The Mission Driven Mom Podcast

Imagine you’re driving through a city you’ve never visited before. You’re following every turn on the map exactly, and you’re completely lost. So you drive more carefully, pay closer attention, and get even more lost.

At what point does it occur to you that maybe the problem isn’t you? Maybe the map is wrong.

Resources from the Episode:

 AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Audrey: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom.

I want you to imagine you're driving through a city that you've never visited before. You've got the map open in front of you. You're watching every street sign. You're following every turn exactly, and you're completely lost. So you look at the map again. You drive more carefully. You pay closer attention. You retrace your steps and you try again. You get even more lost.

At what point does it occur to you that maybe the problem isn't you? Maybe the map is wrong.

I think we do this in our lives all the time. We try harder. We read another book. We become more disciplined. We promise ourselves we'll respond differently the next time. But sometimes the problem isn't how well you're following the map. The problem is that something on the map isn't true.

And here's the really unsettling part. Most of us don't know that we're looking at a map. We think we're looking at reality. That's what I want to talk to you about today.

Audrey: Back in the '90s, my husband and I went on a long road trip. This was before we had GPS telling us exactly where to turn. So we started our trip with a big map of several states that we'd be driving through. And along the way, we wanted to sightsee in different cities. But our big state map didn't have all the little streets and lights and turns that we needed. So whenever we arrived in a new city, we'd stop at a gas station, we'd fill up the car, and we'd buy a local map.

I have all these memories of sitting in the passenger seat with this giant paper map spread across the dashboard, trying to give my husband directions through a city that we'd never visited before. And even though these maps were pretty accurate, we would inevitably make wrong turns. I'd miss something. We'd miss an exit. We'd have to turn around. Sometimes it was really frustrating, and sometimes we just tried to laugh about it.

But our ability to get from where we were to where we wanted to be depended on two things: the accuracy of our map, and the accuracy of my ability to follow it.

Audrey: Our lives work very much the same way, except in our lives, we're also the map makers. M. Scott Peck wrote:

"We are not born with maps; we have to make them, and the making requires effort."

Stephen Covey taught:

"Each of us has many, many maps in our head. We interpret everything we experience through these mental maps."

From the time we're very young, we're constructing a map of reality and our place within it. We're learning: What are people like? Can I trust them? What happens when I make a mistake? What does it mean when someone is angry with me? What makes me lovable? What does a good mother do? What does a good marriage look like? What does failure mean? What am I responsible for? Who is God? What does God expect from me? Who am I? What am I capable of?

We don't actually sit down and deliberately decide any of those things or put them on a map, but we construct it from what we're taught and what we experience. Our parents contribute to it. Our teachers do, our religion, our culture, books, experts, friends, painful experiences and wonderful experiences. And eventually, we have a fairly elaborate map that tells us how the world works.

The problem is something Covey pointed out:

"We seldom question their accuracy. We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be."

And that's the problem. We forget we're looking at a map. We think we're looking directly at reality.

Audrey: There's an old story I've loved for years that illustrates this beautifully. Six men who had been blind from birth were taken to meet an elephant. And each one approached the animal and touched a different part.

One felt the elephant's side and declared that an elephant was like a wall. Another felt the trunk and said that it was like a snake. Another touched the tusk and said that an elephant was like a spear. Another blind man felt its leg and compared it to a cow. Another one touched the ear and thought it was a fan. And the last blind man grabbed the elephant's tail and decided an elephant was nothing more than a piece of rope.

Then they began arguing about what an elephant really is. And finally, the Rajah interrupted them and pointed out that each man had touched only one part of the elephant. They would have to put the parts together if they wanted to understand the whole.

And here's what I find so interesting about this story. The blind men weren't simply wrong. Each one had encountered something real. The elephant's side really did have some qualities of a wall. The trunk was really somewhat like a snake. And the tusk was like a spear. Their mistake was taking their limited experience of reality and mistaking it for the whole of reality.

Audrey: And I think we do this constantly. Something happens, we experience one part of it, and we interpret it. We draw a conclusion. And then we write that conclusion onto the map.

So for example, let's say my teenage daughter comes through the front door, doesn't say hello, walks upstairs, and shuts her bedroom door. So what happened? She came through the door, she didn't say hello, she went upstairs, she shut the door. But I might say, "She was so disrespectful."

Well, maybe she was. But notice I've already moved from observation to interpretation. And I may keep going like this: She's mad at me. She doesn't want to be around the family. We're growing apart. She doesn't respect me. I've done something wrong. I'm losing my daughter. It spirals out of control.

And by the time I walk upstairs to confront her, I may no longer be responding merely to what actually happened. I'm responding to what I've decided what happened meant.

Now, maybe I'm right. Maybe she was really trying to be disrespectful. But the point isn't that our interpretations are always wrong. The answer certainly isn't to stop trusting your own judgment. We talked about that a few weeks ago. The problem is that we often fail to distinguish between what I observed, what I inferred from that, and then what I concluded. And then I treat all three as if they're actually true. I touched the trunk, therefore I know exactly what an elephant is like.

And this matters because our maps don't just passively sit in our heads. We navigate by them. And what I believe affects how I interpret my experiences in life. It affects everything. My interpretation affects my judgment, and my judgment affects the choices, and the choices, the actions, and the actions have consequences.

So you might think about it kind of like this. There's reality, which leads to the creation of a map, and then we interpret. We make judgments and choices. We take actions, and there are consequences.

Audrey: Which means something I think is incredibly important. A lot of behavior that looks irrational actually makes perfect sense when you understand the map that someone is holding.

Why do I keep rescuing my adult child, even though I know I'm exhausted and it doesn't seem to be helping? Maybe somewhere on my map it says a good mother protects her children from suffering. If that's true, then rescuing makes perfect sense.

Why do I have such a difficult time setting a boundary when someone continually takes advantage of me? Maybe my map says if someone I love is upset with me, I've done something wrong. And of course, if that's true, a boundary feels wrong.

Why do I keep asking everyone what they think before I make a difficult decision? Maybe because my map says wise people know that they're making the right choice before they act. And if that's true, then uncertainty feels like evidence that I shouldn't trust myself.

You see what's happening? We can spend years trying to change our behavior without ever examining the belief that makes the behavior seem reasonable or natural. Stop rescuing. Set the boundary. Trust yourself. Stop worrying. Speak up. Let go. But if the behavior makes perfect sense according to my map, I may find it inherently difficult to change.

And now we're back to something that we've been talking about throughout the last few weeks. Sometimes trying harder isn't the answer. Sometimes we need to understand something better.

Audrey: Remember the invisible contract I told you about a few weeks ago? For many years, some version of this was written on my mental map: If I do motherhood correctly, my children will turn out a certain way.

And so I stayed home full time, and I worked on my own education so I could give them a good one. I even homeschooled. I took them to church. I tried to teach them everything I knew. I gave them experiences. I encouraged their talents and interests. And somewhere underneath all that effort was this belief about how motherhood worked: that if I paid a certain price, I would be guaranteed some kind of certain outcome. That they wouldn't suffer. That life wouldn't be all that hard for them.

And when reality didn't correspond with my map, and my children made choices or had experiences that were really hard that I didn't expect, and life started to look different from how I thought it was going to, it hurt, and I felt confused.

A few weeks ago, I talked about what that experience eventually taught me about the difference between power and control. I have tremendous power over my own choices. I have tremendous influence as a mother, and what I do matters enormously. But my children have their agency, and I don't control their choices, or the choices of all the people around us. And I also don't even know if what's happening is actually best for everyone anyhow.

Now, in terms of what we're talking about today, reality forced me to revise my map. And that brings me back to something else that M. Scott Peck said. He wrote:

"The more effort we make to appreciate and perceive reality, the larger and more accurate our maps will be... If our maps are to be accurate, we have to continually revise them."

Continually revise them. That's hard, because once I've been living according to a particular map for 10 or 20 or 40 years, changing it can feel [deeply threatening?]. And sometimes pain is what finally makes us willing to pull out the map and look at it.

Now, I'm not saying that pain always means that your beliefs are false. Sometimes painful things happen because we live in a world where people die and they get sick and relationships end and people betray us and human beings use their agency in destructive ways. But persistent problems where we feel stuck can invite us to examine the map we're using to navigate them.

Audrey: If I keep having the same conflict, if I keep arriving at the same dead end, if I keep responding the same way, if I keep trying harder and harder and still can't get where I'm trying to go, maybe the question isn't, "What should I do differently?" Maybe there's a question that goes before that:

"What would I have to believe is true for the way I'm responding to this problem to make sense?"

I think that's an incredibly useful question. Let's say every time your adult [daughter?] calls you in crisis, you immediately drop everything and start saving her. You tell her what to do, you make calls, you fix what you can, and then you spend the next three days worrying about whether she's going to follow your advice.

You know that you should stop rescuing her. You've told yourself a hundred times that you're not going to do that, but you don't stop. And instead of immediately asking, "How can I make myself stop doing this?" try asking, "What would I have to believe is true for this behavior to make sense?"

Maybe: If I know how to help and I don't help, I'm selfish. A good mother is always available. If she suffers and I could have prevented it, I'm partly responsible. Her crisis is my crisis. Love means helping someone feel better.

Now we're looking at the map. And now we can ask a much more important question: "Are these things actually true?" Because if the map changes, a different course of action can suddenly make sense.

Audrey: But here's the difficult part. Sometimes we would rather fight with reality than erase one line on that map. We want our marriages to work the way we think marriage should work. We want our children to respond the way we think children should respond. We want God to act the way we think God should act. We want our lives to unfold the way we thought a good life would unfold.

But the territory doesn't change because my map is wrong. If my map says, "There's a road in front of me," and I drive there and discover that the road doesn't exist, I can't stand there all day insisting, "But it's on my map." The road still isn't there.

Reality gets the final word. And this is where I think M. Scott Peck said something incredibly important. He wrote:

"For truth is reality. The more clearly we see the reality of the world, the better equipped we are to deal with the world. The less clearly we see the reality of the world, the less able we will be to determine correct courses of action and make wise decisions."

That's why truth matters. Not merely because it's intellectually interesting to know what's true, but because we have to live here, and we have to make decisions here, and raise children here, and build marriages and solve problems. We have to decide what to do right now, in this reality. And the more accurately my map corresponds to reality, the better equipped I am to navigate it.

Audrey: This is why I don't think the answer is to simply change your story. That's something we hear a lot: you're telling yourself a negative story, so tell yourself a better one. But I don't want to replace a negative story with a positive story just because it's positive, if neither of them is true.

I don't want to tell myself, "My daughter hates me." But I also don't want to automatically replace it with, "My daughter and I have an amazing relationship and everything is fine," because maybe that's not true either.

The goal isn't a better story. The goal is a more accurate map. What actually happened? What do I know right now? What have I inferred? What am I assuming and don't know yet? How else might I explain what I'm seeing? What does the evidence suggest? And maybe most importantly, what principles apply, and what is actually true? That is the work of a truth seeker.

And this is one of the reasons I care so much about education, because real education shouldn't merely give us information to put on our maps. It should make us better map makers. It should help us learn how to ask questions, examine assumptions, seek evidence, understand principles, learn from experience, listen to other perspectives, notice contradictions, and admit when we're wrong, continually bringing our understanding into greater alignment with reality and truth. Because none of us has a perfect map. None of us sees the whole elephant. That's not the goal. The goal is to become the kind of person who's willing to keep correcting the map.

Audrey: So here's what I want you to try this week. Choose one recurring problem. Just one. Something where you find yourself thinking, "Why does this keep happening? Why do I keep reacting this way? Why don't I seem to change this? Why can't I get myself to do the thing?" And ask:

"What would I have to believe is true for the way I'm responding to this problem to make sense?"

Write down what comes to you. Maybe you'll discover: I believe I'm responsible for other people's happiness. I believe conflict means something is wrong with the relationship. I believe disappointing someone is unloving. I believe good mothers prevent their children from suffering. (That was one of mine.) I believe changing my mind means I was wrong and foolish before. I believe if I make the right choice, I'll get the outcome I want.

Don't immediately replace any of your beliefs. Don't tell yourself a more positive story. Don't beat yourself up over what you're looking at. Just look at it. Look at the map and ask, "Is this actually true?" And then maybe ask, "What has reality been trying to teach me that my current map doesn't account for?"

You may not even know the answer immediately, and that's okay. Maybe you need to think. Maybe you need to pray. Maybe you need to get more information or ask better questions. Maybe you need to listen to someone who sees part of the elephant you haven't seen. Maybe what you believe is true but incomplete.

The point isn't to distrust everything you think. It's to become increasingly committed to reality and truth. To become a woman who loves truth more than she loves being right. A woman who can say, "This is what I believed. This is what I understand now. And I'm willing to keep learning."

Because you can work incredibly hard, and you can drive incredibly fast, and you can follow every turn perfectly, but if the map is wrong, working harder won't get you where you want to go. Sometimes growth begins by pulling out the map and being willing to redraw it.

Audrey: And there's one part of our mental maps that I think may be more consequential than almost anything else written on them. It's what we've written about ourselves.

"I failed" somewhere along the way became "I'm a failure." "I made a bad decision" became "I can't trust myself." "My child is struggling" became "I'm a bad mother." "I didn't follow through" became "I'm lazy." At some point, something that happened became a conclusion about who I am. And next time, that's what I want to talk about: when did your problem become your identity?

Thank you so much for joining me today, and I'll see you next time.

How many things do you know you should do that you still have a hard time living?

Resources from the Episode:

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Audrey: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom. I want to ask you a question today:

How many things do you know you should do that you actually still have a hard time living?

For example, you know you shouldn't worry so much about what other people think, but you still do. You know you can't control your adult children, but their choices still consume your thoughts for days. You know you need to set a boundary, but when someone gets upset with you, you cave. You know you need to communicate honestly with your husband, but you avoid the conversation. You know you shouldn't compare yourself to other women, but you still find yourself doing it. You know you should forgive, but you keep replaying the offense.

Or you know you have power over your own response. We talked about that last week. You can recognize what isn't yours to control. You can release it, turn your attention back to yourself, and say, "Okay, what's mine to govern here?" And sometimes you even know what you need to do. So why is it still so hard to do it?

Audrey: That's a question I've thought about for years, because I've spent an enormous amount of time in my life learning. I've read hundreds of books. I've taken classes. I've been to therapy. I've listened to experts. I've studied relationships and parenting and personal development and education and faith. I've gone looking for answers to problems I was trying desperately to solve, and I learned a lot of good things.

But for many years I had this frustrating experience of learning something that sounded completely true, getting excited about it, trying to apply it, and then discovering that my life didn't necessarily change very much. Or something worked for a little while, but it didn't work for another situation. Or I would read this really good book, and that author would tell me something completely different than what someone else did.

One parenting expert would tell me to do one thing, and another would recommend almost the opposite. One relationship expert would tell me I needed to be more accommodating, and another would tell me that I needed stronger boundaries. One person would tell me to trust my feelings, and another would tell me my feelings weren't necessarily to be trusted. One person would tell me to sacrifice, another to engage in more self-care. One would tell me to push through the difficulty. Someone else would say that if something felt hard, maybe it wasn't right for me.

And I was sincerely trying to learn. I was sincerely trying to change. But eventually I began to realize that there was a much deeper problem. I'd been given an enormous amount of answers, but I had never really been taught how to determine which answers were true. And that changed the entire way I thought about education.

Audrey: Because when I was a young mother, I was struggling in my marriage, with my parenting, financially, with my extended family, and especially with my own self-image. I had a lack of confidence and ability to lead myself and my family well. I just felt that something important was missing, and I couldn't figure out what it was. And I tried everything. I sought advice from others. I read books. I tried self-help courses. I went to women's retreats, to financial events. I listened to experts. I went to therapy. Nothing got much better, and I still felt unprepared to be a successful adult and thrive in the major areas of my life.

I finally decided I should try to do something for my own development. I searched for a year and considered all sorts of things, from writing, mentoring, going back to college, selling Usborne books, starting a business. When I was finally introduced to classical liberal education, I had exactly zero reference point for what that was about. I'd literally never heard of it. When I finally saw the book list for the school that offered these online classes, I was blown away. They read the writings of people I'd only heard of. Some of them I'd never heard of. It was intriguing.

As I mentioned before, it took a long time for me to give myself permission to take classes, because I couldn't just take that time and money and effort and put it on myself when I knew my family could use it for other things, until I read this quote:

"There's no better investment a family can make than in the education of the mother."

And I knew it was true. Whoever I became mattered immensely, to me, to my family, to the world around me. And I knew I needed to be better equipped to face these difficult challenges that kept showing up in my life. So I dove in. I took a chance. And that one decision has changed everything.

It was in those classes that I was first exposed to the idea of natural law and universal governing principles. And it was here that my ideas and words were challenged. I was encouraged to ask hard questions, reason things through, look for evidence, and compare ideas. I was told to look for truth and strive for ways to build my life on it. And for the first time in my life, I wasn't just asking, "What does this author think?" or "What does this expert say I should do?" I was learning to ask, "Is this true?"

What assumption is this idea resting on? What evidence supports it? What is the principle underneath it? Does that principle correspond with reality? And if it is true, what does it mean for the particular circumstances of my life?

Audrey: That was a completely different kind of education, because I began to realize that one of the most important distinctions we can learn to make is the distinction between a principle and an application.

So I want to see how well you can make that distinction. I'm going to give you some statements, and as I read each one, I want you to decide: is this a principle or is it an application? Are you ready?

Never go to bed angry. Principle or application? Have a weekly date night with your spouse. Principle or application? Spend one-on-one time with each of your children every day. Principle or application? Wake up before your children do. Principle or application? Don't let your child quit something that they've committed to. Principle or application? Have dinner together as a family every night. Principle or application? Don't argue in front of your children. Principle or application?

Now, every one of these is actually an application. Every one tells you something specific that you should do. That doesn't mean they're bad ideas. Maybe having a weekly date would be wonderful for your marriage. Maybe one of your children desperately needs more individual time with you. Maybe family dinner is one of the best things your family does together. Or maybe waking up before your children makes you a much more peaceful and prepared mother.

The point isn't that the applications are wrong. The point is that they aren't principles. And that distinction matters, because applications can change when circumstances change. But principles don't.

Audrey: So how do we get underneath an application and discover the principle? One thing we might do is start asking why.

So let's take "have a weekly date with your spouse." Why? Why should we do that? Well, maybe because it's important for a husband and wife to spend time together. Okay, why? Because spending time together helps strengthen their relationship. Okay, great. Why does that matter? Maybe because relationships require attention. Maybe because spouses need to know one another. Maybe because intimacy requires communication. Or because relationships deteriorate when they're consistently neglected.

Do you see what's happening? We're digging underneath the application. But here's where it gets interesting. Not everything we discover by asking why is necessarily a principle.

We might discover a goal: "I want a strong marriage." That's a good goal. We might discover a value: "My marriage is important to me." That's a great value. We might discover an assumption: "If my husband and I don't date every week, we're going to grow apart." That's an assumption, and it may or may not be true. You might even discover another application: "We need to spend more time talking." That's still something we're proposing that we do.

So asking why is extremely useful, because it begins taking us underneath the advice. But simply asking why doesn't automatically reveal a principle. Discerning a principle requires us to keep looking for what is actually true.

Audrey: Let me show you the difference, using a principle we teach very early in Level One of the Mission Driven Mom Academy. One of the first principles we introduce is:

Love is the work we do to heal ourselves and others.

Now notice how different that is from "have a weekly date night." "Have a weekly date night" tells you what to do. But "love is the work we do to heal ourselves and others" gives me a truth I can reason from. If that's true, then I can begin asking a completely different kind of question. What would love require here? What would actually contribute to healing myself or this other person in this particular situation? And suddenly one principle could produce many different applications.

Suppose my husband and I have become disconnected. Maybe love does lead us to have a weekly date night, but maybe that's not what we need at all. Maybe what love requires is that I finally have a difficult conversation I've been avoiding. Maybe I need to listen instead of defending myself. Maybe I need to apologize or forgive, or stop trying to control something that belongs to him. Maybe I need to tell the truth about something that isn't working, or get help. Or maybe we do need more time together. Or one of us needs some space to think.

These are all applications, and they're very different. And I'm no longer asking, "What's the rule for having a good marriage?" I'm asking, "What does the principle of love require in the reality I'm actually facing?"

