Your Most Beautiful Life

What happens when you’re so used to taking care of everything yourself that it becomes difficult to let someone take care of you?

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In this 50th episode of Your Most Beautiful Life, Lori explores the tension between being a woman who can handle just about anything and learning to receive support from others. She reflects on the difference between “I can do it myself” and “I have to do it myself,” and how the second can quietly become a rule that shapes our relationships, our expectations, and the way we move through life.

Lori shares why capable women can find themselves wishing someone would notice what they need, only to minimize their desires or take everything back into their own hands when help arrives. She explores how staying mentally in charge, anticipating what might go wrong, and managing disappointment by asking for very little can make receiving support feel more difficult than it needs to be.

She also reflects on how past experiences with people who were unavailable or dismissive can shape our expectations of others, and why building trust requires giving trustworthy people the opportunity to show up. Rather than abandoning our independence, Lori invites us to remain discerning while becoming more available for care, learning to express our needs, allow others to contribute, and discover that being capable doesn't mean we have to carry every part of our lives alone.

Lori also shares three ways she's supporting her body in midlife, including making room for nourishing meals, exploring hormone replacement therapy with her provider, and creating a movement routine with her daughter.

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She also explores:

⊹ The difference between being capable of doing everything yourself and feeling like you have to

⊹ Why high-capacity women may want support while making it difficult for others to provide it

⊹ How staying mentally in charge can prevent us from experiencing the relief of receiving help

⊹ Why expressing a desire can feel vulnerable when we're afraid of being disappointed

⊹ How past experiences with unavailable or dismissive people can shape the expectations we bring into relationships

⊹ Why trust grows when we give trustworthy people the opportunity to follow through

⊹ How efficiency can keep winning in the moment while connection loses the opportunity to grow

⊹ What it looks like to make a clear request, allow someone to respond, and remain discerning about the support we receive

⊹ Three ways Lori is caring for her body and supporting her well-being in midlife

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As Mentioned In The Episode:

≫ Join Safe to Receive — Lori's intimate six-week coaching experience for women who are ready to stop living as though everything depends on them:

https://shoplorijsmith.com/pages/safe-to-receive

≫ Join  Let's Talk About Safe to Receive — Lori's space to ask questions and explore whether Safe to Receive is the right fit for you: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/5145633221?pwd=NFNiRU84cHdoNHViTXk4NjhtZjVpdz09&omn=81301562605

≫ Message Lori on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/lorijsmithcoaching/

≫ Work with Lori privately:

https://lorijsmith.com/product/coaching/

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A question to take with you:

Where in your life are you still telling yourself, “I have to do it myself,” when there might be room to let someone show up for you?

What if letting someone really know you is the beginning of the connection you’ve been longing for?

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In this episode of Your Most Beautiful Life, Lori explores what it means to let yourself be truly seen, especially when you’ve spent years being the woman everyone assumes is okay — the one who holds things together, knows what to do, and rarely asks for much.

She shares why the fear of being seen by other women may be pointing toward the very place where support is needed most, and how the reasons we give ourselves for staying out of the room can also keep us from the connection we want. Lori reflects on the courage it takes to speak honestly about the disappointment we keep minimizing, the desires we’re embarrassed to admit, the frustration we think we shouldn’t feel, and the sadness we explain away because we have so much to be grateful for.

She also shares how being in rooms with other women on a similar journey has contributed to her own personal growth and healing, and what becomes possible when we discover that we can be understood while we’re still working through things. Rather than waiting until we feel completely comfortable being seen, Lori invites us to bring our fears with us and allow ourselves the opportunity to experience a different kind of connection.

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She also explores:

⊹ Why the fear of being seen may be keeping you from the connection you want

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As Mentioned In The Episode:

≫ Join Safe to Receive — Lori's intimate six-week coaching experience for women who are ready to stop living as though everything depends on them:

≫ Work with Lori privately:

≫ Follow Lori on Instagram:

≫ Listen next → EP. 048 — You Keep Showing Up for Everyone. Except Yourself

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-048-you-keep-showing-up-for-everyone-except-yourself/id1813192402?i=1000793259096

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A question to take with you:

What might become possible if you let someone really know you — not just the woman who holds everything together, but the woman underneath it all?

What if showing up for yourself isn't selfish — but part of learning to trust yourself again?

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In this episode of Your Most Beautiful Life, Lori explores what happens when you become someone everyone else can count on, but quietly stop counting on yourself.

