323. Grace

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 323: Grace.

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, how’s it going? Hope you’re having a good week. My kids all started school last week, yeah, second week of September. We start school a little bit later, get out a little bit later. But at any rate it’s the most bizarre experience I’m having right now because my youngest just started kindergarten, she’s in all day kindergarten. So now we officially have all four of our kids in school all day. And it’s equal parts amazing and sad. That’s how I’m feeling. It’s just kind odd.

It’s great, I’m excited for them, even my older two, they’re getting older, they’re both in high school now and so they’re having different experiences. My daughter especially is really, really busy and I kind of feel like I never see her. So, I don’t like that part. There’s that and then there’s the peace that comes from cleaning up your house in the morning and it stays clean at least until 4 o’clock when they all get home. That’s kind of awesome. But anyway, it’s just kind of an odd transition that we’re going through in our family and a good thing but a change, nonetheless.

So that’s what’s going on for the Moore family. I hope that you’re doing well wherever you are and whatever’s going on in your life. I want to talk about grace today. And I just want to begin by acknowledging that that word ‘grace’ has a lot of different meanings and can be used in a lot of different ways. And I love that about it. We use it in a religious sense to talk about a portion of the atonement that strengthens us and I love and so much value that form of grace.

But what I mean by it today, the way I want to talk about it is with regards to giving people the benefit of the doubt with regards to being kind, and compassionate, and understanding human weakness and human frailty, and choosing to love people anyway. And I want to start by talking about it with regards to other people. But I really want to focus on your ability to give yourself grace. So, to begin with, every human being on the planet is lovable. I know that’s hard to wrap your head around. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around.

Sometimes I meet people or I have people in my life that I think that person is just hard to love. But it’s never the person that’s hard to love, it’s me that has a hard time loving people sometimes. So, one of the things we like to do when we train coaches at The Life Coach School is we teach them that lovability is not an adjective that describes another person. Lovability is a skill that you can develop. It’s a verb. You can get better at loving people.

You can increase your lovability which isn’t increasing how easy it is for people to love you. But how easy it is for you to love other people, your ability to love others. And a really important part of increasing your ability to love others is learning to have grace and give people grace. Now, I recommend that you do this, that you think about if this is a skill maybe you want to work on and develop for your sake. Because when you love other people you get to feel love, love feels really good.

Now, the other people are going to like it too because they’re going to like the way you show up better. They’re going to like the things that you say or the person that you become when you’re feeling love. But I want your main motivation to be that you will get to feel better and you will get to be that higher version of you which feels amazing and creates the best results, the best outcomes in your relationships in every other area of your life.

But people sometimes do things that we don’t like, darn it. People say things that we don’t like. People behave in ways that we think they shouldn’t behave, even ways that everyone would agree they shouldn’t behave, most everyone except for the person who did it. So, this is where I think grace can be really useful because I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t have opinions.

I’m not suggesting that you should think that no matter what people do, it’s all good and acceptable, even though those are all thoughts, people should do this, they shouldn’t do that. They shouldn’t lie. They should be honest. They should do what they say they’re going to do. We can go all the way from things that again, most everybody would agree are wrong or that we would say violate some of our morals or standards.

But we can go from that end of the spectrum all the way to the other end which is just our opinions about the right way to make pancakes, the right way to load the dishwasher. Are you with me? And anywhere on that continuum, it’s available to you to give people grace. You don’t even have to let go of the thought this is the right way to make pancakes or people shouldn’t lie to each other. You can keep that thought even though it’s just a thought if you choose grace. Do you follow me, am I making sense here?

So, grace is just, and I love you anyway. That’s it, I love you anyway. So, I did a podcast a couple of weeks ago on complaining. I talked about complaining and I decided to use myself as an example of what not to do. And so, I listed out all the ways that I had complained the day before. And I thought I was pretty clear in stating that I was listing that out to demonstrate what not to do. And yet I got a handful of people that were complaining about my complaining podcast. So, it made me laugh because it was so ironic.

And they were complaining about some of the things that I said that I had complained about. I didn’t even go on – I thought anyway, I didn’t go on and complain and plead my case for why I had the opinions I had. I was just simply using it as a demonstration of what not to do. And yet some people said, “I don’t like that you have this opinion about that thing. You shouldn’t say that on your podcast.” And I’m like, “Hey, I do have opinions and I’m a human.”

So okay, thanks for your concern, thanks for your message, thanks for complaining to me about the complaining podcast. I hear you. I definitely will take it into consideration. But the truth is I am a human. I have lots of thoughts. That was, again, I only got a handful of these messages. But they were all along the same lines of that’s just your thought. And a 100% that’s my thought. And I’m allowed to have thoughts. I’m always going to have thoughts. I’m even going to have some thoughts that I don’t want to have, that aren’t serving me. That’s always going to be the case.

