hits the road, it’s where the things I’m teaching you here actually get applied in real life. And I do try to give you lots of real life examples here. But without the interaction of a client, without me being able to go in and dig around in their brains, you don’t get the full effect of it.

And I can tell you this because I actually found these tools, I’ve shared this before but I was working in corporate, I was taught the model as a leadership coach. So I used them there and they were powerful. But to be honest I didn’t know what I was doing. I probably shouldn’t have been coaching people with the model. I was not properly trained. But at any rate we saw the effect of focusing on what you can control versus trying to control others and keeping accountability versus blame. I saw all of that for sure. But it didn’t really blow me away until I saw coaching in real life.

And that actually did not happen for me until I went to coach training because this was back before, well, I think podcasts were around but they weren’t very popular. Nobody was really listening to podcasts. Brooke did not have a podcast. There was no Life Coach School podcasts. There weren’t a bunch of coaches putting out content like we have today. There weren’t coaching options that I had found that were the right fit for me.

So I really didn’t get to experience coaching until coach training. And it’s not an exaggeration to say that there’s Jody before that experience and Jody after that experience. I have not been the same person since. Not to say that I was completely healed of all my problems or that I don’t still have lots of problems, I definitely do. But I just have a totally different perspective on all of them and on myself. And my life just became exponentially better after experiencing coaching.

And so I want you to have an experience at least somewhat like that. I want you to experience coaching and that’s what we’re doing in Train Your Brain. I’m going to be teaching some topics. I’m teaching a little bit each day, all new topics. If you came to Bootcamp back in January that was so amazing by the way, I changed up all the topics. And we’re just going to do lots of coaching. And it’s only 19 bucks. So we’ll be giving you replays if you can’t be there live, it’s fine.

If you’re in Be Bold you’re already going to get it all so you don’t have to worry about paying the 19 bucks. But for everybody else, come and check it out at jodymoore.com/brain.

Okay, so I want to talk to you about approval power today. This is something that I’m generally really good at but only because I trained myself to be good at it. Although it is something that I noticed and I’ve paid attention to for a very long time.

Some of the things that I do as a coach are definitely things that I think Heavenly Father gave me some talents and gifts as He’s given all of us talents and gifts. Some of mine lie in the area of observing human behavior and figuring out how to leverage the way our Heavenly Parents created us to just have a more enjoyable, more successful life.

So I want to give you this story and some of you might have heard me tell this story before. I’ve told it before. But this is from when I was a senior in high school. I was dating a guy, he’s a great guy. I did not end up marrying that guy, he’s not my husband.

But anyway we were at the McDonald’s drive-thru and the woman went to give us change and for some reason she was out of quarters, or dollar bills, or something. And so she was waiting for her manager to bring change and she said to my boyfriend at the time, she said, “I don’t have the right change to give you unless you’re okay with dimes. I have dimes. Can I give you a bunch of dimes?” And my boyfriend said, “Dimes, we love dimes.”

And for some reason it just struck me as so awesome that not only did he say, “Yeah, it’s fine, that’s okay. We’re not going to be difficult here, we can take dimes.” But he went so far as to say, “We love dimes.” And I was just laughing because come on, nobody loves dimes. Nobody wants a whole bunch of change, or at least we just don’t even care, we don’t really pay attention. And I was like, “You know what’s awesome? Is you can just choose to love dimes if it just so happens that someone needs to give you a bunch of dimes.”

And there are so many things like that in our world, things that you could just choose to like. Did you know this? You can choose to like things. You can choose to approve of things. And I have found that I am a much happier person now that I’ve trained myself to like most things. I really do. There are still some things I don’t like and actually I always want to not like a lot of things. I want to not like it when people mistreat one another. And I want to not like when somebody’s in pain and somebody’s suffering. There are things that I want to not like.

But there are so many things that I used to walk around not liking that I realized there was zero upside to that. It was just not necessary and it wasn’t adding to making my life better. It was doing the opposite. It was detracting. It was making my life less enjoyable. Do you know why? I like that is a thought? It’s not a fact. It’s not an observation that you’re making. And people think this, they’re like, “I just noticed I like this and I don’t like that.” As though they’re telling me about themselves, what they’ve observed about themselves.

What we lose when we talk about it that way is the reality that it’s a choice. You have a choice about whether you’re going to like things or not, you guys. I know it doesn’t feel that way. I know it feels like it just happens to you. But I promise you, it is a choice. Again I have always been fascinated by this.