Maybe you've been looking forward to a quiet evening, a walk, a book, or something you've wanted to do for yourself — and then someone asks for something and “Of course” comes out before you've even considered what you have left to give. Or maybe no one is asking anything of you at all, but you reach for your phone and find yourself scrolling through other women's lives while the things you were excited about remain waiting.

Lori explores the ways we can learn to override our own needs, feelings, desires, and limits — not necessarily because anyone is asking us to, but because we've become so accustomed to being responsible, useful, easy to get along with, and capable of handling whatever comes next.

She also shares honestly from her own life about the ways she once looked to being wiser, more disciplined, more emotionally mature, or more spiritually grounded to finally make life feel certain and manageable — and what she began to understand when she realized that self-improvement could never guarantee certainty.

This episode is an invitation to notice the moments when you pass yourself over, understand what may be underneath that pattern, and begin practicing something different: listening to yourself, allowing your experience to matter, and making choices that honor your actual capacity and desires.

Lori also shares a little of her own “beautiful mess” as she prepares for a trip to London and Paris with Shannon to celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary — including the very real challenge of leaving for Europe on Monday while having not yet packed a suitcase.

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She also explores:

⊹ Why you can be deeply generous and still be abandoning yourself

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As Mentioned In The Episode:

≫ Join Safe to Receive — Lori's intimate six-week coaching experience for women who are ready to stop living as though everything depends on them:

≫ Work with Lori privately:

≫ Follow Lori on Instagram:

≫ Listen next → EP. 047 — The Life You Couldn't Have Known to Ask For

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-047-the-life-you-couldnt-have-known-to-ask-for/id1813192402?i=1000792002203

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A question to take with you:

Where in your life have you been asking yourself to wait — and what might change if you let your own feelings, needs, or desires matter before everything else is taken care of?

And perhaps even more simply:

What would it look like to let yourself belong in your own day?

What if the life you have right now contains more goodness than you ever knew how to ask for?

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In this episode of Your Most Beautiful Life, Lori reflects on the day she graduated high school and gave birth to her first child on the same day — and what it means to build a life from a place where your imagination is still limited by what you haven't yet lived.

She explores how our desires are always shaped by the vantage point we're standing at, and how so much of the goodness in our lives — the people, the relationships, the callings — could never have been named in advance because our imagination is often limited by our own actual life experience. She also shares an honest look inside her own unimagined goodness and  "beautiful mess" this season, as two of her three adult children plan their homes on the same property where she lives, and what it's like to hold a full life and a squeezed calendar at the very same time.

Lori also reflects on what it means to write a letter to her younger self — not a list of things to hope for, but permission to keep living and keep listening.

She also explores:

⊹ Why some of life's greatest goodness arrives before we know to ask for it

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As Mentioned In The Episode:

≫ Join Beyond What You Asked For — Lori's brand-new live workshop: https://mailchi.mp/lorijsmith.com/beyondwhatyouaskedfor

≫ Get your Oura Ring - The World's Smallest Smart Ring: https://on.ltk.com/+1IAOfaGmZGIEQ2N0hX7tnA

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A question to take with you:

What might already be here, so woven into your ordinary life, that you've forgotten it once existed only as a hope?

What if there is goodness available to you that you haven’t even known to ask for yet?

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In this episode of Your Most Beautiful Life, Lori explores what becomes possible when you stop treating desire as something that needs to be justified, explained, or made practical—and begin allowing yourself to imagine beyond what you already know.

She explores how responsibility, practicality, anticipation, and the desire to keep everything manageable can quietly edit our desires before we even have the chance to hear them. And she invites you to consider that wanting more does not mean your life is not enough. You can feel deep gratitude for what already is and still remain open to the possibility that God may not be finished surprising you yet.

Lori also introduces the Overflow Framework, a four-part progression for becoming more fully available for your own life:

⊹ Awaken — becoming available to the parts of yourself and your life that have been waiting to be experienced

She also explores:

⊹ Why gratitude was never meant to be the end of desire

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As Mentioned In The Episode:

≫ Join Beyond What You Asked For — Lori’s brand-new live workshop: https://mailchi.mp/lorijsmith.com/beyondwhatyouaskedfor

≫  Get the blake bow suede two-fur jacket: https://shorturl.at/44pQ6

≫ Join the Legacy Letter: https://lorijsmith.com/legacy-letter/

≫ Work with Lori privately: https://lorijsmith.com/product/coaching/

≫ Follow Lori on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lorijsmithcoaching/

≫ Listen next → Ep. 045: When What You Believe and How You Live Don't Match -  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-045-when-what-you-believe-and-how-you-live-dont-match/id1813192402?i=1000789541600

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A question to take with you:

What might become possible if you allowed yourself to imagine beyond what you’ve already known to ask for?

