411. How to Set Yourself Free

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 411, How to Set Yourself Free.

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.

Hey there everybody, welcome to the podcast today. I want to give you some strategies, three specific strategies that have helped me so much to set myself free. I’m going to tell you what I mean by that and I want to start by talking about happiness. Happiness is the word that we tend to use when we think about what we’re trying to feel or how we want to experience the world. It’s a nice pretty word but I think it’s a kind of an oversimplification of what we actually want. That’s why I call this contest Better Than Happy.

I’m a fan of happiness but I think there’s a lot to having a full life. And a full life is better than just simply being happy all the time. I do have a course I’m teaching though in July, it’s coming up pretty soon that you should for sure join me for. It’s $19, it’s a mini course and it’s called The Art of Happiness. I want to dive into a little bit though today and I want to begin by talking about freedom. So I’ll tell you a little bit more about The Art of Happiness but in short if you choose to join me you can go to jodymoore.com/trial.

Let’s begin by talking about freedom for just a minute here. I think that freedom is probably a more accurate word for what we all seek and what actually drives us in the end than happiness. Another word for freedom might be agency. If you’re a member of the LDS faith or you have a similar belief system, we believe that God gave us agency. He sent us here to Earth and gave us the ability to think, act and feel any way that we choose to feel.

That ultimately we have the ultimate authority and freedom over ourselves and the choices that we make in each of those areas will determine our experience and lead to a lot of other things but we all have agency. And I find it so fascinating that we fiercely protect this agency. We are highly suspicious of and leery of anyone that we feel is trying to manipulate us or in some way infringe upon our agency. Sometimes we call it freedom. Sometimes we call it agency. I mean them in a similar way today in this episode.

And we all have different ideas about what would make us the most free. This is where things get political. And I’m not going to get into political issues, but if you look at how fiercely people fight for their political views it’s because they’re trying to protect agency and freedom on both sides. Because if we don’t have some laws and regulations and rules then other people can act out in ways that infringe on another person’s agency. And so some order of regulation or consequences etc. is necessary to protect people who otherwise may have their agency infringed upon or their freedom.

And on the other hand if we have too many rules or the wrong kind of rules of regulations we’re infringing on people’s agencies. Nobody wants to feel stuck or trapped, everybody wants to feel free in the end, even though we have different ideas about how to create that freedom. So I want to take it to a more personal individual level here on this episode. We’re not going to get into global issues or politics but I want you to think about how much your spirit naturally fights for and defends your agency.

And when you don’t do that, when you neglect that part of you, how negatively that impacts you, how bad you start feeling about yourself. We, all of us I should say, not just you, me too, all of us. We start feeling down and discouraged and bad about ourselves if we don’t protect our freedom and our agency. So it will show up in different ways for different people but for many of us it sounds like thoughts like don’t tell me what to do, don’t put me in a box, don’t judge me.

I don’t want to be judged because I don’t want to be misunderstood because that’s a form of feeling trapped. If I’m misunderstood and judged I feel trapped. I feel like I have to change or manipulate myself in order to win others’ approval. That is a form of being trapped. Don’t try to control me or want me to be different than I am. That makes me feel stuck and trapped. That infringes on my agency. So that’s one way at which it shows up for many of us.

Also it’s, hey, other people in my life or in the world, be this way, do these things so that I can move freely in the world the way that I want to. Be a good kid so that I can feel like a good mom. Again, pass laws etc., or discuss principles at church in a way that I can receive well so that I don’t feel stuck or judged or manipulated or trapped. Sometimes that’s how this feels like our freedom’s infringed upon, or our agency. Even our judgment of ourselves is about freedom and agency.

If I believe I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not thin enough, I’m not righteous enough etc., then I have trapped myself. I am trapped. I’m not free to be seen and known even by myself. There is a disconnect in who I am and who I want to be. And when there is, I will be still stuck in a spin of bad habits or inaction. In other words, I’m trapped. I’m a slave to my own laziness or impulses. Are you with me?

