332. Finish Strong

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 332: Finish Strong.

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.

Hello everybody, welcome to the podcast, episode 332. Guess what time it is? It’s time to do your Christmas shopping. Maybe you’ve already done some if you’re on the ball. I am not. I am just getting started. But listen, every year we offer the option for you to purchase a year long pass to Be Bold and a lot of people like to buy this for themselves as their Christmas present. You can of course do that. I’m a big fan of you buying yourself a Christmas present.

But it also may be the type of thing that you want to get for a friend, or a relative, or a loved one because it is an awesome gift. Let me tell you why. First of all, clutter free, no clutter. We don’t need more stuff in our lives, you guys, we don’t. We need things that are going to help us achieve what we truly want which is to be more confident, to like ourselves better, to be better at loving others, to be less frustrated, to not be so stressed out and afraid of what’s happening in the world. To know how to navigate the challenges that we have with raising children or just being human beings in the world.

We need help moving on our goals. We need motivation and inspiration. We need more positive thoughts coming into our lives to combat all the negativity that is all around us in the world and that our brains tend towards and that is what Be Bold is. It is a program. I keep hearing from people over and over again that are new to Be Bold that they’re like, “Whoa, I didn’t realize how much is in there. There’s so much. It’s so reasonably priced.” People weren’t expecting to get everything they get.

So if you choose to purchase a year long pass to Be Bold for someone then first of all you’re going to get some really detailed and pretty instructions to print out. Their membership will be live as of January 1, so you’ll be able to wrap it up, put it under the tree, that nice little instruction sheet along with a copy of my book. We’re going to send you my book to give to them so you can wrap it all up nice. They’re going to be so thrilled. And the little piece of paper will explain that they’ve been given a membership to Be Bold.

And then they’re going to get access to a new workshop every month from me, workshop they can come to live if they want live, via Zoom I mean. And therefore they can interact and do the work with us. They can ask me questions. They can hear other people if they’re shy and they don’t want to ask questions, that’s fine too. There are multiple opportunities to come to various types of calls each week to get help with work that you’re doing to again, ask questions, to get coached, to dive deeper on specific topics.

There’s a way to write in your question if you prefer that. Everything is provided in replay format. So if you can’t be there live it’s all available. You could watch video replays if you like videos or you can listen, we have a private members only podcast where it all gets broadcast with the podcast feed so it’s really easy to listen on the go.

We also have a whole vault of bonus content that has all kinds of courses on every topic you can imagine that people can dig into on anxiety and depression, parenting help, help on progressing on your goals. All the tools I teach around weight loss, and health, just all kinds of things in there. There’s a whole series of family home evening lessons in there that you can use. There is help for your missionary kids in there. There’s just a whole bunch of stuff and we’re always adding to the bonus content.

So that’s what they’re going to get if you purchase the Be Bold gift pass which is an amazing gift. So if you want it you can go to jodymoore.com/gift and just follow the directions and we will hook you up, and you will be somebody’s favorite Santa of the year. We are getting ready to roll into the summer 2021. How do you like that? We almost made it through another year of a pandemic. We’re getting closer, people, we’re getting closer.

Before I dive into this topic, finish strong which I purposely am introducing right now as we’re about to finish out a year. Because I want to talk about finishing out things in a way that is a way I never really fully understood until I learned the tools that I use as a life coach. But before we do that, I want to share with you an interesting experience that I had last week.

I got on an airplane to go to Salt Lake City to do a little bit of work and it was a flight that didn’t leave till about five o’clock in the evening. And it was a really windy day. We get sometimes really windy days here. And it was one of those days. And you have to know first of all that I am not a fan of turbulence on airplanes. I used to get really nervous at it. I don’t get as nervous as I used to but I still don’t love it. I prefer a nice smooth flight. My brain goes to places when the plane is being jilted around.

And at any rate my husband said to me, “It’s going to be really windy tomorrow when your flight takes off”, this was of course the day before. And I said, “Oh, well, my flight doesn’t leave till five anyway.” And he said, “That’s going to be the windiest time of the day.” Because he watches the wind prediction. And so I was a little nervous. And I got to the airport and I started to board the plane. And as we were walking onto the plane just to find our seats and put our luggage away and everything the plane was shaking because the wind was so strong.