What if the life you’re ready to live requires you to choose differently before it feels comfortable?

In this episode of Your Most Beautiful Life, Lori explores the space between what we believe and how we actually live—and why knowing something is true doesn’t always mean we feel safe enough to live as though it is.

She explores how old patterns around responsibility, anticipation, control, usefulness, and keeping everyone comfortable can continue shaping our choices, even after we’ve consciously outgrown them. And she explains why the answer isn’t necessarily more clarity, more discipline, or another plan—but learning to remain connected to yourself when choosing differently feels uncomfortable.

She also explores:

⊹ Why your desires don’t have to be enormous or deeply spiritual to matter

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As Mentioned In The Episode:

≫ Join the Legacy Letter: https://lorijsmith.com/legacy-letter/

≫ Work with Lori privately: https://lorijsmith.com/product/coaching/

≫ Follow Lori on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lorijsmithcoaching/

≫ Listen next → Ep. 044:  Who Are You When You Don't Have to Prove Who You Are?

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A question to take with you:

What would become possible if you stopped treating discomfort as a reason to return to what is familiar?

What if being capable, independent, prepared, and one who always figures it out isn’t just your personality?

In this episode of Your Most Beautiful Life, Lori explores the patterns we can develop around striving, control, over-functioning, earning, and anticipating—and how the very things that once helped us feel safe can eventually make it harder to receive the support, rest, connection, love, and opportunities we desire.

She also explores what begins to change when safety no longer depends on knowing what’s going to happen, keeping everything together, or being the one who makes it all work—and why becoming safe to receive doesn’t mean becoming less capable or responsible. It means having more freedom to choose how you want to show up.

She also covers:

🫶🏼 Why being capable and needing to be capable are two very different things

🫶🏼 How striving, control, over-functioning, earning, and anticipating can become ways we create safety

🫶🏼 Why you can genuinely want support and still have a difficult time actually receiving it

🫶🏼 How caring for someone you love can quietly turn into carrying what was never yours to carry

🫶🏼 Why rest can feel uncomfortable even when you finally have the space for it

🫶🏼 What happens when you delegate something—but still find yourself managing, reminding, checking, or making sure it gets done

🫶🏼 How to begin creating safety within yourself instead of depending on your ability to control what happens around you

🫶🏼 Why receiving support, love, rest, and goodness doesn’t require you to become less strong, capable, or independent

🫶🏼 A different way to think about balance—and learning to ebb and flow with your life instead of needing everything to stay perfectly arranged

🫶🏼 The September Desire List and why your “want to” list deserves a place alongside your to-do list

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⇢ Work with Lori privately: LEARN MORE -> https://lorijsmith.com/product/coaching/

⇢ Join the Legacy Letter: -> https://lorijsmith.com/legacy-letter/

⇢ Grab the Your Most Beautiful Life Journal + create your September Desire List: -> https://shoplorijsmith.com/

⇢ Follow Lori on Instagram: -> https://www.instagram.com/lorijsmithcoaching/

⇢ Listen next —> Ep. 043: You Don’t Have to Hold It All Together

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A question to take with you:

Am I becoming a woman who feels safe enough to receive it when it comes?

What if everything around you didn’t have to be okay for you to be okay? 🤍

In this episode of Your Most Beautiful Life, Lori shares a personal part of her own journey—and the realization that some of the qualities she had always considered strengths, like being responsible, intentional, capable + willing to do the work, had quietly become ways of trying to create certainty in a life that could never actually promise it.

Also inside the episode:

🫶🏼 Why control can be much quieter than we think—and sometimes looks like anticipating, preparing, helping + trying to understand

🫶🏼 The difference between creating certainty around you + cultivating safety within you

🫶🏼 Why taking responsibility for your life doesn’t mean taking responsibility for every outcome

🫶🏼 What it looks like to allow something to remain unresolved without immediately trying to fix or change it

🫶🏼 How learning to stay connected to yourself creates more room for peace, presence + authentic connection

🫶🏼 Why you don’t want to spend so much time caring for the life you’ve built that you miss the experience of actually living it

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As Mentioned In The Episode:

⋯› Join the Legacy Letter — Lori’s monthly note filled with what she’s thinking about, learning, loving + life behind the scenes: https://lorijsmith.com/legacy-letter/

⋯› Something to Sit With ✍🏼

What if this can matter deeply to me without becoming mine to carry?

