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What Needs To Change & Why Now?

October 21, 2019 by Edie Wadsworth Leave a Comment

The highest and most noble part of you knows it.

When somebody mentions it, you FEEL it—the gnawing, the conviction, the aspiration, the belief that you can change it.

But then, the survival part of you brain says, “You’ve always been this way, you’ll never change, you can’t do it.“

And then you give up before you ever start. Or maybe it’s just me.

WHY are our brains SO resistant to change?!?! UGH!

But I know change is possible. I’ve done it in many areas of my life. And so have you!!!

Here’s why I think it’s worth it to keep asking more of ourselves.

It’s not so we can finally weigh 140 pounds or make 100K or write that book–it’s not the destination…

Because THERE is never better than here if we don’t continue to change and grow and challenge ourselves.

The point is the person we become along the way.

The person who’s had enough challenge and adversity to be strong and humble. The person who has put herself out there enough to work through her people pleasing and fear of rejection. The person who has denied her flesh enough to know how strong appetites can be. The person who faces her resentments and finally trains her heart to forgive.

Diamonds are made under pressure.

We live in a world where we its easy to skirt around most of that pressure, staying stagnant or apathetic or hidden. But at what cost to ourselves and to the people who need us?

I LOVE October and fall and the 4th quarter of the year. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. I REALLY LOVE using this time of year as a way to jump start a new year.

So if you had to pick one thing that you could change about yourself, about your life–what would it be and why?

The why is just as important as the what so don’t forget that part when you are trying to pick the one thing you want to change! I took an inventory of my life and while in so many ways its incredible and amazing, it is also HARD.

As many of you know, we have been in an intense stress cycle since January–Tom Tom’s mom passed away and he came to live with us full-time and on and on. In fact, it has felt like one thing right after the other.

And, when I get stressed I feel it in my health! So I know that for me, I am in a season where that is exactly what I need to work on.

That means paying attention to my nutrition. It means recommitting myself to what I want MOST versus what I want NOW. I’m sure most of you know exactly what I mean! What I want NOW are some Krispy Kreme donuts. But, what I want MOST is to have a strong, healthy body with healthy hormones that can serve the people in my life well.

Did you catch that?

I want to have a strong, healthy body with healthy hormones that can serve the people in my life well.

There it is…my why.

Your One Thing may be different. It might be finances or marriage or your parenting or something job/vocation-related.

Remember how I said your why is just as important as your what? It is because all roads lead right back to that WHY. It helps us to train ourselves into the habit of choosing what we want most in our lives instead of choosing what we want now.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve heard me talk about the fact that when you make a change in one area of your life, it often causes a domino effect and you continue to want to change and grow. You just see areas where you know that you’re not living to your highest self, you know that you’re choosing what you want now rather than what you want most.

But let me say it again.

It’s not about your destination or goal.

We think, oh, if I just lost a hundred pounds, if I just got down to 140, if I just built my business to $100K, if I just got to this rank.

If I just.

We have this idea that if we achieve our goal that, “Everything’s going to be amazing and it’s going to be unicorns and butterflies.”

But let me tell ya, it’s not any better there than here unless you do the hard work–the mind work–changing your thoughts and following through in order to be the person you are called to be. If you don’t, you’re just going to be the same person there.

Becoming the person that you were meant to be is almost always through hardship, sacrifice, suffering–just being willing to expose yourself to ALL THE HARD THINGS so that you can learn more about yourself. Diving deeper.

We really have no idea how strong the appetites of our flesh are until we try, say, not to eat sugar for a month. Then we are saying, “Oh my gosh, that has such a hold on me. Food has such a hold on me. Drink has such a hold on me. Approval of other people has such a hold on me.” It”s only when we try to make a change that we realize,“Oh my word, that is a hard thing for me.”

This is why I love challenging myself and trying new things. This is why I love fasting, intermittent fasting, or cutting out sugar. This is why I love challenging myself about getting my work done in a certain period of time.

It brings up all of my drama.

It brings up all of my issues. It brings up all of my appetites. It brings up all of the areas of my life that really need work and change. And, if we don’t challenge ourselves, then we just don’t know what we don’t know. We don’t know how strong our appetites are because we’ve never challenged ourselves to change them. We don’t know how negative our mindset is because we’ve never made ourselves aware enough to go, “Oh my gosh, I’m just doing that to myself.”

That pesky brain, tho…

The other thing that happens is the battle between the higher part of our brain that sets goals, that knows something needs to change, that makes us feel so inspired and the lower part of our brain that just likes to keep us safe. He says, “You’re never going to do that. You know you’ve always struggled with your weight. You know, you just are the way you are. You’re just negative, gossipy, and that’s not going to change. You just don’t like exercise.” Well that is exactly the point! Let all of that bizness come to the surface because that will teach you who you are.

Why is this such a big deal? We don’t realize how we have made basically everything into an idol. We’ve made wealth into an idol, we’ve made frugality into an idol, we’ve made the way people look at us into an idol, we’ve made our children into an idol, we’ve made our marriage into an idol. It is this kind of journey that will make these things apparent. The only way that I know how addicted I am to sugar is to not eat sugar. And let me tell you, as soon as I tell myself I’m going to go a month without sugar, do you know all the drama that comes up? A lot of drama. It’s so worth it. It’s so worth it for the journey.

Let’s Get To Work!

Remember, once you pick your One Thing, you’re going to be super motivated about it initially. “I’m going to work on my marriage. I’m going to work on my finances. I’m going to work on my weight. I’m going to work on whatever.” Then, all the negativity is going to rush in about why you can’t do that and why it’s so hard and why don’t you just go watch Netflix and eat donuts.

Remember that this is the point. Let it all come up and over the next few months we’re going to work on how to manage that, how to be willing to walk into hardship and sacrifice. We are going to learn how to train ourselves so that the pain becomes more than tolerable–so much so that you almost like it. It’s kind of like how I felt when I had been in CrossFit for a while. It’s really hard and you’re sore, but you get to the point where you crave that because you know what that means, it means I’m getting stronger.

The hard part where champions are made. Now, when I get to the hard part, I think to myself, “This is the hard part. Good.” We are retraining our minds that the hard part is not even the hard part. The hard part is the good part.

