Takeaways

• One bad day, one missed workout, or one skipped habit does not define who you are. The real problem shows up when a single setback becomes your reason to quit.
• Starting again is not starting over. Every time you fall off a goal you learn something about yourself, and that information is growth you get to carry into your next attempt.
• Success this season does not have to mean never falling off. It can mean getting better at coming back, which builds resilience, discipline, and self-trust.

Summary of the episode

In this fall series episode, Courtney speaks directly to the listener who started strong on her goals and then watched them slip. Whether it was a sick kid, a chaotic work week, or a late night that turned into a skipped morning routine, she names the moment so many of us hit when we decide we blew it. Courtney explains why falling off is inevitable when you are working on becoming your best self, and why the real danger is letting one bad choice turn into a permanent identity.

She gets personal with the story she has told herself for years: that she is simply not a morning person. She shares how that label became a convenient way to avoid the early wake-ups her own goals required, and how a daily devotional called New Morning Mercies landed as a gentle reminder that this identity does not have to stick. From there, Courtney reframes the restart. Starting again means you are not starting from scratch, because you now know what worked, what did not, and what you might want to change, like moving your routine to the evening or finding an accountability partner.

Courtney also gives practical permission to stop waiting. Skip the perfectly color-coded Monday plan and start on a Tuesday afternoon if that is when you realize you want to try again. She talks about grace and growth as two sides of the same coin, encouraging listeners to be kind to themselves without letting grace keep them stuck. The episode closes with a new definition of success and a simple challenge: think about what you have stopped doing because you believe you have already failed, and take the next small step back toward it.

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Takeaways

• The goal isn't perfection. It's proving to yourself, one small promise at a time, that you can count on you.
• Smaller, specific promises that actually get kept build more trust with yourself than big, vague ones that get broken.
• You don't need motivation to follow through. You need a decision, and that decision is available to you every single day.

Summary of the episode

Courtney checks in on the fall series challenge she's been building for the last few weeks, asking listeners what actually happened to the goals and future-self work they set out to do. She's honest about her own struggle here, sharing that she was voted "worst procrastinator" in her high school senior class and admitting how easily she let that label become an identity she leaned into instead of pushed against.

The core idea of the episode is a reframe: becoming the person you want to be has less to do with big transformation and more to do with learning to keep the promises you make to yourself. Courtney walks through why this is so hard, we keep appointments, show up for work, and remember everyone else's needs, but when it comes to the things we promise ourselves, like walking more or starting a project, other things take precedence. Every broken promise makes it a little easier to stop believing yourself, and every kept one teaches you that you can be trusted.

She offers a practical fix for anyone who has stalled out on their fall goals: make the promise smaller. Instead of "I'll work out every day," try "I'll walk for 20 minutes three times this week." Instead of "I'll read my Bible every morning for the rest of my life," try "tomorrow morning, ten minutes in God's Word." The episode closes with a direct challenge: name one promise you haven't been keeping, make it smaller and more specific, and keep it, not perfectly, just start.

Key Topics Covered:

• Checking in on the fall series future-self challenge
• Why we keep promises to everyone except ourselves
• How a broken promise erodes self-trust, and a kept one builds it
• Courtney's own story with procrastination and letting a label become an identity
• Why smaller, specific promises are more powerful than big vague ones
• Choosing a decision over waiting for motivation
• This week's challenge: name one promise and keep it

https://www.empowerhermn.com/

Takeaways

• Motivation is a feeling, and feelings are unreliable. Waiting to feel motivated before you act keeps most people stuck indefinitely.
• The real order of change isn't motivation, then action, then results. It's action, then momentum, then motivation.
• Confidence and discipline aren't prerequisites for starting. They're built by starting, one small, repeatable action at a time.

Summary of the episode

Courtney picks up where last week's episode left off, digging into why so many of us wait for the "right time," the right mood, or the right amount of confidence before we start working toward the future version of ourselves. She names the quiet trap in that thinking: saying "I'll start when I feel motivated" is often just a more comfortable way of saying "I'm afraid to start."

The heart of the episode reframes the order most of us assume is true. We think motivation leads to action, which leads to results. Courtney argues it's usually the reverse: you take the action first, momentum builds, and motivation follows. She uses everyday examples, a ten-minute walk, washing one dish, cleaning a single drawer, to show how small, unmotivated first steps can turn into real progress.

She connects this directly back to the three questions from last week's episode (who do you want to become, what does that version of you do differently, what's one thing you can do this week) and issues a challenge: pick one thing you've been putting off and take a single small step toward it this week, before you talk yourself out of it.