And I just had a really fascinating time watching my brain, I just watched it. I didn’t tell myself that I shouldn’t be scared, or to calm down, or to think positive or any of that. I like, in opportunities like that to just watch what my brain does. And I’m offering this to you as an example of how I try to use this work in my own life. Because it’s not that I walk around always thinking useful positive happy thoughts. No, I walk around freaked out sometimes like the other day when I went to get on that plane. But I am also very amused by my brain.

And I think because I’m just much more aware than I used to be that the freak out is just because of what I’m thinking. It’s not as scary because it doesn’t feel as real. I don’t question, is there really a reason to be scared? Because I know logically that the airline, their number one priority is safety because if they had a plane go down because of weather, that they should have paid attention to, that would probably put them out of business. So I don’t really think that I’m in any true harm.

I think if wind like that really is dangerous then the airline’s going to err on the side of probably grounding the flight, cancelling the flight. So I have a lot of logical thoughts that I also believe. So I just let my brain kind of do a little freak out sometimes like this because I find it amusing to watch my brain. So anyway here’s what my brain did. It started noticing other people getting on the plane. I was watching the passengers as they were boarding because I was already sitting down, so I’m watching people walk by.

And I was noticing things like that lady seems really put together. She seems like the kind of person who makes good decisions. And she’s getting on this flight so it must be okay. And then I noticed a lady getting on with a baby and I thought, okay, now she surely wouldn’t bring her baby on this flight if this flight was going to go down, if something was going to be terrible. She would probably not risk her baby for sure. For some reason my brain’s like, all these people would probably risk their own lives. But we would never risk our child’s life so it must be okay.

And then I saw a gentleman get on who I recognized as somebody who lives in our area who’s a really well respected surgeon. He doesn’t really know who I am. I just happen to know who he is. And I saw him getting on and I thought to myself, okay, that dude, he’s smart. If he’s getting on this flight, it must be okay. And so again I was just laughing at my brain because there’s this part of my brain that was like, what are you doing?

Why are you willingly boarding a plane that’s probably going to get shaken about, that’s going to be a horrifying flight, that for sure I’m probably going to die on, why are we doing this willingly when we could just get off the plane? And then it tried to rationalize it by noticing all the other people and thinking if they think this is okay, it must be okay. And I just found the whole thing to be really entertaining, I really did. Long story short, we took off and the captain said, “It’s going to be a bumpy flight for about the first 20 minutes so we’re going to ask the flight attendants to stay seated.”

And it actually wasn’t that bumpy at all but about 20 to 30 minutes in he said, “We’re actually going to ask them to stay seated the entire time because it’s looking like it’s not going to smooth out as much as we thought it would.” And it never really got very bumpy at all and then we landed safely. So anyway, that’s just kind of what I do is I notice my brain but I’m really amused by my brain which makes, even though I have some fear and worry and all that, it makes it not really that big of a deal. It makes it not that scary because I don’t really believe my emotions, I just notice them.

Now there are times when you want to believe your emotions but this was not one of them. So anyway that’s another little story for you for the week. I just found it to be really fascinating. You might find it interesting as well, what human brains do.

Let’s talk about finishing strong because we are about to enter the last month of the year. And I’m curious what the month of December is like for you. If you’re like most people I know, especially if you’re a woman then it’s a busy month full of rushing about and shopping, and planning, and cleaning, and decorating, and hosting, and things like that which is fine. However you want to celebrate the holidays, I am not here to tell you what you should do in that regard.

But I’m curious as to whether you take any time at the end of the year to assess your year, to look back on the year. I’m curious if you use this last month to finish strong on any goals, or resolutions, or plans that you created for yourself either at the beginning of the year or later on throughout the year. I’m curious as to whether you do any of that or if you just sort of decide to shut all of that off, to go on pause with your own personal goals or development and to tell yourself, I’ll think about it again in January.

