Podcast Archives | Jody Moore Coaching

  Have you been living your life based on a hidden lie that’s holding you back? I’ve discovered a two-word concept that’s been sabotaging our happiness, our relationships, and our progress toward our goals. This seemingly innocent phrase has become so embedded in our daily vocabulary that we barely notice it—yet it’s the very thing […]

The post 509. The Lie We’ve All Bought Into appeared first on Jody Moore Coaching.

  Have you ever felt that surge of fear right before taking a big leap in your life? That moment when you’re about to launch a course, get married, or make a major life change—and suddenly your brain floods with doubt, worry, and resistance? This isn’t a sign you’re headed in the wrong direction. It’s […]

The post 508. When You’re Afraid to Leap: A Coaching Session appeared first on Jody Moore Coaching.

  What do you do when you find yourself paralyzed by a big life decision?  I share a powerful coaching session today where I work with a client struggling with when to have her fourth baby. She’s caught between her deep desire to grow her family and fears about how it might impact her new […]

The post 507. Deciding with Confidence: A Coaching Session appeared first on Jody Moore Coaching.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where staying calm was crucial, yet your body betrayed you with sweating, shaking, and near-panic? Those moments where you need your brain to function at its best, but instead, you’re caught in a spiral of physiological responses that seem beyond your control?

In this episode, I address a listener’s question about managing severe stage fright and performance anxiety. This common challenge affects countless people in various situations – from public speaking to musical performances, and even routine interactions that trigger our stress response.

Join me this week as I share a counterintuitive approach to handling these moments of panic that might surprise you. Rather than fighting against these physical and emotional responses, you’ll learn why embracing them could be the key to finding relief. Plus, I reveal how our primitive brain’s survival mechanisms play into these reactions and offer practical strategies for transforming your relationship with performance anxiety.

Want to learn to coach the way I do? Join my Better Than Happy Coach Training waitlist right now to be the first to get details when doors open!

Want free coaching? Join me for a complimentary coaching workshop by clicking here.

If you’re serious about succeeding in your coaching business, you want to join our newest program, The Lab: Coach Access. Click here to find out more!

You know that feeling when you just need to be calm and cool and you need to access the most useful part of your brain, the critical thinking part, the wise, brilliant part, and yet, that’s the moment when you find yourself sweating, panicking, freaking out, temperature rising, face getting flushed, maybe your body is literally shaking, and it’s the worst possible timing. You need to be on right now.

Well today, I have a question from one of you that called in, left this on the podcast hotline a while ago. I apologize. I’m just now circling around to some of your questions here, but such a brilliant question. A caller who’s in this situation, she’s going to tell us why in just a minute, and I’m going to tell you the art of not freaking out. What do you do in this situation? This is episode 506. Let’s go.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

Sometimes, listening to a podcast is enough. But sometimes, you’ll feel inspired to go deeper. If you hear things that speak to you in today’s episode, consider it your invitation to a complimentary coaching workshop.

On this live, interactive Zoom call with me, you’ll get a taste of the power of this work when applied in real life. You can participate, or be a silent observer. But you have to take a step if you want to truly see change in your life… two steps, actually. Head to JodyMoore.com/freecoaching and register. Then you just have to show up. Your best life is waiting for you. Will you show up for it? JodyMoore.com/freecoaching. I’ll see you there.

Hi, everyone. What’s happening? How’s life? How are we doing today? You’re not freaking out, are you? I hope there’s nothing in your life that is requiring any freaking out or is causing you or your brain to freak out. But if so, or if you have situations that come up on occasion that cause you to freak out, then you’re definitely going to love what I’m going to be talking about here on today’s episode.

And you might be surprised too. This has been coming up a lot lately. People say to me, I’m pretty sure I know what you’re going to say, Jody. I’m pretty sure I know what you would tell me, but, and then they’d give me their question or whatever’s going on. And then they almost always say, that is not what I thought you were going to say. And I just laugh because I’m not trying to trick anyone or fool anyone. I don’t know what I’m going to say half the time either.

But I do know what I want to say today. I have listened to this question that’s coming in. For those of you that think, I have a question I want to ask, you can always call in to our podcast hotline. It’s 1-888-HI-JODY-M. H-I-J-O-D-Y-M as in Moore, 1-888-HI-JODY-M. You can leave me a question. You can give me feedback. I’m trying to make this podcast next level.

The podcast does really well. I so appreciate all of you who listen and who share it. Please keep doing that. But I’m like, let’s take it on next level. Let’s make this our podcast. Instead of me deciding what I feel like talking about, why don’t you tell me what you want to hear about and what formats you like? 

Last week we did a coaching call. We might do more of those. Today I’m doing a question. Sometimes I just kind of ramble about what’s on my mind. Call in and tell me. 1-888-HI-JODY-M. Tell me what you want to learn about. Tell me what questions you have personally. Tell me what formats you prefer. And let’s really make this thing take off. Let’s make it really applicable and relevant for everybody. Are we in? Who’s going to help me on my mission? Okay. I thought so. Thank you. 

All right. So let me go ahead and play this caller’s question. Let’s take a listen, and then I’m going to tell you how I would answer it. Here we go.

“Hi, Jody. I love your podcast. Love the work that you do. I have a question. I have horrible stage fright and it gets to the point where I feel like I black out. I don’t know what I’m doing and it almost feels like a physiological response. I start sweating and you know those things are really common. 

I don’t know if they’re normal but I just know that the brain is powerful and I don’t know if it’s my thoughts that are causing this But I would love help with controlling my emotions, controlling my body when I am performing, whether it be musically, just talking. I just feel like I lose control. Any help is appreciated.Thanks for all you do. Bye.”

Ooh, can anybody else relate to this? It’s that moment you’re stepping on stage to perform when you want to be at your best, or it’s when you’re meeting up with your ex to exchange the kids and you just want to be brilliant or at least brief and get out of there. And that’s when everything starts happening in the brain and in the body, and it feels like it’s sabotaging you.

So let’s dive in a little bit. First of all, it is kind of sabotaging you, but not on purpose, right? Our brains do this thing called fight, flight, or freeze, which I know you’ve heard of before, right? When we think we’re in danger, one of the ways that we try to protect ourselves as human beings is by either shutting down or running away or just being so still that nobody notices us. It’s the idea, I think, behind fight, flight, or freeze, right? It’s like what animals do in the wild. It’s a basic, primitive survival mechanism.

So does that mean that we think we are in literal danger before we get on the stage? Yes, kind of, but also no. Okay? So survival can mean all kinds of things to this part of the brain. Obviously, like life or death is survival, but oftentimes what we’re trying to avoid nowadays is not even a physical death so much as like an emotional death, if you will. Like this mental, emotional overwhelm or embarrassment or fear or rejection by others or judgment of others that on some level we believe is so dangerous, we move into a fight, flight, or freeze response in order to try to protect ourselves and keep ourselves alive.

Now, when we slow it down in coaching, we’ll talk about these scenarios sometimes, right? Like what would really happen if whatever you think is worst case scenario went down? Like when you’re walking on the stage, why is speaking in front of an audience or performing or whatever it is that you do in front of an audience, why is that so scary to so many people? 

Well, because the brain thinks we might be rejected. It thinks that people might have opinions, negative opinions of us, and they might. Some of them will, right? That they will judge us, that they will have criticism of us, and for whatever reason that feels intolerable to us.

Again, if we want to take it all the way back to survival, it’s because if we were rejected by the tribe at one point, we literally would have died. But it doesn’t matter. It’s very natural, healthy human behavior that you care about what other people think of you. Okay? 

Only sociopaths don’t care what other people don’t think of them or people with other mental illnesses. Okay? So it’s not wrong that you care, but when you slow it down and notice, hey, it’s not dangerous actually. Like even if I went out there on the stage and I tripped and fell and I forgot every word I was supposed to say. And everybody laughed or made fun of me behind my back. 

Whatever you think is the worst case scenario, even if it happened, it would be fine. You’re not going to die. It’s not a big deal. Most people actually would probably come to your aid and comfort and love you even more because they saw you in a vulnerable state, which is what connects us as individuals, not seeing each other all perfectly put together.

But at any rate, part of your brain doesn’t believe that. It thinks it’s dangerous for people to see your weaknesses or your vulnerabilities or for you to be on stage as a supposed expert or somebody who has something worthwhile to say or somebody who’s gifted enough at music to be up there playing a song or singing a song or whatever, and then for you to be terrible at it. Your brain thinks that is very dangerous. Okay. And again, this can apply in all kinds of situations.

You’re going to meet up with your ex. I don’t know why that one keeps coming to my mind. I remember coaching someone, At least one person, many people who say, I go to meet up with the ex, I just want to have it together and that’s when I panic. And I’m like, yeah, because your brain thinks it’s very dangerous for your ex to see you at your worst, but it’s not, right? 

For your ex to see any weaknesses or shortcomings or faults is not dangerous, even if your ex is going to rub your face in it or talk about you behind your back or whatever, post it on social media how terrible you are. Even all those things still aren’t deadly, still don’t have to negatively impact your quality of life even. Okay?

So we do want to bring some level of awareness to this somewhat irrational part of the brain. Now, some experts would say that part of the reason we react this way is because we have what we might call unhealed trauma. I’m kind of careful about using that word trauma because I hate to pathologize just our whole life experiences. So I just want to be very clear that what I mean is that it might be a really severe traumatic experience that you went through, but it also could just be that one time when you were a kid, you were embarrassed.

I just told this story the other day about being in, I think I was in second or third grade. We were playing basketball in PE and I didn’t know how to play basketball. And they said to me, “It’s fine. You can totally do it. All you need to do is guard that girl. That girl over there, she’s your person. Just stay right on her, keep your arms up high and follow her wherever she goes and make sure that she can’t pass or shoot the basketball. That’s your job, Jody.” And I was like, “All right.”

So I’m following this girl around and then somebody on my team like knocks the ball out of bounds and my girl goes to get the ball to throw it in and I’m like right there all over her. I’m not going to let her throw it in. Well, that’s not really appropriate. That’s not how you play basketball, right? You guard them when they are on the floor, not when they’re throwing the ball in, you actually have to get out of their way so they can throw the ball back into play.

Well, I didn’t know this. All the kids are yelling at me, shouting out that I’m doing it wrong. I can’t even understand what they’re saying because they’re all talking at once. After a minute, I realize it and I’m so embarrassed, like filled with shame. I can’t believe everyone here seems to understand this except me. I’m such an idiot. I’m so embarrassed. They all saw me and I decided that day that I don’t do team sports. The end.

So that is not anything that we would say is heartbreaking, earth shattering, tragic, like, “Oh, wow, poor Jody Moore, your life is so hard. Some kids made fun of you in second grade.” Okay, that’s not what I’m saying, feel sorry for me. 

I’m saying at that moment, my brain memorized that it’s dangerous to go out there and try to do something you don’t know how to do, because especially if the people around you know how to do it, they might make fun of you when you mess up and you probably will mess up. And so if there’s a situation then after that where I feel like it’s a similar scenario, my brain has now memorized, this is dangerous. We should avoid this. We should try not to be made fun of because that did not feel very good.

So this is often what’s happening over and over again in our lives. We all have been through experiences, some more severe than others, where we memorized that certain situations could be dangerous, could be physically painful, mentally, emotionally painful, or just downright hard. And then we react accordingly in order to try to protect ourselves. 

And at a kind of more extreme level, it looks like fight, flight, or freeze, which is what’s happening when you’re sweating and feeling like you’re going to black out and shaking. It’s your body trying to shut you down or get you out of there to protect you. Okay, that’s what’s going on.

Now, in answer to this person’s question, what do we do about it? How do we control? She asked about controlling her emotions and her body. She wanted to feel more in control. Well, here’s what I want to tell you first, my friend. Before you try to control any of it, maybe even instead of trying to control any of it, I want to recommend that you just allow it, that you just decide, I’m going out on stage tonight and I’m probably going to freak out. I’m probably going to be sweating. I’m going to feel like I’m going to black out. I’m going to feel this panic coming over my body. All right, let’s go. I’m in. 

Why in the world would I tell you that? Well, because that’s been the reality, right? And my guess about why it feels so out of control and you’re having such a hard time reining it in is because you don’t want to feel it. You’re resisting it. Do you know what happens when we resist what’s going on in our bodies and our brains?

They fight harder to tell us because they’re like, she’s not hearing me. This is dangerous. She’s still going out on the stage and she’s not even acknowledging what we’re trying to tell her, which is, this is very dangerous. This could be very embarrassing. This could be humiliating. This could be all the negative things, right? 

And so we should shout it louder. And then we build up emotions too, because now we have panic and fear or stress or whatever it is, along with some resistance on top of that, some dislike of that experience, some judgment of ourselves that we shouldn’t be feeling it. 

And now we just have judgment or resistance or dislike on top of panic, fear, worry. Now we’ve created like a triple-decker sandwich of negative emotions. Okay? So this is why the first step is to genuinely just be willing to experience it. I want you to just go, you know what? I’m going to go give a talk today. Probably going to do some freaking out before. I’ll probably sweat. I’ll feel out of control. Probably shake. And I’m down for it. 

Are you down for it? I know you are, you know how I know? You’re still doing it, you’re asking me this question because you could just be like, that’s it, I don’t speak, I don’t sing, I don’t play the piano, whatever it is that you’re doing on these stages, you could just opt out. Did you know this? I don’t know why you’re doing these things. I don’t know if it’s part of your job, but you could find a different job. I don’t know if people ask you to do it, but I could teach you how to say no. Like you literally don’t have to do it. 

Why are you doing it? My guess is there’s a part of you that feels called to do it for some reason, wants to keep this job or wants to say yes, or wants to go out and speak and wants to do whatever it is that you’re doing. So if you want to do it, okay, cool, then just decide I’m gonna panic and freak out before I go on stage. And you know what? It’s going to be fine. So that’s the first thing. Open up to it and embrace it and be willing to experience it.

Even go this far, decide like, what about if somebody has never felt this feeling before? Maybe they’ve never experienced stage fright. They don’t know what it feels like to have this kind of mini panic attack almost happen. And they’re asking you to please describe it to them. And you kind of describe it, right? You’re like, I mean, I feel sweaty, like I’m going to black out. And they’re like, oh, so like when I’m on the treadmill? And you say, no, no, no, no, it’s different. It’s different than being on a treadmill.

And then you describe it again and they ask you something, you’re like, no, no, no, no, not like that. Okay, you know what? I’m going to pay attention next time it happens so that I can describe it a little bit better to you. So I can tell you how it’s different than being on a treadmill or about to get on a roller coaster. Maybe it feels just like a roller coaster. I don’t know. But like, how can you describe it? What else is going on?

Go through all the parts of your body, right? As it comes up, I just be like, tonight I give a talk. Can’t wait to see what this is like. What do my feet feel like during this whole experience? What do my knees feel like? What do my shins and my calves feel like? Do my ankles feel any different? Do my toes feel any different? What about my upper thighs? What about my hamstrings? Are they feeling any different?

What’s going on around my waist area and in my gut and in my chest? That’s probably where you’re feeling it the most, in the core, right? But then what about my fingers? Can I feel it in my pinkies? Can I feel it in my thumbs? What’s happening with my hands and my arms? Do I feel it in my shoulders and my neck? What about my ears? Do they feel hot?

Right? So go through. Notice what I’m doing is I’m like getting into my body and experiencing it and opening up to it. And like, what does this feel like? And it doesn’t mean I’m running away with thoughts.

A lot of times when we give advice to like, allow your feelings, just lean into them, just feel your feelings, feelings are for feeling, and all this advice we’re given, what people do is they think we mean run away with the thoughts in your head. And they start fueling the thoughts, right? They get in their heads. And I don’t even know that it’s wrong to do that. I’m just saying that’s not what I mean.

What I mean is open up to it in your body. What does it feel like? Now, if you can become aware of some of your thoughts, that’s cool, but you don’t have to. You can just have the visceral experience, decide that you’re totally willing to experience it. It’s not a big deal. In fact, people sign up to feel this feeling when they go to haunted houses and they get on roller coasters and they jump out of airplanes, they go skydiving.

We sign up for this feeling. We pay money. I will pay you a lot of money to take me in an airplane and throw me out with a parachute so I can experience sweating and almost blacking out and fear and panic. Why do we do that? Because when we’re willing to feel it, it kind of makes you feel alive, actually. Because it is an alive feeling. It is part of the human experience.

Okay, so that’s step number one. Allow it. Experience it such that you could even describe it better to someone who’s never experienced it before. Okay. Now, what do we do after that? Well, usually that’s enough, if I’m being honest. Because here’s the craziest part, and I’m a little hesitant to tell you this part, but whatever, let’s just give it away.

This is the irony of it. When you open up and allow it, remember I said we’re layering all these emotions, right? When you open up and allow it, you actually remove the top layers of those negative emotions. You remove the resistance, the self-judgment, the dissatisfaction or dislike of the experience. Then the experience itself is not that big a deal, and therefore it does not grow. It does not become bigger. It does not take over. And it turns from feeling like a panic attack to just feeling kind of nervous.

You’ll stop having, most likely, either you’ll just keep doing it and you can sweat and almost black out, it’s fine, that’s what we do when we go to the gym anyway, right? Or it will simmer down quite a bit and eventually at some point, you’ll just say, I get a little nervous. I get some butterflies in my stomach. Or maybe it’ll go away altogether. But it won’t feel like this big thing that overtakes you.

But when you say, how do I control my emotions and my body? My answer is, you don’t. Don’t try to do that. Because the word control implies to me that you don’t want it. You’re trying to stop it. You think that something’s gone wrong, but nothing’s gone wrong.

If it’s helpful, you can say things to yourself like, this is just because of sentences in my brain. Sentences in my brain. I wouldn’t even try, I did say if you could figure out what they are, great. But sometimes when it’s really intense for me, if I try to figure out what they are, I’m just going to get lost in my head. So be cautious of that. And if that happens, then you just say, sentences in my brain, that’s why I’m feeling this way, sentences in my brain.

Like I’m fine. I’m just standing here behind the stage of this thing. And yeah, there’s a lot of people out there, but that’s not dangerous. Even their judgment of me is not dangerous. I just have sentences in my brain creating this intense visceral reaction. Isn’t it fascinating? Isn’t it amazing to be alive and be a human being?

That’s it. Remove the top layer, remove the resistance of it, and take a deep breath. Be like, tomorrow I’m giving a talk and I’m probably going to freak out and I can’t wait. I’m all in. Let’s go.

Now, lastly, only after you do this for a long time and you notice, all I do is get a little nervous now, you can go in and examine some of the thoughts and I’m going to give you one, one other redirect thought to play with. But I don’t want you to even entertain this until you do what I just taught you. Okay? But here’s the redirect thought.

You stop thinking about you and you start thinking about somebody in the audience. Maybe it’s someone you know who you know is there to hear your music or listen to your talk or whatever. But often I don’t even try to think about any particular person that I know. I just make somebody up in my head. I’m just like, maybe there’s somebody in this audience who needs a little inspiration, a little motivation, who needs to know that they’re doing a good job, or who is going to have their heart touched by this song I’m about to sing.

I personally don’t sing on stages. They don’t really let me, but I’m just saying for you maybe, right? There’s somebody who’s going to be impacted. They’re going to feel whatever it is you want them to feel. They’re going to have an idea. They’re going to have some insight. They’re going to leave motivated.

Think about that person and think about where they are right now and the transformation that they’re going to have after you do what you do, even though it’s not you doing it for them. You’re not the magic pill. Don’t worry. It’s them. It’s divine unseen forces, okay, but you just get to be there. You get to be the vehicle that helps a little bit.

Think about them. Stop thinking about you. Whether or not you’re going to sound good, whether or not you’re going to look good, whether or not they’re going to like what you have to say, whether or not you’re going to mess up. All of that is so scary when we think about us. You realize that? It is for me anyway.

So a quick redirect, start thinking about somebody in the audience, but only even try that after you just allow yourself to panic and freak out. That’s going to be so fun. Everybody go try it. Come back and tell me how it goes. I want to hear.

Thank you for joining me today. Again, you can call into 1-888-HI-JODY-M. If you have a question, you want to be on the podcast. I’d love to answer it. I’ll see you next time. Bye.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: JodyMoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s JodyMoore.com/freecoaching.

The post 506. The Art of Not Freaking Out appeared first on Jody Moore.

Have you ever felt the sinking feeling of discovering your child has been hiding something from you? That moment when trust seems to shatter and you’re left wondering where you went wrong? If you’ve experienced this heartbreaking situation, you’re not alone.

In this episode, I share a real coaching session with a mom who just discovered her son’s secret phone. Despite their recent heart-to-heart about honesty and attempts to build a deeper connection with him, she feels he’s been hiding a whole other life from her. The betrayal feels overwhelming, and she’s unsure how to move forward.

Listen in this week to hear me guide this mom through processing her emotions, shifting her perspective, and finding a path to reconnect with her son. Whether you also have teenagers you worry about, or have experienced someone in your life “betraying” you, you’ll learn how to navigate these challenging moments with love, understanding, and a commitment to strengthening your relationship.

Want to learn to coach the way I do? Join my Better Than Happy Coach Training waitlist right now to be the first to get details when doors open!

Want free coaching? Join me for a complimentary coaching workshop by clicking here.

If you’re serious about succeeding in your coaching business, you want to join our newest program, The Lab: Coach Access. Click here to find out more!

I want you to imagine it’s just a regular school morning and you push open your son’s bedroom door, stepping over the pile of laundry that he swore he was going to pick up, and you gently nudge him awake. And as he groggily rolls over, something slips from under his pillow. 

It’s a phone, but it’s not his phone and your stomach drops and your mind races. Because just last week, the two of you had an amazing conversation, heartfelt, face to face about honesty and truth. And you even had talked about his new girlfriend, the one that you’re not so sure about, and you both agreed to be really open and honest with each other.

And now this, a secret phone, a secret life? What else is he hiding? If you’ve ever worried about your own child keeping things from you, today’s episode is one you won’t want to miss. You’re about to hear a real coaching session with a mom in this exact moment, panicked, heartbroken and unsure of what to do next. Let’s dive in.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

Sometimes, listening to a podcast is enough. But sometimes, you’ll feel inspired to go deeper. If you hear things that speak to you in today’s episode, consider it your invitation to a complimentary coaching workshop.

On this live, interactive Zoom call with me, you’ll get a taste of the power of this work when applied in real life. You can participate, or be a silent observer. But you have to take a step if you want to truly see change in your life… two steps, actually. Head to JodyMoore.com/freecoaching and register. Then you just have to show up. Your best life is waiting for you. Will you show up for it? JodyMoore.com/freecoaching. I’ll see you there.

Okay, everybody, I am putting some real coaching here on the podcast. I’ve done this a little bit in the past, but not very much. And I feel like it’s the most powerful way at this point to show you what I’m trying to show you. We’re over 500 episodes into the podcast. I have been teaching and talking until I’m blue in the face.

And I quite frankly think that’s kind of boring. I’m glad that you don’t. A lot of you listen to this, so I don’t think you find it as boring as I do listening to myself teach. But there’s over 500 episodes you can go back and listen to. But here’s the thing.

I’m trying this out. I’m going to put some coaching on here and I want your feedback. If you like it, if you find it to be powerful, like I think you’re going to, please let me know that. And if on the other hand, you’re like, I kind of like it better when you teach concepts, Jody, let me know that because I want this podcast to be useful to you, not something that is here for my own benefit or my own pleasure, my own satisfaction. 

So best way to let me know is just to call into our hotline 1-888-HI-JODY-M. And just leave me a quick message and just let me know, Hey, I really liked the coaching, do more of that. Or I really prefer when you teach, do more of that. Or maybe you want to let me know that you like a combination of the two. I’m totally open to making this our podcast.

So I would greatly appreciate your feedback, but I do think that you’re gonna love this episode, especially if you have children, especially if you have teenagers, if you ever worry about your teenagers. Maybe you have teenagers that are lying to you, or maybe you just know that there’s a possibility that they might at some point. 

Now I’m going to play the coaching session here for you, and then make sure you listen afterwards because I’m going to dissect for you a little bit some of what we hear happening on this call so that you can apply it to yourself, whether you can relate to this situation or you have something just somewhat similar. Maybe it’s not a kid lying. Maybe it’s somebody else that has “betrayed” you in some certain way.

I want to make this really relevant and applicable and tell you why I coached this client the way I did. So make sure you stick around for that part. I’ll see you after the coaching session.

—

Jody Moore: How are you? You doing all right?

Client: I’m all right. So the other day I went in to wake my son up and found that he had a second phone that we didn’t know about that he’s been hiding from us for about a month and a half that his maybe ex-girlfriend’s mom had bought for him. I don’t know who paid for it actually, but she’s got a plan. 

And so he’s been, we had like a phone, like he wrote out like this whole phone contract that we had signed and everything. And he’s been completely pretending and faking with the phone that we knew that he had, that he pays for every month and he paid for that phone. 

And so we’ve been working with him for a few months to really work through and build connection. And like we were in a really, really good place. And then I find this phone and I just, I feel like, okay, I just wasted all this time.

Jody Moore: Wait, wait, wait, wait. What are you making this mean? Your phone, your son has a second phone that you didn’t know about. He’s been lying to you, right. And hiding things from you, deceiving you. 

