312. No Such Thing

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 312: No Such Thing.

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.

What’s happening? How’s your summer going? Are you enjoying it? What’s summer like where you live? I’ll tell you what it’s like where I live, it’s amazing. I love summer here especially the evenings, we just stay outside until 10:00 or 10:30 when the sun goes down. I live so far north and at such a weird spot in the time zone map that in the summer it’s a little bit like Alaska. In the summer I think the sun comes up at about 4:30 and it goes down at 10:00 or 10:30. And in the winter it’s very dark.

But summer is amazing and it’s the time when we don’t travel. People always say, “What are you doing? Do you have any plans for the summer?” I’m like, “We’re trying to stay here as much as possible because summer’s when we really want to be here.” It’s winter when I want to come see all of you who live in all the warm tropical places and just get a little break from the winter.

Today we’re going to talk about this thought that I love so much which is that there’s no such thing. There’s no such thing. You are allowed to decide that there’s no such thing as anything that you want to decide there’s no such thing as. But there are certain things that I want to offer to you today that you consider there’s no such thing as this because I think it will make your life better. I think it will make you happier.

I think it will help you to be more confident, and accepting, and approving of yourself. And more compassionate and accepting and loving of the people around you. I think that it will help you to be able to make decisions with more confidence, to be a better decision-maker. I think it will help you to have less regret.

So that’s why I’m offering you this thought there’s no such thing, I’m going to give you lots of different examples of where I have applied this thought. But some of the ones I give you, you might think I don’t want to think there’s no such thing as that. Okay, you can, just make sure you like your reason. But also, you might have a lot of other areas where you find it useful to apply this thought.

And I always love when you guys come over and chat with me on Instagram. That’s the place where I am the most. We post up on Facebook too if you want to talk there. We have people that will help you. But if you want to talk to me, you’ve got to come to Instagram. Sorry, but that’s just where I am. So, you can come and post in the comments and share with everybody, I like when you do that because everybody likes to see, these are some other things that I think there’s no such thing as.

But you can also DM me and I try to respond to as many of those as I can. I will just say, I mentioned this last week. But I want to do a Q&A episode in the near future. So, if you haven’t already it’s not too late to DM me a question. And I’m going to select a handful of those and address them here on the Podcast. A question about anything, anything you want help with, anything going on in your life.

Okay, so when we say there’s no such thing, what I mean is anything that is a thought. And of course, you can apply this to even things that people would say are facts. But that’s not really how I use the tool. What I’m talking about is anything that goes in the thought line is just a thought, which I did a podcast episode on not too long ago.

Which means it’s just something that somebody made up at some point. Somebody’s brain came up with the thought and then maybe offered it to others. And other people agree and then we started to find lots of evidence that it could be true. And then we made it true. But it’s still just a thought. And many, many thoughts that sound responsible, or useful, or they sound like a part of our brain thinks this thought is going to help me avoid a problem in the future.

But it doesn’t always. Sometimes, many times in fact, these thoughts that we’ve just been recycling for years are not helping you create a better future, they’re actually keeping you stuck. And maybe at one point some of those thoughts were useful but maybe we’ve just outgrown them.

My husband and I were just looking over our website and we’re like, “Some of the things on this website we’ve just outgrown.” And so not that we hate it and we’re mad at it, but we’ve outgrown it, let’s move on. So that’s how I want you to think about what I’m going to offer you here today. There is no such thing.

Now, what prompted me to speak about this topic is I had a conversation with my good friend/assistant, Melissa Spencer. Some of you know Melissa, a lot of you know Melissa, she’s very popular. So, I love having Melissa be my assistant because we just chat and hang out and then we do a lot of work too, but she’s super fun. And she loves all of this work too. She follows not only as my assistant, but she follows everything I teach, and subscribes to it, and practices it in her own life.

And so, she told me that she was at church recently. And there was a lesson happening, I think it was in Relief Society, or I don’t know, one of her classes. And they were talking about what to do when you have a wayward child. And she said it bothered her that they kept using that term, wayward child. And every time someone would say it she would sort of cringe. And she raised her hand at some point and said, “What if we stopped calling them wayward children? What if we decide that…”

Melissa said it better than me. Sorry I’m putting it in my own words. But she said, “What if we just decide that there are no wayward children? There are just children making choices, using their agency, and going through life.” And another sister in her Relief Society was like, “I never even thought of that. You’re right. That’s so true.”