So the path to freedom appears to be about navigating the world more carefully or changing the world more strategically or becoming a version of ourselves that we deem acceptable or worthy. But this has never led to freedom in my experience. And I will say, I have felt free at times, many times. I feel free every time I ride the Incredicoaster at California Adventure right outside Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

I feel free when I’m coaching my clients especially when I’m deep in the wrestle of it with them and suddenly words of wisdom come to my mind from what surely must be a divine source. I feel free when I watch the sun go down or when I watch the sun come up. I feel free many times in my life now and but I have felt free many times in the past, but ultimately I trap myself again over and over with my own judgments, opinions or insecurities.

And for me the tools of mindset, awareness and control, emotional maturity and allowing for both myself and others of the full human experience have been the things more than anything else that have set me free. And so today I want to give you three specific examples because I hope that all of those things are things we’re covering here on the podcast at various times. But I want to give you three specific strategies that helped me set myself free when I start feeling stuck or trapped.

Alright, number one strategy is to tell myself the truth, tell myself the truth. When I hired Brad Jensen back in 2020 to help me with my health goals, specifically I wanted to lose 20 pounds. He said to me in my intake interview with him, “Have you ever tried losing weight before?” To which I quickly replied, “Yes, I have, Brad Jensen. I have been trying to lose weight as long as I can remember, pretty much non-stop.” And he said, “Okay, great. Have you ever been successful?”

And I was able to name a couple of times when I had lost some weight. The problem was I had put all the weight back on both times. And he said, “Okay, have you tried anything else other than those two times?” And I said, “Yes, did you not hear me? I’m constantly trying to lose weight, Brad.” But then when I stopped and thought about it I realized that that was a lie, that I was lying to myself when I told myself I’m always trying to lose weight. Because I wasn’t always trying to lose weight.

You know what I was always doing? Thinking about my weight, feeling bad about my weight, obsessing about food that I ate or didn’t eat or shouldn’t eat or want to eat. I was constantly thinking about and feeling bad about my weight, which is not the same thing as trying to lose weight. Wow, this was sort of mind blowing to me. And you know what at the same time, it was so freeing to tell myself that truth, to say to him, “Actually I’ve only tried losing weight a couple of times and I lost weight both of those times.”

And all the rest of the time I have had all kinds of noise and nonsense and drama in my head but I have not actually tried to lose weight. What a gift it was for me to own that because that was the truth. So in what way is this going to be relevant for you? I used to talk to people who were considering going to school and getting a college degree or finishing a degree that they had started. I worked for a for profit university and I talked to potential students every day, multiple times, many of them I talked to dozens of times before they ever started class.

And they used to say to me, “Yeah, once I get my degree, this will change or that will happen or I’ll open up these doors for myself in my life worlds or I’ll set this example for my children.” And they felt really good when they talked about that. And I was really happy for them when they talked about that. But what I realized after a while is that they felt like they were working on getting their degree by talking to me. I was an admissions counselor. They had an admissions counselor and therefore they felt like they were working on getting their degree or finishing their degree.

I envisioned them going to parties, telling friends, “Yeah, I’m going to get my degree. I’m working on finishing up my degree. “But the truth is if they were still talking to me it meant they hadn’t stepped foot in class yet. They hadn’t registered for school or they at least hadn’t attended any more classes than what they started in years past. And I had to start pointing out the truth to them.

“You feel like you’re working on getting your degree because you’re talking to me every week on the phone but listen, we need to register you for class. And you need to attend class and do the work and earn more credit or else you are no closer to having your degree than before you and I ever met.” That was the truth. And I offered it to them as a gift. Where is this showing up in your life? Are you telling herself that you’re trying to get clients in your business?

And if so, is that really true or is what’s true that you’ve put a few things out there randomly without much strategy or focus? Or you’ve talked to some people about your expertise and shared it a little bit? Or you’re taking classes or listening to podcasts about how to grow your business and you’re telling yourself that you’re working on your business.