Client: Yep. Okay. 

Jody Moore: What are you making all that mean? 

Client: That he is not trustworthy. That as much as we’ve worked with him and tried to build that connection, he’s completely disrespected all of that. And I guess I felt like I was trying to keep it because I’ve run through models and I’ve really talked through this a lot, but at the same time, I guess I didn’t realize I still have all this emotion around it. And so you said, hey, it’s your turn.

Jody Moore: Yeah. It’s okay to have emotion around it. It really is. I don’t want you to think this is about like, Oh, it shouldn’t be emotional, I should just be neutral about everything that happens in the world. No. 

Client: Sure.

Jody Moore: You’re going to want to have emotion around it. So what is the main emotion that you feel right now? 

Client: I’m just sad. I really am just sad. 

Jody Moore: Sad?

Client: Yeah, for sure.

Jody Moore: Okay. So you have some sadness going on. And sadness, this is really important. I do want to empower you with this piece of knowledge. I’m not telling you not to be sad, Bbut part of your brain thinks you’re sad because your son had a second phone and didn’t tell you about it. Didn’t honor your contract. That’s not the reason you’re sad. 

You’re sad because you’re making this mean something about your relationship or about your child or about you in relation to your child or whatever. You’re making it mean something. That’s the part that’s just made up. That’s what’s making you sad.

Client: Right.

Jody Moore: Right? And you’re making it mean a lot of things, but one of the things you told me is that he’s not trustworthy. We’ve been doing all this work and it’s been for nothing. He’s disrespected us.

Client: Right.

Jody Moore: And when you think that, then you feel sad.

Client: Right.

Jody Moore: Now tell me how you show up around your son from this sadness.

Client: I’ve kind of shut down and pulled away. I’ve started to close down a little bit because I’m not sure where to go from here.

Jody Moore: Yeah. Okay. Shut down, pull away, close down. What result does that get you in relation to your son?

Client: Distance, you know, it puts distance between us.

Jody Moore: Yeah. Okay. All right. So let’s just take a look at this. Let’s take a guess at your son’s model. Let’s just play with it a little bit, because what we want to show your brain is not that you shouldn’t be sad, but that there are a lot of things going on here that we’re not taking into consideration. With this story is my guess. Okay? 

So what do you think is going on for your son? If we put in his action line that he gets somehow a second phone. He doesn’t tell mom and dad about what do you think is fueling that? What is the feeling thought fueling that for him

Client: That he wants more control in his life that he wants to be able to be more independent, have more freedoms.

Jody Moore: I want more control, more freedom, more independence. I want to be able to do what I want with this phone. Mom doesn’t let me do all the things I want to do on this phone. So I’ll just get a phone and not tell her about it. That way I can do what I want. But mom will still feel good about – she thinks I should be doing with phones. Is that what we want to call not trustworthy?

Client: I don’t know, because it still seems sneaky, right?

Jody Moore: I mean, we can, but it’s just that it’s making you sad to think about it this way. Disconnecting you and putting distance between you and your son. What is it that he wants to do on the phone that you don’t want to let him do?

Client: I don’t know exactly what he does on this phone because so he had a girlfriend that we had, there’s some issues there that have been very destructive in his life and we’ve kind of let that go and said, okay, you can still like talk to this girl, but he does that now all hours of the night.

Jody Moore: Okay. And so you’re like, hey, you need to get off the phone by a certain time?

Client: Yeah.

Jody Moore: Is that it? Okay. So that’s one thing. So you want him to be off the phone at a certain time. We’re not talking to this girl all night anyway. He wants to be able to talk to her whenever he wants all night long if necessary. So he’s like, I guess I’ll get another phone. I just won’t tell my mom about it.

Client: Right.

Jody Moore: Okay. Now I’m not saying that we should think that’s lovely and that we love that kind of behavior. But can we, but like, before we just go into like, he’s disrespecting us, we’ve done all this work for nothing. He’s not trustworthy. Can we just at least try to acknowledge, like, I can see why he would want to do that?

Client: Sure. 

Jody Moore: And not even because he’s a terrible person, like, just like, right. He’s a boy who likes a girl and he likes talking to that girl. And we don’t let him talk to her all night like he would like to, and he wants to. And so he found a way around that. I mean, it makes sense, right? That part of it.

Client: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Jody Moore: Now, what would happen if he would have come to you and said, Mom, I really want to be able to talk to her all night long. Can we just discuss that?

Client: I would talk him through it. Like I would sit down with him. I would have a conversation about that. We’ve really tried to allow him to come to us and at least our conversation has been like, just talk to us and let’s work it out. And we’ve given him a lot of freedom in that way.

Jody Moore: But he doesn’t feel that way for some reason. Right? Let’s just try and let’s try and see the part where he doesn’t feel like that would have been a good solution. That would have worked.

Client: Okay.

Jody Moore: I mean, I don’t know. Does he think it may be that you’re going to worry because you said you don’t really love that this girl’s in his life anyway.

Client: Yeah, I think there’s definitely some worry there. I think he’s told us that he doesn’t want to disappoint us, you know, I mean…

Jody Moore: So what I’m wondering is I want you to just let yourself be sad as long as necessary. But I think a more useful place to go that’s probably available to you even sooner than later would be curiosity and even confusion. 

Client: Like why the heck did this mom get a phone with him and put him on a plan like we didn’t know about? Anyway, it’s a whole other thing, I guess.

Jody Moore: Yeah, that’s going to be some more work you’re going to have to do. But to begin with, we want to work on your relationship with your son, right? You don’t want to be distance and disconnected and ignoring him and pulling away and closing down for him. Right?

Client: Right. For sure.

Jody Moore: We want the opposite actually.

Client: Yep. 

Jody Moore: We want to be up and be available. And so curiosity and even that what I like about confusion is that for me, anyway, I can be confused and it removes the judgment. Otherwise I’m mad and frustrated. Like, why would you do this? We talked about this. Don’t you understand? Why would you let that, why would that woman do this? We’re going to judge everybody. But if we’re just, I’m just so confused. Help me understand.

Client: That’s true. Yeah.

Jody Moore: Right? Then we open up to having useful discussions. But we have to be more open and less judgmental, less defiant about what we think it should look like to have any chance at all of our son feeling like it’s safe to do that. 

Client: Right.

Jody Moore: Right?

Client: Yeah. 

Jody Moore: So listen, all the work you’ve done with him hasn’t been for nothing. It’s perfect. You’re right on track. You’re right where you’re supposed to be.

Client: Thank you.

Jody Moore: You had to lay that groundwork in order to end up where you are now and where we are now is perfect because now we get to have a really open, honest dialogue. But I think this is so important. I think we have to go into these conversations respecting our kids. It’s hard to do because what we want to do is go into it judging the kid.

Client: Right. For sure. 

Jody Moore: But if we respected him, it would sound entirely different. It would sound like, “I just want to understand what it’s like for you right now.” How old is he?

Client: 17.

Jody Moore: I want to know what it’s like to be a 17-year-old boy in the world right now. Tell me. I want to know what it’s like to be a 17 year old boy who really likes a girl who has a cell phone who has like, tell me what it’s like to be you. And I want to know what you would do if you were me. If you were your mom and you suddenly discovered that your child had another phone you didn’t know about, what would you do? How would you handle it? Do you see what I mean? How respect will open up a more honest conversation between both of you? Hopefully?

Client: Sure.

Jody Moore: At least gives him an opportunity to because there’s so much that we don’t even know might be going on with that child.

Client: For sure, I mean, obviously, obviously I didn’t know he had the phone, so there’s so much more.

Jody Moore: But this is the other thing I’m gonna offer to you, is that I know in your brain, this is a really big deal. And I just want to give you permission to believe that this is not a big deal. Okay, so he has a phone, all right. Now we get to have a really candid conversation and I wanna know, I wanna understand, help me understand, I’m confused. And I love you and I’m just trying to do my job as your mom to protect you from the world and at the same time navigate letting you make your own choices. Not an easy thing to do help me understand where you’re coming from?

But you see what I mean? Like your brain is like this is a big deal And you can keep thinking that if you want, but if I were you, I would try on, listen, this is not a big deal.

Client: Yeah. I think what I’m making it mean makes it feel heavier.

Jody Moore: Yeah.

Client: What you were saying, it just makes it feel more than it really is.

Jody Moore: Exactly. And so be sad as long as you wanna be sad, but you also don’t have to any longer than you want to. Okay? All right, mom, You got this.

Client: Thank you so much.

Jody Moore: Okay, you’re welcome.

Client: Appreciate it. Bye.

—

Okay, everybody. Let’s dissect a little bit what we just heard from this beautiful, loving mother who’s in a situation I’m sure many of us can relate to. So I want you to notice that in the beginning when she tells me what’s going on, the first thing I ask her is, what are you making it mean? 

And the reason I’m pointing that out to all of you is because when you have something going on that feels very dramatic, you’re very emotional about it, maybe you’re scared, maybe you’re sad like this sweet mom was, whatever it is, when you have strong emotions, one of the things that will help to calm you down right away is to stop and separate out facts from what you’re making it mean.

So in this situation, I just kind of summed up for her the facts. You know, I was like, okay, so you found a phone. Your son had a phone and he was hiding it from you. What are you making it mean? Because I don’t know about you, but as I listen to somebody tell me something like this, I have thoughts about maybe why she’s upset. I have guesses about how I would feel in that situation or why if I was upset about it, why I might be upset. And the truth is, we’re all unique in this way.

Some people, it wouldn’t phase them at all. They’d be like, oh yeah, you know, kids do that. And there’s some that would be upset because of, I don’t know, financial reasons. They’re worried about the money side or there are others who would just make it mean something more about themselves. As a parent, I must not be a good mom or, or he doesn’t trust me or what have you. Right?

And so that’s why I asked this woman this, I want to know what is she thinking? What is she making it mean that is creating all this emotion for her? Now she has many thoughts probably as usually we do in a situation that feels emotionally charged for us, but the first one that comes to her mind is about her son, right? When she says he’s not trustworthy. And that’s the reason why I start talking to her about what might be going on for her son.

Because she’s immediately going to judgment of her son, which doesn’t feel good to her because she loves this kid, clearly, right? And so for her to judge him and kind of make him the bad guy, if you will, in the story is partly why she’s emotionally charged. And what I want to show her is I know that her son is not a bad guy. I know he’s not. He’s just a teenage boy who likes a girl and wants to be able to talk to her or whatever else might be going on for him.

But from just the little bit that she gave us, I have some guesses about why he’s doing this that make perfect sense. Not because he’s evil and not trustworthy, but because he’s a teenage boy, right, who likes a girl and has a mom that doesn’t want him talking to her all night on the phone. And again, maybe there are many other factors we’re not even aware of. But this is certainly a completely lovable kid in an understandable situation.

And I’m not saying that as parents, we don’t want to have expectations and boundaries and guidelines and things, not that we wouldn’t monitor our children’s behavior as much as possible. All I’m trying to show this mom is that her son is not a bad kid, because when she gives herself permission to stop judging him, it doesn’t feel safe to her brain right now to not judge him. But as a coach, my job is to give her permission to stop judging him. And it’s not even that hard to do when we back it up and look at what’s going on.

Okay, so I want you to, in your own life, consider this situation. Are you judging somebody that you actually love and you don’t want to be in judgment, but your brain is telling you it’s dangerous not to judge them. I’m telling you, it is not useful to go to judgment.

And there’s another thing going on here that we didn’t exactly dive into in this coaching session, because this is just a quick call. But if and when I talked to this client again, I would have asked her, are you making it mean anything about yourself as a mom? Because often when we are in blame, which is her judgment of her son, right, we are also in shame at the same time. We tend to go back and forth between shame and blame. I call it the shame-blame trap.

And so if there is any part of her that’s judging herself in some way, then we want to clean that part up as well. Because the way out of the shame-blame trap is to realize that this isn’t anybody’s fault. This isn’t his fault. This isn’t my fault. 

She’s also wanting to maybe blame the girlfriend’s mom, right? We heard a little hint of that where she was like, did this girl’s mom give him the phone and why would you do that? So her brain is trying to stay in blame because shame feels terrible, but often we bounce back and forth between the two. 

None of those things are gonna be useful because they’re gonna keep my client stuck in the space of something has gone wrong, right? So you’ll notice at the end, I offered to her, hey, this is not a big deal. This isn’t a big deal. 

Now, some of you listening might be like, that’s terrible advice, Jody. This is a big deal. If he’s hiding things, that might mean A, B, or C, and we can’t let kids do that and on and on. I get it. Okay. I’m not naive to that stuff. I’m just saying for this woman, it is not useful for her to think this is a big deal. I should panic. I should figure out who’s to blame. It’s not serving her to do that. 

And this might be true in your own life too, that you’re making something a big deal and maybe everyone around you agrees it’s a big deal. And I want to tell you right now that you have my full permission to decide this is not a big deal because that is the way out of the shame-blame trap, my friend. 

If this isn’t a big deal, if nothing’s really gone wrong, if what we have here is just a bunch of human beings trying to navigate life and the world and doing the best they can, and sometimes not doing a good job at all, but it’s all understandable. There’s a reason for it and we’re going to get through it, and we’re going to figure it out, and it’s okay, then we can calm down and stop pointing fingers or feeling bad. And we could just start having logical, really open, connecting conversations. Okay?

So that’s the other thing I want to show you that we saw in this coaching session is that this mom, by worrying about her son hiding this phone, let’s think about why she’s worried about that. She’s afraid that he’s disconnecting from her, that maybe there are problems or troubles going on that she doesn’t know about, or that he’s not going to tell her about, that maybe he’s involved in things that aren’t “appropriate,” that she doesn’t like for him, that she doesn’t think will serve him in his life. That’s the reason why, right?

And so what she’s doing is disconnecting from her son. We didn’t flesh that out in a lot of detail in this coaching call, but she did say, I disconnect, right? And I want you to put yourself in her shoes. What do we do? We don’t quite know what to say. So we try to say something, but we have to pretend because we don’t want him to know the level of upset that we are. And we’re also afraid of pushing them further away.

So we’re doing this weird like walking on eggshells thing, or we often sometimes even avoid the conversations because we know we can’t show up how we want. We do all kinds of things that contribute to the exact thing that we’re afraid of. Like, I don’t want my son disconnecting from me and not being totally honest with me. So I’m going to disconnect from him and not be totally honest with him. Do you see how this doesn’t make any sense?

And it’s understandable that this woman’s doing it. We all would be doing the same thing if we were thinking about this situation in the way that she is. And that’s why I’m offering to her a bunch of alternative thoughts like, this is not a big deal. It’s totally understandable that your kid is doing what he’s doing. It makes perfect sense. Right? And it doesn’t mean you’re not doing an amazing job as his mom. And it doesn’t mean that you are wrong for kind of panicking right now. That’s okay too.

Notice there’s lots of me saying to her in the beginning, especially, it’s okay that you’re sad. It’s not that she shouldn’t be thinking about it this way. She’s got to process the emotion that she’s already created with her thoughts. It’s just that it’s only her thoughts creating the emotion and she doesn’t have to stay there. It’s not important or responsible or good parenting in some way for her to stay in this story.

Now the last thing I want to point out that you might take away from this coaching, I hope you’re taking a bunch of nuggets that will apply to your life in different ways, but the last thing I want to point out is that the work I’m offering you here of examining what you make things mean, examining your stories, choosing them more intentionally, is not about binary thinking.

I did offer her a pretty opposite thought of like her brain is going from, he’s not trustworthy, and I offered her the thought at the end, this is not a big deal. But it doesn’t have to be a completely opposite thought from the one that you’re thinking or a completely, we don’t have to go from a story like, I can’t believe my kid is lying to me. He’s not trustworthy. I thought we were beyond this. What’s going on? To, this is lovely. I love that he has a second phone. Or even, it’s not a big deal.

I sensed that she would get there. A part of her could believe that and that’s why I offered it to her. And as I’m coaching, I’m always keeping an eye on people. And if she would have really rejected that, I would have offered her something different. But it doesn’t have to be just black or white, all or nothing. There could be many other thoughts.

So for example, if that thought, this isn’t a big deal, was one that I could see she didn’t believe at all, and her brain just completely rejected it, she wasn’t ready for it, I would have offered her this other thought that she gave me in the middle of the coaching session. She said, he doesn’t want to disappoint us. Right?

As we kind of dove in and started exploring why might your child do this if it’s not just because he’s a terrible kid. She said, he doesn’t want to disappoint us. Now I want you to imagine if this woman just shifted from thinking, he’s not trustworthy to my son doesn’t want to disappoint me. Doesn’t that thought feel different? Doesn’t it feel a little bit better?

Doesn’t it help you feel more like the parent that you want to be to think, my sweet son just doesn’t want to disappoint, I added the sweet part, but stay with me. My son just doesn’t want to disappoint me. That says to me that he’s thoughtful, that he’s considerate instead of he’s a not trustworthy villain.

So notice you can just shift a little bit to a thought that you already believe. I know this woman already believes that because she told it to me. She offered me that. So I wanted to take her as far towards feeling some relief and being the kind of mom she wants to be as I possibly could. And that’s why I offered her the thought, this is not a big deal, But we could have equally gone with, my son just doesn’t want to disappoint me. And she still would have made major progress.

Because what happens when you do this work is you notice, first of all, that it’s all a story. You notice that that story is creating your current experience. And then if you can find a new place that you’re headed to in your mind, and you hold space for it, and you give yourself time and patience to get there, your brain keeps working on it.

After a coaching session like this, you can’t not see what a good coach shows you. Yeah, I just called myself the good coach in this situation. All my coaching is not always brilliant, but I’m just saying, when someone coaches you and shows you yourself, and you see it, even just for a second, even if you go back to the old story, you’ve now seen something that you cannot unsee. And your amazing brain will go to work doing the rest if you want to get to a better place, to a more peaceful place, to a place that helps you be more who you want to be.

I promise you, because I’ve seen it happen time and time again, where sometimes at the end of the coaching, I wonder if my client really got it. I wonder if they saw what I was trying to show them. And then they’ll come back to me later and tell me what’s changed for them. And I realize, oh, they got it enough that their brain kept working on it. And they make most of that progress on their own. I just barely tipped them in the right direction.

All right, you guys, thanks for joining me for this real coaching session. And again, call into 888-HI-JODY-M and let me know if you want more like this or if you want me to go back to teaching or you want a combination. I’m totally open for it.

All right, have a beautiful rest of your day.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: JodyMoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s JodyMoore.com/freecoaching.

The post 505. When You Catch Your Kid Hiding Something appeared first on Jody Moore.

Why is it so challenging to minimize your mental drama around food? It’s because we can’t just cut it out of our lives altogether. If you have a toxic friend, you can stop contacting them. If you’re burnt out from work, you can take a vacation. But food is a necessity that is pretty much a non-negotiable part of our everyday lives.

So, how do you start to clean up your relationship with food? It all starts with changing how you think about food, then you can begin to work on the habits and cycles that have you eating in a way you’re not happy about. In this episode, that’s exactly what we’re doing.

Tune in this week to hear from the participants inside Make Peace with Food getting coached live on their eating desires, habits, and their thoughts about all of it. I give you tons of examples about how you can start changing your relationship with food right now, no matter what you’re going through, so listen in and enjoy.

Want to learn to coach the way I do? Join my Better Than Happy Coach Training waitlist right now to be the first to get details when doors open!

Want free coaching? Join me for a complimentary coaching workshop by clicking here.

If you’re serious about succeeding in your coaching business, you want to join our newest program, The Lab: Coach Access. Click here to find out more!

Do you know why it’s so difficult to clean up your relationship with food? Because we can’t just cut it out of our lives altogether.

If you have a toxic relationship with a friend in your life, you can just decide to be done with that relationship and done with that friendship. But food is something that we need and actually I would encourage you to want and still let it be a joyful, entertaining, and fun part of life. But it’s tricky to navigate, right, especially if you have a long history of a toxic relationship with food, as most of us do. But you’re going to love what I have to teach you on today’s episode. We are going to minimize your drama around food today. Let’s go.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

Sometimes, listening to a podcast is enough. But sometimes, you’ll feel inspired to go deeper. If you hear things that speak to you in today’s episode, consider it your invitation to a complimentary coaching workshop.

On this live, interactive Zoom call with me, you’ll get a taste of the power of this work when applied in real life. You can participate, or be a silent observer. But you have to take a step if you want to truly see change in your life… two steps, actually. Head to JodyMoore.com/freecoaching and register. Then you just have to show up. Your best life is waiting for you. Will you show up for it? JodyMoore.com/freecoaching. I’ll see you there.

Hey there, everybody. Welcome to episode 504.

Thank you for being here on the podcast today. I am so delighted that you’re here. I value your time. I want to take good care of you. I want to ask you that if you like this episode, will you please share it with your friends, family, coworkers, whoever you think might also like it? Just throw up a share on your stories or something on social media, if you’re on social media, or just mention it to somebody.

I would greatly appreciate you helping me get the word out about the tools that we are offering here on the podcast. And also I want to explain to you what you’re about to listen to. So this week we started a four-week course I teach called Make Peace with Food. I’ve taught it a handful of times. People are always blown away by it. They get amazing results. And I’m sorry to say that you’re too late to join us. Technically you could join us, but we’re halfway through. You would get all the replays if you want to join us. I don’t even know if the doors are open actually now that I say that. Don’t bother joining us, but listen, today’s call, we did a coaching call today where I teach live, I can answer questions, and then we bring people on for coaching. And it was so phenomenal. Not because I’m phenomenal, just because you guys brought amazing questions, amazing examples, and we had some major breakthroughs that we created together as we dissected our relationships with food.

And so I wanted to share it with all of you here on the podcast. So that was what you were going to get today is the audio from that call. And also, if you’re thinking, gosh, that really was good, and I want to participate, then I want you to go sign up for the free public coaching call, because we do a different version of that.

We don’t just stick to food on the coaching call, we talk about all kinds of topics. But you can just head to JodyMoore.com/freecoaching, and you’ll learn how to get more help. And you’ll get to ask me questions and join in with us live.

So without further ado, here we go. 

—

Jody Moore: Well, good morning, friends. Welcome to Make Peace with Food. I love this workshop so much. I’ve taught it a handful of times now, and I just love getting to connect with you, getting to know you, getting to expose you a little bit to how coaching can help in all areas of your life, but especially around something really challenging like changing your eating habits or your relationship with food, improving on your health. 

I’m so delighted that you’re here. Welcome, welcome. Thank you for being here. Hopefully you’ve been getting and watching the videos that came out this week. Oh, I just remembered we have a brand new function where we are piping everything out to our own private podcast feed. 

We just wanna make it as convenient as possible for you to listen to the videos that come out on Mondays and Wednesdays and listen to the replays of this call here today in case you wanna listen to it again after you come live. What we did is we emailed the link to you guys to sign up for the private podcast. It’s just a one-time really easy process to sign up and then you get everything right in your podcast feed. 

Anyway, welcome, welcome. Here’s what we’re gonna do today. I’m gonna talk to you a little bit about the things that you learned this week, but this Friday call that we do is meant for us to have dialogue. It’s for you to get more specific individual help. And if you’re the one who raises your hand or asks a question or what have you, that’s gonna be powerful for you. If you don’t do that, I’m still glad you’re here or listening later because it’s the real life application of this stuff where we really make a difference, right? 

The things I’m teaching on these videos are not earth shattering. I’ve put them in my own way in formats that have been really powerful for me and others, but it’s not any brand new, I don’t have brand new information about food or bodies or psychology or any of that, right? What makes the difference is right here, what we’re doing on these Friday calls. It’s trying it and then seeing what comes up and then working through that part. 

So here. Here’s where I want to begin today. I want to know why you signed up for this program. Why are you here? So I call this class Make Peace with Food because that seems to resonate with all of us, whether we want to lose a little bit of weight, we’re just sick of the chatter around food, we’re sick of feeling out of control, we have blood pressure we want to lower, we want to gain weight. I’ve coached people a handful of times who want to gain weight and it’s interesting they say the same things as those of us wanting to lose weight in that they say, I’m just tired of having to think about food all the time.

I’m tired of feeling like food controls my life. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want it to have so much power over me. Okay. So, so why are you here? It might be you want a mental and emotional peace and freedom around food. It might be that you have a health goal you’re trying to achieve. What is the reason why you’re here? 

Maybe you’re just curious about what I teach. Maybe you are a health coach and you help other people. No right or wrong reason. I just want to know you guys. I want to know who’s here and I want to know why you’re here. Somebody says, want to lose weight for the last time. Make changes for the life I want. So frustrated with gaining and losing the same weight over and over. Tired of identifying as someone who struggles with her weight. 

Somebody says, I know what to eat. Now I want to work on the mental peace around food. Good. My body says I still need to lose some more weight. want to have diabetes like my mom. Okay, good. To gain more control over my food and emotional eating, I am tired of being so overweight and unhealthy. I want to live a long, healthy life. Yes, my friend. I can’t stop thinking and worrying about everything I eat because I’m so scared to gain weight, somebody says. I want to reach a healthy weight and maintain it. Why do I eat all the time? I don’t feel full. Diet Coke has ruled my life for years. I’ve tried to stop for years, someone says. I’m out of control with food. I want to avoid drugs for health problems down the road. If I continue on the road I’m on. Okay, good. I want to lose weight and feel peace with food. And then somebody says amen to everything everyone else is saying, right? I want to break my addiction to food, someone says. I’m trying to lose weight in a healthy way to resolve some health problems and also I want to get away from using food to solve all my problems as an emotional crutch, thank you for sharing. 