And so, it made me think about, yeah, there is no such thing as a wayward child. There’s just children. Sometimes they make choices we don’t like. But if you label it, “This is a wayward child”, does that help you in the situation? Do you feel more the way you want to feel in this scenario? Or do you feel less the way you want to feel? Does it help you become the person you want to be if this is your child? Maybe it’s a kind of parent that you want to be. If it’s your grandchild, does it help you become the kind of grandparent you want to be?

Again, whatever relation you are to this child, does it help you become more of who you want to be? Or does it in fact do the opposite? Does it in fact cause you to worry? And it’s coming from love but there’s still a lot of judgment usually when we use a label like wayward child. Does it put distance between us? Does it disconnect us? Does it make us stress and worry? So, what if we just decide, wait a second, there’s no such thing as wayward children? Phew, it’s just kids who are just human beings making choices.

And I was like, “Amen Melissa, this is why I love you, one of the many reasons I love you.” But also, there’s a whole bunch of other things I want to add to this list. Now, the other thing that made me think about this is sometimes I think about this in just really, really trivial examples. When I’m eating a piece of chocolate cake and my husband’s eating a piece of the same chocolate cake and he says, “This is just too rich.” And I’m like, “What? What are you talking about?” There is no such thing as chocolate that is too rich. That is what I believe, there’s no such thing.

Or he’ll say, “It’s too sweet.” I’m like, “What? Too sweet? That’s not even a thing. There is no such thing.” Now, of course these are just personal preferences and not what I’m talking about. But notice there are a lot of things like that. Isn’t there a country song that says something about too much fun, there’s no such thing as too much fun?

So, we decide this about trivial things sometimes and we have opinions. I want you to just take it to the next level and decide it about some other little bit heavier things like wayward children. There’s no such thing as wayward children. Phew, what a relief.

Okay, here are some other examples. Laziness. I was thinking about this one because I hear people say things like, “Well, I just didn’t do that. I just didn’t exercise yesterday because I was being lazy.” Or sometimes I’m sitting on the coach and I ask my child, “Hey, can you go get mommy’s phone off the counter?” And I’m just being so lazy when I do that. And I started thinking what is that? Laziness is definitely a judgement word. What do we even mean by that?

How do we know if somebody’s lazy? Or here’s some other possible ideas of what might be going on. That you didn’t exercise yesterday because you were tired and your brain is an excellent salesman. It doesn’t want you to do anything too challenging. It wants you to relax and just do things that are pleasurable. And your lower brain won out over your higher brain yesterday. You were not able to override your lower brain, or you didn’t choose to for whatever reason. And that’s okay and we don’t have to judge you and label you as being lazy.

And in fact, when we judge ourselves or others as lazy it does not motivate us to want to go exercise today because now we have to overcome the lower brain and we’ve added onto it a layer of shame and guilt. Not very motivating.

So, what if there’s no such thing as laziness? What if when I’m sitting on the chair and I ask my child, “Could you go get my phone off the counter?” It’s not because I’m lazy, it’s because my brain doesn’t like state changes. It’s not supposed to like state changes. It’s supposed to save energy. It’s worried that there might be a stampede of elephants we might have to run from. Even though that’s not true, I’m not lazy.

I just have an amazing brain that’s looking out for me, that tries to prevent state changes, both emotional and physical. It says, “We’re already sitting. Why bother getting up when there’s a child right there who will probably go get your phone for you.”

This is another word that I think there’s no such thing as in the way that we use it anyway. What if there’s no such thing as selfishness? And when I say there’s no such thing I mean there’s no such thing as the kind of selfishness most people mean when they use the word selfishness. Which is, I’m only looking out for me and I don’t care about you. And I’m all powerful and I love it when I get ahead and you get behind. Whatever the emphasized version.

I was teaching a class somewhere recently and we think people are like the evil queen in Snow White, or the evil witch in the Wizard of Oz, running around their witches cavern looking in the crystal ball going, “he he he, I’ll get you.” People are not like that, that’s not real.

You know what there are sometimes? Sometimes there are people who are afraid. Sometimes there are people who have a lot of fear, and insecurity, and self-doubt. Sometimes there are people who have experienced trauma, who have been abused in some way in their lives. Sometimes there are people with mental illness. All of those things exist, I think. I don’t think there’s any such thing as selfish people.

I think that every single one of us is wired to look out for ourselves, it’s called rational self-interest theory. Our brains weigh out without us even consciously realizing it, weigh out costs and benefits, and then we make decisions accordingly. We choose the one that we think will have the highest benefit and the lowest cost. And cost doesn’t just mean money. Cost means time, energy, vulnerability, exposure, potential rejection, potential danger, potential inconvenience. We weigh out all those things. And benefits, again, can mean a lot of different things.