That’s not true unless you strategically sit down and decide what you’re doing and then you start building the pieces that are necessary to attempt what you’re trying to do, strategically with focus and intention knowing where you’re going. And what the steps are you believe to get there. Now, that plan might change as you try it out, but if you don’t have a strategic plan that you understand, why you’re talking to people and what you want to offer to them next then you’re not trying to get clients. You’re just talking about your area of expertise to people that will listen.

Or you’re just listening and learning and there’s nothing wrong with talking to people and there’s nothing wrong with listening and learning. I just want you to tell yourself the truth. Every time I tell myself the truth I set myself free. I go from being stuck and trapped and frustrated of why isn’t this working to freedom. It’s not working because I’m not showing up. I’m not doing what’s necessary to get it to work in my life. Some of you are doing this with just the coaching tools and the mindfulness that I teach you here on the podcast.

I’m so grateful that you listen to this podcast but you’re not doing the work until you come in and apply it in a real way. So come to the Art of Happiness if you want to see what that is like.

Let’s move on to the second tool I want to offer to you that will set you free, which is to assume that nothing is wrong with you or anyone else. So after you do number one, where you tell yourself the truth, I’m actually not working on my business. I’m not working on my fitness goals. I don’t actually want to lose weight as much as I want to eat licorice. When you tell yourself the truth then if you’re like me you’re going to be tempted to judge it. You’re going to want to move right from the truth into shoulds and shouldn’ts.

You’re going to start telling yourself that you should want something different or you should be working harder on your goals. And this is also a lie because if you should or shouldn’t it means something’s wrong. You’re doing something wrong or there’s something wrong with you. But there is nothing wrong with you, nothing is wrong. There’s nothing wrong with not actually wanting to pursue your goals, there’s really not. It doesn’t matter at all.

So just remember, you have good reasons for where you’re at when you tell yourself the truth. I promise you have good reasons for it. Even if some of your reasons are rooted in pain and hurt and fear, you still have good reasons for it. It’s called the human condition. And telling yourself the truth and not judging it, doesn’t mean you’re just embracing the truth and you’re going to stay stuck there forever. It means the opposite actually. Well, I should say, it gives you the opportunity to create the opposite. It gives you the opportunity for leverage and progression.

We do not have as much authority over ourselves when we lie to ourselves. We keep ourselves trapped in lies and we keep ourself trapped in judgment but the truth is where freedom lies and the truth without judgment is even better. So that is true for your observations of yourself and it’s also true for all of them, for your observations, of all of them, them being any other person in the world. There is nothing wrong with them. They’re not doing it wrong.

This is a really hard concept to grasp I know but try it on with me. You and I don’t know what other people should or shouldn’t do or feel or be like. We don’t know. We think we know. We have a lot of ideas and opinions about how they should be and I promise you, we don’t. We do not know what it’s like to be them. We don’t know where they’re coming from. We don’t know what would serve them best in the end.

I was just talking to a friend of mine. We were talking about another mutual friend who we were both worried about. And we both share, this friend of mine who I’m talking to, we both share the same opinion about what this other friend should do. And all of a sudden I said, “What if we’re wrong? What if she shouldn’t be doing that at all?” Because she doesn’t seem to be listening to us. She doesn’t want to hear our advice. What if we’re wrong? What if she is making the right choice? We don’t know what other people should do.

Recently I was on Instagram and I clicked the little like button, the little heart button, on a reel. It was a reel from my favorite clothing store of all time, Anthropology. They posted a reel and the reel happened to be of a man dancing around in Anthropology clothes. You know those reels where somebody’s wearing an outfit and then they jump and then they’re suddenly in a new outfit and it feels like magic?

It was one of those kind of reels and the man was dancing around in pants and a t-shirt and then he jumped and he was suddenly dancing around in a really frilly red dress. And then he jumped and he was suddenly in a pink tank top and a new pair of pants. And I clicked like because I liked it. I thought it was fun and creative and it was pretty and the man was very happy and the music was happy. And I just clicked like and scrolled right on by.