I’m tired of emotional eating and binging and feeling out of control, someone says. Hello, my friend from Vermont. She says, I’m in this group to lose weight and I also have prediabetes. I’ve had a lot of health problems since I had my two girls, eight and five years ago, and I’m hoping this will be a game changer for me. 

Okay, good, good. All right. I’m not going to have time to read all of these, but I think that we’ve covered the ones that you guys are sharing here. I think we’ve basically covered, I think we’re all here for basically the same reasons, right? Some nuanced differences, but mostly we all feel the same way. Like, why is this so hard? Why can I not stop thinking about it? Why do I get it? And then I lose it again. I gain control, then I lose control. I lose weight and then I gain it back. Or I’m tired of feeling this way. You’re in the right place if you feel that way. Okay. 

Now this is not going to be an overnight fix. This is not even going to be a four week fix, but I’m going to give you a good jumpstart and some tools that you can use that for me and many of my clients have made a huge difference. But I wanna be very clear. I think one of the reasons changing food relationships, I’m gonna call it your relationship with food, okay? Changing our relationship with food is so difficult is because it has to be an ongoing part of our lives, right? 

Like if we could just cut it out altogether, like let’s think about somebody that has an addiction to heroin, right? Ultimately what we wanna help that person do is just not take heroin ever again, not do heroin. Is that how you say it? Do heroin? I don’t know. Anyway, not do heroin ever again, right? So we would maybe put them through detox of some sort. I don’t know how you get somebody off heroin. I’m not an expert in that, but my guess is they would detox them. Maybe they would give them some kind of a, something to help them come down off of it in an easier, healthier way. And then ultimately we would want to heal like the emotional issues that might be led to that, the physical issues and help them become an overall healthier person. And they would never take heroin again, ideally, right? 

That is not an option for us with food. And food is not heroin. I’m not trying to say that food is terrible like heroin. I’m just saying food is something that not only always needs to be a part of our lives, but it’s a regular occurring part of our lives, right? We need to eat daily, multiple times a day in most cases. And so it’s tricky to figure out how to unwind what is really toxic beliefs and patterns and behaviors and psychology that we all have around food. And it bleeds into so many things. 

It bleeds into our own self-worth, it bleeds into our relationships, it bleeds into whether or not we feel accepted by other people, whether or not we think that we are lovable, worthy human beings, which is so crazy if you think about it. Your body, your health has nothing to do with your lovability and worth, but we’ve been taught our whole lives that it does, either directly or indirectly or both. 

And we’ve been taught that if we were good, mature, solid people, we would take care of our bodies and we would eat like a normal, healthy person would. And at the same time, we’ve been fed a bunch of food that is addictive, that has messed up our hormones, has messed up our bodies, and now we’re stuck. We feel stuck. But the good news is you’re not stuck. We just are going to have to unwind some things, okay? So that’s what we’re going to do in this next four week course. Thank you for joining me. 

All right. So the first thing I want to do is I want to understand, I want to hear from a couple of you who did the homework assignments. There was a video that came out Monday and one on Wednesday, and that’s going to happen for all four weeks of this program. You’re going to get a new video every Monday and Wednesday, and then we’re going to have a call Friday. Really easy to navigate, right? 

So on Monday, there was a video that talked about neutralizing food, about not making food be good guys and bad guys, about stopping labeling food as good or bad, because when we do that, we give food a lot of power. And we make food either tempting, powerful in that it’s tempting and we can’t say no to it, or powerful in that it’s scary and bad and harmful and we’re afraid of it. Either way, we’ve given food a lot of unnecessary power. Here’s what I want to tell you about food. It has no power over you, okay? 

The foods that you love, that you think are amazing, I have many of these myself, okay? I have a very strong sweet tooth. If I could just eat dessert and nothing else, it feels like I would just be super happy and live forever. I know that not to be true, but it feels that way, right? But that food doesn’t care about me at all. This is why we have toxic relationships with food. 

It’s like a bad boyfriend, right? It’s like a guy that I’m obsessed with, that I think is so cool or so hot or so smart or so brilliant or whatever, for whatever reason, so funny and charismatic and I’m so attracted to him and he doesn’t care about me at all. It’s not that he hates me. It’s not that he means to do me harm. He just doesn’t think about me at all. And if I want to go have a booty call with him one night, maybe he’s up for it. Stay with me on my analogy, everybody. He’s up for it. But the next day I walk home thinking, why did I do that to myself? 

I know he’s not thinking about me and I’m left feeling like I’m not treating myself very well. And if I respected myself more, I probably wouldn’t do that. And after the high of something really exciting and forbidden comes the low of the regret and that shame. And some of us are booty calling our food. And all I’m saying is not that you have to stop seeing that guy. Okay. I’m just saying that food is inanimate. It doesn’t care about you at all. It’s not out to get you. It’s not trying to do you harm. It just doesn’t love you the way you love it. It’s not that powerful. 

It just is a thing that exists, okay? Now also the foods that we label as good for us, healthy, nutritious, okay? Those foods also don’t care about you at all. Now they are like being in a healthy relationship, a relationship with someone who wants to take the time to get to know you and who you want to take the time to get to know. And it’s actually those kind of quote unquote healthier foods are more like a marriage that you’ve been in for 20 years. 

It’s not super exciting anymore. It’s not super forbidden and hot. You guys both know each other really well. You’ve seen each other be up and down. You’ve seen each other looking gorgeous with your makeup on and cool hair and great clothes. And you’ve seen each other every day, first thing in the morning or when you’re sick, when you have bad breath, right? And it’s 50-50. It’s kind of more boring, we might say, but much healthier and stable in the long run. And so that’s how I want you to think about your food. 

Is that relationship, that 20 year marriage relationship, isn’t it like a rollercoaster anymore? Now, some of you might say, well, mine is actually really hard. My marriage is really hard, right? And that can be the case. I realize this. My metaphor is not perfect here, but stay with me. We’re talking about like a relationship that is healthy, a marriage that we want, that is overall great. And we appreciate it and we value it, but we’re not thinking about it all the time. We’re not like, when’s my husband gonna get home? I can’t wait to see him, unless he’d been gone for a while, right? We’re just like, I love him. I miss him when he goes and I wanna see him, but it’s okay. That’s actually our healthiest relationship with food. Are you with me? 

Who will be brave now and raise your hand because I gave you an assignment, which was, everybody’s like, I love that analogy. You just put into words how I felt. Yeah, maybe because I can relate too. I feel this way too, okay? I wanna have somebody click raise hand if you’re willing to come on and tell me how it went because the assignment I gave you was to take a food that is like the bad boy boyfriend that I described to you, right? The one that you’re like, this is not good for me, but I really like it. And to eat it very slowly, very intentionally, to pay attention to how you feel before and what does it feel like in your mouth and how do you feel after. 

And we really slowed it down rather than a booty call. We were just like, what if I went on a long date and hung out with this guy for a long time? Do I really like him? And the answer might be yes, still. I just wanna hear how it went. So we’ve got a few hands up. So thank you to those of you that raised your hand. What’s gonna happen is I’m gonna click promote to panelist, okay, and you’re gonna have to accept my invitation, and then you’ll start your video and unmute your audio. Those are the two, you can do those in any order, but you’ve got to start video, unmute audio after you accept the invitation, okay? And I will try to prompt you through it, but we can do this, I promise.

Speaker: Hi.

Jody: How are you, gorgeous?

Speaker: Good to see you. Thank you for doing this. It’s great.

Jody: Okay, tell me how it went. What was our food of choice, first of all?

Speaker: It was a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and an apple.

Jody: Two of my – you know I’m a Reese’s girl. Tell me about it.

Speaker: My husband has candy wrapped up in his closet and he takes it to work. He has to wrap it up and tape it up. So I had to get the ladder out, get the chocolate out. And I thought I want more than, I took two because they were just one individual thing. So I knew right away, I want a handful of this. I want even more. And I got them on the counter and I got my apple out and I wanted right away to eat the chocolate and eat a lot of it. So I thought I’ll start with the apple. So I cut it in half and smelled it and tasted it and just could not believe how good it tasted and really enjoyed it. And just a half of an apple was almost too much. I was very satiated. I was just very satisfied with that I was paying attention to that. Then I had a glass of water, and then I had the candy, and I was surprised how it did not taste good, the chocolate. It just did not meet the need I thought in my brain that it would need. It tasted waxy. The peanut butter tasted fake, and then I wanted to stuff it. I didn’t want to savor it like I did the apple. I had the urge to just eat it quickly. So it was, it was really good exercise.

Jody: Okay. That’s so fascinating, right? Do you normally enjoy apples to that extent, or was that more unusual?

Speaker: When I’m eating well, I do enjoy apples and almond butter, but I haven’t had apples in a couple of months because I’ve been eating other foods. So yeah,

Jody: That’s so awesome. I’m so glad you had that experience. So notice how, when [speaker] just slowed it down, I love that you did both. I love you did the Reese’s and the apple because the apple became more enjoyable to you, right? And you only, like, interesting, you’re like, I only even needed half of it. It was like pretty sweet. And the candy that, right, the Reese’s, it’s true. As much as I’m a Reese’s girl, if I eat it fast, I’m like, oh, that was good. But if I slow it down, it is waxy. It is fake peanut butter. It’s very processed, right? And did you feel disappointed at that point after the recess or not really?

Speaker: No, I was disappointed. Yeah, I was. 

Jody: Tell me about that part. 

Speaker: The illusion is that it’s going to taste so good and be so satisfying and just such a treat that I would savor and appreciate. And I kind of felt like the one night stand that you talked about, it just felt very unfulfilling. And when I really thought about it, just the taste of it, it just felt like, gosh, in my mouth. It was like, this isn’t even good.

Jody: Thank you so much for sharing. I love that so much. Okay. Okay. 

Speaker: Hello. 

Jody: Hi, how are you?

Speaker: Good. So I was making, I had a really hard time thinking of what to pick. Like I was like, just pick something. Stop like making this hard. And I kept thinking, I’m going to go out for a hot fudge sundae or something, but I didn’t even get around to doing that. So that didn’t happen. But I was making supper and I’m like, well, I bought these new guac chips. And my husband wasn’t home and I’ve moved to a new place. So loneliness is a thing sometimes. So I was physically hungry. So I’m writing the answers to your questions. I was feeling lonely. I was physically hungry.

And so instead of waiting till my, I was making fajitas for supper, Instead of waiting till they were ready, I opened the bag of chips. And then I was thinking about what you said and I’m like, okay, I’m going to eat them right now, even though I should wait, but I’m going to savor every single chip. And so I was eating them, I was enjoying the crunch, I was enjoying the flavor. They left a good aftertaste in my mouth. And then I ate my regular fajitas for supper. So I stopped eating after that. But I noticed my stomach felt full and a little bit bloated, but then around 10pm, so that would be like three hours later, I felt like I was getting almost a canker on my tongue. And so they didn’t make me feel sick to my stomach, really. They did make me feel like my mouth was toxic.

Jody: Yeah, yeah. That was a lot of….

Speaker: The ingredients. I looked on the chip’s ingredients. There’s not even avocado in the chip. 

Jody: Right, because how do you put an avocado in a chip? But some kind of artificial flavoring or something. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. So in the end, I found your words were sticking with me all day or all week. And I kept like, every time I ate, I would stop and just eat and try not to do anything else. And so I’ve been trying to think of it like the fuel idea, like you said. So that was my experience.

Jody: Oh my gosh, that’s so brilliant. I love it. Thank you for sharing it.

Speaker: Hi, how are you? Thank you for having me on.

Jody: Yes, thank you for raising your hand and sharing.

Speaker: Of course. So the food that I chose was Cadbury mini eggs, which I guess for me, it feels kind of like a forbidden food because they only come out once a year. So I’m like, I get as many as I can because they’re not coming back.

Jody: That’s good marketing right there that they do. Yep.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly. And they’re so easy to eat too many because they’re little and they’re yummy. So I thought, okay, I’m gonna slow down and really enjoy them. And I think the thing that stood out to me the most was just the satisfaction that comes from intentionality. And I’ve realized that in other areas of my life too, being more intentional with my kids, being more intentional with my work. Just the act of saying, I’m choosing this and I want this right now, so I’m gonna invest and enjoy it was really a good experience. So I did, I sat there and I had like four or five little Cadbury mini eggs and they were creamy and crunchy and yummy. And like, I do really enjoy them. And it was good to have a very intentional moment and then feel satisfied and not like I had to sneak them throughout the day.

Jody: Yes, what I love so much about that is you turned it from a booty call into just like a pleasant interaction with a person, right? where you’re like, nothing wrong, probably, I don’t know what your goals are, but you could achieve your goals, no matter what they are, and still have four to five Cadbury mini eggs, probably.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly, and that’s a good feeling. 

Jody: Yeah, what happens when we’re not doing this, when we’re just kind of like telling ourselves that we shouldn’t, we make it powerful, we make it the villain, is we actually usually wanna eat a lot more than that. Right, and we’re not even enjoying, like you said, we’re not doing it with intentionality. We’re not enjoying the experience. That’s why we need more of them. We’re feeling bad about eating them, which makes us actually ironically want to eat even more. And so I love what you discovered there, which was like, they still are good. Like my family and I were talking about this too. Like, it’s so amazing. You get the crunch and the creamy, right? But different than M&M’s, it’s like a really thin layer of crunch. Like there’s something about the proportion there that’s very satisfying, just the texture. And the taste is good, it’s good chocolate. but if you slow it down, just a few does the trick.

Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.

Jody: Beautiful, okay, thank you for sharing that. Okay, you guys, so here’s the point of this exercise. First of all, obviously what we just heard from those three ladies is pretty powerful. If you were to repetitively, like one of the rules I made for myself years ago is if I’m gonna eat something that is just pure joy food, like Cadbury Mini Eggs, it’s not something I’m eating because my body really needs Cadbury mini eggs, right? It’s just for joy and pleasure. 

If I’m gonna eat something like that, that I consider to be either pure joy food or mostly joy food, like French fries. Yeah, carbohydrates are good for my body. Even like potatoes have some things that aren’t terrible for me, but I… It’s still like mostly joy food. My rule for myself is I refuse to feel guilty about it. I refuse to feel bad about it and I’m going to try and I’m not perfect at this. That’s why I say I’m going to try, but I’m really good about not beating myself up. I should say 99% of the time, but the part I’m probably only 90% good at is I’m going to try to slow it down and be intentional. 

Now I asked you to really slow it down and if you didn’t get a chance to do it, I would encourage you to do it on occasion. I don’t slow it down to that extent every time. Like I can’t, I don’t always eat and not do anything else. That’s what I asked you to do. Sit down, eat your food. Don’t be talking even to somebody. Be like, I need to be alone with this food so that you can really focus on it. And I would encourage you to keep doing that like once a month at least. 

Some of the experts in this industry want you to do that every time you eat because the more intentional and present you are, the more you really experience what’s happening. And that’s what we’re trying to do here. But even if you’re not that present, I try to be as present as possible. And I refuse to beat myself up. I refuse to feel guilty. I refuse to say I shouldn’t be eating this. There’s zero upside to that. It just gives it my power. So what I want you to do is think about food as something that you are interviewing. I don’t want the food to be powerful like it’s the company trying to decide if it’s going to hire you or not. I want you to be the boss trying to decide if this food is going to be one of your employees or not. Do I want to keep these Cadbury Mini Eggs on my staff? 

Do I want this Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup? Do I actually think this apple is doing a better job? And maybe you want Cadbury Mini Eggs, but you’re reducing them to part-time. They’re no longer a full-time employee. They’re just a contract employee that every now and then you have come in and do a job for you and then it leaves and you just pay it here and there. Not full-time salary, getting benefits. Okay. You’re interviewing the food. The food doesn’t have power over you. It’s not controlling you. That’s how I want you to start thinking about your food. This apple is a real A player. We want to promote the apple, right? 

And I’m using apple because that’s the example that came up today. But you know what I mean. Whatever’s serving your body. And we want to give the best employees the best positions in our company, on our team. Are you with me? Okay. So it’s okay if you have… Again, if you had an experience where you’re like, this is amazing. I couldn’t stop eating it. Okay. Well, that’s just interesting to notice. And is that something that I want to keep in my life because it seems to have a lot of power over me? 

Can I play with having just a little bit of it? Can I have a little less of it? Can I shift my relationship with that thing from me feeling like a desperate girl clinging to a guy that doesn’t care about her over to like, I’m an employer and this person is on my staff and I don’t have it in me to fire them right now because I love them, but they’re not doing their job. So what are we going to do about that? You with me? You guys see I like metaphors. It really helps me to get my head straight about food. Okay. 

Before we go on and share again, I just want to, I’m going to peek in the Q and A, see if you guys have questions on what I’m saying or comments or anything. Somebody says, I ate my favorite chocolate cupcakes. First two bites were yummy. The other three were terrible, too rich and sweet. And then guilt comes after I ate it. Okay. 

The guilt is… we’re going to do some coaching in just a minute and I’m going to show you how to get rid of the guilt part, but good for you to know that the first two bites were good. And after that, not really. When I indulged in my favorite treat, I felt completely guilty when I started eating my ice cream. Then it was delicious. I couldn’t stop eating it. After, I didn’t feel great, but I wanted more. Okay. Thank you for sharing that. Wow. The staffing example hit home with me as a previous HR manager. Again, wow. Yeah. There you go. Okay. 

Here’s the next thing I want to have you share. And then I’m going to have some people come on because we’ve had guilt come up for several of you today. And that is something 100% in your control. So I want to teach you today how to control that. But first I want to hear, because there was a second assignment I gave you, and this one, we can have a couple of people raise hands. I asked you to think about what roles you want food to play in your life. Now we didn’t get specific yet this week about exactly what we’re eating. We just are thinking about, like, let’s go back to the work example that I gave you. You’re the manager of your team and your company, okay? What roles do we want food to play in our life? 

Do you want food to be joy in your life? I actually know some people that are like, I don’t want to get any joy from food. I just want food to do its job of fueling my body. And I want all of my joy to come from somewhere else. I don’t want it to be food. That feels for some people easier than saying, I’m going to get 20% of my joy from food, just not 80% anymore. I’m going to reduce the amount. So I want you to do whatever feels easier to you. Okay. 

I am not a believer that everyone should just cut out sugar and flour and whatever. I think if cutting out sugar and flour and other, you know, the kinds of fats that aren’t good for us and all of that, if that makes it easier for you to eat how you want, cool. I’m down for it. If that makes it harder because it creates more noise and chatter because of the deprivation, then don’t do that. I just don’t think there’s one right way to do this. Okay. 

You’ll hear people preach really hard on both of those things. And I just say, why don’t we all just decide for ourselves? Listen, you have the wisdom within you to know how to have a healthy relationship with food. Remember you’re the boss here. You know what your team needs. You know what you’re trying to accomplish and who the best players are going to be on that team. What is that for you? 

You might want to have some joy from food. I do. I still like to get joy from food. I like food around holidays. I like to celebrate with food. I like a treat every now and then. But when I get out of hand and food is most of my joy or even half my joy, it doesn’t serve my body. And I have to dial it in. So maybe you want food to be some joy. Obviously it’s going to be fuel for all of us. That’s a given. Do you want food to be entertainment? Do you want it to be a hobby? Or is it part of your literal how you make a living? 

Are you a cook? Do you share food on YouTube? Like what role do we want food to play in your life? Tell me. Now I’m going to bring a couple of people on so you can either tell me what you decided or it can help you decide if you’re not sure. All right, tell me.

Speaker: So I have had a very unhealthy relationship with food my entire life. Trauma in my life, bad example in how my mom used food. So the chatter, the conversations, the guilt, the overindulgence has been just to the point of exhaustion sometimes. But in recent years, I have already, I’ve been slowly trying to change that mindset, trying to change my journey to wellness, to have a better relationship with people, food, everything. And recently, I started doing something very specific with my food. And I thought it was going to be impossible because anytime I’ve ever tried to adjust my thinking. I sabotage myself. Okay. But I have been totally surprised at how well and how easy it’s been to make that intentional choice, for a specific reason. So on the assignment specifically, I’ve already been thinking about, well, I don’t want to just not have this and not do that. That for me is always, if you tell me no, then I overindulge.

I love this assignment and the way you’ve put it in, I get to decide what I want to do with this. I get to decide how much and when and why. And so for me, joy and celebrations and the social part is super important because I’m learning to find joy in relationships, not just with food, but with people, with everybody around me and stay connected. 

I used to either be over connected or I would just disappear and be dissociative. So joy and the social celebration part is huge to keep. But the most important part is my health and wellness. I’m expecting my 13th grandchild. I want to be playing outside when they’re big. You know, I don’t want to be the grandma sitting in the chair, having them climb up on my lap. I want to be out playing. So the wellness piece is huge. 

So as I’ve been thinking about this, I realized the joy will get greater if I’m focusing on the wellness and the health part. If I’m making choices based on fueling my body and what I need at any given time, whether I’m training for a triathlon or whether I’m focused on losing weight at the time or whether I’m needing to feel myself because I’m on a backpacking trip or something. I know, you know, for different things, we feel our bodies differently. And that’s part of what’s helped me is I’ve been doing some of those things and realize, well, this is the right way. But wait, maybe not because if I’m going to go on this backpacking trip, I’m going to totally change the way I’m thinking about food. 

So I’ve learned to use food as the fuel for what given activity I’m doing at the time, which opens the door for joy, because if I’m sitting around with my family and my grandkids, and we want to make gingerbread houses, and we want to eat the candy more than we want to make the house, I can find joy in that, and it’s okay. I don’t need to feel guilty about that. So I’ve loved the way this whole employee thing that you just did, too, because I was It’s like, oh. Yeah, I can decide who’s part-time and who’s full-time and when.

Jody: Today I’m going on a hike or I’m preparing for a triathlon or something. This is the team I need right now. And other times I’m hanging out with my grandkids and I want this team right now.

Speaker: It really resonated with me that I can do this. I can really do this. For the probably first time in my life, I feel like I can do this.

Jody: There’s a lot of people talking to us about what we should and shouldn’t eat and that’s okay, like they’re helpful people trying to help us, but we take good advice and use it against ourself, like this is bad or I shouldn’t do this, then we actually take what is a tool and use it as a weapon, right? 

We take like scissors, these scissors are really useful if I wanna cut paper and somebody telling me like protein’s good for your body, sugar’s not great for your body, like all that is really useful, but if I’m gonna take it and injure myself or judge others, then I’m actually gonna be using that tool in a dangerous, harmful way. And so I heard you say things like, wait a second, I get to decide. And I decide based on what am I trying to do here? Do I wanna have a little pleasure here and eat some candy with my grandkids or do I wanna go on a hike and I don’t want my blood sugar all over the place and I’m gonna need energy and fuel. So I love that so much. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do here. So, okay, thank you for sharing. Love it, okay. All right.

Speaker: Hi. So one of the things that I have discovered is that I eat more, just randomly eat more, when I’m bored and when I’m tired. I am in a situation right now where I am often just sitting by my parent as we’re caring for him, and so sometimes that gets a little boring. It also creates tiredness. And so then I find myself wanting to go raid the pantry of all of my grandkids’ stash of treats. And it’s not just to get it for joy or I just lose control and want to stuff my mouth. So I’ve tried to maybe replace that a little bit. If I’m still having to sit, I’ll grab my iPad and play a game or something. I’m still struggling with that really hard.

Jody: Okay, here’s what I want to ask you. So when you’re bored slash tired, okay, and you go eat food, we can all relate to this. Most of us, I bet. They’re like, yep, right there, sister. Okay, so I want to ask you this question. Does it take care of the boredom?

Speaker: No, not at all. It’s just something to do with my hands.

Jody: It does for a second, right? For a second it does, because you have something to do with your hands. you got to like go find the food and then figure out and then you eat it. And, and so for a second, and then you get a little dopamine hit a little bit, little hit of pleasure from whatever food. Cause you’re, are you like opening up a can of green beans or what are we eating?

Speaker: Heavens no, no.

Jody: Snacks, like something with sugar or salt.

Speaker: Pop the whole thing in my mouth. All at once.

Jody: Because it’s that it’s like, I just can have a little booty call with some food here for a second. Okay, so I just want to point out to everybody listening that food is not the solution to boredom. Right? It’s just not. It’s not even a very good substitute for a solution because it goes so fast. We don’t usually eat it slowly, right? We eat it fast. We don’t go get some grapes and eat them very slowly out of a bowl. We get candy or salty things or whatever, and we eat it fast. And then we’re just left bored and feeling sick or guilty or whatever else on the other side of it. 

But we’re still bored. We’re still tired. Right? Okay. So that’s just good to know. First of all, that again, on your team of employees, you’re like, I need someone who can edit videos. I think I will hire a public speaker and that public speaker is coming in and talking and talking and you’re like, he’s a really good public speaker, but my videos are still not edited. I still need a video editor on my team. You see what I’m saying? So you’re just like not hiring the right staff. That’s just good to know. Now here’s the second thing I want to ask you, because I love, I, I’m a big fan of like, Oh, maybe there’s something else. Maybe I could get on my iPad. It could make the solution to boredom. is do something that’s more entertaining, right? Right. But it sounds like you have this good heart that also wants to go spend time sometimes with family members, right? Who are kind of boring, let’s just say, right? Yes. And so what if you decided to get better at just being bored? I hadn’t thought of that.