And we could do the same thing with motherhood. If my child is struggling, what does love require? Maybe love means comforting her or listening to her. Maybe love means teaching, correcting, allowing her to experience a consequence. Maybe love means saying no, or even yes. Maybe love that will heal us means giving her another chance. Or it means recognizing that this is her problem to solve, and resisting my desire to rescue her.

Those applications can look almost opposite from one another, and that's precisely why the principle matters. If I confuse love with one particular application of love, then when circumstances change, I don't know what to do.

I might conclude, "A loving mother always makes her child feel better." But is that a principle? No. That's an application, or perhaps even an assumption that needs to be examined, because there may be times when doing the work of love means allowing someone I love to experience discomfort. Or I might conclude, "A loving mother gives consequences." Again, that's not the principle. There may be situations in which consequences are exactly what love requires, and other times they're not.

The principle gives us something stable from which we can reason. The application requires me to look at reality and determine how that principle should be lived here.

Audrey: And this is where I think so much of our frustration with experts and advice comes from. Most of the time, we're being handed the application. Have the date night. Set the boundary. Give the consequence. Validate the feeling. Take time for yourself. Don't let them quit. Spend more time together. And because someone we respect told us to do it, we can easily mistake their successful application for a universal truth.

But I don't just need to know what worked for someone else. I need to understand what's true. Because once I understand the principle, I can begin learning how to reason from that truth in the changing circumstances of my own life.

And I think about how different this is from [how most of us constantly bring in information?]. We have books, we have podcasts and YouTube channels and therapists, coaches, parenting experts, marriage experts, doctors, teachers, pastors, influencers. We take courses. We engage in social media. All day long we're being given all these applications. You should do this, or don't do that, or say this, or never say this. Use this parenting method. Try this morning routine. Set this boundary. Have this conversation. Organize your home this way. Educate your child this way, or manage your marriage this way.

And when these applications contradict each other, what are we supposed to do? Usually we go looking for another expert. We think, "Maybe I just haven't found the right answer yet." So we read another book, we listen to another podcast, ask another friend, find another therapist, take another course.

And again, I am not against any of those things. Other people have taught me an enormous amount. The problem is that no expert can do my thinking for me. I still have to determine what's true in what I'm being taught. And expertise in a particular subject doesn't automatically mean that every assumption underneath an expert's conclusions is true.

Every piece of advice rests on something. It rests on assumptions about human nature, about happiness, children, marriage, freedom, about responsibility, about morality, about what constitutes a good life. And most of the time, by the time the advice reaches us, we're way down at the end of that chain. We hear "do this," but we don't necessarily know what beliefs and assumptions produced the recommendation.

And if I haven't learned how to examine those assumptions and seek evidence and identify principles and reason about how those principles apply to my particular circumstances, then I'm left trying to choose between other people's conclusions. Maybe one of the reasons you've learned so much and still don't know what to do is that you've collected hundreds of applications without understanding the principles that tell you when or whether to use them.

Audrey: And here's where this connects to the question we started with. Why can I know what I should do, genuinely want to do it, and still find it so difficult to actually do it?

Sometimes the answer really is that I need more discipline. Sometimes I understand perfectly well what I should do, and I simply need the courage to do it. Sometimes I really do need more practice. But I think sometimes what looks like an execution problem is actually an understanding problem.

Maybe I don't understand the truth deeply enough. Maybe what I think I know is actually an application someone handed me. Maybe I have competing applications in my head and haven't identified the principles underneath them. Maybe I haven't examined whether the belief driving my behavior is even true. And if that's the case, trying harder isn't going to solve the problem.

We talked about this with Blaine and his viola. Once Blaine finally understood the fundamentals of playing correctly, he still had to practice a lot. Truth didn't eliminate the effort. It made his effort fruitful.

And I think the same thing is true in our lives. We don't really need to work harder at applying every good idea we encounter. We need to become better at discerning which ideas are actually true, and then learn how to bring our lives into alignment with those truths. James Hunter taught:

"Getting people to agree to the principles is easy. The great challenge is learning to move the principles from your head to your heart and from your heart into your habits. It can be a long journey from [head?] to habit."

I love the distinction that James Hunter makes here, because there are really two enormous challenges we face. The first one is: can I discern what's true? And the second one is: can I get that truth from my head into my heart, and eventually into my habits? And those are not simple things.

And that's why I don't want to sit here and tell you that I'm going to give you three easy steps for discerning principles. I'm not, because I don't think that's honest. Learning to discern truth is a capacity. It's a skill. It requires learning to ask better questions, to examine our assumptions, to seek evidence, reason carefully, distinguish principles from applications, and to compare our ideas against reality, listen to our conscience, recognize where we went wrong, and change our minds. And then to take what we discover and practice bringing our lives into alignment with it.

That's a very different conception of education from simply consuming more information. You don't learn to think differently from a checklist. You learn to think differently through the right education. And that's what changed me. I stopped thinking that education was primarily about accumulating information and began to see education as developing my capacity to seek truth and live by it.

Audrey: So I want to give you a very small experiment to try this week. I don't want you to learn anything new. In fact, I'd like you to stop looking for another answer for just a minute.

Choose one piece of advice you already believe you're supposed to be following. Maybe it came from a parenting expert. Maybe from your therapist, or a marriage book, or from church, or a podcast. Maybe even from me. Write it down, and then ask yourself:

Is this actually a principle, or is it an application of a principle?

If you think it's an application, ask, "What would have to be true underneath this for this advice to be sound?" And then sit with that. You may not know the answer, and that's okay. In fact, that's partly the point of the exercise. I want you to begin noticing whether you actually know the difference between the advice you've been given and the truths underneath that advice. Because trying 100 applications [isn't the same thing?] as understanding one principle, and not nearly as effective.

Audrey: And if you're beginning to realize that you don't know how to do this very well, I want to invite you to go to themissiondrivenmom.com. I have a free training there where I go much deeper into natural law, the difference between principles and applications, why discerning principles matters, and how to begin developing this capacity. I'll walk you through some of the same ideas and lessons we work on inside the Mission Driven Mom Academy.

Because this is ultimately why we built the Academy the way we did. I don't want women to spend their lives dependent upon me or any other expert to tell them what to do. I want women to become increasingly capable of asking good questions, seeking truth, identifying principles, making sound judgments, and then learning to live by what they discover. So if this distinction between principles and applications has made you realize that there's an entirely different way you could approach the problems in your life, go watch that training. That's a good next step.

And if you've learned an enormous amount and you're frustrated that it hasn't changed your life as much as you thought it would, I want you to consider something. Maybe the problem isn't that you haven't tried hard enough. Maybe the problem isn't that you haven't consumed enough information. And maybe the answer isn't another book, another podcast, another expert, another application to add to your list. Maybe you don't need to learn more. Maybe you need to learn differently.

Thank you so much for joining me, and I'll see you next time.

Thirty-two years ago I got married. And when I got married, I made a contract.

It wasn't the marriage contract. (Of course I signed a marriage contract!) It was a contract with myself that I didn't realize I was making. It took me a long time to see that I had made a bargain with myself, a bargain with life, a bargain with God. And it went something like this: If I do X, then I'm going to get Y.

Resources from the Episode:

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Audrey: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom. Thank you for joining me today.

Now, I want to tell you something that I did 32 years ago. I got married. And when I got married, I made a contract. And it wasn't the marriage contract. Of course, I signed a marriage contract. But I made a contract with myself that I didn't realize I was making. It took me a long time to realize that I had kind of made a bargain with myself, made a bargain with life, made a bargain with God. And it went something like this:

"If I do X, then I'm going to get Y."

And I put all the rules in place. Now, I didn't just do it blindly. There were people around me that had promised me that if I did certain things, I'd get certain outcomes. There were books by professionals that said, "Yes, we see that when XYZ happens in a home, or when parents do these certain things, then all of these certain outcomes happen."

So for example: if I'm a loyal, dedicated wife, and faithful, and loving, then we will have a peaceful marriage. Things will go along blissfully and be great. That's one of the bargains I made with myself. One of the rules of life that I thought was real, or one of the outcomes I thought I could control.

I told myself, if I live my faith and I take my kids to church every single week, and we pray all the time, and we read scripture, and we do all the things, then none of my children will struggle with their faith.

[I made a deal with myself about our finances?] And if I stay home, if I work on my own education, if I homeschool them, then they'll all have perfectly beautiful relationships with each other, because they will have spent all this time together and they'll have all these shared memories, and then in their adulthood, they'll be super close. And if I teach them these certain things, then they won't have these certain problems, or we won't go through these certain pain points.

It's so funny to think back on it now and to realize that I was doing that, but I really didn't understand what I was doing. I really didn't know I was doing that to myself. I just didn't realize how much I was doing.

I guess looking back now, I can see that in my youthful exuberance, I was ready to make any sacrifice. I was ready to do whatever it took. I was ready to be the mom, be the wife, be the money manager, be the homeschool educator, be the friend, be the whatever. And I really thought that if I did my part, then things would go, not perfectly, but pretty great. They'd turn out pretty close to the picture that I developed in my own mind about who we were going to be 30 years from then.

Audrey: Well, life happened and things got harder. The marriage was a struggle, and the finances were a struggle, and my children did go through hard things, because they're human and they're going to. [There was just all this pain?], and I didn't like it.

And I'm a conscientious person, and I'm willing to do the work, and I'm willing to make the sacrifice, and I'm willing to say I'm sorry or regroup or read the book or whatever. And so I just figured, "Well, I must be the problem. I must have done something wrong."

And I would go over my past, and I would beat myself up, and I would think about the things that I had done wrong. If we hadn't moved so much. You know, maybe if I hadn't homeschooled so much. Maybe, who knows? I don't know.

Audrey: And what I didn't realize is that I was holding this really wrong belief. What was at the heart of all of this is the question that we're exploring today:

"What if I do all the right things and things don't turn out right?"

My belief was, if I'm a good person and I do all the right things, then we'll have this perfect outcome. Like, I will take on all of the mistakes and troubles that other people might have to have, if I need to, so that they can forgo that pain. But you know what? That's just not how life works.

And what I've had to learn is that there are things that I do control and there are things that I don't control. And I know that sounds very basic. But what's hard, I think for us as moms especially, is that we have these little beings that come into our world, most often as babies, and they are completely helpless. And we have to have the wisdom to help them grow and become, and go from being 100% dependent on us to 100% self-reliant. And that is a big gap to bridge. Now, we have a lot of years to get there, but it's not always easy to know the best way to go about it. It's tough.

But when I started to think about the fact that there are things I do control and things that I don't control, it really started to help me to parse out this wrong belief and make sense of it and start to acquaint myself better with the truth.

Audrey: Just think about all the things that we don't control. We don't control our spouse. We don't control our children. We don't control our friends. We don't control the people around us. We don't control anybody.

They have their agency. No matter how old they are, they still have agency. Even if that agency is within stricter bounds, they can still choose.

We don't control the circumstances that we're born into. We don't control the place, you know, the nation that we're born into, or many of the circumstances around us. We don't control the culture, the messaging, the government. There are so many things we don't control.

Audrey: And when you think about that, and you start to really think about, "Well, okay, then what is it that I control?" the truth is really, I mostly just control me.

I control my beliefs, my habits, my attitudes, my behaviors, my responses, my decisions, the way I think, the way I live, the example I set. I mostly just control me.

Audrey: And this is why it's so important for us to realize this when we start thinking, because it's so easy to go down that rabbit hole. How is it that I'm doing everything right? Aren't I hitting the checklist? Didn't I have the children? Aren't I a loyal spouse? Don't I show up every day for the kids? And then things aren't working out right. Why does it look like this? Why does it look so messy?

We have to remind ourselves that control is not the same as power. We don't control very much, but we have almost limitless power, because we have complete power over ourselves. And if we don't always have the power over ourselves and with ourselves that we want, we can grow into that. We can choose more of that.

Audrey: And that's the answer to a question that we're tempted to ask ourselves sometimes. And that is:

"Why even bother if I can't control the outcome?"

And it goes back to the same point. It's because it matters immensely what you choose, because every single choice determines who you become. And who you are becoming matters immensely. It means whether or not your needs are met, the quality of life that you have every single day, the example that you're setting, the leader that you're being, the things that you're learning, the habits that you're establishing, the ways that you think and reason, the principles and truths that you live and exemplify. All of those things matter immensely.

They matter to you, because when you do those things, when you develop gifts and use them in the service of others, you are the one that gets to experience the joy of that. You are the one that gets up every day and lives with yourself every moment of every day, your entire life.

When you see that you have immense power and incredible potential, that is an incredible insight. And it answers that question: what do you do if you're doing all the things right and you're not getting the right outcomes? You can accept that there are things you don't control, and the outcomes are not often yours to make happen.

But all the way along, you're learning. You're growing. You're becoming. Every time you make a decision and it doesn't turn out the way you want it to, you get to evaluate, and you get to grow and learn from it. Anytime you're presented with an opportunity to develop your abilities in any way, in how you think and your understanding, in new skills, new truths, new principles, you can embrace those opportunities. And then there's more of you.

And then what happens is that you're taking loving actions towards yourself by deciding to discipline yourself in cooperation with God's laws, with those truths. And when you do that, you have tremendous power.

And it's okay if things don't always go the way you want them to, because you always have the assurance that you are becoming through it all. And as you take those loving actions towards yourself, you're gaining in liking yourself, because you're living with you, and you really do deserve to love and like yourself.

And you can remember that what you learn, and how you respond, and the quality of your relationships, and how you show up is yours: those beliefs, those actions, those responses. And what's not yours is [everybody else, and the culture, and the circumstances, and the past?].

Audrey: Okay, I want you to try this this week. I want you to sit with yourself and think about some area that you're struggling with. And then I want you to actually take a couple of minutes and journal about this situation, and ask yourself what you can control and what you can't control. And I want you to try to release some of the things that you can't control. I want you to ask yourself this question:

"Where in this situation do I still have power?"

And when you do that, you're releasing control and you're reclaiming power. And you're reminding yourself that the outcome doesn't matter. It's really all about the fact that you still have power, even when you don't control everything or everyone.

Audrey: This leads us to an additional question. Even when we claim that power and we know what we need to do, why is it still sometimes hard to do that? That's a question that we'll be exploring next week. So join me then.

Thank you for staying with me today. Please put in the comments what you're going to let go of and what power you're going to reclaim this week. And I will see you next time.

Do you ever wish you just knew?

Knew whether to keep your child home or send them to school. Knew whether to take the job or make the move. A lot of women tell me that's what self-trust is: if you really trusted yourself, you would just know.

I don't think that's true. And I learned it sitting alone in my car on a cold afternoon, trying to make a really big decision for our family.

Resources from the Episode:

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Audrey: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom.

You know what a lot of women will say self-trust is? "Well, if you trust yourself, then you just know. You know what you should do about your child. You know whether or not you should move. You know which job you should take. You know how to manage all the things. You just somehow magically, intuitively have good discernment and good judgment and good decision-making skills. You always know what you should do, and then you really trust yourself."

I want to tell you a story about when I was in a difficult situation and I had to make a pretty big decision.

Audrey: I have six children, and a few years ago, at this point in our family's journey, we had two that had left home. The oldest at home was doing a modified homeschooling. He was going to the public school for a couple of classes, doing some stuff on his own, and really busy with work and music and all of his things. The next child was doing half-time school at a private school. So they were both busy with their friends. They were in their teenage years. They had educational structure around what they were doing.

And then there's a big gap, about a five-year gap, and then my son. The two at the end are about 18 months apart. They're really close. My youngest daughter had just been accepted onto a gymnastics team, and she was going to start getting up early in the morning and going to the gym and then doing some alternative school stuff later in the day.

Well, this left my number five, my boy.

And I had a decision to make. We weren't hardcore homeschoolers, in the sense that it wasn't everybody homeschooled every year, but we were definitely very much on the alternative path. There was some charter school, there was some private school, there was some public school, there was a lot of homeschool. Most of them were home most years, but there was any variety of that. I was just always trying to be open-minded and do what seemed like it would be best for them that school year.

So we have this new situation where basically the teenagers are doing their thing. I'm checking in with them. I'm around for them. But then I have this one child, and it was going to be just me and him.

Now, that could be a good thing. It depends on how you frame that.

And I needed to decide if I was going to send him to school or not, or if he and I were just going to be home doing our thing. There were a lot of factors that played into that decision. There were a lot of things to consider.

Audrey: Now, of course, I did the traditional things. I talked to my husband, I talked to him, I talked to friends, I prayed, I thought about it. But what I have to tell you about this decision is that it was a turning point for me in my life. By the time I got to this decision, I was self-aware enough to know that I was going through a different decision-making process than I had in the past.

I now had enough of an education, an education for real life, an education that taught me to think in terms of truths and principles and fundamentals, that my decision-making around this situation was actually fundamentally different from the way I had made decisions previously. And it was recognizable to me, so it was like a turning point. I was like:

"Wow, I am going about this so differently than I used to go about making these kinds of decisions and judgments about myself and my family."

Audrey: Now, our culture says that you should follow your heart, that you have your own truth, that you need to trust yourself and go with your gut.

And I'm not saying there isn't something to be said for listening to your intuition, and definitely your conscience. But I want to push back on that narrative, because you and I both know that we can't always trust our feelings. We can't even always trust our thoughts. We don't always know what's right and what's best, and we don't always prove to ourselves that we do.

When we're trying to make decisions, sometimes we lack information. Sometimes we're afraid. Sometimes our feelings get in the way. Sometimes we're just relinquishing responsibility by letting the expert make the decision. We're pretending it's our decision, but we're actually leaning on some expert from a book, from a video, from the doctor's office, whatever it is, instead of really owning that decision for ourselves and doing the hard work of discernment and judgment and decision-making.

Because this whole concept of self-trust, of having confidence in ourselves and our ability to judge and discern, of being able to grow in trusting ourselves and our decisions, is not about making the best decision every time. It's not about doing this perfectly. It's about knowing how to judge and discern from fundamentals, and knowing how to think it through in a better, more productive way, and then trusting that even if you don't get the perfect result from the decision you make right now, you can take responsibility for that decision and you can learn from whatever the outcome is.

You can't always control the outcome, but you can control the decision.

Audrey: If you listened to the podcast last week, you heard the story of my husband Blaine learning to play the viola. One of the things I didn't go into a lot of detail about when I told that story was the first [teacher he found?] a couple of years ago, here in the DFW area. She's a super duper nice lady, a very hard worker, a very great violist, and probably, to many of her students, a good teacher.

But she was brought up in Poland, and she used to tell Blaine these stories all the time about how she was taught to play viola in Poland: how they would smack her hands with a ruler and tell her she was a loser and kind of just shame her, all of these really hard things that happened to her as she was being taught. And she started at a really young age. I mean, it's been her whole life. She's a professional violist. She's a professional teacher. She's really, really good. And she's had all this teaching and instruction all of her life.

And so Blaine had every reason to just completely trust her judgment, to lean into "what she said goes." And he did that for a long time. She says this is what I need. She's put me on this piece of music. She says this is what I should practice this week. I mean, he even paid her extra to practice with him every day for a few months, and they would get on Zoom calls and try to practice together. He went way above and beyond, and it was hard not to think:

"I must be the problem. I really must be a lost cause. There must be no way for me to ever get good at the viola."

And he had those thoughts and he had those moments. But luckily, he came back to viola at a much older age, much more mature. And he's had a wonderful education and all of these experiences. And so he looked at this situation and was able to reason and think it through.

It took him a while to get to the point where he started asking questions like, "Have I really actually been given the fundamentals?" But he was definitely looking at the fruits of this experience with her. And the fruits were that he constantly felt frustrated, overwhelmed, and unsuccessful, that she just kept telling him to do more of the same, and that he had tried that for well over a year.

And so he had the wisdom and the life experience to ask himself better questions as he tried to make the decision about what he was going to do. Because he could have just given up again, and it was maybe tempting for a moment to do that. He could have just said, "I'm the common denominator here. I've had another professional teacher. I just can't figure this out."

But instead he started asking himself better questions, like, "How could we do this differently? What other teachers are out there? What would other teachers do? Maybe I should compare her teaching to some other teachers."

And because he took the time to do that, and, like I said last time, called all these viola [teachers?] and hired two new teachers and tried them all out, he was able to trust his judgment when it finally came to, "I now have the right teacher." The lack of fruits with one teacher and the fruits with the other teacher were a huge indication that this was the right teacher for him, this was the right education, and that, just from a principled and true standpoint, she was teaching him fundamentals, and that was making all the difference for him.