Of course you can do that but here’s the reason why I’m actually teaching a course in Be Bold next week or whatever the first week of December is by the time you hear this, probably next week, right around the 1^st of December. I’m teaching a brand new workshop that I’ve never taught before called Finishing Strong because in Be Bold we’re still going to celebrate the holidays and we’re still going to do all the things that we choose to do but we’re also going to take the month of December to finish strong.

And here’s the reason why I think this matters. Here’s the reason why I am encouraging people in that program to do this work with me. Because what you do in December, who you are in December, the way you treat, again, your past, and your goals, and your own progress, and your own assessment in December is the strongest predictor of who you will be next March or April. It really is. Think about it.

What happens in March or April? The excitement of the new year kind of wears off. The enthusiasm that we had for those new year’s resolutions is now gone and we’re left with the reality that we have a human brain and that we have to learn to manage our brain, and answer our brain, and navigate our brains if we’re truly going to achieve our goals. And so December is the best time to practice the skills that will be necessary to set you up for success next year.

So I have a whole bunch of tools to help you to do that, like I said, I’m going to be teaching that in the Be Bold workshop, so those of you in there you can get ready for that. If you’re not in there you can join us at jodymoore.com/membership. I think the doors are open right now for about a week. But today I’m going to give you one of those strategies and one way to think about this when it comes to your year.

One of the things we’ll be doing is taking a look at our year. Most people don’t do this because (a) it feels overwhelming, it feels so big and so long ago. Again, like I already mentioned (b) we’re caught up being busy with what’s going on in December, especially holidays and things like that.

But the other reason I think people don’t do this is because they don’t know how to do it in a way that’s useful. The only thing they know to do is to look back and to feel bad about how they dropped the ball, to look back and notice where they fell short. And so that doesn’t feel good and so it’s easier to just not look back at all, to go, “Oh, forget it, let’s just not pay attention to that.”

So here’s one way that I recommend that you assess yourself because of course assessing yourself is extremely useful going forward. And I want you to try it out. So instead of taking a look at what you did or even what you didn’t do, I want you to take a look at who you were. This is kind of my new favorite way to think about goals and think about our future. Instead of thinking about what we want to do, what we want to accomplish, what we want to achieve, I want you to think about who you want to be.

I saw this quote somewhere and I’m so sorry, I can’t remember where I saw it, probably on Instagram somewhere, I don’t know. Or maybe I even heard it, I don’t know. Anyway I heard somebody say this and I was like, “Yes to that.” They said this, “Why do we ask kids what they want to be?” That’s what we ask kids, “What do you want to be when you grow up? You want to be a firefighter? You want to be a policeman? You want to be a doctor? You want to be a teacher? You want to be a mom? What do you want to be when you grow up?” That’s what we ask kids.

We should be asking kids who they want to be. “Who do you want to be when you grow up?” Because guess what? Here’s what I love about that. First of all, nobody grows up to be one thing, I mean very rarely. How many people do you know that graduated high school and whether they go to college or not, they end up in whatever job they end up in or they choose, maybe they become a firefighter let’s say and then they just stay a firefighter for the rest of their lives? No, I mean that almost never happens.

Usually we have many different careers, many different jobs. But even if we do find our dream job and dream career and stay there, we also enter into relationships and families. And then we leave relationships or what have you. So we are always a whole bunch of things. And those things change.

And when we ask kids, “What do you want to be when you grow up”, it’s no wonder we all feel this definitive pressure about the time we’re in college, to figure it out. Because we’ve been thinking our whole lives that we were going to become something and we’d better figure out what that something is and we’d better figure out how to become it because now is the time. But that’s not the way the world works. That’s not the way human beings work. We’re not going to become something, we’re going to become someone.

And that person that we become is an ever evolving, ever changing person. I don’t think there’s a finish line at which we become our best selves. Hopefully we keep evolving and keep growing throughout our entire lives. And that person might have many different roles. They might have many at a certain time and they also might change roles, change jobs, change relationship status etc. throughout their lives. That’s a more realistic picture.