The hard part is where the magic happens.

The hard part is the part where everything finally changes and you’ve learned to embrace it.

I want you to go into the next several months with the eye of the tiger! I have the eye of the tiger in a lot of different areas of my life because–domino effect! But I am committed to really zeroing in on my health in the coming months. Continuing intermittent fasting, continuing to challenge myself to figure my hormones out, to learn how to listen to my body, to prioritize rest. Part of that has been focusing on working three days a week instead of five. Constraining my focus and challenging myself in an area I know I need to work on and being willing to endure the misery that comes with that for a while. Knowing that six months from now or three months from now, that misery is not even going to feel like misery! It’s just going to feel like, this is the part that I’ve been waiting for. This is the part where champions are made. Get the eye of the tiger. Y’all.

What can I do NOW or change NOW that will set me up for the best 2020 ever?

None of the habits I want to train into myself are glamorous or easy or even praise worth in and of themselves.

But the accumulations of good disciplines makes for a life that has depth and meaning and purpose.

We are inclined to what is easy and what is normal, but what if the BEST God has for us isn’t easy or normal?

What if it’s counter cultural and hard and totally worth it?

What ONE thing needs to change for you?

Maybe now is a good time.

Why Forgiveness is Magic

October 2, 2019 by Edie Wadsworth Leave a Comment

I got a barrage of emails after my book about fatherlessness came out, all centered around the same subject—how did you come to a point where you weren’t angry or resentful towards your dad?

That’s the million dollar question—how do we forgive someone that we feel has done has great wrong?

The answer is—only God.

Forgiveness is not our idea. We did not come up with it. We got the idea from forgiveness from the Father of all mercy and forgiveness. God who loves us, created us for communion and connection with each other and who forgives us all our sins and transgressions. When I fully understood the forgiveness and love of God for me, when I let it sink in that He wasn’t holding me hostage to my sin and rebellion and pride, when I sat long enough in His unconditional love and mercy to see that there was NO LOGICAL reason that He should come to me with forgiveness, but He did? Then it was easy.

And that’s when I saw the magic.

Me holding onto resentment and anger was a bit like me holding onto a porcupine and wondering why I’m hurting.

Our body’s are brilliantly programmed to mix up concoctions of feelings to match our thoughts, so when I ruminated on what had been done wrong to me, my body made a special blend of RESENTMENT AND ANGER that ONLY I GOT TO EXPERIENCE. This cocktail of molecules circulated in MY OWN BODY for years, poisoning me from the inside out. I thought my unforgiveness was “teaching them a lesson,” but instead it was training my body to be a specialist in holding the porcupine and then wondering why I felt so bad.

To forgive is to let go of the porcupine that is currently making you miserable.

To forgive is to decide that you no longer want the special cocktail of resentment and anger coursing through your veins.

Forgiveness is God’s Gift

To forgive is first and foremost a gift you give yourself, and it is possible because you have been given this gift first by God our Father. To forgive has NOTHING to do with the other person. AT ALL. To forgive goes against all logic and is perhaps the most powerful thing in all the world.

When you truly see yourself for who you are behind closed doors, when you take inventory of your thoughts and grudges and resentments and sin, you won’t be able to hold the porcupine and you won’t want to. And then you will be free.

When I became an adult and mulled over what happened to me in my childhood, it was super easy to just fall into resentment and blame and anger. Of course, I’m a good Southern girl, so it was all buried in there, and I tried to put on a good face, so it’s just eating me away from the inside. When I was writing my book about all these issues, it was easier for me actually to write about the things that happened TO ME, but when I got to my young adulthood where I set my own life on fire, where I was the perpetrator, where I was the one who needed to be forgiven, it changed everything.

When I really let it sink in that God forgave me all of that, how could I even pretend to hold on to these wrongs that have been done to me when I have been completely forgiven?

It reminded me of the parable in the Scriptures where the King has a servant, and this servant owes the king 10,000 years wages and the King forgives him all his wages. But then somebody owes him like two months wages and he won’t forgive the debt and kills the guy who owes him. That’s us. We demand our rights. This person has wronged me, we say. But what we forget is that we are also the perpetrator.

When we really get honest with ourselves— the thoughts that we have, the grudges we hold, the secret resentments, the secret habits, the secret life we often live—when we get really honest with ourselves, we’re just like the next guy who wronged us. It’s just a matter of degrees.

I finally saw that I was really no different than my dad. And when I looked at his life and the things that had happened in his life that possibly led to him being an alcoholic and led to him being absent and led to him not parenting me in the way I wanted, I realized he was probably doing the best he could do.

Then I became a parent and I realized how hard it is, and I just could no longer in good conscience hold on to this grudge and resentment that I was holding, because I saw myself for what I really am.

I embraced the forgiveness of God, who meets me right where I am, who knows my sin, knows my wretchedness, knows my heart and loves me anyway, and for the sake of Jesus forgives me. And I was finally FREE.

Resentments are just thoughts

The abuse that happened to me as a child happened a few times, but I have abused myself with that story my whole life. I mistakenly thought that it was important to hold tight to my painful story, because I don’t want to let them off the hook, but I’ve realized that the only person I’m holding hostage is ME.

Do you know where resentments and anger come from?

Us, our thoughts. Not from what the other person has done, but from the way we choose to think about it. I had important thoughts like:

This shouldn’t have happened. I was treated poorly. I had an awful childhood.

Those thoughts feel true and important but the only person they are making suffer is me. And I can choose to hold them tight (I did for 40 years) but I’m telling you that if you want true freedom for yourself, you will have to eventually choose to let them go.

What I realized is that the resentment and bitterness and anger were only poisoning me. I’m the only one feeling this special cocktail of resentment and blame and anger. ONLY ME. They don’t get to feel it—the people that I’m holding this grudge against that I can’t forgive, they can’t feel the feelings I’m creating with my thoughts. It’s as if I’m holding tight to my story (which feel like holding a porcupine) and I’m not letting go of this, NO MATTR WHAT.

But I’m the only one getting poked. When I began to realize this for myself, I realized how much power I’m giving over to the other person. I feel like I’m holding them hostage. But I’m not. I’m holding myself hostage in this prison of anger, resentment, blame. I’M feeling bad from it.