Speaker: How do I do that?

Jody: How do you? How do you get better at something? 

Speaker: Practice. 

Jody: Practice it. And this is what I found is the key to life, is just to get better at negative emotions. Because if you got better at being bored, you could serve more in the ways that you might wanna serve. You could do things in your life that would ultimately serve you. And I’m not saying you have to be bored all the time. I’m just saying there’s times when you wanna do something that might be boring. And if you were just like, oh, I can just be bored. I know how to be bored. I don’t have to find an iPad. I don’t have to eat food. I can just sit there and be bored and be a little tired. It’s okay. I promise it would be a really useful skill you could pull out of your pocket.

I really like that because I’m thinking, you know, as I’m doing the things that I need to do, I usually have an earbud on so that I can listen to a podcast or listen to whatever while I’m sitting because there’s not a lot of interaction. And I really like that idea.

Here’s the thing, we live in a super entertaining world, which is fun, but it’s made it so that we’re not very good at being bored. And occasionally it’s useful to be able to be bored, right? Because if, so when you’re, like in the example you gave, you’re sitting there visiting family and you’re kind of tired and you’re kind of bored, instead of being like, well, what am I gonna do? Am I getting out of my iPad? Am I gonna get a snack? Am I gonna be like, what if I just experience what it’s like to be bored? Like, what is it even like? 

Just sit with it, be with it. It’s not gonna be fun and pleasurable. I’m not saying you have to enjoy it, but just be like, what if I, it’s okay. Notice my brain be kind of restless. Notice my mind kind of wants something to entertain it. That’s interesting. What if I could just be here and be more present with what’s happening around me? And notice what I smell or what I see or what I hear or what’s going on with my family member? 

Or like, just let my brain be here and be present and not distract it with something. What would that be like? And the more you do it, the better you will get at it. So if you’re like, I’m bored, I’m gonna get on my iPad or I’m gonna have a snack, you lose the opportunity to get better at being bored because you could have practiced it right then, but now it’s gone. So yeah. 

Speaker: I like that idea. I will work on that.

Jody: Okay, thank you for raising your hand. And for everybody listening, it might be boredom for you. It might be overwhelmed. It might be stressed. A lot of us answer stress, anxiety, et cetera, with food. And I want you to find ways that serve you. If the food is not serving you, or if it’s too much with food or whatever, find alternate ways, but also just get better at being stressed. Just get better at being anxious. Just get better at being overwhelmed. Just get better at being bored. It will make your life amazing, the better you get at feeling all these emotions. So we kind of talked about some different things and that’s okay, that’s useful. Here’s what I wanna do for the next 40-ish, almost 40, yeah, 40-ish minutes, okay? Here’s what I wanna do. 

I wanna bring people on, especially I wanna begin with someone who said, I felt guilty when I ate that food. Or maybe you didn’t that time because I told you to do it, but other times you feel guilty. I want to show everybody right here, week one, why you’re feeling guilty. And like I told you, my rule for myself is listen, girl, if you’re going to eat a treat, we’re not going to feel guilty about it. We’re done with that. But that’s easier said than done. So I want to show you how. So put your hand up if you want some help knowing how to not feel guilty. Okay. How are you? Thanks for being here.

Speaker: Thank you for doing this.

Jody: Oh, yeah. Okay. So tell me a little bit about your situation here.

Speaker: Okay. Mine is Diet Coke.

Jody: Oh, yeah, girl.

Speaker: Terrible for like 40 years. And I have tried and stopped. And then as soon as I have one, then I’m back on the wagon again. Okay. And what I had that morning was I sat down and did the diet coke, like you said, and drank it. I do it first thing in the morning. That’s my coffee. Drink it. And it really, I mean, I like the cold, the ice, the whole experience of it all. But it didn’t taste anything spectacular. But why I felt super guilty and what I’ve done every day since that test is as soon as I finished that one, I went right back and got another one. Back to back.

Jody: Beautiful example. Thank you for raising your hand because here’s what I want to show you. Have you ever heard me teach the self-coaching model, circumstance, thought, feeling, action, result.

Speaker: No. 

Jody: Okay, okay, perfect. So I want everyone to pay attention here, okay? We have circumstances, which are facts and things outside of us, okay? They are neutral. Remember I said food doesn’t love you or hate you, it’s not out to get you. It’s actually a circumstance, okay? So your circumstance, I’m gonna use a different color here. Your circumstance is diet Coke, right? Now, let’s just try what we talked about in the beginning of neutralizing it. You kind of have made diet Coke a villain a little bit, like a bad boy in a leather jacket.

Speaker: My whole family’s made it that way, yes.

Jody: Yeah, he’s pretty hot. We all love, we’re all like, yeah, he’s hot. We love that diet Coke, right?

Speaker:  They call it rat poison. My kids call it rat poison that I’m drinking. 

Jody: Do your kids drink it or no?

Speaker: No, no, no, nobody does.

Jody: No, you’re the only one who drinks it.

Speaker: Yeah, I’m the grandma and I drink it. And even my little granddaughter that’s three said, when I get big, I’m gonna drink soda. So I need to stop.

Jody: Okay, no, you don’t, you’re not in charge of her. Don’t worry, she’ll get it from somewhere else, okay? But you have made it pretty powerful in your mind because, and your family’s helping you do this and that’s okay, but my point is, it’s not. It’s really like, listen, you’ve had a lot of fun with that Diet Coke, right? Hasn’t Diet Coke been a good friend to you?

Speaker: Yes, yes.

Jody: Yes, so when we make it terrible and powerful and forbidden, we actually just want it even more. It’s not rat poison. It’s not creating a problem for your granddaughter to watch you drink it. She’s gonna have problems no matter what, and she’s gonna be amazing and be just fine no matter what. Okay? 

It’s just like actually mostly water with some other chemicals and some carbonation and some syrup and things and some artificial sweetener. That’s it. It’s so not powerful. And we don’t have to be mad at it because it’s been a good friend to you. Yeah? Okay, so stay with me. Okay, so after circumstances, we have thoughts. Okay, so you have a lot of thoughts about Diet Coke that it’s rat poison, it’s bad for me, but I can’t stay away from it, it’s so good. and when I have it, then I want more. And those thoughts are creating your feelings, right?

Speaker: Yes.

Jody: Emotions. So when your thought is, I’m just gonna summarize it with the one your family labeled it, it’s rat poison, which you happen to love, rat poison, in this example, right?

Speaker: Yep, yep.

Jody: Then it feels, how do you feel when you think it’s rat poison and then I just drank it.

Speaker: I feel horrible. I feel like I’m, yeah.

Jody: You said you feel guilty, right?

Speaker: Guilty, yeah. I shouldn’t drink it. No, there’s even emotions. I’m embarrassed to say I’ve even had tears over this.

Jody: It’s real. You’re not alone, okay? Yeah, you don’t need to feel bad. You’re not alone in this. So thank you for sharing it, okay? Here’s what’s interesting. Our feelings are creating all of our actions, okay? Circumstances are just outside of us. This has no effect on us. This is what affects us. What we think about the circumstance, what we then feel, which drives how we behave. So sometimes, when we feel guilty, sometimes we resist and we like clench our fists and we just try really hard not to drink it. We can do that sometimes. And other times we, I’m just gonna call it overindulge because we can only resist for so long. And then we give in and we have it. And in fact, we want more. We feel terrible, but we want another one, right? That’s what guilt drives.

It’s this roller coaster of all or nothing. And it’s extreme and it’s exhausting, okay? So our thoughts, feelings, and actions are creating our results, okay? And the result is that Diet Coke is still very powerful. It has power over you, right? Because we have this powerful thought, we give it power in this model, we call it, okay? I want everybody to pay attention. 

The reason you feel guilty is because of what you think. It’s not because Diet Coke is bad for you. It’s not even because your family calls it rat poison. It’s because of what you think. Oh no, this is bad for me. Everybody knows it. I know it. I shouldn’t be drinking it. I’m messing up my granddaughter’s future. I can’t get away from it. And then you feel emotions that don’t feel good. You know what’s a nice escape from emotion that doesn’t, it feels like a nice escape anyway? 

Speaker: What? 

Jody: A diet Coke.

Speaker: That’s right. Right? That’s exactly right. Yeah.

Jody: Yes. Everybody listen, when you feel guilty about eating Cadbury mini eggs, you want to eat more Cadbury mini eggs. Yeah. Because you don’t want to feel guilty. So you want diet Coke, et cetera. Food is not a good solution to guilt, but our brains don’t think that. They’re just like, we just need something, some kind of quick dopamine hit to get out of this.

Okay? So here’s what we’re going to do, and everybody, listen up. What I want you to do is I want you to take the circumstance, I’m going to abbreviate it with a C, and we’re going to keep it Diet Coke. And let’s make us, you can make your circumstance be what happened. So for everybody listening, maybe you just ate, you opened a bag of chips and you ate the whole bag, or you ate whatever it is, you ate or drank. In Debbie’s case, it’s Diet Coke. And let’s say she drank two. I mean, Debbie, I used to drink at least 44 ounces of Diet Coke a day.

Speaker: I’m right there with you.

Jody: Yeah, and then sometimes I was like, that super big gulp was good, maybe I should get another one?

Speaker: Absolutely.

Jody: Okay, so however much you drank, you drank whatever amount of Diet Coke you drank. Okay, now, if our thought is I shouldn’t have done that, I gotta stop this, it’s so bad for me, that doesn’t work for you. We just saw it, it makes you feel guilty. Okay. So here’s the best news I have for you. You get to think anything you want to.

Speaker: Okay.

Jody: And what you think matters because it’s going to create everything else. And, and a shortcut is that what you think is going to indirectly impact your result. So let’s start with the result. What results do you want to have? Like right now your results is that Diet Coke is very powerful in your life. It feels like it has power over you. What do you want your result with to be with Diet Coke.

Speaker: I would like the result to be that I can have one occasionally as a treat.

Jody: So you have control and power over yourself and Diet Coke. Yeah? You want to be the powerful one, right?

Speaker: Yes, I do.

Jody: Yes. I have the power which is control in this case and I’m gonna call this a healthy relationship with Diet Coke. Cause right now it’s kind of toxic. Like it’s got a lot of power over you. It kind of, it, it gaslights you, right? Kind of abusive to you, but then sometimes it’s really nice and says nice things because you’re like that tasted good and the ice and the fizz. And so it’s, it’s like sweet at times and then it turns around and gaslights you. Yes. And that’s an unhealthy relationship with Diet Coke. Instead, we’re gonna have a healthy relationship with Diet Coke in the end, yeah.

Speaker: Okay, yes.

Jody: That’s what we’re going for? Okay, so in order to have that relationship, you’re gonna have to think something different up here, and you’re gonna have to feel something different, and it’s gonna impact your behavior in the end. So let me give you some things to play with.

It’s totally fine that I drink that Diet Coke. It’s not a big deal. And also, it wasn’t as amazing as I thought. Like after you drink 64 ounces of Diet Coke, how do you feel physically?

Speaker: Oh, bloated, gassy.

Jody: I can drink this Diet Coke and it’s enjoyable, right? Let yourself acknowledge like, I enjoyed it. It was fizzy and cold and there’s things about it that I liked and it was a nice distraction and it’s kind of a nice habit to sip on a drink all day, right? But there’s also a lot of negatives that I don’t enjoy about this Diet Coke, about how I feel after. It’s not rat poison. If it were rat poison, you’d be dead.

Speaker: Right, by now for sure, yes.

Jody: When your family calls it rat poison, I’d be like, well, I must be really strong then because I’m still alive.

Speaker: I have thought that.

Jody: Yeah. It’s not rat poison. Okay. And honestly, I know people that have lived to over age 100 and drink Diet Coke and they’re just fine. Okay. It’s literally not that bad. And also doesn’t feel good. And for whatever reason, you feel like it’s not serving you. Right? So that’s really our healthy, just like a healthy relationship is both like, I enjoy this and also I don’t want too much of this because I’m not gonna let it start gaslighting me and shaming me and abusing me. That Diet Coke has been a really good friend to me over the years, and I’m really appreciative of it. And also, I don’t know that I want it to be such a main character in my story.

Speaker: I like that. I like that a lot.

Jody: Right? Like you can love and appreciate Diet Coke and decide that it’s time for it to just have a little side role.

Speaker: Okay. I like that.

Jody: Does that feel true to you?

Speaker: It does, it does.

Jody: So it’s kind of like, I appreciate Diet Coke and it’s time to make it a side character, a side role. As you can tell, my brain works in metaphors a lot.

So you can put this into whatever words make sense to you. But that’s how I like to think of it, is I’m not gonna be mad at it. I’m telling you, I will tell you, Debbie, I don’t drink, I do drink a Diet Coke when I go out to eat at a restaurant, but other, I, and I was chugging it every day, 44 ounces at least. And because I, when I see Diet Coke now, I see a Diet Coke label or something like, I still have a little Diet Coke Christmas ornament that I hang on my tree and it’s a sparkly can.

I still love Diet Coke. But I just no longer, it doesn’t light me up like it used to when I drink it, but I’m not mad at it. I don’t, I don’t, I’m not saying it’s rat poison. Like, no, it was my best friend for ages. I don’t want to do that to my best friend, but my best, but I’ve kind of moved out of that town now. I’ve kind of outgrown that town where my best friend and I grew up.

Speaker: Okay.

Jody: Now, I still love her, but we’re just not hanging out on the weekends anymore because she’s not really actually great for me all the time, but I still love, I still love her. You see what I’m saying?

Speaker: Yes, I do.

Jody: Okay. Now when you think this, and it’s, and it’s totally fine that I just drank that yesterday because a part of me still is kind of hooked on this diet Coke thing. I’m like, trying to get over it. Right. Then how do you feel? What’s the feeling of the emotion it creates for you?

Speaker: This second sentence approach. Yeah.

Jody: This one. Yeah.

Speaker: It feels as if, well, I have a little bit of doubt. I’m going to be honest, but.

Jody: Yeah, because you don’t totally believe this yet, but you’re working on it. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: But I like what you said about, you know, you only having it when you go out to eat. I like that idea. That makes me feel good, like to think, okay, well, that I that’s doable. That’s a treat. That’s something to look forward to.

Jody: Yeah. Okay, good. So you feel a little bit I can tell a little more peaceful around the topic. You even feel a little bit more empowered because I heard you start having ideas about how Diet Coke would fit into your life and the ways that it wouldn’t. And make sure, you guys, we’re going to get into this next week. Over the next two weeks, we’re going to start deciding things like how much Diet Coke do I want to have. Make sure that you’re very realistic with yourself. Don’t try to go from 64 ounces a day to I’m only going to have it when I eat out, if you don’t eat out. Just go from like, you know, two, three cans a day to one can a day or something, make it very realistic. Even a part of your brain’s like, that’s still too much. Okay. But we’re just taking a baby step here. We’re not, we’re not totally breaking up with Diet Coke. We’re just weaning off the relationship a little bit. Right. Okay. So.

Speaker: Yeah, my friendship, I still have my friendship and my love, but it’s changed.

Jody: Yeah. Okay. And every time your family calls it rat poison, I’d be like, not to me. I love Diet Coke. I love it. Okay. I love her and and I’m never gonna stop loving her, even though I’m not gonna drink her as much. Okay, see what I’m saying? Okay, because from peaceful and empowered, you will overall make better choices, I promise. Because you will not have to run away from the guilt and the shame and the fear and all of this. It doesn’t mean you’re gonna be perfect at it, especially in the beginning. It’s gonna be a process, it’s gonna take time. But you will overall be more in control and have a healthier relationship with this. Yeah.

Speaker: Yes, yes. And that’s my goal. And to even to get to the point where I don’t have to think about it.

Jody: Yeah. I mean, that, honestly, I cannot get over that I’m at that point. I did not think I would ever get to that point.

Speaker: That’s encouraging to hear.

Jody: But when I see a Diet Coke logo or something, I’m like, oh, she’s my friend. Or commercial. Yeah, I’m like, yeah, Diet Coke is awesome. We just don’t hang out that much anymore because I kind of outgrew her.

Speaker: Okay. Okay. I can outgrow her.

Jody: You absolutely can. 

Speaker: I’m so much older than you, but I hope I can get there.

Jody: It has nothing to do with age. Nothing to do with age. I promise you.

Speaker: All right. Okay. Thank you. 

Jody: You’re welcome. Okay. Who else wants to come on? I’m popping in the Q&A actually, and then I’m going to bring someone on. Maybe you have guilt around food or something. You want to clean up. What’s going on? questions about what I’ve taught you this week, anything goes. We still have 20 more minutes, so we can bring on at least one, maybe two more people. 

I struggle with Diet Coke too, somebody says. I’ve been trying to quit for 15 years, but my girls all drink it and I love the social part. Going to get a drink is fun, but it doesn’t match my goals to be healthy. Okay. I want to offer this to you because for some of you, this is Diet Coke. For some of you, it’s going out for ice cream. 

We tell ourselves this, right? We’re like, I mean, I just struggle with missing out on the social part, but that’s a kind of a lie we tell ourselves, right? Because drinking a Diet Coke has nothing to do with being social. Here’s how I know. My family loves ice cream. They love to go out for ice cream. And I just don’t really love ice cream. It’s okay. I don’t hate it, but I just don’t really love it. And so when we all go out for ice cream, I go with them and they eat ice cream and I don’t. 

And I’m not missing out on anything social. They’re eating their ice cream and we’re talking and I’m sitting there listening and talking. And me eating ice cream has nothing to do with being social with them. And sometimes they say, mom, are you going to get some ice cream? And I say, no, I don’t want ice cream. You know, I don’t really like ice cream. They’re like, oh yeah, that’s right. Mom doesn’t really like ice cream. And they don’t care at all. And when we go to the Maverick, and some people are getting Diet Coke and big drinks, I get a bottle of water. And sometimes I get a protein bar, or if I’m feeling really crazy, I might get a vitamin water or something. And I just don’t get a Diet Coke. But you know why? Because I don’t want one. I don’t even want it anymore. It doesn’t even sound good. 

I know the first sip or two tastes good. and after that, it doesn’t taste very good to me. And so I just don’t even want it, and so I don’t get it, but I still get to be social. I still go wherever they’re going, and I either don’t get it. For those of you that are members of the LDS Church, I want you to think about this with alcohol, right? If you have a bunch of friends that drink, and they’re like, come to dinner with us, and they’re all ordering wine, are you like, well, I can’t be friends with these people now? No, you still do. You just drink water while they’re drinking wine. It’s not, this is just your brain trying to trick you. Okay. 

But I’m so glad you brought it up because common problem. Okay, let’s see. I want to bring someone else on. Hello. How are you doing? Tell me what’s going on for you.

Speaker: So I just kind of feel like I have my family. We’re kind of foodies. I like to cook. I like to bake. I like to do all of this stuff. And so having joy, like I just kind of feel like I’m obsessed with new recipes that I’m going to miss out on I didn’t make this or that I’ve got to feed my family super great, crazy things. I don’t know. So I kind of feel like I have that I’m going to maybe lose myself or maybe like you’re talking about the FOMO of going out. I kind of feel that FOMO with if I move my joy to something else, I’m going to have FOMO with the food. I don’t know. Does that make sense?

Jody: Yeah, totally. And it’s, again, something that so many of us can relate to. Not the cooking part for me, but the FOMO and for a lot of people, the cooking and the trying out recipes and baking and things. Okay. So fear of missing out is a real thing. Okay. It’s valid. I want everybody, when you notice the fear come up, you got to be very tender with yourself. We’re not going to just push it away and go, well, that’s dumb. Like I gave you guys our explanation just now, but it’s important that you really acknowledge I see what’s going on here. This is how you connect with your family. This is part of your entertainment. This is part of your joy. This is even part of your identity is what I hear you saying.

Speaker: Yes.

Jody: Yeah. Right? And so it is scary when we’re like, now we’re going to change that. It is normal, understandable, scary that your brain would resist it. Okay. But let’s just play with it for a minute. Why do you want to change it? What are you trying to achieve here?

Speaker: Recently we just went on a trip and we got some pictures back and I’m like, oh my gosh, I have got to eat better. I don’t like how my body looks. Lose some weight. Just overall be more healthy and not eat like I’m still 12 and have the metabolism of a teenager.

Jody: Okay. All right. So I’m going to put this on. I’m going to show you guys a little bit different tool and this is going to come up again later in one of the videos in a slightly different way, but I want to introduce it to you here. Okay. So I want you to think about this on a continuum. So when you think about yourself, okay, and your identity, your behaviors around food, your body, all of it, we want to do this in a way that improves your relationship with yourself, not in a way that beats yourself up and makes your relationship with yourself even worse. Okay? 

So on the one hand, we have FOMO. If I change, if I stop making all these great recipes and baking and all this, then I’m going to miss out and my family’s not going to like it. And this is just what we do. And this is just who I am, right? And on this hand, we have, I don’t like how I look, how I feel. I don’t like it. I don’t like that photo. I don’t like the way I’m eating like a child. I don’t like this part of me. Now, either one of these extremes is going to put you into fear or judgment or shame, scarcity, right? All of these emotions are versions of what I call fear. Okay? They’re fear-based. There’s something wrong with me. There will be something wrong if I change it. You with me? 

From those emotions, the only hope we have is to use willpower. Let me just white knuckle it and try to use willpower and try to not eat the food or let me override myself here or let me give in and overeat it. We overeat or we white-knuckle it, okay? And that is not something we can do long-term. So what exists in the middle is a version of it’s all okay. Everything’s okay. This is like something’s wrong, something’s wrong. You with me?

Speaker: Yep.

Jody: Wrong, wrong. From these extremes, we don’t tend to get good results long term. In the middle is it’s all okay. It’s love. It’s trust. It’s faith. It’s compassion. It’s all the useful emotions exist right here in the middle, which is it’s all okay. And so let’s play with that on both extremes, okay? The FOMO end, it really will be okay. You can change what you’re cooking. You can find different hobbies or ways to connect with your family, or you can cook really amazing things that are really healthy, right? That serve you, that will help you. 

You can cook something amazing for your dinner or for your family and modify it a little bit for yourself. Like there’s so many ways to address this and a lot of people have a lot of good advice about how to do it. You know it’s possible, right? And identity shifts feel scary but only in the process of shifting and then you find a new identity which is I used to be a person who baked dessert every night and now I play the piano every night or something like you’ll find a new identity. So none of this is really a big problem like your brain thinks it will be it’s all figureoutable right? 

Speaker: Right, yeah.

Jody: But still, a lot of work like we just acknowledge with our brain yeah that will be work that will be uncomfortable at times but it’s not it’s not really true that I’m missing out on my family will never survive. And like, it’s not dramatic, like our brains making it right now, guess what else is okay. 

Speaker: The other side.

Jody: The way you look in that photo that you saw, the way you, whatever weight you are, whatever health condition you’re in, whatever your body looks like, it’s also okay. Like you could stay this weight forever or gain weight and keep your, you’re very judgmental of yourself. I asked you to stop eating like a 12 year old…

Speaker: I totally am. And then I’ve got that scarcity feeling because I feel like, oh my gosh, I’ve got to have that. Like, and I don’t know if I had feelings as a child that I was always hungry, but it’s that like, I’ve got to have food. I’ve got to have, yeah, like I’m afraid. And then I judge myself and then I’m looking at other people, well, what are they eating? They look better than me. I don’t know. It’s this bad cycle.

Jody: And again, you’re not alone with it. That’s what so many of us do. We bounce from one end to the other. We go, well, forget it. I’m just not going to pay attention. I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing, or I’m going to overeat or whatever. Or we’re like, no, no, no way. This is terrible. This has to change. Look at everybody else. I’m behind. I can’t believe I look like that in that photo. 

And this is exhausting, the bouncing back and forth. That’s why you’re exhausted. And what I’m saying is you got to land right here. Okay. Like, listen. And so it’s both. It’s making peace with the fact that you absolutely could change your habits and your routines and the way you cook and the way you all of it. And you could still be you and you could still have just as much joy and pleasure and just as much connection with your family. It’s all possible, right? And not even that hard. 

And the way you look right now and if you never changed any of it would be totally okay. You’re just as lovable. You’re just as wonderful. You’re just as mature. You’re a, you’re a legit adult. You’re not a 12 year old child. we don’t even have to go back and figure out, where did this come from? Was I traumatized in my past or my childhood? Maybe, but it’s okay. It’s okay. Like you are, there’s nothing wrong with your body. There’s literally nothing wrong with your body. I still have to do this all the time. When I do the same thing, I’ll see a picture of myself, see a video, I have to be on video a lot. Luckily, it’s usually just my head, but every now and then it’s like a full body video and I’m like, oh my gosh, I didn’t know I looked like that right now. Right? It’s not how I looked in my mind.

Speaker: Exactly.