Ideally we’re all trying to just feel better. But our brains weigh out costs and benefits over, and over, and over again. This is not a bad thing. This is what keeps us alive. I could run into the street and get across the street a lot faster. But also, there are cars coming and I don’t want to die. So, I guess I’ll wait even though it’s going to take up some time. I’ll wait for the cars to go by before I cross the street. That’s rational self-interest theory at work right there, we do it all day every day.

And like I said, sometimes yes, are there human beings living in lots of fear? Yes, there are. Do they act out in ways that can be harmful to others? Yeah, that’s a thing. But selfishness? Not a thing, not in the way that we talk about it that’s so negative. There’s only healthy levels of selfishness, and then there is people struggling, afraid, worried, and scared.

This is another one that I feel pretty strongly about. Yesterday in Be Bold we did our Love Your Body workshop, and it was so amazing. So, if you are in Be Bold and you missed it, go catch the replay because it’s live and ready to go. And we’re going to be focusing on it all month. But one of the things I suggested is that there’s no such thing as a person who’s overweight. What if that’s true? What if I’m right? What if it’s just a made up thing, a made up name, a made up label that somebody made up at some point?

And what did they make it up based on? Their decision about what is ‘healthy’ or ideal. So whatever chart, or graph, or doctor you choose to listen to, or book, or whatever else, wherever else you get your information about what is the right weight to be, it’s all just made up. There’s really no such thing as overweight because by definition if it’s over the appropriate amount, that means there’s an appropriate weight, or underweight, same thing. It’s all just made up.

Now, I know some of you are like, “Okay, she’s lost it now.” I’m just saying, if you thinking I’m overweight is really motivating and makes you want to eat healthy and exercise from a place of love, from a place of wellbeing because you love yourself. Alright, keep it. But I have yet to meet that person. I’ve only met people that use overweight to judge themselves, be mad at themselves, hate themselves. And then maybe they take some action out of hate and judgement. It doesn’t really create the long-term effect we want.

And I’ve also seen people use that label to worry or judge their loved ones. They say it to me like it’s just a fact. They say, “My husband’s overweight.” And I say, “What, you think that’s a circumstance? That’s a thought, my husband’s overweight.” Your husband just weighs whatever he weighs.

So, I’m just saying, we could just throw out that label altogether, there are just people who weigh what they weigh. And here’s my favorite part. We don’t even weigh the same from one moment to the next. I’m not going to weigh the same an hour from now that I do right now. And when I wake-up in the morning maybe I’ll weigh a little more than I did this morning. Maybe I’ll weigh a little less. I don’t know. And over the course of a year certainly that can change a lot.

So, I mean to just label someone overweight, underweight, ideal weight. I just think it’s very minimizing, and objectifying, and limiting. And I would like to see us stop using those terms. I weigh this amount, alright. Let’s work to neutralize all of it because from there we get leverage over our eating habits if we want to. We get leverage over taking care of our bodies. We don’t really get much leverage from shame and judgement. And overweight is a word that’s loaded for so many people with emotion. No such thing as overweight, there’s just your body and it’s exactly what it should be.

Here’s another one. Did you know there are no such thing as difficult people? Yeah, it’s true. You can substitute the word difficult for a number of other words. There’s no such thing as negative people. There’s no such thing as angry people. There’s no such thing as irresponsible people, or stupid people, or whatever other label we give. There’s also no such thing as lovely people, smart people, kind people, wonderful people, brilliant people. Those are all just made up constructs, they really are.

Now, to think that she’s a lovely person serves me really well, so I keep it. I choose to believe that she is amazing. But to think that she’s difficult does not make me more of the kind of person I want to be. Do you know what it does? It makes me a difficult person. And it makes me not like being with myself.

A lot of people say to me, “Well, I just don’t go over to my in-laws house because I don’t like the way I feel when I’m there.” And I say, “That’s fine, you don’t have to go to your in-laws house. But I just want you to know that what you don’t like is being with yourself in your own head when you’re there because your in-laws aren’t difficult, they’re not mean, they’re just people.”

You guys, there are not difficult people or negative people, there are just people who are people. That’s it. We’re just a bunch of human beings walking around who are all a hot mess in many ways. And we’re all just trying to survive this thing called being a human. And it is not easy to do. And so, we do all kinds of things to cope with the challenge of being a human, the pain, the fear, the ever changing environment around us that then our brains are trying to figure out what to do with. It’s so challenging being a human and sometimes we manage it well and other times we don’t.