And so I’ve observed it in many, many ways. I notice that it used to be that the style that was cool, and acceptable, and modern, and what we thought we liked in kitchens was a lot of dark wood, and dark cabinetry, and dark floors, and dark banisters, and railings, and dark was kind of cool. Maybe it was cozy. I don’t know. I feel like this was sort of a thing back in the 90s or whatever. It was cozy, and chic looking, and expensive looking to have lots of dark wood. I don’t know if chic is the right word. I shouldn’t be talking about home décor. I don’t know what I’m talking about.

But I do know that if you go in a house that was modern back in the 90s or the 80s and you walk in there today odds are you’re going to go, “I don’t really like this.” Even if somebody took great care of it, let’s say that it’s not worn out, there aren’t problems, there aren’t things breaking down, somebody took really good care and it’s very clean. You still might think that you don’t like it if you’re like me.

Because if you’ve been watching TV at all, or been on the internet, or just been exposed to the world at all then you know that now it’s supposed to be light and bright. That’s what we like, bright, light, white kitchens or at least a lot of light in there, the dark not so much anymore unless it’s done exactly the right way. So how is it that we went from liking this type of kitchen to disliking that type of kitchen? It’s not just something that happened to you, you guys. It’s your brain that changed. It’s your thoughts about what is a pretty kitchen, that’s the only thing that changed.

So I just want you to notice there’s a choice. Now, you were given those thoughts possibly if you’re like me, were given those thoughts by the media and things like that. A lot of people say that and they’re like, “Yeah, marketers sit around tables and think what else can we sell people?”

But I personally don’t think that most companies and marketers are out to try to screw us over. I think that they sit around going, “How can we make people’s lives better? How can we help solve a problem? And what would be fun, and interesting, and new that people might enjoy?” I think most of the time actually marketers and companies are coming from really good intentions. But still, my point is we get offered a lot of thoughts from the world about what we should like and what we should dislike.

And I just want you to know that it’s okay to take it from outside, but it is a choice still. It’s a choice to decide I agree with that or I disagree with that. And that if you want to strengthen your ability to like things you can and then you will gain approval power. Approval power is just the power that you have as a person when you get better of approving of more things. There are so many things that are either neutral that you’re not paying attention to that you could just choose to approve of. Or things that you think you dislike and I’m just like, “Why do we dislike that?”

So here’s another example. I had a friend when I was in college, again this moment stands out in my head just like my boyfriend saying, “Dimes, we love dimes”, this moment stands out too. I don’t remember exactly the setup for the conversation. All I remember is my friend saying to me, “I hate big trucks.” And I was like, “What? Why do you hate big trucks? I mean why are you bothering with hating big trucks? Is there an upside to that?” Because you don’t have to own a big truck, no one’s ever going to force you to.

And yet some people like big trucks and I kind of think that’s okay. I think it might not be useful to hate big trucks. Think about all the things that you have opinions on. This is something again that I’ve gotten really good at. And part of this I’ve always been actually good at. And it comes from a weakness probably of not wanting to exert myself. It might be coming from laziness you might say. But I’ve always been pretty good at not having opinions about things that are sort of irrelevant or that I don’t have influence in.

Here’s what I mean. A lot of people have about opinions about the decision that the school board made when, you know, especially over the last year and a half as Covid has interrupted things. Should we let the kids go to school? Should we not? Should we have them masked? Should teachers do it this way or that way? And so many decisions, now, if I wanted to get involved and go to those meetings, and pay attention, and login, and write in my opinion, or fill out all the surveys, or whatever, okay, that’s fine. I just don’t choose to.

I’m just like you know what?  Anything they ask my opinion on, I’m perfectly happy to share it. But otherwise I just choose not to have strong opinions about whether they’re doing it the right way or the wrong way because you know what? I’m not on the school board. I’m not a teacher or a member of that board. I just don’t have – not that I couldn’t influence it if I wanted to. But I don’t see anybody being mistreated here. I think that everybody has the same goal, which is to do right by our kids, and our teachers, and keep everybody as safe as possible.

And so how we do that, I just choose not to have a lot of opinions because as soon as I have opinions and the decisions they make don’t line up with my opinions then I’m going to be tempted to diminish my approval power. I don’t want to diminish my approval power. That does not control the school board. All it does is punish me and it minimizes my experience of life. I just want to be grateful that somebody is taking the time to make those decisions. And that somebody is doing what they do for my kids and that teachers are showing up and that it’s a hard year for everybody.

I just want to mostly approve of everything. So it makes it easier for me to have approval power if I don’t get all into the nitty gritty of things that really aren’t my business, if you will. Now, that could be different in different situations. If I had a kid that was struggling or something and I needed to get involved, that’s different. But I’m just saying, not really mine.