Those thoughts cause OUR pain, not theirs

Our bodies are masters at being like little bartenders and going, “Oh, okay, let me mix up the cocktail of resentment and anger and blame for you, hope you enjoy it!”

Then that brutal cocktail courses through our veins and we feel bad because anger and resentment FEEL BAD, but we feel justified in making ourselves feel bad.

But, do you see that the reason we feel bad is because we keep asking our bodies to make this cocktail for us when we hold these resentments and grudges?

If you look in the dictionary, to forgive means to stop feeling resentment and anger.

So, to forgive means that I ask my body (with my thoughts) to stop creating this special, awful cocktail for me. Your feelings don’t come from what other people do to you. Your feelings are generated in your body by your thoughts, so you’re having these feelings that are coming from your thoughts, and they’re giving you this result in your life of holding a grudge, of being resentful, of being bitter.

You feel like you don’t have a choice, but you ALWAYS DO.

Your resentment, your anger is the result of a painful story that you’re choosing to hold tightly, and my question is, for the sake of yourself, can you loosen that hold on that porcupine?

That painful story is optional.

And if it feels hard or impossible to do, there are some practical steps to think about it. Ask yourself if you’re tired of feeling this way? Have you held onto this long enough?

Here’s when you know that you might want to forgive: when you get tired of feeling the resentment in your own body. You get tired of feeling angry. You get tired of feeling resentful. You get tired of blaming. You can get tired of bitterness. When you get tired of it, then you might be willing to change it. You’re not going to change it because somebody else says, “Hey, you should forgive.”

Are you tired of giving your power away to someone else? When you realize how much power you have to feel the way you want to, to think the way you want to, you might decide that it’s been long enough.

Wouldn’t you rather feel peace and joy and love instead?

It doesn’t mean that you have to be best friends with the person who wronged you in some way. You can put up some boundary for yourself. That’s fine, but most of the time, the freedom that you get when you really grasp the power that you have in your own life to not resent, you don’t even need a boundary because freedom doesn’t really need boundaries. Because freedom is freedom, and freedom is amazing, and forgiveness is like magic.

Forgiveness takes what stirred up in you all this negativity and all these emotions and all this drama, and it just drops it. It just drops it like a hot potato. It just lets go of the porcupine. You’re not making the other person hold the porcupine. YOU ARE holding it. And you are feeling the pain of holding it.

Some of you are not just holding it, you’re squeezing it to your chest because you’re so convinced that you’re justified in feeling this way. But now, it’s only hurting you. It’s poisoning you from the inside out. And maybe it’s time you let yourself off the hook.

Forgiveness is magic

To forgive is to free yourself from something that is harming you.

Forgiveness is a stumbling block to many and is pure magic to the blessed few.

Forgiveness a free gift that you can’t hold when your arms are full of porcupines.

But when you decide you’re tired of feeling bitter and disgruntled and sour, it’s right here taking.

And it’s patient and kind and full of love.

So, no hurry. But when you’re ready, it’s yours for the taking.

I also recorded a podcast on this very topic. You can listen here!

LINKS THIS WEEK:

On the podcast—WHAT needs to change in order for you to feel better!
On video—What’s in my wellness box!
On Instagram—Tom rides a horse! Check my highlights!

5 Ways to Know & Live Your Purpose

August 28, 2019 by Edie Wadsworth 1 Comment

Many of us spend our whole lives searching for our purpose. If you’re like me, you read some purpose book at some point in your life which confirmed that you’re probably doing it wrong, so you search and fret and worry that you’ll get to the end of all this and NEVER have found your true purpose. Those are ALL LIES. I have great news for you, Mama!

Purpose is God-given

The first way to LIVE YOUR PURPOSE is to know you are already purposeful and complete and loved and enough. You are God’s child and when He created you, He filled you full of purpose. You already have ALL the value you are ever going to have and you are ADORED by your Father. You will not FIND your purpose out there, because it not OUT THERE. IT’S IN THERE—put there by God and indisputable. Purpose is the reason why something exist and you exist to be loved by your Creator & to share that love with those you meet.

Your purpose is not what you do but who you are. Once you know that, you can decide if you want to do it with more intention, with more focus, with more love, etc.

You are free to choose

And since you start from this place of being fully loved and fully known and fully accepted, you can CHOOSE what you want to do with your time and resources and gifts. You can choose to start showing up to everything you do with your whole heart. Since you are filled with purpose, you bring the purpose with you. So often we think if just had THAT important job, or that perfect spouse, or that certain gift, we’d have more purpose and our lives would be more meaningful. Your purpose is not your job’s job. IT’S YOUR JOB to choose to think and believe that your are the PURPOSE and MEANING bringer to everything you do.

Jobs are terrible at making us feel purposeful. So are husbands and children and money and just about everything we seek happiness and purpose from. It’s YOUR JOB to make yourself happy and it’s YOUR JOB to decide what you do with your time to LIVE OUT your purpose. You get to choose! And there is SUCH freedom in that.

Instead of choosing to see our purpose and choosing to choose what purpose we want to live out today, we often indulge in being stuck and confused. Being stuck means we don’t have to offer ourselves and our gifts to the world. It’s a sly way of hiding.

Those nudges that we’d like to do this or that or that we’ve ALWAYS WANTED TO (fill in the blank)? Those desires are God-given. We can choose to use our gifts however we want. What a privilege to do something that creates more love and kindness and goodness and beauty in the world. We’ve made it too complicated. And we are looking in the wrong places.

Not having FOUND our purpose is the perfect excuse for not taking the action in our lives that we should take. Looking for the perfect purpose is just a way to hide.

Take massive action, because you can

That brings me to the third thing I want to share with you about living your purpose. Living your purpose takes action! Decide what you want to do and do it! Make a plan. Pick a thing. Go all in. Give yourself a time limit. You are a walking talking action taking bundle of purpose!

But don’t expect that now all of the sudden, your life will have more meaning and purpose. It means what you make it mean. So, make it mean something that motivates and energizes you to keep growing and learning and evolving. Stop looking around for purpose and start taking action from a place of peace and rest and love. Do it because you’ve been given these gifts and this opportunity. Do it because you can. Do it because, WHY NOT YOU?