Jody: Yeah. And then you know what I do? This work. I come back to here. I go, you know what, Jody Moore, I love you. And your little bit chunky body that looks different than I thought it did. I didn’t realize that your belly was poking out that much these days. I didn’t realize that your arms got quite that way. And you know what? I love you, body. You’re not doing anything wrong. You’re amazing and brilliant. Do I wish you looked more like a Victoria’s Secret model? Yes, I do. But I’m not going to hold that against you. That’s actually social conditioning, and not really even valid. Like I love you. It’s okay. It’s okay. Right.

Speaker: Yeah.

Jody: Now, for those of you listening that are like, but I don’t think it’s okay. It takes some time to embrace it. 

Speaker: So is it just talking to myself every day saying it’s okay? Is that?

Jody: It’s okay, and I love you and listen. I’m gonna take care of you body because I love you I love you too much to keep putting you through what I’ve been putting you through which is shoving a bunch of stuff in you that you can’t really utilize and you’re having to find places to store it and you’re trying to keep me alive and well. And I know that’s really hard on you body so, I’m going to step it up for you because I love you, not because I hate you and you look bad in pictures and we need to fix that, but because I appreciate you’re doing a good job, body. You haven’t done anything wrong. The reason your thighs look like that is because I fed you too much food and I like to cook with my family, but I’m not mad at you. You didn’t do anything wrong, body. 

And I’ll tell you what, here’s what I’m gonna do for you, body, because I love you this much. I’m gonna make it easier for you now. I’m gonna figure out how to alter my cooking a little bit, or I’m gonna make some baby steps in the right direction. It’s going to take me time. I’m not going to be perfect at it, but I love you too much to keep judging you and punishing you and also feeding you a bunch of stuff that you don’t quite know what to do with. We’re going to meet in the middle. You see what I’m saying? We’re meeting in the middle. Not because I hate me, but because I love me and my body. Do you feel the difference?

Speaker: Yeah. I do. 

Jody: Okay. But if you think like, wait a second, I don’t have to go to, oh my gosh, I have to eat it or else I’m missing out. And I also don’t have to go to, if I don’t change something, I’m never going to be able to love myself. Right here in the middle. I’m great as I am. And also I am capable of losing some weight and changing my eating. That’s where you’re going to make progress. Okay.

Speaker: Okay.

Jody: You’re welcome. Okay. You guys. Oh my gosh. So many amazing, beautiful people. Thank you. We’re going to keep doing this on Fridays. We’re going to have a lot more chances to bring people on in the last five minutes. I’m going to pop in the Q and A, will this This call will be available in video form in the future or only as audio on the podcast? Your visuals are very helpful. Video as well. We’ll be posting the video on the portal where the other videos are. So you will have this in video. 

I know I draw a lot on the board and you will also get it in the podcast feed. So you’ll have it both ways. What if my identity is tied to my weight? My dad and brother died from diabetes. I have to change. Okay. I want you to put that into the model I taught you today. thought, feeling, action, result. When you think the thought, I have to change, how do you feel? Does it fall more in this category or does it fall up here? Because if it falls down here, it’s not serving you. 

You don’t have to change. You don’t. You could die of diabetes and it would be just fine. Did you know this? You really could. You’ll have an amazing, still, full life until you die. And that’s okay. We’re all going to die anyway, sometime. You really don’t have to change. If you want to change, you can, but it’s not going to be very easy to do from fear and scarcity and all of this that you’re doing. Okay. All right. You guys, I love you. Thank you for being here. Video comes out Monday and Wednesday, and then I’ll see you again next Friday.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: JodyMoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s JodyMoore.com/freecoaching.

The post 504. Minimize Your Drama Around Food appeared first on Jody Moore.

Do you ever find yourself thinking “I just wish…” about things in your life or the world around you? It’s natural to notice areas that could be improved, but are you wasting your wishes on things that aren’t serving you?

Maybe you wish your partner was more organized, your kids were more focused, or your business was growing faster. But here’s the truth: while wishing feels natural, it might actually be holding you back from creating the life you want, and what you wish for might be revealing something important about where you’re wasting your mental energy.

Join me in this episode as I explore the concept of “wasted wishes” – the thoughts and desires we have that don’t actually move us forward. You’ll learn five common ways we waste our wishes, why we engage in this type of thinking, and practical strategies for redirecting your mental energy in a more positive, productive direction.

Want to learn to coach the way I do? Join my Better Than Happy Coach Training waitlist right now to be the first to get details when doors open!

Want free coaching? Join me for a complimentary coaching workshop by clicking here.

If you’re serious about succeeding in your coaching business, you want to join our newest program, The Lab: Coach Access. Click here to find out more!

What’s up my friends? Welcome to the podcast. I am delighted that you’re here. I have a message that I’ve had in my Notes app. I keep a little Notes app in my phone for podcast ideas. And when they come to me, I throw them into that app. And it’s been in there for a little while now, and I’m just finally getting around to recording it. 

So I’m very excited to share this with you. It comes up a lot in coaching, and I want you to think about and just start noticing when it comes up in your own life. And it’s this concept that I’m calling wasted wishes.

So let’s begin by what we mean when we say the word wish. Okay, I want you to think of a wish not like it’s your birthday and you’re blowing out the candles on your cake and you’re sending a wish up into the sky. I think that’s fine. I don’t think you need to worry about wasting that wish.

I’m talking about the thoughts that we have and the sentences we say out loud that begin with the phrase, I just wish blank. Okay? A wish in this regard is a desire. It’s a judgment, if you will. It’s noticing a gap or a circumstance that we don’t care for and a desire to have a different circumstance. It is a want, right? Something we desire.

So here’s what I love about wanting and desiring and wishing, is it tells our brains what to focus on. Okay, we have this thing called the reticular activating system, which is the part of the brain that tries to filter out anything that is not relevant or necessary or immediately dangerous. And the things that we desire and want and wish for become relevant to our brain so that the reticular activating system will allow them into our awareness and not just filter them out.

Okay, so knowing what you want and desire, I think is very useful. I write about this in my book, Better Than Happy, in the chapter that talks about prayer, right? For those of you that are members of the LDS church, we have a certain structure of prayer and whatever faith you are, or however you pray, my guess is you have something similar, where we spend time in gratitude because that’s useful to our brains, right? To focus on what we love, what we want more of. Literally, there’s so much research nowadays about how useful gratitude is for our mental and emotional health.

But then the second part of prayer is asking for what we desire. It’s becoming more aware of what we want. And I personally believe, this is just my own theory, but I believe that it’s not because God needs us to tell Him what we desire. He already knows our hearts. He knows every hair on our head. He knows what we desire. It’s because He wants us to focus and become more aware of what we desire and to you know by sitting down in prayer. It’s sort of a meditation where we connect with Him. We have the opportunity to develop some faith and some belief that what we want is possible.

But again, he’s given us this reticular activating system that says, if I become more aware of what I desire, I’m more likely to notice opportunities to achieve it or fulfill it. And so that can be a really useful thing, right? Depending on, again, what your belief system is and how comfortable you are with what some people call the land of the woo-woo stuff. I personally also believe that it’s sort of, you know, focusing and thinking about what you desire or wish sort of sends a message out to the universe or God or however you wanna describe it.

Abraham Hicks would say it launches a rocket of desire. And those desires get answered and we just have to then line up with the answers to see them manifested in our own lives. So I don’t know, some of you might like that stuff like I do and some of you might be like, that’s not for me, that’s cool. I just think there are a lot of benefits is my point to wishing or desiring or wanting and to becoming aware of what we want and desire.

But I do see a lot of people wasting their wish I’m gonna call it on things that are not useful and here’s what I mean. The reason I call it a wasted wish is not because I want you to be in scarcity, like I only get so many wishes. This isn’t like a genie in a lamp that says you only get three wishes. I just mean our brains are only capable of focusing on a certain amount of information at a time and it’s a pretty limited amount of information, right? 

If you’re like me you have five million things you want to achieve and then you just feel overwhelmed and shut down when you try to focus on too much or solve too many problems or achieve too many things at once. So it’s a waste in that what my brain is looking for may or may not be something that is serving me if I’m wasting my wish. I’m wasting my brain power, you might say, by wasting my wish, okay?

So I’m gonna go through five situations where I feel like we are wasting our wishes. And as I speak to these, my guess is it’s going to sort of become obvious how to not do it. But just in case I have a couple pieces of advice. Anyway, I’m going to give you in the end of what to do instead. Okay? 

So the first thing we do is we waste our wish on things that are not our business. I’m labeling it that way because I love what Byron Katie says. She says there’s three types of business. There’s my business, your business, and God’s business. And she says, I try to stay out of your business or God’s business. I try to just stay in my own business. Right? Such a cool way to think about it. 

So if I’m wishing that my husband just kept his car cleaner, it’s not really my business unless I want to clean his car, right? Whenever I’m wishing for other people to be different or even sometimes it’s it doesn’t sound like judgment. It sounds like I just wish he was more confident. I wish he could see his value. I wish she would just go after her potential. She has so much potential. She’s just not fulfilling it. 

I just wish he understood or she understood how amazing they are. That sounds so lovely, right? But it’s a waste of my wish because for other people to feel differently, think differently, behave differently is not my business. It’s their business.

And what happens inevitably when I wish that my friend understood how amazing she is, let’s just say, is my reticular activating system kicks in and starts noticing all the times when she doesn’t recognize her value and her worth. And this really is a form of judgment, right? And I’m gonna become irritated or frustrated or sad for my friend. Listen, I want you to love your friends, but I don’t think you being sad about them being sad is creating more happiness. It’s creating instead more sadness, right?

So when I’m wishing for something that is not my business because it’s other people’s business, it’s a waste of my wish. When I’m wishing for something that is God’s business, like I just wish it wasn’t raining right now. That’s what we mean by God’s business. It means like not within our realm of possibility to control.

So sometimes I use this to show people how they’re wasting their wish. They’ll say something like, I just wish that my dad was healthier or something. I wish my dad wasn’t an alcoholic. I wish he didn’t get so angry, whatever. Okay. And I’ll say, I know, and I wish that I could eat whatever I want and not gain weight, but I can’t. Or I’ll say something even more ridiculous than that, like, I wish I could fly without getting on an airplane, like just use my arms and my body to fly from here to LA so I didn’t have to drive in traffic. That’s what I wish. 

But I don’t spend any time thinking about that because I know I can’t. That’s what I mean by God’s business. It’s just not possible given the laws of nature, etc. that we operate by. And so I don’t spend time wasting my wish on thinking about how cool it would be if I didn’t have to take a car or a plane or anything and I could just fly or get somewhere, right? And that’s what I’m trying to illustrate when we’re focused on something that’s not our business.

Now this gets tricky because some of us are teachers, mentors, coaches, parents, leaders, and we get confused about what is our business. Feels confusing, right? I wanna offer to you that it’s not. You being the best version of you, the best parent you can be, the best teacher, the best leader, the best coach, et cetera, whatever you are, I’m all for that. But whether or not your student, child, employee, et cetera, chooses to thrive in that environment is not your business.

It doesn’t mean you’re not aware of it. It doesn’t mean you don’t do everything in your power to influence them for good or to parent in the way that feels like you being the best parent, but how they receive it and whether or not they thrive in that environment is a waste of your wish. You see what I’m saying? We’ll come back to what to do instead, but that’s number one. If you’re wishing for something that’s not your business, you’re wasting your wish. It’s a waste of your brain power. It’s a waste of your focus.

Let’s go to number two. Whenever we’re wishing for something in the past to be different, It’s a waste of our wish. And I hear this all the time. People say, I just wish I would have made a different choice back 20 years ago when I, I don’t know, married this person or chose to stay at home and raise kids instead of continuing working or going after my goals and desires. I wish that I wouldn’t have listened to this person. 

I wish I wouldn’t have followed this advice. I wish I would have followed this advice. I wish I would have done something different. I wish this person would have done something different. I wish I would have known or that they would have known or that we would have made a different choice or done something different. We waste a lot of our wishes on the past. Why is this a waste?

Well, those of you in The Lab know I’m constantly saying, if only we had a time machine, then this would be a useful thing to think about. If we had a time machine, we could go, you know what I wish? I wish that 10 years ago I would have made a different choice and I wouldn’t have eaten so much sugar, I wouldn’t have gotten a sunburnt that day, etc. And let me get in my time machine. Let’s go back in time and change it. But since we don’t have a time machine, wasting your wish on the past, not useful. Not useful, right? It’s a waste of your wish.

Alright, let’s go to number three. Sometimes we waste our wishes by using them to keep ourselves in a place of inaction. Okay, here’s what I mean. Let’s say that I wish my business was more successful, whatever you define as success. I wish I had a more thriving business right now. I just wish that that was the case. Okay. I can sit there and wish for it, and that’s a lot easier than just going out and growing my business, and making it more impactful, more successful, figuring out how to do that.

It feels so much more comfortable to just sit back and wish, and we say it and we talk about it and we think about it and then we sort of fool ourselves into thinking that we’re progressing in some way, but we’re not. We’re just sitting back wishing. So when I hear the word wish around something that is your business, right? If I wish I was healthier, I wish I was stronger, I wish I was more knowledgeable about a certain area, then sometimes, and I’m not saying every time, but just check yourself, right?

Sometimes saying, I wish I knew more about that. I wish I knew how to grow a garden. I wish I was a better cook is a really convenient way to not develop ourselves, to not go learn and grow. It’s a waste of a wish. Don’t wish for that. Just go do it. Go make it happen or decide it’s okay that you’re not good at that. It’s okay that you don’t know how to cook. It’s okay that you’re not a great gardener. And stop sitting around wishing for it if you’re not willing to do anything to change it.

Embrace instead that you’re not good at that and that’s fine. There’s probably other things you’re good at. You don’t have to be good at everything. That’s another area where we commonly waste our wish. We keep ourselves in inaction, and instead we just kind of feel bad. We just kind of use it to downplay ourselves. I don’t find that to be useful.

The fourth thing we do, and this is a little bit of an overlap into number three, but we use it as a limiting belief, right, when we say, I wish I was smarter, I wish I was stronger. I just wanna sort of add on to, in number three, I talked about not taking action in the world, But in number four, we use it as a way to just write ourselves off, if you will, to keep ourselves small overall.

As I’m saying it out loud, maybe this is the same as number three. I don’t know, when I was making my outline, it made sense to separate them, but we use it to make an excuse, if you will, right?

If somebody comes along, like let’s say my dentist, I’m saying this for a friend, not that I can relate to this, wink wink. If my dentist were to say, You know, it would be better if you flossed more often. Your gums would be healthier and we wouldn’t have some of the potential problems that we see happening in your mouth right now. And I say, yeah, I know, I wish I could get myself to floss too, but I just can’t. Right? I just can’t get myself to do it, Doc. I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve just, I’ve never been a consistent flosser.

It’s just sort of a convenient way to write off what might be a useful thing to embrace. We are designed as human beings to grow and to continue to learn and to go through hard things, to experience hard things.

I was just listening to a reel that popped up on my Instagram. It was somebody talking about cold plunging. It was a guy and he said, I don’t really even care about the health benefits.

Like he wasn’t denying there could be health benefits for your nervous system and your whatever else it does for your biology, but he’s like, I do it because it’s super hard to do. I don’t ever want to get in. And I get in anyway, and then once I get in, there’s a mental challenge as to how long I’m gonna stay there. And I stay there even though I really don’t want to, and then I stay even a few seconds beyond that.

And he said, that’s why I cold plunge, because I’m overcoming my own brain and my own self. And I was thinking about it, and I’m not saying I’m against cold plunging at all. If you want a cold plunge, I’m sure there’s lots of mental and physical benefits.

I was just thinking like, we’re supposed to just be doing hard things in the world. Right? That’s how we’re designed. That’s how God created us is to go out and do hard things. And because we don’t have enough hard things, because our world has become pretty convenient and pretty easy, we have to get in an ice cold bath in order to get that experience of having to do something that we don’t want to do, but we know would be good to do. And then keep doing it even when we’ve started and it’s hard and not fun.

And I just think it’s fascinating. I think the same thing actually whenever I go to the gym and we’re all on treadmills jogging along and lifting weights and I’m like, we’re supposed to be doing physically hard things in the world. That’s how we were designed, but our world has become so physically easy that we got to go in these rooms and pick up weights and run on treadmills like a hamster on a wheel in order to keep our bodies healthy.

And so I don’t know it is what it is, I’m all for like whatever keeps you physically mentally and emotionally healthy and strong. I just always want us to connect back to like, yeah, because the way we’re designed is for challenge. That’s how we grow. And we will know if we’re getting enough growth or not, because if we’re not getting enough, we’ll feel stagnant. We’ll feel like we’re not living into our purpose. We’ll feel like something’s missing. We’ll feel like we’re capable of something more.

We’ll feel bored maybe. Maybe you don’t feel that way at all. Maybe you feel overwhelmed and exhausted, which might mean you’re getting too much challenge or it’s not the right kind of challenge that’s going to light you up.

So anyway, there’s a lot to unpack there, but my point is wishing, just simply stating or thinking, I just wish I was better at that. I just wish I wasn’t this kind of person. Those are limiting beliefs. Those are excuses for inaction.

So let’s go to the fifth reason. I sometimes – this one, I don’t see as much maybe because I work with adults. I think it comes up more in youth, but it can come up for us as adults as well. And this is using our wish as like a bid for pity or attention.

When we wish that people liked us more, right? I’m thinking about, you know, kind of some of the stories I hear that circulate amongst young people, et cetera, like I just wish people liked me more. And I actually, now that I’m saying it out loud, there’s a lot of adults who feel this way too. I wish I was more accepted. I wish people thought I was smarter or prettier or more fun, the in-laws wanted to spend more time with us and not the others.

Now, this is only a bid for attention or pity if you’re saying it out loud to people who you sort of think, and usually this is a somewhat unconscious thing that we do. We don’t usually sit down and plan out, you know what, I’m gonna go tell people today that I wish they liked me better, and then they’re gonna jump up and like me better. We do it somewhat unconsciously. We often do it passive aggressively, okay?

But what we’re doing is wishing that we had more attention, wishing that we had more approval usually, wishing that other people would rescue us in some way. And we play these little passive aggressive games or we say it out loud and we try to manipulate people into making us feel better about ourselves.

Okay, so if you think maybe you’ve done this or you are doing it, don’t feel bad about it. It’s okay. Just pause and notice, like, this is a waste of my wish, maybe. Like, what do I want to wish for that would be so much more exciting than this?

And if you notice other people doing it, that’s what, as I’m saying it out loud, I’m realizing that’s what’s going to come up for most of us is like, oh yeah, that’s what such and so does. That’s what this person does. And please don’t use what I’m teaching you today as a way to judge others because the truth is we’ve all done it at some point and if you have people in your life who are doing it more than others it’s okay. It’s coming from pain and hurt and it’s not something that I want you to judge others for. I want you to use this to assess yourself. 

What do we do instead? How do we stop wasting our wishes? Well first of all, if we go back to the first one, right, where we talked about getting outside of our business into other people’s business or into God’s business, it’s a pretty simple fix. Bring it back to what is your business? 

If I am running a company and I have employees and I’m thinking, I just wish my employees did a better job of whatever, fill in the blank, then instead of getting in their business, I stop and go, wait a second, what is my business? What’s mine to own in this situation? 

I wish I was doing a better job of holding them accountable. I want to do a better job of articulating my expectations, being more specific and clear about my expectations, having clear consequences or rewards for when people are meeting expectations, incentivizing and motivating people, lighting a fire under people where they can feel inspired and excited about achieving the work that we’re trying to do here in this company. I wish I was better at that. I’m gonna take that back and get better at my job as a leader instead of wishing they would just be different and better. 

And as you can see, that would apply in so many situations as parents, as teachers, as friends, as spouses. Instead of like, I wish my sister was different, how about I’m gonna be a different kind of sister. What kind of sister do I want to be in this situation? 

That is a question that I ask myself all the time when I’m doing my own self-coaching work. It’s a question I’m asking my clients all the time. Who do you want to be? Instead of wishing that the circumstance was different, who do you want to be?

I think it’s on Netflix, the Martha Stewart documentary, which I’ve only finished half of. I need to go finish the rest, but it was so good. Martha Stewart served time in jail, right? She went to prison for, I won’t get into reasons why, tax evasion originally, but it ended up not even being that in the end. You can go watch the documentary and draw your own conclusion about whether or not she should have been there. I don’t think she should have been there. And she was there for, I wanna say seven months. 

And she was scared going in, and it was really hard on her, it sounded like. But by the end, you know who she was? Martha Stewart. By the end, she was growing a garden there on the prison grounds. She was working with other women, teaching them about gardening, and she was helping them understand how to take the prison food and make it better and do something creative with it. And she was like, she’s Martha Stewart. You put her in prison, she’s still going to be Martha Stewart. Right? 

And now, let’s not say she’s perfect by any means, but she, in any circumstance, is herself and she can be if she chooses is what I’m saying. And she did at one point there, right? And we all have that same capacity within us. Who are you in any circumstance? It’s easy to be Martha Stewart when you’re living on in a beautiful big house with a big garden, but can you be here in prison? That’s the question, right? 

So bring it back to what is your business? All right, when we talk about being past focus, what we want to do instead, of course, is become future focused. Okay, so instead of wishing that the past could have been different, I want to offer to you to just make peace with the past. If you want help with this, to just say, listen, the past was perfect. That is the reality. That’s the truth. 

That’s where if I’m coaching you and it’s on a past issue, I’m gonna try to get you to the place where you understand that the past, nothing’s gone wrong. The past was always meant to be exactly how it went. It was not supposed to be any different. And if you can get there in your head, love it.

If you can’t come to jodymoore.com/freecoaching and I will take you there. Cause it’s sometimes a little bit of a journey to get there. But the reason we want to make peace with the past is so that we can instead think about the future because the future is ours to change. We can make new decisions. We can create anything we want in the future. And it’s such a waste of our wish to wish for a different past because then the brain is tied up arguing with the past instead of using that brain to create the future you want.

What do you want in the future? Now, a lot of people tell me, I don’t know. I don’t know what I want in the future. And that’s why they’d rather just stay in a wrestle with the past. Okay, but again, with a good coach, you can discover what you want and create what you want for the future. It’s such a better use of your desire, of your wish, than wrestling with the past.

Number three and four, I kind of combined on you there, right? Living in inaction or creating limited beliefs or excuses. This is such a waste of a wish. So what we want to do instead is make peace with who we are and where we are. That we don’t have to be, there’s no shoulds or shouldn’ts around what’s going on. And we’re not behind on anything.

It’s not that we should be good at this by now. We should have figured that out by now. I used to do a lot of this, right? I was like, I should know how to cook a little better. I mean, I’m a 50 year old woman. I should be more patient with my kids. I should be more organized in my business, I should understand this stuff.

Okay, well, that’s a waste of a wish is what it is, right? I wish I was better at these things. If I stay in that place, again, my brain’s gonna go to work finding all the proof that I’m not as far along as I should be. And what’s the upside to that? Nothing. It’s just judgment. It’s just frustration. And you know what? I think I’m going to create something different now, if I choose that. Right?

Make peace with the things that you don’t want to even be better at, and the things that you do, decide to take action. I got to say that again. Take action towards what you want. It’s going to be scary. You’re going to be worried you’re taking the wrong action. You’re going to be worried that you’re not good at it and people might judge you and you might “waste” time or money. True, but we can do that or we can get in an ice bath.

Either way, our brains need to be challenged and we are designed to go do things that we kind of don’t want to do but we want to have the results of and we’re designed to stay in that ice bath once we get in which is now I start on learning this thing and it’s actually even harder than I thought it was going to be and there’s things I didn’t even know I didn’t know and can I keep going anyway? That’s how we’re designed. That is what this life is about. Because on the other side of that is extraordinary growth and development and success and contribution and all the things that we want in this life.

And then finally, if you notice yourself sort of creating this bid for attention, bid for self pity, bid for approval. Again, whether you’re doing it really directly and obviously, or more indirectly, passive aggressively, we might say, sort of manipulative kind of thing that I know I’ve done in my life. I don’t know about you. When you notice that, what I want you to do is pause and ask yourself, what do you need, self?

So I do this all the time, I’m like, hey, Jody, what’s going on? What are you needing? What need is coming up for you right now that you’re not getting enough of in your life? Is it connection? Is it approval? Is it fulfillment? And I’m always gonna try to give it to myself first and foremost, and then also reach out in healthy ways through healthy means of getting it from others when I can, not in a passive manipulative way, but in a direct, vulnerable, open way.

Okay? So sometimes I do need to pause and look at myself in the mirror and go, Hey, Jody, I love you. I think you’re doing a good job. Thanks for the things that you did today or last week or last year or whatever. I’m not mad at you, right? For the areas where you fell short or you didn’t follow through. I’m not mad at you. It’s okay. You’re doing a great job. Let’s keep going. 

And I might need a little approval and validation of myself. But I also may reach out to a friend or a family member or a coach or someone and say can you talk me through this? I’m just kind of struggling right now. Is it all right if I open up and vent a little bit? Would you be willing to just listen? Or would you be willing to remind me that I’m doing okay?

It’s perfectly okay to want some approval from others. Just be clear about it. Be honest about it, right? Don’t be passive aggressive, manipulative, et cetera about it. That’s a waste of a wish. I just wish people liked me better. I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard that thought go through my head before. Just wish people saw my value. I wish people believed in me. It’s such a waste of a wish, right? 