Audrey: This is the way in which we learn not what to think but how to think. This is so important to our ability to grow in our capacity to trust our judgments and decisions, and to make the best decision that we can, and then let go of the outcomes and not just constantly judge ourselves.

I mean, one of the things that we do is say, "Well, if I had a good outcome, then I made the right decision. If it has a bad outcome, I made the wrong decision." We can't live our lives that way. It's miserable. We have to gain the capacity to trust ourselves, and to trust, like we talked about last time, that when we slow down and think and we find a truth that we know, we can then start to build plans and decisions and our way forward around our capacity to make good decisions.

Audrey: So I want to encourage you to try a three-step process this week.

The first thing that I want you to do is think about this area where you feel frustrated or overwhelmed or you want a different outcome, just like Blaine was feeling with his viola. Maybe this is some expert you're working with and you're just not experiencing the fruits that they're promising you. Maybe it's something that you have tried to fix for a long time. I don't know what it is, but I want you to sit with yourself and get really honest about reality.

This is something that Blaine and I both had to do. I'm looking at the situation with my son. Should I homeschool him this year? What's the best thing to do moving forward? And I needed to assess reality. What's my capacity? What's his capacity? Who am I? Who is he? What are the circumstances in our home? What are the opportunities outside our home that are available for him? And what do I know about our experiences in the past? What does that help me project upon the future? Really getting down to what's reality.

Same with Blaine. What's the reality?

"I'm not thriving. I have tried practicing three hours by myself. I have tried practicing like crazy with a professor. I have tried practicing like crazy with this viola professional. And in every case, I am not really progressing."

So what's my reality? What are the fruits that I have? How can I be honest with myself about what's actually going on?

And then the next thing I want you to do is try to identify the fundamentals. This goes a little bit back to last week, in terms of asking yourself, "What do I know to be true in this situation?" in order to stop just spinning your wheels with useless effort.

The fundamentals can be truths. They can be principles. They can be other kind of hard-ish facts. And I'll give you a quick example in just a minute. I'll help you understand a little bit what I'm talking about on this point when I tell you the rest of the story about my son and homeschooling him. But you need to get at the fundamentals. You know what the reality is. What are the fundamentals that govern this thing? What are some things that you know to be true and real outside of just the moment that you're in? What could play into the decision?

And then I want you to make the best decision that you can and let go of the outcome, and recognize that no matter what happens, you can learn from the outcome to make a better decision next time. You have done your due diligence on this, and you're going to trust yourself that this is the best decision that you can make, and you're going to let go of what happens next. And then, when faced with the new decision, you're going to do your best again. You're going to grow in your capacity to trust yourself.

Audrey: So, going back to my experience with homeschooling this child. I assessed reality, like I explained with our circumstances. And then I looked at the fundamentals. What did I know?

I actually sat with myself and I wrote down some core principles of education. What I didn't used to know, but what I knew by this point, was that homeschooling is not a true principle. It is an application. And because I knew that, I was able to recognize that because it was an application, I could choose it or not choose it, and it wasn't right or wrong. It was just a decision, and that helped me let go.

I knew other educational principles. And of course, what I knew was the fundamental first principle was that I am responsible for the education of my child. So, starting at that first principle, I was able to write down some educational principles: classics, original writings, group discussion, great mentors, things like that that I knew that I wanted for my children. I wanted them for my son.

And so I got clear on: what are the fundamental principles that govern this area? What are the principles of our relationship? Good, open communication, trust, honesty. What are some of those principles that govern our ability to work together and to kind of navigate whether or not we were going to homeschool? This decision in general was going to affect him profoundly.

And then I also looked at things like values, which are not principles, but which are very important to the individual. Values are things like liberty or patience or loyalty or trust. And good values are just good values, but not everyone has the same values. And I knew enough about myself to know what my values were: that education was a top value, that the relationship was a top value, and hard work, whatever those were. So I was able to actually write down some key values that I wanted to honor in this decision. So now I have some principles I want to honor and some values I want to honor.

And then I also got to the fundamentals of what I knew about him and me. I had done the work on some self-assessments and some different personality things. And they're not hard and fast. We are [masterpieces in the works?]. We are growing and becoming. And so I know that it's not always hard and fast, but I knew some things.

One of the things that I knew is that he's extremely extroverted, probably the most extroverted of all my children. In fact, later on, when he was a little bit older, he did end up taking a couple of additional tests about extroversion from a couple of other sources, and he claimed he was 99% extroverted. I knew that about him. I knew what commitments I had made to other projects and other things that I had going on. I knew the commitment that I needed to make for the one daughter to continue to do her private schooling, and to be a support and an asset to the other kids at home, et cetera, et cetera.

Audrey: So I had a lot of fundamentals to weigh, and they empowered me immensely. I remember sitting in the car. I went on a drive. I was going to go to the park, but it ended up being too cold, so I ended up sitting in the car. I knew I needed some time alone to really think it through and make some final decisions.

And my decision-making process was so concretely different. This was a really big decision for me. It was really at the heart of my core values and some key principles I cared deeply about. And him, and the relationship, and his progress, and his education were all super important to me.

And then I was able to make the decision that could honor who we were as people. I could honor the relationship. I could honor the educational principles, and I could honor our values, by choosing very specifically the charter school that could honor the educational principles that I believed in. So I handpicked a charter school, and I inconvenienced myself to get him there, because it wasn't close to home.

But that was the decision that I was able to come to, and I felt so much peace about it. And everything didn't go perfectly when he went to the charter school. He had some really good experiences and he had some hard experiences, and he grew as a person, and I grew, and our relationship was solid. And I was at peace with it and he was at peace with it, because we knew why we were making that decision.

So look at reality, consider the fundamentals, and then make your decision and learn from it. Maybe the next year, hypothetically, after a year at the charter school, I decide not to do the charter school anymore. Who knows? But that's the decision I made then. I've always been very at peace with it, and grateful that that's what we decided, and empowered by the way that the decision was made.

Audrey: So that's my homework for you this week. I hope you will spend some time doing that in some area of your life.

I know that as you do that, it still may be hard to let go of the outcomes. And we're going to talk next week about how you can follow this process and make judgments and decisions that you feel peaceful about, and what to do when you try really hard, and you try to make the right decisions, and it doesn't look like everything turns out right. What do you do about that? We'll talk about that next week.

Thank you so much for joining me. Please share your insights in the comments below, all of your takeaways from this three-step process and how it worked out for you. Thanks for being here. I'll see you next time.

If you've been trying your heart out to be the very best mom or wife or steward of your health, and you're not making much progress, please stop beating yourself up. It really may not be an effort issue.

Resources from the Episode:

 AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Audrey: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom. Recently, I've been thinking a lot about questions that women and mothers ask me a lot. They're questions that I've really grappled with, and I want to tackle some of those questions in the weeks to come. Things like: Why am I struggling so hard, and things don't seem to be getting better? Or, how do I trust myself more? Or, what if I do everything right and things still don't get better, or they don't go the way I want them to?

These are important questions. These are hard questions. And I want to dive into that first question today and talk for a minute about why we can put in so much effort and struggle so much and work so hard, and things still don't seem to get better. Why doesn't that effort yield more fruit?

So if you've ever experienced this, I want you to think about an area in your life where you struggle quite a bit, or where you feel like you've put in a lot of effort. Maybe it's in your marriage, in your parenting, in your health. Maybe you've consumed books or talked to experts or gone to therapy or taken courses, tried different practices or ideas that you found out there, and you just feel like things really aren't that much better.

I want to pose a question to you, or an idea. What if you really don't need more effort? You're already doing it. You're already trying so hard. What if you actually need to learn something that you don't already know? What if you need to change the way that you think about this thing?

Audrey: I'm going to tell you a story that will really exemplify what I'm talking about here. My husband has a dad who was very into music. His family was into music. They had a family band growing up. His dad, my father-in-law, played multiple instruments. And so it was very natural in his family that when they were, you know, in elementary school or so, Dad would put each of them on an instrument. And for whatever reason, my father-in-law chose viola for Blaine. He said, "I think you would be great at viola. I think that's the perfect instrument for you." And somewhere in elementary or middle school, he handed him the viola. I think they had a couple of little introductory lessons, and that was pretty much it.

Now, high school rolls around. He's played the viola a tiny bit. He's watched his dad play string instruments. He has a couple of books, and he decides he wants to get better at it. He really likes playing his viola. So he signs up for orchestra at school, but his dad won't pay for any lessons, and he doesn't have any money for lessons. So he's in the school orchestra. It's pretty small. He gets in daily practice because he's there at orchestra. He follows along. He does the best he can. He's not great at counting. He's struggling to keep up.

But sometime in that school year, the orchestra teacher told all the kids that there was an all-state orchestra they could attend if they so desired. And for Blaine specifically, the teacher said, "Well, I think they have the orchestra pretty much full, but they might be able to make room for another viola. You could go check it out."

So Blaine decided to go. There's something about being in the music, being in the sound, sitting amongst all of the other players and playing beautiful pieces, that is very meaningful for Blaine. It's very nutritive. He really, really, really loves it. He'd already kind of had a taste of that from high school orchestra. So he signs up, he goes to this all-state orchestra, and they put him last chair, but he doesn't care because he just wants to play. And he picks up his viola and they play some Beethoven piece. I can't remember which one it was.

And he said a few notes in, he was hooked. It was a really large all-state orchestra, and they let him sit in last chair. He fumbled along. He did the best he could, but it gave him a taste, and he really, really wanted it.

So that summer he decided, "Okay, well, I can't have lessons, and I've learned some this year in school. So I'm just going to practice three hours a day." This is some serious dedication and a high level of effort. So he's practicing virtually every day for three hours. He promises me it was really that long. He's doing the best he can. He sees maybe a little bit of improvement. I don't know. Not much.

He goes back to high school orchestra. He stays in the all-state orchestra, close to the end of the chairs. Never really had lessons. He went to college and wanted to play viola in college. And for the first time in his life, he got a really good teacher. It was a university professor at a big, huge university. And here was his big chance. In order to be in the music program, he had to have these private lessons. And so for a year at college, he had these private lessons with this professor and made very moderate improvement. Really not a lot.

Well, time goes by. [He's dating as well?] He's doing his college studies. He's kind of disenchanted because by this point, it's been four or five or six years of viola in his mind. He has finally had high-level lessons, and he just isn't very good. And it's dissatisfying, and he has other priorities. And then we marry, and then we have children, and he sets it aside. We carried this viola around with us for the next, you know, 20-plus years. He'd pick it up every now and again, play a little bit of a piece that he used to play, talk about it, dream about someday when he'd play viola again, but he never really did much about it.

Audrey: Well, a few years ago, he had more free time, and he decided, "I'm going to pick the viola back up. I want to do it right this time. So I'm going to get a really great teacher." So he starts asking around. We're north of Dallas, in Plano. It's a large city. And most of the biggest cities around us all have a city orchestra. There's Richardson, there's Plano, there's Frisco, I think there's McKinney, and there's the actual Dallas Symphony. There are all these symphonies around, and so there are viola players. And he started asking around among all of them, and he had a teacher that was highly recommended to him.

She had all the credentials and an impressive history. Very highly recommended. She played in a couple of these city orchestras. And so she was the best of the best, right? She was going to be the best teacher he ever had.

Well, pretty quickly, she jumps him into a pretty difficult piece. She tells him she wants him to compete in this local competition where you play in front of judges and you get a score. So he's playing his heart out. He's working, working, working, trying to get this piece together. He goes, and he does kind of a moderate job. Months go by, and he's trying really hard. He practices his heart out. I mean, he's practicing for about two hours a day and going to these lessons with this teacher. And after several months had gone by, he's having these conversations with me about, "This is still so hard, and I don't know if I'm improving, and I don't feel like I'm getting much better."

Eventually he finds this volunteer orchestra. It's just a small volunteer orchestra, but he loves playing with them. He signs up and starts going.

And with this teacher, month after month, for well over a year, I think about a year and a half, he'll practice for about two hours a day, and he'll show up, and she'll say, "Did you even practice? Why aren't you doing this better?" She would compliment him some, but sometimes she was hard on him. But she had this incredible reputation, and everybody thought highly of her. And so for a long time, he just kept telling himself:

"Well, it can't be her, because she's the best of the best, and she's the best teacher I've ever had. And everybody told me she was awesome. And I'm working my butt off. I'm trying so hard, and it's just not coming together. What in the world am I going to do?"

Audrey: And I'm listening to all of this, and I was encouraging him to look around for perhaps another teacher. Well, fast forward. He eventually finds two more teachers. He calls around to basically all of the violists in every symphony that he can find within driving distance. He asks people, "Who else do you know that teaches viola?" He gets the names of some other people that are highly recommended. He hires two other teachers while he keeps his old teacher. He tries out these new teachers. They're both significantly better than his current teacher. But one rises to the top, and he starts making progress quickly. Every week he's doing significantly better. And every week he comes home with, "Did you know there's a principle for how to hold the bow? Did you know there's a principle, or a fundamental, or a tactic, or a basic for this, that, or the other?"

And this probably won't come as a surprise to you, but one of the things that this teacher said almost at the very beginning was:

"You don't have the fundamentals down. You don't understand the basics. You're not playing viola in accordance with the principles that govern playing well. And so I have a trick or a strategy for all of these things, and we are just going to try things, and you're going to practice the fundamentals."

He still has the volunteer orchestra, so he still has to practice the pieces for it. But rather than doing these harder pieces and practicing pieces all the time, now he's coming home doing a jillion scales and different bowing exercises. He's supposed to hold a pen and do a certain thing, and move his arm a certain way, and hold the bow a certain way, and do these certain activities.

And now we're, I don't know, several months into this with her, maybe a year. I can't remember. Anyway, he is her favorite student, and she makes exceptions for him all the time. When she's not giving lessons that week or she's going out of town, she'll slip in a lesson with him here and there, because he's so dedicated and so hardworking.

And you know that effort piece we started this podcast with? He is willing to put in the effort. He's willing to do whatever it takes. He's willing to put in the two hours a day. I was with him at a wedding recently, and he kept doing these little pen exercises. I said, "I need you to stop. That is so distracting. I just want to enjoy the wedding." Because he's so devoted to being the best player he can be.

It was not a matter of effort. Think about it. He doesn't have any lessons. He puts in all kinds of effort, all summer long, three hours a day, no progress. He finally signs up for lessons years later. He has one of these really great college professors. Almost no progress. Later on, he finds another teacher. Almost no progress. And then he finds the teacher. And now he's soaring. He's learning so quickly and becoming better. His intonation... I don't even know all the right words to explain to you all the ways in which he's better. But he's really thriving, really excited. He and this teacher are on fire. Not because he needed more effort, but because he needed the right education. He needed to return to fundamentals.

Audrey: So that's why, if you're putting in all this effort and you're trying your heart out to be the very best mom or the very best wife or the very best steward of your health or whatever, and you are not making a lot of progress, I feel pretty confident telling you it really may not be an effort issue. Because unless you're pointed in the right direction, unless you have the right foundation, unless you're working from fundamentals, the effort won't help.

In fact, sometimes it hurts you. In Blaine's case, that was definitely what happened. He drilled really bad habits into himself, and this teacher, focusing on fundamentals, has had to undo the bad stuff while teaching the right stuff. Sometimes you can even get further behind by putting in more effort with the wrong beliefs, the wrong attitudes, without the fundamentals, without the principles. You may be making things worse, just doubling down with effort instead of slowing down and discerning what's true about your situation.

It reminds me of a mom I know who was recently learning more about her situation. She has a bunch of kids, and over a decade ago, she got really devoted to some different methodologies, and she kind of doubled down. And now here we are all these years later, and she's been struggling with depression and overwhelm for about the last year, and she finally had to admit to herself it's because her children are unruly and disrespectful. And a big part of that is because she leaned into these applications that these people were giving her without really understanding them, without really having the foundation, without really knowing the fundamentals. And she put in all the effort. She showed up day by day. She was trying to be a really great mom. And no amount of more effort really made the difference, because when you aren't living the principles, when you don't have the proper foundation, it doesn't matter how hard you try.

One of my kids started running, and she had never run before, and I didn't understand, because I wasn't a runner, how important shoes were. We didn't have the right shoes on her, and she got on this track team, and sure enough, within just a few months, she had stress fractures, because we didn't understand the fundamentals. The teacher didn't give us the fundamentals. They didn't teach us how to buy the right shoes and how to stretch the right way and how to keep her body in good shape. And without those fundamentals, she drilled in bad habits. She put in all this effort. She ran every day. She loved being on that team. And yet it kind of caved, because we didn't have the right foundation from which to build.

So it really does make all the difference. You have to be pointed in the right direction. You have to have those fundamentals, not more effort.

So let's think for just a minute. Let's compare Blaine's experience to this mom's experience. They both cared deeply about what they were doing. They both genuinely wanted to be successful. They both looked around and tried to find the best resources they could. And they both put in all sorts of effort, and they were willing to be there for the long haul and keep trying and being patient and working hard. And yet without the fundamentals, it just didn't work. Intention isn't enough, and effort is definitely not enough.

Audrey: So this week, I want you to try something. I want you to think about an area in your life where you feel like you're really putting in a lot of effort, or you have put in a lot of effort, and it's just not improving, and you're frustrated. I want you to slow down. I want you to think deeply about whatever this is, whether it's a relationship or your health or even just a dirty room. And then I want you to ask yourself:

"What do I know to be true about this, about me, about them, in this situation?"

And I want you to try to rebuild on what you know to be true. Maybe there's one truth, maybe there are multiple truths. And then I want you to start thinking about, "Okay, I know that this is true, so how can I build on that? How can I practice that truth? How can I do more of that thing that I know to be right?" And start to try to build a more solid foundation in this area of your life, because it really does make all the difference.

Audrey: You should stop beating yourself up if things aren't working out the way you want them to, and start asking yourself, "Is there maybe something that I wasn't taught, that I wasn't given, that I don't have?" Because I really believe that a lot of us, a lot of moms, are suffering unnecessarily because we weren't given what we need to thrive as women and as mothers.

I mean, think about the complicated situations you find yourself in all the time: negotiating relationships between other people, managing and juggling schedules, building a relationship with your spouse while also trying to be a great mom. Often you're also working in some capacity and trying to manage the finances and the home. And where was the training for this? When were we taught the truths around it? When did we get a chance to practice success? We weren't given what we need. You probably weren't given what you need to succeed in this area.

So stop beating yourself up. Start slowing down and thinking more deeply. Maybe journal about this. What do you know to be true? And try rebuilding on that solid foundation.

Audrey: Next time, we're going to build on this by asking the next logical question. Once we know, or think we know, what might be true about something, how can we trust ourselves to make those judgments? Once we've thought things through and it's time to actually act and make that decision, how can we better trust ourselves to judge and discern better decisions based on what we now know to be more true? We'll talk about that next time.

Thank you so much for joining me. I would love for you to share with me in the comments your takeaway and your practice on this. How did it go, slowing down and discerning what's true so that you can build on a better foundation? I will see you next time.

I want to tell you about one powerful night in a kitchen in Montgomery, Alabama.

The man at the table was twenty six years old. He had a doctorate he had just finished, a wife asleep in the next room, and a baby daughter who had just been born. He also had a movement he never asked to lead: he was voted in. And the threats had started coming, sometimes thirty or forty per day. His house had even been bombed with his wife and daughter inside.

All of these realities laid heavily on him and he couldn't sleep, so he got up and made himself a cup of coffee.

He never drank it.

Resources from the Episode:

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Episode 173: Mission Driven Story: Martin Luther King Jr.

My call to the ministry was not a miraculous or supernatural something. On the contrary, it was an inner urge, calling me to serve humanity.

AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Audrey Rindlisbacher, founder of The Mission Driven Life and author of The Mission Driven Mom. Martin Luther King Jr. was a truly mission driven man, and he exemplifies a theme that we're talking about over these months through the summer and into the fall, and that is true vision. A real visionary, someone who knew what vision was and held onto it all his life.

AUDREY: I want to talk to you about some of the amazing things that he did that we're not as aware of nowadays, and point you to his autobiography. It is not technically an autobiography. It is a compilation put together by someone after he died from all original sources: his speeches, his journals, his letters, refocused into the first person. But it all comes originally from him, and it's in chronological order. It is beautiful. I loved reading it. I have watched many of his speeches and read articles and a couple of other books. Letter from Birmingham Jail is one of my favorites of all time.