Purpose meets obstacles

The fourth thing I know about living your purpose is there will be obstacles. I love the part in Lion King where Simba realizes WHO he is and WHAT he was put on earth to do. He is told over and over, YOU ARE THE SON OF MUFASA. He leaves his comfortable life to enter back into the pride land and take it back from Scar and his minions. He put feet to his purpose and life got HARD. But he knew they were right—he was the son of Mufasa. And you are the daughter of God. Did you hear that, YOU ARE THE DAUGHTER OF THE LIVING GOD. And whatever obstacles you meet, He will be with you and go before you and fight for you.

Just because things feel hard doesn’t mean you’re not on track. It more often means YOU ARE. Hard things are hard because they matter. Let it be hard. Don’t quit because it’s hard. Purpose is hard. Choose to step into it anyway. Don’t let confusion win. It’s an obstacle that’s easy to give in to.

I don’t know my purpose, I don’t know what I should do with my life, etc. YES YOU DO. Nobody knows better than you.

Overwhelm and busy-ness are great way to stay stuck too. Stop making excuses and start taking action on your dreams. If you’re already enough and you’re not needing to make yourself feel more worthy, what do you most want to do with your life? And why are you not doing it?

The discomfort and the obstacles ARE the pathway to get the results we want.

Purpose on FIRE

The last thing I want to tell you about purpose is to live your purpose ON FIRE! You MUST manage your emotions around this topic to do all those things you know you are capable of doing. Stop telling yourself you don’t know what you don’t know what your purpose is. What do you want to THINK AND SAY about your purpose instead? Stop saying you’re confused and overwhelmed and start telling your brain what you WANT it to think about your purpose and about your life. This is SO POWERFUL, mama!

Do you want to feel inspired? What will you need to think in order to feel inspired? What action will you take from a place of motivation and inspiration? Practice that thought and that feeling before you sit down to plan your week or do your work.

Remember purpose on fire takes massive action! And the mama who KNOWS that she KNOWS that she KNOWS that every little thing she does is part of her calling and purpose in life will stand in awe of the life before her and SHOW UP for all of it—for the glamorous parts, for the awful parts, for the parts that feel meaningful and for the thousandth load of laundry. You are exactly where you are supposed to be doing exactly what you are called to do. You are a gift to the world. You are free to love and serve in whatever way you want. You ooze with life and meaning and love and purpose because you are your Father’s daughter.

Click here for your Live Your Purpose field guide download and video series!

3 tips for managing your emotions during hard transitions

August 22, 2019 by Edie Wadsworth 4 Comments

Last Sunday, we dropped our precious Em off to college.

A brand new freshman at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, in a brand city, with a brand new life waiting to be lived.

The week has been hard and joyful and depressing and full of hope. I think the hardest part of the whole thing was the ride home where her baby sister cried most of the way.

And the moment they said goodbye in the dorm. And going to church without her. And sitting on her bed looking around at all the reminders of her.

Losing our social butterfly feels so unfair.

But I’ve talked to her or face-timed her everyday. She’s THRIVING. She loves it. She so happy.

She texted me this adorable picture yesterday or her and roommates.

Just as it should be. I’m so proud of her and so excited for her future.

But it doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. It’s been a year of hard changes for us all around and navigating change and transition takes some intention and practice.

Transitions can be exhausting and can challenge our relationships and even our identity. We also find ourselves with decision fatigue as we face so many unknowns. Your transition may be that you’re changing jobs. Maybe you just got divorced. Or your kindergartener or just went to school for the first time. We go through so many transitions. Change is actually just inevitable. It’s part of everything and learning how to manage ourselves, our minds, our emotions during times like this is really, really critical.

Things are hard because life can be hard, not because I’m doing it wrong or made the wrong decision. It means that we’re human and that we’re having the normal human experience where things are amazing and beautiful and also difficult. Let it be hard, mama. And stop beating yourself up for that.

So, today I’m going live on my Facebook page to talk about some helpful tips and reminders for your hard seasons.

In this episode we’ll be talking about why transitions are so hard and ways to get better at dealing with them.

Let it be hard, feel what you feel

Transitions are hard and it’s okay to let it be hard, to feel what you feel. We are SO GOOD at resisting our feelings, at avoiding them by buffering with food or drink or other distractions, when the shortest and healthiest way through something is THROUGH IT. When we first adopted our six year old, I kept asking myself over and over, “Why is it so hard? What am I doing wrong?” Instead of just knowing that for the foreseeable future, this is probably going to be hard and I need to stop beating myself up about it or avoiding my feelings about it.

Things take time, and we have to be patient with ourselves. We have to give ourselves space, and we have to give ourselves grace. We have to feel what we feel. You know what? We’re terrible at doing? Feeling our feelings. We’re terrible at it.

What do we do instead of feel our feelings? We go eat something. We distract ourselves with social media. We buy something. We go somewhere.

We will do anything not to feel our feelings.

I just want to clue you in because I’ve really been practicing feeling my feelings for the past couple of years and it’s not as scary as you think. What I try to do when I’m really trying to accept how I feel is I try to name it. What exactly is the feeling that I’m feeling exactly? Am I sad? Does it feel hopeless? Am I angry? Am I overwhelmed? I try to name the feeling. Before we rush to fixing it, can we name it?

Then I ask myself, where in my body do I feel it?

Is it in my chest? Do I feel it in my throat. I often feel my feelings in my throat and chest. Some people feel is in their stomach or their head. Where do you feel yours, usually? Can you name what it is you’re feeling?

Here’s the other thing that’s crazy about feelings— they come and they go. They are vibrations in our bodies that are transient. If you can sit with the feeling and actually open yourself up to it, it will lose its power. And when we resist our feelings, we often feel anxious. A lot of anxiety is just resisting feelings. We don’t want to feel sadness or grief, so we resist it and then we feel anxious. Opening up and being able to just breathe into it is so helpful. Feelings are not scary. Remind yourself that you can feel anything.

I love to think of the virgin Mary when she was told that she was pregnant. I’m sure all those crazy feelings were going through her mind “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe this. I’m scared. I’m nervous. I’m afraid.” All the things that she must have been feeling.