Believe in yourself, love yourself, and then go do something in the world if you want to do something in the world to help people. And ask other people to help you meet those needs in healthy, clear, direct ways. Not passive aggressive, manipulative, self-pity, etc. kind of ways. You see what I’m saying?

If you feel like you don’t fit in somewhere and you wish you had more friends, reach out to people and say, I’m really trying to get to know more people. Could you invite me the next time you guys get together? I would love to be part of your group instead of, poor me, people don’t like me. I don’t fit in. You see what I’m saying?

All right, my friends, last but not least, instead of wishing for things, what if you just dreamed of things? What if you let yourself dream because dreaming is fun and creative and you can have giant dreams and you can go after them or you can not go after them as long as you’re having fun dreaming about them? 

What if instead of wishing for something you just decided to go make something happen? What if instead of wishing you committed to figuring something out and to sticking with it for a certain amount of time until you achieve a certain result until you become a certain person? Or what if instead of wishing you just played in your mind with what’s possible or in the world with what you want to try out and experiment with? What if instead of wishing you imagined and explored?

Desire is a beautiful thing. I want you to allow for desire. I want you to have a good relationship with your desires. But desire with a faith in yourself, and a divine power, and lots of action-taking on your part, creates an awesome life. But wishing tends to be passive, lacking in belief and lacking in action.

Be open, be curious, keep learning, Keep trying, but stop wasting your wishes. Thanks for joining me today, everybody. I’ll see you on another episode next week. Take care.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: JodyMoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s JodyMoore.com/freecoaching.

The post 503. Wasted Wishes appeared first on Jody Moore.

Have you ever found yourself thinking, I’m doing everything right, but it’s not working? You’re following the strategies, applying what you’ve learned, doing what successful people do—and yet, the results just aren’t showing up. It’s one of the most frustrating feelings. But today, I want to help you understand what’s really going on. 

The truth is, it’s not working is actually just a thought, not a fact. Understanding this is one small mindset shift can make all the difference in moving forward. By the end of this episode, you’ll have a fresh perspective on the challenges you’re facing and a renewed sense of empowerment. 

Tune in this week as I share three powerful ways to reframe the belief it’s not working, so you can break free from frustration and start seeing real progress. You’ll learn about the natural cycle of success, including the valley of despair, and why things are always working, even when it doesn’t feel like it.

Make Peace with Food is one of my most popular mini-courses of all time, and I’m bringing it back this March 2025! If you want to learn how to eat better and ultimately make peace with food, click here to join.

Want to learn to coach the way I do? Join my Better Than Happy Coach Training waitlist right now to be the first to get details when doors open!

Want free coaching? Join me for a complimentary coaching workshop by clicking here.

If you’re serious about succeeding in your coaching business, you want to join our newest program, The Lab: Coach Access. Click here to find out more!

Do you ever find yourself thinking or saying, I’m doing it, but it’s not working. I’m trying what they told me, I’m executing what I’ve been taught, I’m living the way I’ve believed I should live, or I’m using the strategies that successful people are using and it’s not working. Is there anything more maddening than this thought or feeling? 

Well, today we’re going to dive into it. We’re going to understand why it may not be working and what to do about it to get moving. This is episode 502: When It’s Not Working.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

Sometimes, listening to a podcast is enough. But sometimes, you’ll feel inspired to go deeper. If you hear things that speak to you in today’s episode, consider it your invitation to a complimentary coaching workshop.

On this live, interactive Zoom call with me, you’ll get a taste of the power of this work when applied in real life. You can participate, or be a silent observer. But you have to take a step if you want to truly see change in your life… two steps, actually. Head to jodymoore.com/freecoaching and register. Then you just have to show up. Your best life is waiting for you. Will you show up for it? JodyMoore.com/freecoaching. I’ll see you there.

All right, everybody, this is going to be a fun episode. I’m very excited to talk about this topic with you. But first, I want to make sure you’re joining me if you want some help making peace with food. Because I’m teaching Make Peace with Food, it’s one of the most popular mini courses I teach. Every time I teach it, people come back to me and say how they can’t believe how much they’ve been able to change what felt like impossible to change behaviors and habits and results in their life, around their health and their fitness. Spring is right around the corner.

So I feel like that is kind of a time when I know I like to recommit to my health. I’m like, enough hibernating, Jody, like a bear, oversleeping, overeating, let’s get healthy, let’s get some energy, let’s get feeling good. So Make Peace with Food, you head to https://JodyMoore.com/food, you’re going to get videos from me that you can watch forever more if you like them. 

You’re going to get access to me through live Zoom calls, where we’re going to dive deep into how it goes as you execute. You’re going to be given some little assignments, many of which are actually very fun. And we’re going to spend four weeks together making peace with food for a very, very low price. So again, https://JodyMoore.com/food. Come and join me for Make Peace with Food.

Let’s talk about how we want to think about things when it’s not working. So first of all, I always in my coaching like to start out with people and point out that it’s not working as a thought, it’s not a fact.

And this is one of the thoughts that feels like a fact, right? Because we can point to like, well, the scale hasn’t gone down, or I don’t have more clients in my business, or my child is still lying to me, or my spouse and I are still fighting, or I’m still feeling really down and out. Okay, so it’s not working is still a thought because it’s subjective, right? For most things. There are a few things I might give to you as facts that we would say are facts, but for the most part, we just wanna remember it’s a subjective thought.

Anyway, I’m not gonna spend a long time on that because I do think that it’s a thought that you could keep too. Even though it’s just a thought, it might be a thought that you wanna keep, I don’t know. I’m not trying to say when I teach you that something’s a thought that you shouldn’t be thinking it. I’m just pointing out that it’s subjective, right? Especially around a lot of things in our lives.

This seems to be coming up a lot in the topic of spirituality, where people are saying, you know, I’m living the Gospel, I’m doing the things that I have been taught to do and it’s not working. I’m not feeling peace. I’m not feeling The Spirit. Again, I’m not trying to take anything away from anybody who’s struggling because there are really hard things that we go through, but it’s not working is still just a thought, like how do we know? How do we know that The Spirit isn’t right there with you, but letting you struggle for some reason, or maybe that you’re unable to feel it for some reason that may be something you can do something about or may not, maybe a chemical, hormonal, kind of biological thing blocking it.

Anyway, like I said, I won’t get off on that tangent, but I wanna talk to you about three things to consider if you find yourself thinking “it’s not working”, because my goal is always to empower you. So the reason why sometimes people hear my work and they think it’s lacking in empathy is because I’m a big fan of empathy. I want you to get empathy from people in your life.

I want you to have people that just say, that sucks, that’s so hard, oh my gosh, I’m sorry, that’s not fair, is there anything I can do to support you? I love empathy, we all need empathy. But as a coach, my job is not empathy. My job is empowerment. And empathy can sometimes just be really useful and the only thing we need to become empowered, but it can become sometimes disempowering because it reinforces sometimes the very beliefs that are keeping us stuck and disempowered. 

And so that’s why I don’t go to empathy much when I’m coaching. I’m always going for empowerment. I want you to feel like, wait a second, I have choices here. I can do something about this in my life. I can make a difference. I can change things. I can create what I want. I’m the one. I don’t have to wait around for things that I can’t control or for people who I can’t control, or for anything else to be different before I can feel how I wanna feel. I can create it right now. 

Not only can I create feelings, but I can create results in my life? I can create tangible things that I want or feel that I need, I have the ability to do that. And that is the truth, my friend, you do. You have the ability to feel better right now. You have the ability to have what you want and need. You have the ability to achieve things far beyond what you can even imagine right now. 

And we do not find the ways, the paths, the solutions to those things from disempowerment. We find proof that we can’t. We find evidence that it’s too hard, that we’re not that kind of person. So my job as a coach is empowerment. And that’s what I wanna offer you here today. 

So this thought, it’s not working, is a very disempowering thought. Because notice the subject of the sentence is it. And it can be a lot of things. It can be the diet that you’ve chosen. It can be the parenting strategy that you’re executing. It could be the marketing plan that you’re launching in your business. It can be so many things. But what it is not in this sentence is us. It’s the strategy, the plan, the routine, the advice we’ve been given. It’s not us.

And what I want to offer to you today is, first of all, like I said I have three things. First one, this is what I do with myself when I hear myself say it’s not working is I say, maybe I’m just not working it actually. Maybe it’s me. Now be careful with this one. Some of you want to go right to shame and guilt. You want to use it to judge yourself. You want to use it If you’re looking for evidence that there’s something wrong with you, you’re not as good, you’re not as smart, you’re not as capable as other people, then you will use this one against yourself. Please don’t do that. That’s not what I’m saying.

I’m saying, wait a second, what if it works? I’m just not working it yet. I haven’t figured out how to work it yet. And that’s okay. It’s okay that it takes some time. It’s okay if it takes me a minute.

So I like to think about a recipe. Like if somebody says, here is my grandmother’s recipe for making lasagna. She made the best lasagna and I’m passing this recipe on to you. And you get it out and you make it and you start eating lasagna and go, this doesn’t taste right. This isn’t good. These noodles are really crunchy and hard. They’re not soft. Then it doesn’t mean that the lasagna recipe is not a good recipe. It means I missed a step.

I didn’t realize I was supposed to boil the noodles before I put them into the pan of lasagna or I didn’t boil them long enough or maybe it didn’t say that on the recipe. Maybe it left that part out because the person who wrote it thought that was assumed that we would all know that and forgot to explicitly say it. Or maybe it was there and I overlooked it, or maybe I saw it and I thought, nah, they’ll probably bake in the pan. I’m not going to bother. I’m going to skip that step. I don’t need to do that. That’s what most people need to do, but not me. These are all things that I’ve done, not necessarily when making lasagna, because I don’t make lasagna. Let’s be honest. I buy it at Costco.

But I’ve done this with many other things that I’ve attempted to do. I’m following this eating plan you gave me, but it’s not working. Well, there are little things I’m not following. I’m not following it perfectly because who’s perfect, of course. But that just means that the plan works. It’s just I’m not working the plan. And that’s okay. Maybe it’s not the right plan. Maybe I don’t want to make lasagna. Maybe I want to buy lasagna at Costco. But it’s not the lasagna recipe that’s not working. It’s me not working it.

Isn’t that really good news? There can be so many reasons we’re not working it and it’s okay if it takes time. If you want, really want to make grandma’s lasagna, then try again, try again, try again. Eventually you’ll get really good at making lasagna.

This comes up in so many situations. I coach people on ads that they’re running on social media to grow their businesses and they’re like, I’m running an ad, it’s not working. And I always say, why in the world would you ever say that sentence or think it? How do you feel when you think that? Frustrated, disempowered.

I was listening to a call the other day, a coaching call, and the girl was saying, we did a launch and it didn’t convert because the email service provider didn’t work. The emails aren’t working. They didn’t deliver our emails to people’s inboxes. There’s a problem with this email service provider. And I was thinking to myself, such a disempowering way to think about it, right?

Maybe there’s a strategy for getting your emails to land in people’s inboxes. And I don’t know, maybe not. Maybe this is the email service provider, but like my, if our first go-to is this software doesn’t work, then we got to find new software, which you could do, but you might run into the same problem again. It might be an email in general issue and then instead I like to go, okay, I’m going to work this. I didn’t get those emails to land in people’s inboxes, but I will figure out how. Feel the empowerment that has to come from that?

Sometimes I have to just kind of talk to myself like I’m giving myself a pep talk. Let’s go Jody Moore. You’re Jody Moore. Let’s figure this out. And I want you to say that to yourself. I want you to get used to hearing your name and using it as a reason to believe that you’re capable of something. So important. It works, we just don’t always work it.

There was a story I heard a while ago from Kim Giles and I’ve tried to go find it and I can’t find it. It was literally years and years ago. It was on like a webinar class or something. So I apologize if I butcher the story. I couldn’t find it, and this is to the best of my memory.

She talked about being in a foreign country somewhere where they had this legend that if you could capture a coqui frog, you were gonna be successful in your life. And someone had told her about this legend and she thought it sounded fun, and so she decided she was gonna try to capture a coqui frog.

Well, she went days and days and didn’t even see one anywhere. And so finally she had to start asking people like, how do you capture one of these frogs that I don’t even see? And they said, Oh no, they’re everywhere. They hide. They’re not out in the open. They hide.

And so she had to keep asking people, where do they hide? Where might I see them? And at what times of day do they come out? And there were all these things that she had to learn. And then there were certain, again, I can’t remember the details, but there were certain ways to even find them that had to do with times of day and locations and had to do with being really patient and really diligent.

And eventually, if you followed all these things, I can’t remember if she captured one or not, but I remember her saying, once I learned how complicated it is to find one and capture one, I realized maybe the reason you’re likely to have success isn’t this magical, you captured the frog, but you are the kind of person who’s willing to learn what’s necessary and then be diligent and patient and do all the things necessary and if you’re that kind of person, you’re likely to have success in your life because that’s what success requires. So listen, maybe you haven’t put in enough time, maybe you haven’t learned enough. That’s okay, but it’s not that it’s not working, I’m just not working it yet.

Okay, the second thing I wanna offer to you, and this comes from my buddy Myron Golden. I call him my buddy because I listen to him on YouTube a lot. He doesn’t know me, but we’re buddies. You know that feeling. He says, it’s always working. It’s either working for you or it’s working on you.

So what do we mean by that? Well, there’s this theory I was taught recently. It’s a theory of change and there’s lots of people have created theories of change in terms of what we experience as human beings from a psychology standpoint as we’re going through change, but I really liked this one that said that we begin in uninformed optimism, right? Where we’re like, “I’m gonna do this thing. It’s gonna be great. It’s gonna be so awesome once I achieve it. I can’t wait. I’m gonna dive in. I’m really willing to work hard and be patient, let’s go.” Uninformed optimism, really fun place to be, right?

We move from there into informed pessimism. When we learn more about what’s involved, what would be the emotional cost, the time cost, the financial cost, the skills maybe that we’d need. And there’s so many things that we didn’t even know we didn’t know that when now we become, we start feeling a little bit negative, right? Informed pessimism. Natural, normal. If you feel that way, don’t make it mean that you shouldn’t pursue this thing. Just know that that’s the natural progression of change.

From there, we end up in what they call the valley of despair. If we keep going, right? Keep going, get to the valley of despair. Wait a second. This is actually really hard because there’s so many things I don’t know how to do. There’s so much involved in achieving this thing I wanted to achieve. I’ve been trying it and not succeeding. I thought I was committed. I thought I had the determination, but now I’m not doing it consistently. So it’s not going to work or I’m not able to do it, valley of despair, right?

That’s the point at which most people exit, if we can. I was thinking about this cycle when I started having babies, right? And I had my first baby and I was like, we’re gonna have a baby! Uninformed optimism. It’s gonna be amazing. And then I got pregnant and started throwing up a lot and my body started changing and I slipped right away between that and having a newborn, which is amazing by the way. The most love I’ve ever felt in my life, but also hard, right? Not getting enough sleep. Somebody always needs your attention.

Anyway, informed pessimism and then right into the valley of despair. Like, I love this baby fiercely, but I do not think I’m good at this, and I don’t even like myself anymore, and I don’t even like my husband anymore. What’s happening to my life? Reason I’m giving this example is because we have to stay with it.

But if this is just, I decided I’m going to lose some weight, or I’m going to try to grow a business, or I’m going to go after this other goal, we have the choice to exit, and that’s where most people do in the valley of despair 99% of people will just exit right there, but 1% will move forward into informed optimism.

So we start coming out of the dip of negativity back up into positively informed optimism. We start finding some things that work. We start getting better at some things that we weren’t good at before. We start getting skills. We start finding support from friends or groups of people doing similar things or coaches or teachers or what have you. We start reading the right kinds of books. We start developing ourselves and we move into this informed optimism.

It starts feeling much better and this is when hope comes back and this is when we see some small wins and successes and we’ve also embraced that this is harder than we thought it was gonna be, but we become okay with it being hard. And from there, we move up into success and fulfillment, right?

So that’s the natural curve of things. So this is again, back to what Myron Golden said, it’s always working. It’s either working for you, or it’s working on you.

In order to be a successful entrepreneur, you have to become the kind of person who is a successful entrepreneur, which yes, will create the results you want in your business, the revenue, the clients, the customers, whatever, but it will also turn you into a different version of you. And the way we become a different version of us is by going through the valley of despair and not quitting. And then we continue to learn and grow and develop new skills and become a new version of us.

So it’s always working, my friends. It’s either working for you or it’s working on you. You’re going to see that show up all over your life if you’re like me now.

The last thing I wanted to offer you, okay, when people say to me, I’m doing this thing and it’s not working. Sometimes I will, I’ll usually ask a few questions and then I’ll just say, okay, well, why don’t you just walk away then? Because you literally can.

So I talked about in the valley of despair, we walk away, right, if we can. By the way, when we walk away, we go right back up to uninformed optimism. And that’s because we think, you know, I just won’t do that and then I’ll feel good again. And we do for a minute until we realize actually we don’t because we still want something more, something different. We still wanna see what we’re capable of. We still wanna contribute. We still wanna improve our lives in some way. That doesn’t go away.

But at any rate, if you keep going, you will eventually end up in informed optimism and then success and fulfillment, but you don’t have to. There’s not anything wrong with you if you choose to walk away. It doesn’t make you a less of a person. It doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t mean you’re never going to succeed.

Sometimes we just decide, I thought I wanted to do that thing and I thought I had what it took in me to do it and I could. The truth is I could, but I don’t want to. I’m not willing to pay the price. I don’t want to, and that’s okay.

Did you know this? This might be a relationship that you’re in. You might realize, you know what?

I could become the kind of person who can be happy in this relationship, but I don’t want to. I don’t wanna put my effort and time and energy into managing myself with this person who treats me in a way that I don’t like being treated. I’m gonna choose to exit now in the valley of despair.

Great, I’m all for that if you want to. You can even decide that you’re gonna start a business and then get to the valley of despair and decide, I don’t wanna keep figuring this out. Okay, cool, no problem. You literally can just walk away anytime you want to, if you want to, especially if you have reasons you like. And I think the best reason of all is I just don’t want to do this anymore. I tried it, now I know, and I don’t want to.

Okay. Not because you couldn’t, by the way, because you could, but I don’t want you to beat yourself up if you choose to exit in the valley of despair. Do you know most of us do that in most areas of our life, but if you have one or two where you stick it out, if you have a handful of them where you stick it out, some of them, again, you’re going to be forced to stick it out. Sometimes life gives us those, we don’t have a choice to exit, but there will be a handful of others that you choose to keep going through the valley of despair into informed optimism and then success and fulfillment. And that’s all you need to create an extraordinary life.

So I don’t want you to tell yourself, I’m the kind of person who quits, who walks away. You can just decide I’ve done that, but that doesn’t mean I have to. I could keep going. And by the way, when I say keep going through the valley of despair, all you have to do is make baby steps. You can just keep crawling. You don’t have to take massive action. You might need extra self-care during this time. You might need to do more learning, but keep taking some kind of action that moves you through the valley.

You have to be careful because sometimes we trick ourselves into thinking, no, I’m still going. Look, I’m getting up and I did the dishes this morning. I’m like, okay, that’s great.

But what is it that you’re in the valley of despair about? If it’s about your business, then doing the dishes isn’t moving you through that valley. It’s helping you feel productive. It’s better than staying in bed maybe, but we gotta take action that moves us through the valley that we’re in the valley on. Do you get what I’m saying here, my friends?

But just keep going, okay? Just keep going. It’s always working. It works, first of all. We just don’t always work it. And then it’s always working. It’s either working for us or it’s working on us.

And finally, you can literally can just walk away. Just don’t beat yourself up for it. Don’t use it against yourself. Just decide you’re making a change. You don’t even have to have a reason.

All right, I love you. Thank you for joining me today. I will see you next time, Bye-bye.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: JodyMoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s JodyMoore.com/freecoaching.

The post 502. When It’s Not Working appeared first on Jody Moore.

Do you ever find yourself wishing someone would hold you accountable to your goals and habits? I’m all for having a coach, friend, or family member hold you accountable, but have you ever stopped to consider what you could create in your life if you developed the skill of self-accountability?

Our human nature makes self-accountability challenging, but it’s a skill that can transform your life if you know how to do it right. That’s why this week, I share the top six obstacles that prevent us from effectively holding ourselves accountable and practical strategies to overcome each one.

Join me in this encore episode as I share real-life examples of how these six obstacles are holding you back from strengthening your self-accountability right now. Whether you’re trying to establish a new habit, reach a big goal, or simply live a more intentional life, mastering self-accountability is the key to unlocking your full potential.

Make Peace with Food is one of my most popular mini-courses of all time, and I’m bringing it back this March 2025! If you want to learn how to eat better and ultimately make peace with food, click here to join.

Want to learn to coach the way I do? Join my Better Than Happy Coach Training waitlist right now to be the first to get details when doors open!

Want free coaching? Join me for a complimentary coaching workshop by clicking here.

If you’re serious about succeeding in your coaching business, you want to join our newest program, The Lab: Coach Access. Click here to find out more!

Gretchen Rubin has an assessment, I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s designed to help you understand your accountability type. And when I took that assessment years ago, it said that my accountability type was “rebel,” meaning I don’t do well with accountability. I don’t like other people telling me what to do or checking up on whether or not I did it. I tend to resist that and push against that. And I don’t even like trying to tell myself what to do and having an expectation of myself. I often will push against that as well. I’m gonna go ahead and blame my genetics. I think I might’ve got this from my dad.

At any rate, that was a problem for me for a long time until I discovered how to be self-accountable. That’s what we’re going to dive into today. And you can use this concept to change any area of your life that you want to be better or easier.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

Sometimes, listening to a podcast is enough. But sometimes, you’ll feel inspired to go deeper. If you hear things that speak to you in today’s episode, consider it your invitation to a complimentary coaching workshop.

On this live, interactive Zoom call with me, you’ll get a taste of the power of this work when applied in real life. You can participate, or be a silent observer. But you have to take a step if you want to truly see change in your life… two steps, actually. Head to jodymoore.com/freecoaching and register. Then you just have to show up. Your best life is waiting for you. Will you show up for it? JodyMoore.com/freecoaching. I’ll see you there.

Hey there, everybody. I am still missing my voice. And so I’m trying to rest my voice a little bit and trying to rest my body, get a little bit more rest. I can feel myself feeling run down with all the amazing things we’ve had going on. We’ve had a VIP Power Coaching Day, which was so amazing. Thank you to everyone that came. We did Marketing Bootcamp this week. We’ve been doing lots of coaching, got lots of workshops happening, loving all of it, but needing a little rest.

So we’re doing some encore episodes. This topic of how to be accountable to yourself is one I get asked about all the time. And this episode originally aired about a year and a half ago, but it’s worth revisiting. And I think the number one way it comes up for people is with their habits in terms of the foods they’re eating and whether or not they’re exercising and drinking water and getting enough sleep and doing all the things we know. You know, Huberman has told us and many other people, but all the things we need to do to be healthy and vibrant and live longer and enjoy our lives, but why can’t we do them? That’s the key, right?

So I wanna also mention that I’m getting ready to start Make Peace with Food, which is a little mini course. It’s a great way to come and try out coaching, to see if coaching could be useful for you, and to learn the tools I teach you on how to get yourself to eat better, and to ultimately make peace with food, right? To not have all the drama, all the chatter, all the shame, all the guilt, all the frustration and overwhelm.

So this has been one of the most popular mini courses I offer. We’ve done it a couple of times and people love it. They rave about it. And then they ask, when can I do it again? Everybody wants to go through it again. So we’re offering it again. So head to jodymoore.com/food. We’d love to have you join us. We start soon. And with that, let’s dive in to self-accountability.

Hey there, everybody. How’s it going today? Do you ever find yourself thinking, I just need someone to hold me accountable? I think I could do that thing I’m trying to do. I think I could be more consistent at creating that habit I’m trying to create. I think I could achieve that result I’m trying to achieve if I only had someone to hold me accountable.

This is what a lot of coaches do. They are accountability coaches. They will hold you accountable. You don’t even need a coach to do it. You can get a friend to do it. You can get a family member to do it. And I’m all for that if you want to have someone else hold you accountable.

But I also want you to learn the skill of self-accountability. Because imagine if you were effective at holding yourself accountable. Imagine what you could create in your life. And I want to frame it – I identified six things that I think are the reasons why we’re not good at self-accountability. 

Okay, so that’s how I’m going to frame the episode. We’re going to go through the six things that prevent self-accountability, and as I talk about them, I’m going to talk about how you circumvent that.

Because it is our human nature for most of us to be not very good at self-accountability, at least in certain areas. I bet there are certain areas of your life where you are good at being accountable to yourself, but there are probably others where it’s challenging. That is true for all of us. Okay?

So I don’t want you to give yourself limiting belief type thoughts like, I’m just not good at following through on what I say. I never do what I say I’m gonna do. I never finish things. I’m too much of a perfectionist or I’m just too overwhelmed with stress. I can’t even get started. All of those kinds of thoughts are gonna prevent you from diving in and creating what you want to in your life, whether what you’re creating be some kind of outcome or obvious result, or maybe it’s just a healthy habit that you’re trying to create for yourself.