The other reason I love the idea of asking kids, “Who do you want to be, what kind of person do you want to be”, is because they don’t have to wait till any certain point to start becoming that person. What do you want to be implies once you’re done with school, once you’re done with whatever these other things are that we’ve outlined for you, then you’ll get to become what you choose. But no, they get to be who they want to be right now while they’re in school.

So this reality that I recommend we consider for kids is true for each of us as well. I want you to think about any goal that you have for yourself or maybe it’s just even a habit that you want to develop, that you want to get better at, a routine that you want to implement. Maybe you want to get healthier, maybe you want to be more consistent about your spiritual practice. Maybe you have entrepreneurial goals or things like that, whatever it is. Instead of asking yourself, what do I want to do, and setting goals based like that, ask yourself, who do I want to be.

Now, let’s bring this back to finishing strong. I want you to look back at the previous year and I want you to assess who you became and who you were being. Now, here’s the catch, we’re not looking for criticism here. I’m not looking for areas where you fell short. We’re not looking for where you dropped the ball and where you weren’t the person you wanted to be. I only want you looking for successes.

I want you to look at all the good that you did, all the times when you operated from emotions that served you, even though I know that wasn’t the case all the time, those are the ones I want you to observe. And I want you to think about anything that has changed even if it’s just ever so slightly in the past year. Now it might be hard to define. Did it happen exactly in the year or was it two years? None of that really matters. What we’re looking for is progress. We want to see that we’ve progressed a little bit in one particular area even towards who we’re trying to be.

Here’s what I mean. Instead of I lost 10 pounds, which might be what you wanted to do and maybe you did lose 10 pounds or maybe you didn’t. A lot of people want to beat themselves up and say either they didn’t lose the weight or they lost the weight and then gained it back. That’s all result based. That’s all about what you did. What you did doesn’t matter at all, it really doesn’t.

That’s true with weight, but that’s also true with money. That’s true with how many times did you read your scriptures. How clean did you keep your house, how close and connected did you end up becoming with your spouse in terms of how many dates did we go on, how much time did we spend together. None of that stuff really matters. What matters is who were you being? And did you progress in some way towards being that person?

Because I’ll tell you what, if you want to be someone who has a healthy relationship with your body and with food, and who is confident, and loving, and doesn’t have a bunch of weirdness and drama around food, and bodies, and weight. That’s the goal. That’s the only reason any of us want to lose weight, by the way, because we want to have a healthy relationship with our bodies, and with food and we want to feel good about ourselves. And we want to feel healthy in our bodies. We want to have energy and all the benefits that good health brings.

So are you being that person? And I’ll tell you what, sometimes being that person might mean gaining some weight, it might mean overeating if you’ve been really too strict about undereating. And now you’ve created some drama in your head. I mean it really doesn’t look like any one certain thing and it doesn’t lead to any one certain outcome in the end. So who were you being? And can we find moments when you did become her?

And I’ll tell you what, I’m having this realization that a few years ago the amount of drama and emotion that I had around food almost feels foreign to me now. That’s not to say that I don’t have tons of work to do, I still do. But I remember just a few years ago having so much shame, there was lots of hiding. I like to eat junk food but I didn’t want anyone to know it, especially certain people who I may be really respected or who I thought had it all together when it came to food, and weight, and all of that.

And I did have this heaviness around it, so much so that when I think back to that now, to those moments, to certain conversations for example, and the way that I know I felt, I’m like, “What was that even?” It sort of feels foreign to me now. So while I’ve lost some weight and gained some weight, and I haven’t mastered all of it yet, I’m so proud of who I am being, who I’ve been over the last year and who I will continue to be, which is somebody who has such a healthier relationship with myself, with my body and with food. That is truly what I desire.

And it doesn’t mean we can’t keep working on achieving the results you want to in your life. But we don’t want to just achieve temporary results through willpower.

So let’s talk about money, the same thing with money. Whether you made the money you wanted to or not in your business or however it is that you make money in your job etc. is much less interesting than who were you being around money. And if you feel this exercise is really challenging because as you look back to who you were being you don’t like what you see, I want to tell you that you’re doing it wrong. Because there is always progress.