There are just people. There are no such thing as difficult people. When you think there are difficult people, I promise you, you become more difficult. I know this because I’ve done it myself, many times. Every time I think she’s difficult I become difficult. Even if it’s just to myself, even if it’s internally in my body. I don’t like being difficult. I don’t want to be around me when I’m that way.

So, I choose to not believe there is such a thing as difficult people, there are just people. There are people who are fascinating, there are people who are kind, and loving, and wonderful, and generous. And there are people who are afraid and struggling. There are people who don’t feel loved. That’s it. No difficult people, are you with me?

This is even true with the way we talk about people and their money. We say, “She’s rich. She’s poor. He has a lot of money. They have a lot of money. They don’t have a lot of money.” It kind of goes back to the weight thing. I think that’s so fascinating because money changes quickly. Money comes in, we get paid, our bank account looks one way, we spend money, we buy groceries, we spend it on whatever else, our money looks another way. It changes quickly. It’s like a river rushing quickly in and out of our lives.

And somebody could have lots of money coming in one day and nothing coming in the next day. Would we say that person’s rich or poor? Are we talking about what their bank account looks like right now in this moment? Do we take into consideration the paycheck that we think is supposed to come on Friday? It’s just such a weird, ambiguous way to describe an ever dynamic part of people’s lives.

Your finances are always changing. And I want you to think about this especially with the way you think about yourself. Because I think it’s so fascinating how we have this idea about who we are in the world when it comes to our finances and what kind of person we are, how much money we have, what kind of lifestyle we live. And then we create that in the end.

And I just want you to know that it’s actually always changing, and that you can change it to whatever you want it to be. But you’re going to have to stop labelling yourself in whatever way you’re labelling it and just know that there is no such thing as that. Those are just made up words and labels that we give to people.

Here’s another one I love. There’s no such thing as a waste of time. There’s also no such thing as a waste of money. I hear a lot of people who are stuck because they can’t make decisions because they don’t want to waste time or they don’t want to waste money. Or they keep repeating things that they don’t even want to do anymore because they tell themselves that if they don’t then they wasted time or they wasted money. What are you talking about? There’s no such thing as wasted time or wasted money, there’s just the way you chose to spend your time.

And even if it didn’t lead you to the place you thought you were going to go, you had to go down that path in order to realize that’s not the right path. There’s no other way. You could have known that. You know how we know? Because that’s the way you did it. And I promise you that every path you go down, everything you spend your time doing, you get something out of. Either you get some relief or pleasure, you get some rest, or you get something done, or you learned something even if you’re learning what you don’t want and what you don’t like, you’re still learning something.

Usually, we’re learning a lot more than that. You’re meeting someone. You’re having a new experience. You’re expanding your brain, you’re expanding yourself in some way, everything you do. So, for example, when people say to me, “Well, my daughter’s in piano and she’s been in piano lessons for several years. She’s thinking about quitting. But I just feel like then that would be such a waste of all that money we’ve spent. Or that would be such a waste of all that time.” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” There’s no such thing as a waste of time or waste of money.

She now knows a bunch of things about music and about the piano that she didn’t know before, a beautiful use of her time. Beautiful use of your money. She met somebody, even if it was just her piano teacher. She met people through that endeavor, always a plus to meet people. Maybe she learned that she doesn’t want to play the piano. Beautiful use of your time and money.

There’s no such thing as wasted time and wasted money. Trying to make decisions from that place. I want you to think about this. We want to make decisions, what is the fuel we want fueling our decision-making? We want confidence, empowerment, trust. We want all those things. When you think this could be I don’t want to waste my time, I don’t want to waste my money, does it generate those emotions for you? Doesn’t for me.

So, I just tell myself there’s no such thing as wasted time, no such thing as wasted money. Beautiful. Let’s go. Now what do we want to do? Now we can access our true wisdom, now we can hear the spirit guide us.

Alright, here’s another thing there’s no such thing as. There’s no such thing as being overly confident. You guys, come on. It kills me when people say this. They’re like, “Well, I mean I don’t want to be over; I don’t want to be too confident. I don’t want to be overly confident.” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” There’s no such thing as being overly confident. What is confidence? Confidence is not judging everyone around you. We don’t – people are like, “Well, I mean I don’t want to start thinking I’m better than anyone else.” I’m like, “That’s not confidence, that’s pride.”