But she let it be hard. She opened her hands and heart and said “Let it be to me as you have said.”

That was her prayer. Let it be to me as you have said. What if to the transitions in our lives, to the things that were hard, we opened up and said, “Let it be.” Just let it be.

I’m all in. I’m in for all of it. I’m in for the hard, I’m in for the sad. I’m in for the overwhelmed. I’m here for it. I’m here for the whole human experience. We feel like there’s something wrong with us when we have negative emotions, but negative emotions are part of what it means to be human and they won’t hurt us when we open ourselves up to them.

You can grieve what you grieve, and you can feel sad about the loss that you have, even if nobody else understands it. Have your own back. I promise open up to it, the emotion and the feelings will come and go and you’ll get through it so much better than if you keep resisting it. Say yes to all of life, even the hard parts.

Your thoughts are causing your feelings, not the circumstance

Your feelings are NOT coming from the circumstances. Your feelings are coming from your thoughts about the circumstances. This is a very, very powerful mind shift. You are not grieving because your daughter went to college. You’re grieving because of your thoughts about what it means that she’s now going to college. You’re not grieving about the actual circumstances in your life. Your grieving is caused from the thoughts that you’re having about the change. And sometimes, we want to grieve. Loss and grief are normal, but we must acknowledge that we are often making the situation much worse by how we are choosing to think about it.

This is super good news because a lot of times, you can’t change the circumstances. But guess wha you can change? You can change the thoughts that you have about the circumstance. When I think about this, I feel so much more empowered because so many things in my life have happened just like in yours—beyond my control. There is nothing I can do about it. This is the circumstance. I can fight against it and resist it or I can accept and welcome it and learn to manage my mind instead.

We think that we have to learn to manage our circumstances because we are always wanting to change the EXTERNAL thing instead of changing the INTERNAL thing. Your super power comes when you realize that it’s your thoughts that are causing your feelings. This is important. Nobody can hurt your feelings. They can say something negative to you, but you have to give that thing permission to take root in your life.

You hurt your own feelings by the thoughts you think about what somebody else does or what somebody else says. This is where you get your power back.

The circumstances themselves are not what is causing me pain. My thoughts about the circumstance are causing me pain. Those thoughts are optional. I can have thoughts about adoption, like this is a difficult situation. He’s difficult sometimes. This is hard. I can have thoughts like that and they might be true. But when I think that, I feel overwhelmed. What if instead, I chose to think, “This situation happened exactly how it was supposed to and we are the perfect parents for Thomas.” JUST AS TRUE and that thought empowers me to show up for him the way I want to show up.

Reframe the situation in a way that serves you

When Emme left for college, I had a choice of how I want to think about that. I can choose to think, “Things will never be the same. Our time together is over. This is terrible,” which though they may have some truth, probably won’t serve me or her.

Those thoughts do not cause me to show up as the kind of person and parent I want to be. How I want to show up for her is I want to be her biggest cheerleader and her best encourager. I want her to feel like she can do anything with her life. I don’t want her to be weighed down because her poor mom is home doing whatever the poor moms do when the kids leave.

It’s fine for me to feel my feelings, but let’s don’t push let our thoughts get so out of control that we blame others for how we feel. And when we decide to think better thoughts, that serve us, we have the freedom to do that.

This is called emotional adulthood where we take responsibility for how we feel. Nobody can hurt your feelings. Nobody caused you to feel this way. You’re choosing to feel this way because of the way you’re thinking. If you want to change that thinking, you have the power to do it.

What do I want to think and feel about my daughter who’s at college? Here’s what I want to think. I want to think that she’s ready, that she’s amazing. She’s going to be such a gift to the people that she’s with now. They’re so blessed to have her. The people she will meet are blessed to know her. I got to have her for all this time. What a blessing it is that other people get to experience how beautiful and wonderful and kind she is.

I show up so much better for her when this is my thinking.

My question is for these hard things that you’re going through, for these hard transitions—is what you’re thinking about the situation serving you? Is it helping you show up the way you want to show up?

When you’re going through hard things, when you’re going through transitions, you get to decide how you want to show up, and it starts with how you think about it and is the thought you’re having serving you and helping you show up the way you want to show up in your life.

Change is inevitable and there are ways to make the best of every hard transition, if you decide that’s what you’re going to do.

You got this, mama.

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Imagine.

—Showing up for your life with confidence & authenticity

—Becoming a relationship ninja and exchanging fighting and resentment and yelling for peace and harmony at home—Discovering the secret that is causing you to feel overwhelmed and frustrated & learning the one tool that will change everything

—Gaining clarity around your life’s purpose as you step into what you were created to do in the world

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5 strategies to stop the overwhelm & get more done

August 14, 2019 by Edie Wadsworth Leave a Comment

I don’t know about you, but the start of a new school year gives me LIFE!

I love the newness of it and the chance to start some new habits or to make some old ones better.

I also know that it feels overwhelming to many of us because here we are back in the land of lunches and karate and homework and dinner plans and laundry piles.

I took a little survey yesterday on Facebook and asked what struggles my friends have as it relates to productivity and, boy was it eye opening.

As moms with a full plates, we collectively feel overwhelmed with a lack of focus and follow through. We are plagued with procrastination and then the perpetual guilt of not getting done what we say we’re going to get done.

As a veteran mom and business owner, I know overwhelm. But over the last few years, I’ve been able to find systems and strategies that have made me highly productive without the all the drama of “busyness” and overwhelm.

I’m sharing those five strategies today, so buckle up and take some notes!

As a mom-preneur running a multiple six-figure business from home, I work out everyday, cook dinner nearly every night and work way less than full time and these strategies make it possible for me to do that. I struggled for years with this, but finally figured out how to throw away my to do list and GET MORE DONE!

I can’t wait to share with you how I—

prioritize my life
create for myself a positive mindset towards time
make a plan every week that allows me throw away my TO DO list
work with laser focus to honor my commitments to myself
leave myself plenty of time to play, relax, make food, exercise, etc

Let’s dive in!

What does it actually mean to be PRODUCTIVE?

Productivity is the results you actually PRODUCE.

