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A lot of people misinterpret what I’m teaching over here on the podcast and in my coaching programs. They seem to think that I’m saying that we should never feel scared, angry, or upset and that we should be able to just switch these emotions off. So, I want to clear that up a little for you all today, because that’s not what this work is about.
Now, your thoughts create your feelings, and I believe that you can choose your thoughts. However, the goal here is not to become some kind of perfect robot who doesn’t have troublesome thoughts. Even if it were possible, the world would be an incredibly dull place if nobody had any thoughts about anything. What we really want to be is perfectly imperfect humans.
Tune in this week to discover why I believe it’s so important that we open ourselves up to the imperfection of the full human experience, and how you can have the experience that you want to have during your time here on Earth without feeling any pressure to be a perfect robot.
What You’ll Learn on this Episode:
- What the goal of the work that I teach actually is.
- Why we wouldn’t want to become perfect robots, even if it were possible.
- What life would look like if we were happy and felt good all the time.
- Why not even God wants you to be 100% perfect during your time here on Earth.
- How we can start working towards being perfectly imperfect humans right now.
Mentioned on the Show:
- When you’re ready to take what you’re learning on the podcast to the 10X level, then come check out Be Bold.
I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy episode 246: Perfect Robots.
Welcome to Better Than Happy. I’m your host, Jody Moore. I’m a mother to four children. I’m a huge Taylor Swift fan, and I’m a master certified life coach. I’m here to teach you how to manage your brain and manage your emotions so that you can create a life that’s even better than happy. Are you ready? Let’s go.
Hello, everyone, welcome to the podcast. How you doing? I hope you’re doing well. I hope you are getting some good, quality time with your family. We’ve never gotten more quality family time than we’re getting right now, right? I hope that things are going well for you. I hope that you’re staying safe and that you’re staying home.
I also know that things are terrible and awful in many ways and challenging and stressful. I hope that you’re allowing room for all of it which is what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about this idea that some people have, or I should say sometime adopt, when they misinterpret the things I’m teaching here which is to say that we shouldn’t feel scared or worried or upset. Or that we should be able to control ourselves better. We shouldn’t ever yell at our kids. We shouldn’t feel guilty for working or for not working. We shouldn’t resent our spouses. Anything followed by the word “shouldn’t” basically is what we start to believe, right?
So, sometimes I’ll be coaching a client and they’ll say to me, “Well, I don’t want to get so irritated with my kids.” I just coached a woman the other day, she said, “I have a toddler and he has tantrums. We were at Target the other day. He was upset, he was banging his head on the floor, laying on the ground in Target, banging his head on the floor.” She’s like, “I just got so irritated and I sort of abruptly picked him up and put him back in the shopping cart. I was short with him and snapping at him and then I felt terrible after because that’s not the kind of mother I want to be.”
So, I said to her, “All right, so tell me about the kind of mother you want to be.” She said, “I want to be patient and kind and loving.” I’m like, okay, I just want to get a picture of this in my mind. Just help me understand this. I just want to try to envision it. So, we’re at Target, I can see that part. We have a toddler laying on the ground, having a fit, banging his head on the hard floor, and we’re over here going, “Oh, honey. I love you. Come on, let’s get up off the floor.” We’re just patient and kind and – I’m just trying to picture it.
I’m having a little bit of a hard time picturing it. I know it’s possible. I’m not saying we have to get upset. I’m not saying we have to be snappy and short, but I’m just trying to picture what this woman was telling me and what kept coming to my mind was that movie the Stepford Wives. Did you guys see this movie with Nicole Kidman? It was a long time ago, so I don’t remember if it’s an appropriate movie or not, so I’m not promoting the movie, I’m just saying that what that movie is about is a community of people and the women were all basically turned into robots.
So, they were perfect. They looked perfect and they said perfect things and they were just sweet and lovely, but they basically had to turn these women – I don’t even remember how they did it, it was so long ago, but they had to turn them into robots, so they no longer had human emotions. They were just happy and lovely all the time. They no longer thought their own unique thoughts. Because thoughts are what create feelings.
So, that’s what we sometimes think when we learn what I’m teaching you here which is that your thinking is optional and that we’ll create your feelings and determine who you become in the world. That’s still true, but what’s equally true is that we don’t need to nor do I even want you to want to become a perfect robot. That is not what this is about. That is not what my work is about, okay?