Confidence is I love me. I love me so much. I love the parts of me that did a really good job today. And I love the parts of me that messed it all up. I love the parts of me that are really, really good at things. And I love the parts of me that are terrible at things. Yes to all of it. I just embrace all of it. And I am amazing and had nothing to do with it. I was created by a divine power, by heavenly parents, they did an amazing job on me and equally amazing job on everyone else.

There is no such thing as too much confidence you guys. People say, “Well, I mean I want to be self-aware you know.” I’m like, “Yes, I’m all for self-awareness.” But I’m not for self judgement. I’m not for believing that there’s something wrong with you. That is not humility. Humility is just tell me more. Humility only comes from confidence. Confidence is yes, I’m great in many ways and yes, I’m a mess in many ways. So please, tell me how can I get better at this thing? Humility is openness, it’s embracing all of you.

And it’s recognizing, again, the divine parents who created you. And so, it’s not trying to take the credit for your awesomeness, it’s just embracing, and owning, and appreciating all of it. You cannot be overly confident, that is not a thing.

The last one I want to leave you with. There is no such thing as loving, or accepting, or approving of someone too much. There’s no such thing as that, you guys. I really felt moved to share this message after listening to a podcast episode that was published by Faith Matters. It’s episode number 78, it’s called Loving Without an Agenda. And it features Ben, I’m probably going to mess up your last name, Ben, I’m sorry. Ben Schilaty and Charlie Bird, who are very active LDS men who are gay.

And they talked about what it was like to grow up in LDS culture and Ben is about 10 years older than Charlie. So, they had slightly different experiences, but they talked both growing up in the church as gay men and what that was like for them. And it’s an amazing powerful episode. We will link to it here in the show notes. But I highly recommend you listen to it, whether you’re a member of the church or not, I just, it was awesome.

And one of the things that they shared was that when they did come out to family and friends that what helped them to stay active in the church and to stay close to their Heavenly Father more importantly. It’s not that we want them to stay active in the church. What we want is for them to stay close to God. What we want is for them to have all the blessings that come from understanding your divine heritage, and from loving and embracing yourself, and from being able to do that so that you’re able to reach out and love and embrace and help everyone around you. That’s what we want.

There are some other layers to it when it comes to our religion. But that’s what we really want for people. What helped them to do that, to become confident, healthy men who are now helping others was other people loving, and accepting, and approving of them. Never once did it help for anyone to say, “But just so you know, I don’t approve of certain decisions or behaviors that you might choose.” That is not necessary.

Every single one of us is going to sin in this life over and over again. So sometimes we think that loving people, we don’t want to love too much, we don’t want to accept too much. We don’t want them to get the wrong idea about what we believe. “I’m like, “Guess what? Nobody’s got the wrong idea about what you believe.” Your child isn’t confused about what you believe if you love her. Let’s say you have a daughter who’s having sex with her boyfriend. She’s not confused about what you believe because you love her. So, there is no such thing as overly loving, accepting or approving of people.

It doesn’t have to mean that you would make the same decision. It doesn’t even have to mean that you wish she wasn’t making a different decision. But you cannot love her too much. That’s just not a thing. I know that’s tricky to navigate being a parent. How do I educate, and inform, and teach and still love? I just want you to try on the idea that when you have this thought, we don’t want to love her too much, we don’t want to accept her too much, that is not coming from our Heavenly Parents. That’s not coming from the spirit. There’s no such thing. You can’t love people too much.

I really do believe that. So that was the list I came up with of things that there are no such thing as. I bet there’s a lot more. I bet you guys have some really good examples and I would love to hear them because it always blows my mind. I mean we do this, my colleagues and I who are building businesses, my friends who are entrepreneur women, those are my friends. I mean I have lots of friends, but I love entrepreneur women.

And we talk to each other sometimes, and somebody says, “Do you think I’m sending too many emails?” And we’ll say, “There’s no such thing as too many emails.” And then we’re like, “Oh good, I can just put that thought out of my head then.” And so, I like to offer these to other people. I like when other people offer them to me. I think we could all offer some to each other.

Like I said, I would love to hear yours. So come on over to Instagram or Facebook. I’ll tell some, you know, I got locked out of my Facebook account. I’m having a hard time getting in. But I’ll tell someone to check Facebook if you prefer Facebook. And don’t forget to DM me any questions you want me to cover on the podcast. And we’ll do an episode on that very soon.

I love you guys. Have a great rest of your day. 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.