So again, sometimes people start talking about a particular issue, maybe it’s politics, maybe it’s whatever. And again I’m not saying you don’t show up and show up for a cause that you believe in. Do that, for sure. I’m just talking about the general like can you believe this person said this thing, can you believe this decision that this place made. I’m always like you know what? I just, they didn’t ask me. I mean that’s the truth. Yeah, they didn’t ask me.

So I just don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, having a strong opinion about it because it’s not a cause that I look at and think that’s an injustice, we need to fight that. It’s just maybe I would have a different opinion about how to go about that. But it’s really not my business, it’s not my thing. It’s not where I’m choosing to put a lot of my time and effort right now. I think they have good intentions. Do you know? They didn’t ask me. I say this all the time. I’m not kidding you.

We have conversations about, “Can you believe that they’re doing this at church now and the whatever, we made this decision about how to run the meeting?” I’m like, “Yeah, well, they didn’t ask me. So I’m just going to support them. I’m just going to approve of what they’re doing.” I really do just choose to approve of so many things, you guys. I choose to approve of the way people look, the way they choose to dress, the way they do their hair, whether or not men have beards or what have you. I’m just like, “Good for them. That’s what they choose, I’m all in.”

But I think this is what people have a hard time wrapping their heads around. If it’s not the way I would do it, if it’s not my style, or if they don’t talk the way I talk, or they don’t show up the way I would show up then I should be mad about it. I should disapprove of it. And again, there are some behaviors that I’m like, “Hey, I just don’t think we need to mistreat each other or disrespect each other.” I disapprove of that.

But otherwise when it comes to opinions, not only do I not disapprove, I approve. I’m like, “Look at your style, amazing, I love it.” Even if it’s totally opposite from my style, I might never have that same style, I might never dress the way they’re dressed. If it’s not harming someone else I just choose to approve of it, I choose to love it. I choose to like things. This has made me so powerful in my own life because I walk around feeling good, feeling happy, feeling the benefits of liking things, just like.

When we dislike things, and we disapprove, and we criticize everything we feel the effects of that. That impacts us more than anyone else. So as much as possible access your approval power for your own sake, for your own benefit. I have done this so much that I choose to like things ahead of time.

So for example, maybe I order something in the mail, I order something for my house or something, whatever, a new item of clothing or something. I just choose to like it in advance. I just like it before I even get it. I don’t think I wonder if I’m going to like it. I just go, “I can’t wait for that thing to get here. I love it.” And mostly I do like what I end up buying for that reason. And if I really can’t get there then I still go, “I love that thing for coming into my life and I’m going to give it to someone who would love it even more than me.”

It might not be the right fit for me but I don’t have to dislike it to get rid of it. I can still like it and decide not my style. Do you see what I’m saying? I also realized the other day that this has made me – obviously liking clothes and things like that, it doesn’t really matter. What I want you to do is strengthen your approval muscle.

I want you to strengthen your approval power because ultimately what happens when you start liking all the little random things in the world that people just have opinions about is you get better at liking people. It’s made me so much better at liking people. People that I used to find irritating, I find fascinating. And I love just observing what might be happening in their heads and wondering what it might be like to be them. I can appreciate a lot more about people now that I’ve trained myself to be better at accessing approval power.

It’s way easier to disapprove of things, you guys, way easier. It’s so much harder to approve of things. So it feels sometimes important and smart, or intellectual or something to be critical of things. And I was going to say, we have a new dentist. I mean we do but only because we didn’t go to the dentist for years after moving to Spokane, we just didn’t bother finding a dentist. And finally I was like, “We’ve got to go to the dentist, this is ridiculous.”

So we started going to the dentist. And I was like, “Don’t you love that dentist office?” And he’s like, “Yeah.” I mean he’s not disapproving of them by any means. But he’s not feeling the benefit of the approval power I am. I’m like, “I just love them, they’re so nice and all of the staff, they stop and they explain what’s happening. And isn’t it cool they have cool technology? And I just love that dentist office.” I purposely do that you guys, I purposely think about all the things I love about it because I’m teaching my brain to approve of things.

It’s really easy to just sort of ignore it because there’s nothing to disapprove of. Or to find the little thing like, yeah, I like it except for this one thing. Why? Why bother? I just don’t see the upside in most cases. If it’s not something dangerous or what have you, then what’s the point? So I had this experience which is actually what prompted me to do this podcast.

I’ve had two people in the last four to six weeks ask my opinion about another person who I’ve worked with in various capacities in my business who they were considering working with. Maybe they were considering hiring them for their services or something like that, twice in the last probably month or so. Somebody said, “Hey, I know you’ve worked with this person or this organization, could you share with me what your experience was? I’m considering hiring them.” And both times I heard myself saying and thinking, “I love them.”