And most of the time when you’re filling out your to do list, you’re not writing what you want to produce. You’re just saying, “Oh, I need to work on this and then I need to work on this and then I need to work on my closet and then I need to spend time in my kitchen working on organizing that.”

But you don’t give yourself a result that you expect to produce at the end of that time. And as a result, you probably don’t produce anything at the end of that hour or day.

So what we want to help you sort of change your mindset around is what it actually means to be productive. It means to produce a result. And I think the thing that has helped me so much about this is that when you actually produce a result, you feel very energized versus when you have a long to do list of things that you never quite finish.

When I used to live with a never ending to do list, I would just beat myself up everyday that I didn’t get very far through the list. That made me exhausted and tired. And when you function with an ongoing forever to do list, it’s not very energizing.

But here’s what I will tell you. When you get something done that was on your list and you actually produced the result, that is very energizing.

So we’re going to talk about the process of how I do that.

Prioritize your life

This step is going to help you get the RIGHT things on the list and take EVERYTHING else off.

One of the ways to get some clarity on this is to make of time journal of YESTERDAY or last week and compare that to what you say are your priorities. For example, it’s really important to me that I take care of myself and I exercise and eat well. Does my schedule over the last few days reflect that? It’s really important to me that I prioritize my relationships and I spend time with people I love. But when I look at my actual calendar, is that reflected in how I spend my time?

So, take some time and write down everything you did yesterday and then ask yourself— is what I say my priorities are? Are those really my priorities? Is that really how I’m spending my time?

It’s so true the old saying that the way you spend your days is the way you spend your life.

And are we doing that on purpose and really accomplishing the things that we want to accomplish and prioritizing the things that we really do think are important? So if I say it’s important that I take care of myself and I live a healthy lifestyle, well did I go to the gym? Did I do some exercise? Did I sleep well? Did I prioritize real food? So how did I actually spend the day versus how do I say I think things are important.

Also, when it comes to prioritizing your life, you need to figure out what needs to STAY on your list and what needs to GO.

Do a brain dump or a thought download of everything that’s swirling through your head. Everything you need to do that’s causing you to feel overwhelmed. GET IT OUT OF YOUR HEAD AND ONTO PAPER.

Everything that you need to get done, get it all out of your brain.

The reason you feel overwhelmed is because you don’t write it down or you write it down on a never ending to do list and never put it in your calendar.

So I want you to get everything out of here and get it on paper, okay? When you get it on paper, I don’t want you to then start putting it right into your calendar just yet. I want you to then decide, does this fit with the priorities I say I have. Is this really important? Then ask yourself, is this something that I personally have to do? Could my kids do it? Perfect example today, I sent my teenager to the grocery store because that was something I couldn’t take off the list, but it didn’t have to be done by me.

There are certain things that only I can do.

Only I can work out my body, only I can spend time with my kids and my husband, only I can sleep for me. But there are so many things that somebody else could do. So could you delegate it? Could one of your kids do it? Could your husband do it? Could you pay somebody to do it?

I can’t tell you how much time and overwhelm it has saved me to really look at my list and figure out what doesn’t even need to be on the list. So, think of it this way, when you’re decluttering your house and you sort of take everything out and you make these piles, it’s going to be way easier to organize. And I promise you that a lot of the things on your schedule are things that don’t need to be there.

If you’re an overwhelmed mom who’s working full time, do you need to be making homemade cupcakes for your second graders class? Probably not. Unless that’s something that really energizes you and gives you energy. But if you’re going to forsake sleep for it and you’re going to halfway resent that you have to do it, delegate it. Buy the cupcakes. Better yet, send somebody else to buy the cupcakes.

There’s probably a lot of things on your list that don’t even need to be there. So after you make this list, I want you to cross everything off that you can either delegate that doesn’t need to be on the list at all, that totally is not really in alignment with what you say are your priorities.

Prioritize the list means you prioritize your life. What you do every day becomes what you do in your life.

Plan your time

The 2nd way to get more done is to plan your time.

Now some of you are going to say, I don’t have time to plan.

You don’t have time not to plan.

And I usually do this either sometime over the weekend or on Monday morning. A lot of times I do it on Sunday evening. I take the list from #1 that has all the stuff that I crossed off that I don’t need to do or that somebody else can do and then what is left, I put in the calendar.

And then I can throw away the list. What needs to get done by me is now on my calendar for the week. So let me give you an example. This week, probably like you, I had so many things that were still left on my list. I had to emails to write, videos to make, classes to teach, an ebook to finish.

One of the things that was really overwhelming me this week is that by Friday, I set this goal that I needed to write this little ebook by Friday. I’m writing a five-day challenge on living your purpose and I’m so excited about it. The content is so good, but I need to write it out all in one PDF. And that was swirling around in my mind like, “That’s going to take forever. I so don’t have time to do that this week.”

But I gave myself a deadline that I needed to do it by Friday and once I did that, I found these two-hour blocks in my schedule where I’m going to work on it. Now, I don’t feel overwhelmed because it’s IN MY CALENDAR and I’ve taught myself over the years to honor my calendar.

Now, here’s something really important with planning. You say, “Well, Dr. Edie, how long does it take to write a PDF?”

It takes as long as you give yourself.

So what I did is I gave myself a two-hour block on Thursday and a two-hour block on Friday to finish it. I don’t know how long it takes to write an ebook, but apparently it takes four hours. And here’s what I promise you, when it comes to planning things like this, if you will really teach yourself to focus (which is actually the fourth strategy) you will get so much more done in a specific amount of time.

When you say, “In this two hours, this is the result that I’m going to produce is I’m going to have half of this PDF done.”

Another example, this morning I had to write an email. It needed to go out today. I gave myself 45 minutes. That’s all I had. Guess how long it takes to write an email? 45 minutes apparently.

It actually didn’t even take that long. And I can tell you that over the years I haven’t been as consistent in the past about sending emails because I would give myself FOREVER to write them. It might take me five hours because I didn’t set a deadline to produce a result. I just said, “Work on email today.” And then Maybe I couldn’t find the right photo I wanted to use. Maybe I couldn’t find the right words. But, when I give myself a hard and fast deadline—like, it has to be done in 45 minutes. Guess what? It gets done in 45 minutes.