⋯› Want support creating more peace, presence + authentic connection in your own life? Learn more about coaching with Lori: https://calendly.com/lorijsmith/theconult

What if loving the people in your life was never supposed to require leaving yourself? 🤍

In this episode of Your Most Beautiful Life, Lori explores how easily the people we love can become the organizing principle of our lives—and how, somewhere along the way, our own lives can become the one thing we keep putting off.

Also inside the episode:

🫶🏼 How the burdens of the people you love quietly become the burdens you live under

🫶🏼 Why your needs and desires can start to feel optional when everyone else’s feel necessary

🫶🏼 The difference between loving sacrifice and always being the one who disappears

🫶🏼 Why you may be waiting for someone else to finally say, “You’ve done enough. It’s your turn.”

🫶🏼 What changes when you realize you are also one of the lives God entrusted to your care

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As Mentioned In The Episode:

⋯› Get Lori’s FREE Plan to GRO Journal — simply subscribe with your email at checkout: https://shoplorijsmith.com/

⋯› Lori’s favorite monthly journal tabs for planning your next 12 weeks: https://on.ltk.com/+4kZ6-ZUt3ScEVi0Oq07nmA

⋯› Join the Legacy Letter — Lori’s monthly note filled with what she’s thinking about, learning, loving + life behind the scenes: https://lorijsmith.com/legacy-letter/

⋯› Ready to make more room for your own life, desires + the woman you’re becoming? Learn more about coaching with Lori: https://calendly.com/lorijsmith/theconult

You love your life. You're grateful for your family. You've worked hard to build something beautiful. So why do you still feel like you're carrying the weight of the world?

In this episode of Your Most Beautiful Life, Lori explores the hidden pattern she's witnessed in countless coaching conversations: the women who love deeply, serve faithfully, and hold everything together often find themselves quietly exhausted—not because they're doing more than they really want to, but because they've learned to live from survival instead of receiving.

Together you'll explore why more routines, better boundaries, or additional help often don't create the peace you've been longing for, why receiving can feel so uncomfortable for high-capacity women, and how God may be inviting you to loosen your grip on control and begin living from a place of trust, safety, and overflow instead.

If you've ever wondered why peace always feels like it's waiting in the next season, this conversation may help you discover that the life you're creating is always shaped by the place you're living from.

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As Mentioned In The Podcast:

⇢ FREE Plan to GRO Journal (Free + Shipping)

https://shoplorijsmith.com/

⇢ Join Lori's Monthly Legacy Letter

https://lorijsmith.com/legacy-letter/

⇢ Book a Complimentary Clarity Chat with Lori

https://calendly.com/lorijsmith/theconult

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⇢ Follow Lori on Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/lorijsmithcoaching/

https://www.instagram.com/atloloshouse/

⇢ Browse All Podcast Episodes

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/your-most-beautiful-life/id1813192402

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Listen Next

⇢ The Invisible Life You're Creating (Episode 39)

⇢ The Beauty of Stepping Into Your Feminine (Episode 38)

⇢ You Don't Need More Time, You Need a Decided Life (Episode 37)

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If this episode encouraged you, would you leave a written review on Apple Podcasts? Your reviews help more women discover Your Most Beautiful Life and encourage them to begin creating a life that nourishes the best of who they are.

Thank you for being here. 🤍

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Keywords

Christian podcast, Christian women, Christian life coach, faith-based personal growth, emotional healing, nervous system healing, healing from survival mode, survival patterns, receiving, learning to receive, safe to receive, emotional safety, nervous system regulation, Christian mindset, renewing your mind, feminine embodiment, feminine leadership, feminine presence, control versus trust, striving, overwhelm, burnout, exhaustion, emotional resilience, Christian coaching, living from overflow, creating from overflow, living from peace, peace that lasts, emotional maturity, high-capacity women, women over 40, motherhood, marriage, identity, self-worth, intentional living, wholehearted living, purpose-driven life, peaceful productivity, quarterly planning, 12-week planning, Your Most Beautiful Life, Table Rock Lake, wake surfing, Evereve, 30A, Rosemary Beach, Christian podcast for women.