Okay, so let me go through these six things that I identified and if I left any out please feel free to reach out to me. I’d love to get DMs from you guys on Instagram. We can continue this discussion there but let’s start with the number one… well these are in no particular order.

So the first thing I want to talk about is that we stay too general. So let’s say I have told myself, hey, I’m going to start getting up earlier in the mornings for whatever reason. Maybe I want to have more time to read or journal or exercise or whatever it is, or I just want quiet time before the kids get up, before I have to go on with my day, I’m going to get up earlier in the morning. Okay? 

The first thing that we do that prevents self-accountability is we get general. We say things like, I never do it, or I haven’t done it at all since I said I was gonna do that. Or even if we say, I do it mostly, but not always. Okay, notice how we are talking in generalizations. We are lumping our behavior into one big broad category.

Now, if you’ve been with me for a while and you’ve heard me teach the Model, then you know what that means is that we’re making the situation, we’re getting into the thought line when it comes to the situation. Okay? If I say, I mostly am good at getting up early, but not always, or I never get up early. I said I was going to, I’ve been trying to do this for months or years, and then I just never do it. These are thoughts, these are not facts. And it’s impossible to get facts when we stay that general. We have to get specific to get facts. Okay?

So, last week, one day out of seven, I got up early like I said I would. Would be a fact. Or in the last five years, I’ve gotten up before six a.m. zero times. Might be a fact. Okay? Or since two months ago when I told myself I’m going to start getting up early, I have succeeded three times and I have not done it the other however many days, times that would be. You get the number and get specific. Okay? Or even better, take a specific situation.

Yesterday, I told myself I was going to get up early. The alarm went off. I hit snooze. I thought to myself, I just need more sleep. I’m too tired. And I did that four times. And then eventually it was whatever time I normally get up. And that’s what happened yesterday. Notice how specific we are and how now we’re into the circumstance line. We’re just getting facts.

Here’s why this matters. When we are talking to ourselves in these broad generalizations, I never do this, I always do this, I often do this, I seldom do this, it’s really hard to get any leverage and to know where to go next. It’s like saying to your phone, hey Siri, tell me how to get to Seattle. And Siri says, where are you? And you’re like, I’m over on the east side of the state. She’s gonna be like, it’s hard for me to tell you how to get there without knowing more specifically where you are.

We want to look at specifics. You can look at a specific time when you did or didn’t execute the behavior that you wanted to. It’s not only helpful to look at times when you don’t, it’s helpful to look at times when you did. What was going on that day? There’s so much to learn from specifics, from broad generalizations, we’re in the thought line, And as human beings, part of our brain’s job is to make our thoughts true. Okay? So this is why we want to get specific.

Number two, the second thing that we do that prevents self-accountability is we choose to be confused or we indulge in confusion, okay? So if we start diving in going, what happened? Why didn’t you get up? Or why did you get up? What was going on that day when you did get up early? It’s so tempting to go, I don’t know. 

That is almost always the first reaction or answer that I get from people when I’m coaching on a topic like this. What was going on? Why did you not? Why haven’t you been getting up early? Why or why did you on those three days when you did? And people always say, I don’t know. Right? 

Again, this is the brain’s preference. The brain prefers to be confused and in the dark because it requires the prefrontal. It requires a lot of energy and focus to go in and think about what was going on. What was I thinking? What did I do? Why did I do it? What was I worried about? What was I afraid of? What am I hiding from myself or that I think I’m hiding from others? What is really going on?

You have to stop and think about it. You have to do some critical thinking. I feel like in our world, we’re getting worse and worse at critical thinking, which worries me. I don’t mean critical thinking in the form of criticizing. We’re good at that. I mean, thinking critically about a problem, hinking through it in a strategic, thoughtful way.

I’m constantly trying to teach my kids this. They’ll come to me with a problem or question and I’ll go, let’s use critical thinking to see if we can figure it out. What do you think might be going on? What do you think that means? What do you think is gonna happen next? What time do you think we’re gonna leave? Right? Critical thinking. Think through it. Think about the future. Take the information you know about the past and come up with an educated guess.

Okay, so critical thinking is the antidote to being confused. Okay, so this comes in handy with self-accountability because if I’m trying to get myself to get up early in the mornings, that’s just the example I used, you can apply this to anything obviously, right? 

But if I’m trying to get myself to get up earlier and I start taking a look at times when I haven’t or times when I have and asking myself why, then instead of being confused, I’ve got to apply critical thinking. The truth is we do know. We all know. We always know. We just sometimes don’t want to know or we don’t wanna stop and think about it. And that is because of some of the other reasons I’m gonna talk about here next.

So let’s move on to number three. The third reason we sometimes are not good at self-accountability is because we prefer unconsciousness. Unconsciousness, I don’t mean literally unconscious like in a comatose state or a sleep state, but there’s a difference between paying attention and being conscious of what you’re doing and doing things unconsciously. In other words, the lower brain is driving. You’re not really thinking about it. You’re thinking about something else and you’d have to slow down and redirect yourself to think about it.

This is the way most of us drive after we’ve been driving for a while. We don’t really have to think about what does a red light mean and who has the right of way. We can do it somewhat unconsciously. And this is how many of us prefer, well, all of us actually, all healthy human beings prefer to operate in unconsciousness as much of the time as possible because it saves us energy. 

Moving into consciousness requires more energy. We have to focus. We have to, again, going back to thinking critically, we have to pay attention. The brain is supposed to avoid that. It’s supposed to because that takes a lot of energy and your brain is supposed to save energy. Okay? So there’s nothing wrong with you, but if you choose to be conscious, not all the time, you don’t have to be conscious all day about everything, but around whatever habit you’re trying to change or whatever result you’re trying to create in your life, choose at times to sit down and go, okay, what happened there?

Again, back to number two, critical thinking and move into consciousness. Now there are a lot of ways you can help yourself to do this. Some of the ways I like are journaling. You might stop every day and write down what happened today. Did I get up when I said I would or not? And if not, why not? And if so, why? What was going on? What was I thinking? What helped? What made it easier? What made it harder? What happened leading up to it? What happened afterwards? Like paying attention, moving into consciousness. That’s exhausting, right? And again, just do it on occasion.

I’m not even saying you have to do this every day. Maybe once a week. You sit down and you assess the week and then you take a moment to be conscious and you take a moment to not be confused, just to own the answer and you get specific. Remember we’re not going to be general, we’re going to get specific.

Okay. Number four, numbing. Numbing ourselves out prevents self-accountability. In other words, instead of taking a look at what’s going on and paying attention and writing it down and asking some really useful questions and gaining some useful information to help me going forward, I will just numb out from that instead. I will just get onto social media instead. I will just do some online shopping instead. 

Like we literally don’t even take the time and this is not unusual. This is the way most people operate in the world. Instead of working on improving my life in this slow, challenging way, I will just give myself a temporary hit of life improvement with a cookie or some pornography or social media or et cetera. 

So numbing is a really great way to trick your brain into believing that you have the life you want instead of being willing to do the slow, hard work of creating the life that you want. It’s a dangerous world that we live in because numbing is so easy to do. 

But if you’re numb to the idea that your life doesn’t look how you want, that your habits aren’t creating what you want, that your health isn’t what you want, that your relationships aren’t what you want, that your money isn’t what you want, et cetera. Then you miss out on the part of you that is capable of fixing it, improving it, changing it. 

Okay? So, numbing is preventing self-accountability in many, many cases. Number five, this is probably the main reason. The main reason we are not good at self-accountability, okay, is because of shame. Shame and/or guilt. Even though I do believe those things are slightly different, I’m just going to lump them together for the purposes of this because shame and guilt will prevent you from holding yourself accountable. If you sit down, like what is accountability, right?

If I want to hold one of my employees accountable, for example, that means I’m going to sit down with them on occasion and we’re going to take a look at how they’re doing with regards to their job performance. And I’m going to point out all the things that they’re doing well and commend them and thank them and encouraging them to keep doing them and then point out the areas where they may be falling short. And we’re going to talk about why. We’re going to talk about whether or not they need more tools or training or support, or maybe I wasn’t clear, maybe I didn’t lay out my expectations clearly and or maybe they just need to step it up and we’re going to have a very loving, ideally supportive, friendly conversation about that.

And I’m going to tell them, listen, I value you. I think you’re an amazing asset to this company and I want to see you succeed here. And these are the things that need to happen for you to keep succeeding here. And I hope that you choose to do them. And I hope you’ll let me know if you need support and help doing them. 

But this isn’t about like guilting anyone or shaming anyone. It’s just about getting clear about what’s expected and seeing what’s necessary for that employee to win and succeed. And maybe they choose not to, and they don’t last, and maybe they choose to, and they do, and then we’re both happy about that, right? But that’s accountability in the end.

So self-accountability then is the same thing, where you sit down with yourself and you say, hey, what’s going on? I notice in these areas, you’re making great progress. And I notice that in all these other areas, you are struggling. What’s going on? What do you need? Do you need more support? Do you need more tools? Have I given you an unrealistic goal? Have I set the expectations too high? Did you know I believe that you’re capable of this? I know it’s possible for you. I believe in you. Let’s go. Okay?

The guilt and the shame that we layer on top of it will prevent you from continuing to assess yourself in this way. It will prevent you from staying conscious. It will prevent you from getting specific if you turn around and make it mean all kinds of terrible things about yourself.

It will make you want to just numb instead. It will contribute to all these other things that we just talked about. It’s the reason why when I ask people, why do you think you didn’t follow through on what you said you were going to do? They say, I don’t know. Because if they own the truth, I was afraid, I didn’t feel like it, I preferred to watch Netflix instead, or I just wanted to sleep longer, or I’m afraid people will judge me, et cetera. If they tell the truth, then they’re going to judge themselves for that truth, that they’re worried, maybe I’m going to judge them too. I don’t know, we worry about that.

But with self-accountability, if you just choose never to judge yourself, if you decide, listen, I always have a good reason, a valid reason, even if that valid reason is I’m a human being, I’m afraid, my brain just wants to rinse and repeat, developing new habits is challenging. Okay. It’s valid. It’s all valid. And yet we’re going to do it anyway.

Okay. So you have to be willing to drop the shame and the guilt. And people ask me how, and I tell them, you just choose not to go down that path. You’ll notice, oh, I ate the food I told myself I wasn’t going to eat, or I didn’t work on my business the way I said I was going to work on my business, or I yelled at my kids when I told myself I wasn’t going to yell at my kids. Okay, so what was going on? What was that about for me that day? Why did I choose otherwise? The answer can’t be because there’s anything wrong with you because there’s not.

Okay, so drop the shame and the guilt. Identify the reason. I was tired. I thought that food was going to be the answer to my stress, or I didn’t go to bed on time, or I thought to myself, it’s no big deal whether I get up or not it doesn’t really matter. All right, this is just good information. You with me? You see how we like find the information and then we just stop. We don’t go down the path of what’s the matter with you, you’re never gonna do it. We go, okay, that’s good to know. So now what?

And this brings me to the sixth and final thing that I wanna offer to you, the sixth and final reason that we tend to self-sabotage instead of hold ourselves accountable in a useful way, and that is denying rewards, okay? A part of accountability is rewards. It’s not just, hey, don’t forget, this is what we expect and you’ve dropped the ball. And it’s not just consequences for not doing things. It’s also rewards.

And rewards can be actual, tangible, like things that you do or buy or whatever, but they don’t have to be. Rewards can just be acknowledgement. Do you know what goes a really, really, really long way for human beings? Just a kind acknowledgement. Hey, thanks for doing that. I’m so proud of you. Well done. I knew it was possible. I’m so proud of you for doing it.

Why do we give our kids like chore charts and things? Because the human brain likes to check off a box or put a sticker or put a star on something and see a tally of wins on paper. And that is not just true for kids. That is true for adults as well.

This is why apps like MyFitnessPal can be so helpful if you’re trying to change your eating habits. It’s not just about tracking your food, although it will do that, right? Tracking what food you’re eating and making sure you’re more consciously aware of what you’re eating. But also, if you’re trying to hit a certain number at the end of the day, and when you hit that number, you get a little reward of look at me winning. That’s a good thing.

Now, again, if you’re going to use that same thing then to guilt and shame yourself, now we have a problem. That’s not what I’m talking about. Okay, not talking about having a star chart and beating yourself up when you don’t get a star. The star chart is just about reward. It is not about punishment.

You can do little things. Drop a bead in a jar every time you do it and watch the jar fill up. Check a box on a chart that you make. Sit down and tell yourself, well done me, I’m so proud of you for doing that. Thanks for doing that. Reward yourself with something that doesn’t have, you know, any kind of negative back end consequence, such as go for a walk.

That’s a great reward for me. Give myself time to play the piano is a reward for me. What are the rewards that are going to serve you in the long run, not just become a numbing escape in the moment?

So let me go through those one more time. There are six things we do that prevent self-accountability. If you can pay attention to these and you don’t have to master all of them, but you’ll notice there’s a lot of overlap with all of them, then I promise you can develop the skill of self-accountability. You can strengthen your ability to hold yourself accountable. And I highly recommend that you do.

The first one is we stay too general, so get specific. Number two, we choose to be confused instead of just owning the answer, the truth that we know about what’s going on. Number three is unconsciousness. You’ve got to move into consciousness, do some journaling on occasion, sit down and have a conversation with yourself. 

Number four is numbing. We numb ourselves out, which makes it challenging to keep doing the hard work. Number five is shame and guilt. You do not need to be ashamed or feel guilty when you’re not succeeding. I promise you. 

Shame and guilt will not get you there long-term, they send you the opposite direction. And number six is denying rewards. You gotta reward yourself as you go. The ultimate reward will be the new habit or the result that you’re trying to create, but you’ve got to have little tiny rewards along the way to counteract the hard work that your brain is having to do, or it won’t want to stick with it long term.

All right? Self-accountability. That’s what we’re all about around here. Again, if I forgot anything, please send it to my DMs. I’m @jodymoorecoaching on Instagram, Facebook, you can find me there. 

Alright, have a beautiful rest of your day everyone. Take care.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: jodymoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s jodymoore.com/freecoaching.

The post 501. Self-Accountability (Encore) appeared first on Jody Moore.

Do you ever feel like you’re just going along with what everyone else believes without really examining it for yourself? What if I told you that intentionally choosing what you want to believe about anything in your life is a powerful skill to cultivate?

In this episode, I explore how to decide for yourself what you want to think about topics that may be considered controversial or have a lot of societal baggage attached to them. Using the examples of social media, video games, and MLMs, I walk you through the process of examining your beliefs and choosing thoughts that serve you.

Get ready to open your mind and consider new perspectives that you may not have entertained before. You’ll come away with my favorite tools and skills that you can use anytime you want to take control of your mindset and create the results you desire in your life.

Want to learn to coach the way I do? Join my Better Than Happy Coach Training waitlist right now to be the first to get details when doors open!

Want free coaching? Join me for a complimentary coaching workshop by clicking here.

If you’re serious about succeeding in your coaching business, you want to join our newest program, The Lab: Coach Access. Click here to find out more!

Mentioned on the Show:

As human beings, one of the things that we do naturally, without even thinking about it, is look to our “tribe” to determine how we’re going to think about things, especially new topics or subjects in our lives. We look to the people that we care about. We look to the people that we trust or respect. We look to people whose opinions we care about. And we gather information about how they think about things, and we consider it, and for the most part, go along with what the majority of our tribe believes.«

This is fine for many things in our lives. But there are times when you’re going to want to back up and choose for yourself how you’re gonna think about things because the truth is my friends, it’s all subjective. It’s all up for grabs. And today I want to teach you how to intentionally choose what’s true for you when it’s useful to do so.

This is Episode 500. Choose What’s True: Thoughts On MLMs, Video Games, and Social Media. Let’s go.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

Sometimes, listening to a podcast is enough. But sometimes, you’ll feel inspired to go deeper. If you hear things that speak to you in today’s episode, consider it your invitation to a complimentary coaching workshop.

On this live, interactive Zoom call with me, you’ll get a taste of the power of this work when applied in real life. You can participate, or be a silent observer. But you have to take a step if you want to truly see change in your life… two steps, actually. Head to jodymoore.com/freecoaching and register. Then you just have to show up. Your best life is waiting for you. Will you show up for it? JodyMoore.com/freecoaching. I’ll see you there.

Let’s be honest. You kind of like my voice this way. It’s a little bit cooler, a little bit sexier, a little bit raspier than my normal voice, right? I kind of like my voice a little bit better this way, but also I apologize because obviously I’m getting over a cold. Hopefully I’m not going to do anything too gross into the microphone today, but no promises.

Thank you for being patient. This is Jody Moore. I just don’t sound like myself, but I’m delighted to be here with you today. I sound way worse than I feel, and I’m kind of on a high right now, if I’m being honest.

I gotta give you a little update. I’m on a high because of two things that I just did back to back. First of all, a five-day, almost six-day girls trip to Cancun with seven other incredible women. I mean, I don’t have to expand on that. You already know how amazing that would be, right? But what I do want to say is this. Cancun is beautiful and the weather was amazing and the food and the resort and all of that.

But I could have been at the Holiday Inn Express Salt Lake City with these women and still got the healing and laughter and connection and just whole experience of it because that’s what it’s really about, right? Is the people you’re with, the relationships, the memories. I mean, we had a great time. I won’t go into detail, but anyway, highly recommend that you give yourself the gift of some, whatever’s fun for you. Maybe that’s not fun for you, but for me, being with girlfriends is just amazing.

And especially those of you who are, maybe stay at home parents, or you’re working in a job you don’t love or something, please give yourself breaks and recreation and rest and time to laugh. It’s so healing and so necessary. So I did that and then right after that, I went to a conference of sorts, a seminar and workshop, you might say. I had no idea really what it was gonna be. I went with some people that I trust and respect and they said it was great and they’d been before and so I’m like, all right, let’s go.

And it was incredible. It was a personal development workshop and focused on things like understanding your conscious and subconscious mind and how they work together, and then understanding how to leverage breath work and meditation and visualization and things, and goal setting to create your ideal life and achieve impossible goals. And you know I love all that stuff. So that was phenomenal.

Again, amazing people, great, really well-facilitated event. And I hope you’re doing things like that for yourself too. I hope you are getting some personal development and I hope this podcast is a piece of that for you. But I want you to go deeper as well in whatever you’re doing in terms of your personal development. Your fitness, your mental and emotional fitness matters and it will make all the other stuff easier.

Even if you still have to go home and do a job you hate or your life is really hard in a lot of ways, I’m telling you, it will be exponentially easier if you’re investing in your own development and growth and self-care. There, just saying that as your life coach.

Okay, so today, you might have thought the topic of this was kind of odd, right? Like the choosing what’s true part, not so odd, but to get as specific as MLMs and video games and social media is not really common for me in my podcast titles. But I noticed that when I don’t put those things in, people later on will come back and go, what was the episode where you talked about MLMs again? And I’ll go, I don’t know. I don’t remember. So I’m just trying to make it easier to go back and find if you want to revisit this at any point.

But my objective today is to teach you a process that you can use in your life to make your life better, both today in your current experiences, in your day-to-day emotions, your relationships, whatever work you’re doing in the world, but also to create what you want for tomorrow. And tomorrow meaning anytime in the future, right? 

So I wanna teach you a process. I wanna give you some tools and skills and tell you how I decide what I’m going to think about things, what I’m going to believe is true in the end about certain subjects.

And I’m going to use those topics of MLMs and video games and social media to demonstrate for you because those are three topics where I think that I think a little differently, if not really differently, than most people. And so it’s not to persuade you. It’s still the way I choose to believe, the things I choose to believe about these topics. That’s not to say that they’re for everyone. That’s the last thing I want, actually. I want to teach you how to decide for yourself, to decide on purpose, because there will be many times in your life when it is useful to do so. And most people have no idea that it’s even an option.

And I know people sometimes get riled up with the whole like, this is my truth kind of talk. And I would agree that there are times when we use that as like an excuse to not be our best selves or not live into our values or something, or to judge or mistreat other people, and I’m not talking about that. But the reality is, it is all subjective. We are all deciding what’s true. It’s just you’re either deciding it unconsciously or you can decide it consciously.

And again, much of the time unconsciously deciding it is going to be fine, but on occasion, I want you to have the tools and the know-how to decide it consciously. Are you with me? Okay, good, I’m gonna assume that you’re in your car or on your walk or whatever going, yes, Jody, I’m with you. We’re gonna proceed, okay?

So I think what I’ll do is I’ll give you the three basic steps, And then as we go through these examples, I’ll try to flesh out what I mean by each of them. Hopefully that will work for us here today.

So the first thing I want you to do is to give yourself time to be undecided about things. Okay? Now again, for much of your life, you don’t have to worry about this. You can just decide like, you know, maybe in your family you love country music and other people say they hate country music or you love, you’re a cat person and some people hate cats. Okay?

So you don’t have to, with every single thing, be like, wait, I need to decide, is country music good or bad? It’s okay to just love country music and love cats, even though some people don’t, or hate cats and hate country music, right? It’s okay to just have opinions.

But let’s say I hate cats and then somebody in my family really wants to get a cat and I’m starting to consider that maybe, you know, we should be considerate of people’s opinions. Maybe this is like, maybe my spouse wants a cat and he or she has some reasons or desires and I want to hear them out, I might decide, you know what, I’m going to be undecided because I’ve been walking around hating cats.

That’s not true for me, I like cats. But you know, some of you hate cats. I’ve been on board with this idea that we don’t like cats. We’re dog people, right? And cats are dumb and there’s whatever. All the reasons why people don’t like cats. And I’ve been thinking that’s just true. Cats aren’t as good as dogs. But maybe I should be open and undecided for a minute here about this.

These two go together, obviously. I don’t want you to think that you have to make a decision even in a fast timeline. Sometimes we have like things going on in life that mean we kind of need to make a decision by a certain timeline, but I like to let myself be completely open and undecided for as long as possible. 

God, I don’t really know how I feel about cats in the example I gave, right? I used to think I hated them, but you know, I’m starting to reconsider that maybe I could like cats. I’m going to be open to being wrong about the idea. And again, we don’t have to go down to like whether cats are better than dogs, but we could be wrong about the idea that we hate cats. Maybe I’m wrong about that. Maybe I’ve just been believing that or I’ve been creating that, but maybe I actually like cats. I don’t know.

This is so useful to be open to being wrong. I was just talking to my health coach today and I told her, you know what? I think I like veggies. I’ve been working with her over a year and she’s laughing at me. She’s like, I remember when we first started working together and you’re like, I’m just not a salad girl. I don’t like, I can’t just like eat a salad for lunch. And I was telling her, I still need more than just salad, if I’m being real. 

I need a piece of bread with it and lots of protein and things, but I kind of think I might be a veggie eater. I think I’m on the lookout for getting more veggies and I’m liking it actually.

So anyway, staying open to being wrong about yourself, about what’s “true”, because we’re talking about subjects here that are highly subjective to people’s opinions, so there is no actual truth, this can be very useful. And I like to stay open as long as possible.

The last thing that we’re going to talk about is, again, all of these overlap a lot, but like remembering that it’s all subjective, that it’s all made up. Like people should drive the car in this way. You should put your hands at 10 and two. Someone made that up. Now, I’m not saying this made up out of thin air. Like there’s such a thing as the scientific method and research and studies, and they’re experts who make recommendations.

And it’s all, I’m not saying it’s like, there’s not good reason for why we made it up. It’s still made up, right? We see examples of this all the time. I think about how when I was a baby, my mom put us to sleep on our stomachs because that’s what they were told was best for babies. That was best for our health and our development and our safety and whatever reason. And then by the time I started having kids, they’re like, don’t put them to sleep on their stomachs, put them to sleep on their backs. That’s the safest way.

Again, not just made up out of thin air. We have studies and data and all of that. I’m not ignoring any of that stuff. I’m just saying it’s still someone’s perspective and in every study, every scientific study or research that anyone could bring us about something, there’s no 100%. There’s always the exception, right? And so that’s why I like to think about what’s true for me.

I’m not out there trying to say this is what’s true for everyone and everyone should follow this with what I’m teaching you here today. I’m saying decide what’s true for you. And it doesn’t matter how many studies we have or how many people feel a certain way. That may or may not serve you to believe that thing is true for you. Do you get what I’m saying? It’s all subjective. It’s all made up and it’s actually all changing and evolving regularly.

It’s so crazy to think about this, right? Like the best way to raise kids, the best way to discipline kids, the best way to parent kids, changes so much. This is why none of us are perfect parents, and this is why we make our grandparents’ mistakes. Because maybe in one generation, the loudest overarching message about parenting is you need to be strict with kids and expect a lot and have consequences when they don’t obey, if you will. 

And somebody inevitably goes too far, and then in the next generation, the message becomes be kind and loving and nurturing and not so hard on kids. And then inevitably, we take it too far, and then in the next generation, the message has to be stop coddling kids, expect more from them, encourage them and even expect them to do hard things.

Like, why does it go back and forth like this, the pendulum swinging? Because it’s all subjective. And so many people are not choosing for themselves, for their specific situation, what’s the best way to think about it? And I don’t want you to be one of those people, I want you to choose for yourself. Okay, are you with me? 

All right, here’s the thing. We’re gonna talk first about social media. So this is what I think is interesting about social media, the overarching story that I hear a lot about social media. And I don’t disagree with this story entirely, but let me just set up the premise. 