And done is better than perfect.

So when you’re planning out your time, you just give yourself an amount of time to do it. An hour, two hours. Most things can be done in that amount of time.

How long does it take to clean your closet out? As long as you give yourself. Right? So, just decide, I’m going to take two hours to clean my closet out. I’m going to take an hour to make our vacation plans and do all the calling and whatever. Get in the habit of planning things and giving yourself a certain amount of time.

The other thing that I love about planning is that you’re making your decisions ahead of time. So you’re deciding ahead of time on Thursday, from one to three, I’m going to write a PDF. I make that decision ahead of time, which makes it easier than trying to decide on Thursday IN THE MOMENT what I want or need to do.

The other powerful thing about deciding ahead of time is that your brain will go to work for you because it knows your intention is to get this done this morning. When I look at my calendar for tomorrow and I know I have to make a video about productivity, my brain starts helping me by coming up with ideas. It’s a super powerful thing.

Planning also doesn’t let you indulge in perfectionism.

You have one hour to get this done and that’s it. It won’t be perfect, but it will be done.

Positive time mindset

We have to stop saying, “I’m so overwhelmed. I’m so busy. I’m never going to get this done. This is so hard. I have so much to do.”

We have to stop saying that because that is how we indulge in confusion and overwhelm. If you say that all the time, your brain is going to prove you right. Your brain is going to go, “Oh, we’re overwhelmed. We never get anything done. We never finish our list.” And you won’t because your brain likes to be right, so if you tell it over and over how busy you are and how you don’t have time to gets things done, you’ll be right. If you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them.

So instead, before I start my work, I create the feeling of motivation and inspiration before I start working by telling myself something positive as it relates to time. I didn’t wake up feeling inspired and motivated. I create inspiration and motivation by saying to myself, “I have something really awesome to share with my people and I’ve got to get this done in 45 minutes so that I can share this awesome tidbit with them.”

I create that feelings I want by how to talk to myself about time and my work. Starting your day with that kind of positive mindset versus, “I’m so overwhelmed. I’m so busy. I’m never going to get it all done.”

We must tell ourselves what we want ourselves to think about our day and about our time. How do I want to think about time?

I have plenty of time. I have plenty of time to get my work done. I have plenty of time to go to CrossFit. And cook food. And make lunch for my husband. And hear about my daughter’s day. I trust myself to honor my calendar and do what I say I’m going to do.

You tell yourself what you want yourself to believe about time instead of telling yourself that you’re overwhelmed and that you don’t have enough time.

Power Focus Hour

Here comes the magic. When it comes time to honor your calendar and do that one thing on your list, ONLY DO THAT ONE THING. So when I was writing the email this morning, I wasn’t checking Facebook. Or scrolling Instagram. Or watching Netflix. I had one job. Write the email in 45 minutes.

I promise you that when you train yourself to do this, you will so much more done. But, this takes practice. When I started training my brain this way of getting things done, it was about 7 years ago. I read the book, Getting Things Done and I was so motivated to start this method.

The first year I practiced this way of productivity, I was maybe 20% better at doing it. The second year, I was 30% better at doing it. The fourth year, I was 40% better at doing it. Do you see what I’m saying? Be patient with yourself. You’re not gonna all of a sudden tomorrow create this system and then be able to execute it perfectly. And that’s okay. Just take baby steps.

Today, years later, I can get things done fast and I feel energized after I do it.

But even so, when I got up this morning, I didn’t wake up going, “Oh, I feel so motivated to write an email.” No, it’s 6 o’clock and it’s time to write an email, so I have to generate the thoughts and emotions that I want to do that, and I have to purely focus until I get that done, and not be distracted.

Don’t indulge in distraction or procrastination. Just tell yourself I have 45 minutes and I have to get this done and once you start practicing that, you will learn that you can trust yourself.

I know that I am highly productive now because I can trust myself. I can trust that the at the end of today, everything that was on my calendar, I got done because I didn’t do a million things, but only the three main things I was supposed to do today. And I didn’t feel overwhelmed. I felt energized.

Think of how you feel when you decide you’re going to clean out your closet and you get it all done. You feel like, okay, what else can I do? What else can I attack? It’s so energizing to actually get things done.

But you must train yourself to focus and do one thing at a time.

When you’re doing your task—no scrolling, no notifications, no phone calls. Don’t let yourself indulge in distractions. And then after that hour is over, you’re going to have all the time in the world to do whatever you want. I don’t think it’s wrong to be scrolling Instagram. I love to scroll Instagram, but I love to scroll Instagram after I get my work done and then I’m like, yes, I can just sit here and be mindless and scroll Instagram because I earned it because you know I got my work done.

So give yourself the gift of FOCUS and see what’s happens to your productivity.

Play, relax, waste time

Get your stuff done and then purposefully waste time, if you want. Purposefully scroll through Instagram because you did your work or purposefully sit down for two hours and read a book or take a nap. You should have plenty of rest time. But schedule the rest time in instead of living with this ongoing to do list that you never finish.

You now have time to play and relax and waste time if you want and you can do it with peace of mind, instead of overwhelm. When you prioritize your life, plan your time, cultivate a positive mindset about time, and execute it with power hour, you will have time left over to play. Go play with your kids, go play on the Lake, go take a nap, go scroll through social media, whatever.

But do it with a clear mind knowing that you got done what you wanted to get done for the day.

We have to stop indulging in overwhelm.

So my question for you is, why are you choosing overwhelm?

Why aren’t you choosing something better to say about your time and about your productivity? You get to choose. So I say, choose productivity NOW so that later today you can choose play.

Have a beautiful and PRODUCTIVE day!

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3 ways to give yourself the gift of self-confidence

July 24, 2019 by Edie Wadsworth 7 Comments

Tom Tom and I were gone for a week together to Salt Lake City for the Young Living convention.

It was a whirlwind of learning and connecting and pouring into as many people as I could. We met hundreds of new people and I’m so thankful for every one of them for finding us and saying hi and for all the encouragement we were given.

I also noticed that so many women lack confidence. They felt insecure and were unsure of themselves. They were timid and had a hard time making eye contact.