I didn’t think anything of it until one of my followers wrote me an email explaining to me how terrible I am and how she just can’t believe that I would like a post like that of a man wearing women’s clothes. And how disgusted she is with me and how her husband’s the bishop and whatever else. I was like, “This is so fascinating.” We think people shouldn’t like that stuff on Instagram. People shouldn’t post that but we certainly shouldn’t like it. And I’m just fascinated by it all.

And here’s the other thing, even as I tell you this story, it’s my brain thinking that she shouldn’t write me an email like that. And she shouldn’t have opinions about what I should like, but guess what? Maybe she should. Maybe she should have strong opinions about what I like or dislike on Instagram. And she should write to me and tell me. I don’t know what she should do. Maybe that made her feel better in some way. Maybe she is justified.

So it’s just so fascinating how much we all are in everyone else’s business. And my point here is that that is a trap. It keeps us trapped and stuck to be focused on what everyone else is doing wrong, it really is. You set yourself free by going, “I guess that’s what he or she should do. I guess she should write me that email, I guess.” That’s how I free myself is I stop spinning on how she shouldn’t say those things. And I just go to, I guess that’s the way she navigates the world. In some way that makes her feel better or it’s just what she chooses in any regard.

And I just let go of focusing on it, doesn’t mean I have to go all the way to what everybody does is beautiful and lovely and right. It’s just none of my business actually what they do. That is how you set yourself free. You stop thinking that other people’s lives and decisions and even emotions are your business to own. It doesn’t mean you don’t care about how other people feel. It means you don’t take responsibility for how other people feel. There is a big difference and it will set you free to understand the difference.

And this brings us to the third and final tool I want to offer you today that will set you free. And this is one of my favorite ones. And I haven’t talked about this one much so listen up. You will set yourself free when you start exposing yourself to the truth of other people. Let me say that again and then I’ll explain what I mean. Expose yourself to the truth of other people. Here’s what’s interesting. We’re all surrounded by people all the time, most of us, unless you live maybe out somewhere very secluded and you don’t see people a lot.

But if you get online or you turn on the TV then you’re still surrounded by people. We’re all surrounded by people all the time but we’re not surrounded by the truth of other people very often and that’s okay. We don’t need to be all the time, but you need to do it on occasion.

So I just went to school, to the elementary school and picked my kids up from school. And I go to the area where, one of the areas I should say where the parents wait, where the kids come out. And there’s always a bunch of parents there, a bunch of dads and moms and grandmas and grandpas and all kinds of caregivers there waiting for their kids. And so I recognize and I know some of the parents there. Some of them are my friends in my neighborhood, some of them I go to church with.

And so it’s not uncommon that we will say hi, maybe make some small talk about how’s your day going, what have you got going on for the summer, what did you think about the weather today? This is what the conversation sounds like at school pickup and we’re all very polite and we keep it light because we don’t have a long time. We’re just there to get our kids and then we’re going to go. So it’s perfectly appropriate that we’re just polite and kind of surface level and nothing wrong with that. But that’s what most of our interactions have turned into or they are contrived on social media.

They are preplanned and thought out and set up to give you a certain experience. That’s okay, but I want you to on occasion expose yourself to the truth of other people. The real truth, not the guarded, pretend, appropriate truth. This has set me free, listening to people’s real stories, hearing about their real struggles, caring about their happiness and also their sadness. And when I hear other people who are stuck then it’s so much easier for me to see the way out for them.

I hear other people’s stories and I see how they’re reacting to their situation and it’s so much easier than in my own situation to see the way out. Or I hear people tell stories about when they were stuck in some way and how they set themselves free and I’m inspired by those stories. And I get information and inspiration about how to free myself. And one amazingly powerful way to do this is through group coaching.