And a little part of my brain is like they’re going to think that you’re not very smart if you don’t have something to say, this is the only drawback, this is the only downside. And in fact some of these, at least one of the organizations that I was asked about, I know other people that haven’t had the same thoughts and feelings. They don’t love them like I do. They’ve maybe stopped working with them. So I’m like should I let them know that?

And here’s what I realized? You know how there are people that you don’t really ask their opinion because you know they just hate everything? You have people like this you’re like, “Hey, let’s ask our friend if he liked the movie.” And then you think no, of course he didn’t like it, he doesn’t like any movies. Or let’s ask him if that restaurant was good. No, he’s not the one to ask. He’s going to say no because he’s so critical, he doesn’t like anything. He’s going to tell you what was wrong with it. Not the person’s opinion we want to ask.

Well, I think I’m kind of that person on the opposite end. You ask me and odds are I’m going to love it. I’m going to love the person. I’m going to love the movie. I’m going to love the restaurant. I’m going to love the organization because I like to love things. I like to at least like and approve of things because it’s so much fun. I feel so much happier.

So if you ask my opinion there’s a really good chance I’m going to say, “I love that place. Here’s what I love about them. Here’s why I think they’re amazing. Here’s why I love that person. That person’s brilliant, so impressed with that person.” It’s not the person, I mean it is but it’s my head being really naturally good at liking things because I practiced it, because I trained myself, because I’m so good at accessing approval power that I’m really good of approving of so many things. And this is a power you can access too my friend. It really is just a choice.

Now, I’m going to tell you the best part of approval power, are you ready? When you practice and you get better at approval power you naturally get better at approving of yourself. You just do. When you’re good at liking things, it doesn’t matter what the thing is, it could be you. And that is what I’ve discovered. That is why this is the most powerful thing is because when you love yourself you don’t have to think about yourself anymore all day long.

You know that old story that your brain plays over and over again about what’s wrong with you, and how you don’t look right, and you didn’t do it right, and you’re not smart enough, and you haven’t made the right choices, and you’re not a good enough parent or whatever it is? Yeah, that soundtrack, isn’t it boring, aren’t you bored of it? It’s so old. I’m so tired of it. I finally was like, “I’m done watching that movie. I have watched it way too many times.”

And I started approving of all the things outside of me. I started liking people’s names, and liking how they did their hair, and liking just all kinds of random things, and you know what happened? I actually like myself better. I didn’t even mean to, it just happened on accident because again if you ask me about someone I’m probably going to tell you they’re great, including me. It’s really just a decision.

I was listening to someone get coached the other day by another coach. And he was saying how he’s having a hard time loving himself because he has some saggy skin. And he was asking the coach. He was like, “I know I need to love myself but how do I?” And I just wanted to scream into the computer, but I wasn’t live so it wouldn’t have worked. But I wanted to say, “You just choose, it’s just a choice. You just decide to love yourself.” And okay, I’ve got some saggy skin and I love all of me, let’s so. So what, it’s skin.

It’s what bodies do. Bodies do funny things especially as we get older. You just have to make the choice. And if it’s hard to start with you, I think that’s the hardest place to start, honestly, to start with yourself, that’s the hardest place. Start with things outside of you. Start with just loving that person’s name. What a great name, that’s such a cool name, I love that name. I love what you’re wearing today. I love that you just said that. I love that you would think about it that way. Start with loving other people, that’s so fun to do.

If that feels too hard start with something smaller, start with loving the color of paint on your house. Start with loving the plants in your front yard. Start with loving the plants at church as you walk in the door. Have you ever noticed them? Have you ever noticed the landscaping at church? What if you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I love that someone planted flowers.” Somebody thought about, hey, you know what would be nice? Some flowers. And then they went and bought flowers. And then they planted the flowers and those flowers haven’t even died. Amazing.

Do you see what I mean? There’s things everywhere that you could love. And when you do that my friends, you will access an amazing power. Alright, do it with me, I can’t wait to hear about it.

Thanks for joining me today. I’ll see you at Train Your Brain next week. Have a beautiful weekend. Bye bye.

Who is your life coach? If you don’t have one I would be so honored to be your coach. I created a virtual coaching program called Be Bold that I want to invite you to join me in. We can address challenges, we can work on goals, and we can do it in so many different ways.

We have group coaching, individual private coaching, and online chats along with hundreds of hours of courses and content that I’ve created just for you. When you’re ready to really take what you’re learning on the podcast to the 10x level, then come check out Be Bold at JodyMoore.com/membership.