Sometimes people will say, “Don’t tell me the circumstance is neutral.” Like, I was just reading a podcast review, someone who gave me a one-star review, so rude. But anyway, this person said something to the effect of, I’m sick of hearing you say that circumstances are neutral. To which I though, it’s curious that you’re still listening, but anyway, I get where they’re coming from.
They’re saying, don’t tell me that things in the world aren’t good or bad. The truth is things in the world aren’t good or bad, but what this person understands and the part I agree with of what this person is saying is that we’re not trying to become robots. We don’t want to stop having opinions and thoughts about the things happening around us.
I don’t want you to get rid of that part of you. I even had somebody come to Be Bold Masters and they said, “Oh yeah, my husband and I decided to have an experiment the other day. We thought, let’s go all day and not say thoughts. Let’s just talk in circumstances and facts and we couldn’t do it.” I was like, yeah, you can’t do it nor do I want you to do it. There’s no reason. I mean, if it’s like a fun game you’re playing, okay, but the goal of this is not to stop having thoughts. It’s not to get rid of your thoughts or eliminate them or become a robot who doesn’t have opinions about things.
My cat, Oscar – I always talk about Oscar because I look at him and I think, that’s the difference, right? Not that cats don’t have some opinions, I think that they probably do, but there’s no other animal species that exists that has the level of thinking and the degree of thoughts and opinions that we do as humans. It’s what makes us the most intelligent species.
It’s a tremendously valuable thing. It’s what has allowed us to create the world we have today. It’s what provides us a full human experience that I don’t know what it’s like to be a cat, sometimes I think it looks pretty awesome. But in many ways I also know it’s probably not as full or rewarding or rich of an experience as being a human being. It’s without some of the highs and it’s without some of the lows.
So, it’s not a complete human experience and I want you to have the complete human experience. I want you to have opinions about things. I want you to take a circumstance and then immediately have a thought about whether it’s good or bad or easy or hard or right or wrong or any of those things your brain is telling you, okay?
So, let’s talk about the alternative then. If we’re not trying to be perfect robots because, again, my clients seem to think, “If I just felt happy all the time, if I felt good all the time, if I showed up kind and lovely and patient and I never judged people and I never felt resentful and I never felt any self-loathing or self-pity then I will have arrived as a higher level human being.” I say no. I think you will have downgraded yourself into robot status if you get to that point is my guess.
So, instead of that we’re trying to become perfectly imperfect humans. When I was first thinking about this episode and how I wanted to talk about it and writing myself a few notes here I wrote, perfect robots, and then I wrote, imperfect humans. But then I was like, I need to add something there, though. It needs to be perfectly imperfect humans because we are perfectly imperfect.
In other words, we’re imperfect and that’s perfection. That’s how it’s supposed to be. It’s our imperfection that is providing our full human experience. It’s our imperfection that gives us something to push back against so that we can evolve and grow. We’re here on Earth to become more like God. That’s what those of us that are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, we believe is that we were sent here to Earth to have experiences, to get bodies, and to become more like God.
God’s like, hey, how am I going to help all of these that I created? How am I going to help them evolve and become more like me? Well, they’re going to need to go to Earth and forget me, not fully remember what it was like before, and have all these experiences, have emotions, and have thoughts, and make mistakes, and have trials, and all of it is what creates the perfect foundation for us to become like Him.
It’s like that piece of clay that you mold into a beautiful bowl, but it needs to go into the kiln and be fired. Is that what it’s called, the kiln? Whatever that hot machine is that it goes into. It’s super hot and there’s fire and it feels like it’s going to melt that thing, but what it does is it solidifies it and helps it come out glazed and shiny in the end, right? That’s what this life experience is.
So, perfectly imperfect, if we were all a bunch of robots doing it perfectly, not having unique thoughts, only experience positive emotion it wouldn’t provide the foundation for us to become like God. It also wouldn’t provide the same experience. So, I want to dive into that just a little bit, okay?
Let’s talk about as of the time I’m recording this we’re right in the thick of the Coronavirus pandemic. By the time this airs we will still be in the midst of that, but a lot changes in two weeks, a week and a half right now, so I don’t know what the status will be at that point, but let me just say that I’ve been putting out a lot of messages of hope and positivity.
My intention in doing that is to balance all of the fear and negativity and worry messages that are coming out. I think we’re getting enough of that already. I want to try to provide some balance to that with some positivity and hope and peaceful messages. But that doesn’t mean that I think it’s better to not worry.