Courtney closes with a faith-rooted reframe, encouraging listeners to stop trying to see the whole path before moving and instead ask for just the next right step. The episode ends on a clear, repeatable line: don't wait until you feel like it, start, and let the feeling catch up.

Key Topics Covered:

• Why we wait for motivation instead of just starting
• The real order of change: action, then momentum, then motivation
• How "waiting for the right time" is often fear in disguise
• The "smallest thing I can do today" question
• How confidence and discipline are built through action, not before it
• Connecting this week's challenge back to last week's three questions
• Taking your next right step instead of needing the whole plan

https://www.empowerhermn.com/

Takeaways

• Growth isn't one giant reinvention. It's built through small, ordinary choices repeated daily, the same way you'd build any habit.
• You don't have to choose between grace and growth. You can be proud of who you are right now and still want to become more.
• The biggest thing holding most of us back isn't ability, it's fear, comfort, perfectionism, or waiting for a "perfect time" that never actually comes.

Summary of the episode

Courtney opens this episode with an honest admission: she scrapped the entire fall series she had planned because it didn't feel right. Instead of teaching from a finish line she hasn't reached, she's kicking off a new series about becoming, walking listeners through the process of identifying who they want to grow into and taking real, ordinary steps to get there.

At the center of the episode is a simple but powerful reframe: the future version of yourself isn't waiting for perfect motivation or the right circumstances. She's built one decision at a time. Courtney shares her own experiment of digging up an old daily habit tracker from three years ago and hanging it back on her wall, using it to hold herself accountable to the same questions she's asking listeners to sit with.

She walks through what's actually holding people back from growth, naming fear, comfort, perfectionism, and the habit of waiting for "someday" as common culprits, while also acknowledging that some obstacles are legitimate because life really is complicated. The episode's central idea is that grace and growth aren't opposites. You can accept exactly where you are and still want more for yourself.

Courtney closes with three simple questions to carry into the rest of the fall series: who do you want to become, what does that version of you do differently, and what's one thing you can do this week to move in that direction. Not ten things. Just one.

Key Topics Covered:

• Why Courtney scrapped her original fall series and started over
• Getting specific about who your future self actually is
• The daily habit tracker experiment and why she brought it back
• Common reasons we stay stuck: fear, comfort, perfectionism, and "someday"
• Why grace and growth can coexist instead of competing
• Three questions to define and start moving toward your future self

https://www.empowerhermn.com/

Takeaways

• Whether your summer was full or hard, it wasn't wasted. God meets us in every season, and guilt over an imperfect summer doesn't make it any less valuable.
• Instead of asking what you want to accomplish this fall, ask who you want to become. Busyness doesn't build character, it reveals it.
• Before fall's pace takes over, decide now which rhythms you want to protect (quiet time with God, family dinners, evening walks) and which distractions you want to leave behind (comparison, people-pleasing, your phone).

In this episode of Find the Joy, Courtney closes out summer with an honest look back before stepping into fall. She celebrates the season her family just lived, from summer rec baseball and swimming lessons to her kids running wild and free-range across the farm, and invites listeners to do the same: write down a favorite memory, print a photo, hold onto what made this summer good before it's gone.

But Courtney doesn't stop at the highlight reel. She turns to the women whose summer looked different, the ones who worked more than they rested, who carried doctor's appointments, financial stress, grief, or lost patience more than they'd like. Her message to them is direct: that summer wasn't wasted. God meets us in every season, even the hard ones, and the guilt that convinces us an imperfect season wasn't valuable simply isn't true.

From there, Courtney reframes how to walk into fall. Rather than asking what you want to accomplish or how much you can get done, she challenges listeners to ask who they want to become, because busyness doesn't determine character, it reveals it. She walks through three questions to carry into the new season: what rhythms do I want to protect, what distractions do I want to leave behind, and where is God inviting me next. The episode closes with a prayer for fall, asking for a heart that trusts God's plan, finds beauty in small everyday things, and holds onto the promise of a brand new beginning each morning.