When I say, what do you think about social media? If I were to ask the average person today that question, most people would give me some kind of an answer about how it’s really not very good for us. It’s creating a lot of problems, especially with our youth. It’s highly addictive, causes us to compare ourselves to one another in a way that’s not useful. It gives us quick dopamine hits in a way that’s not healthy for our brain. 

Not only bad for our mental health and especially for a young developing mind, but it can be very dangerous, right? For somebody that is susceptible to outside influence that might not be good for them. And at the same time, it’s hard not to get sucked in and find yourself scrolling more than you want to. 

Now, that same person who has kind of that viewpoint on social media would probably also say that there is some good that can come from it, right? And there can be some really useful ways to utilize social media. 

Now, like I said, I don’t actually disagree really with any of that. It’s just not my main story that I go with about social media because here’s the thing, The way some of you found me, a lot of you found me, was through social media. And the way that I get my workout into the world and find more people that want to increase their mental and emotional fitness level and, you know, want to learn from me in some capacity or another in ways that I want to teach and make an influence is through social media.

 And so it feels not good to me to think that social media is terrible and evil and bad and then be on social media trying to promote my business. Not to mention, I like to get on social media every now and then and learn from other people, other experts, develop myself and just see what my friends are up to and see what’s going on in the world. So it feels like such a double standard to me to villainize social media and then turn around and use social media.

And so at one point I decided, what am I gonna think about social media? Now, before I tell you that, I also wanna add, for those of you who are entrepreneurs like me, I got a lot of coaches here that listen, or other kind of service providers, online marketers, if you will. There’s also a big story in that world about the algorithm.

And even in the general public, if soon as I say the algorithm, what do you picture? You picture something positive and good or do you picture something negative? That’s mysterious, like a villain that’s dark and hidden. And it’s always changing, and as soon as we figure it out, then it changes again. Now we have to relearn how to do all this stuff, and it’s just feeding me content, and it knows where I live, and it hears everything I say, and it’s capturing all my personal information and ooh, the evil social media people and machines and AI and all that, right?

So again, back to what I was saying about the fact that social media has been an amazing tool for me both to learn and find help for my own life, but also to go out there and help others. I don’t feel good about villainizing it and then being a hypocrite and turning around and utilizing it.

And so I gave myself a lot of time and I still, I have the way I currently think about it, but I’m still open to being wrong. I have plenty of time to decide how I want to think about social media. And I can change my mind at any time and I’m totally open to being wrong. But again, in the very beginning, I had to be really open to like, maybe I’m wrong about this, about the way I’m thinking about social media.

Again, I remember that it’s all subjective. I can think about it any way that serves me and what I want to think about it. So this is what I think about it currently. I do think that it’s an amazing tool.

I feel so grateful for it as a tool because again, I can get in front of more people and help more people because of social media. And I can do it with very little money. I could even do it with no money. I can do it with ease because the tool is set up. Everything I need to edit my videos, for example, or to put it out there to more people.

Again, just like I can put work out and help people, I can receive help, I can hear from experts at like no cost and very little effort even to learn from the most educated minds and experts in any topic I might want help with. And I can learn from them in quick sound bites. I don’t have to invest necessarily two hours. I can just get a little tip, a little bit of help.

I think of social media as the new yellow pages, right? Those of you who are too young to remember this, we used to have a big phone book with everybody’s phone numbers in it, which is interesting, right? We’re like, social media knows everything about you. I’m like, well, I mean, we used to put all of our numbers in all of our phone numbers in a big book and just send them out to anyone who wanted it. Interesting, but whatever. I’ll talk about that piece in just a minute.

There was a section of the phone book in the back called the yellow pages. And that was where you went if you needed to find, like, let’s say I need a plumber. I would go to the yellow pages of Spokane, Washington, where I was living as a child, and we would look up plumbers in the area. And then we’d have some, you know, options in there.

I wouldn’t have to do that anymore. I can go to social media and look up plumbers in my area and I can see their social media account and then I get a better feel for who these people are. Do I feel like I trust them? Does it seem like they do good work? Do they have proof that they do good work, are other people saying nice things about them? And then we go from there. It’s just a much, much better way to serve one another, if you will.

Originally it started as connection for families and friends, and I think it can serve that purpose too. But my main use of social media is to learn from others and then to try to also serve others through my business. So that’s what I think about that.

Now let’s talk about the whole privacy thing. Again, everybody gets so up in arms about how they know everything. That if I was shopping for something, next thing I know in my social media feed, it’s showing me those things. And my thought is like, why is that bad? I mean, If I’m shopping for a pair of red shoes and suddenly red shoes start showing up on my feet, isn’t that useful? Because I was looking for red shoes and now I’m getting red shoes and thank you because I wanted to buy some red shoes.

And I get it, there are limits to how much of your personal information you want available and to how many people, but this is not new, my friends. Everybody who works in your children’s school district knows your address and your phone number. Everybody who works for your gym or your bank or any number of other things has access to your name, your email, your address, they can find out anything they want to about you. And that’s been the case for a very long time. They can find out a lot, I should say. Not anything, but a lot. And that’s been the case forever.

So again, I’m not saying we shouldn’t have some regulations around it. I’m not saying there aren’t boundaries maybe, but I don’t really care if they know what I’m shopping for or they know what I’m struggling with, or they know what I like. I’m like, yeah, please show me more of what I like. I don’t really have anything to hide at this point. I guess if you got something to hide, maybe that’s a bad thing, but that’s a whole ‘nother problem, right?

So whenever people get mad about the algorithm, they’re like, I was just talking about this in my kitchen and now it’s in my feed. I’m like, isn’t that amazing? I love that so much. People look at me funny. Just saying, that’s what I just decided to believe because I stayed open and I realized it’s all subjective and it’s all made up and maybe I’ll change my mind one day, but not today, that’s how I feel about it today. Does that mean I don’t need to teach my kids and keep people safe and be cautious? Of course not. 

So the other thing I think about social media is that just like any other tool, it can be used as a weapon. And so we do need to be cautious. My scissors are a tool, but they can be a weapon. That’s why I need to carry them in the proper way and I need to teach my children how to carry them in the proper way.

And I need to teach my kids more so than like guarding my kids against, I mean, again, not that we don’t talk to them and don’t give them social media until they’re mature enough to be able to handle it. I’m on board with all of that. I’m just saying I would much rather develop in my kids confidence and critical thinking than try to prevent any negative, harmful person from coming in their life, because that’s just not even possible.

I will try, don’t get me wrong. I’m going to try to prevent people from taking advantage of them, but if I’m teaching them confidence and critical thinking and how to come and talk about, to their dad and I, about anything that they feel uncertain about, that’s the best way to protect them against whatever might come, if you will.

Last thing I wanna say about social media is I wanna talk about the algorithm. For those of you who are entrepreneurs, coaches like myself, and you hate the algorithm, you definitely should rethink that, in my opinion. I rethought it long ago. I was on board with everyone being like, the stupid algorithm, you can’t even figure it out. You have to play this game. And then one day I went, wait a second, it doesn’t feel good. It’s not changing the algorithm. It’s not making this whole thing go away.

And what I realized at some point is the algorithm is amazing because you know what it does? It just puts my stuff in front of the people who need it. That’s what it’s trying to do. It’s trying to find the people who want and who want to listen to me or watch my video or hear what I have to say and it’s trying to exclude the people who don’t. And that’s what I want too. We want the same thing, the algorithm and I.

Now the algorithm wants it because they want me to pay money and whatever, it’s a business, okay. I have thoughts about how I feel overall about the people making money off of all this that are not all positive. But I’m just saying in general, the algorithm’s a brilliant thing because before the algorithm, we just had to like put up a billboard and hope that the right person drove by and saw it or take out an ad in a magazine, or a newspaper, or on television, and hope that our people come by and see it.

But with the algorithm, we don’t have to do that anymore. We just make good, engaging content, and we talk to our person, and the algorithm will go and find them. And it rewards high quality work and valuable information, as it should. 

That means rather than try to play the game, I just need to work on getting better. I need to do a better job of helping people. And I need to be more specific about who I help and then the algorithm will go find those people. I love the algorithm so much and I’m glad it changes. You know why it changes? To improve upon what its mission is, which is the same as my mission, go find people who want my help.

So that is how I think about social media. Now, notice what I did to get there is I stayed open, I consider that I could be wrong, and here’s the other thing I forgot to add that’s really important too. I listen to the thoughts of people who are quote unquote successful and how they think about these topics. And I consider the way they’re thinking about it. Doesn’t mean I just blindly follow anyone, but I consider the viewpoints of people who are successful.

Now what is successful? That’s for you to decide, okay? So to me, when it comes to social media as both a consumer, a mother, and also a business owner, I’m looking to people who are similar to me, people who have similar values to mine. 

In other words, they care about honesty, they care about serving people, they care about safety and protection. Also though, people who are succeeding in their businesses and are using social media to do so. Those are the people whose stories I want to listen to and consider, not just the default people necessarily in my life. Some of them have different opinions than me about social media. That’s cool. No problem.

I’m not they don’t have to think about it my way. But it’s okay if I don’t think about it their way because they’re not “succeeding”. They don’t have businesses. They don’t care about that part. They don’t even understand that part. So it’s totally cool for them to think about it that way. But I’m going to think about it in the way that still feels true to me. I’m not talking about trying to trick myself, but I can see the logic behind the way I just described it to you. And it serves me really well to think about it that way because then I don’t have to feel like I’m doing something outside of my value system, outside of my truth.

Social media. All right, let’s talk about video games. And then I wanna talk about MLMs. That’s the one I’m most excited to talk about. So I’m just going to do a quick video game thoughts. You know, as a mom, if you’re a mom or a dad or a parent or grandparent, whatever, you probably like me hear everybody talk about how terrible video games are for kids, which is interesting because we used to hear about video games a lot and now we hear about social media and phones way more, which is interesting. It’s going to add to what I’m going to tell you in just a minute.

But I went through this process of deciding and the reason why I had to decide is because I have kids who like to play video games and I don’t really like being the video game police. And for some of them, I think the video games are their hobby, and even some of them play games online with people, and that’s their kind of one of their forms of social connection. And I didn’t want to just say no video games.

Now you can. Again, I’m not trying to convince you how to think about video games. I’m just telling you why I had to reconsider the idea that video games are terrible and evil and rotting everyone’s brains and no one should play them.

So here’s what I think about video games now. Again, just like with social media, they need limits, they need boundaries. I don’t deny all the research that exists about what it does to your head and your emotions and your mental health and all of that. I’m not denying any of that.

I’m just saying not always, not necessarily, and everyone’s unique and different. And I do think that video games, again, like I said in the beginning, that they get talked about less because now phones are the new villain. They were new for a while, right? The extent to which we had these really complicated games anyway that were really detailed and really appealing to our young people especially was new enough that we villainized it.

But did you know that when baseball first became a thing, all of the adults sat around saying, that is a terrible thing to be doing. Why would you go out in the street with a stick and hit a ball? What a waste of time. Our young people are wasting their time, they’re not being productive, they’re not accomplishing the things that they could accomplish because they’re so busy playing baseball. It sounds so funny now when I say it, right? Because baseball is actually a really fun thing for some people. And has some benefits.

And I do think the same is true of video games. It’s fun for some people and it has some benefits. And does it need some monitoring and some guidelines? Sure, of course. But I’m not gonna villainize it, especially if my kids love it. Because now we’re going to war, and I don’t like going to war with my kids. I wanna at least understand why they love it. I wanna be curious about what they love about it. I want to guide them and teach them and have parameters, but I don’t want to villainize the thing that they love.

And so I’ve shifted how I think about them. And I, again, might change my mind at some point, or I might look back and go, that was wrong. I should have thought about it differently. But for today, that’s what I choose is true.

Okay, let’s talk about MLMs, my favorite one. MLM, multi-level marketing. If you haven’t heard of an MLM, I bet you have, but these are the types of companies where somebody sells something and they make a commission off of it and then they recruit people to sell the product as well and every time the people they recruited sell it, you get a little bit of commission off of what they sold even and so on and so forth. They recruit people on down the chain.

You can make a lot of money in an MLM because of the system of making a little bit of something off the people that you recruit and off of who they recruit, etc. Now, this business model, this is just a business model is all it is, right? Has gotten a pretty bad rap in recent years. And for valid reason.

Most people when you say MLM, by the way, here’s the new thing people do, they don’t say MLM anymore, they say direct sales. Because they know that the word MLM, a lot of people have a negative conversation with it, so they’re like, you know what we’ll do is call it direct sales. That will sound better. When you hear people talk about a direct sales company, they’re talking about an MLM. Same thing, just a different term. Okay?

And so I like to say MLM on purpose because I like to see what comes up for people. And I like to be confident in my own view of it. Because I actually love MLMs. I think they’re amazing. I think it’s a great business model. I don’t think it’s for everyone, and I don’t think every MLM out there is a great company doing great things. I think some of them can be shady and whatever, just like any other business model, just like any other company.

But there’s so many things about MLMs that I love. Now, why did I decide to think that way about it? Well, first of all, 11 years ago, 12 years ago maybe, I decided to start selling a product for an MLM. Why would I do such a thing? What’s the matter with me?

Well, because I found the product and I loved the product and I couldn’t stop talking to everyone about it. Which is typically how it goes with an MLM. They produce some of the best products on the planet because they rely on that in order to succeed. They don’t usually do traditional marketing. 

They rely on everybody in their company to love it enough that they can’t stop talking about it. And that’s why I was years ago with the product that I found was cleaning product and so as you talk about a lot people like I wanna try that. If you have a link to give them and you make a little money off it, that’s a win for everyone, right?

So at any rate, when I decided maybe I’m going to sell this product, I was kind of looking for something to do. I was in between my corporate job and this was right before I started coaching. I had to decide how am I gonna think about MLMs? Because everybody hates them.

Now, let me, again, let me give you the backstory about why most people hate them. Not everybody hates them, I’m just saying some people do. And here’s why. There are some people whose approach to building their MLM is to really hound all their family and friends. Okay? So I’m not talking about like just introducing it and offering it and providing value. I’m all for that. 

I’m talking about the people who just don’t, they won’t take no for an answer. Every time you see them, you know they’re going to talk about it. You’re kind of sick of it. And there’s something that feels a little shady about it.

And the only reason for that, I believe anyway, it’s not because most people are slimy and selfish and they only care about making money off of you. I just don’t happen to believe that about most people. I just think that most people when they get into sales and recruitment, they’re not very good at it yet. They don’t quite know how to do it in the “right way”, which is a way that serves everyone but still is honest and truthful.

And that’s okay, I’ve been that person. I had sales jobs back in the day that I wasn’t good at, and I probably at times was like too soft and didn’t talk about it enough, and at other times I was probably too aggressive and pushy and annoying. And that’s just the reality. Like learning how to sell a product or service or something and learning how to recruit people onto a team is a skill.

So anyway, you get a whole bunch of people into MLMs and you’re going to get some people that aren’t very good at it. And eventually they can become better at it or maybe there are some people who never do. And again, just like in any company, in any business model, most people have good, honest intentions, but there’s a handful that don’t. There’s a handful that are selfish or slimy or greedy or whatever. That’s the reality of any business model. But certainly people chalk it up to MLMs, right, when they hear that.

The next thing is sometimes these companies will kind of over-promise, if you will. This is what I hear people say anyway. I hear people say they over-promise. They tell you that you can make all this money and they show you examples of people who have made all this money. And the reality is it’s really hard to do. I’ve heard this about the coaching industry too, by the way. I’m sure people say this about a lot of industries, but certainly MLMs.

So here’s the truth. I don’t like personally to oversell things. I try really hard not to. Those of you who came to Marketing Bootcamp that I taught yesterday, I begin with like, I try to inspire people about what’s possible because I like to be inspired about what’s possible. 

And then I like to follow it up with the real truth, which is this is going to require a lot of you. It’s gonna require your time, it’s gonna require your effort, may require a financial investment. It’s certainly going to require that you grow and develop yourself. And growth and development is often uncomfortable. It’s filled with also moments of fulfillment and satisfaction, but it also is uncomfortable and challenging.

And so I think most people want to tell the whole story like that. They just, again, are not good at it. And then there are some people maybe who are kind of shady and they oversell it. Again, I think the biggest one is because we’re just so wanting to fit in with the tribe that if I am gonna join an MLM and most people don’t like MLMs, then they’re gonna judge me for that. 

But I decided long ago that people can judge me all day long. And if I’m out there doing what I want to do, which is helping people, making an impact, and creating a life I love, making the kind of money I want to make, then they can judge me all day long. I’m good with it, right? They just don’t understand, okay?

So again, I apply my process. I listen to thoughts of people who are “succeeding,” in a way that I wanna succeed. So listen, if you wanna hear some ideas about how to think about MLMs, listen to people who are succeeding at MLMs and are also what you consider to be good, honest, forthcoming people. 

People who you like being around, people who value their relationships and have balance in their life. People who maybe have a spiritual practice or a personal development practice. People who want to give back and who really care about others. That to most of us is what success is. And there are people like that in any business. And there are also the shady kind. 

Don’t listen to them, but certainly don’t get your story from someone that tried an MLM and failed at it and quit and walked away. Or somebody who’s, this is the thing we get most of our stories about how to think about things from people that are unhappy and grumpy and bitter and upset. 

And I’m not saying we don’t have valid reasons for being unhappy at times. I’m not saying that you should judge those people. I’m just saying they’re not the ones that I decide how I’m going to think about things from. They’re just not. Because if you think about things the way other people think about things, you’re going to get the same results those other people have. 

So make sure that the people you’re listening to have a result that you want. And if they have the opposite result, I would definitely filter out what they’re saying. But if they just don’t have a result in that area at all because they have no experience in it, they’ve never tried it, they’re not the best person either to get your story from. Okay?

So this is what I think about MLMs. I kind of said earlier I love them. I actually have an affiliate link or a link to a product called The Feel Great System because again, I found it a year ago and it changed my life so much. It made it so much easier for me to eat better. It helped me reverse my insulin resistance and it helped me, just like it’s called The Feel Great System, it made me feel great. 

And I’m not gonna go into detail on that today because that’s not the point of this podcast. We’ll put a link in the show notes if you want to learn about that. What I want to tell you is that I took with me the story I already had developed about MLM so I didn’t have to do it this time.

I did it years ago with that other product, but this is what I think. I think it’s one of the best business models out there, and it’s not a perfect business model. It has some shortcomings that I don’t love, but these are the things I love about it. I love that people are incentivized directly through money to help one another. Because we all have this little bit of altruistic gene within us or this human need to help others.

And so I’ve worked in corporate America, I’ve worked in small, tiny little small companies, I’ve had my own company and I’ve worked in MLMs. I have a little bit of experience in all of those kinds of areas, if not a lot. And in every company, there is a component for most people of just wanting to help you out of the goodness of their heart. And that’s great, I love that. But in an MLM, there’s that and the person above you is financially compensated by helping you. And so it’s a win both ways.

If I make more money in my MLM, then the person who’s my coach, who’s guiding me, supporting me, teaching me how to be successful also makes a little bit more money. And I’m so happy. I’m so delighted for that. Right? I think it’s a great business model.

When people are like, oh, well, MLMs, they overpromise. Again, just like in coaching. You know, coaches out there saying, you can make so much money. I’m like, but you can. Actually, like when I worked in corporate, could I make tons of money? Yes, I could technically, But I was at the mercy of many other people. Like, is my boss going to recognize the value of what I’ve been doing enough to give me a raise? And even then, the raise I’m gonna get is probably gonna be like a 5% raise, maybe 10%.

If you’re in a sales job, maybe you’re making commission, maybe you can get you can make more money that way right, but there’s still a limit for me there was anyway in my experience based on the way the company set up based on their regulations and the other way would be to get a promotion, right? As I move up.

So those things for me anyway, and most people took a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of, or at least a little bit of politics. Like, they don’t like you, you’re kind of subject to what they say, right? And then there was a pretty low cap on what was possible unless I’m going to become the CEO one day.

So that’s the other thing people say about MLMs, only the people at the top are making the most money. And I’m like, wait, what company is that not true in? True in every company. I guarantee that at Google, the top level execs are making lots of money and then it gets less and less as you go down the chain to the frontline staff making not that much. That’s how every company is set up.

The difference is that in an MLM, if I’m a “frontline person”, meaning I just joined the company, then I can in very little time, if I’m willing to put in the effort, I’m really willing to learn and grow and go out there and work hard and execute, I can “move up”, make lots of money, and influence a lot of people for good in a pretty short amount of time. It’s up to me. How long it takes is up to me.

And I’m not saying you have to do that. I think it’s great to join a company and make just a little bit extra to help out your family, because you don’t want to put in tons of time and effort. That’s cool too. I’m just saying, it is possible. Just like as a coach, if you own your own business, it is possible. Is it easy? No. Will it require a lot? Absolutely. But it’s doable and you’re not subject to anyone else’s opinion about whether or not they like you, right?

So anyway, the other thing I love about MLMs or direct sales companies, as we say now, is the skills that you learn. And this can be true in a lot of companies too. But I learned a lot of skills in my corporate jobs, in jobs working for other people that I’m really grateful for, that serve me today.

I learned how to sell. I learned how to teach as a corporate trainer. I learned how to present. I learned how to talk with other people. I learned some customer service and things. I learned a little bit about how businesses run. Anyway, I’ve learned a lot of skills, but in a direct sales company, you’re sort of learning it by getting tossed into the pool and you’re either going to sink or swim, right? 

So there’s still, in my experience, and again, I’ve only worked for two companies, but with both of them and from what I hear from other people, there’s usually a lot of trainings available, a lot of videos, a lot of, you know, calls you can come to, conferences you can attend, other people who know how to do this that are excited to teach you how. But you also have your own sort of more or less business in a box where you can go and practice it all and learn it all because the best way to learn it is to get out there and do it.

And one of the things that’s great about an MLM is you’re not selling, “yourself”, you’re selling a product usually. And that makes it easier to learn the skill of selling. When I see coaches come in who want to sell programs, they feel like they’re selling themselves, which you’re not, by the way. You’re selling a transformation for your client. Let’s be clear about that. 

But it feels personal because you’re going to be the one delivering it. You’re going to be the one fulfilling on what they sign up for. Whereas if I’m selling somebody else’s product, then it’s not so personal, which makes it a lot easier to learn the skill of selling.

Not to mention, you don’t have to fulfill on that product. There’s a whole company set up that is usually manufacturing and distributing the product, handling the customer support. It just takes a lot off your plate so you can focus on being an entrepreneur. And learning how to be an entrepreneur is the most valuable skill. Learning how to sell things, learning how to serve people in such a way that they want more help from you is invaluable for anybody, I dare say, to learn. And MLMs are a great way to learn that.

Now, some of the drawbacks are that it isn’t your company. So you have your version of your company within a bigger company, but that bigger company might make changes at some point that you don’t care for. They may change the product.

They may change the comp plan, that happens sometimes in these businesses. So there’s some risk involved. But again, that’s the case in any company I’ve ever worked for. In fact, I used to think working for corporate is the safe way to go. Just go work for a big company and you’ll have a job and you don’t have to worry about running out of money. Jokes on me when I got laid off after 15 years. 

My husband got let go several times from really healthy companies. So anytime you’re working for someone else, they’re the ultimate decision maker. And I’m not saying that to scare you away from getting a job somewhere or whatever. I’m just saying it’s no different with an MLM than any other company in that regard. So you wanna do your due diligence and make sure that you like the values of the company, et cetera.

Okay, like I said, I’m not trying to sell you on MLMs here. I’m trying to use this as an example. Where did I get this viewpoint on MLMs, I wonder? Well, I looked around at people that were succeeding in the world in the way that I wanted to succeed, people that inspired me, people that are happy, generous, kind, wise people that are doing good work in the world, that are helping others, and that are making good money doing it and supporting their families and having good lives and people I respect and look up to, people that are “successful” and winning.

And there’s still tons of people out there who don’t agree with me and it’s cool, I’m cool with it. I love it, in fact. I think it’s great. I think everyone should decide for themselves what they wanna think about it. But if you wanna think differently about any topic in your life, all you have to do is step back and recognize that it’s all subjective. 

And you have to be willing to be wrong about what you’ve been believing. And then you gotta hold space for the time it might take for you to formulate the way you’re gonna think about it now, and even then go into it knowing that you can change your mind at any time. But what is your reason for changing your mind? Do you like your reason? Don’t change your mind because you just feel dumb and you are trying to fit in with the cool kids. Come on, people.

We’re past that, right? Change your mind because it would serve you to change your mind, because it will help you be more of who you wanna be today, and it will help you create what you wanna create in the future. That’s the reason to change your mind. And if other people don’t get it, it’s all right. Just sit back and smile and say, I can totally understand why you would see it that way. And then go home and reinforce believing it however you want to believe it.

If you want help with it, come and sign up for a free public coaching call because that’s what I happen to be very good at doing is helping people choose how they’re going to think about things and what they’re going to believe.

All right. I love you. Thanks for joining me today. Episode 500. What? We should be celebrating, right? I should go get a cake or something. Maybe I will. Get yourself a piece of cake too. I love you. I’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: jodymoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s jodymoore.com/freecoaching.

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