That doesn’t mean that I’m saying you shouldn’t be worried. I’m simply trying to show people that worrying is an option and it’s okay if you’re worried and also not worrying is an option and it’s okay to not worry. I just want to make sure that we have both represented.
That’s always the case for the work that I’m doing. So, being resentful and judgmental of your spouse is okay, you guys. Did you know this? That you can. It’s going to punish you, you’re going to feel terrible if you’re resentful and judgmental. You’re going to weaken your own ability to have the experience you want to, but that’s part of being perfectly imperfect humans.
We will all do it at times. It’s a natural thing to do at times. It’s no reason to beat yourself up. It doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It doesn’t mean that you’re not enlightened. It doesn’t mean that you’re not at the same level I am because I do it all the time, by the way, which I’m always telling you guys. I don’t think you believe me.
But anyway, so, it doesn’t make you worse of a person, it just makes you a person. When you know that and you can let go of judging yourself, that’s when you have a lot more ability to change it if you want to. If you decide that you’re tired of feeling resentful, you’re tired of judging because it doesn’t feel good and it doesn’t change that other person, darn it, then you do have the option to change the way you’re thinking about it.
I just like people to know that all options are available and that one option isn’t more important or necessary or better than the other. That goes for positive emotion and negative emotion. So, some people want you to think that if you’re not worried right now then you’re naïve and you’re doing it wrong and I don’t believe that.
I think if you’re not worried right now it just means you’re not thinking the kind of thoughts that generate worry and that’s okay, and you don’t have to. They’re not important thoughts, they’re not necessary thoughts, and it doesn’t make something wrong with you. You’re just choosing not to think that.
On the other hand, if you are worried, some people will want you to think, you shouldn’t be worried, you need to manage your head or some people are misinterpreting my messages to mean that which is not at all what I’m saying.
I’m saying, if you are worried it just means you’re thinking thoughts that generate worry, and that’s okay, too. It’s okay to do. A lot of people are thinking those thoughts right now. It’s part of the human experience. It’s not a problem.
So, one of the things that’s coming up a lot in Be Bold as I’m coaching you guys and you guys are writing in and I’ve been getting a lot of questions along the lines of, okay, I want to feel this way right now and my spouse wants to feel differently, the he or she wants to feel a different way. So, it’s causing a lot of conflict. It’s causing us to argue and fight.
So, again, maybe it’s I don’t want to be worried. I’m choosing not to worry. I know how to think about it in a way that doesn’t upset me and cause me a lot of worry and my spouse wants to be worried and freaked out. He keeps saying, “What’s the matter with you? You’re not paying attention. Don’t you understand? This is serious. You should be worried.”
That’s kind of just a generic but common example of what I’m hearing from a lot of people right now. So, here’s what you have to see. First of all, it takes two people to have an argument or fight. So, I know it’s not easy to do, by the way, but if your spouse is upset with you, you don’t have a fight until you’re upset about them being upset. Or you want to convince them to feel differently in some way. Now, we’re probably going to engage in some kind of a confrontation if not a fight.
So, if there’s just one person who’s upset, but you’re not upset about them being upset, you’re not upset that they think you should feel differently than you do. Because here’s the interesting part. If I’m not worried, but my spouse is and I’m saying, “My spouse thinks I should be worried and he gets really mad and when I tell him that I’m not worried. He says that you’re not being realistic or you’re being insensitive,” or something like that, right?
I say, “Okay, but that’s all right.” He wants you to feel differently, but you also want him to feel differently, right? You want him to not want you to agree with him. We get it. We can understand why he feels that way because we’re doing the same thing. Even if we’re okay with him being worried we’re not okay with him wanting us to be worried in this scenario so we’re doing the same thing, do you see it?
So, what I tell them is, “Okay, what do you want your spouse to think about you? You want him to think it’s okay that she’s not worried? It’s up to her to feel how she wants? I’m going to go do my thing.” Well, that’s what we have to do. Let’s start there.
It’s okay that he is upset. It’s okay that he thinks we’re doing it wrong, this human thing. We can understand that. We have those thoughts, too, and I don’t need to change his opinion. It also doesn’t mean I have to go, “Okay, I’ll worry and freak out with you.” It doesn’t have to mean either of those.
