Words are so hard. My college girlfriends and I joke about not being able to find the right words anymore because words are hard. But truly, words are hard and can be used for good or bad. In this episode I talk about a few of my favorite words and how they can impact your day and how you can use them for good.
Podcast Transcript
Words are hard for so many reasons and good for so many reasons. I have the phrase ‘choose your words wisely’ ingrained in my brain. And one time in grade school I told my teacher a lie and I got caught. When my mom talked to me about it, she said words and lies were like toothpaste. Once they came out, you couldn’t put them back. That has stuck with me. Your words are powerful! The words you say to other people, and the words you say to yourself!
While I don’t want to talk about positive self-talk today, we can do that later,I do want to talk about a few key words. I am sure we all have lists of words that we like or don’t like and some are probably fairly common. For example, many women don’t like the word moist. I don’t need to say anymore. LOL. And I have to tell you, this podcast took me a long time to write. Why? Because words are hard! Ha! I’ve written two other podcasts before this one because it has been hard for me to pick the few words I wanted to talk about. Here are the words I want to talk about today. First word – Surrender.
If you hear or read this word and immediately start singing Cheap Trick’s “surrender” we should probably be friends. LOL. Even now all I can hear is ‘Mommy’s alright, daddy’s alright, they just seem a little weird. Surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away, ay, ay, ay.’ I’d sing that for you, but I am not a singer! Singing is for my friends Nina and Colmon. Ha! Anyway, I used to not like the word surrender at all. I felt like it was submissive and demeaning. That was until I completely surrendered my all to God. By my own free will! Funny right. Then all of a sudden the word didn’t seem mean or scary, it was freeing, my heart felt lighter! I saw a saying the other day that says, “you can do more with surrender than control.” Woofta. But we all like control so much! Or the thought of having control. The real truth, we never really have full control of the things happening around you. Yes, you can control yourself (or maybe you can’t – ha), but what happens to you, around you, for you…nope, that is not in your full control. Do you have some control over certain situations? Sure, I’ll give you that. But not 100%. So whether you like it or not, we are all surrendering at some point, even if we don’t want to be. I have found that if I lean into surrender and consciously know when to surrender, it makes life much easier, more enjoyable, and oddly, makes you feel like you are in control because you chose to surrender. Surrender now is one of my favorite words. On my vision board, or action board, I have a picture of a person kneeling with their hands palm up to the sky. To me, this is a perfect picture of surrendering to God, and it is the only picture on my vision board that gives me perfect peace. The other pictures excite me, or give me fuel to keep moving, but this image is surrender. If you are someone who struggles with the concept of surrender, I want to encourage you to try to surrender something small today or this week. Pick something easy and build from there. It could be as easy as surrendering control of what your children wear to school. Just make sure it is weather appropriate, but if it doesn’t match. Ok. If it isn’t exactly what you would have picked. Ok. If it isn’t going to matter in a year, don’t worry about it now. You can build from there. Surrender to the relationships in your office. You can’t control how others will act, but you can control you, which is a form of surrender. What I mean by this…we all have one or two people we work with that just get under our skin, and we might dread having meetings with them. Surrender that feeling and know going in, they will likely say or do something that will irritate you. Surrender that feeling and choose to let it roll off of you and not get to you. I promise you it will feel better! You will feel better. I like to talk about how I was really good at surrendering certain parts of my life to God, but not all of them. I would give Him pieces at a time, as if He couldn’t handle them all at once. LOL. Needless to say, when I finally surrendered my life, all parts, is when my life started to make sense and I recognized my purpose and started living to my full potential. Give it a try. You might like it.
Second word. Intentional. This is definitely a word that could be used for good or bad. You can be intentional about helping someone or intentional about hurting someone. Your thoughts and words can be intentional and I would argue they should be intentional. When you wake up in the morning, you need to set your intent. You need to decide from the minute you wake up what kind of day you are going to have, regardless of what happens for you. You need to be intentional about who you are and what kind of relationships you want to have with your kids, your family, your partner, your co-workers, the random people you meet on the street. Everyone. Let’s unpack those two a little more. In my workbook I talk about showing up and how you are currently showing up versus how you want to be showing up. How you want to show up takes intention.
Being intentional with your day. This can be easy for the first 30 minutes of your day, but as the day goes on, it can become harder, depending on how you think your day is going. This is hard. I will not sugar coat any part of this. This is hard and takes constant practice and attention. You might have all heard me talk a little bit about my Miracle Mornings by now. LOL. I cannot tell you enough how much my morning routine sets my day for me. I literally feel the best when I finish my miracle morning. However, I have to be intentional with keeping that high or buzz no matter how the day goes. Which is not easy sometimes. I don’t like when my miracle morning gets interrupted, but sometimes my kiddos wake up early and they do. I have to take a deep breath and know it’s okay, that my day will still be amazing as long as I choose to be intentional about my reactions and next steps. And now for some realism. I had to break from writing this podcast to get the kids ready for church. My son does not love Sunday School so we had a battle of the wills. I won and he went to Sunday school, but I have to be transparent with you (another one of my favorite words), I lost my mind with him and yelled. Not a small yell either. A big loud, use all of my lungs (as my daughter says) yell. Ugh! I do not like when I do that! I am trying hard to be intentional with him, but he is not an easy child and I won’t stand for the back talk and arguing. I would never have talked back to my mother or father the way he does at times. And today was one of those days. All of that to say, sometimes the best intentions still have slip ups. I gathered myself and apologized and made him apologize as well. Then I had to choose to forget the incident and be intentional about continuing with a happy morning. That has been successful. We went to church, we were all happy, and now we are home and good. Whew! Again, this isn’t easy and clearly I have not mastered this, but I am aware of it and keep working on it every day.
Being intentional with your relationships. I love that sentence. Being intentional with your relationships. I get frustrated when someone says “well so-and-so isn’t doing this or that for me,” but when I ask what they are doing for that person, they aren’t investing in them. You truly can’t expect anyone to pour into you if you aren’t going to pour into them. I’ll give one caveat here. Children. We might pour into them over and over again and they give little in return. We do need to guide them so they understand how relationships work, but there will be more effort in our relationships with them. We have so many relationships as I mentioned earlier, and you do need to choose how you’d like to show up and be intentional for each one of those. Who do you want to be as a mom, a sister, wife, partner, employee, granddaughter, daughter, co-worker, friend, volunteer….and the list goes on. I encourage you to write down your key relationship and how you’d like to show and then how you are going to be intentional with that relationship. I’ll use my son for example since I failed at that this morning. I know I want to be a patient mom, it is even in my morning affirmations! But with JC, it requires more than just patience, it is also an understanding of how his mind works. I know I have to be more intentional about slowing down and explaining every detail to him, even if it is clear to me, it probably isn’t to him. I need to mentally prepare for situations I know will trigger him and how I can approach them differently. This morning in my rush for church, I did not do that. I also know how I want to show up as a daughter. My mother has always done so much for my sister and I, and there are times where I don’t think I do enough for her. I am trying to be more intentional about reaching out and being there for my mom.
Okay, I have so many other words so I will just list a few more for you to think about otherwise this episode won’t end. Transparent, vulnerable, authentic, kind, thankful, loyal, disciplined, determined, strong, God-fearing, faithful, loving, relentless, gratitude, patience, perseverance, and I’ll stop there. Words are hard and there is so much meaning packed inside them. Remember, choose your words wisely my darlings!
Something Better, My Darling 