Even if that progress is just awareness, even if that progress I tried to get up and walk and I just kept falling down, falling down, falling down. I don’t care. I’m glad you got up and tried walking. So many people are not even trying to pursue the goals that they think they have for themselves. They’re not even willing to get up out of the chair and take a few steps because they’re so afraid of falling down. So in other words you were being a person who showed up and gave it a try. And that is worth celebrating.

So what did you do is not very interesting. What did you create, what did you make, how many times did you check off the box for whatever the habit is you’re trying to develop, how much money did you make, what happened to the scale? All of that is actually so boring and so irrelevant because we can achieve results by being the opposite of who we want to be and I don’t know why we would do that. That doesn’t serve us in the end. We only want to achieve results by being the people that we want to be.

Money again is a perfect example. If your goal is just to make money there’s a lot of ways to get money that are not us being who we want to be. There’s a lot of ways to manipulate and con people, and lie, and steal. We could get money in a lot of ways. But that’s not what we really want. We want to become a person who creates value and figures out how to provide that value to other people in exchange for money. That’s what we want to be, someone who serves and gets paid for it.

So who were you being last year, only look for the good. Now, you might be asking, “Don’t we want to notice where we fall short, Jody, isn’t that useful? Isn’t it useful learning to take a look at where we weren’t being the person we want to be?” My answer to that is yes and no. Here’s why. Of course we want to learn from our mistakes but your brain is already doing that, I promise you. Your brain is already pointing out all of your shortcomings and failures.

So if you can look at where you weren’t being your highest self with the utmost compassion, if you can look at it and say, “What’s wrong love? What were you needing? What are you still needing? What can I provide to you to help you?” And you can feel totally confident that you have a good reason for who you were being then okay, go in and take a look at it. But most people I find are not really very good at doing that. And the truth is, you don’t have to. It’s not like the lesson is going to be lost, I promise you.

There isn’t a lesson there that you’re not getting. You already are aware of where you dropped the ball. You’re already aware of where you fell short. And your brain is already automatically learning from that.

Again, back to the toddler learning to walk, we don’t have to be like, “Now notice when you put too much weight on your heels and didn’t balance properly then you fell down. So take note and try it again.” We don’t have to do that, you know why? That little baby brain even as underdeveloped as it is, is learning from falling down. It takes note and it adjusts accordingly until eventually he or she is able to walk.

So I promise you, your brain is already doing that and you’re already making little, tiny adjustments that you’re not even aware of based on your failures, you don’t need to do that. You need to celebrate your successes, and I don’t mean successes in terms of results, I mean successes in terms of who you were being because you are amazing most of the time. Did you know this?

You are good, and kind, and patient, and loving, and you try, and you give it your best, you mean well for everybody, and you’re loving, and trusting, you are all those things way more often than you’re the areas in which we fall short. But your brain won’t notice the positive unless you direct it on purpose.

So I want you to take a little bit of time, you can approach this a couple ways, you can pick one particular area, maybe one goal that you have, whether you achieved it or not this is still really a useful exercise. And I want you to notice who you were being the last year. What do you love about her? What do we appreciate about her? What’s amazing about her? And who are we continuing to be? And then of course we’re going to ask, who do I want to be December of 2022?

You can do the same exercise to picture your future self. What will be different about her? What will she think that’s different than what you think now? What will she feel? How will she behave? What is different about her? Who were we last year and who are we striving to become? That is such a better question than what is it that you want to do. I hope you’ll give it a try with me this year. I would love for you to come to Instagram to find the post associated with this podcast episode and share in the notes with me who you were being, what do you love about her.

Alright you guys, I love you so much. Again, if you’re in Be Bold get ready because I have seven other concepts I want to teach you to help you finish strong 2021 so that we’re ready to roll into 2022. I’ll see you then. Take care.

Hey there. If you enjoy this podcast, or even if you just find that it sort of piques your curiosity or makes you think, you’re going to love the book that I wrote. It’s called Better Than Happy: Connecting with Divinity Through Conscious Thinking and it’s available now at Amazon, in print, or Kindle version. Or if you want me to read it to you, head over to Audible and grab the audio version. And why not grab a copy for your sister, your best friend, or your mom while you’re there too? Just saying.