AUDREY: There are some incredible stories and experiences I'm going to share with you, and I'm going to read some selections from his autobiography because he says it far better than I could. Reading it really nurtured my soul. It increased my faith. It told of miraculous experiences.

AUDREY: I'm going to give you one little caveat at the beginning: he is a controversial figure in some people's eyes. Two things I think are important to point out. One is that some of his closest friends did say after he died that he had affairs. There are FBI tapes under lock that will come out, I think, next year.

AUDREY: I can't speak to any of that. I don't know. I do know that the FBI did things that even the most conservative individual thinks are pretty shady, and I don't know how that interaction played back and forth. I don't know what they have under lock and key or what will come out. Maybe there is a chance that Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't exactly the man he positioned himself to be. But I do know that what he writes about rings true to me. I know that the principles he dedicated his life to served beautiful purposes and beautiful ends. He lifted our nation. He made our nation better through the vision that he held and the way that he sacrificed himself for it. So I don't want to discard all the good that he was and all the good that he did. I want to share with you the experiences that are undisputed, that we know actually happened, the things we know he said and did that I believe are truly admirable and worth learning about and worth looking up to him for.

AUDREY: I also had a conversation with someone recently that was very fascinating. They were saying they think maybe he wasn't really peace loving and didn't really practice nonviolent resistance. That seemed very bizarre to me. I was like, we have videotapes. We have evidence of that kind of thing. Like anything, we're rewriting history. We're telling the bad parts of the story and not always the good parts. I just want to share with you the things that have elevated and inspired me, the truths I know he teaches, and what we know for sure: that he made a conscious choice to give his life for his vision, and he did bring that about to the betterment of the people around him and our nation, and I truly believe, probably the world.

AUDREY: This isn't meant to be a full picture of everything about him. It's a mission driven story in the sense that he was a man truly dedicated to some true principles, and he lived those out. He did love God. He did everything he could to try to love humanity. He did love his family. If he had some faults, some weaknesses, some committed sins, I can't speak to that. But he did exemplify many of those mission driven qualities, and he was, for sure, a true visionary who changed the world.

AUDREY: He was born in January of 1929. He had, in his own words, a marvelous father and mother. They didn't argue much or have very many falling outs, and they were very significant in determining his religious attitudes. He said:

It is quite easy for me to think of a God of love mainly because I grew up in a family where love was central and where loving relationships were ever present.

AUDREY: He said this made him a more optimistic person: "I lean more toward optimism than pessimism about human nature because of my childhood experiences." And he also says, "I think that my strong determination for justice comes from the very strong, dynamic personality of my father, and I hope that the gentle aspect comes from a mother who is very gentle and sweet."

AUDREY: He tells about an experience he had with a little boy when he was young:

From the age of three, I had a white playmate who was about my age. We always felt free to play our childhood games together. He did not live in our community, but he was usually around every day; his father owned a store across the street from our home. At the age of six, we both entered school, separate schools, of course. I remember how our friendship began to break as soon as we entered school. This was not my desire, but his. The climax came when he told me one day that his father had demanded that he would play with me no more. I never will forget what a great shock this was to me. I immediately asked my parents about the motive behind such a statement. We were at the dinner table when the situation was discussed, and here, for the first time, I was made aware of the existence of a race problem. I had never been conscious of it before.

AUDREY: He was middle class in Atlanta. They lived, I guess, in a predominantly Black neighborhood, and those were the people he mostly associated with. But he saw no color differences. It didn't make a difference to him what color this little boy was. They were just friends.

As my parents discussed some of the tragedies that had resulted from this problem, and some of the insults they themselves had confronted on account of it, I was greatly shocked, and from that moment on I was determined to hate every white person. As I grew older and older, this feeling continued to grow. My parents would always tell me that I should not hate the white man, but that it was my duty as a Christian to love him. The question arose in my mind: how could I love a race of people who hated me and who had been responsible for breaking me up with one of my best childhood friends? This was a great question in my mind for a number of years.

AUDREY: He always had a resentment toward the system of segregation. His mother talked to him about slavery and about the Civil War, and she tried to explain the divided system of the South as a result of that: the segregated schools, restaurants, theaters, housing, drinking fountains, waiting rooms and bathrooms, as a social condition rather than a natural order. So she tried to explain, this isn't how things need to be. This isn't how God intends them to be. This is how humans are making it for each other.

She made it clear that she opposed this system and that I must never allow it to make me feel inferior. Then she said the words that almost every Black southerner hears before he can yet understand the injustice that makes them necessary: "You are as good as anyone."

AUDREY: So at a very young age, he has this really great friendship with this little white boy. He believes that we can all get along and be friends, and then it's shattered in this revelation at age six. His parents try to help him through it and help him see the truth about it, but he really, really struggles.

AUDREY: He learned a lot from his father too. He says:

The thing I admire most about my dad is his genuine Christian character. He is a man of real integrity, deeply committed to moral and ethical principles. He is conscientious in all of his undertakings. Even the person who disagrees with his frankness has to admit that his motives and actions are sincere.

AUDREY: His father was the pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, and he wielded great influence in the community and perhaps won the grudging respect of some whites. He says, "With this heritage, it is not surprising that I had also learned to abhor segregation, considering it both rationally inexplicable and morally unjustifiable."

AUDREY: What the Civil Rights Movement owes to Martin Luther King Jr., we also owe to his parents. They were the ones who pulled themselves up, got some education, became leaders in the community, and lived this middle class lifestyle. They believed in Christian love in the face of social injustice, even though they were the ones being acted against. They instilled in King a love for all mankind, or tried to at least, and tried to help him see that the system was broken, but that people were good.

AUDREY: He always talked about his religious experience. He said the church was always a second home for him, and he accepted the biblical teachings uncritically for a time. But as he was growing up, he was always questioning and very precocious. He says, "At the age of thirteen, I shocked my Sunday school class by denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus," and he began to have more and more doubts.

AUDREY: One more note on the system of segregation. He said there was no Black YMCA. They couldn't go to the public parks, and they couldn't go to the so called white schools. [VERIFY AUDIO: the raw transcript reads "could go" for the parks and theaters.] Some of the stores downtown would only let them go to certain counters to buy things, and they couldn't go to the white theaters, and so on.

AUDREY: Now something really incredible happened to him. He was always very intelligent, and he was just going through school in regular fashion. Then World War II came, and many young men were lost. Morehouse College, which I think at the time was an all Black college and may still be, had vacancies to fill because young men were going off to war, and they decided to try to find some high school students who could start college early.

AUDREY: At the age of fifteen, some very significant things happened to him. First, he gave a speech on [VERIFY AUDIO: "The Negro and the Constitution"] and won at his school, so he was sent to a state competition. He went with his teacher, Mrs. Bradley, and they were on a bus returning home. White passengers boarded and told them to give up their seats. Martin didn't want to, but his teacher coaxed him.

I intended to stay right in that seat, but Mrs. Bradley urged me up, saying we had to obey the law. We stood up in the aisle for ninety miles to Atlanta. That night will never leave my memory. It was the angriest I have ever been in my life.

AUDREY: So he's got all these experiences happening to him that are triggering this passion about segregation and these deep feelings of injustice. Of course, it's part of his nature to be a certain way. He's naturally brilliant, he feels the injustice of the system, and he wants to try to make things right. Even at a young age, he's giving speeches about the Constitution and natural rights and natural law. He talks about those again later in his writings and speeches, and in Letter from Birmingham Jail. He's very well aware.

AUDREY: So in 1944, Morehouse College has openings. They administer an exam, he does well, and they invite him to start college at just fifteen, which meant he graduated from college at nineteen, which is just crazy. He was on the fast track to get this incredible education, and a storm of circumstances happened in his life to make him the perfect candidate to lead this movement.

AUDREY: Just before he went to college, in his teenage years, he went to Simsbury, Connecticut, and worked a whole summer on a tobacco farm. He says:

After that summer in Connecticut, it was a bitter feeling going back to segregation. It was hard to understand why I could ride wherever I pleased on the train from New York to Washington and then had to change to a Jim Crow car at the nation's capital in order to continue the trip to Atlanta. The first time that I was seated behind a curtain in a dining car, I felt as if the curtain had been dropped on my selfhood. I could never adjust to the separate waiting rooms, separate eating places, separate restrooms, partly because the separate was always unequal, and partly because the very idea of separation did something to my sense of dignity and self respect.

AUDREY: So he's got all of these ideas brewing in him. By the time he gets to college at fifteen, he's already devoted himself to this cause. He already feels passionate about it. He's already written about it in junior high and high school. He's been thinking about it, talking to his parents about it, looking around in the world at it, and he pushes even further into these topics. In college, he gets a degree in sociology, so he has an opportunity to ponder these concepts more.

AUDREY: I think it was at Morehouse that he first read Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience. It introduced him to the idea that you need to stand on the true law: that natural law and civil law are not always the same thing, and that civil laws that don't honor natural law are not real law. Thoreau had refused to pay his taxes because he didn't agree with the war the money was being used for. All these ideas are growing in his mind, and he continues to build, at a young age, this vision of a different world. He wants a different world. He wants to find a way to insert himself into this problem and make things better.

AUDREY: At nineteen, he says:

Not until I entered Crozer Theological Seminary in 1948 did I begin a serious intellectual quest for a method to eliminate social evil.

AUDREY: So up to age nineteen, he felt passionate about it. He studied sociology. But he's not very optimistic that society could be changed. He doesn't have any idea how that could happen. By nineteen, he's actively on the hunt for a method. He's saying, if we could do it, how could we do it? He has already formed this vision. He knows what he wants to do with his life and the kind of difference he wants to make. He is actively looking for a method to create social change.

I turned to a serious study of the social and ethical theories of the great philosophers, from Plato and Aristotle down to Rousseau, Hobbes, Bentham, Mill, and Locke. All of these masters stimulated my thinking, such as it was, and while finding things to question in each of them, I nevertheless learned a great deal from their study.

AUDREY: He's getting a classical liberal arts education. He's studying all the greats. He's digging deep and learning the arguments of these different thinkers. One Christmas, when he goes home for several weeks, he decides this is his time to study Marxism, and he delves deep into all of the Marxist writings. He later dives deep into Nietzsche and other philosophers, and he rejects them on principled grounds. He's able to list the tenets of each belief system, what they're promoting, and why they are wrong.

AUDREY: He also reconnects with his faith. He finds great mentors, and he learns to discern the truths that the Bible holds. In Atlanta, he had been around many pastors, some of whom were not very educated, and some couldn't even read very well. He was very relieved in college to find men to look up to who were the kind of pastor he wanted to become. He had been deciding between education and the ministry, and he chose the ministry, which is why he went to the theological seminary. There he found a place where he could believe and put his whole heart into his religious beliefs.

When I went to Morehouse as a freshman in 1944, my concern for racial and economic justice was already substantial.

AUDREY: Like I said, even at fifteen he's already set on the problem, and he's studying it during these years.

Here, in this courageous New Englander's refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery's territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times. I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.

AUDREY: He talks about running across Gandhi and being exposed to the way he executed this in India, the incredible good that he did, the way he changed the world with the nonviolent resistance model. And he knew he had found a method that could work, if he found himself in a place where he could make a difference and implement these ideas in a real world way.

AUDREY: One of the reasons I've thought about doing this Martin Luther King Jr. podcast for a while: I prepared all this information for a book I was writing last year, and every time I would think, no, it's so controversial. Finally I decided he did so many good things, I just needed to talk about the good things. I want you all to know that when he was standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, he had spent a lifetime preparing. It was no surprise that he was the man standing there. And I'll continue to tell you what he sacrificed for this vision. He really sacrificed everything. He put everything on the line for the cause he felt was the most important in the world, the one he wanted to give his life to.

AUDREY: He goes on to the theological seminary, and he eventually gets his doctorate. He says:

In 1954 I ended my formal training with all of these relatively divergent intellectual forces converging into a positive social philosophy. One of the main tenets of this philosophy was the conviction that nonviolent resistance was one of the most potent weapons available to oppressed people in their quest for social justice. At this time, however, I had merely an intellectual understanding and appreciation of the position, with no firm determination to organize it in a socially effective situation.

AUDREY: So he wasn't going to start his own movement or his own organization. He had just done all the groundwork. By the time he was twenty five, he was prepared. He was perfectly prepared and positioned.

AUDREY: Then it was time to determine his career path. I want to read this to you because it is incredible. It is one of the things that really makes me admire him.

At this point, I was torn in two directions. On the one hand, I was inclined toward the pastorate; on the other hand, toward educational work. Which way should I go? And if I accepted a church, should it be one in the South, with all the tragic implications of segregation, or one of the two available pulpits in the North? Now, I thought, as the plane carried me toward Detroit, I had a chance to escape from the long night of segregation. Could I return to a society that condoned a system I had abhorred since childhood?

These questions were still unanswered when I returned to Boston. I discussed them with my wife, Coretta; we had been married less than a year. I found that she too was hesitant about returning South. We discussed the all important question of raising children in the bonds of segregation. We reviewed our own growth in the South and the many advantages we had been deprived of as a result of segregation. The question of my wife's musical career came up. She was certain that a northern city would afford a greater opportunity for continued study than any city in the deep South. For several days we talked and thought and prayed over each of these matters.

AUDREY: If you can imagine, here are two highly educated, highly accomplished individuals who have had the best life they possibly could have, coming from where they came from. They have their whole lives ahead of them. They're beautiful people. They are deeply devoted to Christ and Christianity. They are very highly educated, and their future is in front of them. Where will they go? What will they do? They had every reason to stay in the North, which they easily could have done. He could have taken a pastorate at one of the northern churches. She could have pursued her musical career. They could have had a few beautiful children and a wonderful life and never looked back. And then he goes on:

Finally, we agreed that, in spite of the disadvantages and inevitable sacrifices, our greatest service could be rendered in our native South. We came to the conclusion that we had something of a moral obligation to return, at least for a few years. The South, after all, was our home. Despite its shortcomings, we loved it as home, and had a real desire to do something about the problems that we had felt so keenly as youngsters. We never wanted to be considered detached spectators. Since racial discrimination was most intense in the South, we felt that some of the Negroes who had received a portion of their training in other sections of the country should return to share their broader contacts and educational experience.

AUDREY: So they felt like that's what others should do, and so they knew that's what they needed to do.

Moreover, despite having to sacrifice much of the cultural life we loved, despite the existence of Jim Crow, which kept reminding us at all times of the color of our skin, we had the feeling that something remarkable was unfolding in the South, and we wanted to be on hand to witness it.

AUDREY: And it is crazy to me how quickly it came. I'll give you this quick timeline. In 1944, he goes to Morehouse College. In February of 1948, he's ordained. In 1948, he gets his degree in sociology and enters the theological seminary. In 1951, he graduates from Crozer. In 1953, he marries Coretta. In 1954, he's given his pastorate. In June of 1955, he receives his doctorate from Boston University. And in December of that same year, Rosa Parks won't get up from her seat. It is crazy to me how right on the heels of his preparation, almost in the moment, he's called upon. By December 5th of 1955, they've arranged the mass meeting, and by 1956 the bus boycott, which lasted a little over a year, is in full swing.

AUDREY: He's in this moment where he's been uniquely and perfectly prepared and understands that nonviolent resistance is the way forward, and he's still formulating the strategies, how to work this out in practical terms and how they can execute it. So they decide that everyone will boycott the buses. They will walk everywhere, and they will give each other rides. This required a lot of coordination: people with cars going to pick up people who didn't have cars and getting them where they needed to be. And they just did this day after day, week after week, month after month. It is incredible. He says:

We were saying to the white community, "We can no longer lend our cooperation to an evil system." From this moment on I conceived of our movement as an act of massive noncooperation. From then on I rarely used the word "boycott." During the rush hours the sidewalks were crowded with laborers and domestic workers, many of them well past middle age, trudging patiently to their jobs and home again, sometimes as much as twelve miles. They knew why they walked, and the knowledge was evident in the way they carried themselves. And as I watched them, I knew that there is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity.

AUDREY: This is something he talks about over and over again: how ennobling it was to be involved with people who would choose this work, who would choose to protest this way.

AUDREY: At one of these first meetings forming the association, he is asked to speak. He says:

I was almost overcome, obsessed by a feeling of inadequacy. In this state of anxiety, I had already wasted five minutes of the twenty I had to prepare. With nothing left but faith in a power whose matchless strength stands over against the frailties and inadequacies of human nature, I turned to God in prayer. My words were brief and simple, asking God to restore my balance and to be with me in a time when I needed His guidance more than ever.

The enthusiasm of these thousands of people swept everything along like an onrushing tidal wave. While I would not let this experience tempt me to overlook the need for continued preparation, it would always remind me that God can transform man's weakness into His glorious opportunity. No historian would ever be able to fully describe this meeting, and no sociologist would ever be able to interpret it adequately. One had to be a part of the experience really to understand it.

AUDREY: Because this is when it began: this rush of support and unity in the community, that they were going to do this and stand by each other and make it happen.

AUDREY: This is where he goes into what nonviolence is, why he chose it, and what it's really about. It's really beautiful.

From the beginning, a basic philosophy guided the movement. This guiding principle has since been referred to variously as nonviolent resistance, noncooperation, and passive resistance. But in the first days of the protest, none of these expressions was mentioned. The phrase most often heard was "Christian love."

AUDREY: As I go back into this history and read it from him and from other people who were around him, I'm constantly reminded what a spiritual movement it was. Like the original abolitionists, they were Christian women and men. Like the original suffragists who wanted the vote for women, they were Christian women. It is amazing to me how the movement toward better principles and more freedom for more people is stimulated most often by those who love God, who want to love the people around them, and who make personal sacrifices, often when they have no personal stake in it.

It was the Sermon on the Mount, rather than a doctrine of passive resistance, that initially inspired the Negroes of Montgomery to dignified social action. It was Jesus of Nazareth that stirred the Negroes to protest with the creative weapon of love. Nonviolent resistance had emerged as the technique of the movement, while love stood as the regulating ideal. In other words, Christ furnished the spirit and motivation while Gandhi furnished the method.

AUDREY: That's so beautiful to me, because as we move closer to the love of Christ and those biblical ideals, we see good coming for all humankind.

AUDREY: I included a couple of these stories simply because they really struck me as showing a deep self consciousness and a real striving to be honest with himself. Again, I can't speak to what other things he may have done. But as I read through his autobiography and listen to him and watch him, it seems to me that he is very sincere in his convictions. He basically sacrificed his life for his beliefs. He is a real martyr in that way. And so we have to believe him that these were his convictions, regardless of what his weaknesses may have been.

AUDREY: He was struggling with himself. He had a heavy heart because he knew he sometimes got angry, and he had had moments where he was disappointed in himself because he had been indignant and angry. So he calls a meeting of the [VERIFY AUDIO: "Southern Conference"] and basically says, I am not worthy to be your leader. I'm still young. He was twenty five, twenty six at this time. He says, I just don't have the maturity. I get angry. I don't think I can do it. I will be one hundred percent with you. I will do everything that's needed. But I think you should get a different leader. And they all said, we trust you one hundred percent. We are completely behind you.

With a unanimous vote of confidence, they made it clear that they were well pleased with the way I was handling things, and that they would follow my leadership to the end.

AUDREY: So there's this aspect of humility in his work all the time. No one knows these things about him: that he was concerned about his ability to do this and offered to step down. He didn't choose these leadership roles. He was voted in. He was asked to do it.

AUDREY: This is one I really love. This was later on, when he was world famous:

When you are aware that you are a symbol, it causes you to search your soul constantly, to go through this job of self analysis, to see if you live up to the high and noble principles that people surround you with, and to try at all times to keep the gulf between the public self and the private self at a minimum.

One of the prayers that I prayed to God every day was: "O God, help me to see myself in my true perspective. Help me, O God, to see that I'm just a symbol of a movement. Help me to see that I'm the victim of what the Germans call a Zeitgeist and that something was getting ready to happen in history; the time was right for it. Help me to see that a boycott would have taken place in Montgomery, Alabama, if I had never come to Alabama. Help me to realize that I'm where I am because of the forces of history and because of the fifty thousand Negroes of Alabama who will never get their names in the papers and in the headlines. O God, help me to see that where I stand today, I stand because others helped me to stand there and because the forces of history projected me there."