I think no matter your confidence level, we all have days where we’re not feeling quite ourselves and we can go into an insecurity tail spin.

But being in the presence of someone who is confident and kind and loving is such a gift.

They’re easy to be around. They put everyone around them at ease. They are so comfortable in their own skin that they can focus their time and energy on everyone else. They radiate. They have this vibe and energy that is contagious.

I think that is possible for all us if we are willing to increase our awareness and notice our own thinking about ourselves.

The secret messages that you tell yourself are so important.

In fact, the way you talk to yourself becomes the way you talk to others.

If you are positive and patient and compassionate with yourself, it will bleed into all your relationships.

Conversely, if you are critical and negative and unkind to yourself, it will also bleed into all your relationships.

Your relationship with yourself is important and taking the time to be curious about and to be willing to change it signifies that you are willing to grow.

Self-confidence is cultivated. Self-confidence is just the thoughts you choose to think about yourself. Notice, I said CHOOSE.

My question is—are you deciding what those thoughts should be or are you letting your brain run wild?

Self-confidence is a gift that ONLY YOU can give yourself and when you decide to make it a priority, it’s a gift that you give the world too.

It’s doesn’t mean you know everything or are good at everything and it certainly doesn’t mean you’re arrogant and self-serving.

Self-confidence is basically your ability to handle your own self (your thoughts and feelings and emotions) in any circumstance and you get better at doing it by practicing.

We will talk about recognizing the value of YOU—seeing yourself the way God sees you, practicing your confidence (learning that you are in charge of your thoughts and feelings), and owning your frailties.

[1] Acknowledging your value

You are a child of God. You are inherently as valuable when you are born as you will ever be. You do not need to earn your place, you cannot make yourself more valuable by what you do or contribute. You are loved by the God of the universe and His love makes you forever and always precious and enough and beautiful and perfect. You don’t need to wait until you get married or have a baby or write that book or get that job before you “qualify” as someone who can have confidence. You already have EVERYTHING you need within you and YOU are the one who needs to practice believing it to your core.

You also have a your ego, your sin nature—the you that wants to constantly prove yourself and compare yourself, the you that’s afraid and doubtful and full of insecurity. This is the sneaky part of you that in the name of protecting you from being hurt, tells you that you are less than and not as good as the next girl. When you are letting this voice rule you, you are not living from your truest self—your deepest essence. You are listening to the wrong voice.

Your highest self knows that you are made in God’s image and that you have always been just right. Listen to the still, small voice that reassures and comforts and encourages. Listen to the voice of love and humility. THAT is the voice of God’s spirit in you and when you learn to show up for YOURSELF and for others with that voice in your head, you are one contagious and attractive person to be around. Self-confidence becomes a gift, not only to you, but to everyone blessed to be around you. Since you are comfortable in your own skin and know who you are, you make everyone else comfortable around you. What a gift!

Practical: Make a list of 25 things you like about yourself. Be curious and not so critical. This might seem hard at first but it’s totally worth it if you are someone who is always putting yourself down.

[2] Owning your frailties

Last week when we were out of town, I was feeling particularly vulnerable. I was traveling alone with Tom Tom and I was very hormonal. Every person who approached me to meet us and show us love and kindness brought me to tears. I must have cried ten times the first day. At first, I was mad at myself. Why am I so emotional? Why does every interaction feel so raw? Why am I feeling so vulnerable? And then I remembered that I’ve had a rough few months and I let myself off the hook. I’m emotional. So what? It’s kind of endearing, at least to some people. I’m flawed and sinful but I’m also the perfect version of me. I’m forgiven and I am learning to walk in grace and humility, even when I feel like I’m too much or not enough.

Being confident doesn’t mean being good at everything. And it certainly doesn’t mean being arrogant. Hardly. It actually means having the humility to know that there’s still so much to learn and so many ways to continue growing. It’s good for us to own where we are and how much farther we have to go. But we can’t let our brains use that as evidence that we are unworthy.

Our brains have been wired to look for the negative things in our world to try to keep us from danger. Unfortunately, that has often led us to these loops of negativity that we’ve let run wild. And even more unfortunate, the target of these negative thought loops are often our own selves. To reprogram that, we have to tell our brains what to think about us. And when we do this and begin to tell ourselves the beautiful truths about who we are and what we are created to do in the world, that positivity spills over into everything. We begin to see everyone else in that same, positive light and we begin to radiate the light that is within us, making it easier for others to do the same.

So, instead of beating myself up for being too emotional, I reminded myself that I’m tender and compassionate and easily moved to tears. Just as true and a much better story to tell about myself. Now, it’s your turn. What is negative, perhaps awful story you tell about yourself. That you’re not motivated? That you’re too heavy? That you never get anything done?

Listen, those negative messages are poisoning you against you and they’re also making it almost impossible to generate the positive emotions that you need in order to take ACTION in your life. Tell a better story and just see the magic unfold.

Practical: Name the most painful thought you have about yourself—something that causes you to feel shame or causes you pain in some way. Right it down. How does thinking that about yourself make you feel? And how do you show up in the world when you feel that way? That is probably a thought worth examining and changing. How can you change that thought to something that serves you better, that fuels more motivation and passion and less shame and paralysis.

[3] Practicing confidence

Now, this newfound way of talking to yourself will seem weird and wonky. Jordan Peterson said in his book 12 Rules for Life to treat yourself like someone you’re responsible for helping. And I know you would never treat your friend or family member like you often treat yourself. So, you’re going to need to practice.

The old, nagging voice will keep trying to have its say. You decide now that you are going to have your own back—that you are going to remind your brain that yes, you struggle with many things, but you are God’s child and you are loved and you are willing to keep practicing this skill of showing up with your whole self, faults and shortcomings and gifts and all.

Self-confidence is more about knowing that you can handle yourself in any situation—that you can manage your mind and emotions and have your own back. And the better you get at that, the better you get at taking care of others around you too, because you’ve gotten good at taking care of yourself first.

The skill of feeling confident won’t come overnight. But EVERY LAST THING in your life will get better when you learn to live from a place of confidence, humility, and love—first for yourself and then for everyone who is blessed to have you in their life.

Give yourself this gift. You’re the only one who can.

To watch the video on this topic, click here!

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