And that’s going to be the case for every human in your life, I hate to tell you. They’re never going to do it how you wish they would. Your favorite podcaster, I’m not saying I’m your favorite, I hope I am but I’m just saying, your favorite coach or podcaster is going to say things that you don’t like. And you can keep the part where you don’t like them, just like one of the things I complained about was one of my favorite of our church leaders saying some things that I didn’t like. That’s what I complained about.

And I have so much grace for that leader of my church. I have nothing but love for him. I still don’t like some of the things he said. But I have nothing but love and grace for him. And the reason I’m starting with this description of having grace for other people is because it’s a lot easier, I think, to do for other people than to do for yourself. It’s a lot easier for me anyway to have grace for other people in my life whom I love, especially the people I really look up to overall, I can totally give them grace. But for me it’s a little harder to give myself grace. It’s a little harder to let yourself off the hook.

So, here’s the next thing I want to say about it. Grace is not necessary when people do things ‘right’ or ‘perfectly’. Now, of course what’s the right way, what’s the perfect way, that’s all subjective. That’s all up for debate. But if people do things according to how I think they should or how even most people think they should then there’s no grace required. Grace is only required when people do something we don’t like or show up in a way that we don’t care for. And that is the beauty of it.

The beauty of loving people anyway is a skill that I want to offer to you will make your life better. It will set you free because you will stop having to try to control everyone. It still enables you to be you because you get to keep your opinions and ideas about the world but you just don’t hold so tight to them. You just know that people actually get to do things their own way. They get to have their own opinions. And they may disagree with me that that was the wrong way to do it, 100%. That doesn’t make either one of us right or wrong, it just makes us different.

We have different brains and different ideas, that’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. So that’s grace for other people. Now, like I said, I want the main focus of this episode to be giving yourself grace. And I’m going to tell you why that’s so powerful. And then I want all of you in Be Bold to get ready because in October, which is right around the corner, I’m going to be teaching you a brand new workshop. This year I’ve created all new workshops, it’s been really fun, this is no exception. It’s called How to Give Yourself Grace.

We’re going to go through it together step by step. And I’m going to teach you how to do it. Now, again, giving yourself grace is the hardest part. So, if you master what I’m going to teach you or you even just get a little bit better at what I’m going to teach you, you’re going to be so much better at doing it for the other people in your life. But I really want to kind of dive into in Be Bold this month, the heart of it, which is giving yourself grace. How do you be kind to yourself even when you haven’t mastered the things you’re trying to master?

How do you be kind to yourself when you mess up, or you drop the ball, or you fall short? How do you love yourself anyway? That is what I’m going to teach you. But for today, and by the way if you’re not in Be Bold, get in there because I want to empower you with this information. And I will say that the doors opened today, the day this podcast airs and then they will close by next Thursday, September 30^th because we’re going to dive in, in October. So, get in there if you’re not in there. It’s only 49 bucks and you’re going to want to go through this workshop and all the other stuff you get in Be Bold with us.

By the way I just like mentioning this over and over again because when I go sign up for something with recurring payments I get really nervous. I’m not going to be able to get out of it, I’m going to have to go visit corporate in order to get out of this thing. And that is not how we work in Be Bold. You could just literally come for one month, 49 bucks, cancel by just clicking a button and we just say, “We love you, see you later.” That’s it, super easy.

At any rate I want to talk to you about why learning to give yourself grace is so necessary and important. What is it that you want? If it comes to some area of yourself that you’re trying to improve, or maybe it’s a goal you’re trying to achieve, or maybe it’s a habit you’re trying to start or stop, just something you want to change about yourself. I am all for doing that. I like growing. I like changing myself in ways that I think will serve me and the rest of the world better.

So, whatever that thing is, maybe you want to lose weight, maybe you want to stop yelling at your kids, maybe you want to stop fighting with your husband, maybe you want to stop whatever it is. You get my drift, right? So why do you want to change in that way, why? What will be different for you? I get that other people around you might have a different experience of you but we can’t control that, that doesn’t always happen. What will be different for you in your experience of you if you achieve that change you’re trying to change in yourself.

Let’s take yelling at your kids. Let’s say you’re like, “I don’t want to yell at my kids. I feel terrible after I yell at them. I feel guilty. I don’t think that’s good parenting. I don’t think it’s serving them but I just can’t get myself to stop.” Then if we ask, “Why do we want that?” Well, you would probably start out by saying, “Because my kids deserve better.” To which I would say, “Okay, that’s fine and all, but we don’t know what your kids’ experience is going to be in the end, they get to choose it. So, let’s just try to get out of their business. What will be different for you?”