AUDREY: So he's constantly doing the work of trying to take his ego out of his convictions and his work: all of the fawning, all of the attention, all of the women throwing themselves at him, all of the ego boosting everyone around him is doing. Compare this to someone else who was just as world famous as him. Are they praying these prayers? Are they trying to check themselves? Are they trying to live up to the way other people see them? Or are they surrounding themselves with yes men who will do whatever they want?

AUDREY: As the boycott heats up, the death threats begin. People are calling or writing letters. He said at one point that he would sometimes get thirty or forty threats per day. In Montgomery it's starting to heat up, and his home is bombed. It's actually bombed twice. The first time, he says to the crowd:

We believe in law and order. Don't get panicky. Don't do anything panicky at all. Don't get your weapons. He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword. Remember, that is what God said. We are not advocating violence. We want to love our enemies. I want you to love your enemies. Be good to them. Love them and let them know you love them.

AUDREY: What a thing to say on his front porch when his home had been bombed and he almost lost his wife and daughter, who were in the home at the time. He goes on:

I did not start this boycott. I was asked by you to serve as your spokesman. I want it to be known the length and breadth of this land that if I am stopped, this movement will not stop. If I am stopped, our work will not stop. For what we are doing is right. What we are doing is just. And God is with us.

AUDREY: The second time his home is bombed, he has this to say:

At home I addressed the crowd from my porch, where the marks of the bomb were clear. "We must not return violence under any condition. I know this is difficult advice to follow, especially since we have been the victims of no less than ten bombings. But this is the way of Christ; it is the way of the cross. We must somehow believe that unearned suffering is redemptive."

AUDREY: I think that's a core principle he really believed and tried to live out: that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Then, since it was Sunday morning, I urged the people to go home and get ready for church. Gradually they dispersed.

AUDREY: In the middle of all of this, he and his wife had a long conversation about what it meant for them, and how they should protect and defend themselves as the threats were coming in and the bombings were happening. He says:

Meanwhile I considered: how could I serve as one of the leaders of a nonviolent movement and at the same time use weapons of violence for my personal protection? Coretta and I talked the matter over for several days and finally agreed that arms were no solution. We decided to get rid of the one weapon we owned. When I decided that I couldn't keep a gun, I came face to face with the question of death, and I dealt with it. From that point on, I no longer needed a gun, nor have I been afraid. Had we become distracted by the question of my safety, we would have lost the moral offensive and sunk to the level of our oppressors.

AUDREY: He was also at one point put in a car by the police and driven off, and they weren't going toward the jail, so he didn't know where they were going. Again, he was really scared. At another point, he was in a crowd and a woman lunged toward him and stabbed him in the chest, and it almost killed him. Afterward, people commented a lot about how calm he was in the midst of it all. This is what he said about it:

If I demonstrated unusual calm during the recent attempt on my life, it was certainly not due to any extraordinary powers that I possess. Rather, it was due to the power of God working through me. Throughout this struggle for racial justice I have constantly asked God to remove all bitterness from my heart and to give me the strength and courage to face any disaster that came my way. This constant prayer life and feeling of dependence on God have given me the feeling that I have divine companionship in this struggle. I know no other way to explain it. It is the fact that in the midst of external tension, God can give an inner peace.

AUDREY: And this goes back to a really powerful spiritual experience he had, when he offered himself up, faced his own humanity, and accepted that this might cost him his life, which of course it did. As a little tangent: Gandhi was also a man of faith. He also saw these as spiritual as well as physical principles, and he also worked to discipline himself and give the glory to a higher power. In that way, both men tapped into deep spiritual principles and called upon the consciences of the people around them through nonviolent resistance, this turning of the other cheek. As Gandhi explained to others, he also learned it from Christ.

AUDREY: So here is the experience Martin Luther King Jr. had.

Finally, I went to the kitchen and heated a pot of coffee. I was ready to give up. With my cup of coffee sitting untouched before me, I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward. I sat there and thought about a beautiful little daughter who had just been born. I'd come in night after night and see that little gentle smile. I started thinking about a dedicated and loyal wife, who was over there asleep. And she could be taken from me, or I could be taken from her. And I got to the point that I couldn't take it any longer. I was weak. Something said to me, you can't call on Daddy now. You can't even call on Mama. You've got to call on that something in that person that your Daddy used to tell you about, that power that can make a way out of no way.

AUDREY: That's one of the themes. Way Out of No Way is also the title of a book by one of his companions in the work. This was a key element of King's faith: that even when he saw no way, God could provide a way out of no way.

With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud. The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory. "Lord, I'm down here trying to do what's right. I think I'm right. I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now, I'm faltering. I'm losing my courage. Now, I am afraid. And I can't let the people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I've come to the point where I can't face it alone."

It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: "Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you. Even until the end of the world."

I tell you I've seen the lightning flash. I've heard the thunder roar. I've felt sin breakers dashing trying to conquer my soul. But I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced Him before. Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything.

AUDREY: And that conviction, that unflinching knowledge that God was walking with him, stayed with him through all sorts of other trials. He said once:

As far as the repeated attacks on me and my family, I must say that here again, God gives one the strength to adjust to such acts of violence. None of these attacks came as a total surprise to me, because I counted the cost early in the struggle.

AUDREY: As we get close to the end here, I want to point out a few more things about their work, and reiterate that many of the most important things ever created for humanity were done in obedience to divine laws, in submission to God and His ways. We see that in the founding of our own nation. We see it in past movements with Wilberforce and other martyrs and great men and women. The Civil Rights Movement in America is right along the lines of all of those movements.

AUDREY: We know they started to do sit ins and peaceful walks and protests to raise the conscience of the community, and sometimes they would get themselves arrested because they were acting against the law. But of course, in their minds and truthfully, they were acting in line with the natural law, that all men and women are created equal.

AUDREY: Many of their meetings took place in churches. It was spiritual from the beginning. They were asking people to turn in their weapons and sacrifice themselves in the gift of love to others, to put their bodies to work against evil by offering them up, even in prison. Among all the prayer, scripture study, and striving to live a Christian life, he fasted to prepare himself for his stay in prison. He took responsibility when any Black person was violent in any respect. He called for a day of penance for all Black people to evaluate their hearts and minds and see the rightness of the nonviolent way. They held a prayer vigil in front of City Hall to call for peace and negotiations, and they were arrested again. They stayed in jail, missing an important Meet the Press TV interview. In jail, they read scriptures often, held services twice a day, and sang religious songs.

AUDREY: From a letter he wrote to Coretta at one point when he was in jail:

Today I find myself a long way from you and the children. I know this whole experience is very difficult for you to adjust to, especially in your condition of pregnancy, but as I said to you yesterday, this is the cross that we must bear for the freedom of our people. So I urge you to be strong in faith, and this will in turn strengthen me. I can assure you that it is extremely difficult for me to think of being away from you and my Yoki and Marty for four months, but I am asking God hourly to give me the power of endurance. I have the faith to believe that this excessive suffering that is now coming to our family will in some little way serve to make Atlanta a better city, Georgia a better state, and America a better country. Just how, I do not yet know, but I have faith to believe it will. If I am correct, then our suffering is not in vain.

AUDREY: This is an example of what happened when they were holding these mass meetings all over the South and asking for volunteers:

Toward the end of the mass meetings, Abernathy or Shuttlesworth or I would extend an appeal for volunteers to serve in our nonviolent army. We made it clear that we would not send anyone out to demonstrate who had not convinced himself and us that he could accept and endure violence without retaliating.

AUDREY: That's why they did these trainings. They made people think about and consider what they would do if people were hitting them or beating them or pushing them.

At the same time, we urged volunteers to give up any possible weapons that they might have on their persons. Hundreds of people responded to this appeal. We proved that we possessed the most formidable weapon of all: the conviction that we were right. We had the protection of our knowledge that we were more concerned about realizing our righteous aims than about saving our skins.

AUDREY: And that is vision. He had the vision in his own mind. He developed it over years of education, thinking about it, studying it, talking about it, writing about it. And then in his personal life, when the moment came for him to sacrifice himself, he did it. He took on leadership roles he felt inadequate for. His home was bombed, and he chose to stay in the work and not walk away, and he turned to God, and God gave him the strength and the conviction. And then he asked others to do what he was doing. He never asked anyone to do something he wasn't willing to do himself. And he shared the vision, shared the dream, over and over and over again, and the circle got wider and wider.

AUDREY: This is the principle: we can only control ourselves, and to the level at which we control ourselves, we get out of drama. We decide to be creators. We formulate a vision and we live according to that vision, and our circle of influence will grow and grow. It is incredible how he came to have worldwide influence.

AUDREY: So we get to the moment where they're doing these protests and going to jail for it, and they make a decision. He says the city government obtained a court injunction directing them to cease their activities until their right to demonstrate had been argued in court. They believed they had the right to demonstrate, but the city was trying to stop them.

Two days later, we did an audacious thing, something we had never done in any other crusade. We disobeyed a court order.

AUDREY: He makes this justification in Letter from Birmingham Jail. He explains why they were being obedient to law, because they were obeying the natural law above the civil law. He says:

I intended to be one of the first to set the example of civil disobedience.

AUDREY: Which is the title of that Thoreau essay from years before, when he was in college.

Ten days after the demonstrations began, between four and five hundred people had gone to jail. Some had been released on bail, but about three hundred remained. Now that the job of unifying the Negro community had been accomplished, my time had come. We decided that, because of its symbolic significance, Good Friday, April 12, would be the day that Ralph Abernathy and I would present our bodies as a personal witness in this crusade.

AUDREY: So they gave themselves up and offered themselves into jail, and then he writes Letter from Birmingham Jail. Here's one little segment of it. We go through it in detail in Level Two of the Academy, where we drill into how to understand it and identify its principles.

Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just and there are unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.

AUDREY: So here he is citing the natural law as the justification for the actions he's taking. It's incredible how this natural law and its first principles bring about justice and healing and freedom for so many people. The truth makes us free.

AUDREY: I don't have all of this in perfect chronological order. I have snippets that stood out to me that I wanted to share with you today. There was a moment in prison when he was put in solitary confinement, which was incredibly difficult. He was finally let out long enough to have a visitor, a man named Clarence Jones who was working with him. Here's how he recounts what happened:

When Clarence Jones arrived the next day, before I could even tell him how happy I was to see him, he said a few words that lifted a thousand pounds from my heart. "Harry Belafonte has been able to raise fifty thousand dollars for bail bonds. It is available immediately. And he says that whatever else you need, he will raise it."

AUDREY: There were all these people in jail, and they couldn't get any of them out. The bail bonds had been set so high, and he didn't know how he was going to help these people go home and live their lives.

I found it hard to say what I felt. Jones's message had brought me more than relief from my immediate concern; more than gratitude for the loyalty of friends far away; more than confirmation of the life of the movement that could not be snuffed out. What silenced me was a profound sense of awe. I was aware of a feeling that had been present all along below the surface of consciousness, pressed down under the weight of concern for the movement: I had never been truly in solitary confinement; God's companionship does not stop at the door of a jail cell. God had been my cellmate. When the decision came in Room 30 on Good Friday that we must act, God was there. And He was also present in a Fifth Avenue New York City apartment, where a dedicated young star had worked night and day, telephoning everyone he could think of to raise money for Birmingham. In the midst of the deepest midnight, daybreak had come. I did not know whether the sun was shining at that moment. But I knew that once again I could see the light.

AUDREY: He was truly a visionary, with a vision so much bigger than himself. His life was swallowed up in a cause and a movement that involved first dozens, then thousands, then tens of thousands, and eventually millions of individuals who came together in a common cause, lived out this vision, and changed the whole face of America.

AUDREY: Vision is really what changes everything. It helps us get out of drama. It helps us stay in a creator mindset and keep moving toward something that matters, something bigger and better than we are as individuals. And as he devoted his life to this vision, he literally changed the world. He as an individual is so inspiring to me. The vision he formulated and held, the light he held up, is just like the torch that is our logo. It's the image of our movement here at The Mission Driven Mom. That light that we hold up: the light of goodness, the light of truth, the light of God, the light of principles. We become principled mothers who then link arms with other principled mothers. We get ourselves in line. We get our homes in line with truth. And we go out and make a difference in the community. Together we can do that, because this vision makes all the difference.

AUDREY: If right now in this moment of your life you feel stuck, if you aren't sure how to move forward, just know that as you make the decision to become a creator and find a new vision for your life to move toward, as small as that may be, it will start to change you. Maybe it's a clean kitchen. You hold to that vision that you are going to have a clean kitchen, and you're going to figure out how, you're going to find a way to have a clean kitchen all the time. It will start to change you. The very fabric of who you are will begin to change. As you stay in that creator mindset by holding onto that vision, big or small, grand or minimal, it will make all the difference for you.

AUDREY: I want to end with his I Have a Dream speech, because this was the ultimate moment when his vision hit the world stage. They had the March on Washington. So many people came; the whole Mall was full. You can watch videos of it on YouTube. It's so incredibly inspiring. He shares with the world the vision he has risked his life for, at this point for a decade. He has shown that he is all in and willing to give everything for this cause, even to be in prison. One of the things he says in his autobiography is, I might be in prison for a decade, but that's okay, because the cause is worth it. The change for our nation, the change for the people, the prospects for our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren are worth the sacrifices we have to make today.

AUDREY: These are some of the words of that speech. He gave it one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by Lincoln. He's standing there in front of the Lincoln Memorial, pleading with those in power to bring greater levels of freedom to the nation.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal." I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

AUDREY: As I have said throughout this podcast, Martin Luther King Jr.'s life and legacy continue to inspire me today to be a woman of vision, to devote myself to causes and ideals that are higher and bigger than myself, and to let God help me in the work I am called to. That is why we are The Mission Driven Mom.

AUDREY: If these ideas resonate with you and you would like to dig deeper, I have a few suggestions. I have an older podcast, I think it's number 36, called Meeting Life with Nonviolent Resistance. It goes deeper into the tactics and principles of nonviolent resistance and how you can use some of those principles in your everyday life. I would encourage you to go listen to that podcast, which we've linked below. I would also encourage you to keep listening to these podcasts and go back to some of the ones we've done over the previous few months, because these are all the concepts and principles we want to arm you with to be the visionary and the creator of your own life: to take hold of the problem stories you have right now, arrest them, turn them around, and gain a better vision and future for yourself.

AUDREY: And most of all, we would love for you to join our Mothers of Creation celebration. It's not just an event, although it is an event, live in Provo, Utah this September. We would love to see you there, meet you in person, and help you get to know our community. We are super excited. We're going to take your problem stories in the morning and teach you how to deconstruct them, how to see the drama and victim types in your life, how to disconnect from that problem story, reframe it, become a creator, build a new vision, and write your creator declaration. It's going to be an incredible day.

AUDREY: In the meantime, as soon as you sign up, you get access to the private community that's being mentored by Lindsey Wright. You've seen her on the podcast recently. She's digging deeper, doing workshops that are recorded and available to you immediately. You can meet other moms who are going to be there and get to know them before you arrive. We'd love to have you there. We'd love for you to bring a friend. But most of all, we would love for you to be empowered with truths that can make you free, and to be the creator of your own life by determining a new vision for yourself, having passion around that vision, and taking the necessary baby steps to get you there. That's the key. Martin Luther King did it from the time he was a young boy, and he changed the world. But all of us can do it right now in our everyday lives. You have far more power than you think you have to turn your life around, and it won't take very long. You just need those principles.

AUDREY: Thank you so much for joining me today. It was a joy to share the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and his legacy with you. He's a man who continues to inspire me today. We'll see you next time.

Have you ever imagined how things would turn out in the future—the perfect man you'd marry, the beautifully obedient children you'd have— and then, years later, when things were messy and hard, you wondered what had gone wrong? 

I did. 

And what I had to learn was that the image I was holding all that time was not a vision. It was an expectation. 

Resources from the Episode:

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Episode 172: Confusion, Clarity & Vision with Jennifer Hudye

AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. I’m Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom. I’m honored to have Jennifer Hudye with us today.

AUDREY: I’ll read a tiny bit about her. She’s the founder and CEO of Vision Driven, which sounds awesome and very much aligns with us: a company devoted to helping people get crystal clear on their next big vision and then actually live into it. In 2016, she partnered with Cameron Herold, the author of Vivid Vision and a top coach to CEOs and COOs, and became a driving force behind the Vivid Vision process. Since then, she and her team have guided more than 2,000 companies, many run by leaders like Tony Robbins, Joe Polish, and Brendon Burchard, in crafting a compelling picture of their future. I also know you have a sister company called Conscious Copy & Co., where you help business leaders and individuals get their messaging out through copy. And I thought it was fascinating that you’ve been doing this almost since you started walking, building businesses in your teen years, launching them and selling them. You’ve had a bit of a wild ride, a different adventure than the average person, so I was really excited to talk to you about all of that.

AUDREY: Before we dive in, I want to read a little section from the book Vivid Vision. I’ll tell you in a bit how I got my hands on it and why it’s been so helpful to me personally. Moms especially, as I read this paragraph, I want you to replace the word “organization” or “company” with “family,” and think about your own family culture.

No one else in your organization [family] knows with any certainty what it is you want to build. At best, they guess. If you want your team [family] to build what you see, you must provide them with the means of understanding it. Otherwise, you will get different ideas of what to build. Everyone will grasp a different part, but no one will put it all together. No one will comprehend what it is you want to build as a whole. The result? Confusion. Everyone will have a unique, subjective experience, drawing a picture that looks nothing like anyone else’s.

AUDREY: In other words, your family is without alignment. So before we get to the concept of vision, which I want you to define for us, I’d love to start with this word: confusion. I saw one of your videos where you talked about what confusion is, and it was fascinating. I think if we talk about confusion the way you teach it, it will help us contrast it with vision.

JENNIFER: First off, thank you so much for having me, Audrey. I’m grateful to be here. My definition of confusion is thinking you should know something, but you don’t.

AUDREY: Wow.

JENNIFER: Confusion oftentimes has two components. The first is getting caught up in the how of something before you’ve ever identified the what, the where, and the why. Say you want to go on a cross-country road trip. You start driving, but you haven’t plugged in a destination. Then you start to feel this sense of confusion: “I don’t even know how I’m going to get there.” Well, have you identified where you’re going in the first place? We do this in so many places in our lives.

JENNIFER: The second component is fear: the internal story we tell ourselves about why we can’t have what we want. I’ve guided over 10,000 people and leaders through the Vivid Vision process over the last decade, and I can tell you that more often than not, it’s either the how or fear, but the fear is underneath it. Confusion can be a really convenient cover-up for avoiding the truth.

AUDREY: Yes.

JENNIFER: Because what if you state what it is that you want, and then you don’t get it?

AUDREY: You don’t get it. That’s right.

JENNIFER: What does that mean about you? So we have these fears running in the background, and we label them as confusion. We label them as being stuck, because that’s actually more convenient than knowing what we want. Because if we know what we want, then we have to be responsible to the knowing.

[Speaker to verify against audio: the next paragraph may be Jennifer continuing rather than Audrey.]

AUDREY: And then when we fall short, it’s a new way for us to be a failure. It lowers our status in our own eyes and creates even more self-deprecation and that horrible self-talk. And we don’t want to go there. So fascinating. Abraham Maslow, in one of his books I love, has a chapter called “The Need to Know and the Fear of Knowing.” I think that’s what you’re pointing to: we need to know, but we’re afraid to know, because knowing anything makes us responsible for that knowing. And the truth can liberate us. That’s a core idea we talk a lot about at The Mission Driven Mom, that the truth has the power to make us free. But often that truth is painful, and it must be faced and championed. That’s the work.

JENNIFER: On the topic of confusion and being stuck, I’ve found a lot of people think the opposite of clarity is confusion. I haven’t seen that, working with clients or in my own experience. The opposite of clarity is the unknown. Clarity is the known: I have the information, the education, and the insight within myself to make a decision and move forward. The unknown is the opposite. I don’t have the information, the education, or the insight. It’s the open void. But there isn’t emotional baggage that comes along with the unknown.

JENNIFER: For example, when I went to college, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. I’m partially dyslexic and I hate reading, which is ironic because I ended up building a writing company. In my first year I took some law classes and realized, wow, I really hate this. This is not for me. So for about two years, I didn’t know what I wanted, but I wasn’t emotionally distressed about it. I thought, okay, I just need to go try things, see what I like, and that will give me some clues about what I do want.