The third option, the other option is, all right he wishes I was worried, he thinks in some way it would be useful. It’s okay, I get it. I might say things like, “Okay, I’m so sorry you feel that way.” So, here’s what it sounds like when I think it’s not working well is the husband says, “I’m so worried about Coronavirus and I’m freaking out, and the kids are out of school, and what about the economy,” and all of this, right?
Sometimes my clients will say, “Well, I’m not worried. I’m choosing not to be worried. I think about it this way. I think about that way, and I’m just not worried.” Then the spouse comes back with, “What’s the matter with you? You’re not paying attention. You’re not informed. Don’t you know about this? Don’t you know about that? We should be freaked out.”
Now, this is the point at which I recommend rather than you just hold tighter to why you’re not worried and engage in a debate with your spouse about why you don’t think you need to worry that you just say, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry that you feel that way. I can understand it, I get why you feel that way. I see the validity in that viewpoint. I’m so sorry you’re feeling that way.”
It doesn’t have to be that you defend yourself. You don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t have to try to convince your spouse not to worry. You’re really not responsible for their opinion. You just have to decide to be okay with him or her, I’m making the man in this situation because a lot of my clients are women, but I know it goes both ways. You just have to be okay with them having their own opinions.
Now, again, he might get upset. He might say, “You don’t even care. You don’t even want to talk about this because you don’t care.” You can say, “Again, I’m so sorry you feel that way. That’s the opposite of what’s true. I care so much. I care about you. I care about your suffering. I care about our family. I care about what the world is going through. I have so much concern and compassion and care for the world, but I also just don’t feel worried right now. I just don’t.”
Again, not that you have to hold tight and defend yourself. I want you to be compassionate and understanding and even curious. What must it feel like for that person? As soon as we start judging that our way is better, like if he would think the way I would think he would be calm. This applies to a lot of things, you guys, this doesn’t just come up when there’s a pandemic happening. This applies all the time. “If my spouse was just more positive, if he just were more committed, if he were more motivated, if he believed that he was capable of more then that would be better. The way I think is so much better.
That is the biggest lie and that is a toxic thought. It’s not better to feel any certain way, it’s not better to understand even how to choose your thoughts and that thoughts create feelings. None of that is better, it’s just different. It’s just a different experience.
So, here’s how I want to wrap this up. I want to give just a couple other examples of this idea that we want to be human, we want to have thoughts and opinions about things. We want to feel all of the emotions available to us. One is not better than the other. In any situation they’re just different experiences.
Yet, circumstances are neutral. So, they are neutral until we think thoughts that we want to. So, I was listening the other day to Byron Katie and she, I thought, did such a beautiful job of illustrating this. She was like, we want to have thoughts though. Even ones that aren’t serving us. We want to be fully human. She didn’t say it in these words, but this is the message I took from her. We want to be fully alive.
Because the alternative is that we become like an inanimate object. So, I talked about Oscar, my cat, but she took it to the next level. She said, well, you could just be like a tissue. A tissue doesn’t get upset even though we just yank it out of the box and we blow our nose with it. We don’t even ask it, we’re not very gentle with it and then we just throw it in the trash, we don’t even say thank you. But a tissue has no brain and has no thoughts.
We could become like that tissue. I mean, I don’t know that we could, but what I’m saying is our goal is not to become more like a tissue or even more like a cat. Our goal is to become more like our Father in Heaven. Now, I don’t really know what His thoughts are. I can’t pretend to wrap my head around the way He thinks because in the scriptures we read that His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways.
I just don’t know that we’re capable in our human state of thinking the way He does, but that’s the direction we’re trying to go. A part of that is leaning into our humanity and leaning into our higher brains that have opinions and predictions and do all kinds of things that serve us well, and some of those same things that serve us well create problems for us, but it’s the entire package that’s required for us to evolve and grow and become like Him.
So, please stop trying to become a perfect robot. Just lean into being a perfectly imperfect human. Be willing to observe yourself in all of your perfect imperfection. Stop judging it. Stop making it mean that you don’t get this or that you’re doing it wrong. Be curious about it all and you will get so much leverage over now directing yourself.
It’s like you go from watching a movie to being the director of the movie when you use these tools, but step one is just to watch the movie without judgment. Step two is when you get to start directing the movie. All right, you guys. I love you. Thank you for being here. I will see you next time on another episode. 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.
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