“Well, when I stop yelling at my kids then I won’t feel so bad afterwards. I won’t have all this guilt and shame. I won’t dislike myself and judge myself so harshly as a mother.” So, what I say is, “Okay, let’s imagine that we’re trying to get to the south end of the lake. The south end of the lake is I feel good about myself, I like who I’m being as a mother. I feel confident and I can love myself.” That’s the south end of the lake.

Now, my clients will tell me that after they yell at their kids, they beat themselves up and I say, “Let’s not do that. Let’s just give you grace. Let’s just be kind to you. Let’s not yell at you for yelling at the kids.” And they say, “I think that’s very dangerous. I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think that’s fair. I think I should feel bad.” I get this on social media too if I say, “Don’t feel bad if you yell at your kids.” People go, “You’re teaching people to be abusive parents.” And I say, “No, I think the opposite is true.”

Because if the south end of the lake is that I feel good about who I’m being, I’m being my highest self and I feel that then rowing north isn’t going to get us to the south end of the lake. Do you follow me? When you beat yourself up, and hate yourself, and feel terrible about yourself, you’re rowing north. Because the south end of the lake is I love myself, I feel good about me. I like who I’m being. We can’t get to the south end of the lake by rowing north.

Now, some of you might say, “Well, that does work for me actually, Jody. When I beat myself up, when I tell myself that I’m disgusting and fat then I go to the gym. When I get really mad at myself for yelling at my kids then the next day I’m much better.” And I say, “Okay, yeah. For a moment you might get a temporary surge of false movement.” I’m calling it false movement because you’re not headed south when you’re rowing north. It’s just that you scared yourself into a change. You used fear on yourself.

We can motivate people through fear, we can, it’s a thing that people do unfortunately in a lot of cases. We can get a temporary change that way. We cannot get long term sustainable, healthy change that we actually want in that way. Has anybody ever hated themselves into being really healthy? If so, please send me a DM and prove me wrong. I would love to talk to you about it. But I’m pretty sure that doesn’t happen. I’m pretty sure we only get temporary surges of change that don’t actually last, don’t create the ultimate healthy result that we’re looking for.

If we’re trying to get to the south end of the lake and the south end of the lake is always feeling better then we can’t feel worse in order to get there. We can’t row north and expect to end up at the south end of the lake, it just doesn’t work. You’ll never hate yourself better, you just won’t, you have to love yourself better. And we don’t have to say, “Well, it’s fine that I yelled at my kids, in fact it’s amazing that I yelled at my kids.” We can use grace as the vehicle to get there. Grace is alright, so that happened, I wonder why.

I wonder what’s going on for me. It’s fascinating that I did that. It’s curious that I did that. I wonder what’s up for me. I wonder what I’m needing. I wonder what I’m seeking. I wonder what I’m missing. I wonder what I’m scared of. I wonder what’s behind all this. I wonder what’s going on for me. Do you see the difference? You don’t have to go all the way to it’s amazing, I love that I did that. You can just give yourself some grace. Okay, so I did that.

Now, here’s the other thing and final thing I want to leave you about grace today. Grace gets us focused on the future, it gets us pointed towards the future. We cannot be focused on the past and make the progress available to us. So, notice grace is, okay, that thing happened, I did that thing. I wonder what was going on. I wonder what I’m needing. But we don’t spend in coaching, those of you in my program and all this, we don’t spend very long on the past. We spend a lot more time on okay, so what do I want to do next time? How do I want to think about myself now?

Who do I want to be today, the rest of the day today and tomorrow? How do I want to feel in situations like this? Who do I want to become? How do I want to think? That is about the future. So, we use the past as a little bit of information to learn from and then we redirect to the future. Sometimes we try to go to our past because we remember it as being really great. We’re like, if I could just get back to that place, if I could go back to that weight I used to be, if I could be that fun version of me that I used to be, if I could go back to being that, that would be great.

But going back is never an option and it’s never where you’re going to get to your highest self. We want to focus on the future. So, we don’t spend very long assessing the past, we use it again to learn and then we move into now what do we do about this? How do we want to take this with us into the future? Because the future version of you I promise is a more fun version of you if you allow yourself to go there. Because she or he understands things that you didn’t know before, has had experiences that you hadn’t had before.

That version of you has wisdom and knowledge that we want to bring. That version of you also might have pain, but we want to use that pain again to refine us and move into the future. So easiest way I found to do this is to give yourself grace. Give everyone grace and give yourself grace. And I want to send a huge thank you to all of you for all the grace that you give to me because I have tons of shortcomings as well as do we all.

Alright, so I cannot wait to teach you all of the tools I have that will help you to give yourself grace. If you’re not in Be Bold, go join us, jodymoore.com/membership and I’ll see you there. Take care.

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.