JENNIFER: As moms, or as we get older, we understand that for kids. We give them a lot of grace in those periods where they don’t know what they want. We say, no problem, go try what’s on the buffet menu, go have experiences. But then we don’t give ourselves that grace. And so we get locked in confusion, which is that middle ground between the known and the unknown: thinking we should know something, but we don’t. And that’s like an e-brake on our own evolution.

AUDREY: Wow, that’s profound. And I think it’s exacerbated by our social media age, where you look out into the void and it looks like other people know what you think you should know. That creates even more internal turmoil: why haven’t I arrived?

AUDREY: I’d love to hear your thoughts on something. I know this personally because I’ve done it many times myself: I thought I was setting a vision, but I was actually setting an expectation. How would you distinguish between clarity, vision, and expectation? I feel like those words get jumbled into one thing, and we think they’re all the same, but they’re very different, and knowing the difference can help us. How would you define vision and hold it as something separate?

JENNIFER: That’s a great question. I think of expectation as how it needs to look in the process of getting somewhere. There’s a little bit of a white-knuckle grip on it, and a deflection from reality.

AUDREY: Yes.

JENNIFER: The definition of vision is simply a painted picture of something in the future. If you were to take a time machine into the future, what do you want it to look like, and how do you want to feel? You can do that in different time frames. I think there’s a lot of value in a ten-year vision. In our process, we use three years.

JENNIFER: But I think it’s so important to hold that vision lightly, to say, “I would like this reality, or something better,” knowing that we don’t have all the insight and sometimes life will redirect us somewhere even better than we could have imagined. Whereas expectation says it needs to look this way, and it needs to look this way in how I get there. It’s almost like getting in the way of this amazing energy called life, because we think we know better. Which I have done. Anyone listening who’s thinking, “I’ve done that,” I’ll put both my hands up.

AUDREY: Yes. One hundred percent. And I hadn’t thought about it quite this way until you explained it, but what I see in myself and in the women I work with is that expectation is often a stumbling block, whereas vision creates forward movement. I think expectation is a stumbling block because expectations are often completely arbitrary. They don’t come from a place of knowing, like you’re talking about. You’re not learning how to get there. You’re not being intentional. You’re layering life with something you hope is going to show up, but it’s not part of a plan. You don’t know how it’s going to come about, or you don’t have a clear sense of the reality and what you’d need to know to get there.

AUDREY: A vision is a very intentional process. An expectation is kind of a lazy man’s way of living: I think that if I live this way or do this thing, I should have this, so I’m going to expect it. But you don’t actually pay a price to know whether those two things even equate, or whether what you’re doing now can even cause the outcome you expect. With a vision, I love that you said a painted picture, because we’ve paid a price to know something about it. Then we’re working hard to know who we need to be to step into that vision and what needs to happen along the way. It’s a very proactive, intentional process.

JENNIFER: I do think there’s a level of expectation that needs to come along with realizing a vision. I would maybe upgrade the word to faith. About four and a half years ago, my husband and I decided to move cross-country from San Diego to Austin, Texas. It was at the peak of a lot of people moving to Texas, and the housing market was on fire. We had a lot of friends moving around the same time, and many of them were telling us stories about how they couldn’t find a house and were living in Airbnbs. We were in a holding pattern. We hadn’t fully decided we were making the move. We hadn’t hired movers or given notice on the place we were staying.

JENNIFER: For about eight months, I had crafted a vision. I listened to it in my own voice every single day on my walk. I was speaking into existence the exact home we were going to find in Austin: what it would look like when you walk in, open, spacious, expansive. Every window you look out, you see nature and trees. A clear separation between where we work and where we live. A place for us to host. Every room you walk into feels like home.

JENNIFER: So I was very clear on the vision, and I was walking along the beach one day with my husband, and I said, “We need to decide that we’re moving. Even though everybody else’s reality says the market isn’t set up for us to find this very specific place, I have faith that we will. But we’ve got to do our part.” So we gave our notice. We booked movers, even though we had not found the place yet. I said, “We’re moving in 30 days. If we have to put our stuff in storage and figure it out from there, we will. This is the move we need to make.” There was a level of expectation, or, I’d say, faith.

AUDREY: Faith. I like that better.

JENNIFER: Life was going to meet us and bring us that perfect place. And literally a couple of days later, we got a message from our realtor saying, “I’m pretty sure I found your dream place. It checks every box you’ve said you want.” The next day we flew to Austin and walked the place. We were in and out of Austin in maybe 90 minutes. We flew back home and said, “Yeah, that’s our place.” And we received the keys the exact day the movers were dropping off our stuff. So there was a level of expectation there, but there was also a level of clarity that we weren’t willing to settle for.

AUDREY: Yeah. The energy is different. If I say to somebody, “I expect you to do this,” that has a negative energy and connotation around it. But when I say, “I have faith that you will,” faith is a principle of action. Faith means we’re moving forward. We’re doing something. We’re acting in the world. I really love changing that out.

AUDREY: Your story reminds me of a podcast I did recently on Viktor Frankl and Man’s Search for Meaning. He tells the story of a man in the camp who said he heard a voice telling him he was going to be released on a certain day. He believed it with all his heart. And he died on that day. He was released from the camp through his own death, because he believed so much in that result.

AUDREY: Okay. So with all of those definitions established, let’s talk about this in a little more detail. What does the word vivid have to do with it, and why three years?

JENNIFER: If we define vision as stepping into a moment in the future and painting a picture of what you want to see, the more specific you can be, the better, because the more real it feels. If I asked you to tell me about your life right now in the area of your health, you could describe it in detail: what time you wake up, what time you go to bed, how your sleep is, your nutrition, how you feel in your body, what kind of exercise you do. You could describe it in vivid detail because it’s your reality. The same goes for your relationships, your vocation and where you spend your time and energy with your gifts, your finances, and your lifestyle: where you live, where you travel, your hobbies. The same is true for vision. You want to be able to describe in vivid detail what you want your life to look like.

JENNIFER: I use three years, and there have been a lot of studies on this, because it’s far enough in the future that you can dream big without needing to know the how, but close enough that you can get vivid and specific. It’s that sweet spot.

JENNIFER: But I think it all stems first from looking at your current reality and asking, where am I noticing longing and discontent in these five quadrants? Because that is life speaking to you, saying there’s unlived life here. If you’re thinking about your finances and you’re feeling stressed, feeling longing, feeling discontent, that’s a signal. There’s unlived life here, and something more wanting to come through. So if you could have it all your way, what would that look like?

AUDREY: I love that. In one of your videos, you gave three questions for when people are in confusion and chaos. The first question you recommended for moving out of the chaos and toward the vision was, “What do you know for sure?” And I was floored. As far back as I can remember in my adult life, every time things got really awful or I felt so overwhelmed I didn’t know how to move forward, I would steal time away, grab a journal, and ask myself that exact question. What do I know for sure? About myself, about my life, about the people I love, about what’s happening, about what I want? That open-ended question was so centering. It got me back into a more positive frame where I could start working toward something intentional instead of playing out all these things I didn’t really want.

JENNIFER: That’s exactly it, Audrey. It’s so easy for us to go to where we’re confused and ruminate on that. The very first place to go is clarity. Where do I already have clarity? What do I know for sure? In these areas of my life, what is a constant? And the more specific you can get, the better. If what I know for sure is that I want to be healthy, well, what do you know for sure about what that looks like? Health is fairly universal for most of us. We want to wake up energized. We want to go to sleep rested, feeling like we got the most out of our day, with a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction.

JENNIFER: Maybe it’s in the area of your family: “I want my kids to be thriving and healthy.” The question I always like to ask there is, how will you know that’s true? If you and I were a fly on the wall and saw your kids healthy and thriving, how would we know? When that’s realized, what does it look like?

JENNIFER: Then the opposite end of the spectrum, which we talked about earlier, is the unknown. What don’t you know about your future that you’re okay with? Maybe you’re not sure if you’ll be in a different house, and you’re okay with that. Or you’re not sure whether you’ll be in a particular job or role or start your own business, but you’re not ruminating on it. You’re just not in that season yet, or you don’t have enough research or insight.

JENNIFER: And the third question is, where do you think you should know what you want, but you don’t? That’s the confusion piece. I almost guarantee that any of the answers you list will fall into either a how question or a fear question. Maybe it’s, “I want to start a business, but I don’t know how to get customers,” or “I don’t know exactly what topic I want.” Or, “I want to move to a different state, but I’m not sure. Do we want to be closer to family, or to this?” Oftentimes it’s either a mindset issue, or you need more education or information.

AUDREY: I love that. I’ll tell you really quickly. I launched The Mission Driven Mom as a hobby. I didn’t plan to be in business. I just wanted to help moms. It grew and surprised me. It grew pretty quickly, and I didn’t know what to do with that. After about four years, it kind of collapsed. The technical problem at the heart of it was a broken business model that wasn’t scalable and needed fixing. But the real reasons we went silent for a couple of years were exactly what you’re pointing to: the how and the fear. I didn’t know how to run a business properly, and I had a lot of fears that I couldn’t do it. What would the cost be for me and my family? What would it mean? What would I have to do? All those layers.

AUDREY: Fast forward a year or so, and my husband comes to me and says, “This program you’ve built has such a profound impact on people. I feel almost a call, or a responsibility, to champion it. I’ll help you. Will you come back to it with me? Let’s figure this out. We can do it.” Facing the fear and making a conscious decision to figure out the how let us back into it. The business still brought in some money each year, so there had been money sitting in the account. We hired some people and got going again. But we were starting from scratch in the sense that we had to wake everybody back up. I had gone quiet. I hadn’t been podcasting or anything.

AUDREY: Then we hit a wall last fall, when it was time for us to make a personal investment. The funds that had been sitting in the account were gone, and my husband said, “Okay, now it’s time for us to invest again.” We had invested the last time, and it had gone sour. And I just hit this wall. I said, “I’m not doing it. I’m not going to make a personal investment again.” He said, “What are you talking about? I thought that’s what we were doing. I thought we were going to do whatever it takes.” And I said, “Apparently I’ve drawn a line, and that’s my line, and I’m not willing to go past it.” He said, “But why?” And I said, “I don’t know.”

AUDREY: So for three or four weeks, I did not much else. I lived my life and took care of what I needed to, but most of my time was spent journaling, meditating, praying, studying, researching, and thinking, until I got to a point where I could see what this business could be that would be worth my sacrifice. That was the point I had to get to.

AUDREY: I think it’s the point parents have to get to. You want a baby. That sounds fun. You’ve always wanted to be a parent. You get into it, and a few years in, maybe five, maybe ten, maybe fifteen, you recognize it’s requiring more of you than you thought you’d have to give. You’re pushed up against a wall of decision. What am I willing to give for this? Why am I in it? What’s my vision of what it’s going to be? I didn’t want the cost of the money and the time and the sacrifice. I wanted a vision big enough to inspire me, and hopefully others, that I was willing to give my life energy to. Life is short. Life is precious. I have very little time here. If I’m going to give my life’s energy to something, it’s got to be a vision big enough.

AUDREY: And that’s really why Kate is with us. Right at that time, we had asked her to help build out a marketing strategy. I went to her and said, “Before you build it out, here’s where I’m at. Here’s the vision of what I’m willing to give my life energy for.” And she said, “Go buy the book Vivid Vision and write it out for me so I can see it.” That’s how I was introduced to the book and the process. It was so helpful. It was like a guidebook. I went point by point and did everything the book told me to do. In fact, I printed it off and brought it with me. It’s five or six pages. It’s our Vivid Vision, and we read it every quarter. It unifies the whole team. We’re in the thick of it now, really starting to gain some momentum and traction, and it’s a super exciting, rewarding journey to be on.

AUDREY: At the heart of that whole story, I’ve had to do the same thing in my family. I had expectations of what things were going to look like twenty years in the future, and when they didn’t look like that, I had to go back to the drawing board and decide on a new vision for my family. Who am I going to be in my family? What can I control? What’s my vision of what our family can look like that’s within the realm of my ability to control? It’s been so liberating to recreate a new, updated, upgraded vision that then fuels my everyday activities.

AUDREY: I have a couple more questions for you as we finish up, but I want to read one other thing from the book, because I’d love to talk for a minute about the benefits: to you, to the clients you’ve worked with, and to others you’ve seen do the work of building a vision.

The benefits to employees [family members] of a Vivid Vision don’t stop there, however. This company-wide [family-wide] alignment also aids your team in becoming decision makers themselves. One goal as the company leader is to develop leaders within the organization.

AUDREY: And that is what mothers do. They’re leaders who develop leaders.

The more work you can responsibly delegate, the more you can focus on bigger issues. One hallmark of a good company [and a great family] is the ability to promote from within, which leads to a culture of trust, dedication, and willingness.

AUDREY: Those are universal principles that apply to any organization where we’re working together. So the benefits are tremendous, because not only do you have this clarity for yourself, but it’s helped me so much to sort through all the opportunities that start to come your way. When you move in a direction, people see that you’re in motion, opportunities come, and you have to say no most of the time. But what do you say no to? Whether it’s your time and energy as a mom, a friend, a spouse, an employee, or an owner, you have to say no most of the time. It’s only when you have this vivid vision that you know where and how and why to say no, and you can say it with confidence. And the people around you also know how to clear the path so you can make it through the forest.

AUDREY: So why is this a message that’s worth championing to you? What benefits have come from it, like this incredible experience you had with your home? Are there other personal experiences, or experiences with clients, that you’d love to share about why this matters so much?

JENNIFER: So many. I want to highlight a few things you shared. The vision is like an anchor: what are you going to dedicate your time and energy to, which is essentially your life force? What are you going to dedicate your life to? If we don’t intentionally think about the answer to that question, we get caught in default mode, where we just go through the motions of whatever life throws at us. I think about 95% of people live in that default mode, following whatever patterns society or family has said is just the way it’s got to be. There isn’t conscious creation, like you teach in your events. Setting a vision you would love is saying, this is what I’m going to dedicate my life to. It’s intentional, so I know how I’m going to show up every single day, aligned to that.

JENNIFER: In my own experience, Audrey, I grew up in a very entrepreneurial family. One of the gifts of that was that my parents always said you can do anything you put your mind to. It’s just a matter of determining what you’re going to put your mind to. Early on in college, I was really grateful to find some key mentors who helped me collapse the timeline on results that might have taken me ten or twenty years into three. One of them was Cameron Herold. I was building my first business, bootstrapping it and trying to make enough month by month to pay my bills, and he said, “No, this is not how you’re going to grow an extraordinary company. You want to imagine three years into the future. What is the company you’ve built?” I followed that advice and ended up building one of the top copywriting agencies in the personal development space in less than three years.

JENNIFER: Then I had another mentor, Mary Morrissey, who came at the perfect time. She said, “Yes, and it’s about so much more than business. What do you want for your life?” Vision is a spiritual quest. If you look at any spiritual text, it keeps coming back to vision. Without a brighter future, we stay stuck in our own circumstances. Instead of having a circumstance, like a health diagnosis, a family member passing away, or a miscarriage, we allow it to have us, and we get caught up in a loop and don’t know how to get out of it.

JENNIFER: In my own life, I love this work every day. It’s helped me build my dream business, and it’s helped me build my dream marriage. My husband and I have been together ten years. We sit down every three years, and every quarter for the last 35 quarters, and review our vision for our marriage and our family together: what we’re building and why.

AUDREY: Wow.

JENNIFER: And even in my own immediate family, I’ve held a vision of what our family gets to look like. We don’t have kids yet. We’re starting to prepare; we’re planning to have them next year. But I see a vision of the future where my kids are surrounded by loving, conscious, emotionally aware adults. Imagine what’s going to be possible for them if they’re surrounded by emotionally regulated adults. That inspires me every day to get it together and work on myself. It’s allowed me to build a dream life.

JENNIFER: But more than anything, I use it in my darkest moments. When my dad got really sick last year and the odds didn’t look great, one of the first things I did was say, okay, when we pray and when we’re communicating, we are holding the vision together of him being healthy and strong and well, and aligning my entire family around that vision. So I use it everywhere.

AUDREY: That’s so beautiful. And to your point about it being a spiritual journey, looping all the way back to the beginning of our conversation and talking about faith: it’s an act of faith. It’s a very courageous thing to spend your time on what you’re intentionally moving toward instead of reacting to the stimuli that come at you. And it’s a decision. You’re going to choose that instead. I call it a creator declaration. Some people might call it a set of affirmations; I call them truth statements. One of mine is that I intentionally choose my thoughts and words each day, because I know they are the seeds and soil from which my creations grow. That’s a lot of what we’re talking about.

AUDREY: And I would say it’s impossible to move intentionally toward something that isn’t pretty clear. How can you know what you’re trying to create unless you’ve taken the time to sit with yourself and imagine it? I love your example of walking each morning and talking to yourself. I tried for so long to visualize with images in my mind, because I thought that’s what everybody was saying to do. Then I realized I just make voice memos. Sometimes I say it out loud, or I listen to myself talking about what it is I’m working toward.

AUDREY: This vivid vision fuels our company. We’re all lifted every quarter as we’re reminded again: this is where we’re headed, this is what we’re doing. It’s so unifying. And that can happen everywhere. Like you’re saying, you can align with people by creating shared visions with them. What are we doing in this friendship? What are we doing in this family? What are we doing in this marriage? I feel like it’s so vital and not talked about enough, and your framework is so incredibly helpful.

AUDREY: My last question: if there’s a mom listening and she could do just one thing this week to start creating a vision for her life, what would you have her do?

JENNIFER: I love this. For the mom who’s listening, especially if you’re thinking, “I keep hearing everybody tell me to get clear on what I want. If it were that easy, I would have done it. Where do I start?” this is what I recommend for all my clients. If you’re feeling a little rusty at connecting to your desires, every morning for the next seven days, and if you really want to do it, the next 30 days, take out a journal and start with the headline “What I Would Love.” Then start making bullet points about aspects of your vision: your desires, what you would love, what you want. Start with what you know for sure.

JENNIFER: You may find yourself repeating things over and over, and that’s okay. I think of it like turning on a tap that hasn’t been on for a long time. You’re going to get dark, murky water first. But if you keep the tap on, it keeps flowing, and eventually you get that crisp, clear water. The same thing goes for your desires. So do this as a little morning ritual. It should only take about three minutes to start connecting to that vision for your life. You can start with three years, or you can keep it open-ended if three years feels like a stretch, depending on where you are in your journey.

AUDREY: I love that. That’s a perfect place to start. I’ve done that so many times, and it’s so helpful as a kick-start: I want to stop being in drama. I want to stop being reactionary. I want to be a creator instead, have a vision, and create that vision. That’s so beautiful. Thank you so much for that. How can our listeners find you and your work? What projects or programs might benefit them? We’ll put all the links and resources with this podcast in the description.

JENNIFER: On social media, you can follow me on Instagram at [handle to verify]. On Facebook, it’s still my maiden name, Jennifer Hudye, H-U-D-Y-E. Our website is visiondrivenglobal.com [URL to verify], and there you’ll find our free Vivid Vision mind map, which has a series of questions you can start asking yourself to gain clarity on your three-year vision. That would be a great first step.

AUDREY: I love that so much. And for those of you following The Mission Driven Mom, we still have some tickets available for our event this fall in Utah, in the beautiful mountains with the fall colors. We’re going to talk all about moving from drama to creator, and we’ll put a vision together at the end of the day. We’d love to see you there. Links for all of these resources are below.

AUDREY: Jennifer, thank you so much for being here. It was so interesting and enlightening to hear your take on some key words we use all the time, and to realize we sometimes think about them in ways that aren’t helpful. Hopefully these new definitions and new ideas about how to create a vision will bless our moms. Thank you for all you’ve shared, for your life’s work, and for being who you are so you could share what you’ve learned and who you’ve become. Thanks for joining us.

JENNIFER: Thank you, Audrey.

Have you ever had someone you love decide to walk out of your life? 

Cadie did. Someone very close to her decided a few years back that they didn't want to be in her life any longer, and there's been no contact since.

While Cadie was sharing with us her pain and struggle over this loss, we all had a profound realization:

Even though she has no contact with this person, Cadie still has a relationship with them! 