Nothing has been more powerful for me or my clients than group coaching because it connects us and it makes it so much easier for us to do number one and number two. To tell ourselves that truth because we will see our truth show up in other people. And to not judge ourselves or others for the truths that we see because we start seeing that we all have similar patterns. We have similar issues keeping us stuck and we all have a valid reason for it.

So I will tell you, the number one question I get from people who are considering working with a coach is, “How can I get individual help from you, Jody, I want individual help. I don’t want group calls.” It’s what everyone thinks they need and it’s what almost nobody needs. I know this because I’ve been a coach now for nine years. And for the first few years I coached people privately.

I did individual coaching and it was great but it took easily three to six months of coaching for someone to get the progress that now my clients get in three to six weeks and that is not an exaggeration. And the reason why is because when you’re in the thick of your issues it’s tough to see. It’s tough to see what’s going on. It feels like just the reality of your situation. It feels like you’re just observing the world around you. But when you see it through the lens of someone else’s circumstance, it becomes very clear and then very easy to apply it to yourself.

A few years ago, many years ago actually when I was a brand new coach I was attending a live event and Brooke was coaching. And the woman that she was coaching, I will never forget this moment. She was trying to decide if she should accept a job offer that she had or keep working on growing her own business. And this felt like a big decision. Her income and livelihood depended on it. And she had a lot of dreams and goals. And she wanted to do the right thing and she was loving her business.

And it seemed like it was starting to get traction but this opportunity felt like a golden opportunity. It was a really great opportunity. And she didn’t want to let something pass her by and she couldn’t decide. And I remember thinking that yeah, this is a difficult choice and she should really think through it. And as Brooke coached her, they went round and round discussing it. And Brooke was continuously pointing out to her that either one would be great and it really didn’t matter. And I kept thinking okay, yeah, but also it kind of does matter.

Until Brooke said, “The decision you make will not create your result.” In other words, whether you take this job or you say no and you keep working on your new business, that is not going to create your result, the decision goes in the circumstance line. Now, if you’ve been listening to me for a while or you’re in Be Bold you know what I mean by that. If you’re new to me, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to get off on a tangent on what that means.

All I want to say is when I heard Brooke say that and I remember seeing her write on the board the decision right next to the C line, I was like, “Oh my goodness, I never thought of it that way before, but she’s right.” I saw it so clearly and I’ll tell you what that did for me. It wasn’t just a little interesting insight I got. I am so much better at decisions than most people I know. And that’s not to say I make the best decisions. It’s just to say I make decisions.

I do not waste very much energy or time in indecision. And this is why my business is so successful. This is why I move so quickly through things that I want to accomplish. This is why I have a lot of energy because with decisions comes momentum. Indecision is like a ball and chain. Decisions are like wings. And even though it’s scarier to fly than to stay on the ground, flying gets you somewhere fast. And all of that isn’t because I’m just so confident or I was born this way. No, it’s because of that one coaching session I saw years ago that shifted everything in my mind around decisions.

So I want you to come and experience group coaching. I want you to see for yourself because, again, everybody thinks they need private coaching. And if you want private coaching, I’m in, go hire a private coach. I don’t do it anymore because I’m way more effective, my clients get much better results in a group setting. This is the most common response I get, when we put a call out to our members in Be Bold and we will say, “Hey, give us some feedback. How’s it going? Is this working? Is this helping you? What would you say to someone considering joining Be Bold?”

And the most common thing we hear is a version of, “I have never been coached live and this has changed my life.” That is what we hear over and over again. So come and join me for the Art of Happiness, it’s $19. What have you got to lose? If you can’t be there live we’ll be sending out replays daily. If you’re curious about coaching, come and join me. If you’re in Be Bold already, we’re going to post the Art of Happiness there. So you don’t need to worry about paying the $19. But for everybody else, come and check it out at jodymoore.com/trial. I’ll see you there. Thanks for joining me today.

Hey there, if you enjoy this podcast or even if you just find that it sort of piques your curiosity, or it 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.