Key Topics Covered:

• Looking back on summer with an honest eye, the good and the hard
• Releasing guilt over a season that didn't go as planned
• Shifting from "what do I want to accomplish" to "who do I want to become"
• Protecting rhythms and releasing distractions heading into fall
• A closing prayer for the new season

https://www.empowerhermn.com/

Takeaways

• The invisible, unpaid work of caregiving, the meals, the laundry, the mental load, matters even when nobody says thank you for it.
• Rest is not quitting, laziness, or selfishness. It's obedience, modeled for us by the Sabbath, and it's how we stay in rhythm with God's provision instead of running on our own strength.
• Growth, in your kids, your relationships, and your own faith, often happens quietly underground long before you see the harvest, so don't measure your impact by what's visible today.

In this episode of Find the Joy, Courtney sits her listeners down for an honest, coffee-shop-style conversation with the woman who keeps showing up even when she's running on empty. She names the invisible work so many women carry silently: the meals planned around everyone's preferences, the endless laundry, the appointments, the mental list that never really ends. It's a love letter to anyone who has ever wondered if any of it is actually being noticed.

From there, Courtney turns the conversation toward rest, and specifically why rest is not something to feel guilty about. She reframes rest as obedience rather than laziness, pointing to the Sabbath as proof that God built rhythm and recovery into the design of life on purpose. Trying to operate at full capacity every single day isn't sustainable, and it was never the goal.

The episode closes with a reminder that growth is often invisible before it's ever visible. Just like a seed planted in soil, the impact of showing up in love, praying quietly, being dependable, and staying calm under pressure, often takes time to reveal itself. Courtney reminds listeners that even when no one else notices the effort, it is never wasted, and it is always seen.

Key Topics Covered:

• The mental load and invisible labor of caregiving
• Why rest is obedience, not laziness
• The Sabbath as a model for rhythm and recharge
• Trusting growth and impact you can't see yet
• Letting go of striving for perfection

https://www.empowerhermn.com/

Takeaways

• Checking in with your heart, not just your calendar or to-do list, is a practice worth building into a busy season.
• Discomfort with silence is common, and it often masks avoidance of harder emotions, questions, or unresolved hurt.
• Scripture models honest prayer, not polished prayer, from David's raw psalms to Jesus's honesty in Gethsemane.
• Surrender follows honesty. Naming what's real comes first, letting go comes second.
• Five simple reflection questions can guide a weekly heart check-in: what you're carrying, grateful for, grieving, where you've seen God, and what you need to surrender.

In this episode of Find the Joy, host Courtney Vroman leads listeners through a practice of checking in with their hearts as summer winds down. She opens up about her own resistance to silence and stillness, admitting that busyness often becomes a way to avoid what's really happening beneath the surface. Courtney walks through five reflection questions designed to help listeners slow down and get honest with themselves and with God.

The episode moves into a deeper look at what Scripture teaches about honest prayer. Courtney points to King David's psalms, which are raw, unfiltered, and often full of hard questions like "How long, O Lord?" She notes that David is still called a man after God's own heart, not because his prayers were polished, but because he kept bringing his heart back to God. From there, Courtney turns to Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, highlighting how his honesty about his own anguish came before his surrender, "not my will, but yours be done."

The episode closes with an invitation and a challenge: take ten minutes this week to sit in real silence, without a phone or distractions, and ask God what he's trying to say to your heart. It's a gentle but pointed reminder that faith doesn't require pretending, and that God is inviting relationship, not performance.

Key Topics Covered:

• Checking in with your heart versus your calendar or to-do list
• The discomfort of silence and why stillness feels so hard
• Guilt around avoiding quiet time with God
• Five reflection questions for a weekly heart check-in
• David's honest, unfiltered psalms as a model for prayer
• Jesus in Gethsemane and the order of honesty before surrender (Luke 22:44)
• Why God invites honesty instead of polished prayers
• A weekly challenge: ten minutes of real, undistracted silence

https://www.empowerhermn.com/

Takeaways

• Joy doesn't have to come from big life moments. It's often hidden inside ordinary, everyday ones.
• Noticing small joys doesn't remove a hard season, but it can give you the strength to keep walking through it.
• James 1:17 reminds us that every good and perfect gift, big or small, comes from God.
• Keeping a simple joy list (three small things a day) is a practical way to train yourself to notice goodness.
• You don't have to compare your burdens to anyone else's to have permission to notice your own joy.

In this follow-up to last week's conversation on peaks and valleys, Courtney picks up right where she left off: still in the valley, still walking through a hard season, but choosing to notice the small gifts along the way. She shares that joy isn't meant to fix everything or erase the heaviness of a hard week. Sometimes its only job is to remind us that goodness is still showing up, even when nothing about our circumstances has changed.