Resources from the Episode:

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Episode 171: Vision, A Panel Discussion

AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom. So happy to have you back with us again today. We have our beautiful panel of upcoming speakers for our Mothers of Creation event this fall. We've got Tracie Hyde, Lindsey Wright, and Cadie Hatch with me. Today we're going to talk about the final key theme of this event, and of this whole process of moving from our problem stories and the places where we feel immensely stuck to really moving forward, having some serious success, and making things different on a long-term basis.

AUDREY: We've talked about the victim types, and how understanding them creates a spark and turns us on to the fact that we are being a victim and we need to be different. We've talked about how creator orientation gives us new hope. Cadie talked about how it makes us feel liberated, and Lindsey talked about how it helps her feel relief, like a new beginning, turning toward others, all of these beautiful things. But then how do we maintain it? We get that we're acting like a victim, and that we could be a creator instead, and we want to be that. Vision is at the heart of how we stay there. It's how we get to the end result. So let's start by putting some words around what we mean when we say vision. How would you describe that?

TRACIE: Vision is something we hold in our mind that we have done the work to spiritually create before we bring it into the world. It's something we have in the forefront of our mind. In victim mode, we're reacting to problems, and the problems pop up like whack-a-mole and we're just whacking them down. But with vision, we actually have something we carefully and intentionally created in our mind that we are walking toward, working toward.

AUDREY: That's a beautiful description. Any other thoughts or descriptions around that? We've talked in previous podcasts about how sometimes our expectations and our ideals can get us into trouble. So what's the difference between an expectation and this idea of vision?

LINDSEY: The culture can say, just envision it. If you want a million dollars and an island in the Bahamas, just imagine it and then it will happen. That's not what we mean. For me, vision is based in reality, meaning it isn't unrealistic. It's based on principles. It's something that, like Tracie said, we've spiritually created. This thing we're holding in the mind, this way we want to show up in the world. But it's realistic.

AUDREY: I would add one other little caveat, and I think it's what you're getting at, Lindsey. It's within the realm of our control. One of the things that really trips me up in the expectation realm is two things. One, I have to remind myself that if my expectations are higher than God's, then I'm in the realm of the impossible and the ridiculous. But also that I can't have expectations for other people. I can only have expectations around my responses and my creations. Those are the things I can hold and that I can control. So that would be part of how I would flesh out what we mean by vision. Cadie, you were going to add something.

CADIE: That was what I was going to say. I can have a vision of what I want my relationships to look like, but I can't control what the other person in the relationship is going to want or do next. It's unrealistic for me to force that on them. So a question I have been finding helpful is, what kind of person do I need to be to live this vision I'm thinking about? I can't control their response, but I can control mine. Who do I want to be as I get older? What kind of person do I want to be? What would that look like in this relationship? Then it's all my responsibility to be that person.

AUDREY: Great point. Another word that's used in some of the sources we're using to prepare this event is outcome.

AUDREY: Cadie, Tracie has given the example in past podcasts and past discussions about her family gatherings. Maybe she knows what she doesn't want. One of the words we haven't used yet is fear versus faith. I think that's a very important fundamental difference here. When we're in the victim mentality, we're very fearful. You can see threads of this if you go back and listen to the ways we described problem stories and problem situations. There are a lot of fears about what we're going to do, what other people will think, how we're not going to show up and be enough, all of that. Creator orientation is a place of faith, and faith is a principle of action and power. So we're taking action around a predetermined outcome. The reason Tracie kept talking about this spiritual creation is because we've gone to the work of deciding what it is we want instead.

AUDREY: So much of what's happening in victim is that something has happened in life. We've been in an accident, or someone has betrayed us, and it's something we didn't want to have happen to us. In that sense we are kind of a victim of life, but we don't want to be in victim orientation. We want to take that experience, turn it into a challenger, and show up as a creator. But we cannot do that without determining what we want instead, now that these are my new circumstances. When my father passed suddenly when I was sixteen years old, that was my new circumstance. There was no going back. There was no changing it. There was only accepting it and creating new visions and outcomes of who I was going to be, how I was going to show up for the people around me, how I was going to be in my family. Vision is that outcome we predetermine, that we spiritually create, like Tracie kept saying. We hold it in our mind. We cling to it to keep us in that creator orientation.

LINDSEY: I love what Cadie said about holding this creation in our mind, this outcome. But we're also willing to do the work. We're willing to act in faith. We're willing to take responsibility. So the vision is based on reality, and it's based on what we can actually control, but we're also willing to do the work. We don't just set the vision and then expect it to happen. We're taking the responsibility to make it happen.

[Speaker attribution uncertain in this passage. Voice matches Lindsey’s earlier "based in reality" language, but verify against audio.]

AUDREY: That's a good component of vision. And creating the vision is a big part of taking ownership. We can't just decide to stay a creator. If we don't do the work to build out a new vision for ourselves in this new reality we find ourselves in, then we will flip back into [victim] orientation. There's no other way for it to go, because we don't know why we're being a creator. We lose sight of it constantly, and those negative emotions and reactions to a situation we didn't choose, or don't like, are going to overwhelm us if we're not hanging on to a new vision for ourselves, our lives, our way of being. It's indispensable to staying in creator orientation.

[The recording says "flip back into creator orientation" here. Corrected to victim, which is clearly what was meant. Confirm before publishing.]

CADIE: If I could share a little experience on this, I would love to. I have a person in my life who I have a very close relationship with. Some years ago this person decided they didn't want to be involved in my life anymore. You might be able to say in some terms that this person abandoned our relationship. When that happened, it was a pretty traumatic experience for me, and I felt like I legitimately was the victim of that circumstance. And I didn't want to be.

CADIE: One of the ways I know I am in drama is that I obsess over the same event over and over. It gets replayed over and over. That's a huge part of victim. That's all I thought about. When I didn't have to be thinking of anything else, that was what I was thinking about. So I knew I was stuck, because victims are always stuck. And I wanted to change that. It took me a long time to be able to change it. MDM is such a wonderfully faith based community, and there are some circumstances in which I could not get out of victim by myself. On that one I had to turn to God and ask him to help me. He got me out of victim on that one.

CADIE: However, just like Audrey was saying, I can easily flip back into victim if I dwell on that problem. But the thing that keeps me out of it is this idea of a vision of what that relationship could look like someday. I cannot control this other person at all. But like I was saying before, what kind of person do I need to be so that if this person came back to me, we could start a relationship again? I need to be the kind of person who has an open heart and is willing to forgive. I need to be the kind of person who is able to have maybe challenging conversations, but with empathy and love. I can't control the other person, but my vision is of who I want to be. [Unrecoverable phrase in the recording.] I'm working on becoming that person.

AUDREY: That's beautiful, Cadie. While you were telling that story I was thinking, and I don't know if you've thought about it quite this way, but part of what you're saying is that you actually still have a relationship with this person. You are choosing the kind of relationship you have with this person, even when there's no contact. That is such a creator way of being in the world. It's a vision focused, optimistic perspective. And it's a choice. It's an intention. You're choosing to forgive. You're choosing to love. You're choosing to think positively. You are absolutely controlling your responses to a situation you didn't choose, you didn't want, and that was incredibly painful for you. That's such a great example of the way we can choose to be creators.

AUDREY: Could you juxtapose for us how you were feeling when you were in that victim place toward this person, stewing about it, versus how you're feeling right now as you're talking? Because in both instances you were still in a relationship with this person. It's like that statistic about the big chunk of women who, after they divorce, are still miserable for years and years, because they're still in a relationship with their ex. They're just not choosing to be in a good one.

CADIE: Before, it was quite awful. All you're doing is replaying. I was rehashing every conversation. I was replaying everything that had gone wrong, and it felt terrible. I was miserable all throughout the day. I was tired, because it takes a lot of emotional energy to do that over and over, and to be angry all of the time over this thing. It got in the way of my relationships. I'd be watching my kids playing outside, and instead of laughing over the funny things they were doing, my eyes were tracking them but my brain was rehashing.

CADIE: Now I don't obsess over it at all. Most of the time my thought is, this person is right in the palm of God's hand. He knows exactly where they are, and I don't need to worry about it anymore. I just need to be ready. Will they come back? And if they do, what kind of person do I need to be to say, come back, I've been waiting for you?

AUDREY: What are your feelings when you think about them now, when you think about this situation?

CADIE: There can still be times when it can be difficult, when I can think, it's tough that this is happening. I still don't like this. But overall, when I think about them, I try to remember the best memories.

AUDREY: Do you have more peace? Do you feel more peaceful than you did?

CADIE: More hopeful. Way more hopeful.

AUDREY: That's beautiful. Does anybody else have another example of how hanging on to a vision has helped them stay in creator orientation?

TRACIE: I have a child who has a lot of lofty goals right now, and sometimes this child doesn't follow through with her plans. I can tend to get into persecutor mode quite quickly in that situation, or I can get into rescuer quite easily, trying to smooth her way and do a lot of things for her because it will make it easier and faster. But I have to remember that I'm in drama in those instances. I need to hold a vision of how I can show up for her, the type of coach and mentor I want to be for her.

TRACIE: It's a double vision. It's how I want to show up, but also who she is as a child of God, and what truly is best for her personal growth. Is it this really narrowed goal she has, or is it becoming a whole, complete person, and all the other experiences she could have? So it's this dual vision I have, for her and also for me. I have to keep that constantly before me, to calm down in those moments and step intentionally into creator instead of into victim, or the drama triangle and all those roles. That's helped me a lot in that relationship, to keep that vision and to intentionally choose the creator empowerment dynamic.

AUDREY: Thank you, Tracie. That's beautiful. For me, when I'm really holding a vision, I was thinking of one of my own children when you were sharing that example. And I was thinking of someone who stepped out of my life when Cadie was telling her example. Very similar situations to both of you women. When I really am holding the proper vision, I feel a sense of calm and reassurance, remembering the principles, that it is better for my child to learn the lessons now while they're young. If I smooth the way too much, it will keep them from their growth. It will stunt their growth if I get in the way with all of my rescuing victim way of being.

AUDREY: And the reason I'm doing that is because I don't want them to suffer. I don't want them to have pain. And yet pain and suffering are how we learn and grow. Muscles have to be torn down. Whatever the analogy is, that's the way to growth. Jordan Peterson has this beautiful thing he said once, that a mother's job is the hardest in the world, because she has to bring a child into the world and grow them up and then sacrifice them to the world. That's a very hard process that we're all in the middle of. So I hold a vision of, I trust God, and I trust his laws and his principles, and I'm going to step away and really orient myself to a different role, and hold a vision of who I'm going to be for them and not shortchange them in their growth.

AUDREY: I feel calmer. I feel more in control of myself. I'm not giving in to my knee jerk reactions to rescue and soothe and pave the way and all those kinds of things. Those are some of the feelings I have when I really hang on to that vision and keep myself in creator orientation. And afterwards, when I'm in a hard moment and I really have to pull that vision to the forefront of my mind and cling to it, and I perform in a way I know was a creator way of being, I really feel proud of myself. Maybe that sounds funny to say, but there's this kind of self commendation of, that was hard. That was hard to be a creator in that moment. And I did it, and I'm a little bit stronger now, and I can do that again. We can have this upward trajectory of growth in ourselves as we choose the vision that keeps us a creator, and keep sculpting our character over time. I do believe this whole process is also a process of character sculpting. Exactly like Cadie said, it is a key way we can start to become that person we would really like to be.

AUDREY: Thank you so much. Any last thoughts or words on holding vision, or using vision to stay in creator orientation, as we finish up?

TRACIE: I have to say, just remember how good it feels when you have that vision, because it does take a lot of work. It's easy to know what you don't want. It's a lot harder to know what you do want. And it's work to write that down and to figure it out. But every time I've done that, I feel so much better. Like we talked about in the last episode, like Lindsey said, it's an exhale. It's calm. It's like, okay, now we're ready to go. And when I get stuck, as I still do in victim, I try to remember that you felt so much better. Remember the vision. Remember the vision. I just have to replay it, and it really does help.

[Speaker attribution uncertain. This speaker refers to Lindsey in the third person, so it is Tracie or Cadie. Note also that this passage credits the "exhale" line to Lindsey, which contradicts the working attribution in the EP 166 transcript. Worth checking both against audio.]

AUDREY: That's perfect.

CADIE: It's so much easier to get excited about life when you're in creator mode. And that's really my goal for myself. I want to wake up in the morning excited for the things I'm going to create.

[Speaker attribution uncertain.]

AUDREY: I love that. It reminds me of something Stephen Covey said. He said that when we are principle centered, we see life as a great adventure, and adventures have pitfalls and traps, but they also have vistas. When we can see life that way, we know it won't be perfect, but we can have that realistic optimism that keeps us grounded, but also hopeful.

AUDREY: I hope this little discussion on vision was helpful for those of you who were listening. I hope these podcasts we've been putting out around victim and drama and creator orientation and vision are proving to be helpful in your everyday life, that you're seeing yourself in the stories and examples we're sharing, and that you're feeling more armed to live according to better principles and to liberate yourself with truth. If you want to know more, keep listening, pass these podcasts along, and consider joining us at our event this fall. We would love to see you there. All the information is below in the description. Thank you so much for joining us today. And thank you again to Tracie, Lindsey, and Cadie for these incredible discussions. We're excited to be a speaking team presenting this fall. So grateful for them, and for all of you for listening. We will see you next time.

I'm re-sharing an episode from a few years ago, about a mother who really inspired me. When I first told this story, women heard echoes of their own deepest desires in it. I think you might too. 

It's about a woman named Jennie Butchart.

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Episode 170: Mission Driven Story — Jennie Butchart

AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom, where we are empowering moms with principles and purpose. In preparation for our upcoming Mothers of Creation event this fall in Utah, I wanted to re-share with you a podcast I did a few years ago about a mother who really inspired me. Many women heard echoes of their own deepest desires in this true story, so I hope that you also catch the vision of how you can create and contribute in meaningful ways and bring your family along on the journey with you.

AUDREY: Our story today begins with a little girl named Jennie Kennedy. She was born into a modest middle class family and had a relatively happy childhood, but by the time she was twelve years old both her parents had passed away. She was orphaned and sent to live with her wealthy aunt, sort of a Pollyanna true story. Jennie's aunt was able to send her to a good school, one of the better schools in Canada, and there Jennie really thrived. She was intelligent and she loved to learn. She also proved to be an especially gifted artist. She excelled in her art classes, and her teachers and school administrators noticed her artistic ability. That is why, in her late high school years, she was offered a scholarship to go to Paris and study there. I am not exactly sure how old she was, but she was offered this scholarship. In the meantime, though, she met and fell in love with a man named Robert Butchart.

AUDREY: They had fallen in love, and she wanted to marry him and have a family so badly that she actually turned down the Paris scholarship. In 1884 they were married.

AUDREY: The Butcharts were well off, so there was some money in the family, and they were able to take a trip to England. While they were there, Robert began looking around because he wanted to be in the cement business. I don't know if his family had already been in the cement business, but this was Robert's interest at the time. Incredibly, he was able to obtain a recipe for cement while he was in England that would allow him to be the first person to produce Portland cement in Canada, which was a much higher quality cement than what was available at the time. So when the couple returned to Canada, he set his sights on a plant. He wanted to open his own plant and produce cement. They were in Victoria, on the western side of Canada, and there was a limestone quarry that he needed for cement production. So they bought some land, some acres for themselves, and a quarry so that he could produce this cement. I don't know how much land there was in total, but he began to mine the quarry. He had some success in the business, and he was able to send bags of cement for the first time down to San Francisco and other places in the US and Canada. For a time it was a thriving business, and the Butcharts were having quite a bit of success with it.

AUDREY: In the meantime, Jennie was starting her family. Remember how she was really artistic? Now that they lived out in this beautiful area, she decided she wanted to start gardening. She would express her artistic abilities in gardening. She started out planting flowers and shrubbery just around the house, learning about her plants, following her interests, and developing her artistic gifts and expressing them through gardening. She got better and better and better at it. As her abilities and knowledge grew, so did the garden. It got bigger and bigger over the next few years, as did her family. She worked hard to balance her mothering and wife roles with this artistic passion for gardening. It was wonderful not only to have this outlet, but to also garden with her children and teach them along the way.

AUDREY: Well, within a few years, the limestone ran out. And when that happened, Jennie found herself with a huge three acre pit for a backyard. It was tall sheer walls of rock and this big ugly pit with debris all in it from all the tools that were used to pull out the limestone. It was really an eyesore, and Jennie hated it.

AUDREY: Then she had an idea. She was going to try to hide it. So she planted Lombardy poplars, Persian plums, and white poplars to grow tall behind the house, on the back part of her yard, to try to hide this huge monstrosity.

AUDREY: In the meantime, the garden right around her house was really beautiful. In fact, sometimes her husband would send workers over to move things around for her and help with her gardening, because it had become such a massive passion project. She had gotten better and better at it. By this point they had lived in their home, I think it was five or six years, before the limestone ran out. So she has had this garden going for several years and, like I said, she has gotten really good at it. And she looks out at this big pit in her backyard, at the temporary fix she tried to plant, and she thinks it is not cutting it.

AUDREY: And so then she thinks, I will create a sunken garden. I will make it beautiful. I will use all the knowledge and expertise and extra money that we have now to find beautiful plants and make this into a gorgeous sunken garden. Now, I don't know that she actually thought much beyond the task at hand. Maybe she had in the back of her mind that someday people would come and see the sunken garden. I don't know for sure. But just know that this dawned on her and became an incredibly fun project where she could really express her talents and could beautify her home and her yard.

AUDREY: So she took massive amounts of topsoil and brought it in by horse drawn cart. She had the rubble on the floor of the pit pushed up against the walls of the pit. She put these tall mounds on each side, and then she used those mounds of rubble to plant terraced flower beds. She wanted to beautify the walls of this pit, so she used a bosun's chair. She hung from this bosun's chair on the side of these cliffs, and then she would plant in every crack and crevice that she found. She would plant ivy and other beautiful things to cover the ugliness of the sheer walls around the sides of the pit.

AUDREY: Once they had the rubble out of the way, and she had made some of the flower beds and brought in topsoil, it was a matter of deciding where to begin. She decided to start with a Japanese garden. She was able to work with an expert on Japanese landscaping for a little bit of time, who helped her get the details right. This was more than just an opportunity to develop her gifts. It was an exciting passion project.

AUDREY: As the gardens grew, more and more people wanted to see them. Not only did she welcome them to the garden, she always offered them a cup of tea. In fact, she often welcomed them to see the gardens and showed them around herself. Sometimes they didn't even recognize her or know that she was the gardener. They thought she was just a worker. She loved serving her community through her gifts in this way. So when they came, she would hand them this cup of tea and show them around.

AUDREY: Now, I don't know how many people she hired to come in and help over the years, but eventually there was an Italian garden and other themed gardens. The garden grew, the interest grew, and in the year 1915 alone it was reported that more than 18,000 visitors came. She and her husband named the estate Benvenuto, which in Italian means welcome. Over time, she and her husband traveled and brought back plants and fountains and sculptures from all over the world. She worked tirelessly for twelve years, and she finally pronounced the sunken garden done.

AUDREY: The visitors increased and increased and increased. By 1930 she was named Victoria's best citizen for her work in her sunken garden, and its tremendous beauty, and also because there were visitors coming from all over now who brought interest and revenue into the town.

AUDREY: When World War II hit, there was a loss of manpower, and it was hard to keep the gardens going and to keep them as beautiful as they once were. In the meantime, Jennie's health declined, and her daughter started trying to keep up with the garden. When they couldn't do it anymore, they gave it to their children, and their grandson brought it back to its original state and then started to beautify it and grow it even more. It has since grown immeasurably from that first garden and Japanese garden to five themed gardens and fifty-five acres, and now it is 122 years old and famous around the world. It is still in the family. A grandson, a great-granddaughter, something like that. They manage it now. I can't remember all the details of how the succession went, but they keep adding to it. They have added other themed areas. There is a children's garden and other gardens. There is a stage where they do performances. They have a lot more walking paths, and they do fireworks shows. So they have really made this an incredible experience for the people who come.

AUDREY: It has also been named a National Historic Site in Canada. They employ at least fifty full-time gardeners who oversee everything. In fact, one of the people who visited said something remarkable about it. They were talking to the gardeners, and one of them said something like, we are experts at plucking dead flowers and leaves. There are not any yellow leaves. They are not allowed to stay. It just stays meticulous all the time for anybody who might come and visit.