Courtney walks through a list of the small joys she noticed this past week: a good cup of coffee, a peaceful car ride with her kids, saying yes to a tickle fight instead of brushing it off, watching her kids ride along on the tractor, voice memos with her best friend, a favorite worship song coming on the radio at just the right moment, wildflowers from her daughter, and an impromptu game of baseball at the sandlot. None of it changed her circumstances. All of it changed her perspective.

Grounding the episode in James 1:17, "every good and perfect gift is from above," Courtney challenges the idea that good gifts from God have to be big ones. She closes with a practical challenge: keep a joy list. Every morning or evening, write down three small things that made you smile. It doesn't have to be a gratitude list. It just has to be true.

Key Topics Covered:

• Why joy isn't meant to fix or erase a hard season, just remind us of God's presence in it
• Everyday examples of small joys, from coffee to tractor rides to voice memos
• James 1:17 and the idea that every good gift, no matter how small, comes from God
• Why comparing your burdens to someone else's isn't the answer
• How to start a simple daily joy list practice

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Takeaways

• Life moves in seasons of peaks and valleys, not one steady climb upward.
• Growth, faith, and joy are built in the valley, not on the mountaintop.
• Trials produce perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope (Romans 5:3-4).
• God never wastes a painful season, and He's present in every valley, not just the peaks.
• Real joy isn't the absence of hardship. It's discovered because of what hardship teaches us.

Summary of the episode

In this episode, Courtney sets aside the polished success story and gets honest about where she actually is right now: not at rock bottom, but definitely walking through a valley. She describes the feeling of a season changing before it arrives, the anxiety and bitterness that have crept in, and the tiny voice that whispers "don't get too comfortable" every time she reaches a mountaintop season.

Using the image of peaks and valleys, Courtney unpacks why life was never meant to be one long climb upward. The mountaintop feels good, clarity, gratitude, ease, but nothing actually grows there. The valley, rocky and slow as it is, is where rivers flow, trees take root, and faith gets built. She walks through James 1 and Romans 5, showing how trials produce perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope, not because suffering feels good, but because God never wastes it.

Courtney closes with a reminder for anyone currently in a hard season: every valley you've survived has prepared you for the next one, and there is never a moment when God isn't present, on the mountain or in the valley.

Key Topics Covered:

• Recognizing when a hard season is approaching, even before anything "goes wrong"
• The difference between mountaintop seasons and valley seasons
• Why growth, faith, and joy are built in the valley, not on the peak
• What James 1:2-4 and Romans 5:3-4 teach about trials and perseverance
• How to hold onto gratitude and hope in the middle of a hard season

https://www.empowerhermn.com/

Takeaways

• Comfort has a cost. Naming exactly what comfort is costing you (change, growth, health, connection, honesty, peace) reveals what you actually want.
• Happiness can show up in comfortable moments, but happiness and joy are not the same thing. Joy is built through discomfort and growth, not around it.
• Jesus never promised an easy life, but he did promise to carry the heavier weight. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me" is the invitation to grow without carrying it alone.

Summary of the episode

In this episode, Courtney trades her usual scripted format for a conversational one, because the topic showed up everywhere in her life at once: her Bible study, her group coaching, her individual coaching, and even her journal prompts. The topic is comfort, and the question she's been sitting with is simple but heavy: can joy live inside of comfort?

She starts with the journal prompt that cracked the whole conversation open for her: what is comfort costing me? For Courtney, comfort looks like sleeping in, staying home, avoiding confrontation, and keeping everyone else happy at her own expense. But when she lists out what that comfort actually costs her, change, growth, better health, connection, friendship, authenticity, honesty, peace, and discipleship, she realizes it's the exact list of goals she keeps setting for herself year after year.

That realization leads to the heart of the episode: her greatest growth seasons have always come through discomfort, never around it. She leans on the image of a sprout pushing up through the dirt to reach the sun, and on Jesus telling his disciples that following him will make life harder, not easier. But there's a promise tucked inside that hard truth. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me" means we're never carrying the heaviest part of the load alone.

Courtney closes by answering her own question. Happiness can live in comfort for a while, but it doesn't last. True joy lives on the other side of discomfort, in the growing seasons we'd rather avoid.

Key Topics Covered:

• The journal prompt "what is comfort costing me" and how to use it
• The difference between happiness and joy
• Matthew 11:29 and the picture of Jesus carrying the heavier weight of the yoke
• Why growth requires discomfort, using the image of a sprout breaking through soil
• Building real connection through community and events like Empower Her

https://www.empowerhermn.com/