AUDREY: Now, 122 years later from the time that Jennie first set foot on this property, she has built a legacy that has outlived her, that will continue to go on and be a place of beauty and interest and bless the lives of the people who visit. Millions of visitors a year.

AUDREY: When I first heard this story, I was determined to find out more about it. There is not a lot of information on the history of it. It is really hard to find, and I scoured online. I have not been to the Butchart Gardens. I have seen pictures online and it is absolutely breathtaking. But of course I wanted to know more, because being the founder of The Mission Driven Mom myself, this story is one that I wanted to look more deeply into. Because it is a story of a mother focusing on her strengths, developing a talent, and serving her community in a way that has become a massive worldwide attraction.

AUDREY: And what is so key in this story is how small it began. It began with just one woman who was confident as an artist. She had the opportunity to study in Paris, but she chose a family instead. She even put her artistic abilities behind her for a while, and then she brought them out into the world around her. She understood that choosing motherhood doesn't mean suppressing your talents. She wasn't going to sit on her strengths. She chose to do gardening as her artistic expression. And then she worked little by little. And her children, she brought them along with her. They did this together. It bonded their family. It beautified their home. As her knowledge and interest grew, her confidence grew. And people around her saw what she was doing, and they affirmed it, and they helped her. They got plants from around the world and they fed and nurtured this desire. And it grew and grew.

AUDREY: Stories like these, where the mother nurtures herself and nurtures her family and nurtures her community, are such a blessing in the world. But it didn't start out that way. It started with one small and simple idea, a mindset. It started with how Jennie saw herself, and how she saw her talents, and how she wanted to bring her family on the journey with her. She thought, this is my passion. I can't be an artist in Paris, but I can do artwork around my home and bring my children with me. Something like that. She set the example. She paved the way. She showed her family that you can express your gifts and talents while still putting motherhood first and blessing your community.

AUDREY: So I want to share some quotes that combine these ideas of gardening and mindset and how we view ourselves, to highlight how Jennie was making her pursuits and her potential become a force for good.

AUDREY: James Allen taught:

A woman's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild. Whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind. Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a woman tend the garden of her mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts. By pursuing this process, a woman sooner or later discovers that she is the master gardener of her soul, the director of her life. She also reveals within herself the laws of thought, and understands with ever increasing accuracy how the thought forces and mind elements operate in the shaping of her character, circumstances, and destiny.

AUDREY: Jennie Butchart did just that. She conceived a worthwhile project and she acted on it. And then she had a little bit bigger idea, and acted on that. And then she had a little bit bigger idea, and then she acted on that. And it grew and grew and grew. It was an amazing blessing, but she started small, with one idea that she could develop and nurture herself while still nurturing her family.

AUDREY: You might be wondering, if it is really that simple, if we just need to plant the seed and nurture it in our minds and in our lives, why do so many women and mothers still struggle so much? It reminds me of a podcast I did a few years ago called Kickstart Your Self-Discovery. In that podcast I talked about the important component in motherhood of focusing on our strengths.

AUDREY: I have seen a lot of well-meaning, God-fearing, good-to-the-core women who are constantly belittling themselves, to themselves and in front of their own children. They say that they aren't talented. They put their needs last. And they set a poor example for their children about what womanhood is, about what motherhood is, and about how they ought to treat themselves. And unfortunately, children sometimes see and follow this example. That is why it is vital that we switch that paradigm.

AUDREY: And that is exactly the example that Jennie Butchart sets for us. She didn't belittle herself, her real needs, her gifts, her strengths, or her abilities. She didn't tell her children she wasn't gifted and didn't have anything to offer. She leaned into her strengths and she developed her talents while creating something beautiful that lifted and inspired people. She had plenty of weaknesses, and they definitely cropped up. But it was precisely because she was focused on her creation that she continued to have the motivation to move through those weaknesses and keep creating. She was a mother of creation.

AUDREY: Earl Nightingale echoed these same truths about the importance of becoming an intentional creator who blesses the world with our gifts. He said:

Now it stands to reason that a person who is thinking about a concrete and worthwhile goal is going to reach it, because that is what she is thinking about. And we become what we think about. Conversely, the woman who has no goal, who doesn't know where she is going, and whose thoughts must therefore be of confusion and anxiety and fear and worry, becomes what she is thinking about. Her life becomes one of frustration, fear, anxiety, and worry. And if she thinks about nothing, she becomes nothing.

AUDREY: So we must become creators in our homes. We don't have to know the whole picture, but we have to have some kind of goal. We have to have something that we are working toward, so that our children can see us building on our strengths and working toward something meaningful. And they have the desire to do that for themselves as well, as they watch our examples.

AUDREY: Earl Nightingale also said:

All you have got to do is plant that seed of your creation in your mind. Care for it. Work steadily toward your goal, and it will become a reality. And not only will it, there is no way that it cannot. You see, that is a law, like the laws of Sir Isaac Newton, the laws of gravity. If you get on top of a building and jump off, you will always go down. You will never go up. And it is the same with all the other laws of nature. They always work. They are inflexible.

AUDREY: So our principles for today are to focus on our strengths and become intentional creators in our family's lives.

AUDREY: This started with me when my children were young, just like Jennie Butchart. I worked hard in high school. I had gotten really good grades. I had gotten the ACT score, gone to the university, and spent three years there. But I felt cheated. I just did not feel like my mind and soul had been nurtured. I had not learned anything deeply, and I had not developed as a person and a woman because of my university experience. I felt cheated and I felt lost, and I didn't understand myself any better. I didn't understand marriage or parenting or finances any better. And I definitely did not understand this world any better. And there I was, trying to navigate all of those things and raise three children. I had no idea what I needed. I just knew that I wanted to grow somehow and I wanted to be more than I was.

AUDREY: When I prayed about this consistently, I was led to an opportunity to read the classics and be nurtured in them. This was going to cost my young family some time and attention and some money that I knew we didn't have. And even though these were accredited classes, they were just for my own personal development. It felt like a place where I could dig deep and grow as a person. A place where I could learn important ideas and talk to others about the things that matter most. A place where I could be nurtured as a whole person: my mind, my heart, my soul. A place where I could pursue truth and truly be changed.

AUDREY: My husband and I struggled over this decision for quite a while, until one day I ran across this quote: that the best investment a family can make is in the education of the mother. This opened everything up for me. I felt like it was an answer from God. And I had emotional permission from that point on to work on myself in deep, meaningful ways, because who I become matters immensely. In a sense, it is everything. For me, for myself, for my family, for my community around me.

AUDREY: And so I opened up. I acquainted myself with those things that matter most. I brought them home to my family. And as I pursued truth and infused it into my home, not only was I forever changed, but so was my family. In fact, recently in a podcast I did with my husband, I asked him what this had meant for our family. And he said, I think we still have a family because of it.

AUDREY: We have not regretted that decision for one day. It laid such a powerful foundation for our lives. When I dove in and worked on me, when I learned my strengths and began to build them, when I let my strengths lead, our lives became so much richer and more beautiful. And that path has led me here and will continue to lead me forward. I became a mother of creation. Jennie was a mother of creation. And so can you be too.

AUDREY: Ponder the life of Jennie Butchart and the example she sets for us, in making a little time and taking a little money for mom to build on her strengths, for mom to meet her own creative needs. And it doesn't have to interfere with your mothering. In fact, it can elevate your mothering. It can make your family better. Bring them on the path with you.

AUDREY: And if you aren't sure where to start, just ask yourself the question: what is something I would really love to do or know about? And start learning about it. Take the little art class.

AUDREY: If you want more clarity and direction on how to be a mother of creation, join us at our Mothers of Creation event this fall, September 26th in Utah. We will begin the day right where you are, and you will leave that afternoon with much more clarity about how to stay out of your own negative stories and focus on what you are creating and who you are becoming instead.

AUDREY: Whatever it might be, if it is gardening or running a marathon or taking the time to set an example for your children, to build a legacy of being creative, of meeting your own creative needs, of giving yourself and your children permission to build something that will outlive you, to build something that will make you and your family and your community a little bit better, then please start there and do it. What is it that you love? What is it that you want to create? Do more of that. Become more of the mother of creation that you were divinely designed to be, and future generations will thank you.

AUDREY: Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope to see all of you at our event in Utah, and I will for sure see you next time.

Years ago, when I was just beginning my classical education, I sat in a seminar where the presenters kept telling us to use our scholar skills. So I finally raised my hand and asked where I could find these scholar skills.

The presenters, including the founder of my college, gave me a blank stare. Nobody had an answer for me.

I could have just brushed this problem aside. But I cared about being the best student I could be! I was making a lot of sacrifices in time, effort, and money to be in those classes, and I had a vision of what this education would do for my family. So I went and found the answers myself.

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AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Episode 169: Vision

AUDREY: Mom, this fall I'm going to be back in the gorgeous library ballroom in Provo, Utah, spending one transformative day with women just like you, connecting, growing, and learning how to be the creators God divinely designed us to be. If you want an opportunity to spend one powerful day with some of the most incredible women around who will inspire and uplift you, and if you want to be guided through a process that will give you the tools and principles to turn your persistent problems into new vision and forward momentum, then I invite you to join us Saturday, September 26th in Utah. Me and my team of mentors have literally been preparing for an entire year, and I want you there. And I can promise you that your life will never be the same. You will walk out of that room, just as hundreds of other women have, with new hope not only for yourself and your family, but for the future of our culture and nation. Because there really are moms out there just like you who want to overcome their challenges and make a positive difference. Tickets are selling fast. Check out the link around this video or go to themissiondrivenmom.com to grab your seat while there are still some available. And I will see you there.

AUDREY: The dreams you carry and nourish in your heart are the most noble part of you. When you don't have a vision, those dreams cannot be a reality. So what is vision? How can we develop it? And how is our perspective here at The Mission Driven Mom different than what you might hear at other places? That's what I'm going to talk to you about for a few minutes today.

AUDREY: Beyond just the ability to see with our eyes, vision means the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination, wisdom, and intelligence. In The 8th Habit, Stephen Covey warned:

"Vision is seeing with the mind's eye what is possible in people, in projects, in causes, and in enterprises. When people have no vision, when they neglect the development of the mind's capacity to create, they fall prey to the human tendency toward victimism."

AUDREY: We've talked a lot about victimism, or our victim mindset, or acting like a victim, on this podcast over the last couple of months. We've explored how this pulls us into drama and steals our power and keeps us stuck. We've even spent a bit of time talking about the victim types and which ones we show up as, and we've gone on and on about how we need to be creators instead. Well, just like many others who have taught about creativity and vision, Covey also affirms that vision is the antidote to drama and the victim mindset.

AUDREY: And of course, at our Mothers of Creation event this fall, we'll be spending one transformational day going through all the steps necessary to move from victimism and drama to creation and vision. I hope you plan to be there. But for today, I want to spend a few minutes diving a little deeper into the vision component of this journey.

AUDREY: I want to start with a model Covey shares in his book The 8th Habit about how the four key areas of our lives work together and help us to create and cast vision, striving toward what matters most and becoming more than we were. Here's how this model works. There are four aspects to our whole being: the body, the mind, the heart, and the spirit. And each area has a need, an attribute, and what Covey calls a voice, or the expression of this part of us in the world. I'll explain them one by one.

AUDREY: First, the physical body. Our physical body has a need to live. The voice or expression of this need to live is to take action, and it is through our body that we do the things that need to be done. The attribute that enables the body to thrive and to do the things it needs to do is discipline. With little discipline, we accomplish little, and sometimes even put our own health or lives at risk. With great discipline, we can accomplish great things. Covey said about discipline:

"Discipline is willpower embodied. Only the disciplined are truly free. The undisciplined are slaves to moods, appetites, and passions."

AUDREY: Horace Mann once said:

"In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle."

AUDREY: The second aspect is your heart. Your heart has a need to love. The expression of that need to love, when properly understood, is taking actions of love toward ourselves and others by meeting real needs. I don't have time to get into this today. We talk about it a lot in the MDM Academy. If you want to understand it a little better, you can go to our website and sign up for my on-demand training.

AUDREY: That being said, in order for our hearts to love, it needs the attribute of passion. Covey said about passion:

"Passion comes from the heart and is manifested as optimism, excitement, emotional connection, and determination. It fires unrelenting drive."

AUDREY: Courage is the essence of passion. So taking action and doing what needs to be done to love properly, regardless of fears, obstacles, objections, or risks.

AUDREY: Three, your spirit, which has the need to leave a legacy, and the expression of this need is conscience, working to guide the spirit in the right direction. The attribute that makes this possible is what Covey calls educating the conscience. Again, we don't have time to get into it today, but we all have what he calls a social and a divine conscience. It is the divine conscience within that must be nurtured by truth and goodness so that it can guide us to goals worthy of us. Immanuel Kant said:

"I am constantly amazed by two things: the starry heavens above and the moral law within."

AUDREY: If you've spent much time around us at The Mission Driven Mom, you know we work to champion the natural moral law and its governing principles. We strive to inspire women to listen to that still, small voice that wants to guide our actions toward what is good, true, and beautiful.

AUDREY: Number four, our minds. Our minds have the need to learn. The voice or expression of all we learn and know and are is our talents. And vision is the attribute of the mind that takes the action of the physical body, the passions of the heart, and the conscience of the spirit, and brings them together in an aspiration bigger than all of those parts, bigger than we are, and puts all the parts of us to work toward a future worth creating. Aristotle taught:

"When talents and needs of the world cross, therein lies your vocation."

AUDREY: So to recap what Stephen Covey just taught us: vision is the spiritual creation. This is where it all begins. And discipline is the physical creation, making the decisions and doing the tasks to realize the vision. Passion is the fuel. A constant [image of the] vision generates passion to keep going. And conscience is the guide along the way as we're making decisions. You listen closely as your conscience guides you to an end that blesses everyone, a true win-win. Covey said:

"When conscience governs vision, discipline, and passion, leadership endures and changes the world for good."

AUDREY: In other words, moral authority makes formal authority work. [As moms,] we need to be the leaders and visionaries of our lives and our families. By virtue of being mom, we have some formal authority, but Covey teaches that formal authority doesn't work without the moral authority underneath it. And that moral authority comes from working intentionally with all four parts of your nature and submitting them all to a vision worthy of you and your family.

AUDREY: This is where we at The Mission Driven Mom deviate from other voices you might have heard discussing vision. We don't say follow your heart and live your truth. We don't believe that you can do anything you want to do or be anything you might want to be. Those ways of thinking and believing are unhelpful and unhealthy. We do believe you can become the very best version of yourself. We do believe you are different than others for important reasons. We do believe that you are uniquely designed and called to a work that will bless you and others. And we do believe that recognition and adherence to truth makes all of this possible.

AUDREY: Now, going back to vision: it is the spiritual creation. This is why, as Einstein said, imagination is more important than knowledge. Great ideas, great beauty, great art, nature, sacrifice, service, great deeds, courage, and virtue. All of these fuel the imagination. Great leaders have vision. They hold an image of the future they are creating in their minds, and they share it with others. "I have a dream" [cemented] a nation in turmoil. Your mind needs vision, and vision is fueled by ideas and imagination. That's why ongoing lifelong learning from the greatest minds that have ever lived elevates our minds, and it nurtures the kinds of visions we can have.

AUDREY: How can you make headway in leading yourself unless you can clearly articulate to yourself where you're going to go? How can we become a certain kind of person unless we know who that person is? Think of all the teenagers seeking self-knowledge and self-acceptance who have no vision for who they are becoming, and therefore take their view from those around them, listening to the social rather than the divine conscience. Now, how can you successfully lead your family unless you cast a vision for them of who they can be together? How can you lead in your community, church, school, or anywhere else unless there is a spiritual, intangible, worthy ideal for people to strive to realize?

AUDREY: And in [source unclear] we read this:

"A visionary is supposed to have a vision of the future. Ideas govern the world. The power they have is phenomenal. It is therefore necessary to repeatedly fill our minds with thoughts of service, abundance, and success to break free of the gravitational pull of our negative thoughts. Eventually we replace the old negative thoughts with a new positive self-image. Each new thought has energy, and through some mysterious law of attraction it draws objects, beings, and circumstances of a similar nature to it like a magnet. Negative thoughts attract negative experiences, whereas positive thoughts attract positive experiences."

AUDREY: Which we say here comes from God.

AUDREY: Now, envisioning is holding the vision, using your imagination to see it before it happens, to work out the details beforehand so you always have that clarity with which you make decisions and course correct along the way. This is the only way you can bring something into the material, physical world. You must create it spiritually first, just like you would draw a floor plan of a home before you built it.

AUDREY: You moms know all about this. You had a vision of motherhood. You make decisions about when and where to become pregnant and have a child. You held a vision of that child and prepared diligently for their arrival, and you loved them even before you knew them. That's what creating is about. It's about love. We love something enough to bring it into being. And how do we actually do that? We do the mental work of clarifying the vision and holding it in our minds until it is worked out in reality.

AUDREY: I've told this story probably more than once on this podcast. When I was just beginning my classical education, I attended a small seminar my school was holding. It was there that I was continually encouraged to use scholar skills to get through my studies more successfully. When I finally raised my hand and asked where I could find scholar skills so I could implement them, the presenters, including the founder of my college, gave me a blank stare and had no answers for me.

AUDREY: I could have just brushed this problem aside, but I cared about being the best student I could be. I wanted to see truth. I was making a lot of sacrifices in time, effort, and money to be taking these classes, and the quality of my education really mattered to me. I needed to do it right. I had a vision of what this education would do for me and my family, and that meant I needed to do the work to figure out how to make the most of it.

AUDREY: So I researched, I read books, I talked to other students, and over time these scholar skills, these tools for lifelong learning, began to emerge, and I got more and more and more out of the time I spent studying. Eventually I felt like I had good enough information that I wanted to share it with other students who could benefit from it. Now I had a vision of what these principles could do for others. In order to make this a reality, I had to do something I had never even considered doing before. I had to create a class. I did this and asked the school if they'd offer it. They said they'd see if it was of any interest to the student body. It turned out to be hugely popular, and then I was traveling to several states teaching the course I created.

AUDREY: Later I attended another seminar, and I wanted the people there to be able to connect because the seminar was over. I knew that what I could do was offer my home for book discussions. At the first meeting in my home, I cast a vision of what I learned and what I wanted from this experience. The book club grew and grew, and over the next year I learned more and more about what we needed to do next. I spent the next summer [organizing, planning meetings,] and cast a vision for our community.

AUDREY: With our family, we did the work to create a family statement. We repeated to our children over and over again that there is truth and it can make them free, that family matters most, and that they would always be there for each other. And the more clear our vision was of the kind of family we wanted to have, the more we could clearly communicate it and create it. And when it looked like things were not working, or were not going in the direction we wanted them to go, we held our vision before us and took actions to help them realize it.

AUDREY: In my marriage, I repeatedly shared with my husband the kind of [unclear] I wanted to have with him, and that he would [unclear] to hold a shared vision of where we're trying to go, and discuss openly and honestly all the healing and work we needed to do to get us there.

AUDREY: Of course, I've tried to repeatedly create and hold a vision of myself before myself, asking myself questions like: Who do I want to be? What is future Audrey like? How can I pave her way? How can I make her life better? How can I make decisions today that will set her up for success?

AUDREY: Vision works everywhere, and envisioning is the tool by which you hold it in your mind and you live it with intention. This is mental work. It's meeting your real mental needs. It's what we overlook so often, but it's the only way to build a life of love.

AUDREY: [Unclear,] we must hold two visions. What is it that we are creating? But also, who are we going to be on the way to creating that vision, and who will we become when that vision is realized? Covey said:

"The most important vision of all is to develop a sense of self, a sense of your own destiny, a sense of your unique mission and role in life, a sense of purpose and meaning."

AUDREY: Here at The Mission Driven Mom, we believe that too. It's in our name. It's the title of my book. It's deeply ingrained in everything we do. It is our earnest hope for you that you will do the work to seek out and fulfill the unique contributions only you can make, using your discipline, talents, conscience, and vision. Because when you don't do that, we all miss out.

AUDREY: Thank you for joining me today for a deeper dive into victim mindset, drama, creation, vision, and exactly how you can build a vision worthy of your precious time and life energy. Please join us at the Mothers of Creation event this fall in Provo, Utah for one transformational day. I'm excited to [see you there].